8 posts tagged “new york film academy”

   My computer was out of commission for a while so that explains the silent treatment you all have been getting from me (and by you all I mean the 2 people that might read this blog). Anyway I am still alive and doing well. I start as a TA at the New York Film Academy in a few days. I will be working with the High School students and helping them learn to make films.

   I also have been working a few days a week at a catholic news show as a freelance "predator" (producer/editor) shooting and editing news stories in Brooklyn. Yeah I go hard. I also have been working on a quite a few video projects for the church. So I have been able to keep busy.

With out a doubt I will be moving at the end of August. The rest is to be determined.

I need to buy new clothes. Almost everything is two sizes too big. A pretty good problem to have but still a problem.

this past week is about the halfway mark on my 8 week course at new york film academy. It has gone my really fast. I don't know where the time has gone. It seems like just a few days ago I was still trying to remember my classmates names. It has been an intense experience for all 18 of us. We were strangers and now we are all friends. We have a worldwide network of budding filmmakers now. England. Portugal. Brazil, Argentina, Denmark, India, Mexico and of course there are a handful of us from America. We got coast to coast, California, Nevada, Texas, Oklahoma,Ohio,  Rhode   Island, Massachusetts, and New Jersey.
I think most of the class are hoping to make a career out of this whirlwind experience. Some might make it some might not but that is how life goes.
We begin shooting our final films in five days. It is pure madness. I don't even have a script in a final form. I think I like the story though so hopefully it will come  out the way I picture it in my mind. All I will say is that it is a superhero movie. I put out and ad on craigslist.org for scripts and I got a few actually scripts and a few pitches. The one that is my fall back plan is a basic coming of age story where the boy turns 18 and his father's gift is a father vs son boxing match. I liked the script but it needed a good amount of reworking/rewriting. I even found and awesome boxing ring that might look familiar because it is often seen on ESPN or HBO. So it is kinda of a bummer that I won't be using that location because it would be epic.
here is what the website says
The Look:- 80 foot long catwalk (ideal for unique camera angles)
.- Hard Wood Floors throughout.
- 2 gyms, each with it's own unique look.
- Each gym has a regulation size elevated boxing ring.
- Ceilings of over 20 foot with I beams running throughout.
- Rows of heavy bags.- Locker rooms.
- Gritty authentic Manhattan brick wall.
- Timeless black and white murals including an 18 foot high "Joe Louis".
The new superheros story will be less taxing on the locations, acting, and choreography
(I have never boxed so it would be hard to stage a match but it would look like an amature match for sure so that part would be authentic I guess)
So the new script is written by me I used celtx, which is a free shareware pre-production program. I have to say it is pretty slick. I think I would rather have celtx than the $300 competition. It was actually fun to write it out. Now I just need to comb through it a few times and fix mistakes and make the dialog less lame. I'm going to shoot digital instead of film for the simple reason that I can't afford to spend $600+ just on film. I wish I could though because film does look better, there is no question in my mind about it. 16mm just looks really cool, even on this shitty reversal film stock we have been shooting on.
here is one of the projects that I directed. this was a production workshop where we had a few hours to write and shoot something that was some type of allegory or parralle universe or supernatural power or something along those lines. 

With school coming to a close I have to figure out what to do from here. I no job to got back to and it sounds like SNCAT is about to close anyway so I jumped ship at the right time it seems. We are moving out of the apartment we live in now and are moving to washington heights which seems to be all the rage and is way cheaper becasue I will be sharing a room with Al. so rent will be half the price I pay now. I want to try and find some work here. I don't want to spend to much time working at a resturant or something if I'm not working on other film/video projects. If I could get a job at a post-production house that would basicly be the dream or something where I'm touching a camera would be nice. I know there is free-lance stuff that I could get for online newspaper stuff or something but freelance is kinda scary, spotty work. As long as I'm here trying to advance the carrer then that is fine with me even if I'm making my own web series while I'm working at blockbuster or something like that.
I also got a friend who is moving to LA and wants me to come with. He is going there for music production school and I know I would have fun there but again it is the same thing, I just need to be working(paid or not) at my craft. otherwise what is the point of living outside of Reno? So I have this debate going on in the back of my mind but my main focus right now needs to be my final film. A lot can change in a few weeks too. My final might come out really good and I might submit it to festivals and if not then it is still and awesome learning expirence. Once school is over I'll put together my reel and resume that should take about a week and then I'll send that all over the city, state, hell even the country and I'll take it from there.

BOTTOM LINE is that I'm out here to live the dream and so far so good.

it is my one satrurday that i don't have school. I have a small re-shoot(where I met Hugh Jackman[another story for another timef]) but the big thing is that I am going to wake up super early and stand in an line where hopefully I get a ticket to SNL(Saturday Niight Live, in case you live under a rock, or just not america) I get a standby ticket and thing hope that some people dont show up with real tickets for the live taping. it is a long shot but yeah you only live once right? Host:Steve Martin.

Surprise! I'm So Freakin Excited

1 comment

this week was pretty crazy too. the rest of the crew finished the mise-en-scene project and we started the continuity project. here is my mise-en-scene. the project is just one shot no editing the time limit was 45 seconds(no sound)

180 degree rule
30 degree rule to avoid jump cuts
get in late and get our early(edit on action)

I shot mine on friday, but we had a camera loading problem and ended up shooting nothing but now I have a nice basketball sitting in my room that I bought for the shoot that didn't get recorded on film. oh well. no harm no foul. Now we just have to double up and shoot twice as much on Monday.

School is demanding but that is what I wanted. I came here to get my butt kicked and hopefull make something good or at least learn how to. The poeple in class are awesome too. it has only been a 2 weeks and people are calling it a family. Here is a small portion of the clan[sasil, todd, ash, me, claira, and olivia[4 contries represented, still blows my mind])

Nyfa-part of the clan

Also this week we had 2 production workshops, where we break in to crews and write and shoot something and edit it before the next class. Production workshop #1 the assinment was we needed to create suspense and maintain it for 75% of the scene. Our crew worked well together and we had a pretty good outcome. Pedro was the director and I was just an actor. I'll post the results as soon as i get a copy.
Production workshop #2 was another story, I was the director because I somehow came up with the story. A few people on the crew were jackoffs and were more harmfull than helpfull. we lost 2 rolls of film because of the assistant cameraman was clueless. We wasted all kinds of time trying to get the actor to pay attention to anything other than the mindless babble of our director of photography. I tried to respect everyones job title for most the class until we had 20mins left of in class and almost nothing shot. So I took over everyone else's job and got it all shot in time. I had to cut a few moving shots from the shot list I had but we had enought to tell the story. It will get ripped apart in class but at least we will have something that tells a story. And that is how you learn from mistakes, right? I also learned some of the peple i don't want to work with again. I'll post it here next week when I get the footage back and edit into something.

I stay up to late and wake up too early, but that is what I have to do in "the city that never sleeps," I miss my family and friends but there is no where else in the world I would rather be. It is really weird to be in this position because i know that I am sitting here at a turning point in my life. I won't be the same afterwards. I will have friendships that will last a lifetime and expirences that I won't forget. It is also really weird to know that I'm in a moment that I was dreaming of years ago and have been planning for almost a year. I am literally LIVING THE DREAM but ironicly I'm wearing my KILLING THE DREAM t-shirt haha.

Bottom line is that I'm here, in new york, shooting films and I can't think of anything better. I keep myself up at night if I think about it too much.

Well I have been officially accepted to New York Flim Academy in New York City. I'll send out my first payment this week and its none refundable so here we go. no backing out now. I don't have all the details just yet but they will all work out, I'm sure of it. I may or may not have a friend going with me. Only time will tell on that, I have no doubt that he wants to go but i don't know if he has the focus to actually make it happen.

In other news, my little brother's band, See It through, played their last show on Friday sept. 26, 2008. While I wasn't in the band, it was a much a part of my life was it was any of the members. I released the CD on Firece Justice Productions and I was on the major tours. Really it has been a good time and that time has come to watch it faducde away.

Also, SNCAT has just shot its self in the chest(on the foot, its more serious than that) the guy that has held the company together with duct tape, for 11 years. He gave is two week notice and said that he will stay on part time and teach some of the classes we offer. Seems like a resonable offer right? yeah. Did the head moron take it? no. rather he would like to make his two week notice into a two day notice. So now I have to teach the classes and am the most veteran employee. sounds like I need a raise.

It is funny how this specific person really wants to create a problem and is convinced that I have wronged her in some way but really it is quite the opposite and she has stabbed my whole family in the back and is out to destroy my little brothers life. I can't wait until he takes off the rose colored glasses and sees that she is a sucubus that is out to tear down everything around her.