Back from la-la-land.

I'm back home after spending the weekend in Los Angeles. While I was there, I visited Santa Monica and Venice Beach. Saturday night, I decided at the last minute to go to a comedy club. I went to the Hollywood Improv located on Melrose Ave. in West Hollywood.

Here's their Web site: http://www.improv2.com/hollywood.html

They had four warm-up stand-ups and one headlining stand-up. The four warm-ups were mediocre at best, although there were a few laughs. The feature stand-up was a comic who goes by the name of Rich Vos. I don't know anything about him, except that he's from New Jersey. He was the one that got the most laughs but most of his jokes were all about his racial hangups with every ethnic group in the world. Among the people in the audience that became the butt of his jokes was a patron from Finland. The comic tore Finland apart as if it were a country "no one's ever heard of or not known for anyone or anything famous" (never mind that cellphone maker Nokia is based in Finland). I won't go into his routine except to say that he'll never win any awards for harmony or brining people together! I was smart enough to sit way in the back and out of sight of the comic. I learned my lesson many years ago when I sat in the front at a comedy club in New York and this stand-up from Houston, Texas made me the butt of his jokes! I don't understand why people sit up front unless they enjoy being made fun of in front of an entire audience!

Finally, on the drive back to Phoenix, I decided to make a detour to The Joshua Tree Park at Twentynine Palms. Here's a link:

http://www.nps.gov/jotr

I took plenty of shots on my new camcorder and took lots of still shots as well. The Joshua Tree is a very huge park. Off the I-10 highway, it took me 30 minutes to drive to Twentynine Palms and once I was finished, another hour to drive out of the park and back on the I-10. I had a really good time.

Overall, I had a good weekend. I didn't get stuck in too many traffic jams, although many Angelenos weren't so lucky! On both my drive to L.A. and back to Phoenix, I saw the highway going the opposite direction always to be jammed and hardly moving! The traffic there lasted for miles! I remember when arriving at the hotel, I put on the local news and they had these live shots of the congested freeways.

My entire film has arrived!

I'm happy to say that the rest of my film arrived yesterday, most of it looks great! I received most of the film back last month, but only the last two scenes (the football stadium scene and the scene at my house) were still being processed and telecined, until yesterday.

After I get back from Los Angeles this weekend, I'll will start editing the film sometime next week.

It's already hot in Phoenix!

It's not even summer yet and we are already getting our first heat wave of the year. All this weekend, we'll be getting high temps at about 110 degrees Fahrenheit/43 degrees Celsius, with overnight lows at about 75 degrees F/24 degrees C. Normally at this time of year, our highs should be about 93 F/34 C.

I already got my ticket to see "Revenge of the Sith" late tonight. I bought it yesterday though. That's how "hot" they are (sorry for the pun).

I'm trying to come up with a use for my new camcorder. I might visit the Phoenix Zoo tomorrow or I might just take some shots of downtown Phoenix in the morning. There isn't a lot of traffic downtown during the weekends, especially on Sundays.

Bought a new camcorder!

Late last week, after over a year and a half of saving up for a new camcorder, I finally bought a second-hand Canon XL1 3CCD camcorder. It works really great, the videography is rich. I have been practice shooting and I have learned how to shoot video in daylight, indoors and in the dark at night. I hope to one day shoot commericials and/or documentaries.

For all you horror movie fans, it was the same camera used to shoot the British zombie flick "28 Days Later"(2002) on digital video. If you want to get an idea as to what kind of camcorder it is, this link will take you to a similar camcorder, the Canon XL1s.

http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/controller?act=ModelDetailAct&fcategoryid=114&modelid=7471

Right now, Canon has the XL2 available.

Welcome to my blog! : )

This is my first post right here on Blogspot. I plan to talk about pretty much what's going on in my life, especially with filmmaking.

During the Spring 2005 semester, I was shooting my first short film with sound/dialogue and being that it was my first project with over 15 people, I decided to keep a journal of my filmmaking experience on another blog site.