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!

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!

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!