"Caffeine"
a self-made feature film by Jordan Krumbine
IMDB Title Page | Watch it on IMDB
Viewing tip: watch it on your TV! If you have an Apple TV or Roku or other YouTube-connected device, go into YouTube Search (through your device) and search for "krumbine caffeine". If there's multiple results, this one is the longest ;)
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WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING"What an epic piece of work for one man to undertake! Funny and dark, smooth yet zingy, it had style, substance and polish. You should be very, very proud."
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"Holy f*#king crap. Who knew schizophrenia could be so much fun to watch. Krumbine delivers the performance of his lifetime, and his life time, and his lifetime."
"I am truly blown away Mr. Krumbine. This belongs in a film festival and you deserve an award on every level."
"... bloody fantastic and Slacktives music is a match to a T."
"The story is great. The character development is fun. It's a well developed story and deserves to be seen."
"The takeaway from this movie [was that] Krumbine's editing is extremely unique [and he] could use this film easily as an acting resume (albeit a long one)."
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"It was inventive, creative, and an amazing demonstration of surprising (and impressive!) acting skills. I enjoyed the Wal-Mart sequence; relieved to know Anna and Jaime had a secret and that Jaime was actually a good guy. There really were a lot of subtleties in the story and performances. The hostage scene was also impressive and really showed off the inventive camera work. The guitar [score by Slacktive] was a good choice."
-- Raye R., 08/12/13
"As it started and I came to realise what format the rest of the film was going to take I was a little worried hat I'd get bored, but the quality of the writing obviously lived up to, and quite possibly went beyond, your usual standards [...] Fucking amazing. You have every right to be proud of that, Jordan."
"I was very impressed with what you were able to accomplish with one person, one camera and one room. Also, when this goes to Hollywood, one or more of these characters needs to be played by Jeff Goldblum. I was also totally waiting to see you kiss yourself at Wal-Mart. but other than that disappointment, I really sincerely enjoyed this."
-- stardust047
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CAFFEINE
PROMO #4 (the official trailer)
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CAFFEINE
PROMO #3 |
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CAFFEINE
PROMO #2 |
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CAFFEINE
PROMO #1 |
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SOME FACTS ABOUT "CAFFEINE"
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• Filmed between July and November of 2012.
• Shot on a Canon SX40 HS at 720p • Edited at 29.97 fps and then converted to 24p. • Narrator and script shots are only color corrected and gently vignetted -- the black & white scenes are heavily processed to achieve the high-contrast look. Film grain and vignette effects are also used. • During the narrator shots, you can see a lapel mic. I originally intended to record audio with a lapel mic and a Zoom H1, but after listening to the audio on the narrator shots (the first bits that I filmed) I decided it wasn't worth the hassle. (I later realized the batteries in the lapel mic were shot.) • The whole of the movie's audio is recorded with the in-built camera mic. Many hours of post-production were spent balancing and cleaning up the audio. • The movie was almost abandoned completely in early November. |
• No lines were memorized (aside from the short, simple lines that are easy to retain). A $20 music stand held the script and I used clamps to adjust a page to get a better eye-line (which wasn't always effective). It's the equivalent of a poorman's teleprompter.
• The movie was shot entirely in the second bedroom of my condo, in front of the window. Aside from the narrator and script shots, the entire movie was shot with natural sunlight only. • Early on, Slacktive provided active encouragement and was someone I could creatively bounce ideas off of. I requested music and the score is (mostly; about 90%) built from a 40-minute noodle session Slacktive recorded. • The completed movie was screened in full with my wife (who was watching it in its entirety for the first time) the evening of January 25th, 2013 and was posted live, for free, on YouTube immediately afterwards. |
WHY I MADE A FEATURE
I wrote a bunch of screenplays between 2003 and 2007. These weren’t any kind of piddly affairs, either -- they were feature-length, character-driven stories that I labored over intensively. I rewrote, revised, and refined. There were a handful of pointless attempts to submit scripts to agencies and production companies -- it’s a demoralizing and obliquely hopeless exercise in futility, should you ever choose to attempt it yourself.
A glimmer of light in my attempt at a screenwriting career came in 2008 when my most ambitious script yet was recognized as a semi-finalist in a national screenwriting competition. Let me assure you: such recognition is worthless, aside from biographical video descriptions like this.
I had penned a stack of screenplays and the only future I could see for them was that of professional dust collecting agents.
As I turned my focus to novels (in 2009 I started writing what turned out to be my most popular book “Zaphod Zombie: Living Impaired Among the Unimpaired Living” and self-published in 2010) I made a small effort to publish a few of my screenplays as scriptbooks. The publishing worked just fine, but the format just wasn’t reader-friendly.
My screenplays -- my stories -- were doomed to wallow in infinite obscurity.
Eventually I would start adapting my scripts into novels and novellas. The first project was the semi-finalist sci-fi epic -- it eventually became “Explorers of the Unknown: Disastergeddon!”. Another passion-project script that had only been seen by two or three people became “Religiously Roasted Every Goddamn Day”.
In the summer of 2012, I was either going to start working on another adaptation or do something DIFFERENT. I had been inspired by a fellow youtuber who had shot a brief scene he was writing -- he shot it by simply playing the two parts in the scene and cutting it together. It presented a unique proposition: could a whole movie be shot that way?
If yes, well, I certainly had the material for it.
And there was something romantic about finally committing one of my screenplays to video. Even if it wasn’t produced as a “real” film, to have a visual interpretation of this screenplay I had crafted … there was something special about that.
So starting in the summer of 2012, I took one of my screenplays and began shooting the movie by myself in a single room in my condo. There was never another person behind the camera. There was no sound guy or cameraman. There was no costume designer, script supervisor, or light tech.
In fact, the only outside help I had in making this movie was from my dear friend Slacktive who provided me with a 40-minute piece of audio filled with his guitar noodles. There were a few additional tracks and a vocal track that I used for the credits, but this was all material I used to craft the score of the movie.
Almost as soon as I began shooting, I started editing. Everything came to a grinding halt in October when I went to Las Vegas to get married. It took awhile to find motivation to continue shooting -- and I almost didn’t. If it wasn’t for the encouragement of my wife, I probably would have abandoned this crazy project altogether.
I officially completed taping on November 17th, 2012 (although I would still be shooting script-page b-roll into 2013).
I officially completed editing on January 24th, 2013.
In the end, “Caffeine” is a dramatic reading of an original screenplay. It is produced entirely by one person, in one room, with zero budget.
In the end, after years of writing feature screenplays that were never produced … one was produced.
For every screenplay that Hollyweird produces, a thousand more scripts lay untouched. As a creative, I cannot rely on an obtuse and unfair lottery system to see my art realized.
My dad was fond of saying that “where there’s a will, there’s a way”.
I made my feature, goddammit.
-- Jordan Krumbine
I wrote a bunch of screenplays between 2003 and 2007. These weren’t any kind of piddly affairs, either -- they were feature-length, character-driven stories that I labored over intensively. I rewrote, revised, and refined. There were a handful of pointless attempts to submit scripts to agencies and production companies -- it’s a demoralizing and obliquely hopeless exercise in futility, should you ever choose to attempt it yourself.
A glimmer of light in my attempt at a screenwriting career came in 2008 when my most ambitious script yet was recognized as a semi-finalist in a national screenwriting competition. Let me assure you: such recognition is worthless, aside from biographical video descriptions like this.
I had penned a stack of screenplays and the only future I could see for them was that of professional dust collecting agents.
As I turned my focus to novels (in 2009 I started writing what turned out to be my most popular book “Zaphod Zombie: Living Impaired Among the Unimpaired Living” and self-published in 2010) I made a small effort to publish a few of my screenplays as scriptbooks. The publishing worked just fine, but the format just wasn’t reader-friendly.
My screenplays -- my stories -- were doomed to wallow in infinite obscurity.
Eventually I would start adapting my scripts into novels and novellas. The first project was the semi-finalist sci-fi epic -- it eventually became “Explorers of the Unknown: Disastergeddon!”. Another passion-project script that had only been seen by two or three people became “Religiously Roasted Every Goddamn Day”.
In the summer of 2012, I was either going to start working on another adaptation or do something DIFFERENT. I had been inspired by a fellow youtuber who had shot a brief scene he was writing -- he shot it by simply playing the two parts in the scene and cutting it together. It presented a unique proposition: could a whole movie be shot that way?
If yes, well, I certainly had the material for it.
And there was something romantic about finally committing one of my screenplays to video. Even if it wasn’t produced as a “real” film, to have a visual interpretation of this screenplay I had crafted … there was something special about that.
So starting in the summer of 2012, I took one of my screenplays and began shooting the movie by myself in a single room in my condo. There was never another person behind the camera. There was no sound guy or cameraman. There was no costume designer, script supervisor, or light tech.
In fact, the only outside help I had in making this movie was from my dear friend Slacktive who provided me with a 40-minute piece of audio filled with his guitar noodles. There were a few additional tracks and a vocal track that I used for the credits, but this was all material I used to craft the score of the movie.
Almost as soon as I began shooting, I started editing. Everything came to a grinding halt in October when I went to Las Vegas to get married. It took awhile to find motivation to continue shooting -- and I almost didn’t. If it wasn’t for the encouragement of my wife, I probably would have abandoned this crazy project altogether.
I officially completed taping on November 17th, 2012 (although I would still be shooting script-page b-roll into 2013).
I officially completed editing on January 24th, 2013.
In the end, “Caffeine” is a dramatic reading of an original screenplay. It is produced entirely by one person, in one room, with zero budget.
In the end, after years of writing feature screenplays that were never produced … one was produced.
For every screenplay that Hollyweird produces, a thousand more scripts lay untouched. As a creative, I cannot rely on an obtuse and unfair lottery system to see my art realized.
My dad was fond of saying that “where there’s a will, there’s a way”.
I made my feature, goddammit.
-- Jordan Krumbine