My connections to the filmmakers who made "Take"

Today an independent feature film starring Minnie Driver called "Take" is being released in local Utah theaters for all to enjoy. I had the pleasure of going to a special advanced screening last Wednesday evening at the Gateway. It was emotionally heavy and very dramatic, perhaps to strong for me personally. However, it is undoubtly a powerful movie with great perfomances and story throughout. Charles Oliver (writer/director) and Chet Thomas (producer) were there as well for a Q&A session after the movie.

Now for those of you who don't know I have a bit of history with Chet Thomas. In early 2003 my commercial art teacher Tom Wood advised me to get involved with a program called Independent Student Media Films (www.ismfilms.com). A former student of his (who he said I reminded him of because we both always talked about making big movies someday), Darrin Fletcher, had teamed up with Hollywood producer Chet Thomas and started this nation-wide educational program. My friends Jim and Angie came with me to a presentation Chet and Fletch gave at a local high school. We stuck around afterwords to bug them and pick their brains for knoweldge.

A few months later while Jim, Angie, and I were down in Burbank to help on the shooting of "The Book of Mormon Movie" we stopped by Chet's office in North Hollywood and he gave us an hour of his time to ask him questions and learn about the industry. A couple months after that we particpated in ISM's summer workshop here in Utah. Teachers and students were assigned to work with different departments everyday and learn directly from Industry professionals during production of a short film shot on 35mm film.

I was out of high school and Jim was a senior during the 2003-2004 school year. Jim had special permission to go to West Jordan a couple times a week to be in the ISM film class at West Jordan because they didn't have it at Brighton High. We utilized West Jordan High School's equipment they purchased for the ISM film course to create a short film unlike any we had made before. It was called Catawampus and we finished it in June of 2004.

I served as a spanish-speaking missionary in the CA San Fernando Mission. Four 3 months I lived with english-speaking missionaries who served in Chet Thomas' ward in Burbank. I never really got to speak to Chet but the english Elders passed a DVD of Catawampus with my contact info onto Chet and said hi for me.

Skip forward a few years later and Chet Thomas is promoting "Take" here in Utah. The day after the advanced screening Chet and Charles were up at the University of Utah were they gave an amazing presentation on the making of this film. It mostly covered pre-production. Writing, financing and budgeting, storyboarding, and all sorts of really cool topics were discussed in detail. There were also a few amusing stories.

After the presentation I had the perfect opportunity to put in a plug for ISM Films to Brian Patrick (the head of our film program at the University of Utah) with Chet standing next to him. I started a mutually benifcial dialog between the two. And Chet thanked me for my efforts afterwords.

Yet again I had an amazing experience that helps to motivate me in my filmmaking endevours. I believe I made a good impresion on both Charles and Chet. I made sure to obtain all their contact info and they have mine. I'm sure that will benefit me greatly in the near future.

Anyway, support my friends and go see "Take" here in Utah theaters!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Making Movies in the Not So Distant Future

You’ll never believe where I’ve just been! I recently returned from a possible future reality where I was visiting a movie set. The crew was so awesome and showed me so many phenomenal things. I can’t talk about the movie itself because they don’t want anybody to steal the idea before they get a chance to make it. But I can tell you about their workflow and the technology they were implementing. Okay, lets start with the camera. Man, that thing was amazing! It didn’t really look like a typical camera you’d see today, more like a giant eyeball on a gimbal. They rigged it all sorts of ways and controlled it with a tablet. And when I say controlled it, I mean pretty much every aspect you could think of. You see it’s a light field camera so it captures everything in front of it with depth. Through an app you can control things like focus, focal length, exposure, and frame rate. What was even crazier is that none of that was baked into the actual raw files! It was all settings passed o...
Read more

What Video Literacy means for Video Professionals

In the 21st century everybody has the means to make a movie. You no longer need a lot of money or connections to Hollywood to get going on your first project. Got an idea and a smart phone? Great, go out and tell your story! Of course that doesn’t mean your movie will automatically be an Academy Award Winning Blockbuster and make over a billion dollars. It’s a little more complicated than just that. But on a fundamental level, whether you are shooting a video of your kid playing in a pool or a scene with Tom Cruise running through the streets of Paris, the basic principles are the same. Light reflects off of objects, gets captured by a camera, and moving images are produced. The power now found in ordinary people’s hands cannot be overstated. We no longer live in an era of trade secrets only shared to the initiated. The curtain has been pulled back and we see the Wizard of Oz for who he really is. Very technical processes have been demystified and simplified to the point that a c...
Read more

What Star Wars means to me

Image
Even though it can upset me, I don't blame anybody for asking, "Hey Brad, what do you think about them making more Star Wars movies?"  I am a huge fan, have been since I was a kid, and Star Wars is a big deal to me. Like countless others, Star Wars inspired me to pursue my movie making career.  Before seeing the behind-the-scenes TV specials and making of documentaries for Star Wars I had no clue that movie making was even a legitimate career choice.  I began making videos by helping my brother and his friends with school projects and continued doing it with my own friends.  By the time I was 12 years old I was determined to become a movie director.  My parents were less thrilled, it didn't seem like a practical or realistic career goal to them.  But Star Wars ignited a passion in me and it has not stopped. There is a whole other type of Star Wars fan, one that still loves the visuals, the stories, and characters as much as I do, but has no inte...
Read more