I had a really short episode recorded, but upon trying to upload it I realized that I had loaned my camera bag, complete with all the necessary connection cables to upload a video, to my little brother. There wasn’t much info though, so I can just write it out really quick:
May 9th is our casting date. We’ll be doing auditions for all of the characters that we haven’t secured yet. They are as follows:
Richard the employee
Phil the portly cop
Tony the alcoholic manager
Father
Mother
Teenage brother
Teenage sister
If you’re an actor in the LA area, and one of these seems like something you could do, go to LA Casting and search for “Mint Chocolate Chip”. Be sure to leave a note in the application that you frequent the site. If that doesn’t work out for you, go ahead and just email me with your resumé and headshot at VernonShaw(at)gmail.com
If you’re not an actor but still like the whole movie-making process, you’re also in luck. If we work things out right, you should be able to watch the all the audition videos and give your input to us. More about that next week.
And finally, we’re really close to locking down a location I’ve been courting for some time now. I don’t want to jinx it, so more on that later.
And that’s about it. The key crew will be making posts on the site in the next couple of days, so this place will be bumpin’ soon. Promise.
Sorry for a second straight week of no video. My Lady Ruin, or “The Production that Just Wouldn’t Die”, was finally completed this weekend in terms of principle photography, and now faces its hellish run in the editing bay. Now, finally, we can go full-swing on Mint Chocolate Chip. I had a meeting with the producer, Bernard, and we figured out a couple important dates:
May 9th: Casting Date
June 12th, 13th, 14th: Principle Photography
Also, here’s the freaking finalized crew list (wooh!):
Production Department
Producer - Bernard Badion
Unit Production Manager – Stephen Perlstein
Associate Producer - Taylor Finan
Script Supervisor - Sarah Davis
Director – Vernon Shaw
1st Assistant Director – Caitlin Halliburton
Craft Services - Torie Sanchez
Camera, Grip and Electrical Departments
Director of Photography – Marco Bercasio
1st Assistant Camera – Michael Rich
2nd Assistant Camera – Gabriella Calvo
Gaffer – Daniel Lee
Key Grip - Mark Dalmacio
Grip - Ryan Rigley
Sound Department
Mixer – Adam Hyatt
Boom Operator – Marshall Richey
Art Department
Art Director – Adam Perez
Art PA – Jasmine Amiri
Wardrobe – Nicole Owen
Makeup and Hair – Suzy Pasqualetto
Being that we’ll be shooting in a very tiny ice cream shop, we had to keep the crew small as well as doubling up jobs. So sorry to the buttload of great applicants that we couldn’t assign a job. As for the rest of you who are on the list, we’ll be having a production meeting in about a month.
No video update today, sadly. We’ve been working hard on locations but have nothing to show for it just yet. There’s some really hot leads though that I will be investigating Tuesday morning which look like a pretty sure bet, so worry not. The crew has almost completely been decided, and an official list should be posted in about a week. Finally Bernard (the producer, you’ll see more of him later) and I are scheduling a casting session for early May. So yeah, lots of thing are going on. It’ll get a lot more fun for you in the coming weeks though, as we’re trying to make this whole movie-making process as interactive as possible.
That adorable picture of Scott that you see at the top of the post was actually just sent over to me today by Adam Perez, our storyboard artist/art director. Right now he’s working on a poster for MCC which, I am told, involves explosions and dinosaurs. This should be amazing.
And while we’re on the subject of Adams. I would like to introduce you to Adam Hyatt, our sound mixer. We call him the Sound King for hilarity’s sake. This is him doing a monologue from Extras after fooling our Directing Actors teacher into thinking that he was an actor:
Last, but certainly not least, Collin has a new project coming down the pipe. He’s working on producing and starring in a feature screenplay he wrote, and is chronicling the project much the same way MCC is. Naturally it will end up being bigger in scale than our humble 15 minute production, so it should prove to be a very exciting thing to follow. So far it’s only on facebook, but from what I here they’ll have their own website soon. Here’s the first episode:
Sorry for the lack of video this past week. Thanks to an all-too-ironic mishap, My Lady Ruin has officially turned into My Lady Production That Just Won’t Die. Because of this, not only was I curled in the fetal position in a corner of my dorm room all weekend, but MCC is now running a bit behind. We’re still trying for May 29th, 30th, and 31st for the principle photography date, but everything now hinges upon the speed at which we find a location. The good news is that me and Mel are working on that this weekend, and there’s a couple of promising places in our targeting sights.
I’m working on a small restructuring of the site that will involve the key crew contributing posts daily. It’ll happen closer to the shoot, but I’m really glad to have a little company around here. And hey, play your cards right and you’ll get twitter updates, too.
Many from our Mint Chocolate Chip crew have been spending every waking moment (and most of our non-waking ones thanks to the hellish nightmares that overwork and undersleep produces) of their lives working on My Lady Ruin. It’s a short 16 mm film project directed by MCC actor/executive producer Scott Naurath and photographed by myself. So far, barring me not screwing up the $1,000 worth of film (be prepared to talk me out of jumping on Thursday after the telecine processing), it has been turning out really well. Somewhere at the end of one of the shorter days, we managed to sneak in a short video about what’s going on. I know that we all look like complete goofballs in the video, so let me assure you that we are. Bandannas, neckties, aviator sunglasses and awesome nicknames such as “The Sound King” are completely normal on our sets.
As of right now our key grip, Mark Dalmacio, is longboarding somewhere between South Lake Tahoe and Northridge in support of the Crohn’s and Colitis foundation. You should probably check it out.
The next week will entail location scout Mel and I searching our hearts out for a location. Once we find a place, everything should fall into place. After that, we’ll be holding casting sessions for the rest of the talent. ‘Til then, stick with us guys.
Hey! MCC’s back! And apparently we already have a porn parody of our movie being made! I think!
I guess that’s the sign of a good movie. Anyways I talk about a couple of important things in the style of a poorly made video blog. I’ve been deathly ill lately and am bad at editing, so the videos we took of the party (which went great, by the way) will have to wait until later. The links mentioned are as follows.
Kick, Push, Cure The NY Times article Collin’s fan page on facebook
We’re gonna be taking this next weekend off before we get into full swing, but we’ll hopefully be posting pictures and video from the party soon.
edit: The janky audio and thumbnail problems have been fixed. Thanks for putting up with my Mr. Magoo-esque incompetence in regards to all things Internet.
Surprise! Scott is playing second lead! We posted some of the audition tapes for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy them, and then go to the Dance Party on Saturday the 21st. Sorry I was two days late in posting this update, but as you can see there were a lot of things to do (and there was a party full of cheerleaders involved, but that’s another story for another day). Things are going along swimmingly over here, the new producer is helping out a lot and I do believe we’ve found a cinematographer. You’ll be seeing more of them in the next couple updates. Now we just need to find the right ice cream place and we’ll be right is rain.
Mint Chocolate chip is going to be taking the next week off for the party and for a lot of us to help out on the Str80s movie shoot. We will, however, be seeing you in your track shorts on Saturday. Right?
Hours of unnecessarily tedious work, lost sleep, pulled out hair, and four days past when it should have happened, I have the site overhauled now. There’s still a few photos and videos I need to upload, but the majority of work is done.
Now it might not look like a lot has changed, but I assure you good sirs and madams that it has. The website is now hosted completely via Bihira, a company I’ve known and trusted since high school. I tried out a million different themes, but ultimately decided on the one we started out with in the beginning. Also, if you’ll look all the way up at the top of you browser where you type in web addresses, and then look a little to the left, you should see a tiny brown “M” on top of a tiny green square. That’s the bookmark icon. I totally did that.
Being that it took me forever to finish this project (seriously, if you were a friend of mine in high school when I actually, you know, knew things about computers; feel free to punch me in the stomach), all of the footage from Episode 9 has been collecting dust on my computer. It’s a doozy of an episode, but I should have it all edited by tomorrow night. Sorry for the lateness.
With this said, if you wanted an embarrassing photo that illustrates my elation at the completion of this overhaul and our ability to press onward and upward, you’re in luck:
Technically I was supposed to post something last Sunday and technically I wasn’t, being that we let out an early video for the party. In either case, sorry about the confusion. Here’s a quick update on what’s going on:
I’ve been trying to switch the site from the Wordpress server to a dedicated one for the past couple days now. I’m pretty rusty on this sort of stuff and don’t live in the Silicon Valley anymore (where you could literally ask anyone on the street for computer help), so this is taking a little longer and being a little more complicated than expected. The good news is that I worked out most of the kinks and should have that finished tomorrow.
The Mint Chocolate Chip Track Shorts Dance Party is gaining steam and looking like it will bring us really darn close to our fundraising goal for the project. Taylor Finan, our associate producer, has been doing an amazing job with this fundraiser and I am pretty excited to see how it all turns out. If you’ve been a little in the dark for this past paragraph, just check here.
Finally, Scott is directing a short film on 16mm that will begin shooting at the end of March. The name of the movie is Stand Alone, and it’s looking like it’s going to be pretty darn good. You can go here for more info on that.
Thanks again for putting up with our erratic posting schedule. This Sunday’s video looks like there’s gonna be a pretty interesting twist in it. Keep your specs on.
