Dead Set Films

S is for Psycho! is now online at Vimeo….

The Scary Cow Film festival was a big success for Dead Set Films latest project: “S is for Psycho!”  In the category of budgeted films, “S” tied for 1st place against a film with a much larger budget and much slicker production.

The film will be posted online on Vimeo, and possibly on YouTube.  However, since YouTube restricts movies to a hard 10 minute limit, we are hoping to negotiate a way around that.  Otherwise, we will have to abandon YouTube and move to posting strictly on Vimeo.  Stay tuned!

Above is the trailer for my second short film, screening Feb 7th at the Castro Theater in San Francisco as part of the Scary Cow Film Festival.  The screening will likely sell out.  Advanced tickets can be purchased at http://tinyurl.com/psychotickets

Come support the local film community, or for you cynics, come make fun of the local film community!

I’ve been slacking with posting updates.  There is a lot going on:

• “S is for Psycho!” slated to screen in February 2009 at the Castro Theater.  Post-production is still underway.
• Collective of film-makers to be formed.  One of my goals for the coming year is to coordinate a co-op of local film-makers such that we can get a reliable source of shorts averaging one every two weeks.
• Feature film scripts underway.  I’m working on a new feature length film idea while two older ideas are now on hold.

Things will be slow as the year comes slowly to an end but expect a lot of new work next year.

The website has been devoid of updates and for that I apologize.  However, I have been busy at work, despite my lack of updates.

My current project is “S is for Psycho!” which will wrap principal photography this week.  I’ve begun the arduous task of editing and already I’ve hitting some challenges with missing shots (things I thought I had covered in other shots so we skipped shooting) and mismatched cuts, where it is obvious that actors in one shot aren’t doing the same action or in the same pose in another related shot, making it difficult to cut the two shots together.

Lesson learned: get all the shots you planned.  Let’s see what I can do to pull this off….

Sunday night (last night) was the night of the Round 5 Scary Cow film screenings. In the category of “unfunded” projects, “Cursed” went up against a few short of a dozen films. The screening went rather well, with some jokes going over really great and other jokes creating rather uneasy silences.

But all-in-all, the attendees voted, and “Cursed” tied for 2nd place (or 3rd, depending on how you look at it). First place was a tie between films “Time Addict” and “Seconds”, and then “Cursed” tied with “Geek Loves Punk” (another great film by writer/director Julie Kerr, on which I was the camera operator). Read More »

After a grueling two nights of shooting in Piedmont, California, “Cursed” has wrapped up principal photography. We started at 5pm on Saturday and 8pm on Sunday and went until just about 2am each night. Grueling, but we made it through.

So far, the footage looks good and I’m waiting to pick up the audio tracks from sound man Brian Moss. I’m hoping to have a rough edit done by the end of the week, which will let me know if I need to bring back actors to loop some dialog. If not, I can proceed with adding in foley and soundtrack, and move on to color correcting and toning.

This was an interesting experience because I cast a Screen Actors Guild actress and had to deal with the paperwork involved. In the end, it wasn’t too bad at all, but it did catch us by surprise because I assumed the film co-op production house Scary Cow Productions had a relationship setup with SAG, which it apparently did not. But thanks to Fatna at the San Francisco SAG office, we were able to rush the paperwork through and get the contracts signed so we can shoot in time.

Also of great help, Mark Brown, co-Producer. I couldn’t have gotten everything juggled without him and his extra hands at the shoot were much appreciated. Mark did a lot to help out given the limited time he could devote to the project and his participation is appreciated.

Cinematography on “Cursed” was handled by Brian Doom. Sound was recorded on some very nice professional equipment by Brian Moss. The direction of the actors was greatly aided by my Assistant Director Sharon Huff. Jimmy Houng was our badass Production Assistant. “Cursed” stars Khary Moye, Jennifer Linkous, Ronald Acosta, and Orlando Mendoza. Expected completion date is May 25th.

Link: http://www.vimeo.com/808243

Send your friends to this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K3zD15rzHg