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?
For the last 4 days, I’ve been volunteering and attending the San Diego Comic-Con. It has been a lot of fun and I’ve gotten to see a lot of cool promos for upcoming movies. The trade show took up the entire bottom floor and apparently walking every aisle is about 3 miles in distance.
On Friday, I went to a Bryan Singer panel where he talked about Superman Returns and the strong possibility of having a sequel made for 2009. He also showed some hilarious bloopers from Superman Returns.
Steve Sansweet gave his annual “State of Star Wars” speech where he announced that the all-CGI Star Wars TV show would hit the networks in 2008 and would be like “nothing you’ve ever seen before”. He also said the live-action show is still being developed and should hit networks “later this decade”.
The best panel of Friday was by far the Snakes On A Plane panel featuring Kenan Thompson & Samuel L. Jackson. They also showed 10 minutes from the movie, which confirmed that the movie will not be by any means a “good movie” but features a hell of a lot of Samuel L Jackson being one bad mother-f***a. They definitely recognized the importance of their fan base in the possible success of this movie by showing a montage of the songs, posters, images, etc that fans have created and posted online. The director also admitted that they were not making a trailer for Snakes On A Plane because they didn’t want to give the whole plot away. You can watch a funny response from the Q&A session by clicking on the pic of Samuel L Jackson below:
On Saturday, I went to a Lost panel in the morning where Jorge Garcia and Daniel Dae Kim (Hurley and Jin on Lost) were there as well as the executive producers. They answered a lot of questions about the future of the show including that they plan to have around 4-5 seasons total for the show, and that Season 3 will focus on relationships as well as getting into more of the science of the island. They also did their best to quash rumors such as the entire show takes place in Vincent the Dog’s brain and that the word “clones” will never be heard in Lost.
Partway through the Lost panel, Rachel Blake from The Lost Experience alternate-reality game grabbed a mic and started accusing the producers of being murderers and hiding the truth about The Hanso Foundation and The Dharma Initiative. I enjoyed this a lot because I’ve been playing along with the online game this summer and getting to be a live part of it definitely makes feel more involved with the show.
Quentin Tarantino got asked if he’d ever make a kid’s movie to which he responded “it’d be like no kids movie you’d ever seen” and that he’d let his kids watch it. Seeing Quentin in person makes me find him even more annoying. I enjoy his flicks, just not hearing him talk.
Kevin Smith was caught in traffic so his panel got bumped to the end of the day and shortened. Although Rosario Dawson did come on stage near the end to answer some questions about Clerks 2 and even called Kevin on her cellphone to have him talk to us through her speakerphone.
Nicolas Cage and Eva Mendes came to promote Ghost Rider. I am not too familiar with the comic, but the trailer looked awesome and hopefully the movie will not turnout like Daredevil did (it’s the same director). Cage came out with these big glasses and a few of us thought he might be trashed based on the way he was talking.
For the Spiderman 3 panel, Sam Raimi walked out on stage and then announced he had pretty much the whole cast with him! They answered questions and did their best not to give plot points away, although Kirsten accidentally let slip that Topher as Venom will capture her at some point in the movie. They also played a rough version of a trailer that should hit the theaters during the holiday season that looked amazing! Especially the shot of Venom at the very end as he springs directly at the camera.
Finally, Kevin Smith came on and answered questions about Clerks 2 as well as his plans for other projects. He said he doesn’t plan to sequalize any of his other movies and he also advocated ass-to-mouth for everyone. I saw Clerks 2 on Friday night, and while I enjoyed sequences of it (Star Wars vs LOTR), overall I wasn’t too impressed with the film. When asked if Kevin was planning on doing The Green Hornet, he said he couldn’t make action movies like Bryan Singer can, and if he did make the movie, it’d pretty much just be The Hornet & Kato leaning against a car talking about sex and movies.
If you get the chance to go to Comic Con next year (July 26-29), I’d strongly advise it as you’ll have a lot of fun and get to see a lot of cool promos and celebrities.
For all of my Comic-Con photos, visit my Flickr photoset.
[tags] Comic Con, San Diego, Lost, Clerks 2, Spiderman 3, Kevin Smith, Snakes on a Plane, Samuel Jackson, Nicolas Cage, Bryan Singer, Superman, Ghost Rider, movies, Hollywood [/tags]
Summer is speeding right along…
So it’s now the middle of July and I still have not yet been able to find a job in film production. It’s not that I haven’t been trying to get one, cause I definitely have. It’s just that it’s been hard to convince people via phone and email that this guy who just graduated from an unknown engineering college is the guy you should be hiring for the position in film production that requires 2-3 years of experience.
I’m definitely getting more open to working in TV again so I can have a paying job, although I know that’s not where I want to end up working. I just think that it may be difficult for me to get out of TV and back into film once I start down that career path.
On another note, Yellow Lights is almost to the point where Tom and I can sit back and say that it’s completely finished. Tom is meeting with Brian and Sean to do some final music work tomorrow, and then we’ll have a day or two left of work and it will be finished! A month from today is the earlybird deadline for Sundance, and we plan to have the film burnt onto a screener DVD and in their hands by August 18th. With the 15-20 festivals that we plan on submitting to, we need to save costs wherever possible, so submitting early will definitely help.
Starting tomorrow, I’m going to be volunteering at the San Diego Comic-Con. For those unfamiliar with it, it’s the largest convention in San Diego with 100k attendees and showcases everything from comic books to Hollywood movies to Japanese animation. I’m looking forward to the panels showcasing upcoming movies and tv shows including: Kevin Smith’s panel (always entertaining), a Lost panel with the executive producers and the actors who play Hurley and Jin, a 20th Century Fox sneak peek at upcoming movie releases in late 2006 and 2007, and a bunch more.
I decided to dig up some short clips that I shot at the 2003 Comic-Con of Halle Berry blowing me a kiss & Hugh Jackman singing both parts of Summer Lovin’ from Grease. Enjoy!
[tags] Yellow Lights, San Diego, Comic-Con, Comic Con, Halle Berry, Hugh Jackman [/tags]
Hey Everyone,
Happy Independence Day! I hope you all enjoy having the day off. (Gabe & Ramey, sorry you guys still have to go into work.) 
Here are some pictures I took from the fireworks show at the Padres game last Saturday night to help get you in the celebrating mood:
[tags] fireworks, 4th of July, Independence Day [/tags]
This post is coming from a hotel room just outside of Indianapolis, Indiana.
I’m done!!! The ceremony was awesome and the post-ceremony dinner at Top of the Hub in Boston was also great! The next day was not as fun as I spent it packing up my stuff, going to the airport to rent a mini-van, and driving to New Jersey while exhausted.
On top of all of that yesterday, as we had been planning to for a long time now, Francys and I broke up. We decided that although we felt that we were great together, it didn’t make sense to do the long-distance dating things for the next three years or so. Especially with me being her first boyfriend and all. If we’re supposed to be together later on, things will work out that way. All that logical stuff aside, I still already miss her a ton and am looking forward to the next time I’ll be back at Olin (Oct 14-15 for Family/Alumni Weekend) when I can see her in person to hang out as friends.
Currently, I’m about a third of the way done with my cross-country trek to get my crap back to San Diego. In the last 28 hours, I’ve driven over 1000 miles already. I was at Sean Munson’s house in Jersey last night, and I will hopefully make the trek to Grant’s house in Oklahoma City tomorrow night. The goal is to make it back to San Diego on Sunday or Monday.
When I make it back to San Diego, I’ll be picking up my RX-8 on Tuesday!!!!
Alright, enough blogging for now. Time for some sleep so I can do the next leg of the trip tomorrow.
[tags] Olin College, Boston, San Diego, RX8, travel [/tags]
1 Day Til Graduation – Update on Everything
It’s been a while since I’ve last posted. In that span of time, I’ve finished a movie, ran a week of senior events, finished 3 classes, and prepared to pack up the last four years of my life.
The “premiere” for Yellow Lights went really well. We had somewhere between 150 and 200 people piled into the auditorium to watch the movie. We got a ton of applause at the end of the movie which made me very excited and happy about the prospects of this movie. We still have some fine-tuning and a layer of polish to add to is so that it will be ready for submission to film festivals starting with Sundance in the late summer. Although I’m definitely curious what the reaction will be from audiences who know nothing about Olin.
I’ve been starting to pack my room up and clean the stuff off my walls. It’s a slightly weird feeling, but it still feels like it hasn’t quite me yet that I’m going to be done with Olin. Maybe during the ceremony?? Maybe I just feel like Olin is such a part of me that I’m not actually losing it? Who knows?
On Monday, I’ll be packing up most of my room into a minivan and starting to drive across the country. I’ve never done a road trip of that extent before, so it will definitely be a cool experience. I’m not sure where I’m going to be staying after the first night yet though…
To the Classes of ‘07, ‘08, and ‘09, I have a lot of friends amongst your classes and I look forward to hearing how you guys make Olin even more of an awesome place in the future. Feel free to keep in touch with me. I’ll also be at campus every once in a while, and I plan to be at each of your graduations.
To the Class of 2006, you all are so amazing. I feel so lucky and privileged to have been a part of your class. It’s been great being one of your guys’ Senior Class Reps and I hope you’ve had a fun and enjoyable last week of events leading up to Commencement. I’ll be proud to walk down the aisle tomorrow with all of you and I definitely want to hear what you guys are up to!
My new email address will be kevin.tostado (at) alumni.olin.edu for those who want to stay in touch via email. I’ll be in San Diego for most of June and hopefully in Los Angeles/Hollywood after that.
[tags] Olin College, graduation, Yellow Lights [/tags]
Tonight my SCOPE team is leaving for Chicago to present to Motorola tomorrow. We’ll be giving two presentations tomorrow and then tomorrow night the brunt of our SCOPE project will be done!
Wish us luck!
[tags] Motorola, Olin College [/tags]
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