September Update

I’m happy to announce that yesterday was the last day of summer quarter at AiMIU and everything ended on a great note. Film III project “Mighty Mouse” was reshot and edited using Adobe products and Digital II film “Devil Thread” (working title Spinning Wheel) was finished. Those two projects will soon be featured on the blog in a few weeks’ time, as I am leaving some wiggle room for polishing the projects and uploading them online. It’s been one heck of a long summer in Miami, but now that the season is out, upcoming projects for the fall and early winter can now be focused on.

Fall quarter will commence the Monday after next, kicking off coursework in Directing Actors, Independent Producing, Scriptwriting II, and Anthropology. For the first time in about a year, I will be neither editing or shooting anything which leaves me time to work on some independent projects and fine tune the ol’ portfolio. More will be revealed on these ideas as they manifest themselves.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Talk about a lack of posts lately! I admit, I have been rather busy/distracted with school and the internship over at SFX-360 along with the ol’ job hunt, which is unfairly difficult these days. Just to glance over the many things I’ve done in the past few months:

• Wrap of “Wondersaurus” – The renamed project of Ryuiek and His Stella reached a wrap after a long and strenuous production cycle involving live-action shot entirely by myself (yeah thanks guys, sheesh) and then a couple minutes of claymation magic I captured by myself. I hope to have a few clips of the film online to show the world soon
• Film III production schedule – Worked as sound recordist, boom operator, assistant camera, director of photography, director, and grip on the Film III sets as part of the class over a period of five weeks while finishing Wondersaurus. Thank goodness that’s over! Whew!!
• Storied production of Film III project “Mighty Mouse” – What started off as “A Lost Hope” became “Mighty Mouse” after an overnight pre-production redo after circumstances prevented me from having a living cast and location. With money also being an obstacle, I penned a new script overnight to shoot the next day as planned about a mouse droid from the Star Wars universe who has been demoted to janitor after the Empire is torn down. After sending the 16mm film to the lab, the footage was lost and over the next few days I’ll have to redo the film on digital. Should be a treat when it’s done though
• Digital II pre-production – I’m filling the role of art director for the digital II project Spinning Wheel, a ten-minute short to be shot in high-definition. I’ve got a lot to do over the next couple of weeks before the shoot commences, including shopping for props and costumes, altering said costumes, and building a fake tree!

I hope to have some cool stuff to post over the next few days, including photos, clips, and new reviews. I aim to review the new iCarly movie as well that will be shown on Saturday on Nickelodeon.

May already?

Wow, I gotta say the month of April just flew by! Not a heck of a lot happened in that month to be honest, but I do know this month will be different… and very busy. Looking to be finishing the digital short up MOSTLY this month and then the Film III shoot is slated for the end of May. Also on the SFX-360 schedule is our big GameNARP event, a solid night of gaming in at Miami’s FIU south campus with free admission and $5 per person tournaments in Street Fighter IV, Gears of War 2, and others plus lots of gaming setups. That kicks off on May 15, which is this Friday!

So really all I’ve been doing is working on those things, have not had a lot of free time to watch and review much outside of my SFX writings. Coming up this week will be my review of Runner (which is finished) and also Plants vs. Zombies (almost finished), a game I highly recommend!

Computer Woes!

I reveled in some offline time last week (yes, I’m being quite sarcastic here) thanks to a variety of computer woes I had to endure. Thankfully I managed to kick the viruses outta my computer within two days of working on my machine; one problem got solved, reboot, another one appeared. While most of the prominent problems are resolved, I still can’t upload anything online for some reason and I have to manually start explorer.exe upon startup. It was all a very frustrating experience, especially since I’ve got work to do and I have never had to deal with this great of an ordeal before on my Dell laptop. The three years I’ve had it it has been just an awesome little machine; I’m looking to upgrade soon though to a new one thanks to a broken hinge Dell has kept my business though, most certainly.

Now that’s over, I will be uploading some new reviews this weekend if all goes well and no more viruses attack me I have a lot of work to do with the filmmaking post and pre-productions. Zzz.

Status Update

Good God, while I firmly stand behind the PC platform, I get so annoyed by persistent viruses that like to rewrite themselves after I succeed in removing them! Obviously, the past week I’ve had some computer troubles with a couple different varieties of viruses and adware; one that caused pop-ups, one that covered my screen with Symantec warning pop-ups, another that makes me have to manually run explorer.exe… ugh. Thankfully I’m not totally computer illiterate and I have managed to work out some of the problems.

I hope to have the new script online by the end of the weekend, working title is A Lost Hope. Casting will also kick off this weekend and I am due to pitch the film in class on Thursday morning… yippee! While Film III appears almost exactly like Film II, we’re all experiencing some changes to how production runs. First off, we get another hour of shoot time and an extra 200 feet of film. New to the game is the DP/gaffer is responsible for all camera movement and is the one operating the camera as opposed to the director. This I am actually sort of thankful for because I do not considered myself a tremendous skilled camera operator… my pans could use some tweaking. Position of grip has also been added to the crew list and in our production notebooks we have a few new forms to fill out: gaffer’s notes (containing information about power and light setups), sound notes (troubleshooting sound on set), and script breakdown forms.

Also, my review of the DS title The Dark Spire is now online at SFX-360.com. Check it out here.

Status Update

Lots to do this weekend! Mostly video game write-ups to finish and do some new photography to put online, but also the barrage of homework assignments from my GE classes at school.

I have about three pages of movie goodness written for the Film III project. To be honest, I had my doubts about the project since it is again very ambitious and also because someone has a concept that has a scene very similar to a scene I’ve included in my film. I hate feeling not totally unique, but I feel not doing this creative venture when I have so much drive for it would be a regrettable decision. So, forward bound on that idea! I hope to have a polished script ready by the end of the weekend so I can kick other things into gear!

A rough cut of Ryuiek and His Stella is about done at this point. Yesterday I worked on a few sequences in the lab after Anthropology class. It generally looks good, but I will have to work to get the sound up to par among other elements. I’m really excited about it and hope to have it done and looking as good as I envisioned it.

Also on the table, I am looking into writing up a concept for a filmmakers’ competition. I know, I’m throwing a lot of stuff at myself right now, but I think it would be great to at least try out a few ideas and see where that takes me. Wish me luck!

Status Update

Something spring break taught me is how much I sometimes miss the rush of a fully-loaded week; I like having something important to do several different days of the week that will help me progress in a project or be involved in something. This week I have lots of writing to do: the general script for the next film, previews of Patapon 2 and Boom Blox and a review of The Dark Spire to do for SFX-360.com. Then on Monday the rough cut of Ryuiek and His Stella is due first thing in the morning.

So, in other words, don’t be expecting too many posts out of me this week!

Also, check out my Flickr feed at the bottom of the right panel for new pictures I’ve been taking… will reveal more in the immediate future.