Greetings and Lamentations

*kicks tires... checks under hood*

Wow, this site is still up and running and shockingly not hacked by Russian Internet pirates hoping to sell you futons made out of Burmese Monkey hair. Honestly I prefer the Siberian Monkey over its Burmese cousin due to their propensity to fling less poo and such. Speaking of flinging poo, I've quit my job and moved to Hollywood! We sold our house in San Francisco after striking oil in the backyard. We made quite a bit of money off of our discovery and now live in a cozy Beverly Hills mansion. Shockingly, our neighbors don't take kindly to the nouveau rich which has led to some very very humorous situations. I may or may not be creating a sitcom about this recent period in our life.

The true Hollywood story is that we started saving up over time, sold our house and moved to LA so that I may give screenwriting/directing/filmmaking the old college try. Yes, my wife is indeed amazing. We relocated in the early part of January and I really haven't had much time to devote to writing as I played the role of Mr. Mom until we got our son enrolled in to a pre-school. Now that that has occurred, I'm balls-deep in screenwriting and such... more like ankles deep if I am to be honest. All incredibly exciting truth be told. Having started just recently, I don't have much to report gentle reader, but please keep your eye on this site as I am will be covering the following items shortly: my trip to the ASC, my 1 & 2 year plan, daily/weekly routine of a screenwriter, souffle recipes.

Oh! It was good of you to pop in. Thanks.

Uncle Lazlo, father of Benjamin Linus...

SFSDF is the film school which I graduated from and being the kick-ass center of learning that it is, they allows students back in the door for all kinds of the things. Be it to use camera equipment, editing stations, rooms for audition/filming, etc. On top of all that goodness, they host the occasional mixer with a special guest or theme. You need a guest or a theme because drinking and talking about film just isn't enough right? WRONG! Seriously the guests and themes are amazing otherwise its just me and my friends standing around drinking beer and dropping lines from Evil Dead III: The Army of Darkness. (Give me some sugar baby!)

This last week's mixer was a conversation between John Gries and James Savoca. John had starred in a movie that James had written and directed so they were familiar with each other and their work, which was nice because it gave their conversation an open and laid-back feel. John was the "main" guest of the evening and if you aren't familiar with the name you will be with the face. Look at his IMDB page. It has ninety-five entries for acting alone! 95!! My favorite is Lazlo Hollyfield from the 80's classic Real Genius. (Side note: they wanted him to read for Kent) The focus of the night was being a character actor and the director/actor relationship. How they had the evening set up was that a clip played from a movie staring John and then discussion followed. Lots of funny hollywood anecdotes and really insightful nuggets on filmmaking.

Here is the list of notes that I scribbled down throughout the night. Sorry if they come off all stream-of-consciousness:

-During an audition, have actors read off-book.

-Move your actors around in scene. Give them action/something to do.

-After writing a character, give it to the actor and get out of the way.

-Be open to improve, but anchor the improve to the scene.

-if you learn your lines well be fore the scene, it opens you up to explore other avenues. Kinda like "know the rules before breaking them."

-If you start to fall behind, slow down!! Speeding up will only cause mistakes.

-Be economical with your camera angles.

-Find the physical truth, then the rest. How does a character walk, etc.

Great evening and left feeling rejuvenated if slightly tired as I was up past my-living-with-a-baby 8 o'clock bedtime.

-b

Everything in its right place.

Writing Lab was scheduled for Monday so I spent a big chunk of the night working on my short story proposal. I am going the narrative route and my challenge to myself is dialog and to quit using the word myself more than one time in a sentence and also to cease the use of run-on sentences. The one-line and paragraph pitch was what I worked on. Not to sound like a total egomaniacal douche-bag, but I really like the idea I have for my next short. Should be fun...

Tuesday night we began our Camera 3 lecture. Details, details , details. Essentially we opened the hood on our cameras just to see what those babies could do. Achieving the "film-like look" was the goal of the night, or at least it was for me. We spent a lot of time looking at camera settings and lenses. Interesting lesson with Stephen.

James was up next on Wednesday with another look at storytelling through screenplays. We spent a huge chunk of the night discussing the 3 act format for screenplays and how essentially every movie ever made falls into this structure. A lot of this information wasn't new to me as I had read it before in books devoted to screenwriting, specifically Syd Field's, but it was excellent to go over it again.

Thursday was pitches with a dash of group critique. I pitched a comedy involving super-heroes and it went over really well. It's always exciting and interesting to hear people's reactions to your ideas.

The last school day of the week was all about Directing! In fact the lecture was titled Directing. This was our very first lesson that was specifically devoted to the art of directing. All day lecture as well. For this exercise, both my class and the day class met in the large studio out at school with James and two actors. James took a script and worked with the actors doing the following: script read-thru, blocking, acting, camera placement, directing.

All of this made me a happy lad. I am dead serious when I say that 99 percent of the time none of this ever feels like "school" to me, which just re-affirms I am where I need to be.

Right here, right now.

For better or worse.... my first day of directing was upon me. After a night of restless sleep I started off the day by swinging by Noah's for bagels and coffee for my cast and crew. Remember, craft services is required on your shoot. Speaking of cast & crew here is the breakdown:

Jo (character) = Heather

Intruder (character) = Ed

DP = Adi

AD = Tyler

Lighting = Nitin

Sound = Ephantus

Instructor = James

Craft Services = Jenny

Jenny would be Jenny my wife, she completely kicked ass and catered by shoot. Hawaiian Bar-B-Que, cookies, and beers! Awesome woman.

Back to the filming. As with all of the other shoots, it took forever to hit record. Lighting is incredibly critical and incredibly hard to get just right. At least for beginners such as us. Combine that with the fact that my first shot was a dolly shot. In a dolly shot the camera moves towards the subject. This requires laying dolly track and then setting up the camera on the dolly with the camera operator. You also need a cord wrangler and someone to push the dolly. So incredibly smart for me to make my first shot of all time a dolly shot, no??

Time management is a big part of your time and you are constantly racing the clock. Today was no exception. We started to run very short on time so we just pushed the tri-pod aside and hand-held the camera the entire rest of the day. Hopefully this will add to the overall effect of the film.

Everyone gave a 100 percent on the film and I couldn't be more grateful to them as it is a long day of hard work . I was stressed a big chunk of the day and none of my stress was from an exterior source which I guess is something to be incredibly happy about. Hah! Even though I was stressed all day the second it was over I missed it and I am already looking forward to my next shoot.

Some notes on the pictures. Pictures 1 & 3 three are both of studio B where I held my shoot. Before and after pics if you will.

Picture 2 is me at the monitor. You spend a big portion of your day at the monitor communicating to your crew on the set what needs to be done to make it look how you envision it and watching each take to make sure you captured what you needed/wanted.

Picture 4 is some props/costume from the shoot Death Rattle!!!! So dramatic...