The two hour season premiere of House aired last night on FOX but I just finished watching it on tape and it’s simply a perfect episode. This season will be amazing.

Captive Films swept the Cinesol 4th Annual 36 Hour Film Race event with “Sex, Trafficking and Luchadores” which won a total of five awards including Best Writing, Best Ensemble, Best Credits Sequence, Audience Favorite and Best Film.

The members of Orange Media, which was unable to participate this year, are thrilled to have joined forces with Captive Films to take home such a prestigious set of awards. And also congratulations to all the teams who competed and we’ll see you at the starting line next year!

Pictured (left to right): Rommel Garza, Sergio Tovar, Jay Juarez, Jose Lomas, Hernan Cortez, Jason R. Johnston, Ivan Buenrostro, Bertha Gonzalez, Gabriel Ramirez, Erick Treviño, Alyssa Salas, Gerardo Salinas, Mark Rodriguez and Edward Cordero.

Due to a miss-communication, Orange Media was late to the registration period for the Cinesol 4th Annual 36 Hour Film Race this weekend and opted not to participate. Erick Treviño, president of Orange Media, and the voluntary members of the defunct team voted to continue participation by assisting another team. All of the ex-Orange team members were excited to help Captive Films (Jose Lomas, Aisa Showery and Gerardo Salinas) with the production of their motion picture “Sex, Trafficking and Luchadores”, a fun action-adventure short film about a Mexican A-Team hired to rescue a man’s kidnapped daughter from a dangerous cartel.

With every Cinesol film race comes script variables which must be included in any production to ensure legal participation. This year’s requirements were: genre (action-adventure), character (mariachi), location (bakery), prop (cape) and dialogue (“this is going on my blog”).

Principal photography began after 4am Saturday and wrapped after 5pm. Second unit photography happened after 6pm and wrapped before 8pm. Foley was captured around 2am Sunday morning as the final edit sweetening and music production and recording was happening. I came on board the show as cinematographer (credited as director of photography) with 1st AC Rob Liendo who rocked the joint consistently well throughout principal photography. Rob’s professionalism and awesomeness kept the shooting efficient and we got the show done on time and on budget. I’ve had camera assistants and grips and volunteers who were happy to help, but I’ve never had a “1st AC” before and Rob was a pro and kicked ass so a big thanks to him for coming down from Pennsylvania to volunteer his time.

Also a big thanks to Sergio Tovar, Ivan Buenrostro, Mark Rodriguez and Pepe Revilla who are always happy to help camera and electrical but were also able to break out and have roles in the cast this year, while still managing to find time to help Rob roll cables, set up lights and dolly. I’m thankful for all these guys volunteering their time to play these dual roles as efficiently and gracefully as they always do.

“Sex, Trafficking and Luchadores” is directed by Jose Lomas and written by Bertha Gonzalez. Produced by Aisa Showery and Gerardo Salinas. Executive Producers are Erick Treviño and Edward Cordero. Gibby Ramirez is the editor with assistant George Garcia. The killer original music score was written and performed by Jay Juarez, Rommel Garza and Erick Treviño who let me peter around with the MIDI accordion. “Sex, Trafficking and Luchadores” stars Pedro Garcia, Ivan Buenrostro, George Magee, Gerardo Salinas, Sergio Tovar, Jorge Damm, Erick Treviño, Alyssa Salas and Hernan Cortez.

“Sex, Trafficking and Luchadores” is intended to premier at the 4th Annual 36 Hour Film Race results program during the Cinesol Film Festival September 13, 2009 at the TSTC Student Theater in Harlingen, TX. “Sex, Trafficking and Luchadores” would probably be rated R for language and violence.

I will post the film here with HD links to Vimeo and YouTube after the results of the film race next week.

Introducing my next camera. The 7D is pretty much what I’ve been looking for: an upgrade from my 20D with a 100% viewfinder, larger Polaroid, 1080/24P capability with full manual control and be less expensive than the 5D Mark II. The 7D has an APS-C sensor, but I’ve been used to them since the 300D. Check out the previews at photo.net, dpreview.com and the 7D’s official Canon page here. My 20D is pretty old now (but working great) and I’ll finally be able to let it slip into quasi-retirement as the secondary camera body. The Canon EOS 7D is released at the end of this month.

I just met Ingrid Michaelson (she did that song “The Way I Am”) as she did an interview for one of the adult contemporary stations. She’s totally got the cute nerdy thing going on and when everyone left I told her I was a fan and would totally want to see her open for Coldplay or Dave Mathews, which she talked about during the interview. Ingrid’s awesome and totally doesn’t sound like she’s from New York. Ingrid Michaelson is my Crush of the Moment.

I’ve written about The Battle before, and casually checking Laguna Production’s website, I finally found it listed! Check it out: this link will take you to the movie that I was in.

The Bench has been selected to screen at the Cinesol Film Festival this year. It will premiere Saturday, September 19 at 5pm at the Cine El Rey in McAllen, TX. A Q&A with myself and other members of the crew and cast will follow.

Here is a link to the schedule:
http://cinesol.bside.com/2009/films/thebench_cinesol2009

Also, local newspaper The Monitor wishes to review the film. I’m nervous!

I just got back from a special screening of District 9. It is, in a word, awesome.

Go see it.

The pacing, structure, story, character development, direction, acting, is all top notch. I could probably sum it up like this: take Alien Nation, Schindler’s List and The Fly, mix up all the best parts together and you have District 9. I enjoy science fiction quite a bit and this is pure sci-fi. It’s all about exploring the human condition through an “alien” point of view. In this case: racism, apartheid, segregation. And of course, humanity in all forms. District 9 is at both times exciting and moving, carefully balancing an epic (but personal) action-thriller with carefully structured drama. A lot of love and attention went into District 9, and it absolutely shows.

The documentary of the film serves to create background and context within an interesting bookend to the epic story that the traditional movie tells. The ending is beautiful and appropriate. Several members of the audience applauded over the end credits. Weta’s effects are awesome to the point that you don’t care that it’s CGI, much like their work on Gollum from The Lord of The Rings. The work done by Weta in District 9 looks effortless.

To the Transformers crowd: it starts slow but packs a punch as it roars toward the end.

I loved every minute of the movie. Nothing felt ridiculous or ham-handed. Nothing superfluous. Just carefully paced, epic storytelling that moves you emotionally. District 9 feels real, and it touches you in the same way Children of Men does. You see the horror capable in man, and the humanity capable in beasts. It was hard for me to find a human character in the film to root for until very near the end. Selfishness and greed rule the day in District 9.

The people sitting next to me in the theater were shaking their heads, disgusted at the humans. There was a moment in the story where it looked like things were going to work out and suddenly, it all comes crashing down, and a woman sitting next to me was visibly upset. And as the movie picks up speed toward the end, it knocked me off my feet. There were cheers coming from the audience.

Hopefully District 9 will do well financially and will open the doors for producer Peter Jackson and director Neill Blomkamp to finally realize their swan song: Halo.

Playing from a tiny preview on an iPod Touch, screen grabbed and emailed to myself. Such a low quality solution but, an effective tease for our ambitious PSA for the Cinesol Film Festival.

G.I. Joe? G.I. Blow.

I give it a D+. Snake Eyes saves it from being an F and the boobies give it the extra credit. The only casting I agree with is Ray Park and Dennis Quaid. I pretty much didn’t like anything else. The effects work swayed from good to bad to often. The ending was stupid; it practically dares the writers to come up with a sequel. I could taste Star Wars references everywhere: from the Death Star’s floor plans to the Battle of Endor, the duel of the fates and even the canyon chase in the asteroid belt. The villains weren’t scary. The love stories were lame and forced. Pros: Marlon Wayans was surprisingly not unfunny, though, and The PIT was cool for about three seconds. The Snake Eyes/Storm Shadow flashbacks started off alright, but wound up being lame.

Basically, G.I. Joe tries too hard to be cool. It hurts to watch sometimes, like a virgin nerd trying to score. But, it IS watchable…in a completely sucky way. It’s good that I got to see it for free (a radio station gave away tickets), but I still feel like I want my money back.

But, I hear it’s better than Transformers.

We wrapped shooting for “What Can You Do?”, the ambitious television spot for local film festival CineSol’s 36 Hour Film Race event, this morning at about 12:15am.

The final scene shot will be the first scene in the spot: the drama sequence. The director wanted the scene to take place during the day, but I wanted complete control of the light so we opted to shoot at night and blast a 2k through the window and white curtains to double for the sun. On the master shot (which included a dolly move), I used a 1k for a rim light on the woman and another 1k for the man’s face. For later shots I would use just the 2k through the curtains with a 1k fill (scrimmed 2 stops down) and another 1k for accent, using the falloff as slit through barndoors. A stage fog machine was used to create an atmosphere that would show the beams of “sunlight” coming from the window.

The footage looks great and I’m very proud of the results. I can’t wait to see the final spot.

Below are two behind the scenes videos from Orange’s most recent project: a non-profit public service announcement for the CineSol Film Festival that has no title (so I’m calling it “What Can You Do?” from a piece of its dialogue). The first video shows us working on a Vietnam War action sequence, and the second video is the horror sequence. Fun!

[flashvideo filename=http://www.impossiblefx.com/video/cinesol-bts-vietnam.flv image=http://www.impossiblefx.com/video/cinesol-bts-vietnam.jpg volume=100 /]

[flashvideo filename=http://www.impossiblefx.com/video/cinesol-bts-horror.flv image=http://www.impossiblefx.com/video/cinesol-bts-horror.jpg volume=100 /]

I’m using the new Panasonic AJ-HPX300 recording on 16GB E-series P2 cards with the AVC-Intra 100 codec at 24PN. Lighting is two Arri babies and a vintage Mole junior on a regular gas generator. All the gear worked flawlessly and I am very, very pleased with the HPX300. The location shown in the videos was a good 200 feet from where we could bring our trucks so we had to haul our gear the rest of the way. We arrived at 4pm and left at 3am. I also did all the zombie makeup. All the footage on the BTS videos above was shot with my little Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS.

I’m the cinematographer for a television commercial that’s been scheduled for four days at several locations. Our first shoot was at our studio last Tuesday, we then broke until this weekend and will finally wrap tomorrow evening. Saturday, we shot two scenes at a ranch that doubled for a horror sequence (shot at night) and a Vietnam war sequence (at magic hour). Both came out spectacularly. Sunday, we shot the romance and comedy segments on South Padre Island and I…am…sunburned. As I write this my legs and arms feel like they’ve been under a hot lamp for seven hours and…well, I guess that’s exactly what they were doing. I need to clean the camera and charge the batteries this evening because tomorrow we shoot the drama sequence.

The project is a 30 second spot for the CineSol Film Festival’s 36 Hour Film Race. It is the most complex local spot I’ve ever produced. Once production has wrapped I will supervise the color timing process, write the original music score, add special visual effects and animation and mix the sound effects to the spot before it’s ultimately finished. It’s a big spot and should be pretty funny when it finally airs later this month…long before the effects of the sunburn have peeled away.

For some reason, sunburns (particularly the peeling part) makes me hungry for fried chicken.

FOX’s More to Love reality show ala The Bachelor premiered Tuesday evening with some lovely looking ladies. I must say, I thought quite a few of them were pretty hot. Two of the contestants stood out to me: Lauren (a student from Atlanta, GA) and Shari (a waitress from Miami, FL, who did not make it through the first round). Since Shari was voted off she is my official Crush of The Moment. So, Shari, if you’re reading this… :)

We shot more of Street Sertified’s Gucci Shades music video over the weekend: the studio recording scene, the shoebox scene, the auto tire and rim scene and the “Mr. Big” scene. The majority of the scenes were shot at Orange Studios with the exception of the tire and rim scene which was done on location. This is the first stuff we’ve shot for Gucci Shades since the pool party scene back in March and officially marks days 4 and 5 of the total shoot.

This shoot also mark the maiden voyage of our flagship camera, the Panasonic AG-HPX300, which was used both with and without an RNG35 DOF adapter with a Zeiss 50mm 1:1.4 lens. I was shooting 1080i at 24PN, 1/48 shutter in broad daylight as well as in the studio with two Arri 1K fresnels either direct or bouncing off white foam core. The footage is great and it looks like it’ll cut well together.