News from the Sickly Director

Hello readers!

Sorry again for the delay in this weeks post, but I've been fighting a nasty cold since last weekend. Luckily, I'm starting to feel normal. But man what I'd pay for a clear head!

Love, Concord Scheduled

Debbie Brubaker has written a preliminary schedule for principal photography of the feature. While I've literally just received it and haven't had a chance to fully dive into some important aspects about it popped up immediately. First off, she predicts we'll need 27 days to shoot instead of the 15 days I'd been hoping for. While this is a significant difference from my goal, I believe there's room to work her 27 days down to something more close to what I'd like. On a side note, when I originally started planning this project I actually gave myself one full month to shoot it all, so perhaps my initial prediction was pretty accurate (insert Gus shrugging shoulders).

Debbie's almost done with the budget for the project so I'm really looking forward to reading that and sitting down with her and Virginia to further discuss the project. More on that to come later.

Live Event Shoot Shows Weaknesses in 7D

This weekend my faithful and trusted former student and fellow videographer Jimmy Freeman used the Canon 7D to shoot a speaker for Virginia McCarthy's forthcoming documentary. The shoots allowed us to really test the 7D's ability to do live event recording. Here's what happened.

Jimmy used the 7D as a "B-Cam" to shoot several speakers at a church in San Francisco. The speakers in total spoke for over an hour. To record their audio the 7D was patched into its 1/4" mic plug from a mixer which was receiving mic audio from the microphone where the speakers spoke from. Right off the bat, the frustrating thing about the 7D is the lack of real audio control. There's no headphone jack to confirm it's receiving signal, and there's no level indicators to monitor how low or high your signal is recording. You're virtually left to a guessing game estimation or recording a little bit of footage and then playing it back to see if it recorded audio.

Once audio was done being troubleshooted, Jimmy began shooting the speakers and ran into the next issue with the 7D. The manual states the longest any single shot can be is 29min 59secs or 4GB whichever comes first. Therefore, Jimmy had to stop the recording every 29mins even though he had 16GB compact flash cards. The other issue is since there's only one card slot, to swap out a full card he lost whatever was happening. Again, since he was shooting the "B-cam" footage this wasn't too big an issue, but a noteworthy one nonetheless.

The next morning when Jimmy set about capturing the footage, he ran into a major snag. The movie files were not being recognized by his Mac and we both suspected the large file size had something to do with it. After doing some internet research, Jimmy discovered the 7D apparently suffers from overheating issues when recording long shots. Well this was may have been news to both of us, but it didn't help the fact we still had several 29 minute shots we needed downloaded.

Luckily, Jimmy still had two more 16GB cards to record the next event and this time he limited his shots to no more than five minutes in length. This definitely did the trick in terms of being able to download the footage with no problems. However, I'm still yet to get the original shoot's footage off (mostly because I've been too sick to try). But Jimmy was able to start getting some of the original long footage off by using the camera's built in clip editor to shorten the shots into smaller parts. He also installed the Canon software that came with the camera, which also allowed him to pull off some more footage. I plan to do a combination of these two solutions and I'll write about my progress in next weeks article.

Well after this ordeal, it's obvious the 7D is not meant to do live events. This camera would still be a great "B" camera to do an event with, so long as it's clear to everyone the footage will be nothing more than "cut away" footage. If you need a 2nd camera to sync up with your main unit, the 7D is NOT for you when it comes to a live event.

Stay tuned for more experiments with the 7D as well as more results from our future head to head dual with the Sony EX-1.

Until then everyone have a great weekend!

Forward!

-Gustavo

A New Recruit

Hello readers!

Had a lovely long weekend with friends and family. Hope you all did too.

Updates:

Love, Concord welcomes its Art Director

I'm happy to announce Paul Renaud has joined the growing production team as our Art Director. This position is responsible for all the props and set decoration for a movie. If done right it's almost an invisible job, as the viewer will hopefully not notice that a set is missing the proper decoration or "feel." He'll be working closely with me, until or unless, I find a production designer for the movie. The production designer is in charge of every visual aspect of a movie including costumes.

As always I like to give a background to the people who are

joining the production, and Paul's in yet another personal connection from my past. Paul's vast video production background eventually led him to teach videography at Concord High. This is where I met him as my first video teacher and one whom I've used the skills he passed onto me to this very day. Paul continues to teach video at College Park High School in Pleasant Hill. Also, he currently writes, directs, and executive produces a local youth cooking show called: Twyla's Kitchen. Which I happen to be a camera operator on. He's currently working on a new version of the show and you can find out more about his previous productions and works in progress at: www.eduvisiononline.org.

I'm honored to be working with yet another one of my mentors and am excited to see the talent I'm sure Paul will bring to the production. His first task will be to assemble an art department crew to help him find and produce props and or set dressings. He tells me he plans to recruit some of his current students and perhaps some of his former ones, yet again making this a very locally driven community project.

Casting Call Has Begun

As mentioned last week I've posted a listing on Craigslist calling for actors to submit headshots and resumes to me for the opportunity to audition for the various speaking parts in the feature. If you know any actors or anyone who's interested in being in the film please direct them to this link: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/tlg/1551495324.html

Thanks!

More EX-1 vs 7D Testing to Come

Jon, my DP, and I will be shooting more tests with the Sony EX-1 and the Canon 7D side by side in the very near future. I'm really interested to shoot a night scene with both as the 7D is said to do low light extremely better than the EX-1. Stay posted as we'll share our results here on the blog.

Brubaker Hired to do Budget

Debbie Brubaker has officially received the 6th draft of the script and is preparing to write the budget for the production. This will be a great tool to plan the logistics of the shoot as well as help prove our worthiness to grant foundations. She gave me an estimated completion time of the end of the month so I'm looking forward to reading her budget and meeting her in person to further discuss Love, Concord.

Well that's all for now folks. Stay tuned for more exciting developments for the feature next week. Until then....

Foward!

-Gustavo

Roaring Good Time

Hello readers!

Our brand new couch just arrived today. I can finally call our new apartment home! Ahhhhhhh.

Updates:

Opificer Film Festival a Hit!

This Saturday was the first ever SF Opificers of Film Festival hosted and organized by myself, Jon Bowerbank, and my lovely wife Sandra. I'm happy to share it was a complete success. The exact turn out is unclear be easily had between 70 and 80 people in attendance. We ended up screening 10 films as we had a last minute entry. Nine of the Ten directors appeared at the festival and after the screening I invited them to the front of the theater to introduce themselves and to explain the inspiration behind their film. All their answers were truly engaging and gave great insight to their creative process.

Aside from screening the 10 films and help exposing the artists to a new audience, we managed to raise the most money yet of any of the fundraiser events I've hosted thus far. We made $700 in profit toward the Love, Concord production budget and we're now nearly at 20% of my goal to raise $10,000 by the beginning of June.

Another great aspect about the film festival was the hour long social/mixer hosted in the theater lobby immediately after the screening. This gave all the festival filmmakers a chance to meet each other as well as the various other filmmakers who didn't enter work but simply came out of their passion to support young and local talent. I for one, met many interesting and talented people during the social and look forward to keeping in touch with these artists so as to continue our mutual interest to make movies here in the Bay Area.

Another fun aspect to the festival was the audience award ballet. This ballet allowed the audience to pick their favorites in various categories. The winning films and filmmakers don't win an actual prize other than kudos and a genuine morale booster, which any artist can admit to coveting. So here are the winners, congratulations to them all:

Best Actress: Maggie VandenBerghe for ".... a 1000 Words"

Best Actor: Nick Scoggin for "The Fenceline"

Best Cinematography: Philip Hurn for ".... a 1000 Words"

Best Original Concept: Ryan Wilmot for "The Artistic Process"

Best Screenplay: Jonathan Bertain & Benjamin Foster Campbell for ".... a 1000 Words"

Best Director: Jonathan Bertain for "... a 1000 Words".

Best Picture: ".... a 1000 Words"

As I predicted "The Fenceline" and ".... a 1000 Words" were the run away hits. Kudos to both directors for their crowd pleasing work. For those of you who missed the festival here's one of the entries. And don't worry, with the success of this event Jon and I plan to do another one within a few months. If you know anyone interested in submitting please get them in touch with either Jon or myself. And lastly, stay tuned to the blog as we'll make announcements about the next event here.

I want to give a HUGE THANK YOU to the other filmmakers who screened at the festival. Thanks also need to go to the audience who came out to enjoy our artistic offerings and by doing so are supporting my feature film project.

I want to thanks my mother, Mila Calvo, and my brother, Michael Guardado, for not only supporting me by coming out. But also by actually working the event and helping ensure everything ran as smoothly as it did. ¡Gracias, y te quiero mucho!

I also want to tip my proverbial hat to Jon Bowerbank, my partner in crime, for helping to organize and conceiving this terrific idea.

Last and certainly not least, I want to thank my beautiful wife Sandra. She more than anyone is making my dream possible in more ways than I can count. This festival is just her latest effort. If every artist had as strong a supporter as my wife, we'd all be Picassos.

Casting Calls to Go Out

This week I plan to finally submit casting calls for the various roles in Love, Concord to Craigslist.com. Once they're up and have a link I'll post them on Face Book as well as the blog. Once I start receiving headshots I hope to begin holding mass auditions by the end of this month. If you know anyone interested in acting, now's the time to get me their info. Email me at gguardado@gmail.com.

6th Draft to be Delivered Today!

Later today I plan to finally email the latest draft of the script to Debbie Brubaker who we've hired to write a professional budget. Again, I can't over exaggerate how awesome it is to have her doing our budget. Her name alone on this aspect of the project will undoubtedly go a long way.

Well that's the scoop guys. Be sure to check out more pictures from the festival on my FaceBook page. Have a great rest of the week everyone!

Forward!

And the films are....

Hello readers!

Happy New Year everyone! It's finally 2010 the year I officially shoot my first feature film. Only 157 days left (as the counter so constantly reminds me)!

Oh and I'm soda free thus far this year! Woot! WOOT!

Updates

The Showdown Begins!

On Monday Jon (my DP) and I shot a short movie using both the Sony EX-1 HD video camera and the Canon 7D digital-SLR. As mentioned before these two cameras are now competing with one another to be the camera I select to shoot Love, Concord.

So rather than shoot random test footage we decided to start off by shooting a short script Jon wrote years ago. I directed the actors while Jon, and our trusty assistant Jimmy Freeman, handled the cameras. Jon's lighting for the shoot gave us the ability to test daylight balanced lights mixed with actual sunlight for both cameras. We had hoped to shoot a tungsten balanced scene, however, the 7D's only battery died and we weren't given a charger.

We shot most takes on the 7D and then did a final take of shot with the EX-1. Right off the bat, the ability to use prime lenses on the 7D made it a heavy favorite. But at the same time it's lack of balanced audio inputs forced us to use the EX-1 as our primary audio recorder. On the set I noticed how just based on appearance alone both cameras look almost the same in terms of quality. But when I looked closer on a few takes the thing which set the 7D apart was the depth of field. The larger chip and the longer prime lenses we used definitely gave it a more polished look than the EX-1. And for one shot, the compact size of the 7D also was a great benefit.

There's still more test scenarios that need to be done before I sign off on the 7D but as of now, the EX-1 should be nervous. Keep posted to the blog as I'll feed you side by side comparisons like the ones below as we shoot them.

The Festival Selections are Finalized

Jon and I finalized the films to be screened at the first ever SF Opificer's of Film Festival. Here they are in the order they will screen on Saturday night starting promptly at 7:15pm.

"Time Capsule" directed by Jimmy Freeman

"Drowning" directed by James Z. Feng

"The Price of Morality" directed by Hisham Izzeldin

"The Claw Machine" directed by Megan Johnson

"The Fence Line" directed by Brian Rasmussen

"Wake Up" directed by Devon Perez

"....a Thousand Words" directed by Jonathan Bertain

"Waiting" directed by Maressa Stertz

"Marta's Last Exit" directed by Gustavo Guardado

Again, we'll begin promptly at 7:15, screen all nine movies back to back, and have a 10 minute Q and A session immediately following the presentation. After that, there'll be a social/mixer in the lobby of the theater until 10pm.

Tickets for the event are $12 at the door. Refreshments will be sold as well. Please come early or on time. I hope to see many of you there and to meet all the new filmmakers and their friends and family.

Well that's all for this week. Next week I plan to post photos from the festival and hopefully some more test footage.

Forward!

-Gus