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

Static City

Welcome to Static City, a film that I worked on (wrote, produced,acted) from '07-'10 and unfortunately was not able to finish. I wrote this film for my best friend and fellow LACC film school alumni, Moses Martinez. We had no money what so ever and when I mean no money I mean nine hundred dollars, lol. Not much money, we were all poor. I think we got some cool stuff on camera including a giant warehouse that Moses got us for free. I love all the great acting also Mark Wood, Jo Mani, Bart Leenders, Gabe Fonseca and Andie Ximenes all did an amazing job. I also had a part in the film, the original part was that of a drug dealer who the police interrogate at an after hours spot. Then the day before we were to start shooting the main actor playing the white cop told us he couldn't do it. So Moses comes to me and says "yo if the guy playing the Mexican cop fell through I would be playing him, but it's the white cop". So I took over as the co-lead with Gabe. We had a great time making this and a shout out to Shaun Phaneuf for the great job as gaffer, 1st AD and terrorist, you were awesome!! Sorry for everybody I missed!!

More Work with Corona

So this is another in the line of Corona commercials I worked on :) This job was really fun! We actually closed a street in Long Beach down for two days. The project was shot with a stedi cam and all in one shot. At the end of the video you will notice a giant billboard with a Corona sign on it. I helped the construction crew hang that sign. Unfortunately while we were up there the scissor lift's battery died. This happened a minute before lunch, so they just left us up there for an hour, lol. It kind of sucked, and it was hot but we got down eventually and were able to eat(that's all I cared about any way). Enjoy the commercial it was a fun one to make!

Fun Times with Corona

In early 2012 I worked on a series of Corona commercials. I was an art PA on the whole thing and actually got 5 union days. The shoots were fun and all over Los Angeles. The location here was the parking lot FOR the Los Angeles Sports Arena. The first few hours of the day was moving the cars into the right position for the shooting. Then we started set dressing, that means putting out all the props. During the filming I was hiding inside of a blue car and working the smoke machine that is next to the grill. If we had a real fire we would of had to have a special effects guy and a fire marshall, way too much money! This whole shot was one take and involved a glide-cam set up. The operator did an amazing job and had a really cool look, like the bad guy from the 80's flick Body Double. Please enjoy the spot as much as I enjoyed making it!