Mucho Amor!

Hello readers!

Wow! What an awesome turn out at the fundraiser! But first I must give extreme thanks to my producer Virginia and her mother Mary Anne for opening to their beautiful home to the event. I'll never forget their sincere generosity.

I also want to thank everyone who came and the many people who tried to come and still made donations and or gave me some moral support. There's more fundraisers to come so I'm sure everyone who wanted to come will have a chance to attend one. Here's a link to more photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/17057609@N02/

So who won the prizes you ask? Well here's the list:

#6 DVD bundle: Jimmy Freeman

#5 Two movies passes: Megan Johnson

#4 An airbrush full body tan: Lisa Sullivan

#3 A one hour massage: Amanda Gillespie Baker

#2 A custom haircut and blow dry: Lisa Sullivan

#1 Grand Prize: William Sonoma wine decanter, bottle of Justin Siena wine, and tasting kit: Monica Angulo

So here's what happen at the fundraiser. Everyone who arrived was greeted with a warm plate of the delicious Mexican food my wife Sandra cooked and prepared. My mother made her famous Chirmol, a kind of Salvadoran Pico de gallo salsa, which everyone devoured.

After eating many people browsed my DVD collection and picked up excellent condition used movies at a fair price. People also helped out the cause by paying $1 for a game of pool which my producer Virginia conveniently had in her garage.

Next we screened my first short film I made at LMU "Chicas on the Way."

After the short I gave a brief presentation about the feature film project. The only new info I added in the presentation that hasn't been mentioned in the blog thus far is that I really need help with rounding up vehicles from the late 80's or early 90's to be used in the movie. I don't need them to lug equipment, they'll be used as "screen cars." Meaning they'll either be in the background or may be driven short distances by actors for a scene.

I also could use help with collecting prom dresses from circa 1997 so all you CHS classmates if you still have your dress and would be willing to loan it to the production please contact me!

After the presentation we did the raffle which was a lot of fun and exciting (see the pictures).

In between the major events I was lucky enough to socialize with all my friends and family who came. I also truly enjoyed meeting my producer Virginia's friends who came to show her and me support for the project. Out of these new introductions I may have found a few actors to play parts in the script as well as a potential crew member!

Lastly, most people went for seconds on the food as we had a lot and of course it was delicious!

The fundraiser raised over $400 from the raffle, DVD sales, and outright donations alone! I want to give a special mention to my mother Mila Calvo and brother Michael, who both donated a sizable amount of money on top of the $400. Other people made donations after the event as well so in total the production earned roughly $700!

This is amazing people! Thank you so much!

Now not to sound ungrateful and while $700 is a fantastic start, it's still not enough. Hence I'm hoping with your help the next event will be an even bigger success. To put things into perspective I've saved about $15,000 in the last 5 years for the project and I'm hoping to double that with a combination of applying to art grants, saving my personal earnings, and fundraising. So the goal is to reach $30,000 before the start of the shoot on June 13th 2010. The next fundraiser is scheduled for early November so keep posted for the precise date and time as we'll announce on the blog in the near future.

The Loss of a Location

So this week I want to talk about a location issue I'm having with the script. In the current and previous drafts of the script I had a scene that took place at an A's game in the Oakland Colosseum. When I wrote it I always heard a voice in my head that said "how the hell am I going to pull that off?" Well last week I finally went about trying to lock that location down. I contacted a very helpful person with the A's organization's media services department. She set about trying to grant the production permission to shoot their next summer and things seemed optimistic for a few days. But alas, yesterday she emailed me stating the minimum rental fee for the stadium would be $20,000! For an empty stadium!

Being that sum is 2/3 of my projected budget for my movie there's no way we'll be able to get the location. But all is not lost. In fact losing that location has allowed me to rethink the scene's importance and I've already come up with a solution that would not only be better financially, but story-wise it would make more sense.

The moral of the story here is sometimes having a very limited budget forces you to be more creative than if you had money to burn (ahem, cough: see Star Wars prequel trilogy). So all you fellow artists out there, use your defeats as way to improve your art instead of just letting it crush your spirits.

Well folks that's it for this week, I got a birthday to go out and celebrate so thanks again to everyone for the massive amount of love and support you're sending to me and the project! Next week I will be hopefully announcing a newly casted character and any other stuff that pops up. Until then....

FORWARD!

-Gustavo