This Saturday

Everyone should come on down to Dundalk Heritage Park this Saturday at 2pm to join in on the fun of the Dundalk Zombie Walk. We will be there taking pictures as well as at our booth giving away free goody bags! It will be fun for the whole family so stop down anytime from 2-6pm.

Phew...I am exhausted but still moving from the past few days. This weekend was pretty much the biggest weekend ever in terms of work/importance. All this past week I was helping a studio based out of California to get ready for a documentary shoot here in Maryland. Throughout the week we found grips, an AC, makeup people, and a DIT (myself). Then they needed black wood frames to hang bike parts in to have as the backdrop to the interview, so with the assistance of my father, all Friday night I was painting wood. I got it all done the frames were put together and we were in business. Saturday night comes around and they asked if we could make four more, there was no way to make them but we were able to paint the materials for four more. Sunday comes we take the frames and got to set on time. Then all day Sunday we were filming two interviews one with Debbie Pastrana and the other with the legend Travis Pastrana himself. It was great, stressful at times, but awesome to be in that environment. The next day we came back again at 10:30am and cleaned up the mess from Sunday.

That is why I haven't really been able to update and with the Zombie Walk coming up it is another week of dealing with crunch time.

Random Movie Fact: In the 2008 film Frost/Nixon, Both Frank Langella and Michael Sheen repeat the roles they created on stage. Ron Howard would only agree to direct if the studio would allow both actors to appear in the film version.

Thanks for the support,
Daniel Hess

This Past Weekend and the Gaps

So this past weekend was freaking awesome! I got to go to the Virgin Mobile FreeFest and do DIT for a company that flew in all the way from California. They were a great bunch of guys and while we didn't have a long time to chat, the little time we did have to talk was super informative and worth all the time in the world. I got to get the VIP treatment around the fest and got pampered with free food and swag as well as seeing some awesome acts from the media area. The piece de resistance of the day though was being around a Red Epic camera which was the first time I got to see it up close, it was a beauty and just an awesome rig the videographer had set up. Not only that but I got to handle all the footage coming in from the Red and it was beautiful. All around great time with a chill crew and a cool event.

Now to address the gaps in my blog, sorry each month I strive myself to post something every day but each month I find out very quickly I just can't do it. Some days are just big on a lot of down time which I don't want to write about because me talking to potential clients all day is just plain boring. Or on the other hand I get overloaded with work and I have a ton to talk about but I don't have time to because I am busy...then when I do have time to it makes for one huge blog post which I don't like to do either. I am going to try to find a middle ground soon and hopefully have a month where I blog every single day without missing any...

Random Movie Fact: In the 2008 film Hellboy II: The Golden Army, the one-eyed Troll Mr. Wink was named after Selma Blair's pet, a one-eyed dog named Wink.

Thanks for the support,
Daniel Hess

Coming Soon

Country music video, Voicebox, some more photography, and a pop music video this fall.

Wanted to keep it brief today!

Random Movie Fact: In the 2002 film Red Dragon, Edward Norton is the only actor who appears with two other actors who played the famous role of Lecter - Brian Cox and Anthony Hopkins. Norton would later appear with Cox in 25th Hour.

Farewell Sony HXR NX5U

Well it is an end to an era...or maybe the first era of my film career. Today I officially sold my Sony HXR NX5U camera for $3,000. It was hard but it was time to let go of the camera, mainly because it is just outdated. It was a glorious day when the camera arrived, I was so happy to have a great camera that was going to do so much for me and it did. The camera served me amazingly for about a year and a half. I used it for Gas Guzzlers and many of my student projects, for 2010 and 11 it was perfect. However the DSLR camera has really taken over the market and it beats my camera in several categories. For one it can run higher mbp/s which makes the HD much higher quality. If you compare the two the Canon T3I or 7D beats it every time. Also DSLR cameras give you an amazing depth of field that is much more cinematic than the HXR could ever be. It does suck though because I put out a lot of money for the Redrock Micro M3 adapter which I just got last summer and I should have never bought it. At that point I was just hanging onto the silly dream of making the HXR a cinematic camera, which it could be but the low data rate just makes the picture much muddier and then the grain from the adapter just doesn't look good at all. That is the next thing to sell, I hope I can at least get a 1,000 out of the adapter.


It has been fun HXR it really has but with the RED camera and Canon C300 on the market there really isn't room for you anymore. It is a new frontier and I hope to get out and make even better looking work in the future.

Thanks for the support,
Daniel Hess

No Country for Old Men and Red State

Well over the past few nights I have watched both No Country for Old Men and Red State two very different films that are both very well done. First I would like to over my thoughts on Red State the newer of the two films.

In the film Red State a change of pace for Kevin Smith three young high school kids all decide to take up an add for a woman looking to have sex with three guys at once. They decide to go out and take this woman up on her offer and when they arrive she offers them alcohol which is inevitably poisoned with what is implied as a date rape drug. When we see one boy awaken we are now inside of a church of very creepy people. We go through the motions of seeing how crazy these people are and in the meantime the police go down to investigate the boys car who sideswiped the sheriff's car on the way up to the woman's trailer. Police officer gets shot things escalate and it goes from there. What I love about this movie is the fact that it has a good sense of humor too it which is of course a staple of most Kevin Smith films. The dark subject matter is great for Smith who I usually have stronger reservations for because I feel like his films can be a tad too talk heavy. In this film he sticks to action, humor, and violence to create a very well done film. In addition this is his first film using a digital format which he used the Red Camera which again is a nice touch that allows him to do some very unique shots. I would highly recommend this film if you and your buddies are looking for a good movie to pass the time.

In No Country for Old Men Joel and Ethan Coen deliver another great film that is very dark and stays very dark throughout. It is a film about a hired killer who is trying to find a briefcase of money from a drug deal gone wrong. A man while hunting stumbles across it and tries to flee from the pursuit of this killer as well as fellow drug dealers who are all trying to get the money. In this film we see the mindset of the man on the run, the sheriff, and the killer all who which at one point or another you sympathize with in a strange way. I don't want to give away the ending but it is a different ending then you might expect for a film like this. I know I kinda felt like it was but it still was a little bit of a shock for me. The thing I love about the Coen brothers with this film though is the way they film it, it makes it seem as though anyone could do this film as long as they have a solid ground in filmmaking. This is not a bad thing at all, I love the simplicity of the shot selection and the very classical way of telling this story. Just everything about this movie they nail dead on, there is really not a lot of flaws I could point out. Another great one to watch maybe not with a bunch of buddies but certainly a great film none the less.

Thanks for the support,
Daniel Hess