Exhausting work and upcoming projects

It's been two months since my last post, but it seems like a lifetime ago, so much has happened. I'm more than halfway done with the school semester, a fourth of the way through my last school year.

I've worked most of the semester non-stop on short films of varying lengths and difficulties. Some have been more successful and/or fun than others. But I wouldn't trade the experience of any of them for anything. Well, maybe I would trade them for getting paid. On the last post, I laid out the work I had already done in the semester and what was coming up at the time. That amount of film work is about half of what I've ended up working on up to this point, and I have another two short shoots to go. Overall, it's been by far the busiest film semester I've had in my school career. It's been exhausting but it's been a blast.

When I say it's been exhausting, I mean exhausting. There have been a total of about seven different 12 (or more) hour days. Some went all night until the sun came up the next day. They took everything I had to keep my energy up and my work at a high level, but I think we pulled off some great work. We'll see once final cuts are up. Among those films I worked on, I got my first bit of experience as a 1st AD (Assistant Director). For those outside of filmmaking, it's the person that's in charge of making sure the film keeps on schedule. That includes making things happen in a timely fashion, and keeping cast and crew motivated so the film is always moving forward. I've worked with some great ADs (shout-out to Jen W. and Stephanie F.) so I was hoping I wouldn't have a hard time rising to the task. I think I did fairly well since we were only ridiculously late one of the three days. However, my hat goes off to anybody that is trying to be a full time AD. The job is probably one of the most stressful on a set. I much rather prefer to handle lights and cameras.

Well, the next few months I am going to be delving full force into a few projects that will be filming next semester. The work I do on these projects can make or break my career as they will be a large part of the final demo reel that I will compile and turn in in order to graduate. I will be working with three great filmmakers who I trust and respect and I think we're going to make some amazing work. I hope that I live up to the trust they are putting in me to be able to make their visions come true. I'll try to make a few posts as we progress in these projects so there's a record of the improvement of work from day to day.

Finally, this might be my last update on this blog. I'm considering making a switch over to Tumblr. It lends itself really well to A)customization, and B)short posts. I think I can be more motivated to make shorter posts more often than longer posts on here every two months. I'll make another post when I get that one up and running with a link to the new blog. Until then, à tout à l’heure.

Shout outs and being busy

So, I'll start off with a shout out to the homie Geoff McCarthy since he gave me a mention in his own blog today.

Well, jeeeezus. It's been too long since my last post. I have been wanting to sit down and write something for a long time, but I just can't seem to find the time to do it that in. Let's see what I can do to catch things up around here.

I'm still working on editing a my film from Directing class last semester. I think I pretty much have a final cut. I just need to design the DVD menus and cases and I can send them out to everybody involved. I haven't forgotten you guys.

I've been super busy since I got back in town after my extended stay in California. As soon as I got back in, there was a lot of celebrations going around. First, there was a get together because Dan is visiting from Korea. Then there was Brett's birthday shindig, and finally Jared and Molly's going away party. Altogether, it was a bittersweet couple of weeks. It was nice to have some time to hang out with friends after being away for three months, but most of that hanging out time was saying goodbye to people. I miss everybody who has moved away and I hope to see them soon.

Then, after that settled down, school started. It's (hopefully) my last year at ASU, and it's going to be one tough last year. I'm in Capstone which is like my senior thesis class. The teacher is new to ASU but he's proven to be a fresh breath of air so far. His name is Adam Collis. He's directed one feature in his career called Sunset Strip. Despite his limited career, I trust in this guy to teach us well. He has an extensive background teaching at USC so I'm sure he's more disappointed in us than we are in him. Other than that, I'm taking a higher level French class, an upper division English class and a couple other courses to round out my schedule. Hopefully I can actually keep up this semester.

Once school got going, that's when things got really busy. I have been getting offers for work on student films left and right. So far, we have already wrapped a 6-day, 2-weekend shoot on a comedy short film. This morning, we started on another 7-day, 3-weekend shoot. In a couple weeks, I start work on a 4-day, 1-weekend shoot. I have loosely committed to another four projects which will probably be at least 6 days of shooting each. I have a couple other offers that I am thinking I am going to turn down, just to keep from overwhelming myself. All of this is work that I am doing pro bono. I don't mind, it's what I love to do and I wouldn't have it any other way. The day I start getting paid for my services will just be an added bonus.

Speaking of work, I am still looking for some. I have an interview on Tuesday with the ASU School of Engineering. They are looking for a student worker to help produce and edit films for the school's website and other marketing materials. I think it's a great opportunity. It's paid work and I get to practice some techniques that I can use in my own work. Everybody wins. Wish me luck, I hope the meeting goes well.

Well, it's getting late and I have to be up early tomorrow for another shoot day. I should be getting some shut eye soon.

Live long and prosper.

Still here and missing a home

My next post will be from California where I will be vacationing for the weekend at my sister's. Hopefully it'll be a fun time and I can come back relaxed and ready to get on the grind.

Haha! That's how I closed my previous post. That was about a month and a half ago. I'm still in California. Times are tough, I won't lie. I'm pretty much homesick all day except for a few moments when we're having fun out here. We haven't done all that much since I've been here. We've been to a few parties and barbecues that my sister's friends have hosted. Last weekend we did go to the beach in Santa Monica. I was doing it just as a way to get out and get some fresh ocean air, without any real intentions of having fun. Once we got there, however, I really began to enjoy myself. I took off my shoes and went for a stroll at the edge of the water. It felt so nice and soothing I regretted not having brought a pair of trunks so I could take a dip in the ocean. I think there's plans to go back again this upcoming weekend so I'll make sure I'm well equipped next time.

It hasn't been as if I've been completely without options since I've been here. There are a couple of people that I know from back home that are also spending time in town over the summer. I've been in contact with a few about hanging out, but I find it difficult to make those plans work. First of all, I intended on hanging out with Brittany, a fellow filmmaker, but I came down with the flu while that was being discussed. Later, I spoke to Chris about chillin', but by then I was so broke and uninspired to paint the town that nothing really materialized from those conversations. I think I'm just relegating myself to being a hermit for the remainder of the summer.

I haven't had much communication with people back home except for a few exceptions. I have talked to my dad a few times to see how he's doing. Thankfully, I think he's on his way to getting back on his feet. He's working again and it's paying better than the last couple of jobs he's had. I'm happy for him and hope he does well with this new opportunity. There's only been one friend I've really kept in contact with, and that's my buddy Javier. I was hoping to be back home for a few days because tonight Javier and I were supposed to attend the Jay Z concert in Phoenix. Unfortunately, I didn't think it would be prudent to ask my sister to make the extra expense to send me to Phoenix for only a few days. I felt horrible bailing on a friend like that, but he was understanding of the situation. I'm really bummed that I didn't get to go to the concert either. I saw Hova perform last year with Mary J. Blidge, and he knows how to put on a pretty good show. I hope Javi has fun tonight.

One of the few perks of being out here is that I have a lot of time with my own thoughts. I've been redirecting these efforts toward developing a few film ideas. None of them are too far along yet, but I'm excited at the possibilities. I wish these ideas would have come to me last semester, then maybe I would have put together better projects. This all just serves to remind me that I have unfinished work back home. I can't wait to get all of that completed. There are several people that gave to me of their time and effort that haven't seen the fruit of their labor. Briefly, to Brett, Jon, Drew, Katrina, Tobin, Wasef, Ryan, John, James, Karen, Josh, and Claudia, I apologize. I haven't forgotten our little film and I will complete it as soon as it becomes possible.

Well, I'm working on about 4 hours of sleep in the last two days, so I'll sign off now and go make me a cup of coffee. Until next time, goodbye.

R.I.P. Michael Jackson.

Retrospect and Presidents

It's May, so you know what that means. School's over. Thankfully and mercifully over. It was a tough semester to say the least. Did I succeed? Depends what your definition of it is. My standards for academic success are pretty low, so that has an effect on my definition. That said, I did well in the classes that I worked hard in. The other classes I gave a half-ass effort and got a half-ass grade. My fault, I'll pay for it later. What I find interesting is that the classes in which I had a teacher that I admired and enjoyed their company are the classes that I got As in. The classes that I disliked the teacher - not personally, but as a student - are the ones that I did poorly in. I think I could make a chart out of this data. Oh well, what's done is done. I have another two semester to retake courses I've done poorly in and hopefully I can graduate with a decent GPA. At the end of the day, I don't really care. Cs get degrees after all.

The most positive thing to happen since the beginning of the year is my growth professionally. I've had a super busy few months when it comes to film work. Here are the highlights:

- January, capstone film "Darkness of Light", camera operator.
- January, short film "The Following", director. IFP Special Award Winner.
- January, short film "Story of My Life", gaffer. AFA Film Festival Selection.
- March, short film "Without a Cure", cinematographer. AFA Film Festival Selection.
- April, short film "I'm the Best", cinematographer. AFA Film Fest 3rd Place Winner.
- April, short film "For Hire", director.
- April, short film "Streamlined", gaffer.

In addition to this, I was offered a job as a grip on a feature film. This would have been my first feature film work ever. It would have been a four-week shoot, six days a week, 12 hours a day. It would have been the most exhausting and most rewarding month of my life. However, it was not to be. The investor for the film had an unfortunate accident and pulled the funding for the movie. Without funding, nobody gets paid. For a project of that size, if nobody gets paid, nobody works. And if nobody works, no movie is made. So I lost that gig. But to know that there are professionals out there that want my services is a very good feeling.

Regardless of losing that income, my film work this semester has still been very rewarding. Each of the films I have worked on has been in front of an audience of at least 30 people. With the exception of the film I directed for school, they all received generally favorable reviews. That would discourage most filmmakers, but I am not trying to prove I am a good director. I have received praise for my cinematography and lighting work, and that is what matters most to me. I have already received offers for work next semester so hopefully I still have a few more films to add to my reel before my time at school is over. This is important with one year left because I am now starting to feel the pressure that after school is over with, I'm going to have to find legitimate ways to make films. Hopefully it all works out.

Another pretty awesome event happened as the school year ended. In case you hadn't heard, President Barack Obama gave the commencement speech at this year's graduation at my school, Arizona State University. A great and generous friend of mine was able to get his hands on a few tickets and gave me one so I could witness the momentous event. Here's a picture of my ticket:


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Here's a picture of the President as seen from my seat:


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Don't let the small size fool you. They were pretty good seats. Some of the graduates had worse seats than that. I won't rant and rave about his speech. If you'd like, search Google and you can find transcripts or even video of the entire speech online. I'll say that it was very inspirational, even if in retrospect I recognize it was mostly just good PR. But if the country would heed his words with sincerity, we'd be in a much better place. In particular, he spoke often about the need to drop the traditional selfish money-hungry American way of life, and adopt a lifestyle where we put helping others as a top priority. If only that would ever be possible.

Well, I've gone on long enough. Thanks for tuning in. My next post will be from California where I will be vacationing for the weekend at my sister's. Hopefully it'll be a fun time and I can come back relaxed and ready to get on the grind. Hasta luego.

Piling up and directing a third time

So I'm going to be up all night tonight. I have a couple of essays to write and an entire book to read. Since being up late isn't an issue, I thought I'd spend a few minutes and drop a few lines about my recent happenings.

In my previous post I mentioned staying up to study for a French exam. I got a 96 percent. Très bien! I took another one last week, but I don't think I did as well on that one. School is hitting a really rough patch in general. A lot of my late semester projects have been piling up on me. It's part of the reason I'm staying up late tonight. It's entirely my fault for letting it all catch up on me instead of working steadily throughout the semester. But we all know that's just not the way I work.

I have been doing a lot of film work recently. In particular, there's a group of filmmakers that have been working together on a few projects and I'm glad for it. Chronologically, we worked on Brett Dellandre's Without a Cure: The Tony Novak Story, which I mentioned briefly in my last post. The film is a spiritual sequel to an old film we made called Homophobic Homosexuals. It is a mockumentary about a guy that discovers he's contracted a disease called "The Gay". Now, it may seem the film would be offensive, but I assure you it is not. The entire premise of the film is to show that homophobia is lame, and I think we did a great job of getting that across. We screened it in class and folks loved it. We're showing it at this year's ASU Filmmaker's Association Film Fesitval. Speaking of... shamless plug!



As DP (that's Director of Photography for you non-film geeks) for Brett's film, I used two camera operators because we were using two cameras and I wanted to see what was on each of them at all times. One of them is Wasef El-Kharouf and his was the next project I worked on. This guy is a visionary and a great filmmaker. I had a blast working on his film which is difficult to even describe. I'll try to get him to put it online for sharing with you all when he's done editing. But I want to thank him first for his excellent work as my camera operator, and secondly for letting me work on his interesting project.

This weekend, I shoot my third directorial effort, a slapstick comedy titled For Hire. I'll post a synopsis and update on my next post. I'm really nervous because I'm not comically inclined as a filmmaker so this will be a challenge to complete. Okay, the sleepiness is kicking in so I'm going to go back to writing my essays. Will check back in soon.

P.S. Since Twitter seems to be all the rage now, and I've been a user since very early in it's lifetime, I'll whore my page out a bit.

Film challenges and sausages

It's about 1:30 AM right now and I can't sleep a wink. Which is strange since last night I only got about 5 hours of sleep because I was up all night studying for a French exam. I hope I did well. This has been an exciting and tiring week. Last Sunday I was a grip on a friend's capstone film. For those not in the ASU film program, a student's capstone is their thesis project in which they try to show that they actually learned something in the about 4 years they spent studying at ASU. It was an enjoyable way to spend a Sunday even though I was exhausted after the 13 hours of shooting. However, I worked with a few people that I hadn't worked with before but always wanted to, some people that I had never heard of but am glad to now have worked with, and some people that I needed to - and did - make peace with. The shoot went well and I hope Jen gets a good movie out of it.

Another project I recently worked on was my 2nd effort as a director since I began college. I mentioned in my previous post that my friend Dan was in town from Korea. Along with him and I, our friend Jared wanted to make a short during his visit, so we found an opportunity. It was a short film that was a part of the IFP's 24-hour Film Challenge. The challenge was this: At 9 AM on Saturday all of the teams met at the IFP office. Once there, each team was given an envelope containing 3 pieces of information: a prop, a line of dialogue, and a choice between two genres. In our case we drew a copy of that day's Arizona Republic newspaper, the line "Who is that guy?", and a choice between a thriller and a slapstick comedy.

There was a dilemma however. The night before was Dan's birthday so we all went out to Four Peaks to celebrate. So the next day when we had to be sharp and ready for filming, we were all hung over. Because of this we spent the better part of the morning sitting on Jared's couch watching The Onion Movie and having breakfast. At around 1PM we decided we needed inspiration so we went and rode the new Phoenix Light Rail all across the Valley. We decided we wanted to shoot at least one scene on the train. I won't talk too much about the movie we ended up making because we still haven't completed our final cut that will be ready for display. Suffice to say it ended up being a really fun and exhausting 24 hours. We turned in our film with about ten minutes to spare. A few weeks later we attended the premiere/awards ceremony where we won an award for "Best Use of a Sausage". You'll understand when I finally show the film. It's a lame award but it's the first one I've won for a film so I'm taking pride in it while I wait for the next award.

As far as school goes, I'm having a much better semester than last Fall. I am actually showing up to the majority of my classes and am turning work with much more frequency than before. I may not earn straight As like I did a year ago, but I won't fail or nearly fail any courses.

This weekend I have a project I'm really excited for. It's a short film being directed by Brett Dellandre. It is the 6th time we are collaborating and I think it will be our best to date. It is a comedy mockumentary about a young man afflicted with an incurable disease. That's just a teaser. More info in my next post. I will say this, it will be hilarious.

Well, I have a ton of homework to do for the rest of the day, so adieu for now.

Operating cameras and pointing lights

Wow. A lot sure has happened since the last post I wrote. The Fall semester ended and it couldn't have come any sooner than it did. I failed a couple of classes, but I actually did better in the other two than I expected. I think at least one of those is because my professor was retiring and he just didn't care what grades he gave out. I don't mind, it got me an A. Gus Edwards, you will be missed, and all of that.

I mentioned in the last entry that I lost my job in November while helping out with an audition for a fellow student's short film. Well right as the new year began we began principal photography (the main part of the shoot) for Darkness of Light, directed by Randy Forte. At first the Director of Photography Kenny Yanga wasn't even sure if I'd have a position on his crew. There was a chance I wad going to end up a lowly PA (just kidding PAs). But after a few conversations, he invited me on as his 2nd AC (assistant camera). I basically was going to help the camera operator with the little details like changing lenses, keeping the camera clean, moving the tripod, etc. During the course of a few meetings I was promoted to 1st AC, then finally to camera operator.

For the entirety of the film, except for a few shots, I was the guy behind the camera. We had an excellent crew on the shoot and it was by far the most organized and professional setting I've worked in as a student filmmaker. So for the awesome experience that I was a part of, I want to wholeheartedly thank the following people: Jared S. Mercier, Charles R. Forte, Stephanie Flores, Kenneth Yanga, Christopher J. Meyers, and the entire cast and crew of Darkness of Light. We shot and exhausting 7 days with 2 days rest, with most of those days being ten or more hours. But I enjoyed every minute of it.

I got my Macbook Pro back last week. I had previously bought one, but tight financial situations forced me to sell it in November. But I bought another one from a guy in Tempe. This one is even newer than the one I had before, but it is not the new unibody models. It's still one of the old aluminum ones. I'm going to get a hell of a lot of use of this one since I'm going to be editing a lot this semester.

My good friend Dan Dredger is paying us a visit from Korea. He's in town for a couple of weeks so we decided to shoot a film on one of the weekends he was here. It was off a short script that another friend had already produced before. We thought we could improve on the original so we gave it a shot. It was a much smaller production than DoL, but not any less enjoyable. We shot this one over two days with a great group of people and we're currently editing it so we can enter it in a few local film festivals. Hopefully something good will come of it all. I was the Gaffer on this film, also known as the guy that points the lights at the actors. I'll put links to the movie once we have it online.

I'm also working on the website for Darkness of Light. I'll link to that when that's ready. We should have a teaser site by next week. Look out for that.

Well, I need to go to sleep now. Tomorrow I'll write a little bit about school and what I have to look forward to this semester.