I haven’t purchased a digital SLR since my 20D in early 2006. This past Saturday I made the 30 minute trip to Harlingen to pick up the only Canon EOS 550D (Rebel T2i) in the area. I’m going to shoot my next short film with it. It’s awesome. Check out this video clip I shot with it this morning:

My new short film Estilo Romantico is in preproduction right now and casting is on! Go to http://tinyurl.com/estiloinfo/ for more information!

I had no idea “The Battle: Cinco de Mayo” had it’s own little website. While going through the production stills (most was unit photography I did) I came across this screenshot of the actual scene where I appear. The movie was supposedly released in September but I can’t find it anywhere.

Produced for my friend Alyssa who was taking a directing class and asked me to DP, It Happened One Night is a collection of scenes adapted from the 1934 Frank Capra classic written by Robert Riskin. Check it out here.

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.

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.

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.

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. The first video shows us working on a Vietnam War action sequence, and the second video is the horror sequence. Fun!

Cinesol 2009 – Behind The Scenes: “Vietnam Sequence”

Cinesol 2009 – Behind The Scenes: “Zombie Sequence”
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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.