7_27_08

Oh my blog!

I love reading other people’s blogs. They are so much smarter than me! They have so much more fun!

Check out the blogs on the right there, some fun stuff!

Answers – zero, Questions – many

So I left off with a quandary last time I wrote. Then a bunch of craziness happened.
I spent a good amount of time on my online reel of production work.
(http://adventuretimetheatre.com/eric.html) Check it out!

I also worked a bit on finishing the feature I am producing - Diantha’s Crossing. There’s a bunch of loose ends and finishing that needs to take place.

I am also trying to find a good audio mixer for my short film Dirt. Once we do a sweetening of the audio, we will submit the film into several festivals. Our goal is to get into Sundance next year.

So what have I decided? What path have I chosen?
I don’t know!!! It has seriously plagued me since I wrote the different choices.
I really want to do B because that would afford me some really great experience and it will help me learn more about the biz. I also want to try C because I have always thought that I could make it on my own.
I am definitely not choosing D. No way.

My plan is to submit a bunch of resumes to companies in LA and see what will happen.

The Choices:

A- Stay around here for a while and try and find work in the local industry (which isn’t always a guarantee for work, especially during the fall)?

B- Go to LA and work as an assistant for free for a period of a couple of months before I can really land a good job?

C- Stay around here and try and establish my own company and try and make money with video production or some other business (which is extremely risky, especially with today’s economy)?

D- Get a job doing something that is not what I want and flounder in the world of unfulfilled dreams?

CLOSAT

C- A creepy old man with beady eyes and large-framed glasses. Arms and legs chained together, wearing a pale orange suit.

L- A quiet suburban street at dusk with rain pouring down.

O- A dark green plastic cup, not full of water - (sad…)

S- Searching online for information and getting more and more lost in the world of the internet (and consequently further away from the original search).

A- “Flipping” a home. Taking a cheap home that needs a lot of work, putting in some repairs, then selling it for a higher price.

T- All things can be resolved over a bowl of ice cream.

Producing Tips

Producing Tip #4: Be flexible – For the most part, you want to make all of your plans solid and perfectly calculated, but there are many times when your plans will not work how you want them to. This is when you need to adapt and be flexible. This also requires some quick thinking on your feet. It is a good idea to have backup plans to your backup plans.

I once got to plan “F” before a certain location worked out for us on a shoot.

These are the sort of things that can go wrong:
Actor schedule changes
Location falls through
Hostile environments (including people) near location
Crewmembers not showing up
Food showing up too early or too late (usually because the production is too slow or too fast)
Frustrations on set (people not getting along)
Budget concerns
Things burning, breaking, blowing up on accident

Etc., etc.

Last Two Movies seen in Theaters:

Journey to the Center of the Earth (in 3D!)

You may laugh, but this was actually an exciting and fun experience. The glasses were uncomfortable over my regular glasses, and they kind of made me motion sick a few times, but it was way worth it!

The film’s plot is very basic – A geologist goes searching for the secret of his brother’s disappearance in Iceland. He takes along his nephew who was visiting and a beautiful mountain guide. They stumble upon the entrance to the center of the Earth and go on a non-stop thrill-ride of discovery and adventure!

The dialogue leaves us something to be desired, and the plot is less than plausible. But the film was downright fun. I was not sorry to part with my $9.50 to see the film.

I give this film three and a half out of five floating 3-D glasses.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe

For all of you who were not fans of the original show, there were times when they would break away from the mythology/continuing story of Mulder and Scully and go for a stand-alone story. Sometimes these stories would involve freaky medical oddities.

Number one: I hate medical stories. I get freaked out talking about stitches, let alone something way massive like removing body parts.

Number two: when the least popular episodes of the show are when you break away from the main flow of the plot, don’t go and make a film that is like those episodes!

I really wanted to enjoy the film because of the first film they made. That movie kicks trash! This film was very slow moving and less exciting. We get some insights into the psychology of the two characters of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, but some things introduced in the film did not pay off.

Overall I wasn’t too happy coming out of the theater. I wanted either more action or more connection to the overall story of the X-files. (and less medical oddities…)

I give the film two out of five "I want to believe" posters.

Cell Phone Picture of the Day!

This huge moth flew into our windshield and got stuck in our wiper. I put a quarter next to it so you can see just how humongous this dude was. We left him there to see if he would fly away. The next morning he was gone (it’s possible a bird got to him).

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7_11_08

In-Between

Okay, quandary.

I am done with school in one week. I am almost finished with producing the two films I have been working on for over a year. I essentially have nothing left to do after August.

Do I…

A- Stay around here for a while and try and find work in the local industry (which isn’t always a guarantee for work, especially during the fall)?

B- Go to LA and work as an assistant for free for a period of a couple of months before I can really land a good job?

C- Stay around here and try and establish my own company and try and make money with video production or some other business (which is extremely risky, especially with today’s economy)?

D- Get a job doing something that is not what I want and flounder in the world of unfulfilled dreams?

I’ll let you know what I chose tomorrow.

CLOSAT

C- A slow moving fast food restaurant employee donning a pair of latex gloves and an apron.

L- Front yard of a suburban home.

O- A shiny new Apple iPhone 3G (don’t have one, but a few sleepless consumers now do!)

S- Calling frantically around town to find a location for a party and getting rejected.

A- Downloading and installing Apple iPhone software 2.0, then downloading a butt-load of apps.

T- It is twice as hard to do what you should than to do what you want.

Producing Tips

Producing Tip #3: Software. It is a necessary evil in the producing world. You almost have to know software nowadays to make it in the producing world. Here is a small list of some software that I have gotten to know, if you’re serious about making it in the industry, you should probably get familiar with the following:

Adobe Products (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign)

Budgeting and Scheduling Software (EP Scheduling and Budgeting, Gorilla)

Screenwriting Software (Final Draft is my favorite, but Movie Magic is also good)

Microsoft Office (Word and Excell are my best friends, you should know this stuff anyway)

Some companies down in LA are starting to groove to the tune of FileMaker, I haven’t gotten quite the hang of that one, but I’m trying to so I can kick butt.

(It wouldn’t hurt to also know how web browsers and Flash Animations work…)

Blog of the Day:
Tim's

Feeling of the Day:
Fatigue

A Movie I saw when I was Eight:
Haakon Haakonsen (Shipwrecked English Title)
I don’t remember much about this movie. I was taken to see it in the theaters by my older brother Sam when I was eight. I remember that I really enjoyed it. It was one of those films that you aren’t really sure if you actually saw it, but you wish you did.

The two things that stand out in my mind are: When the lead character Haakon leaves his Norwegian home and he is bundled up on a sled with tons of furs to keep him warm. And the poem that Haakon reads out loud a bunch of times.

Without seeing the movie again, I will have to give this four out of five gun-wielding Gabriel Byrne’s-

Cell Phone Picture of the Day!

The Snake River and the famous Perrine Bridge which is about 486 feet high in the air. Taken on a trip to Twin Falls, ID a couple of weeks ago.

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7_09_08

In One Hour

Today I had the following things blow up in the time frame of just one hour (just a prelude to how crazy life is sometimes).

On my advanced film project Dirt we discovered that we had the wrong takes put into the timeline of the film. Which meant the director Tim and I had to watch the whole film to look for more mistakes. We couldn’t do that because the server in which our film resides was not yet fully connected, so we had to put it on hold. Which also meant that the many hours we had set aside to do color correction was not going to happen today.

Once we decided this, we also tried to figure out what type of codec that we should have used to capture the footage. We thought “oh crap, we’re going to have to re-capture all of our footage!” but we eventually decided to stick with the resolution that our assistant editor captured the footage at. Unfortunately this meant that we had to re-capture those takes that were off. It also meant that we had to re-shoot one shot because it was lost…urm…by someone…

During this whole ordeal, the post-production supervisor for my other project Diantha’s Crossing, Andre was patiently waiting for me so we could meet.

Also, my stomach was aching way bad ‘cause I hadn’t eaten.

After all that, Andre and I worked a deal with a great color-correctionist who will be working on the film. That was interrupted with a conversation about starting a website for the sketch comedy show Adventure Time Theatre that I started with my friend Spencer.

Mind you, all of this time I am texting on my phone and checking my email (thank you iPhone!)

After that we were able to get some food and discuss the post-production on Diantha, which of course was all dependent on the two people that are not in town.

I guess we’ll wait. That’s fine; I have way too much to do!

Birthday Surprises

As I was getting ready to write my blog and finish various other projects, my wife asked me if we could go out to eat. I kind of thought that was peculiar because we are trying to stay away from doing that too much, but I was like “shoot, I don’t want to make dinner!”

So we hopped in the minivan and headed to Magleby’s Fresh (which was too crowded) then to Pita Pit. We each ate delicious and fat and sloppy pitas, and then we headed home.

Curiously, my brother’s car was in the driveway, which isn’t too weird because we’re living in my parent’s basement at the moment (leave me alone, its temporary).

I told my wife that I wanted to go up to my parent’s front door to check out what was going on; she wanted me to go to the side door. We went in and I looked toward my parent’s kitchen. On a table was laden a great deal of snacks and stuff. Oh yeah, and a big old cake with my name on it! I was so confused.

I wandered into the living room and there was a bunch of people there to greet me and wish me a happy surprise birthday! That was pretty rad. I had no idea that was going on. I apparently was supposed to go through the front door like I wanted to, but since I didn’t I kind of ruined the big surprise.

We hung out and talked movies and stuff, then we ate cake and played Scene-It, which is way too fun to play with film people by the way. Whenever I try and play with other friends or family they usually refuse because they think I’m going to kick their butt. Well people, I got schooled by my friends so what do you think about that?!

CLOSAT

C- A large man walking down the sidewalk (marriage fat, not trans fat) with a cute little toddler sitting on his shoulders. (The toddler almost fell off because he was fascinated with looking at me!)

L- A stall of the men’s bathroom on the second floor of the HFAC.

O- A hard drive that has a ridiculous terabyte of storage capacity (oh yeah, but there are like 40 of them in the Cave).

S- Not being aware of a secret underground party in your honor.

A- Backing up into a tight parking spot because your van has the turning radius of the Queen Mary.

T- Staying up way too late working on things that are pretty much unnecessary when there are more important things to get done.

Producing Tips

Producing Tip #2: The second cardinal rule – Do! Actually get out there and do it. There are a lot of jobs that you are not going to want to do, but you just need to get out there and do it. Who cares if you haven’t done it before! Chances are no one’s done what you are trying to do. If they have, they probably hated it so much that they want you to suffer through doing it yourself like they did (I know a lot of producer-types that feel this way about contacts and resources. I say give them out carefully, but don’t be stingy.) So get out there and do it (and as someone once said, “do it right.”)

Album of the Day:
Viva La Vida – Coldplay

Board Game of the Day:
Scategories (brand new for my birthday)

Last Movie seen on DVD:

Vantage Point

You know, I kind of like it. It had a great deal of fun action sequences and they were able to build up quite the suspense. The cool vignette style of the film was both aggravating and delicious because I was so intrigued by what they were not showing us (they stopped each vignette right up to but not at the reveal, I got so sucked in!)

Unfortunately I couldn’t find any real story arc or theme to the film. All that I took away from the film was that the Secret Service is a useless organization when it comes to protecting the President. Oh and also that the world’s terrorists are totally pissed for almost no reason and they are too smart for the US Government.

The film didn’t really pay off; there were so many unanswered questions. They didn’t bother paying off the setups that they painstakingly explored in the first hour of the film.

SPOILER ALERT: Most of all this film taught me that all it takes to bring down a super-smart terrorist organization is a crying child who is old enough to know better than to stand in the middle of the street.

I rate this film three out of five handguns waving in the air –

Cell Phone Picture of the Day!

My lovely wife scooping the remains of her pita up after it exploded.

(this Post brought to you by the color "white")

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7_07_08

THE FIRST!

Today marks the very special occasion of my very first blog (that I actually write on a regular basis).

We just got cable internet and television (thank zanthar). I really wouldn’t know what I would do without being able to waste time with those two things. And I didn’t do much. I sat around thinking about all the things that I should have been doing.

July the 4^th was fun. And boring. We sat around most of the day tossing between the two possibilities of spending the day together alone or going out and spending it with friends. We made the compromise of doing both. We hung out together for most of the day. We then went to our old digs (Wymount - moved out at the end of May) and had a quick BBQ with our friends the Garners. After we hoofed it to the missionary field in front of the temple to watch fireworks with my brother Zach and his wife Megan and their daughter Skyli (pictured below).

It was fun, but the fireworks were less than entertaining. I don’t remember when fireworks were fun last, but it wasn’t this year. I guess I’m just too old. Oh snap! An old joke, cause I’m now 26 (birthday was on Sunday, thanks to all who wished me a very happy facebook birthday)!

Anyway, to kick off my most excellent blog post, I am going to copy the master at The Haberdasher’s Guide to Good Grooming (link) and do a CLOSAT at the bottom.

CLOSAT

C – A totally pissed off bachelor who wasn’t picked as a “soul-mate.” Haha, dis!
L – The outer lane of the McDonalds drive-thru (seriously, why two?).
O – A baggy full of bottle caps brand candies. Root beer is the best flavor.
S – Having to coordinate a ride to the dentists, then a pickup of a friend, then a pickup of my wife, then a pickup from the dentists, then a stop at home. All without a car.
A – Cooking a delicious barbecue steak dinner over rice.
T – No matter how much you accomplish in a day, you always have more to do.

Producing Tips

Producing Tip #1: There are two cardinal rules in being a good producer (in fact, it’s essential in being good at anything in film or any other business.) The first is: Communicate – learn to be a good communicator. Learn to talk with complete strangers. Learn to convince them to let you do things. Learn to keep updated or update others constantly. An email just won’t do, go to the extreme - call, text, mail, show up on their door. The more you communicate, the more gets done.

Quote of the Day: “Woah. $40,000 a year and 13 children. Wouldn’t the pill be cheaper?” –Tiffany, my wife.

Song of the Day: “I Should Have Known Better” The Beatles (A Hard Day’s Night)

Last Movie seen in the Theater: Get Smart

I didn't hate the film, but I didn't really love it. I like Carell, and Hathaway isn't atrocious. Just not my cup o' tea.

The film lacks any genuinely original comedy. Most of the really good parts are seen in the trailers. For the most part, it doesn't work cohesively. I say rent it at Redbox so you don't spend too much money.

I rate this film two and a half Steve Carell heads -

Phone Picture of the Day!

Ya! Ice cream is the shiz-nit!

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