7:00min, Canon 5DM2
Washington, DC
October, 2009

Production Notes: Made for The National Film Challenge
Genre: Detective/Spy
Prop: Matchbox
Line of Dialogue: It feels like deja vu all over again
Character: Mike Schapiro (unemployeed)

4:56min, Canon 5DM2
Fairfax, VA
June, 2009

Production Notes: Made for the 72 hour shoot out by the aafilmlab, we had 72 hours to write, shoot, and edit to a required theme. This year the theme was "Time's Up." We shot primariy on the Canon 5D Mark 2, and using the HVX200 only for the steadicam shot.

1:00min, miniDV
Washington, DC
August 17th, 2007

Production Notes: Made for the DC APA Film Festival trailer contest. This was my 2nd time doing this contest, and this year, I had more time to prepare. Our first attempt to shoot in late July turned into a soaking disaster. Mother nature decided to hammer us with a down pour just as the last person arrived on set. And of course, after we waited it out for a bit and decided to pack up and leave, the rain stoped just as we drove away.

We tried again 2 weeks later and instead of rain I got sun burned. We shot for 4 hours along the Lady Bird Johnson memorial statue along the GW parkway on the bike trial. The biggest problem we had was the constant flow of bikers, who sped and honked at us like aggressive automobile drivers.

This is my first time doing an action film, and it was quite a learning experience. Becky, a Tae Kwon Do black belt and film student had some great suggestions with her past experience in shooting martial arts films. I had several meetings with Jon and Jason to discuss the choreography of the fight set, and I storyboarded every shot to ensure a fast and smooth production.

The sound effects took forever to get right and match up. My roommate had an entire CD collection of professional sound effects, and whatever I couldn't find I recorded using 2 Wushu broadswords. It was also my first time working one-on-one with a composer. Andrew Pham, a music major, did an excellent job with the composition. We had several email exchanges of music and rough cuts and a live meeting to get the sound just right. He made over 9 versions of the music.

1:49mins, Blender 3D
Animation
December 15, 2008

Production Notes: Made for the ScarletUser MiniFest. This was the first ScarletUser fest and I couldn't miss it. With only 2 weeks before the deadline, the only way I could make something was to go the animation route. It would also double as a learning project for blender and After Effects.

I used blender 3D for modeling, coloring, lighting, and animations
After Effects CS3 for VFXs, many thanks to video copilot.
Avid xPress Pro for editing.

2:40min, miniDV
Kyoto/Tokyo, Japan
November, 2007

Production Notes: The idea for this film began on an impulse. During my 3 week vacation in Japan, I came up with the idea to shoot a short film while peeling 200 persimmons on the farm. It would seem overly sapping persimmon hands are a great recipe for screenwriting inspiration. Since I had my DVX cam and bare-bones film equipment with me, plus 2 friends in Kyoto and Tokyo, I figured what the hell. I'm going to shoot a film on my vacation!

It was going to be like no other film I have shot. No experienced crew, if any. No experienced actors. And I'd be shooting in 2 locations I've never been to, and in a country where I can barely speak the language. The script would have to be extremely simple and with large room for flexibility, in case problems arose during production.

Day 1: Kyoto. I had arranged to meet Jon Evans at Kyoto station, along with Misako, whom I met briefly during my stay on the farm near Toyota city. She brought along two other friends Aco and Jacob. The scene with Jon was shoot at the Heian Ingu Shrine near Higashiyama. I later discovered that this temple was also visited in the film Lost in Translation. Production was short and sweet, and very cold that day. Originally, I wanted Jon to try the lines in Japanese, translated into Hiragana by Misako and Aco, but that took too long, so we stuck with the original English script.

Day 2: Tokyo, about a week later and after finishing a hard week's worth of work on my 2nd farm, I meet up with Valerie for my last 3 days in Japan. We shot all the scenes in Shibuya. I mistakenly thought the famous intersection was in Akihabara, but turned out all the scenes were located near the intersection at Shibuya.

Originally I wanted Valerie to drop off the doll with a girl with a red scarf, but we had trouble recruiting her friends to act in the part. I was also hoping that recruit could hold up Valerie to do 3 heel clicks. But, fortunately for us, she bumped into her friend Chris (who happened to be a film student at Temple University) and he was shooting his documentary at the time.

2:50mins, miniDV
Les Halles, Paris, France
July 13, 2005

Production Notes: My first film ever made during my AMC movie camp with the New York Film Academy @ La Femis in Paris, France. The 2 actors are both French, one of which spoke no English. I had only 3 hours to shoot and was interrupted numerous times by the park police for a permit, which of course we had. I ran out of time and had to improvise the opening scene.