This was a short film I worked on a couple of years ago for the LDS Film Festival. They needed a super cute baby so Brooke took the part. You can see Brooke in a couple of parts.
Crossroads
Spanky Ward | MySpace Video
Here are the funny little outtakes from the Amp commercial I did for Sarah.
Starring:
Ben Thomas
David White
Zach Lonsdale
Austin Nichols
Directed by Dallas Golden
Because Rebecca has already posted about our day of filming, I don’t know how much more you want to hear about behind the scenes, but I’m going to write about it anyway.
We had a concept that we were going to go out and film, but we ran into a major obstacle of the cold weather and the ice outside. After a long lunch of brain-storming on a new idea, we went over to D.I. to see if we could find something to use as a prop to inspire a new story idea. Zach and I found a broken TV they were trying to sell for parts and I fell in love with the TV because there was something about it that demanded our sending a projectile through the screen. Thus the basis of our story was born. We had to somehow create a need to destroy the TV. David found a hat that he wanted to use as a TV technician, so we found our need for a TV repairman. After that we threw everybody else in to satisfy the film requirements of making a sacrifice to the downtrodden by Ben sacrificing his TV money to those who needed it more than he did.
Filming began and we were off to film our outdoor scenes before the sun went down. Macey’s was gracious enough to allow us to film in their parking lot. Zach and Austin were great. About the time we ran out of sunlight, we finished filming our last shot outside. There were a couple more shots I would like to have gotten, but they weren’t essential so they were easily skipped over. We headed back to our condo where we made an absolute mess of the house by moving the furniture around and we banished Rebecca and Brooke to the bedroom to quietly watch Wall-e.
Editing was the hardest part because even though it was fairly early in the evening, it felt like it was midnight. I was also desperately needing to get to bed because I had to be up the next morning at 4:30. The editing was finished at around 3:00 and I dropped in bed only to wake up long before I wanted to.
If you are having problems viewing the video, you can watch it on YouTube HERE
Last night Dallas and I had a fun date night. We went to an event at the LDS Film Festival held at the Scera Theater. Dallas, my brother Ben, and three of Ben’s BYU friends spent last weekend filming a three-minute short for the 24-Hour Filmmaking Marathon.
Last Friday at 10:00 am Dallas, Ben, and friends met at the Scera to get the theme for their film, a prop, and a dialogue line they had to include in the film. They had 24 hours to come up with an idea, film it, and edit it together. The theme this year was sacrifice. The prop was a match, and the dialogue line was “Let me be your…”
After a couple of failed attempts, they finally came up with an idea that worked. They started filming at about 3 in the afternoon and wrapped up a little before 8 pm. Dallas was up late into the night editing the masterpiece.
I think the boys did a great job, especially considering the lack of time and dearth of acting lessons between the boys. Dallas will post the video when he gets a chance.
Anyway, last night was the screening of all the 24-hour films. There were 41 shorts presented. We were quite impressed with the quality of the films. We had some good laughs.
I’m proud of my boys!
“Ben’s TV” – a striking short comedy with heart to match.
Coming soon to a theater near you! Mark your calendar for Thursday, January 22, 2009, 7:00 at the Scera Movie Theater in Orem. Get your tickets early! Tickets might be going fast. Blog release to shortly follow.
Starring:
Ben Thomas as Ben
David White as Super G
Zach Lonsdale as Zach
Austin Nichols as Austin Dew
Directed by Dallas Golden
A couple of years ago I was taking a film production class in which we were broken into groups and each person was assigned to write a script. We then voted upon the script which we wanted to film. My script was met with much enthusiasm and was voted as the script to be filmed. Now I have a theory that nearly every new filmmaker/film student will without fail do either a corny comedy, a Star Wars fan film, a pointlessly violent whatever, or a horror. And I must admit that I fell into that theory with creating Facing Fear, but I kind of think of it as more of a exploration into an idea.
When I was writing Facing Fear I came up with the concept of fear’s purpose. Then I wrote the script outline around that. I came up with one short scene in my mind with all of the shots, which brought on the concept of having Fear living in the forest. That specific scene I was very insistent about having in the film so I made sure it was there and you can see it in the film when Clark first gets out of the car and senses Fear. The rest came together into the script which was shot.
The final film didn’t get as much open enthusiasm as we had expected and after sitting back and watching it over and over again I see places where I would like to have done it differently to improve some of the poor dialog and editing to make the film more engaging. Overall I feel pretty proud with what we did with the limited resources we were provided with and with the knowledge I had at the time. I also have to brag that my film was the only film shown which caused my somewhat pompous professor to actually say “wow” to himself over some of the shots.
So here is Facing Fear! It is about 12 minutes long so don’t watch it until you can devote the time to it.
Also we probably would rate it at a mild PG-13 for blood and minor horror.
Brigham Young University had a contest for the upcoming football season to make a 30 second commercial about BYU winning the Mountain West Conference Championship for the third year in a row. Rebecca and I participated by creating our own commercials. The winner gets his or her commercial played on the JumboTron during the first game. Unfortunately, we didn’t win even though our videos were awesome. Oh well, you can’t win them all. Well, we broke down and published the videos on Youtube for the whole world to search for and watch.
Here’s Rebecca’s Commercial.
Rebecca used the voice of her friend’s husband.
Here’s my commercial.
I had the help of our neighbor Derek. I used the same music as Rebecca because my sound library doesn’t have a great selection of music of that genre.
Go Cougars!
Dallas is going to be the Director of Photography (the one in charge of setting up camera shots and filming) for a film in the LDS Film Festival. He had a meeting at the Salt Lake Library to meet with the director, and Brooke and I went along so that we could see the lights at Temple Square afterwards. While Dallas had his meeting, Brooke and I roamed the library. Dallas ended up calling us to come meet the director because they need a baby in the movie and Dallas thought Brooke might be perfect for the part. With a head shot like this–
she’s a shoo-in! We’re really not sure if they’ll use her. I guess they’ll get back to us sometime. We ended up not seeing the lights because I was feeling sick and it was getting late. Maybe another time.
My mom thinks we always post silly pictures of Brooke, so here’s a picture that I think is so sweet. I could look at this picture all day!
Here’s a smiling one, too. This is Brooke right before church last week. Unfortunately, mere minutes after this photo shoot Brooke spit up all over and so she was never able to debut this outfit for our ward.
I’ve been in Denver for the last couple of days filming the Utah Valley University hockey team’s games. It been a good trip. I can’t say that we have done anything that I have been too excited about. Mostly we are at the hotel with nothing to do and no way of getting to the places where there is something to do.
As the title of this entry states “shooting in Denver” that has a double meaning. On the night we got here there was a gang shooting about half a mile away from the hotel. As a result, the coach has been a little more cautious about us leaving the hotel at night.
The games have been a bust. The first game was cancelled because the referees didn’t show up. The second game I had to film through a net and the footage was not great as a result. UVU did win the game.
Tonight UVU plays Colorado who is ranked #1 and UVU is #2. It should be a good game.
I’ve been traveling with the Utah Valley University hockey team filming all of their games. Last month we went to Rochester New York for a couple of games there. We were also able to visit the Smith farm, the Sacred Grove, Palmyra, and the Hill Cumorah. Here are some pictures.
This is of the Hill Cumorah where Joseph Smith got the plates.
I’m in the Smith’s kitchen.
I found a four-leaf clover in the yard behind the Smith farm.
This is the Sacred Grove.
The Granden Press where the first Book of Mormon was published.
Rebecca and I went to the premiere of Pirates of the Great Salt Lake tonight. This is the first independent film that I worked on. The movie stars Kirby Heyborne (Saints and Soldiers, The RM), Trenton James, Larry Bagby (Saints and Soldiers, Walk the Line), Emily Tindell (Napoleon Dynamite), and Steve Anderson (and me (Facing Fear, The Department)). It was nice to see all of the friends I made while making the film. It turned out to be a pretty good film and was quite popular with the crowd that was there.
The movie should be coming out some time this summer. Be sure to go see it when it comes out.
Thanks to those guys for the good time!
Here is a picture of me, Larry Bagby, and Christian Vuissa. This was one of my favorite days because I got to sit in makeup and have that nasty latex face put on to body double for Larry.
I would write more about making this film, but if I did then I would feel like I should write other blog entries from other past experiences and that could add up to forever.
