Will Film For Food
Mood:  hungry
Now Playing: Part 1: Bon Jovi's "Born To Be My Baby" Part 2: Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life"

because you're reeeeally special, The Realm's first two-part blog!

Part 1:


one hour and thirteen minutes until lunch . . .

i'm sitting in my office, staring at a cluster of exposed wiring, wondering what my chances are of being electrocuted as i keep half an eye on the video i'm capturing.

two weekends ago, a friend of mine's daughter got married and he asked me to video the service. "no problem," i thought and said. then his daughter called me. she wanted the rehearsal videoed, too. and the reception. and she wanted them edited nicely together, with a kickin' soundtrack. oh, and if i could transfer the raw footage from mini-DV to DVD that would be sweet, too.

so my day started at 9am (the ceremony began at 6pm), when they wanted me to show up at their house and video the girls doing their make-up and getting dressed. i was one of three men in a house filled with, what, twenty women? if i wasn't engaged, i might like those odds even more.

the morning was fun and fairly stress-free, but as it continued, i began to realize how big and momentous the day was and was becoming. how could i possibly capture such a day with my puny little XL-1? how could i do the third biggest day in anyone's life (first biggest day being birth, the second being baptism) any kind of justice?

i calmed myself by telling myself that i was film graduate. i knew what i was doing. and, because these people aren't film people, their standards and what they're expecting are probably much lower than me. i mean, seriously, somebody had to make Napoleon Dynamite popular.

the day went off without a hitch (except the expected one -- you know, the bride and groom) but the absolute funniest moment was when the mother of the bride grabbed me and pulled me into the dressing room, as she wanted video of her daughter getting into her dress. "Just don't look," she said.

"You want me to video blindly?"

"No, well . . ."

"You do realize, I'll be editing this later, right?"

"Um . . ."

"But if you want me to, I can point the camera in one direction and look the other. Or if you want, I can give you the camera."

"Oh, just come in."

so there's the bride in her skivvies and i'm videoing her as she blushes and squeezes into her wedding dress. everyone's comfortable with this until the photographer comes in and starts shooting her, telling her to strike "sexy" poses (as she's not in her dress quite yet, just her underwear corset). and that's when the mom gets uncomfortable.

ah, fun was had by all.

and i have the video to prove it! Mu-wah-ha-ha-ha!!

on a side note, it made me want to create a bumper sticker and t-shirt line that reads "Yes, This is my Camera. Yes, I Have Access to Final Cut Pro. No, I Won't Shoot Your Memorable Event."

fifty-seven minutes until lunch . . .


Part 2:

thirty-one minutes until i go home for the day . . .

having tested the wires, i can't get electrocuted. the video i had been capturing is now taking its dear sweet time to burn to DVD. i'll be quite happy when this whole wedding ordeal is behind me (don't tell the Murrays i said that, of course).

a couple of friends (who don't visit this site, as their time is "too precious") have asked me about the art i have on my main page. and so i have created a small presentation to tell the vivid history of this picture.

it began with a script for a film called "Happy Valley" that i was going to shoot this summer (2005, for the time capsule), but had to pull the plug on due to budget and time constraints. but that didn't stop me from going out and doing a photo shoot. i was going to play the pivotal (but ultimately supporting) role of CS and Amie Barnhardt was going to play Rebecca, CS' girlfriend. since none of the rest of the cast was cast, and i wanted promotional material to make a website out of, i grabbed Amie and we went out and took a slew of pictures. the one i liked the most had the both us in it, in character (a slight trick of gettings the settings right, putting the timer on, and quickly getting into place).

part of the marketing of this doomed project was going to be the focus on how diverse the characters were and how ecclectic even the script was. it bounced between drama and comedy pretty fluidly. so i sent the picture to Joe Pekar, a comic book artist i met on the internet and had comissioned a Spider-Man picture from a couple of months previous to the shoot. then he created the picture.

he sent me every step of the process and now the finished products (the black & white and the colour) are waiting to be framed and hung beside my Spider-Man & MJ picture (which i might share with you at a later date). anyway, here's the process:

the real picture is much bigger and has a much higher resolution. i had to downsize everything, otherwise it would take a year and a half for you to view it.

the script for "Happy Valley" has been sent to a screenwriting competition. we'll see if there's still some life in the ol' girl.

thirteen minutes until i go home for the day . . .

I'm Walking On Sunshine Whoooooooooooa-Yeah!
Mood:  on fire
Now Playing: Joan Osborne's "What if God Was One of Us?"
it came in today!

the other came in on Monday, and that was kickin', but IT came in today!

and i'm talking about Ripple's Panasonic DVX! i know, i know, it's not top of the line anymore. the new cameras record straight to flash drives on HD, but dude, the things i can pull off with this DVX is going to be AMAZING!!

like all these short films i keep talking about.

people (film people, mainly) roll their eyes at digital photgraphy, but i'm all about it. i really look up to George Lucas and Robert Rodriguez, who have pretty much pioneered digital photography for movies. i'm a poor college grad who can't afford to shoot movies on film (more precisely, i can't afford to develop the film i shoot the movies on). but mini-DV tapes? that i can afford. they're like, "oh, but it's not film, you can tell. look at the way it looks."

if you go into a digital movie, expecting the look of film, you will be disappointed. but don't expect film and you won't be. it would be like painting with water colours and wondering why it doesn't look like your friend's acryllic painting. they are two separate mediums, and i embrace the digital. i give it a big Irish bear hug. the freedom, the stresslessness of shooting on mini-DV is unexplainable. yes, there are some con's to this, but there's con's in everything. people who think film is absolutely the best thing to shoot are are delusional, as there are A LOT of things that can go wrong on film that will simply never happen digitally. i could rant on this all day, but you're already bored and scanning down to my other blogs for language, nudity, violence, sex, and explicit adult situations.

so i'll shut up now.

just let me say this in closing:

Command 1: Respect
Mood:  energetic
Now Playing: Elton John's "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters"
Pre-Production has officially began on "Respect," the first in a series of ten short films exploring human relations and what place the Ten Commandments have in the lives of people today, some five-thousand years after they were written.

For the curious, i'm going to share the shooting script, so you can read what i'm up to. DISCLAIMER: this is copyrighted material, so please read and enjoy it, even comment on it, but should i attend a film festival where i see this script on screen (and it's not directed by me), i'll have to look at you, wax on a Georgian accent and say, "what an ugly thing to say. I abhor ugliness. Does this mean we're not friends anymore? You know [insert your name here], if I didn't think you were my friend, I don't think I could bare it." then i'd sue you.

nothing personal, mind you. i just have to look out for me and mine. but if you like what you read and would like to talk to me about writing something, then do contact me. i'm always looking for something else to do and/or write.

i talked with Morgan last night and we're going to be getting together later this week or early next week (depending on when the gym is available) to go over her routine.

going to meet with DR Fraley on Thursday night about a mutual trade of services and to discuss what actors and models he represents and hope to cast the Coach out of his acting pool. or i might get my dad to do it, that way i could have not one single actor in the cast (he looks the part, and the script's not exactly Shakespeare).

anyway. back to work!

And It Was Goooooooooood . . .
Mood:  cool
Now Playing: Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone"
i imagine the sixth day of creation ended something like this: "And He created the air conditioning unit and set it in the backyard. The air did flow through the ventilation shafts and did cool the entire house to a respectable 71 degrees Farenheit. He sat back and saw that the air conditioning was good. And there was sunrise and sunset -- the sixth day."

my landlord (one Mister Ted Summitt) showed up and rest the breaker box and the air conditioner kicked on. it was beautiful.

no more sitting on my living room floor, playing "Halo 2" and feeling sweat roll down in the middle of my back! In the words of Anakin Skywalker, "yipppppeeeeeeeeeee!"

Ode to A Maple Leaf
Mood:  chatty
Now Playing: Alan Silvestri's "Forrest Gump Suite"
thanks to this blog and WAYN, I have just reconnected with a blast from my past.

her name is Amy Lambros. she is from Canada -- Windsor, actually. and we met in Bedford, Kentucky, at a little place we liked to call "the compound". it was here (or there) that we were trained to become good, proper missionaries. i headed off to Dublin, Ireland and she headed off to Seoul, Korea. but for that insanely intense month, we (along with Dannon, Nathia, and Eugene) were thick as thieves. when we weren't forced into manual labour, we were avoiding manual labour -- which would result in a lecture on responsiblity, a water fight, a lecture the evils of "the bridge," me being pulled into the pastor's office and asked to play mediator or a combination of any two of these.

it was quite possibly the most stressful time of my life, and yet it also holds what i consider some of the most fun times i've ever had. it was all we could do to survive.

that's Amy on the left, me shocked in the middle, and Nathia on the right. it's okay to be jealous. you're not me.

and it's good to be me.

This Message Brought to You By the Letters A, B, H and The Number 6
Mood:  energetic
Now Playing: dc Talk's "Jesus Freak"
i just have to throw a shout-out to Amanda Herod, after hearing i have a blog, let me know she's had one since November of '04.

you can go check it out here.

for those of you new to my life, Amanda is one of my "good-best" friends from academy ("high school" in layman's terms). we graduated together in 1999 from Collegedale Academy and have been in and out of each other's lives since. we share an overt fondness for all things Celtic, Christ, art, and general laughter (not to be confused with laughing Celtic Christ art).

she graduated from Southern Adventist University with an education degree and now works at the Collegedale Credit Union (where she still dreams of the high-paying, high-profile, highly-respected job in the field of education that she sought in school). i graduated from Southern Adventist University with a degree in Visual Art & Design With an Emphasis in Film and work at the Fertility Center of Chattanooga.

for those of you still in school, note the pattern. for those of you freshly graduated from college, let us all collectively laugh at those still in school pursuing their "dreams."

sorry. i have a cruel streak a parsec long.

and i'm a recovering Star Wars-aholic.

My First Night in the Apartment
Mood:  bright
Now Playing: Salma Hayek's "Siente Mi Amor"
finished the big move -- mostly. there's still a few things that need to make the move over into the apartment, but i have everything i need to live off of (TV, DVD's, XBox, clothes).

the air conditioner is being very reluctant to cool down the place, so last night i slept naked under the fan in the living room, as it was 84 degrees when i went to bed and 80 when i woke up this morning for work. i don't know if it got cooler sometime during the night, but i didn't get cold.

time to dive head-long into preproduction. we've decided to tackle the ten commandments. we're going to do one short film for each of the commandments, sending each one out to film festivals. then, maybe when they're all done, we'll slap them on a DVD. we'll see. i have two written that i'm very fond of (commandments 1 & 7) and a couple i'm not so fond of. but it's time to get started -- at least on the two we have.

Ripple Productions has recently purchased an eight-foot jib and a Panasonic DVX (and it only took me a year of whining!).

the first one we'll begin is the First Commandment, one i've entitled "Respect." it's the story of an eager young gymnast who is trying to complete her floor routine, but there's a particular move at the climax of her piece that she simply can't pull off, but her stubbornness and her pride won't let her listen to her coach and find out how to fix the problem. i had approached Ruthie Gulley about the part, but she informed me she's not a tumbler, so she put me in touch with a fellow gymnast named Morgan, who's going to be absolultely brilliant. we're going to be getting together and figuring out what her character's routine is. i'll video it, then Brian Young (my faithful DP) and i will figure out how we're going to shoot it, and then we'll shoot it. it should be a pretty straight-forward shoot. the only thing i'm worried about is Morgan having to do the stunts over and over and over and over again . . . especially the part where she has to fall over and over and over again. we just have to be careful.

-whew!- long blog!

peace out homies, i gotta get some work done.

Moving Day!
Mood:  celebratory
Now Playing: Divynls' "I Touch Myself"
i have a new apartment!

it's my first apartment, though not my first time living outside the house. i spent a year in Ireland and four years away at college ("away" being 5 minutes down the road, but in the dorm nonetheless).

it's blistering outside. sometimes i despise Tenessee weather. today is one of those days. one of those hot, humid, relentless days that begs you to go swimming but instead you find yourself doing heavy manual labour.

i shaved my head Friday night and the ladies in my life are not impressed, despite how much i feel better about myself. it's not like i'm a skinhead. i have peach fuzz. but it's all good.

i recalled one of my scripts today. i had sent it to two of my favorite actors (Corey Newmyer and Michael Ennis) but the more i read it, the more i disliked it. it was too preachy. it was practically a three-page monologue. no thanks. i have a new (and hopefully) better idea on how to tackle the subject at hand.

anyway. need to get back to work. have a few last things to move, a dryer to hook up, and a landlord to bribe into fixing my air conditioner (a must for yankees trapped below the Mason-Dixon Line).

Death to Mornings!
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: Morissey's "Irish Blood, English Heart"
mornings should not come before 10am. i'm no good to anyone before 11, so why my boss insists i arrive at work at 8am is beyond me. if i didn't think i was missing something, it would do me a lot of good to work from 1pm to 9pm. i'd be alert, awake, and just hitting my stride as i got off work. oh well. at least i can listen to music. otherwise, there would be NO WAY these bleary eyes of mine would stay open.

this is why the Lord created Starbucks.

Alfie
Mood:  not sure
Now Playing: Aerosmith's "Dream On"
just finished watching Alfie. absolutely fantastic character study. the movie is quite brilliant, despite what critics might say. it's compared (understandably) to the original of which it is a remake.

but remake isn't the right word for what it truly is: an update. the biggest gripe (from what i hear) is the conclusion. for those of you behind on your Jude Law movie marathons, i won't spoil it, all i will say is there is an honesty in the final words spoken that aren't found in the original. in the original, there is a feigned strength. my reaction to this is, when the original was made (in 1966, for those wondering) there was a social honesty that men were expected not to have. the feigned strength and invincibility because admitted weakness was exactly that.

i see the two Alfies as two time capsules: one a brilliant commentary on the late (and swinging) 60's, the other, the early mellinium.

if sexuality doesn't offend you, then you should enjoy what i found to be a cinematic treat (so much so i had to own it).