In honor of Star Trek’s 40th Anniversary, I wrote and directed a 3 minute episode of Deliverance where the Pizza Dude delivers to a couple of comic book store Trekkies and has to decide who the best Starfleet Officer is- Mr. Spock or Dr. McCoy.

I had a lot of fun with this project. One of the cool things about it is I shot all the background plates at the original location that was used in the 1966 Star Trek episode “Arena”. We didn’t have the budget to actually shoot at that location, so I took my digital camera and shot the backgrounds on my own, then composited them with Apple’s Shake software. That’s right- every shot is a greenscreen one on this episode.

Here’s the link to a QuickTime version of that episode (latest QuickTime required). And here’s a link to it on YouTube.

Happy Birthday, Star Trek!

I’ve been meaning to post a lot more of the work I’ve been doing. It’s been tough finding the time, as my schedule’s been pretty crazy. Last week I shot another promo film for a client that was for their website and dvds they send to their customers. I also have been doing some video editing for our museum client and I’m in preproduction for a very interesting movie I’m shooting in November and a series of short promo films for another corporate client. The corporate client is a well known college that is trying to attract new students with a cool, edgy video series. In my “spare time” I’m working on some concepts for my next YouTube/MySpace series and a fully CG greenscreen project.

I’ll have a new directing and editing reel up for you to check out later on, when things calm down a bit. In the meantime:

For those of you who appreciate a higher quality trailer than the pixely YouTube/MySpace look:

Headhunting, Inc. in Flash Video

I like Flash Video or QuickTime the best- as a filmmaker I don’t like how YouTube or MySpace video looks. But you can also:

View the original Deliverance trailer on MySpace.

And here’s the Headhunting, Inc. trailer on MySpace.
(special thanks to Stacy Steinkuller for posting this one)

Cool visual effects stuff. I stole this link from HD For Indies. I loved the movie, of course- Charlie Kaufman is one of my favorite writers. But I put the link here so people who aren’t necessarily Hollywood people could see how much work goes into even relatively simple visual effects. This movie breaks it down.

And my friend Josh has a new short movie up. He’s clearly been working on camera motion (steadicam?) and focus pulling on this piece, which takes an inantimate object- a building- and makes it appear to be human.

We’re getting ready to release the newest Pizza Dude mobisode on YouTube and GoogleVideo. But you can get a sneak preview of it here, first. Mosey on over to the Deliverance Mobisodes page.

This one’s called “How Dude Got His Groove Back“, and it’s about how our long suffering Dude finds love. You’ll need to have QuickTime to view it, including the H264 codec that is built into the latest versions of QuickTime. If the video does not load in a few minutes you should just visit the Deliverance Pizza website to view the episodes in YouTube quality.

This is this final installment of our Deliverance By The Slice sitcom series for SprintTV that was shot this past summer. We’ll be back with more episodes and a brand new series at some point in the future, plus I’m working on a feature film about our beloved Pizza Dude. Enjoy!

Is this just an LA thing? I spent some time at the Container Store in Pasadena recently, and it’s this massive two story building with the largest elevators I’ve ever seen and aisle after aisle of containers. It seems sort of, I don’t know, decadent? Not that I am not grateful for their existence- I am. My lady and I each left with a new set of wire mesh drawers. I’m using mine for client material storage, and the way things have been going at work I’ll probably be back again in a month to buy another set of those mesh drawers. Yeah, we’ve been busy at work.

We’re starting a new project on Monday, which is why I’m in the studio today- time to clean up the mess from the last project, do my archiving, etc. This new project will involve website, database, middleware integration, motion graphics design, and video production. The client is on the ball and knows that they have a shot at setting a new standard for their industry. I love that. In the meantime, I’m also working with my fellow filmmaker friend Erica’s XL2 to get a handle on how that baby reacts in different situations. I think we’re shooting that in a month (early November?). And I’m also working on a new commercial for another client. Cool stuff.

Last night I got to finally check out the Ford Amphitheatre in LA. That place is amazing, it’s the oldest one in Los Angeles. A fire destroyed a lot of it in the late 1920s, but it was rebuilt in the early 1930s. The reason for my attendance- a ballet performance done to the music of the late jazz great John Coltrane.

I absolutely loved the music, the band was truly awesome. The dancing? It was cool. I’m definitely not a ballet guy, though. What was really interesting was the fact that the Hollywood Bowl is directly across the freeway from the Ford. And Pink Floyd was playing. I’d never been to a Pink Floyd concert. Now I feel like I have been. I could hear ‘The Wall’, ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ and ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ very clearly between the jazz numbers. I can’t help it, I do like Pink Floyd.