Playing the undead in American Zombie

American Zombie - Trailer: http://youtu.be/tdhXeqrjtmw

In summer of 2006 I took the long trek to Valencia to play a Zombie in Grace Lee's zombie mocumentary American Zombie. The film is about a group of zombies trying to live a normal life in LA. The climax involves a once a year Burning Man-esque festival where the zombies head to the desert to get away. This is where a 100 extras and myself come into play. The crew covered us in make up and tattered clothes and we preceded to dance and chase people around all night. The pay was little and the food was awful but it sure was fun. The funny thing is I still have never seen the movie, maybe I should put it on my Netflix que.

Moving on up working as a Production Designer

I recently finished my first job as a production designer. For those of you not aware of what a production designer is, he or she is the individual who designs the look of the project. I don't want to get too into the project but I figured I would post some pictures of a few things that my assistant Damon and I built for the project.
We built the Ice Cream Cart below, I think it turned out pretty awesome!

 Below is me with the body part grinder that we built. It's made out of an old wood chipper and some MDF. This was the highlight of the project for me.

Shooting a fun Promo for Work

The jobs I get on commercials and music videos are all freelance jobs. That means I work for a day or two, get paid and thats it. That also means I don't know when I'm working again. Since I kind of freak out when I don't know when I'm going to get paid again I need to have a regular job. That job is manager at Last Stop Props & Scenic in Burbank. Fortunately the owners are also in the industry; so there is always a way to work time off, I'm on day 10 of 21. So one day about a year and a half ago I decided I was going make a promo video for the business. I'm in love with classic stop motion effects so I cleaned the dust off my Rebel 2Ti and set up a tri pod facing our cyc wall. With the help of a remote and then later my buddy Anthony I took photos of myself and over two hundred items in our shop. I hope you enjoy the video!

Acting can be so Much Fun!!

So I recently played two parts in a short film. The film takes place in a post apocalyptic future where roving gangs rule the streets and death is around every corner. The first roll I played was that of an old man who gets the crap beaten out of him. This was super fun, the make up lady did an amazing job giving me a great beat up look. The end of my scene had me turn to the camera and spit out a bunch of blood, awesome!! Then a few days later I shaved my beard and played a killer clown who hosts a tv show. The tv show involves clowns breaking into houses and murdering the inhabitants. So two very different roles and quite a good time. I love the film business.

The SONY job

I've worked on allot of cool projects but one of my favorite finished projects was a SONY commercial I did summer of 2012. I was doing art department under JP Gutierrez production designer on the job. The first day of shooting started at 6am the day after my birthday, needless to say I didn't get a ton of sleep. I was lucky the shoot was in the Glendale studio which at the time was very close to where I lived. The other plus about that studio is that my homie is the stage manager, it's always nice to know the guy in charge. The commercial was for a new pair of SONY 3D goggles. The theme of the commercial is that the glasses are so intense you will actually experience what happens in the video your watching. JP designed 3 amazing living room sets for the job. A big part of my job was driving the 5 ton truck around and picking up props and other set dressings. If you watch the video you will notice an amazing Eames chair that I had the pleasure of picking up from Rapport on LaBrea. I love Rapport they have such amazing modern furniture. One of my favorite segments in the video is an explosion that a SFX artist (Aaron, Alien Resurrection) I know performed. After the explosion, a close up of the actors ear was filmed while Aaron shot it with a blast of air and some foam, very cool. Unfortunately Aaron tested it on me first and had the levels a little too high. It stung pretty bad and the way I screamed Aaron thought I was going to turn around and sock him. Well I didn't and instead had a pretty good laugh out of it. I love the movie biz!!

The Contest

Last year I decided to film and enter a spec commercial for the website Poptent. If that last sentence confused the heck out of you let me explain. A spec; is a commercial that is filmed with out the companies knowledge and out of your own pocket, with the hope that you impress someone. Poptent runs contests for spec commercials that end with the companies purchasing said commercials. This contest was for SIM Mobile, a pay as you go cell phone company. Their big thing is you can remove your sim card and put it any phone (I'm not sure who owns a phone that still uses sim cards). SIM Mobile wanted a gritty urban feeling while using the tag line "More for the People". For some reason the future set battle scenes from Terminator kept popping into my head. The shooting went pretty well, I even used a few actors from the Cat Power video "Cherokee" I worked on. I called in allot of favors on this one including my old pal Moses Martinez who shot 2nd Unit. My major problem with this project were the post issues. Mainly the music and sound, I had a friend who promised three days in a row to come over and help. Six hours before the deadline to upload the video my buddy Anthony Ceglia and I created the music and sfx using Final Cut. Not everything came out the way I wanted but I was still really happy with how everything came out and I love all the acting. Enjoy!

Codename: Beacon

Codename: Beacon was the brain child of Chicago transplant Michael Arzola. Michael plays a psychic government assassin (condenamed Beacon) who has just been called back into service. Michael had acted previously for me in Static City. When he told me about this project and that he needed some help I agreed wholehartedly. I brought Moses Martinez along to film it and I got a small part as Michael's victim. After we filmed Michael edited it all together and put this out. As you can see it never made it out of rough cut stage. A few months into 2010 I had a falling out with Michael and he erased me as a friend from Facebook. Oh well glad I'm done working with him. Enjoy the video