November 18, 2005: Movie Maker
FACTS Part I
Unlike the rest of the world, I am one of those who get my news from MANY sources and then sorts out the BS from the facts—we are NOT looking for truths; many people get their news, their information, their reason for existence from ONE source—and most of the time it is incorrect, misleading, and biased but they follow it nonetheless, which is the bane of people like me.
I am also one that questions and thinks deeply about what people say are truths, facts, and what they believe—the problem with believing that having troops in Iraq is good, does not mean it is good—there are people that still believe the earth is flat; it does not make it true, because 99% of the people know otherwise—we know for FACT that it is NOT, but they believe nonetheless. Same with the almighty, that music should be free, that you come into my country and make it yours without my consent or input—this is diversity, and college professors are telling us (Americans) that we need to be understanding, forgiving, and respectful to their way of life. THEN WHOM THE FUCK WILL DO THAT FOR ME!?!? They do not teach them that in their country before sending them over here.
I mean we have the NAACP—they even have their own awards show, Women's Suffrage movements and other groups, organizations for children, and so forth, but you will not see, publicly mentioned, advertised, or broadcast, are organizations for white people. Why is that? I mean we are Americans, the Blacks are Americans, so are the Hindus, Islamic's, and so forth, so why can we not just be called AMERICANS? Stop the separation of race and color; they call us WHITE people racists? We are not the ones doing the separating. AND DON'T BLAME ME FOR MY ANCESTORS!!!! I WAS NOT THERE; I AM NOT LIKE THEM!!
I am not a racist, I hate stupid, boring, mean, inconsiderate, self-centered, over consuming, wasteful, arrogant, hateful people equally, of any color, race, creed, or age—and yes I hate myself for being one of those when I was younger—I have much to compensate for my faults, but I am doing it.
Finished School.
After leaving CSU CHICO, I tried a VFX school but ended up in Burbank at Video Symphony, a post-production school for film and tv. I took a 14 month course and finished it in 9 months (I started in October of 2004 and finished in June of 2005)—of course there were 4 classes left to take.
A job market class that was 6 weeks for 4 hours every monday night. I could not do that, plus the class was a common sense class. Decks and Mixers, the advanced class, but the basic was boring and I have been playing with mixers for quite sometime. The final two classes were week long ones and they were based, so they say, on real world situations. None of that is true, I have worked on real world situations in productions, and these classes they have for the week are for beginners, the weak hearted, and those without any motivation or drive.
Anyway, I am 90% done, so yes, I am finished with the school. They will graduate me, I will get my certificate, and I am still able to take the courses, and audit any of the courses I took, for free, any time, which is good because the course, most, were really good. I recommend anyone who is looking at getting into TV, Film, or Music post-production to quit the current school you are at and head over to Video Symphony.
What have I been doing since?
Well when I was at CSU Chico, I met a guy named Adam Vesely, a choir, new to Mac, CS student, movie maker wannabe. We got a long really well. He told me this idea for a paintball movie he had. So after awhile I asked what he would do with it. I then wrote a screenplay for it and showed him—he loved it.
I wanted to shoot it ourselves and with my new knowledge of Post, I felt that we could make it decent. So I began the steps, stages, the starting the ball in motion, which took nearly a year to do that in which I revised the script many times.
I began researching where I could buy equipment, thinking it would be better to own the camera. What I could afford was MiniDV, and that format is NOT professional enough for movie work, at least high end movies. So I abandoned the idea of buying and looked for a place to rent. Now about high end professional video cameras the only place to rent them was SF or LA.Now with this caliber of equipment, one needs an insurance policy, a short-term one, but one must have one to get the equipment. So we used Complex Corporation to get a 200k policy for equipment, people, and property—this was beginning to feel like a real movie.
Then came the task of finding locations, cast, and crew. We cast people we knew and a few that we did not—we had many that said they were interested but never made the commitment to it—I find it hard to believe that people did not want to be apart of a real movie; that was it, is that most people thought, even my closest family that is was going to be a cheesy home movie. I also found out that some people wanted to be paid. HA!
If you are in a major motion picture as a background actor you will get food and MAYBE some pay. If you were in an independent film as a background actor, no, as a main actor, depends. In an independent movie like ours, if you were someone famous, or an actor to begin with then maybe, but not the people we were asking. No one was getting paid.
Crew was myself and my wife, and anyone one the cast that had a free hand. Locations were not easy to come by but when they did come, they seamed easy. The difficulty was finding enough forest away from everything that we could shoot a movie, a movie about paintball—this was the word that got everyone looking for their forms to be filled out and their environmental reports to be done. Well, we found a great location to shoot. While there I picked up my last cast member and crew help.
The movie was a blast to make, we shot it in 3.5 days and am now editing it, adding music, and so forth—this is what I want to do the rest of my life.
