Week 9 EOC: Tennis Clinic

When following your dreams, it’s very hard to make the right decisions, because it can be very hard to even know what the right choices are. If it’s your dream, then you have a love and passion for it. That same love that drives you to follow your dream can, in some cases, destroy your dream and sometimes love. If you don’t start out on the right foot to begin with, then you’ll find yourself in a little bit of trouble.

            This is what happened to Rob Johnson. It’s unfortunate, but happens, and for Rob it could have been avoided. Rob was a journalist that was always working with deadlines and yelling editors. He was tired of the grind and wants to follow his dream of playing tennis for a living. He thought easiest thing to do would be to quit his job, in early 2000’s people were getting fired like crazy, and he went around to some of the Orlando, Florida resorts around him and offer to teach tennis for their customers.

           

            He hopped in it, offering to teach for fifty dollars and hour and kick back ten percent back to the hotels for working with him. After getting a couple hotels he invested $500 for t-shirts. He quickly had a few clients and thought everything was working out. Rob had a few problems. He was trying to teach to tourist and kids that don’t even really care about tennis. He was also teaching in a place that gets hits by hurricanes and where it rains all the time. Quickly he began to hate what he once love.

            Rob could have avoided this all by thinking things through first. He didn’t have a business plan, and that would have made him realize the actual job he was trying to get into. He also could have volunteered to teach at a boys and girls club to even see if he would like teaching. Or he could have eased into it by teaching one or two days a week and keeping his job. His problem wasn’t that he was following his dream; it was the execution of it.

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Week 8 Photo Challenge: Dressed for an event

This is me at the NAB show. I was only able to make it for one day, but it was an amazing experience that I can’t wait to have again. I went as a student and started off at the Job fair. After hours of talking to employers, I went and walked around the show to check out some of the new gear.

          There was A LOT of really nice, cool, and inspiring gear for filmmakers of all types. New cameras were release, like the Blackmagic Cinema Camera. It’s a camera in the size of consumer DSLR cameras, like the canon 7D or 5D Mark 2. The biggest difference is that the Blackmagic Cinema Camera shoots in raw footage and shoots in 2.5k format (DSLR’s only shoot in 1080 with the exception of the 1D). The only problem with the 1D is price. For the Blackmagic Cinema Camera it’s almost $3,000 and you get free Coloring Software.

            There where a lot of other gadgets and gear I got to test and look at. The one thing I wanted to do I couldn’t. I really wanted to get Avid Certified at NAB. I looked into doing it outside NAB and it cost so much and is just a pain, for students at NAB it was a lower price. Or at least I was told it was.

            I’m wearing a suit I pieced together with the help of my fiancé. I’m a big fan of the vest look. I have a bulkier upper body, I’m not saying fat at all, just thicker chest. Because of that, jackets can be awkward and my sleeves always feel too short. The vest gives me a look that stands out more. It gives me a look people don’t see all the time. My sleeves are up in the picture because this was near the end of the day and I was hot, when I was at the job fair the sleeves were down.

Week 7 Weekly Photo Challenge: Screenplay Cover

Screenplays are interesting monsters.  I say that in the most loving and hateful way I can. Every filmmaker wants or wishes they could write the next biggest screenplay hit. They want to be the next Joss Whedon with an Avengers script, or Shane Black getting paid over a million dollars based off of just the treatment and not even the script.  They can get too flashy, or creative, and loose track of the importance of writing a screenplay. It all comes down to just the story. That is why covers to my screenplays are very basic, and looks like most Hollywood scripts.

The Last Drive was a seven page short screenplay that I wrote in 2011 just for fun. It wasn’t for a class or assignment, just for myself because I had a great idea stuck in my head and I wanted to get it out. The importance of the title page is the same as a book, just not as showy. It’s the first thing people are going to see and read. Of course it’s important to have the writer’s name on it, more then once would be ideal, and it’ll have a way to contact the writer. For contacting it could either be a phone number, e-mail address, or in some case a physical address can be used.

The main thing about the cover page is the title of the screenplay you are showing. Titles alone can make or break your chance of getting it made, or even just looked at. I personally feel that the best titles tell a part of the story, while leaving just a little bit of mystery. Movies like The Sixth Sense, Along Came Polly, The Thing, and Cabin in the Woods, seem straightforward; yet still hold a slight bit of intrigue curiosity to them. That’s what I tried to do with The Last Drive. It’s telling you the part of the story it wants you to know right off the bat, this is the last drive for someone, but it makes you wonder why.

Week 7 EOC: My Resume and Optical Resume

My resume has been worked on over and over, and has had many different forms and images. It has seen so many different designs, I’m sure it’s as tired of being worked on as much as I’m tired of my fingers hitting a keyboard.  Since it is getting closer ad closer to my graduation date, I have found that my main time is spent editing and writing, fixing designs and applying for jobs.

            In the last three months alone my resume has been updated five times. It has had everything moved around and reorganized, and had my new logo fixed and correctly applied to it. Because of the fact that everyone I talk to has a different opinion about how a resume should be set up, the resume keeps forming. I’m not changing it to be in the form of those opinions, what I have been doing is finding way to take what people have felt most important or a must do and apply them all to the resume.

            By doing this I am hoping to create a resume that is not only appealing for most people to look at, eye catching, but also as effective as it can get. When it comes down to it, being effective is the most important part. What’s the point of making something eye catching, if as soon as they tried to read it they were lost or didn’t like the wording? This is why effectiveness is very important.

            My next step for my resume will be using Optical Resume to see how they would set it up. It’s a professional site that helps you create an effective resume the best you can. Once I get everything into Optical Resume I will take what it says is best and apply it to my current resume.

Week 6 Photo Challenge: Special Effects

I talk about my short “The Survivor” a lot, the reason is it has gone further then any other short I have done. I’ve been a part of a television show for VegasTV, but when it comes to creative work, it’s the only short to get “Official Selection” in film festivals, and even got shown all the way in Florida.

“The Survivor” was also the first thing I created were I had to do the Visual Effects myself. I’m use to hiring a visual effects artist. When I know I can’t have one I plan on only Special Effects, effects that are practical and I can hand make. I’m good at things like making mask or squibs, a device that shoots fake blood to make a gunshot look. When it comes to Visual Effects I only knew the basics.

The reason I had to do my own Visual Effects is because my artist I hired had a family emergency and I couldn’t get a second one to commit because they were too busy with classes. This left me with watching a lot of tutorials, and reading lessons on how to get done the task I needed.

For this shot of “The Survivor” I had to use about 6 different layers. The City was broken up into 5 parts. I had to make sure they were all cleaned up and I can fit them together to fake a complete city. Then I had to add the city into my footage. Blending and color correcting too a long time to get as close as I could. Once I had that I had to color correct the scene.

For “The Survivor” all color correction was done in After Effects. It was important to try and get a good contrast with a solid off orange color. Each shot was slightly different, but doing the whole short in After Effects helped keep a close enough continuity of color that it was the best way to do it.

Week 6 BOC: Monty Lapica

Monty Lapica is growing to become a Las Vegas homegrown celebrity.  Born and raised in the Las Vegas area, he had big dreams an wouldn’t stop until he reached all of his goals. He’s a filmmaker that gives back to his beloved hometown of sin city, and he is always moving forward.

            Winning two academic scholarships, Monty graduated Magna Cum Laude from Loyola Marymount University's School of Film and Television. Just graduating wasn’t enough, while in school he began to dream of bigger plans. This is when he started forming his feature movie “Self Medicated”.

            “Self Medicated” is a feature film that Monty produced, at the age of 24. It tells the true-life story of a 17-year-old boy, Andrew, who’s life begins to spiral out of control.  Not being able to move on from his father’s death, Andrew turns to drugs in order to make it to the next day. Andrew’s mother is at a loss on how to help him, and pays a private company to kidnap him and lock him up into a psychiatric institute. There he is subjected to physical and mental abuse and awakens something deep inside himself, and must find a way to get free of the medicated prison he has been forced into.

            Monty’s film premiered in 2005 and quickly took the international film festivals by storm. With over 25 awards won world wide, it became one of the biggest hits and must seen Indy Films of 2006. His movie, “Self Mediated” was such a hit that Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman officially declared August 31^st to be “Monty Lapica and Tommy Bell Day” in honor of the theatrical release. This wasn’t the only thing to push Monty forward however.

            Monty has given back to Las Vegas in many different ways. One of the most noted ways is the creation of the Las Vegas International Film Festival. This festival grew to become the largest independent film festival in Las Vegas. He also served as an advisory board member on the Marty Hennessy Junior Tennis Foundation, which is a nonprofit organization that gives to underprivileged children.

             With a very successful feature film made, a production company built, and charitable events, it would seem like life should slow down. For Monty it is the opposite. Monty told Las Vegas Business Press that they are currently working on a Toyota campaign that will conjunction with AOL and Saatchi & Saatchi. He is proof that as long as you put in the effort, anything can be reached.

Weekly Photo Challenge: In the Director's Chair

For this weeks photo challenge we were told to Photoshop ourselves into the director's chair. It was meant more for us to be able to show our skills in Photoshop more then anything. I used 3 different photos, and used the chair photo twice. I took the photo of the director’s chair and cut the bottom and top apart from each other. I place the picture of me on top of the bottom of the chair, then matched the size of the top of the chair and layered that on top of the picture of me to make it look as if I was actually sitting in the chair.

I chose the image of the desert because it looks like the scene from my short “The Survivor”. The last part of the short was all shot on the dried up lake bed out here in Las Vegas. I felt that even though I was making a fictional picture, it would feel better if it was based on a short I directed.

I feel that society, even my own family has a weird belief of what a director does, or acts like on set. They like to think all Director’s do is sit in a comfy chair, bark tons of orders, and lets everyone else do all the hard work. Today’s modern director tends to get very hands on and involved more. They spend more time next to the camera, but helping moving things around and standing as close to the shot as possible.  Even JJ Abrams got hands on while shooting Star Trek by standing behind the camera every now and then, and would tap the back of the camera to give it a shake effect.

To further this feel I’m adding in a picture actually took at the set. The picture was taken by Johnie Wood, and it does show me kind of barking orders, but I’m not sitting in a comfy chair relaxing. 

Week 5 EOC: Midterm Eval.

For this Class, Presentation techniques, I started off really rough. Due to unforeseen sickness, I missed the first week of almost most of my classes. Missing one week in this class put me far behind everything. It’s amazing how much you can miss when not being at a location in just only one day. I missed the Film Festival Assignment and started off on the wrong foot for week two.

For week two I was not one hundred percent positive on what was needed in my use or creation of my blog. This was an important week since our main blog post was to create a video on http://www.xtranormal.com/. We were assigned to create an animated video on the sight and incorporate it into our blog post, while also writing three hundred words on why we did what we did and used what we used.

By not having this it gave me a ton of work to try to get caught up on for week three. This meant more time then usual to get to the same point of everyone else in the class. Not hard to do, just putting in the extra elbow work and time I should have been putting in the week I should have been in class.

After getting caught up on tweets, posting as many a day as I could, and my blogs I found myself back on my feet running. Able to keep up with the rest I was now capable to try to get a head start in thinking about my business plan and what I wanted to do. But, of course, as most great ideas happen, I found the hidden gem in my business product and need to form the plan more to that need.