It's now three months since I relocated to Orange County after 14 years of Phoenix ...

Just this past November after 14 years of living in Phoenix, I relocated to Costa Mesa in Orange County, California, about an hour’s drive south of Los Angeles.

Something very bizarre occurred with me when I made what was supposed to be my last drive from Phoenix to L.A. Apparently, my rear trunk got loose during the drive and some very important papers, such as my birth certificate and my car title fell out. I didn’t know about it until I check my E-mail on my Verizon Droid (my computer and other items such as my HDTV and furniture were still in transit with North American Van Lines) and discovered an E-mail from an employee of the City of Phoenix Parks Department informing me that my important paperwork was recovered by Parks employees that morning and was being held by the Department in three garbage bags. Having them mail my belongings was not an option since the employee couldn’t tell it was really me on the phone she’s speaking to.

This meant I had to drive back to Phoenix to get my belongings. So I made the drive back that day with the intent of picking them up the following morning. However, I neglected to notice that the following day was Veterans Day, a federal holiday meaning all government offices would be closed that day. I called up the City Desk office which is always open 24 hours and told them of my situation. The City Desk phone operator was able to convince a Parks Department employee to let me in the office to collect my stuff so I would be on my merry way back home.

Once I returned home, I waited for my furniture to arrive later that week. After they arrived, I started the slow process of emptying my boxes. The following week, I chose to sign up with AT&T U-verse for my phone, cable and Internet connections. My first choice was Verizon FiOS, however although it was available in most of the neighboring cities in Orange County, it was not available in Costa Mesa. The only other choice was Time Warner, but I heard some not so good things about them. Later that week, I took my car to DMV, got it verified, had it pass a smog test, get my car registered so I could get my California license plates and I had to pass a written 18-question multiple choice test to get my California driver’s license. I could not get more than three wrong and I had three chances to pass it or pay another $28 fee. I passed it on the first try with only one wrong. My license was mailed to me two weeks later.

After completing film school in Scottsdale, Arizona, I will be doing freelance film editing work. I also am working on a couple of screenplays. I have also gone to couple of L.A. Kings game and one L.A. Lakers game as well.

The biggest headache I have is that the patio in my new house was not constructed properly, so every time it rains, my patio tends to get flooded. I am working to remedy this.

So that’s what’s going on so far.

The latest as of Friday, April 11, 2008.

Wow, I can't believe it's been almost three years since I posted anything on my blog. I guess it's because I didn't feel there was anything going on in my life worth posting, but most likely I don't like blogging when nobody is posting comments on them.

So much has happened during the last three years. I've worked on three feature film projects, I made my first overseas trip to London since the 9/11 terrorist attacks (both that and Iraq have made me afraid to travel overseas for a long time), I bought a new iMac last November and now have Avid, the editing system that Hollywood uses (in addition to Final Cut Pro) and I'm almost done with film school. Assuming I don't screw up with the last two courses I'm taking this semester (and no disagreements over my fulfilling the general course requirements), I should graduate next month.

Up until several months ago, I seriously considered traveling to Beijing to attend the Summer Olympics, but that was only if I was able to snag tickets for the Opening Ceremonies event. I was not able to obtain those and I also wasn't able to obtain tickets for gymnastics and swimming, so I am passing on the Olympics. I already have set my sights on visiting South Africa in the summer of 2010 to watch World Cup games. Two cities I definitely want to visit are Johannesburg and Cape Town.

After I'm done with school, I'm thinking about rewarding myself with a well-deserved vacation in late May. I'd like to visit two cities I've never visited before. They are Anchorage, Alaska and Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada.

My mother earned a free round trip ticket from JetBlue airlines for using her JetBlue credit card and she is giving it to me. I'm undecided as to whether I should visit Puerto Rico or Bermuda. I'd like to visit Mexico, but it only goes to Cancun and the only city I want to visit is Mexico City. Two summers ago, I drove with friends to Puerto Penasco (aka Rocky Point).

So that's my life in a nutshell. At least for the last three years.

Film almost ready.

For the first time since I shot the film last Spring, I have all the scenes put together in order on the timeline. There is still a lot of tweaking that needs to be done, but it's getting there. I was able to find the right kind of Spanish music I needed, plus other types of music and sounds.

Although I have a December 7 deadline, the first preview of my rough cut will take place next Wednesday, November 23. I'm really, really nervous as this will be the first time other people will see my work. They will be critiquing it and offering constructive criticism of it as well. This is a day I'm dreading, just like when filmmakers get their films released and the critics come out with movie reviews in which they either like it or hate it.

Pictures from The Joshua Tree.

Last May during a return trip from Los Angeles, I took a detour and stopped over at The Joshua Tree Park in Twentyninepalms, California. I took several pictures, here are a few:

December 7, 2005 is the date.

The deadline for getting my film ready for exhibition is December 7.

This, of course, assumes that there will be no further problems or technical issues along the way between now and December 7. As of now, I have a rough edit of the telephone conversation scene between the lead character and the girl he asks out on a date. Right now, that scene just goes back and forth when each of the characters is talking. However, with a little help from my technical adviser, there will be some tweaking of that scene in which I will get reaction shots from the girl while the guy is talking to her, meaning that I will need to create a "telephone voice" for the guy.

I also did a rough edit of the cafeteria scene in which while the girl is talking with her friends, the guy manages to get a hold of her cell phone so he could punch up her number and then call her. There are cutaways in which first you see the gang talking, then a cut to the guy sneaking up on them and snaring the girl's cell phone.

Finally, I put English subtitles on the classroom scene where the instructor is reading a Spanish poem and the English translation is at the bottom of the screen.

There will be one review of the film on November 23 in which I will receive feedback/constructive criticism from my classmates as to how they think I should edit the film. I will either accept or reject their advice and put the finishing touches on it by December 7. The film will be shown either on December 7 or December 14 depending on how many other films are ahead of mine.

So far, so good!

Latest on editing film/Volunteered at film festival.

Thought I'd let you all know that despite the glitches I've experienced about a month ago, editing on my upcoming short film (for now at least) is going smoothly. Over the last couple of weeks, I ran into more trouble trying to get a separate project done. That project was a 60-second montage of still shots I took at the Joshua Tree Park at Twentyninepalms, California last summer with the Alanis Morissette song “Ironic” in the background. Whenever I outputted it from the Avid editing system to a JVC deck, I get a lot of noise on both the video and audio portions of it. I then tried to output it on a Panasonic camcorder instead, again, no luck. With all the problems I had, I was starting to wonder (in jest of course!) if I had some sort of supernatural infection in which anything I touch goes haywire!

The following week, I found out that I was not alone. EVERYBODY was having the same trouble. It turned out that there was some sort of compatibility issue with the latest release of Avid Xpress Pro and the Mac OS X Panther operating system. One editor who has worked with Avid for years suggested that Avid be put on the Mac OS X Tiger system instead. Anyway, I don't know what both the tech and IT people did, but they did manage to fix it in a way so that any outputting from the Avid system to mini-DV would not produce audio and/or visual noise.

Anyway, we had our class presentation with our montage stills. I saw quite a few from my classmates that I thought was very good and that they really put a lot of work in them. Our job was to critique the montages, discuss what we liked, what we didn't like and what we could have done to make them better.

As far as work on the short film which I still hope for a Christmas release, that is going more smoothy. I have my first draft ready, but I have only another week to get my second draft ready in which it should be mostly finished. The deadlines are fast approaching!!! I have also been working on my film at home using the Final Cut Pro system I have in which I need to edit the phone conversation scene between "Steve" and "Tina" in which the shots cuts back and forth to both people talking to each other on the phone. I also worked on the cafeteria scene in which while "Tina" is talking to her friends, "Steve" notices she leaves her cell phone unattended, so he sneaks up to her cell phone and quickly pulls up her phone number, so he could call her in the phone conversation scene.

Finally, over the weekend, I did some volunteer work at the inaugural International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival held in Tempe, Arizona.



It is put out by the same people that put out the annual Phoenix Film Festival (the next one is scheduled for March 23-30, 2006). I volunteered to work on floor operations where I guide people as to which line they need to stand in for the right movie, manning one of the booths in which I sold DVD's and books and ticketing in which I sell movie tickets to the public. I worked on this so that I could see their movies for free (!!!) and to introduce myself to the directors and board members of the festival to get some recognition, so that hopefully I could improve my chances of getting the Phoenix Film Festival to exhibit the film I'm working on. The deadline for getting my film in for next year's festival is December 16. Right now, I feel that it's pretty close and I'm not sure I will be able to get it ready in time for next March's festival, but there will be other festivals I will enter my film in. Plus, it would give me ample opportunity to put together a winning press kit that should get festival judges' attention. At worst, I could try to enter the Phoenix Film Festival for 2007.

At the Horror and Sci-Fi Festival, I got to see some horror films, including "The Dark Hours" from Canada and the film that was just made on the "Project Greenlight" series run by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon called "Feast".
So that's what's going on. I'll keep you all up-to-date on the work in progress.

The drama of film editing continues.

(sigh) The drama of post-production film editing just never ends! Maybe one day I'll shoot my next movie about my experience!

Since I'm having trouble bringing my footage from my home computer to the school computer using the Final Cut Pro editing system, I decided to use the Avid Xpress Pro editing system. Avid is the one that is generally used by Hollywood, although some tell me that Final Cut Pro is making inroads now. I have already taken courses in both editing systems, but Avid is a bit more of a challenge than Final Cut Pro.

Here's a link to Avid Xpress Pro:

http://www.avid.com/products/xpressprohd

And here's a link to a picture of the Avid interface:

http://www.avid.com/community/mac/images/Script_lg.gif

So what I decided to do is output the footage that I've worked on so far on my home computer to mini-DV tape on my Canon XL1 camcorder and that I would bring the tape to school so that I could recapture it on the Avid system. I went through two JVC tape decks and two Panasonic camcorders to transfer the footage to the PowerMac with no luck! In all four cases, there was tons of noise on both the video and audio portions of the playback. However, I just outputted the footage yesterday and played it back on my Canon and it was fine! I returned home and played that tape again and like last night, it was perfect with no noise. Anyway, I decided to output that whole footage again on a new mini-DV cassette tape and this time I would bring my Canon to school to capture it on the computers there. Before I went ahead, someone told me that it was possible that anything recorded on my Canon camera may be incompatible on other camcorders due to a tracking issue which can only be fixed through servicing. Anyway, I tried using my Canon to capture my footage and, believe it or not, the Avid system was rejecting my camera! I would later find out searching on the Internet that evening that there are tons of issues between Avid and Canon.

So a couple of techs came by and concluded the only way to do this would be to convert my mini-DV copy of my footage onto a JVC tape deck, in which the tape deck would record directly from my Canon. Then we took that tape and used the JVC deck to capture my footage on Avid and it worked! Finally! After almost a week of headaches, I finally began working on editing my film at school.

I promised many people that I will have my film out by Christmas, but after all these technical glitches, I'm not so sure that will happen, but I try to be hopeful.