I Hope You Know...

Hey everyone,

How are you all? Me? Well, I am in a bitter sweet position in my life. After nearly 3 years in school I am finally only about 2 days away from graduation. So, why am I not jumping for joy? I'm saying goodbye to a chapter in my life that has been well, a pretty damn good chapter. It got really good towards the end! Don't you hate when that happens?? I just hope that the new chapter in my crazy novel of a life is as good if not, then BETTER than the last one.

I am not a Fergie fan... But, I do happen to like one of her songs and it really has been getting me through this bitter sweet time. The song is Big Girls Don't Cry. Here are some lines from the song that really pulled me into it:

"I hope you know, I hope you know. That this has nothing to do with you. It's personal, myself and I we've got some straightenin' out to do."

"It's time to be a big girl now and big girls don't cry"

Those two lines really hit me. I have been so down over the past week or so that I noticed there were people asking me "What's wrong?" and I would lie and say "Nothing". It really is something for me to work out on my own. For so long school has become my place of escape. I could retreat to school and keep busy with the projects and not have to focus on some personal issues at home. It really was my safe haven and now that I am graduating, that safe haven is gone. Not to mention there are a few people who I met in the past 6 months that I have really grown fond of and that I am honestly going to miss seeing them almost on a daily basis. Such is life, I can always look back with fond memories and remember how much they have touched me.

Now the hunt for a job in the career that I actually want to do begins. I have applied to one place already. The one good thing from having all this free time on my hands is that I actually have time to write now. And you know what, I have a lot of stuff to let out in the form of a script. I think it will be a VERY theraputic thing for me. It will help me take the first steps in progressing on to the next chapter. I think one of the most important things for a writer is to be unapologetic of the stuff they write. You wrote it so stand by it. People are not always going to agree with it, be comfortable with it or something else but it is something from you. Speaking for myself, with this future project I will be working on it will get out a lot of emotions I have been feeling and you know why should I apologize for it? I am only human and I feel like it's a step towards the good, the better.

Now on to the discussion on Grandpa's Revenge. I know I have neglected you all on this project. I have teased you all with little or no details and well, here it all is!

The idea spurred from a ride home in Marina's car from a class field trip to the Kodak Store on Santa Monica. I believe we were listening to Star 98.7 and this woman had just won tickets to something on the radio. The woman was so excited and the next thing we heard was "WOO oh! I almost got into an accident!" and the radio DJ responded "Don't go getting into an accident on the radio now!" or something like that. After Marina and I heard that we just laughed because we imagened seeing something like that in a movie and how great it would be. I know I would be on the floor laugh if I saw that. And we came to the conclusion that we would write some kind of script with that happening. Not too long after that, I think maybe a day later or something we were in the car on our way to school when this old man goes speeding past Marina and yells out "Slow down Grandpa!" and we noticed he had on this funny hat. When we get to school we saw a classmate of ours, named Benny Flores, and he was wearing the EXACT same hat that Grandpa was wearing and me made the joke that Benny stole Grandpa's hat and thus the story for Grandpa's Revenge was born.

We went to Denny's later that night, and many nights after that, to discuss more ideas for the script. We thought it would be the best thing if we could write a script and actually shoot it. We really had our hearts set out on casting the real Benny for the character Benny in the film. Unfortunately, we were unable to get Benny for the projects and our hopes of making this film a live action film were crushed.. So, we thought maybe we could turn it into an audio project, something you would hear on an old time radio show before television came around. As time went by we discovered that the project would be pretty boring if it was just audio. So, one night as I am sitting here on this computer lurking the net Marina IMs me and sends me this link to this video on youtube. It turns out to be this mock film of Pirates of the Caribbean and it was of Barbies on fishing line. It was pretty bad, so bad it was good. After watching that we thought "Why can't we do that for Grandpa's Revenge?" We worked up the courage to ask the teacher for our Senior Seminar II class, also the department chair for Media Production at school, Mark Lowentrout, if we could shoot the films with dolls. To our surprise he said we could and encouraged us to do so.

So with his blessing we began the post-production process to the film. We need to get the actual script done so that meant we had to sit down and actually write. Which is much harder than we both expected. It is much easier to say something would be funny than it is to actually put it down on to paper, let alone to fit it in the story and have it work. Once the script was done we realized we had no ending. So we headed back to Denny's for our sugar, caffeine and whatever else is in those drinks there to think of an ending. While we were on our sugar highs we were joking around about how funny it would be to have one of our professors, Professor Aleem Hossain, playing with the dolls at the end. Then we realized that it would actually be a pretty good ending to the crazy film we came up with. The next thing was actually going up to the professor and asking him if he would do that for us, you know.. play with dolls. Now, I for one was scared because though he was kind enough to agree to lend his voice for one of the characters I did not think he would be interested in going that far. Since we figured none of the other professors would be willing to do it I was elected to ask Aleem if he would since I had him for a class anyway. I was scared out of my mind for fear of a big fat NO. Once I got him alone and I asked him, he surprisingly said yes. Now I wanted to jump for joy when I heard that yes come out of his mouth! We had an ending and an actor for the ending. We pretty much got all of the faculty to lend their voice, and or likeness, for the film.

Now we had to come up with a pitch, presentation and a folder for the project. We presented it to the class expecting people to not get the film and completely reject it. Oh on contrare, they loved it and were actually excited about seeing the end result. Marina and I then celebrated at... You guessed it Denny's! Then came the grueling task of scheduling, scheduling, scheduling... It wasn't that hard but still haha. We were unsure of how to direct some of the actors. We were worried that we would really have to coach one of the actors. Since the only example we had of him was of this audio project called The Invasion. So when the time came to record Professor Nathan Marshall's dialogue we were blown away by his performance. We had a hard time NOT laughing while he was recording his dialogue. He did a phenominal job! I do feel bad for thinking otherwise, but like I said, the only example we had of his acting was from that other project... haha. Infact everyone did a great job with their dialogue. It was very refreshing to have such talented people to work with.

Over the course of the past three months I would show Aleem what footage Marina and I had and with each time he became more excited for us and wanted to see the end result. It was so great to have someone so enthusiastic about the project as we were. It certainly made us enjoy it more. The time came to shoot the final scene and it was nothing less than fantastic. Aleem did an amazing job, as did Mark. We only had to shoot his reactions twice since he did so well. There was one take that I really wanted to use of Aleem and Mark but I just could not use cause it did not work with the scene... But, I will be putting that up so you all can see it cause it was a good one! Ha ha.

I am at school and I notice a flyer hanging about the first annual Media Production Awards and I thought "Why don't Marina and I enter this? I think we could finish by the deadline and it would have a good chance." So I call Marina and she said yes to entering Grandpa's Revenge. I put in the script for best screenplay and then Marina and I worked our behinds off to get the film edited by June 1st for the awards. We got it done and then we found ourselves done WAY ahead of schedule. Grandpa's Revenge won best screenplay but not for best narrative. Still a big achievment for us and we were very gracious. Once we screened Grandpa's Revenge we got a very positive responce. It was nice and very rewarding to see something we were so passionate about get such a positive responce. I can't wait to show you all the film! Keep an eye out for it cause it will be posted soon!

Ok I think that will be all for now. I have more to write about but this thing is already a novel. So you all take care and keep a look out for the next post! BYE!!