Dragons!

So a couple weeks ago Ian, Seth, and I went to see How to Train Your Dragon. It's a new animated flick by DreamWorks. AMAZING! It's seriously one of the best and most-enjoyable animated movies I've seen in a long time.

The character development is great, and although you know how it's going to end, the getting there is pretty durn exciting! It had enough surprises in it to keep me interested and enough real-ness to it to make it worth watching. Just wanted to throw that out there.

Go see it!

It's awesome!

A Corn Maze and Other Things

So I did another movie. And it was insane. Just like every other movie. It was a little horror flick we filmed in Tremonton, Utah in 6 days. Yes folks, a feature in 6 days. I was the 1st AD. Quite exciting again :) It was great working with my friends again. I always enjoy that, although I do recall telling myself to avoid freezing cold shoots after I did the Snowmen movie last winter. So much for listening to myself. Oh well.

We shot pretty much all nights... some day stuff included. We had a small cast, which was awesome. And a small, but great, crew pretty much comprised of my college buddies. And we shall see how the whole thing turns out come next Halloween!

The fam is heading down to Las Vegas for Thanksgiving. We have some baptisms and a baby blessing to participate in, so that should be chock-full o' fun!

I guess another important event occurred in October... Nate got married. He and Robyn tied the knot on October 17. It was beautiful weather and generally great!
They went to Cancun for a week. Lucky.

Beyond that, life's been full of football, filming, fun...alliterations... just kidding. I'm sure I'll have some great stories from this week. More to come from the Asian Occasion. Hehe...

Mourning

I am mourning the loss of multiple things. My fish for one. He lived for so long! And he was doing so well! And then he just DIED! Well, okay, he was sick on Saturday and then he died, but generally he was doing so well... *sigh*

I am also mourning the loss of our top ten ranking for football. It was a sad, sad, day on Saturday. (altogether a bad day in terms of loss!) But alas, there is still hope. Kind of. We can still have a stellar remainder of the season. And it will be awesome.

On a happier note: I got a free fuf chair from the trade show I worked down in Vegas last week! It was rockin'. I mean, I won it playing guitar hero. How much cooler could it get?! And I'd never played guitar hero. I'd played rock band a total of once. And that's about it! And the guy said that if I beat him I could take whatever I wanted that wasn't sold out of the display room! Woot! And thus, the ugly colored, but highly comfortable camo fuf chair in my living room.

The end. For now.

Star Trek

So, I don't know if you remember or not, but a while ago I posted about working on "UFO Hunters." Within that post I talked about how I was something of a nerd and obsessed with Star Trek growing up. Well, I think that phase has been reintroduced into my life. I saw Star Trek last night for the fourth time in theaters. It's true. And it is still awesome. You know that it's a good flick when you can watch it four times in a matter of months and still laugh at the funny parts and cry at the sad parts and be thoroughly engaged throughout.

J.J. Abrams is amazing, I really don't know how he did it. He stayed incredibly true to the Star Trek ideals and yet created this amazingly enthralling drama with completely different actors! I was talking to Kimi and we were discussing the difference in quality of the summer blockbusters, specifically Michael Bay's "Transformers" and "Star Trek." Both had equally great effects and action-packed adventures, but there was a seriously important element missing in Bay's film: humans and depth of character. That is my favorite part of Star Trek! I love it when a Hollywood blockbuster can not only use non-A-list (hah that's a lot of hypens) actors and make bank because the movie is so terrific AND have a meaningful film where there are stories within stories because of the characters, direction, and acting. I love it!

Star Trek rules. I'm a sci-fi nerd and a movie geek. And I'm cool with it...

Hunting UFOs

So when I was in elementary school... fifth or sixth grade... I became a nerd, geek, whatever you want to call me. I fell in love with Star Wars and Star Trek. Like for real. Hah. If you're ever lucky enough to see my room at my parent's, which, I might add, is fully intact, you will notice two center calendar spreads of the starship Enterprise and that a full fourth of my book collection in that room is Star Wars books.

It all began innocently enough with watching Star Trek: The Next Generation with my parents at 10 on weeknights. Re-runs, of course. I guess it really began earlier than that. See, my school had this program called "Pegasus" where a group of about 15 students from the 5th and 6th grades in elementary were asked to essentially leave school for two days and become the crew and mission control of our very own space shuttle simulator Pegasus. It was awesome. We got to do science experiments and activities, and then conclude the adventure with an actual simulation of the space shuttle launch, mission, and landing. Fantastic, right?!

The instigator of this program was a third grade teacher named Mrs. Hanebut. She was amazing. And I blame my obsession with science fact and fiction on her. So anyway, I digress...

So I would watch with my parents and I felt pretty cool because I was able to stay up late. One of the perks of being the oldest, I suppose.

That led to my fascination with Sci-fi in general, and led me one day a book rack at Albertsons and specifically to a book for young adults about the children of Han and Leia. I was intrigued. And thus began my collection of a ridiculous number of Star Wars books.

And yet, I have fallen far from where I was going with this whole blog post in the first place. Being that it is opening weekend for the Star Trek movie, you may think you know where this is going, but, no indeed, you do not.

See folks, apparently I'm going to be working next week on the History Channel show UFO Hunters. Not even joking. It's going to be awesome, and I think that the 6th grade geek in me is going to come out with a vengeance. I'll let you know how it goes...

Technology!

Hey! So I'm becoming really high tech, and I can now post to my blog from my phone. Rock on! Here are a couple photos I took on the set of "Snowmen."

The Things We Call "Children's Movies"

Well folks, I guess this is the moment that I make the world-wide, and rather loud declaration regarding the farce that is the Disney movie. Now, don't get me wrong, I've known for a long time that there are a lot of truly...well I was going to use the word heinous, but I think that's a little strong... There are a lot of undesirable things in Disney movies, as is the case with most media in general, but Disney somehow managed to convince the general population that they were the last word in children's and family entertainment.

Last night I watched The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

NOTE TO PEEPS: NOT A CHILDREN'S MOVIE!!!

Yeah, the little gargoyles are funny, and there are definitely moments where it's aimed at kids... like when the old guy gets released from his current incarcerated state and he wobbles around saying, "I'm free! I'm free!" until moments later when he somehow finds himself entrapped again and yells, "Dang it!" It's slapstick, and it's funny... but the rest of the movie! Not so much!

I could go on and rant for a good portion of this page, but I will refrain :)

On another note, I really like Hunchback, despite the less-than-stellar character animation. (Though the backgrounds are spectacular!)

So don't let the fools at Disney kid you... haha... There's still monitoring and censoring to be had despite... or maybe in spite of... a brand name!

As For Resolutions...

As for my resolution regarding posting weekly, may I add an addendum? I want to post at least weekly when not absolutely going out of my mind spending every waking moment on a film set...minus my day or two off, which I spend sleeping, doing laundry, and catching up on my week of life.

Thus, I am resolved to tell you of the excitement, or perhaps lack thereof, on set. Mostly it's pretty slow on this show. But, on a happier note, I have met some really cool people: like Matty Props (for those of you who don't know, you don't have last names in the film industry, it's a first name and then your department...yeah, it's weird). Anyway, Matty smashed his middle finger in a garage door the other day and now, since it's broken and in a splint, he finds it quite amusing to walk around flipping people off. Not going to lie, it is pretty funny!

And there's my fellow PA buddies, they're awesome. We have fun, probably too much. The rest of the AD department are pretty much rockin'. We have parties in the production hole every night. It rocks.

The whole camera department are rock stars. Seriously. The art department are kind of enigmatic, especially when Chris (the production designer) cuts off his luscious locks, and no one even recognized him at first! And, strangely enough, the same thing happened when Andy from the grip department cut his hair...hmm...

The grip and electric department definitely provide the comic relief during the down times. They're pretty amazing.

Darcy is crafty (the person who provides all the snackage), and she is super. She's giving me soup recipes, which I rather enjoy! And, speaking of food, our catering boys are way too much fun, and always provide a smile and a plate of food, which is definitely appreciated.

Then there's Telly Wardrobe, who provides us with enjoyment by writing down all of the random quotes from set. It's funny. Seriously funny. All of the hair/makeup/wardrobe ladies are lovely.

And the above the line peeps: like MB, the UPM, she's always fun. Especially when her walkie starts keying and everyone can hear her conversations... Stephen, the line producer, has been giving me much needed advice regarding my newest hobby that I have yet to actually do: snowboarding. And you know, the director Rob, and DP Geno... I've learned great things from them... like how I shouldn't eat sea urchins and how to smell steak from a mile away.

At any rate, many cool people. Oh, and did I mention Christopher Lloyd? Yeah, the one and only Doc came and was in our film. He was super nice, but quite shy and quiet! Ray Liotta is also here, but my favorite is definitely Doug E. Doug. You know, from Cool Runnings! He's the nicest, most chill guy ever! It's awesome!

So, I finish up this show on Friday... and I'll have a life again. Imagine...

Sheesh! Why?!

So, just so you know. I'm working on a feature Wednesday through Sunday. Yeah, not even kidding. It's brutal, but oh so much fun!

Like, for example, yesterday we worked halvsies... you know a half day, half night. WELL... it was the most NOT awesome day ever! We had probably 30 kids on ice skates on this little pond outdoors in single digits. YEAH! Plus the cast kids were just goofing off (what did they expect with 9 year olds on ice skates?!). It was a messy day, but you live and learn. At least the food is good :)

On a happier note. I now have really warm winter wear. Like the serious snowboarder type. I have this great down hooded jacket and super warm amazing snowpants...but my favorite are my Salomon "girlie" boots, as my coworker Julie calls them. I guess they're girlie because they have an abundance of fur on the top. I think it's awesome. And warm.

Anyway, so if you don't hear from me on a regular basis, that is the reason. But I'm sure I'll be able to throw you a set anecdote every once in a while!

And She's Back (with premiered movies!)

So I'm setting a resolution to write on this thing at least weekly. Hopefully more. I have a lot to blog about! All of my crazy trips, my working adventures, and all that jazz! It's exciting stuff!

So some news:
A bunch of my films premiered at the LDS Film Festival mid-January. We won the audience choice award for my last student film that I produced entitled The Teller's Tale. (pictured below and to the left)

The feature I worked on summer 2007 also premiered! Dragon Hunter was actually pretty sweet, if I do say so myself! I had a couple other student films that I worked on show up at the festival as well, so it was pretty successful!

So that was sweet. (see the awesome dragon poster? Yeah...)

Let's see what else...


Well here's a list of things you have to look forward to coming soon:

A bunch of photos from a bunch of things including, but not limited to, all of my east coast trips, holidays, birthdays, random moments. And, of course, stories to go with them. And my next blog will actually be philosophical. Brace yourself. Hah.

Lame Choices

So today some of my coworkers invited me to go with them to the Salt Lake Bees (Is that what they are these days?) baseball game vs. the Tacoma Raniers. See, Nick Lachey is a partial owner of the Raniers, thus he gets a sweet suite (hah, I think I'm funny), and some of the peeps on the show were going to the game to support our lovely hosting cast member. (And I'm not saying that facetiously. Nick really is a great guy.)

Instead of going, I decided to head home since it's about a 45-minute commute and my call is relatively early for tomorrow. That was dumb. Well, maybe not dumb, but pointless. There was a HUGE accident today on the road right before the Highland/Alpine exit and, luckily for me, the slowing started right after the last exit before the Highland/Alpine exit. Yeah. So I made a grand total of 2 miles in 30 minutes. Apparently the accident was blocking all four lanes...

So, really? How much time did I save coming straight home instead of going to the game? A little bit, I'm sure. But not enough to make a difference.

Thus, today I made a lame choice; neither bad, nor good, simply LAME.

But Nick's team lost anyway...

Who Thinks Making Films is FUN?!

Today was a seriously long day.

Honestly? The commute is killing me. I have to leave here more than an hour before I have to be to work, which means, add thirty minutes of getting ready time to that, and a 7:00 call time turns into 5:30 really quickly. That was pretty much what today was. Oh, and to add to the bliss? Yeah, we were the only group that didn't get called and told that call times were pushed two hours and that we REALLY didn't have to be there until 9. Go figure...

Now, I'm sure that some of you get up as early as I do, and are thinking, "That's nothing...," and I'm not suggesting that it is. But see, then you add on the fact that I tend to work 12-13 hours a day, not including lunch (or dinner...). Thus, after 13-14 hours on set, I still have an hour drive home, which makes the day about 16 hours. By my calculations, that leaves pretty much no time to have a life.

But, really, I'm not complaining. I love what I do. I'm just trying to point out to all y'all who think that making films is glamorous. HAH, it's not. It's some of the hardest work and longest hours EVER. But it is fun. Really.

So, I'm pretty sure that this post isn't groundbreaking or anything, but I figured that I should write something, and the only thing I could think of was work. Basically it rules my life at the moment.

Look forward to something better next time. Maybe.

P.S. I really don't like working on Sundays. Just so you know.