Halloween versus Aliens

Two of my favorite movies in the horror and sci-fi genre. Halloween is a movie anyone can watch and appreciate the genius of John Carpenter. Even if you don't understand a lick of English, scary is scary.

Aliens is my favorite out of the Aliens franchise. James Cameron knows action above all else. Watch True Lies, Terminator 1 and 2 and Aliens and you cannot argue with the fact that Cameron's work stands far higher than any action director. He might not be the best but he's one of the best.

I edited the two films together for a editing class back in film school. The point of the project was to edit the movies together to make one coherent short. I had to cheat a little and used footage from Halloween 2 and 3.

Hope you enjoy it. Happy Halloween!

Olaf's House of Shoes

The actor , Quinn Carlson, who plays the shoe salesman Olaf is a Russian language major at UC Santa Barbara and loves everything Russian. So we wanted to do something about persistent salesmen that don't really understand a thing you're saying. Olaf will pretty much do anything to sell you a pair of shoes. Even make up a story about the shoes being his mother's.

Did anyone noticed the bottle of vodka in the left corner? Actual fact about Russian drinking habits. If there's 3 people at a table...it's okay to drink and you must have at least 1 bottle of vodka on the table. If there's less than 3...you're seen as alcoholics if you're drinking.

I love the line," We don't even have a ball, there's a guy on the sideline that decides if ball goes in." Cracks me up every time.

Olaf: Quinn Carlson
Customer: Jeremy Davis

On the Street...with Hughie "Chopper" Ferguson

Asians for Asians on Television doesn't exist. We made it up. Hughie "Chopper" Ferguson doesn't exist either, but if you look closer he could be the son of Will Ferrel's character in Anchorman.

Jeremy Davis does another fine job in taking a bare-bones character and making him real. It would've been nicer if we were actually on location at CBS studios but I don't think we could've gotten the permit. Who am I kidding, we didn't even try but it would've been nice.

I'm told that Charlie Cheng, who played the President of AFAOT, really meant what he said during his interview with Ferguson. I'm not sure if they really let Asian women work on the railroads?

Hughie "Chopper" Ferguson: Jeremy Davis
Chik Leung Cheng: Charlie Cheng

Directed by Mark Katz
Written by Charlie Cheng and Jeremy Davis

Southern Film Review - episode 1

This is my favorite skirt out of all the ones we did on the three camera stage set-up. If you've never acted and never improv, then you can't really appreciate what Quinn Carlson and Jeremy Davis pulled off in the skirt. They had a bare outline of what they were going to talk about. Neither really knew what the ques were and we really had one reheasal before we went to tape. It was all done in one take.

Look at how relaxed both actors are (maybe it's the beer, they're drinking real beer) through the whole thing. Quinn's motive was to talk about these traumatic moments in his life. Jeremy's motive was to keep him in line and run the show. Even the mistakes came out funny...when Jeremy asked Quinn about what happened in the bar in "Tombstone", Quinn really didn't know what happened. At the same time, Jeremy was choking on the dip in his mouth and really needed Quinn to talk. Watch it again...it's hilarious and honest.

Great job by both actors.

Joe Bob: Quinn Carlson
Jeff: Jeremy Davis

Contact

This was my second film that I shot on 16mm. I only had 12 minutes of film and thank god for Brian Shelburne, my lead man on the bench - he made every take count. I even put him in the situation of interacting with live people. When you see him reaching for people, those are not actors. If one or two person interacted with him, that would've ruined the take. I was hoping that people would ignore him and they did.

The transfer from 16mm to VHS tape to DV didn't hold up that well. I still have the 16mm print. The film looks great but I had to transfer it to VHS tape to edit the short. Editing was done on Media 100 (it's comparable to premier).

All in all, it was a fun 4 hour shoot. If all shoots were like that...

Man on Bench: Brian Shelburne
Editing and Music: Scott Villani
Written and Directed by Charlie Cheng