Magic Hour

This was from this evening’s sunset. The next couple days might have more pics from today, maybe.

-Bryan

Shooting in the O.C.

Trying to shoot a narrative film on a Canon 7D requires overcoming a lot of compromises but once you get it all working right the results can be pretty impressive.

Honorable mentions for pic of the day (gotta make up for missing the last few days):

Palm trees and snow! I love California

The challenge of the zolly with an auto zoom lens

Umami Burger + Film Screening

So tonight I went to an outdoor screening of two short films, one of which happened to be the first public screening of “Middle of Nowhere” which I shot with director and old classmate Michael Carreño almost a year ago. And it happened to take place at Space 15 Twenty adjacent to Umami Burger right across from the good old L.A. Film School.

This was the tastiest burger I’ve ever eaten in my life, and that is saying a lot considering how many hamburgers I’ve eaten in my life (what can I say, burgers are my favorite food!) — I highly recommend it to all burger connoisseurs.

It was great to reconnect with all the actors and crew and also the space — I hadn’t actually been to Space 15 Twenty since it was just a bunch of old run down warehouses where we shot a lot of After Midnight. Back then it was dirty and full of homeless poo… now it’s full of hipsters, haha.

-Bryan

And so here it is, now on Vimeo and available in HD!

-Bryan

The best way to get “film look” is to shoot on film. Of course, this is somethign that I (and many others) have been saying for a while now but last night I got quite a rude re-awakening on this.

Last night, “Returning“, a short film I produced and shot screened at the L.A. Shorts Festival. It was shot on a Panasonic DVX100 (provided by my friend Brian) with a Red Rock M2 35mm lens adapter and a set of Nikon prime lenses. Not exactly current state of the art equipment, I know, but it was what we could get.

At this particular festival, the allowed submission formats are 35mm film print and standard definition video on DigiBeta tape. “Returning” had the unfortunate honor of being the first film in its program to be projected in standard definition video after the first film was shot on 35mm and projected from a film print.

Yikes. The transition from film to standard definition video made my eyes hurt. But it was so much more than that. The depth and richness of color… the contrast… there’s so much more to the look of film than just the resolution, latitude and depth of field, and last night was quite a vivid reminder of that for me for sure.

-Bryan

What We Do Is Secret

What you’re looking at over there is for me a very historic ticket stub! Today was the first time I saw my name in the credits of a movie that I had worked on, playing on a regular day, in a regular theater, to a regular audience. Not a one-time festival date full of people who worked on the film. Not some made-for-publicity theatrical premiere for a direct-to-DVD release, but just a plain old regular movie in its second week of play! And I have to say that it feels pretty good. I finally feel like I have worked on a “real” movie.

I wasn’t even sure that I would be credited at all as I had only worked on it for a few days on what I was told were re-shoots, but when I got to the credits roll at the end, I found myself credited as grip under the “Additional Photography” section.

The movie itself, I am actually proud to say, was pretty mediocre. And actually it was a lot better than I was expecting. At any rate, having been paid to work on even a mediocre movie playing in theaters in multiple cities is an achievement that 10 years ago would have seemed like an impossible fantasy to my college-aged self.

What We Do Is Secret is a biopic in the form of a fake documentary… sort of… about the what I am told was groundbreaking late-1970′s Los Angeles punk band The Germs and their lead singer, Darby Crash. Having grown up in the suburbs, I had never heard of The Germs until I was working on the movie, and I didn’t know who Pat Smear was until someone leaned over and said, “Dude, you’re standing next to Pat Smear,” and I was like, “Who the hell is Pap Smear?”

When I found out that he was that mysterious fourth guy that appeared playing guitar with Nirvana on MTV’s Unplugged, then I was like, woah, that’s kinda cool. Me and Dwight and Rob, the other two guys in the grip crew, I think were the only people working on this movie that were not punk fans, haha. So yeah, I basically went into the movie as a complete punk music/scene/history layman. And so to me, like I said, it was pretty mediocre. It just seemed like a very generic drugs and rock and roll and drugs and sex movie, with all the expected elements.

I worked on the Darby-as-child flashback scenes, and on the recreation of the show at the Roosevelt Hotel with the band’s performance, the broken glass, and the crowd. I also worked on a little second unit thing where we shot all the crowd shots to match the previously shot band performances, changing the backgrounds and lighting to match. In the scene where the crowd is all in red light and the riot happens and there’s a white light moving back and forth hitting the backs of the audience’s heads… that’s me moving that light around, haha. Oh and the extreme closups of the heroin spoon action with the rippling swimming pool water effect in the background. Oh, and the “interview” with “Pat Smear” with the car in the background.

All that stuff actually ended up being a pretty big chunk of the whole movie, so I’m feeling pretty damned proud of myself this evening. What We Do Is Secret is currently playing in Los Angeles; Irvine; Philly; D.C.; N.Y.C.; Columbus, OH; S.F.; Berkeley, and other places I’ve forgotten. Check out their calendar to see if and when it’s coming to a theater near you. If you want to go to a theater and sit through the credits and say “hey I know that guy”, well this could be your chance, haha. It’s opening in San Diego on September 5 at the Ken!

-Bryan

P.S. Hey what the heck, WordPress? Why does your spell check say “Philly” is ok but “Los Angeles” gets red underlines? FUNK DAT!

!!

Glumbert – USA vs Japan in the open a beer bottle with a helicopter contest:
This sport is definitely not environmentally sustainable, but these guys sure do have some mad skills!

What We Do is Secret – What We Do Is Secret premiere dates:
This is the second of the feature films I’ve worked on to actually get released to the public (not counting festivals) as well as the first to get a (non-festival) theatrical release (the other film was direct to DVD)! I don’t even know if I’m in the credits or not. But check the link to see if it’s playing in a theater near you. Just don’t get mad at me if it sucks, haha.

- Bryan

I don’t even know at this juncture if my name is even in the credits but I can’t wait to see the final product even if it was only deemed worthy of a direct to DVD release, haha. I was actually still in film school when I got this gig… so it seemed especially big time to me… hotel and even some gas money paid for, a huge grip truck with everything so no need to jury rig things when you always have the right tool for the job. But man it sure was hot out in the desert in June!

Anyways, it’s good to finally see that something I worked on is actually in a place were some people might actually see it!

-Bryan

UPDATE: I did indeed make it into the credits. Click for a bigger version:

I have included this screen shot to save you from watching the whole movie if you just wanted to see my name in there. Watching it was not exactly the most enjoyable experience of my life, haha.

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