The following are films that I aided in producing and provide snippets of background information about the process of creating each film. These films are listed in chronological order from most recent to oldest.
The Dudesons: Dinner Time Language Barrier!
This short was written by Jake Edmonds and Trevor Harrison for a college level sociology class. In this episode of The Dudesons, I play Zenon X Romulus, an out of this world fellow who serves to open a commentary on language barriers. If you are interested in 70’s sitcoms, collateral coordinators, and toast juggling then this is the film for you.
Dave And Carl’s Amusement Park Adventure
What do amusement parks and skateboarding have in common. They sure do and in Dave and Carl’s Amusement Park Adventure, I play a character that is very into skateboarding and even more so into “hacky sacs.” This was another last minute production which I had wrote after plans for our Office film fell through. It was senior year of high school, and we needed one last film grade before we could call it a career but we did not have much time. So naturally I looked towards skateboarding as a way to structure a story around visiting various skate spots and before i knew it Dave and Carl’s was born. This was definitely one of the most fun videos to write and film as it was meant to be doofy from the start. And like the film teaches life is all about friendships and sweet H.
Disk-O-Winder
In Disk-O-Winder I got to play the role of Darnell Dawsonomeyers Jr. III. This epic game show, with an entirely original soundtrack brought to you by SpeedyTimmyEXP, was our most grand and spectacular last minute production in of all of high school. As the scrolls of old tell us the LeavingSomeDay crew had finally reached the due date for the film and as was tradition, this is when all of the real work began to get done. Set immediately into rush mode we convinced our film teacher, Richard Patricia, that we would hand him a film one week from the current due date. As usual this ploy worked, and the four week production process began. One thing that made this film really special was initially we had planned for it to only be eight minutes, but instead it spiraled into the 28 minute beautiful disaster that it is. Initially we figured each round would be two minutes and there would be four 30 second commercials. But as was also tradition we wrote out a very light script and included a lot of improvisation the lead to longer and longer scenes as we gave each character larger roles. A key example of this can be examined in Officer Poundcake’s role played by Colin Corde. Initially his character was supposed to be used for Foreigner’s Palace and Dice Challenge, but as the game filming process went on we continued to integrate his character more into the film. Another piece of trivia about this project’s timeline is that filming took place over the course of one week. All of the game room set scenes were shot over the course of one nine hour long filming day, and the Rockstical Corse and Cooking competition were shot on two separate days. Editing took an additional three weeks and rendering took multiple attempts with Zave’s Computer taking about 16 hours to render each time.
Lipstick
Lipstick by Ariel Pink became a common soundtrack for the LeavingSomeDay crew in the summer of 2017. When school rolled around in the fall we knew we had to create a music video as homage to the sound that had burrowed into all of our heads. This music video was to be a secret from our film teacher, Mr. P. So when the time came around to pitch our script to him and the class we said the story would be a serious gay romance between Matt Diamond and a young lad. When filming began we had not expected to include this section but luckily we found ourselves with a couple of spare days we could use to add this smooth polish. This only aided in concealing our true intentions from Mr. P and when the film opened with Eric Lawson, played by Jake Edmonds and Matt Diamond, played by Eric Lawson, we knew we had him.
ScepterQuest VII: Sir Calcium’s Tale
ScepterQuest VII might just be the greatest story never told. This film project dominated LeavingSomeDay’s junior year of high school and Sir Calcium’s Tale is just the tip of the scepter. Calcium’s Tale depicts what was originally going to be a flash back of Calcium recalling his tragic backstory of becoming a true hero.
Pearanoia
In 2016 Logan Parker and I teamed up to tell the tale of fruit lunacy that became my first LeavingSomeDay Production. This film was made for my high school sophomore year film class and depicted a man’s madness caused from nearly choking on a pear. Pearanoia is very special to me because it is one of the first films where I produced a large portion of the writing, directing, acting and editing. One of my regrets of this film is that it was slightly rushed and some scenes were never shot. For example, one of these scenes depicted Pearston seeing to a psychiatrist after his outburst in class. This is where he received the placebo pills from a hospital janitor dressed like a doctor which he used in the next shot seen in the published version. Back in high school there was chatter between Logan and I of making the sequel, Pearanormal Activity, but as of today there is no current progress made on this project. One more behind the scenes trivia is that we purchased between 15 and 20 pears for the making of this film.