A Christmas movie?

I am very excited about being hired to direct a Christmas movie for next year. I have been working extremely hard on preparing for our production which will begin at the end of this month. The star of the show is a dog who saves Christmas with the help from one special little girl. I am still waiting for the final word from the producers as to which actress will play as the little girl but I am confident that we will have a strong leading actress for the part. For the Santa in this movie we are trying to create something different from the traditional Swiss chalet style Santa. I want our Santa to be believable counterpart to the main character who is a very bright young girl.

 

This week I have been scouting out locations and prop shopping with my art director. We checked out some great prop facilities in the valley earlier this week. The first stop on our list was "History for Hire". If you have ever been there, then you know how amazing this place is. They have every period prop that you could possibly imagine.

 

As far as locations for our North Pole we found an amazing old factory location in downtown Los Angeles that we will be adapting for our Santa's workshop and living area. The location has so much character and has really grown on me. I hate to use the term Steampunk but that is sort of the inspiration for the look and feel of this version of Santa's world. The best part about finding this factory locations is that is has so many various locations in one central place. Shooting in this warehouse will enable us to shoot more than half of the movie in one location. So far of the places we have scouted we are convinced that we can lock our shoot down to just three locations for the entire movie. We will have the warehouse in downtown, a house possibly one we've already scouted in Simi Valley and a movie theater. The theater we are looking at now is an amazing old theater with a Gothic motif inside and a more retro look on the exterior. So far everything we have been looking at has added new depth to our story. Each location has pushed our creativity to the next level and each challenge has helped us forge a stronger connection between the story and the design.

SANTA'S DEN AREA

 

EVIL VILLAIN'S LAIR

I am continuously surprised by the amount of production value we are getting out of the locations we have found here in L.A. and by the quality of crew members who really care with a passion about what they are doing. Everyone on board for this production so far has been amazing. Each person has gone above and beyond my expectations. I only hope that we can all continue down this path until the end and come out with a movie that each of us will be proud to show to the world.

Verizon NFL Mobile App Spots.

In December I directed three spots for Verizon's NFL mobile application. Verizon provided us with the creative and our team executed the production of the three vignettes. We planned to shoot all three commercials in a single day and to my surprise were actually ahead of schedule throughout the entire shoot. I was fortunate on this production to be able to work with a very talented group of individuals. The spots turned out amazing and even better the client loved them and had little feedback during post. This was another surprise for me since I am so used to having to make revision after revision during post. We definitely created something very special and unique for the client and I was very proud of the team I worked with for being able to pull these projects together with very little resources.

 

 

Ford Fiesta 2012 Spot.

Last week I wrapped production on a new spot for the Ford Fiesta 2012. This was a special project for me because I actually wrote the script and directed the commercial. I had a great time directing the actors and driving the new Fiesta on set. It was a challenge to light the car and it took the crew an entire day to pre-light but in the end everything looked amazing. The spot has yet to air but as soon as it does I will post it. For now here are some screen shots.

10 Minute Fruits!

Here's the result of Thursday's 10 minute painting exercise. We decided to paint a variety of fruits this week. It was a tough night for all of us. As for myself I had a the most difficult time painting the strawberries. At the end of the night when I stepped back from my canvas I was actually surprised at how well everything came out. We had Gregorio Gonzales join us and although he decided to draw instead of paint this week I expect he'll be back to paint another time. Below is my finished canvas.

I've been uploading these painting to the daily paint works website along with some of my other artist friends. I recommend you go check out this site if you are interested in these types of challenges.

More 10 minutes paintings.

 

left: Dan Racusin  center: Edward Morden

right: Oscar Arroyo

Here we are after painting for ninety minutes. As you can see we are all very excited about these weekly challenges. It definitely helps to put limits on yourself. It pushed me to find new ways of painting.

 

11x14 oil on canvas board.

How do you like them apples?

 

Photo: Edward Morden

10 Minutes Challenge!

Here is my first submission to the 10 minute challenge. This was a great painting exercise and definitely one I plan on trying again soon. Painting with in a ten minute window really forces you to plan out your process. It really kept me on my toes the whole time. The first panel made my heart race a bit. After the first couple of panels I found myself getting more comfortable with the short time frame.

 

This was a second setup after painting the bell pepper. At the end of the night I couldn't believe how many paintings I was able to complete in a night.

Always Painting!

As a personal project of mine I've been painting on and off for a year now and have created a small collection of still life studies. These are some of my favorite paintings.

This painting came to me the night before my friends art show Amores Muertos. I already had two paintings but then this image came into my head. I painted as fast as I could and tried to copy the image in my head onto the canvas.

This is another painting that came directly from my imagination. It seems that most of the images that come directly from my mind are dark.

Jenny's rock collection. I thought it would be nice to document one of her art projects by painting it. She is crocheting very intricate covers for each these stones. 

 

Part I and II of the toy series. Above are my son's Fisher Price stacking rings and wood-block train.

 

These last two paintings are 5x6 inch studies done during a couple of our Thursday night painting sessions. Both of these pictures show a personal break through in my overall technique and continually excite my creativity.