[The random tales of an indie filmmaker]
I’ve been using Occam’s Razor on a lot of my material belongings lately, and in my adventures of cleaning/throwing out a bunch of old crap I’ve come across a lot of stuff that have come to define certain periods and phases of my life.
Here are some of the many things I’ve come across:
(Photos will be here soon)
Anywho, I haven’t posted in a while and thought I would start with something random.
So I ACed for Brian Hamm on a cooking show pilot in Sacramento over the weekend, and it was something I did not expect, like at all.
I got to the set and immediately recognized a guy by the name of Bill Leonard, former California State Senator and member of the California Board of Equalization (he’s a tax guy). I was taken aback because he is featured in the doc that Nick and I have been working on for the past year and thought to myself, “what the hell is Bill Leonard doing here on a film set about cooking french fries?” Come to find out it was his house that we were shooting at.
I got inside and Ryan Todd started setting up the work station (G-RAIDs/MacBook Pro) to offload the footage to and I got a sneak of the stuff Brian had shot from the 102º day before. From the footage, I thought I recognized another face but wasn’t sure where from. Turns out that it was Tim Russ of Star Trek Voyager fame (what is up with Sacramento’s link to Star Trek?). He played the vulcan Tuvok. I IMDB’d him and also found out that he was the guy from Spaceballs in the scene where they literally combed through the desert for the princess. He stood up and said “We ain’t found shit!”
Throughout the shoot I was thoroughly confused as to what the premise was about. I knew there were French Fries, Bill Leonard, Tuvok, I mean Tim Russ (at one point he pulled out a guitar and started jamming) and we were shooting all this on the RED. It was just weird, weird enough that it was really entertaining.
Ran into some local folk I hadn’t seen in a while and got payed the same day. I do enjoy ACing a lot more than G&E.
I just moved my sparse weblog over from blogspot.com in hopes that it would ignite a fire for documenting the adventures involving cinematic tomfoolery that I often engage in.
I hope it works. Bye.
Why is it that when seemingly normal people get in front of a camera they often do things they shouldn’t? More often than not, people try to sound smarter than they really are or pretend to be and they paint themselves into a corner.
If you don’t know what you’re talking about, don’t do the interview. There’s nothing wrong with stating that the subject matter isn’t your forte. Just don’t pretend to know when you don’t.
–Luke
My first post of the new year …and the last 6 months for that matter.
Reel Marketing is doing pretty good. Been working on a project that has spanned over 9 months (should have taken 4, tops). I really can’t complain since it’s been consistently prosperous; though at times it has been a hard, uphill battle.
Started a new doc (a real doc) that has potential to go theatrical. It’s about political hypocrisy (sounds blah blah, but I guarantee that it will be more than just a blip, on a lot of people’s radars). We’ve already gotten 10 times the budget of both of our previous features.
I am shooting and co-editing with my P.I.C, Mr. Tucker. Kinda scary how fast things move when you’re on someone else’s dime (for real!!). Never travelled so much in my life either. Drove 9,000 miles in 3 weeks, flew to DC for a week, driven to So Cal at least 4 times and have set up shop in SF for half the film’s production.
HDV has been the main format for this feature. Can’t wait to try and go solid-state for the next one scheduled to begin in approximately 3 months (subject matter: edumacation).
–Luke
P.S. DO NOT DOWNLOAD THE QUICKTIME 7.4 UPDATE!! It will screw up all you AE users out there. We have found several annoying Bugs with FCS2 too (especially with Motion).
I have been a little busy around Sac lately. Getting our company started, freelancing, losing the only key to my car …you know, the life of me!
So the last post stated that Erin and I were doing a new video, while that is technically true we had to change artists …kinda. The new video were are in post with is for a fairly well know Deep House DJ that goes by the name D. JESUS (aka DJ Rich Soul).
Check out D. Jesus’s myspace site.
–Luke
Erin is going to be directing a new video for Rachael Santos, an artist here in Sacramento. The video she did last year for her was pretty impressive given the budget and time that was allotted.
In addition to shooting and cutting I will probably be co-producing as well.
We plan to shoot in May and are storyboarding it out right now.
I WILL POST SOME OF THE STORYBOARDS SOON…
–Luke
I’m up late finishing a wedding video I shot back in August for a friend. I need to ship it to SO CAL, FedEx Overnight, soes it gets there sometime on Saturday.
Finishing this project has been a challenge for me. I honestly should have completed it before Christmas, but with all the other projects I was working on, moving, family problems and general anxiety about getting steady work, I kept putting it off.
This being the first time I ever made a wedding video, I honestly don’t care to ever do one again. Seemed like an easy gig, but when you factor in that YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE for capturing the memories that will last people a lifetime (hopefully), you really can’t afford to NOT be meticulous.
I should be done with the encoding early friday morning.
–Luke
So I am getting ready to shoot some beauty spots just to spice up our reel. Reel Marketing™ is a venture my girlfriend, Erin, and I are trying to make happen. We like to actually have a day job that’s somewhat closely related to our field of choice (ie; creative and visual).
We’re renting the P+S Technik™ Skater Mini from John Chater in Berkeley, CA. He is a great guy with a lot of great gear. The shoot looks to be fun and in a whole new realm for me. I’m not used to shooting product spots.
Working with minimal budget, as per usual, it seems to escalate by the minute with all the grip gear and possible extra lights (peppers, inkies and whatever smaller lamps) we may need. I am also scoping out what the local Home Depot and Lowes has to to offer in the way of art direction by way of building supplies.
Tap Plastics is another place I want to mosey on into. Located on Florin Road, it is ironically across the street from the Home Depot I worked for at turn of the Millennium.
Frosted plastics (plexiglass) and flexible metallic plates are on my check list. Trying to budget for under $400, IMHO, that is not happening! : (
–Luke
When I first captured the footage we shot on two DVX100s, I forgot to set the pulldown rate to 2:3:3:2. I think that may be a factor into why I seem to keep having interlaced problems when there is any kind of motion in the frame.
I did these viral spots for BitTorrent™
(out of San Franciso) and shot them with a white background. There is high contrast between the background and the characters. The spots spoof the Mac vs. PC ad campaign by Apple™. I may be crazy, but I have never seen anything shot, using the DVX, where there were that many interlace issues.
Just something I should have taken care of 6 months ago. Oh, well…
–Luke
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