I got a new job… :D

Turns out I’ve been working full-time the past few weeks at a local TV station called My50-TV.

It’s been fun because I get to come up with script ideas, edit, shoot, be creative, and get paid for it. Whoa.

Most of our stuff involves going around town to promote businesses with a host, aka “VJ”, who does all the talking and interviewing for 20-60 second segments between TV shows.

For 2012, we have been auditioning for a new VJ, and came across Dominic, a very funny chap from England. Unfortunately, he will not be the next VJ (citizenship status), but he’s going to be the “Judge” who tries out the 3-4 VJ finalists throughout January.

We brainstormed up this bit together:

Josh did the voice over.

I’ve had all kinds of ideas for Dominic, and he’s had very slap-stick ideas for himself, but we’ll have to keep him tame and toned down for a little while as we “ease” him into the public eye. So I eased him in with a nice extreme close-up for his introduction.

Done With Santa Fe: What I Learned As A Production Assistant

I really had a crazy time in Santa Fe. It was my first real PA job. The most stressful, stimulating two-months of my 28′s.

During the 7 weeks I worked as a PA:

• I experienced the highs of accompanying 2 barfing actors in the emergency room and missing the STRFKR show.
• I experienced the lows of babysitting 2 puking complainers in the emergency room and missing the STRFKR show.
• I have had close encounters with the core goodness of humanity, and also the inherent charlie sheen ego-mania of humanity.
• I have come to understand that “who cares what other people think” isn’t just a mantra that makes you feel better.
• I have learned that when you’re bustin your ballz, there’s no time to feel insulted, it’s actually pretty easy to slip into “who cares what other people think”.
• I have learned that coffee and I have finally been forced into a life-long affair.
• I learned that no matter how square of a screenwriter you are, a strong ego will get you places.
• I learned that under the most intense pressure, I wanted to retreat to some place in the middle of nature with canvas and paints.
• I learned that actors have really [funny] things to worry about in life.
• I learned that making wrong turns on the way to a hotel can mean the apocalypse for somebody else.
• I learned that even when an entire country is washed over by a Tsunami, bookmarking nudity/side-boob scenes in a script is still the primary focus of a PA.

Can’t wait for more.

Now I’m set to go to Denver next weekend.

Living in Santa Fe – New job as a PA

A little over 2 weeks ago I got a new job working as a production assistant. I’m working in the production office for a TV pilot shooting in Santa Fe. Wikipedia describes my job perfectly.

The production company put me up in a cozy hotel. I like it. The best part is how there are  spinach-eggs and green-chili eggs rotated as breakfast. Every. Single. Morning.

A lady named Flower hooked me up with the position because I had started a job with her last summer on a movie that went under within 3 days.

Before that, Josh and I were on a pretty big roll on some video projects, one of them including this commercial we wrote and shot for Golden Pride.

I heard it was supposed to be on some cable networks, but so far I only know it’s been playing in ABQ at the huge sold out b-ball games.

Also, there were chances of a new band developing with Tommy, Danny, and Steve…???

Practice has been a little hard to execute ever since getting the new job, but I’m confident that kids will have their teeth knocked out when we finally make a show happen.

Albuquerque Video Production Services – Shooting & Editing

Most of my blog is dedicated to documenting life experience. This entry is about video production work I can do for you in Albuquerque.

I am a freelance video producer/editor. I have over 15 years experience. I can make a video for your personal use or for your company.

Here is a recent TV commercial I produced for The Vanity Makeup Studio:

Dreams And Music Videos

Tonight the moon is nearly burning my skin as its full moon-beams shine through my bedroom window.

My dreams have been wild lately. Not completely insane, just super real. I’m settling unresolved issues with people who I haven’t talked to for years. I’m facing imprisonment and capital punishment in foreign countries. I’m experiencing nuclear attacks. I’m living entire lifetimes in minutes.

I guess it works out, because I’m working on a music video for Will’s project, Riley Guy, and need a semi-schizo, moon-inspired neurosis to make this happen and finish already.

I’m running through thousands of photos. It’s not the most fun.

In other news, my production assistant job fell through. The movie isn’t going to be made. Somebody who had money chickened-out on the deal I guess.

“How can I help you finish your own movies,” you ask? Simply go buy stuff!

Blue October

I worked another show tonight.

I remember seeing Blue October when they were playing the duck pond at UNM. I remember they played there an awful lot. And despite all of the criticisms shared among Jake Tittmann and me between classes, this band still “made-it”.

But what does “making it” even mean with bands?

I work these shows at Sunshine, I get to see the bands pre and post-show, and… I see the fans they have to deal with.

There is a distinct boundary between each fan-demographic, from show to show. After tonight, I’m not sure I’d ever want to be Blue-October.  I also realize that I’m not sure Blue October wants to be Blue October either.

I remember working at the radio station (103.3 The Zone! FM). We used to do these things called “sound check parties” where a group of listeners were entitled to show up early enough at a show to watch the band “sound check” some special songs for a select group of “contest winners”.

Apparently another pop-rock FM radio station called “The Peak” did the same thing for this Blue October show, only the singer and the band didn’t appear to like doing it at all. They douched around playing whatever they felt like, including a half-assed cover of the oldies classic “Blue Moon” while the singer kept his back to the “winning crowd” of 20-or-so gawking radio contest winners.

It was sad, but reasonable, because…what would I do in that situation? Clearly, being a one or two-hit band means performing a lot of mini-concerts like that to “contest winners” who see you, not as a human performer, but a prize that was won for a “rare exclusive group” of “lucky” people.

Admittedly, I have certain aspirations for a rockstar-like status. But it is strictly (I hope) for reasons that isn’t a stigma to being a “rockstar”. So seeing this kind of stuff makes me want to re-evaluate what it entails to be a popular musician at all.

Of course, it all depends on the demographic. Clearly these guys felt that being a simple pop-rock band was the answer. But when a group of these fans (drunk, asinine human-beings) howl nonsense from the stage and drown out a piano/pizzicato violin solo that took you years to master, have you ever questioned what-the-hell-happened along the way?

The answer is compromise. The universe smells it on your band, and so shall ye receive its due audience.

The Dead Weather

Finally, a Sunshine show I was stoked to see.

I didn’t go to Coachella after all. Of course, William let me know about how enlightening, inspiring, and beautiful the 3-day festival was. I tried to ignore the fact that I spent most of the weekend focusing on non-enlightening things. I also got a temp staging job setting up lighting rigs, unloading ungodily heavy equipment from a truck.

The Dead Weather is Jack White’s newest project with chanteur de femme exquis, Allison Mosshart of the kills; Guitarist/keyboardist of Queens of the Stoneage; Eccentrically fat-toned bassist of the Raconteurs.

The best part was the sound check, involving them practicing jams from the new record, plus not-yet-recorded jams.

And just because I’m pompous and music-righteous, I’d like to add that this is the first show where I didn’t have to deal with the low-intelligent results of drunk humans who spew fluids from both ends, putting the cherry on the top of their night, as well as mine. So, my egotisticality likes to point out the inverse relationship to the amounts of bodily evacuations with the level of intelligence to be found in the demographic, and hence, the intelligence of the music.

Cheerio, mates!

Mortuaries and Film Sets

So the last couple of weeks have been wild and exciting.

Here it goes.

I finally landed a job interview at a place that agreed to pay decently for design/video work.  I went through a couple interview sessions, graduating along until I was neck ‘n neck with one other person for the spot. Long story short, I didn’t get the job. But that’s okay, because the interview process made me realize that my true life-dreams can happen apart from working there; a mortuary.

“Graphic design and video work at a mortuary? Where death, sorrow, and sad families reside twenty-four seven?!,” you ask.

Yes. The job requirements involved the following:

• Designing memorial cards with photos of the deceased
• Help design marketing materials for billboards
• Video tape/edit memorial services

I didn’t know there was a market for such things, specifically creating DVDs of funerals.

Sidenote: I feel unusually careful about using usual dry/dark remarks about this situation, because the people who interviewed me seemed like rad down-to-earth people, and I risk this blog being discovered. How? They asked me for the URLs of sites I created.

I’d like to keep it real, however. Allow me to proceed with as much tact as possible.

A sad, yet rather pleasant, truth is, I’ve never been to a funeral service. I have a good-size extended family, and in all my 27 years, I’ve only had one family death; my Mom’s dad, when I was 8. My life has been relatively free of tragedy. It’s quite a thing to be grateful for. The strange irony is this: In the past I’ve been surrounded by dead bodies in the school cadaver lab, handling entrails and dismembered limbs, even a severed head cut straight down the middle like a cantaloupe, all for the sake of art.

It’s not that I don’t have death experience, just a lack of funeral experience. So, the job requirements were going to be quite a new adventure for me. I would have had to get used to consulting families about which super-hero should be photoshopped onto their deceased child’s memorial program. While I was up for it, because hey-it-was-a-job, the interviewers must have smelled something on me that revealed I was a little bit more interested in an autonomous approach to creative endeavors.

They used an interview technique to dig out my true values. So it was like psycho-therapy. At least that’s how I imagine successful psychotherapy to be; a system of questions that require you to look at the answers you already have for yourself. They pulled out what I really want to be doing in five years, and absolutely none of it had to do with working a 9-to-5 job in the funeral industry.

The day I got the email that said they gave the job to the other guy, I was as accepting as a Hindu monk. I contemplated the 5-year question, and started to obsessively write down some goals for myself. Immediately I began to see action-packed results and take steps toward the new groove. This was in complete opposition to the familiar, “I need job now, so I go git one.” Instead, it was “I am going to get a job THERE.”

As of now, I don’t have a steady job. Still work at the concert venue sometimes. But… more recently, as Albuquerque is gradually becoming a little Hollywood, I got to work on set for a day as an extra for a T.V. show. Coincidentally, I was also invited to a party with the cast/crew of the same show. Despite the new-guy awkwardness that happens in these situations, the whole experience and unfolding of events was an eye opener. And it all has to do with this little quote I discovered:

Fifty percent of the battle ends when you make up your mind.

There’s a load of vomit, and we’re all out of shovels.

My mom once told me that my Grandpa was trying to become a boxer until the traumatic day he punched an opponent in the stomach, causing him to vomit spaghetti all over the place.

The story was told to me when I was probably 8 years old, but it came back to my memory with such vivid splendor tonight as I was told to clean up a full stomachs-worth of spaghetti on the balcony at Sunshine Theater.

The smell of stomach acid, although consistent in aroma from person to person, is a smell that I’ll never get used to. This wasn’t a simple pile to be sopped up by a mop and bucket, but a series of massive splashes that started on a table top, slapped to the floor, and lubricated the foot steps that had trafficked through it, leaving a slippery 10-foot radius of fun and fragrance.

Tonight would have been the first night working at Sunshine that I didn’t have to deal with bodily ejections, and I almost got away with it.

Sidenote: Killswitch Engage played. I care about that kind of music as much as I care about seeing McDonald’s on roadtrips… but the drums sounded super good.

Working For My Brothers

I don’t take too kindly to not having a job. Technically I do have a job (masonry labor/block tossing), but “work” is coming in the unforseen future.

The state of not having a job is actually quite enjoyable to me. I like the free time and doing what I want. I don’t get bored. But when I see my bank account depleting every single day, getting closer and closer to zero, the pressure is on to go job hunting. So, a bunch of time is wasted as I apply for jobs where people who are as confused as I am about work are reluctant to hire me.

There’s very few things I abhor; job hunting is one of them. Thankfully, my brother Jeremy who used to be my brother Josh’s landlord provided me with a one-day job of cleaning up Josh’s neglected unit.

I’ve done this type of thing before, and had forgotten about the universal enigma of discovering pubes in the refrigerator.