"La Nina" Location Scout

My DP, Boa Simon, and I recently went on a camping trip to scout some locations for La Nina del Desierto. We found some incredible places.

Click on the pictures to see bigger ones!

The Korea Times and the Corner Store

A few weeks back, a lady from the Korea Times emails me for an interview, concerning the whole Korean exchange trip we did over the summer. I answer her questions, and she tells me where I can pick up a copy a few days later. Funny thing is, it's all in hangul, or written Korean. Still, it's worth putting online!

I've seen a few cuts of The Corner Store now, and it's looking like we're going to shoot some pickups. We never actually see the exterior of the store, and it might be good to get those shots to split up the film's scenes, which have trouble transitioning from one to another.

Other than that, I'm surprised how well it turned out. We were so stressed and unprepared when shooting it, due to the single week of pre-production we had available (the DP, Joel Remke, and I were making up shot lists an hour before the shoot each day), that I was worried it would turn out to be cinematic trash. But we got lucky! It's not half bad. Everyone else involved agreed, with equal surprise.

As for La Nina del Desierto, I'm working on procuring a certain Hollywood actor to play Javier in this reincarnation of my first short film. I won't say who until he says yes or no. Suffice it to say that you've definitely seen him before - this guy works like mad.

And I'm off.

More Press and More

I've put up two more articles in the Press section. The first is an old one from high school graduation that I'd forgotten about. The second is more recent - it's in the Chapman University film school's magazine "In Production," and the article involves my trip to South Korea and the movies we made there and here in California.

Speaking of South Korea, I had a chance to watch dailies from The Corner Store, which is the movie that we made here after our trip to Korea. We made this when it was the Koreans' turn to have a cultural experience, and they crewed on our set. One of them even had a role.

Anyway, the footage looks decent enough (it was shot 35mm, it should look good), but it was hard to tell because we were watching it on this tiny screen, SD. I'm sure it looks great HD. It didn't look like there were many options, however, as far as coverage goes. Our editor, Robin Hartwig, certainly has her work cut out. It's hard to say at this point if it's going to be any good. I really hope it is! We all worked our hardest on it.

Pre-production on La Nina del Desierto is now in full swing. Producer Matt Sullivan and I have been working hard on casting and crewing up. Next weekend, cinematographer Boa Simon and I will go camping in the desert north of Los Angeles to try and find a few good locations. Should be fun.

In other news, I've had the wonderful luck of getting what is called the Hayde Scholarship here at Chapman University. It's not a financial scholarship. Basically, I meet once every two weeks with Chapman's filmmaker-in-residence, who this year happens to be Jocelyn Moorhouse. She directed Proof and a number of other films I haven't seen but definitely will! I'm hoping to talk with her about my forthcoming Albuquerque-related feature script, which I hope to have complete by the time La Nina is done.

Finally, The Silver Lincoln is 100% complete! I have a trailer up on its page explaining that I'm not putting it online because I want to submit it to festivals, and a lot of festivals won't accept a film that's available online. I also say on that page that a DVD of Lincoln (which is awesome, comes with sweet features) costs $5 plus shipping, but all I really want is money for the shipping, which should be around $5 anyway. In any case, contact me if you're interested in getting a copy and we'll figure something out.

"The Silver Lincoln" Trailer Online!

Brian Andrews, on the eve of his departure to New York for the rest of the year, completed The Silver Lincoln score. With that done, the film is officially complete!

I have put up a trailer on the Lincoln page, instead of the full film. Why just the trailer?

Well, I'm right now knee-deep in pre-production for the remake of La Nina del Desierto, which will be my senior thesis at Chapman University. This film will cost me a lot of money to make.

I'm therefore putting together a Silver Lincoln DVD, complete with storyboards, behind-the-scenes photos, and other features, which I'm selling for a modest $5.oo, plus shipping. Every dollar will go toward La Nina, which I am aiming to make the best short film of mine yet.

Most film festivals won't accept a short film that's available in full online anyway, so until runs its festival circuit or the funding for La Nina is secured, whichever comes first,

If you'd like to see the trailer, click below!

If you'd like to support independent/student short filmmaking, click the DVD below to contact me about receiving a DVD of The Silver Lincoln in all its glory!

The Vault: Updated and Expanded

I finally got around to uploading some of my really old, worthy-of-the-Vault material. The Vault is now 7 short films mightier. Some are action, some are animated, some are comedy. Some are good, some are bad. All but one are less than 3 minutes long, some as short as 43 seconds.

They're old, they're short, they're fun, they're in:

Enjoy.

New Photos, Storyboards, "Ragtime," and Press

I finally got the last three rolls of film from my trip to South Korea developed. They were black and white, but not C-41 process, so it had to be sent out to a special facility. To think that at one time, black and white film was cheaper than color...

Anyway, I've added a few of my favorites to the photography section. Click on the crab to go there!

I've also dug up storyboards from Ragtime Ballad and Baggage. You can click below to see those as well:

And speaking of Ragtime Ballad, I just put up a MUCH BIGGER version on the site! It's very big! It's bigger than the small one! Now you can see all the digital "dust" and "scratches" in glorious almost-full-screen. Enjoy.

Finally, the "Links" section is gone. It was never doing any good anyway. In its place is a new "Press" section. I've only been in the newspaper twice, but you never know when it'll happen again! I've been looking for a place to put those articles online anyway.

Introducing The Vault

I recently decided to showcase only the best and most recent of my shorts on the Archive page, rather than all of them. So for that reason I created:

I've already pushed a few films back there, but what I'm hoping is to be able to put up much older stuff in the Vault, like my old animations and the shorts made as class exercises.