On this day in 2019, Brandon Cabral (director of photography), Stephanie Vigil (camera operator), Ranen Lawe (1st assistant camera), Dima Shorin (2nd assistant camera) and Yoni Coen (key grip) prep a shot with Nicholas Mariano ("Adam") on the last day of filming for The Broken Table.
On this day in 2019, Nicholas Mariano ("Adam"), Majdolene Abualfaraj ("Jennifer") and Martin Chang ("Todd") hang out in the green room while the next shot is being set up during Day 2 of filming for The Broken Table at The L.A. Film School.
Rest In Peace, Sir Sean Connery... While the rest of the world honors him as one of the best iterations of Agent 007 in the James Bond franchise, I remember him for his role as Professor Henry Jones, Sr. in 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Soviet submarine commmander Marko Ramius in 1990's The Hunt for Red October. I saw these films when I was still in elementary school, and it was Red October that got me interested in filmmaking when I drew my own storyboards for a submarine thriller after I watched the Tom Clancy-inspired movie at the theater on opening weekend. While Connery had officially been in retirement from acting since 2006, he will be missed by the world of cinema.
The Scottish legend passed way in Nassau, Bahamas at the age of 90 yesterday. My condolences to Connery's family.
Happy Halloween, everyone! Just thought I'd finally share my short film Envious...which has been in the works for over 16 years! To read more about the backstory that lead to me completing this project after so long, go to my Main Blog. I had fun putting the finishing touches on this film—and I can't wait to start on another project early next month! Enjoy Envious on Vimeo below, and I hope all of you guys have a great and spooky weekend!
At this moment in 2019, I was on set discussing a flashback scene for The Broken Table with Nicholas Mariano ("Adam"), while production assistant Louis Huynh and Majdolene Abualfaraj ("Jennifer") look on.
On this day in 2019, make-up artist Susanna Luong practices applying prosthetics to Martin Chang ("Todd") during an hour-long special FX make-up test in Long Beach, California...six days before principal photography began on The Broken Table.
On this day in 2019, Majdolene 'MJ' Abualfaraj and Nicholas Mariano enact the first scene of The Broken Table during a callback audition held at The Los Angeles Film School in Hollywood, California.
MJ was cast as 'Jennifer' after her great audition three months earlier, while Nicholas accepted the role of 'Adam' the day after this callback! Happy Monday.
As mentioned in yesterday's Blog entry, here's the full-screen version of my experimental short The Cinematography Project(TCP)...which is the original version of the film that I shot back in 2002. The only difference is that I'm using a Hans Zimmer track from the 1996 action flick Broken Arrow for the music score (I'm a huge fan of Zimmer, in case you're wondering) in this iteration. I also did another version of TCP where I used John Williams' "Across the Stars" theme from Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, but I didn't upload that to YouTube as I'm sure it would've have elicited smirks by some viewers since this track is probably more recognizable!
That's it for now. I'll post another Blog entry focusing on the student film version of The Broken Table that's also posted on YouTube. Carry on!
Happy Saturday, everyone! Just thought I'd share this experimental short that I did during film school 18 years ago! Dubbed The Cinematography Project(even though I only called it Cinematograpy Project in the film itself), this short was shot using a Super 8mm camera provided by my school's film department [I went to California State University, Long Beach (CSULB)]. I originally had to splice the film together manually using a device provided to me by the film department...but I eventually digitized my project so I could enhance it using Final Cut Pro(FCP). I used FCP to make this version widescreen, while also adding in Hans Zimmer's track from the 2001 film Black Hawk Down as the music score (this was also the track that I played on a separate audio player when I screened The Cinematography Project in my film class back in 2002). I'll post the full-screen version of The Cinematography Project in the next Blog entry.
I'm so happy to watch this film again considering the fact that I've been unable to do so for the past 18 years! The Cinematography Project, plus three other films that I did at CSULB (including the original version of The Broken Table), were on an external hard drive that I couldn't access since it was formatted for the Mac G5 computer I used to edit the films at school. With the new Apple MacBook that I received as a birthday gift last week, I was finally able to download the files from the hard drive so I can view them once more. Click on the link above to see what my future plans are in regards to using my new MacBook to resume doing filmmaking stuff! Have a great weekend.
On this day 10 years ago, the bank heist film The Town was unleashed in theaters nationwide (though it wasn't till a few days later that I watched it at the multiplex for the first time...on September 21). It was my favorite flick of 2010! Click here to read my review of the Ben Affleck-directed movie.
