Interview Room 3

Our May production, Interview Room 3, went very well.  Here is a photo of most of the cast and crew (not me, though… I must have been getting lunch or something.)

photo by Judy Garlow

“Interview Room 3” is a police drama that I co-produced that centers on a college student (Morgan) who is brought into a police interview room and finds out that her father was killed.  As the two detectives talk to her, we find out there may be more to the story…

TXR Paintball Commercial

After filming Tomboys, which featured a paintball field, we agreed to film a 15-second commercial for them that is going to film at the local movie theater. We stopped by on a Saturday morning for 3 or 4 hours and filmed the following with a bunch of kids:

Our DP Brad shot, edited and narrated it.  I think it turned out pretty good!  I was the clapper, lol.

“Tomboys”

(click here for more photos; photos by basselal)

After my previous attempt at directing a film for this film group, I was determined to do much better.  By this time, our group had grown, we’d learned a lot of lessons, and we’d improved by leaps and bounds.

“Halloweed”

(click on the photo for a flickr set of all the thumbnails; photos by basselal)

Our third film, “Halloweed” is almost done being edited, but it won’t be publicly available as we are going to try to submit it to film festivals.  Wish us luck!

Film #2: I Remember When

As promised, here is our film group’s second video:

I have a lot to say about it, but for now I’ll just say it’s WAY better than the first one for a myriad of reasons. I was not on the creative team for this one (is that the reason? Hehehe!), but I did work heavily behind the scenes.

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Update: (5/4/2010)

So, as you can see, this film was MUCH better than our group’s previous one. Here is a list of things that we did differently that contributed to this:

“Scene”

Even though I haven’t posted in three months, much has happened to me, filmmaking-wise.  In December, someone in my part of town started a film club with the goal of making one short film per month for a year.   A handful of people showed up to that first meeting, and by the time the meeting was over, we had a script, cast and crew ready to shoot the first film.  I was the director.  And we shot it a few weeks later.  I’m not gonna say it was a masterpiece, but it was quite an adventure, and we learned a lot.

As of now, we’ve shot three films and are doing pre-production on a fourth and fifth.  Two are completely done, and I’ll post the second one shortly.  You’ll see a huge difference between the first and second film, which shows how fast we are learning and growing.

Here is our first short film, “Scene.”

Here are my some random tidbits of what went on behind the scenes of this particular project:

My first Toastmasters on TV Episode

Ugh… finally.

I’ve been a “producer” at the cable access station for a YEAR, and just NOW finished editing one episode:

I’ve actually tape three episodes, but the footage on two of them got corrupted.. and I’m pretty sure I can’t retrieve it.    So this is it.

Here it is.

So yeah. Here it is. Lots of technical issues but… also a lot of heart. hehe.

Here are my comments on this video (please keep in mind we did the whole thing in 24 hours, which was VERY challenging)

Light of Islam bookstore fundraising video

Finally… I finished my next project.  Well, sort of.  My intent was to do a profile of Ruth Nasrullah for the LinkTV “One Nation, Many Voices” contest.  I missed the deadline, then dragged my feet, until Ruth asked if I would do a video for her March fundraiser.  This lit a fire under me, and I finally finished something… Unfortunately, this version doesn’t show you what is so great about the bookstore.  It assumes the viewer already knows, and just talks about the positive impact it’s had on the community.  So a LOT of my footage didn’t get used, so I am *planning* on doing another version of this later that is closer to my original vision. 

Boy, did I learn a lot from this experience!  Not only do I have COLOR this time, but I also have SOUND!!  I got better at editing (especially editing footage that has not been stoyboarded), and at learning how to keep the viewer from dozing off while trying to show them a bunch of documentary footage (hopefully).  Here are some things I can definitely improve on, though:

• Framing:  Some of my framing is really bad.  I was trying a little TOO hard to adhere to the “rule of thirds” and ended up pushing some people almost out of the frame completely.
• Lighting:  Some of the shots are dark and/or dull.  I used ambient light in all of these interviews, but I should have found a better way of lighting my subjects.
• Sound:  The sound is kind of tinny and cheap-sounding, but I am not sure what I could have done about that, short of getting my hands on better sound equipment.  Especially since I was trying to grab people for interviews whenever I could.

I’m sure there are a bunch of other issues with this that I will think of later, but those are the main things for now.  PLEASE post constructive criticism–I want to get better!

My first film

With the help of my friend Gina, I just completed my first film. It’s only a minute and a half long, but there you go.