Melissa Parker found herself in a bit of a pickle. The Los Angeles LDS Singles Film Festival (that we do every year) was upon us, her movies were shot, but she didn’t have anyone to edit them. When she asked me to help, she seemed to think I was doing her a favor. It was such a delight to work on, though, with Corbin Frost, the director, sitting behind me tweaking my cut, that I think she had it absolutely backwards. What a delightful project. Here are the two movies we churned out:

We had extra fun applying aging effects to the footage of several of the shots (the baby doing pull-ups and the explorer/archaeologist are the obvious ones. We did a little bit of discoloration and scratches/grit on the baptism and praying over the car as well). Gotta love After Effects and all the tutorials you can find to do stuff with it online (I used this).

Director

Corbin Frost

Writers

Melissa Adrina Parker & Corbin Frost

Producer

Melissa Adrina Parker

Cinematographer

Duncan Rawlings

Editor

Matthew Stumphy

Production Designer

Kenny McNett

Composer

Laurel Bogner Plewe

Cast (in order of appearance)

 

Most Interesting Mormon

Adam Johnson

Narrator

Keith Paugh

Eavesdropper

Victor Vaile

Investigator

Martha Howe

Missionary Companion

Brandon Stanford

Toddler

Justin Plewe

Wife

Trina Talbot

Monk

Amery Ken Thao

Pretty Girl

Stefani Batson

3 Nephites

Curtis Bridenstine, Eric Newnam, and Eric Gerace

St. John

Agostino Marfello

Stroller Kids

Grace and Audrey Erekson, Brody Orton and Milton Bird

Archeological Tourist

Victoria Von Roth

Crew

 

Co-Producer

Orchid Cameron

Costumers

Stefani Batson, Martha Howe, and Julie Hinton

Sound Recorder

Meghan Stettler

Grip and Electric

Curtis Bridenstine and Mike Hammari

Production Assistant

Kelly Flanagan

Special Thanks

Lon-e and Krista Parker, Kristen Johnson, Joyce Norton, Alex and Sarah Lowe, Dave Broadbent, and Mike Mahoney

This was the opening video played at this year’s Los Angeles LDS Singles Film Festival on August 13th at the Santa Monica Stake Center. The shoot was on the evening of August 8th (and carried over into Aug 9th). I was the gaffer, which means I was responsible for the lighting. Enjoy the video below, as well as some production stills I snapped.

How an Epic Movie is Made

Created and performed by

Julie Hinton and Rob Moffat

Orchestrated by

Stephen Anderson

Recorded by

KC Blake

Edited by

Jeff Dickson

Filmed by

Parker Mann

Makeup by

Charity Rawlings and Melissa Parker

Costumes by

Stefani Batson and Melissa Parker

Lights by

Matthew Stumphy

Every year the Mormon singles of the Los Angeles area get together and have a film festival. The movies are usually very short (the rules of the festival for the last several years have limited them to 4 minutes) and pretty silly. Most people just try to throw together a couple of gags and call it even.

This time around, however, an innovative young man called Kenny McNett decided to break new ground and make a serious movie. He tapped me to be the DP, and we spent a Saturday (or at least a good 16 hours of it) shooting his film. To fit it into the four-minute limit, it was written as two movies, the first with something of a cliffhanger ending that is meant to be continued. Here they are for your viewing pleasure:

Directed by

Kenny McNett

Written by

Samuel Douglas Miller

Story by

Kenny McNett & Samuel Douglas Miller

Produced by

Kenny McNett & Samuel Douglas Miller

Cast

 

 

Samuel Douglas Miller

 

Verona Masongsong

 

Kenny McNett

 

Meghan Stettler

 

Sean Summers

 

Casey McDonald

 

Corbin Frost

 

 

Director of Photography

Matthew Stumphy

Editor

David Broadbent

Art Direction & Production Design

Kenny McNett

Asst. Production Design

Mike Hamill

Sound and Grip

Mike Hamill

Music

Stephen J. Anderson

Re-Recording Mixer

Justin Wikke

Makeup, Hair, & Special Makeup FX

Melissa Parker

Smoke Effects

Jeff Dickson

Stunt Choreography

Verona Masongsong

Script Supervisor

Melissa Parker

Craft Services

Kelly Flanagan

Stung Driver

Jihan Zencirli

Special Thanks

Los Angeles 1st Ward YSA, Santa Monica 3rd Ward YSA, Lisa Bigelow, Tim and Stephen, Hailey and Rob

I suppose you could say the whole endeavor went relatively well. I was cast in a minor role as one of the villain’s henchmen, which required me to do just a little singing in choruses and to pronounce my two or three lines of dialogue with a French accent. I think I got to speak the best verbal gag in the show (for those of you who know it, it was “Well…it spoke Latin”). For me it was generally fun, but not too taxing or overwhelming.

I actually wanted to be more involved than just that, so I volunteered to act as assistant to the director. I find that my efforts there weren’t really of all that much use. I tried to take copious notes of all the stage directions that she invented as she invented them. I say I tried because sometimes I was busy writing down the stage directions for my own character, or worse yet, I was busy actually trying to execute my stage directions, so I seemed to miss a lot. The few times someone actually asked me what my notes were, they tended either to be missing, or to contradict whatever the actor remembered such that I was summarily overruled. Despite the notes never getting much use, I found I got a bit misty the day I was asked to erase them all out of my folio. It must have taken me a full hour to get through it all, as I had very generously decorated every page of the thing.

A slightly more useful (albeit not much more) task I took on was the building of a website to promote the show. You can find it at magnificentproductions.net.

The site was fun to do because I got to play with some design techniques I hadn’t tried before…like having a multi-layered background (gradient over a tiled image, with one of the images placed right on the element). I also got to build a new interface for looking at photo galleries that involves a lot of auto-scrolling (in other words, you hover your mouse over the thumbnails in the gallery, and the thumbnails scroll up and down depending on whether you move the mouse up and down, without you having to click on a scroll bar or anything—too bad it doesn’t work on touch screens ). You can see examples of this in the cast and crew gallery and in the performance and costumes gallery. I imagine about 12 people ever visited this website, but at least I can use it as a showoff piece for web development jobs.

The thing I did for the show that really was useful was craft services. I brought snacks to every rehearsal. I don’t suppose they were the greatest snacks of all time…I would usually just raid a Ralph’s before each of our big Saturday rehearsals, with a trip or two to Smart and Final to buy bulk items that would keep longer. You get a really good sense of what people want to eat vs. what they say they want to eat. Everyone always asks for healthy stuff: fruit, vegetables, bagels. But the donuts will always get devoured before the carrot sticks. I suppose then, that while I may have contributed a great deal to the ability of our cast to continue to function throughout some of our longer rehearsals, I may have also contributed to their girth. Sorry kids.

I thought that when the show ended, I would be quite beside myself. I knew that once it was over, I wasn’t really going to have much opportunity to interact socially with all these wonderful people anymore. I’m not all that fun to be around, I think, so generally no one seeks me out just to have me around. In any case, I think it was a good thing that the night we did our final performance, we immediately adjourned to someone’s apartment for a little party. If I had been forced to go home immediately, the rather abrupt end would have probably induced me to cry myself to sleep. We were in rehearsal from the beginning of February through mid-April (or at least I was…I apparently joined the cast a bit later than everyone else), and by the end, it was taking up nearly every moment of my free time. So it was a good thing to have an immediate cast party to start the closure. We had another party a little later, smoothing over our break-up with the play a little more. Perhaps the others were simply relieved it was all over. I wish it was going still.

Late Night Worker Gallery

After Hours
This was our first round submission. Though it didn’t do well in the popular voting, the judges apparently liked it enough to get us into round 2.

Office Clash
Our second round submission took second place, and thus grabbed on of the three slots available to entries from our month to compete in the final 2007 competition.

Granny’s Day Out
This is our entry in the final competition for all entrants from 2007. We have yet to hear back whether we have won anything.

So there it is. I’m a bit excited by how well our movies have been doing, especially as I understand the prize for winning the final competition is rather more substantial than the bits of cash we have been awarded so far. So enjoy the movies, and I’ll let you know if we win anything.

And hooray: someone is doing it. The name of the game is “Guitar Rising” (guitarrising.com). You’ll be able to plug any electric guitar into your PC with simple USB to 1/4 inch interface. You’ll get 30 rock songs to play along with, at five levels of difficulty, and even with variable tempos so you can learn at your own pace. The first release is due out in time for this Christmas, and I’m sure if it’s successful, you’ll see expansion packs with more and more songs.

So for all you guitar heroes who wish you could translate your gaming skills over to actually performing real songs for your friends, get excited. This game is for you.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/index.jhtml

For those of you who have heard of them but haven’t yet figured out what they are, podcasts are basically the internet version of Tivo. Most podcasts I am familiar with are very similar to radio talk shows: a group of people just talk about something interesting for an hour or hour and a half. The thing that makes them podcasts is that you don’t have to tune in at the time the show is broadcast. Instead, you use a program like Apple’s iTunes to “subscribe” to the podcast. When you turn on your iTunes, it simply downloads the latest episode of the show, and you can listen to or watch it whenever you want.

I have three recommendations for Podcasts available through iTunes.

ONE
This Week in Tech with Leo Laporte

If you’re a technology geek, but you get tired of having to read the trades to keep up with the latest news and gadgets, this is the podcast for you. Every week, Leo Laporte and a panel of select technology journalists get together and just yap about whatever has happened in technology during the week. They’re up to date on the latest new devices that are getting buzz in the industry, as well as the legal, social, and political issues that come up in internet and technology circles. Best of all, they keep it funny. Recommended for all ages, but if you didn’t really care about the release of the iPhone, this probably isn’t the podcast for you.

TWO
Diggnation

The founder of Digg.com, Kevin Rose, and his goofy actor friend, Alex Albrecht, spend an hour each week discussing the most interesting stories that have appeared on Digg since the previous show. They do it while consuming a very large amount of alcohol (which was generally donated to the show by fans or sponsors). If you don’t know what Digg is, see my earlier (Oct. 20) post about it. Kevin and Alex manage to keep it pretty funny, although sometimes they’re just dumb and somewhat poorly informed. This is a good podcast for those of you who can plug your earphones into your computer at work and need something to keep you awake while you execute the daily mindless process your job requires. Be forewarned: these guys know some harsh language and aren’t afraid to use it.

THREE
Keith and the Girl

If you were offended by the language in Diggnation, you’ll think Keith and the girl are the anti-christ and his girlfriend. Keith Malley is a New York area comedian who, with his girlfriend Chemda Khalili, discuss news, events, and just the vicissitudes of their own lives. Keith’s parents are devout Christians, while Chemda’s family are a mix of Persians and Israelis. Neither set of parents has ever heard the incredibly raunchy podcast their children currently produce, and Keith and Chemda often discuss their need to keep it that way. The two tend to wax very direct as they discuss their sex lives, use of controlled substances, violent altercations (though not with each other), crappy day jobs, and often poorly informed opinions.

Most episodes have a guest-host, such as gossip queen Patrice, aging (and often drunken) rocker Brother Love, or advice guru Dina (who is actually just a hick from upstate New York).

The charm of the shows are, in my opinion, Keith’s acerbic, poorly informed but often well thought out, Brooklyn-accented rants on whatever topic they happen to be discussing at the moment. These topics are not things your grandma would feel comfortable listening to (unless she used to be a fishnet-stalking wearing barker in front of an Atlantic City casino and carried a pool cue to discourage the gents who got too fresh), so don’t listen to Keith and the Girl unless you have thick skin and cynical sensibilities. Nevertheless, I generally think it’s a riot, and have very successfully used it to help me through the duldrums of repetitive labor in front of a computer.

A last note on iTunes
If you’re interested in trying out these, or any other podcasts, I recommend simply using iTunes. If you don’t have it on your computer already, go to http://www.apple.com/itunes/ to download it. Once it’s installed on your machine, turn it on and click on the podcasts section. Do a search for the name of the podcast or the subject that interests you. Click “subscribe” next to anything you want. From then on, whenever you open up iTunes, it will automatically download the most recent episode of the podcast that you don’t already have.