FILM & VIDEO: Background

Creativity is the food to my life; my family is my breath; entertaining and sharing are my heart. I cannot get enough of any of them.

The Intro

Everyone has a story; some are exciting; some are sad; others are not as noteworthy, yet a story nonetheless. My story has a little of each. I am special and interesting, but am I worthy of more than 15 minutes of fame? Which I have already had. I do not believe so, but what I am, is more interesting than 50% of the crap that is on the radio, tv, and movie screens.

I know I can entertain people with my creativity if given a chance. Because when I do, if you turned me down, you will regret it.

Dateline: circa 1977 - 1979

With music taking up every waking minute of my day, and some sleepless and dream filled nights, there wasn't much time for another hobby or interest to fit in, but when Star Wars came out my interest in movies woke up—one of many things that was waiting to surface.

Star Wars encompassed everything I felt as a boy, everything I wanted to say, everything I I wanted to do—the imagery, the sound, the story, I absorbed the whole thing into my soul—like all boys, I wished I wrote it, I wanted to be Luke Skywalker or Han Solo—I wanted to be in that world, but I knew it was not real, but I had written similar stories, I had far away worlds, I had fantastic adventures; Star Wars just reignited the fire, waking my past dreams that were started by the classic movies I saw as a child.

Dateline: circa 1980 - 1983

MTV began to get popular and I was intereged by the concept of marring music and moving pictures together. The ability to take the imagery in a song and actually view it was a concept that entranced me, but not having the resources available to produce high-end professional quality recordings and not having the marketing and sales outlets for my music, like with everything else I have tried up to that point in my life, I was at crossing with no bridge to get me over, but I kept on working at it in hopes that one day I would find that bridge.

This was also a time that home-video began to get popular with these over-sized video cameras that were quite expensive. Not having the money to buy one myself I signed up for the TV Productions elective at the high school which gave us access to the cameras and editing bays. I used them anytime I could to learn and practice things that I envisioned; it was wonderful to see what I saw in my mind be seen on a tv screen.

I logged many hours on the camera, writing scripts, editing, and adding music to the video footage — this is where "World Next Door" came to life. There was a video contest and the theme was World Next Door; the TV Production class wanted to enter. The concept we came up with was a person inside a video game was trying to entice someone to play it and when the person played it and won. they were sucked into the game and had to get freed by having someone else play and win. This was a year before TRON came out in the theatres, whatever that may mean.

We never finished it, but I did write a song for it that still survives today, in fact it is not just a song but a Novel, Screen play, and a Music Publishing company.

Dateline: circa 1984 - 1994

I always carried my Canon A1 camera with me and took pictures of anything I could working on my skills as a photographer and pushing my imagination, I also borrowed video cameras to tape events and little stage bits; and eventually purchased a Canon Ultura MiniDV camera that I put 1000's of hours on it — I have over 200 tapes in storage.

Editing the footage was quite difficult and not very inspiring at this time — I did not have the ability to take the footage and put it into the computer and tape to tape editing was quite arduous, so I kept video taping with the thought that one day I would be able to create a library of movies that would be easy to view. I was thinking VHS but wanted DVD.

Dateline: circa 1995 - 2001

Editing footage began to get easier; the abilty to digitize footage into the computer was more accessible and video editing software was coming of age—I tried Adobe Premier, Final Cut Pro, iMovie, and other obscure software titles and found that Final Cut Pro was much easier and much more usable—but getting the fotage back to a format that was ready to view was still, for me, a bit troublesome;nonetheless, I still worked on my craft and learning the tool. I also picked up my programming interest and attended WWDC.

Dateline: 2001 - 2003

As a WWDC student member I was offered the chance to get a one time hardware purchase through Apple at a 35% markdown. I chose the 17" Powerbook which had a DVD burner; this was the cornerstone that occupied my time. I purchased the full version of Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro and began to edit the hours and hours of footage I took over the past 15 plus years and put into nice organized packages — the powerbook was the answer I needed to furthur my creativity.

After getting my two AA's from Sierra College I went to CSU Chico to finish up my Bachelors Degree in Computer Science, but realized that was not what I wanted to do — I mean I loved to program, but the school was not the right school to learn it.

Dateline: 2004 - 2007

I finished a 14 monthy post-production program in 8 months at Video Symphony located in Burbank, California. While attending I was lucky — I do have skills though — to get involved with Kevin Church to shoot and edited the BTS of Dave Markey's Lovedolls Superstar: Fully Realized, which is on DVD and for sell at Amazon. I was also involved with Acid Headz car show production called Maximum Street. And I also made friends with Dan Nelson, a very quick and energetic editor, Kristian Gabriel, and Jeanette Dubois. The school and working on projects have enhanced and solidified his skills in the film and video world.

I then decided that after learning about what causes productions to be dleayed and seeing several productions get shelved or various reasons, I came home and started Aria Pictures my own independent movie production company. And I lens Paint my first movie where I was in charge of everything and knew that it would get finished — I did not know how good or bad it might be, since I never done everything by myself and direct it. I was a mazed that it turned out really good; everyone involved was happy with it. We are now wanting, ready, and waiting to do a follow up to it called Paint² (Paint Squared)

I stay busy doing website work, writing screen plays, plays, novels, composing music, and editing other peoples home movies under the name of DVD Memories looking for that bridge.

Dateline: 2008 - 2010

Searching for the right place to work, the right kind of people, and the right kind of area that suits me and my way of life is quite difficult — more so now that the economy is in the dump — that I am willing to take on any project or position to make ends meet.  I dabbled in asphalt; yes, seal coating and paving — I was the estimator and actually began to enjoy it until the econmy took a dump.

So I took on a few more websites and odd jobs uncluding editing a 10 minute short called Detective A that was for Access Sacramento's "A place called Sacramento 2009" movie contest in which I won the "Best Technical Achievment" award for my editing and post-production work.

in May 2010, my screenplay, "The Golden Tree," was selected as one of the ten finalist — out of forty-five entered — to be made.  After nine months and 25 revisions I was pleased with what I wrote and was excited and content that they chose a well crafted entertaining story, but after the cast & crew call on May 19, 2010 — when I only needed five characters to be cast — we had the longest line all evening and I received more than 60 head shots and bio's from potential actors and crew seeking positions.  In pre production as I type this, so more to come.