Kevin Tostado - The Blog!

Watch Over Me has wrapped, and now I begin my work as a Camera Production Assistant working on a new show currently titled Saints & Sinners. Supposedly, the title which was A Dangerous Love before S&S, will change yet again. Either way, this show should air starting in March and Watch Over Me will start airing in about a month, both on MyNetworkTV.
Tomorrow will be my first shooting day on this new show, and we’ll be shooting at a wherehouse down in the port district just south of the Convention Center. We’ll be there for a week or so before moving on to our next shooting location, which is still TBD.

I’m excited to be finally getting out of the office on a permanent basis, and the crew I’m going to be working with seem really happy to be working with me. Hopefully, I can figure out a way to get into the local camera union so that I can get a much better-paying job on the next show.

[tags] Watch Over Me, Saints & Sinners, Stu Segall, Fox, MyNetworkTV, My Network TV [/tags]

So I’ve been a Spaceballs fan for a long time now, and it wasn’t until highschool that I got to watch the other Mel Brooks movies like History of the World Part I and Blazing Saddles, and I laughed my ass off.

Today, I read on CNN that they are planning on making an animated series based on Spaceballs:

“Like the 1987 movie, which parodied well-known science-fiction movies, “Spaceballs: The Animated Series” will spoof current blockbusters as well as every genre of entertainment from movies and reality TV to culture and politics.

It is set to debut on cable network G4 in fall 2007. Production has already started on an initial batch of 13 episodes.

Brooks, who will voice two characters in the show, co-wrote the pilot with longtime collaborator Thomas Meehan, who will oversee all writing for the series.” — From CNN

I think they’ve figured out the key demographic for this show by choosing to air it on G4TV. I wonder if they’re trying to avoid the cancellation that shows like Clerks: The Animated Series went through. I think that lasted like 4 or so episodes on the air before ABC pulled the plug. (Partially for good reason too, those cartoons weren’t any good).

Anyways, I hope they do a good job with these and that they get lots of celebrity voice cameos to bring some attention to the show like The Simpsons did early on. May the Schwartz be with you!

[tags] CNN, Spaceballs, Mel Brooks, TV [/tags]

So after waiting around 4 weeks from my original request, I finally got a page on IMDB! Now, granted, I haven’t really worked much that counts towards IMDB, but hopefully within a few years you will see this page fill up with a ton of shows and movies!

On a somewhat similar note, Yellow Lights now has been sent off to the Phoenix Film Festival as well. We’ll hear back in Dec/Jan for that festival in April.

Now to go enjoy my 1-day weekend!

[tags] IMDB, Yellow Lights, movie, Hollywood, job [/tags]

Last weekend I went to the Zero 7 concert at the San Diego House of Blues. It friggin’ rocked. I got there early enough that I was one of the first few in, so I got to be right up-front literally touching the stage. They had the speakers up nice and loud so I could feel the music.

Sia, a solo artist who is also one of the featured singers for Zero 7, looked like a cross between Gwen Stefani and Bjork and sang like a mix of Fiona Apple and Imogen Heap, a haunting yet intoxicating voice.

They played a two hour set with a 30-minute opening act from Jose Gonzales (pic below). He has a great voice and is an amazing guitarist, but all his solo songs sounded very similar. He was much better when we accompanied Zero 7 on the songs he had performed from The Garden.

There was an amazing song that they did where they recorded Jose singing a few notes, mixed it, looped it over and over added different reverb and SFX to it, continually adding more instruments until it built to a climax and then transitioned into the next song.

The only thing that kept me from giving this concert a 10/10 was the encore took way to long to get started and they ended with a song that dragged on and lost the energy of the audience.
Check out all my pictures of the concert on my Flickr page.

If you haven’t yet listened to Zero 7, I’d strongly suggest that you check them out.

[tags] Zero 7, concert, San Diego, House of Blues, music [/tags]

Previously posted on YellowLightsMovie.com:
As I write this post, a finished copy of Yellow Lights is on its way to the Sundance Institute’s LA office to be reviewed for possible inclusion in the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Unfortunately, we will not hear back until December if we’re selected, and if we’re not selected, we may not hear anything at all!

So now that the movie is finished, Tom and I are beginning work on the special features for the DVD to be on sale at some point in the future, possibly on this very site! Things we plan to make are a full behind-the-scenes documentary with interviews of all the cast and some of the crew, a deleted scene, blooper reel, and much more to come. I don’t want to give away all of our surprises. We’re also trying to finish up the trailer. Right now, we’re just trying to add some music to it to give it some more character.

Add Yellow Lights as a MySpace friend and help get the buzz going for our movie! The more people are talking about us, the better chance we have of getting into festivals and having Yellow Lights go somewhere! Keep checking the website to find out how things are coming along with the movie as Yellow Lights slowly starts up its festival run.

[tags] Yellow Lights, movie, indie, Hollywood, Sundance [/tags]

In the tons of free time that I have with my new job, I decided to spend my one day off this week by going to the movies. The movies that I went to see today were the infamous Snakes on a Plane and the college comedy Accepted.

I went into Snakes on a Plane (SoaP) knowing full well that the movie was likely going to suck and did not want to give myself false expectations of it being an amazing movie. Well, I can pretty much say that my expectations were exceeded, but only slightly. SoaP does a good job of scaring the shit out of anyone who is afraid of snakes (and perhaps others who just scare easily). Samuel L. Jackson seems definitely at home in the role as it seems he decided to just use his image of being a badass as his motivation in every scene. It does a good job of living up to the hype of being a movie about snakes on a plane, and not much else. I usually rate a movie by whether or not I would buy it when it comes out on DVD (and for those who don’t know me well, I have a ton of DVDs), and I’m kind of on the fence about whether or not I would spend the money to buy it. I mean it was enjoyable, and I definitely had fun hearing Samuel L. Jackson say the already classic line “I’ve had it with these motherfuckin’ snakes on this motherfuckin’ plane!”, but for me it didn’t quite live up to all the hype. Similarly, it seems like most moviegoers felt that way as well since SoaP has only pulled in an estimated $15.25 million in its first weekend (to contrast, PotC 2 pulled in a whopping $135 million in its first weekend).

The other movie I saw was Accepted, an Animal House inspired comedy starring Justin Long, the “Mac” guy from the PC vs Mac commercials. I first saw Justin in the tv series Ed where he played a lovable geek/loser, a role which I could identify with. He then had another role in the movie Dodgeball, where he played a similar type of character. At the San Diego Comic-Con, most of the cast were there to promote the movie, but they only got about 5 minutes of stage time. The one plus from Comic-Con was the keg party they threw on the lawn of the San Diego Hilton - Convention Center with a concert, beer, daquiris, BBQ, brownies — all free! That was one hell of a marketing gimmick and it definitely helped spark my interest in this movie.

I also really enjoyed that the premise of the movie involves going to school at a fake college, developing a curriculum, and going to an unaccredited institution. It made me proud to think about how our fake school is now a “new Ivy” after only graduating one class!

So go see Accepted if you get a chance. Little Miss Sunshine is another movie that I saw a few weeks back that has just started to see wide release. Go see that one as well!

[tags] movie, Accepted, Snakes on a Plane, Snakes, Plane, Hollywood, review [/tags]

We all decided in the office that the new name for our show Watch Over Me is now Walk All Over Me. Surprisingly, I still had enough energy to write this after just finishing a 17-hour shift with no lunch or dinner break (I did get food for lunch, just no break, but I didn’t get any dinner.)

Now for some well-earned sleep.

Today started just out like any other day at the office - stressful and full of things that need to get done. However, what made it different was that my boss and his boss who have side by side desks had a more escalated argument than usual which ended up in a couple FU’s going around and my boss packed up his stuff and quit.

So now as a result, I am now still a Office Production Assistant, but I am now an assistant to the Unit Production Manager, which to my understanding, is the boss of my former boss’ position, the Production Coordinator.

I definitely felt like I was in the middle of a domestic dispute or something when they were going off at each other. Now, I’m not from a divorced family so I can’t truly compare but it definitely felt like the type of thing where the Mom and Dad of the office were flipping out, deciding this was an unlivable situation, and the Dad up and leaving the family behind to deal with it on their own.

Anyone else been in similar situations?