Thats right, Patrick Sarni has officially departed the big apple to make a new life out in LA. Patrick is a writer producer so he should be right at home, not sure what this means for JoyHog but if they need a NY correspondent I have volunteered to help out where I can. Fear not… Patrick has not officially cut the umbilical cord to Manhattan, when I last spoke with Patrick he said

I have not officially cut the umbilical cord to Manhattan.

YOU SEE! He will attempt some bi coastal relation with liberty city and to prove that he claims to be here to help produce the 48 hour competition that is coming up in a couple of weeks! We solute you Patrick, best of luck in the city of sin…in the meantime I will prep the couch for your return.

FYI: Only if you catch this post fresh, The eyeballs of the Incredible Hulk (see Ad on right) were actually rendered from Patrick Sarni’s eyes.

Sorry I have not updated as soon as I wanted to, I have been hustling on the streets and in the field to keep this vessel afloat and continue, aka… bring home the bacon. I have been going non stop the last two weeks working on several RED camera shoots so I have lots to post about my experience and some images behind the scenes and from the Mysterium (RED footage frame grabs). I am going to gather my notes and update this evening as soon as I catch my breath.

RED 1781 UPDATE: Spoke with my RED dan who says they are catching up fast with back order and trying to beat the current delivery schedule but I am still on standby for my tracking numbers. I hope to continue getting RED related work in the meantime.

RED 1781 UPDATE 6/2/08: Spoke with Dan again today, he says 1781 could ship this week!

After 20 years the good doctor is back, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is everything you’d hope it would be and much more. I was 8 years old when I 1st saw Indiana on his Last Crusade and have been hooked ever since so as you can imagine I have had high expectations in this 4th installment of Steven Spielberg’s series. I wont spoil anything but even from the trailer you can tell there are certain choices that were made in the development by Spielberg in regards to making sure the look and feel of the “kingdom of the Crystal Skull” pertained to the aesthetics of the originals. Sure the picture was woven with very impressive visual effects as you can expect from this kind summer blockbuster, some of which were simply jaw dropping but for me it was not the FX but the color treatment, the textures, the photography, art and direction, and the comic performances that overwhelmed me with nostalgia for my experience I had watching the original trilogy.

Harrison Ford returns 20 years later and still hunting treasures, raiding tombs, teaching part time, dodging bullets, and some hoe always under the red tape of the KGB and now CIA. Although a slightly older and more rusty Doctor Jones, Harrison Ford was spot on, the gloves certainly still fit. Shia LaBeouf enters the picture as…well Shia LaBeouf, expect pretty much the same performance he plays in most of his recent roles except this time he is a 1950s punk greaser type, Indiana’s sidekick a little tougher…but tough enough to be the next Indiana Jones? I have mixed feelings about the speculation of Shia taking over in the franchise, those are some big shoes to fill Shia. I felt the two had a decent on screen chemistry overall. Cate Blanchett plays the sexy soviet villain, and plays it well she does. Her character is dark and sinister as you would expect but thankfully she does not play it off as comical as most the cast.

Simply put, this is a 124 minutes of pure Indiana Jones action packed joy. You are in for a ride from the moment the picture starts to the very end. I will say there were times I would have appreciated a moment to breath, Spielberg definitely did not hold back but the story manages to balance some of the over the top chaos with intertwined comic relief, did I mention it’s over the top? Many of the action sequences are just far-fetched enough to make you laugh. I am trying not to spoil anything but I will just say the end was a little unusual and somewhat anticlimactic with not whole lot of pay off, and leaves you asking, “What next”?

If you have not seen the original installment of Indiana Jones then now is a good time to (re)visit them…there is some back story that will help tie things together but overall will not effect the experience of new comers. In a nutshell…If you like Indian Jones at all then you will most likely love the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Enjoy.

Gotham Guerrilla was fortunate enough to be invited to a press screening of Indiana Jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull, a week before the actual release. This will mark our 1st and hopefully not last of many sneak peaks to come. I would like to thank our affiliates, Joy Hog, for this special invite. Now I need to get off my phone before it gets seized and destroyed as the fine print says on the back of my ticket. Review coming tonight.

Returning home from a week long PBS shoot on RED to Grand Central station while hustling the precious cargo back to Brooklyn…hundreds of gigs in Digital Mags. I stuck around for the wrap party to do a little networking, met up with the lead talent, Jamie Hector, who delivered an incredible performance and as it turns out he is a neighbor so I look forward to working with this cat.

I am spent, tomorrow the RED digital mags are Offhollwood bound to Mark and Aldey for some LTO backing up…saftey 1st. I have no idea what’s on my plate for next week, but I do know that tomorrow the Gotham Guerrilla has a special date with Doctor Jones…Indiana that is.

A little update: If you have been following at all then you know that my big freelance gig for May was delayed until August (or for good?). If you learn anything from my post as a freelance filmmaker it’s this, have more then one iron in the fire, as my brother so elegantly put it. As a rule of thumb I always try and book my next gig before I finish the 1st one and if your fortunate enough and have the right connections then you might book your calendar…this is not always the case. I was so confident this May gig was golden (Direct a commercial in Costa Rica) that I literally cleared my schedule…note to self, DON’T DO THAT.

To make matters worse, I over budgeted due to recent RED ONE investments, leaving my pockets pretty empty….if you walked into my bank account you would here the echo of your foot steps. One of the main reasons you should never turn down work is cause the seeds you plant in your past gigs often times grow to lift you up in your future…this month I celebrate those seeds. Documentaries for example will often result in repeat work and last week Richard Cummings Junior called me up to DP another one of his Subway Busker Documentary shoots that he likes to refer to as his “Crack Habit”….keep at it Richard, I believe in your Project!

Then Mark from OffHollywood Studios gave me the opportunity to be a RED TECH this week for a PBS shoot so I could brush up on my RED experience before I take delivery of SPUTNIK, RED # 1781. I enjoy being a RED TECH, all those hours spent researching this new emerging technology is finally paying off. I love watching the crew be enamored by RED’s capabilities. I enjoy downloading the shots off a CF card the size of a matchbook and watching the images come down the pipeline making me feel giddy like a school boy each time, thinking…”ok, this is the future of Cinema” …F^&*@ing PHENOMENAL. I would like to get permission 1st before I post any details about this particular shoot but I will report to RedUsers that RED firmware build 15 is holding up strong, completely stable…unreal, look forward to 16…it just gets better.

So thanks John Mitchell, Jessica Lambert, Patrick Sarni, Ryan Morris, Kendall Smith, Mark Pedersson, Richard Cummings Jr, Jim Jannard and the RED team, my father Richard Haskell My mother Ann Richardson, My aunt Ann Haskell, Lainie Gratz my sister, and last but certainly not least, my wife Anabel Bouza…and everyone esle for all being little seeds that grew in the month of May. I will not give up, just keep pushing forward….more to come.

So I just got a phone call from one of my partners in Crime, Kendall Smith, who just informed me that it was official…we are registered as Team Lurkers for the 48 Hour Film Competition. Thank you Mr.Smith…I always manage to miss this deadline, not this time. Here is a blurb from the official 48 Hour Film Competition site…

The 48 Hour Film Project is a wild and sleepless weekend in which you and a team make a movie—write, shoot, edit and score it—in just 48 hours. On Friday night, you get a character, a prop, a line of dialogue and a genre, all to include in your movie. 48 hours later, the movie must be complete. Then it will show at a local theater, usually in the next week.

A friend and filmmaker form my home town Richmond VA, Lucas Krost, called me down to work on one of his 48 hour films, Terminus, when he competed in the previous 48 hour show down, and all I can say is its insane film production on steroids…little time for sleep. Lucas reached out to the city for help and had an incredible response from Richmond which certainly paid off as his film was ultimately selected for the Cannes film festival and screening in about a week…Congrats to Lucas and his crew. While there was much to gain from Lucas’s approach, New York is another story….our budget is very low, competition is very high, but either way we are going try and have fun doing it.

Amazing what you can do with potatoes really, I recently learned if I chop them up into little wedges, boil until soft and fry them in a pan, add some seasoning and you got home fried potatoes! I just hope my wife does not get sick of them yet cause there are only so many things I can do with a potato…good thing she is from Havana Cuba and knows how to be resourceful.

Speaking of, you really figure out what your not missing in life when you can’t afford it…like television (the home seams much more peaceful without it) paper towels (wasteful, a rag works just as well) and I am learning to take my espresso without sugar…soon there wont be espresso.

As a freelance filmmaker I always book my gigs at least one month in advance as a cushion in case I fall to hard times. Fortunately the recession does not effect this industry too hard but it really depends what part your working in, cause IMO just about all my commercial clients are extremely financially tight these days. May has arrived and my big May job which involved traveling to direct a commercial in Costa Rica for an Ad agency (whom I will not name)…was delayed until August, maybe for good? This was not the Agency’s fault, their client can’t pony up the budget either…wow, thanks Bush. Now I am left scrambling for day jobs I had originally cleared for Costa Rica.

On a good note, the wire went into RED DIGITAL CINEMA today for our new RED ONE, I have tapped every resource dry and I am officially more broke then I have ever been in my life…so cheers to RED ONE #1781 coming home, may she prosper and bring me back to the surface. This has been a humbling experience no doubt, but the truth is…being a starving artist in New York city is not glamorous or romantic as the cliche goes. I got to run, there is a boiled egg with my name on it.

This does not need much explanation…just felt like revisiting some of my favorite viral political propaganda. Best viewed on its home site DIP DIVE.

Stuck, completely stuck and chasing my tail…asking myself where the F$!& is my STORY! In the indie world sometimes your fortunate enough to choose you’re own projects and other times the projects choose you, in my case it was a documentary, something I had the least experience in doing…that is until now.

I got a job from an established Museum out of Denver who hired me to document their experience into the depths of Black Rock city for last year’s 2007 Burning Man festival, if thats what you want to call it….either way, I was completely ecstatic to score this gig and hoped it would a good opportunity to further my career. I don’t want to stray too far off topic but for more information on Burning Man then cruise the official site HERE. This is where that old saying comes to mind, “If it can go wrong, it will go wrong”…lets just say this was the most challenging project I have ever participated in my life (mainly due to the harsh conditions of the environment), but what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, right?

6 months of post production and just now am I seeing the light at the end of the tunnel…what went wrong? When I wrapped the production, I left the festival with my head down, knowing very well that while everyone was packing up getting ready to go home having completed their mission, my job was only beginning…the world of post-production.

I run and operate a Final Cut Pro, Mac based editing suite for High-Definition content delivery and from previous experience I could make a decent living off of post (edition etc), if managed properly. However, if you don’t plot your course to take you all the way home then you are setting yourself up for disaster. Ever find yourself with all the right ingredients but cant quite bake the cake? Try and take a step back and see the big picture and avoid spreading yourself too thin as I did. Film production is a collaborative effort so dont be afraid to staff up and bring some fresh perspective to the table.

Often times Indie directors like to cut their own material and while there is nothing wrong with that, your decision making is some times clouded by your marriage to the project…saying to yourself for example, “I can’t cut this sequence out because it took an entire day to shoot this material” when a third party editor has less emotional involvement with the material and therefor has no problem tossing shots away that do not actually benefit your story.

Fortunately Burning Man is all eye candy so that is not the precise case. I would like to thank Patrick Sarni, writer producer, for stepping in on this project and helping me wrap things up with have a fresh take on an old project.