Last weekend I went back home to Long Island to scout Jones Beach as a potential shooting location. It's only 20 minutes away from where I live. I knew Jones Beach was the perfect location, and scouting only confirmed it.
The wide open space of Jones Beach is perfect for the scenes we have to shoot there. My producer Alexa and I are going through the process of getting a permit to shoot there. It'll cost us $250, which is a reduced fee. It costs $2,500 to shoot in a state park.
This past week I held auditions for the parts of Narsha, Dante, and Grief. I held two two-and-a-half hour casting sessions. The first day I already had a favorite for each role. The second day I found some more. I think I know who I want to cast, but I want to go over the headshots with my casting director Erica before I make my decision. For me, casting is really nerve-racking. Partially cause I don't want to seem like an idiot in front of actors, who are just as nervous as I am. I have to get better at communicating with them if I ever want to be a director.
This weekend I'm sound mixing my friend Paulo's Intermediate Narrative Friday and Sunday. Friday was tiring because I was both mixer and boom operator all morning until the producer's assistant become my boom op in the afternoon. Plus the location, a dance studio, wasn't the nicest sounding location which made my job more challenging.
Today I was supposed to make revisions to Catharsis and start outlining my feature that I'm writing for my Preparing the Screenplay class. Instead I woke up at 2 and basically fucked around until 5 pm. My friend Bryce was giving away free tickets to see Kevin Smith's new film Red State at Radio City Music Hall (with a Q&A with Kevin Smith afterwards), so I reserved two and invited my friend Rob. To kill time before the screening I walked up Broadway in SoHo (where I live) and went window shopping. But I'm a shopaholic so window shopping was a bad idea.
I first took a look in UNIQLO and was instantly in love with their collection of anime t-shirts. They had One Piece, Dragonball Z, and Naruto shirts. They had Dragonball Z shirts last year and I bought a cute one in purple with young Goku on it. They also had Big Bang shirts that I desperately wanted. They were only $19.90, and I had $23 in my possession. My choice: Big Bang or Dragonball Z?
For those of you who don't know, Big Bang is a five-member boy group from South Korea. I'm an avid fan of k-pop, and Big Bang is one of the best boy groups out there. Their music is hip-hop/dance/R&B. They came out with shirts at UNIQLO in Japan, but I didn't realize they were also going to be in the States. Unfortunately all the small sizes were sold out. The t-shirts were in men's sizes, and I was an XS. All they had left were M, L, and XL, which were simply too big. I could have gotten medium, but I preferred a smaller fit. I picked up some XS Dragonball Z t-shirts to try on, and after trying on 8 different shirt I decided to buy a white Dragonball shirt with all the characters on it. I really like it.
After looking in H&M I realized I was going to be late for the screening so I hopped on a D train to Radio City. The movie was at 8pm and I made it there at 7:30. Rob brought his friend Ty who happened to be in my writing class as well. Bryce gave me three tickets and we set off into the theater.
I knew nothing about this film. Rob told me that it was a horror film, which immediately freaked me out cause I hate horror films. Apparently Kevin Smith is distributing the film himself. He planned on showing it at the Sundance Film Festival and auctioning it off to a distributor. In the end he bought it from himself and decided to distribute it. It's supposed to be released this fall but he's taking it on a tour to screen it first. When we got to our balcony seats I looked the movie up on my BlackBerry.
Red State is described as a horror/thriller film written and directed by Kevin Smith. The summary on IMDB said: "Set in Middle America, a group of teens receive an online invitation for sex, though they soon encounter fundamentalists with a much more sinister agenda." I also read that it didn't get such great reviews, so I had low expectations. I was also afraid ti was going to be super gory.
Kevin Smith came out before the film ti introduce it. I actually like him, even though I haven't seen all his movies. He has a great stage presence and he's hilarious just to chat with. My friends and I didn't know what was going to happen, but we didn't have high hopes.
The film was better than I expected, but still not so good. It wasn't entirely a horror either. Kevin Smith was ballsy with this story: nothing turned out how you expected it to. Which I suppose was a good thing. And it was funny, but I don't know if that was the intention. It really criticized and made fun of Christian Evangelicals, you know, the really extreme ones. It had a really great cast (John Goodman and Melissa Leo to name a few) and I must say, the film nerd in me thought it had great cinematography. This screening cost between $60-$100, but it is worth seeing for a cheaper price.
After the film Kevin Smith came out again and brought out the cast. It's always awesome for me to see famous actors in real life, including John Goodman and Melissa Leo. The Q&A was pretty much dominated by avid Kevin Smith fans who all thought the movie was amazing. As it turns out, Kevin Smith is making one more film called Hit Somebody and then retiring from directing. His reasoning was that he said all that he needed to, and now he was going to focus on his radio show and I guess producing films with his production company. I'm actually curious to see his last film, which will include cast members from Red State.
I should really be in bed now. I have an early call time tomorrow. Good night friends!
Oh, and don't forget to donate to my short film!
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