Zach

So I have been sitting on these two photos I took of my friend Zach for a while now, I put them up on our facebook page but I kept forgetting to put them up on the blog until tonight. I like the nice use of black and white in them and that is thanks in part to the fact that he was wearing a white shirt. He was on the computer at the time rapping away so that is why his mouth is open, on the one which to me is the only issue with the photos. Otherwise I think they are very solid photos. Also it is or at least was his facebook profile picture which always makes me feel more confident in my work. Check it out and enjoy! More photos soon to come.

Random Movie Fact: In the 1995 film Friday, the neighborhood where the film takes place is the same street where the film's director, F. Gary Gray, grew up in South Central, Los Angeles. Principal houses that were used for filming were houses of old friends of the director. The scene where Deebo punches Red into the air is the house that F. Gary Gray grew up in.

Thanks for the support,
Daniel Hess

The Latest

I feel so empty handed today, I don't have any pictures to upload or any other kind of content to show off. Sorry for that. However I have been working my butt off at my part time job up in Towson. I have been working with editing/video production/logging footage. It has been cool and the hours aren't bad either. That being said on my end TTP is going kind of slow but this weekend is the return of football! Well high school football at least, yes again this year I am recording football games for IBN sports based out of California. This weekend is the Patriot Classic at Navy Stadium so I have four games to film in one day...fun fun. In addition the next day I will be up at the Baltimore Humane Society filming some event they have going on, I just contracted it about an hour ago so more details coming my way soon. Other than that not much else to talk about here, going to relax the rest of the evening.

Random Movie Fact: In the 1970 film Five Easy Pieces, when Dupea goes to quit his oil-rigging job, the loud whirring of machines can be heard in the background. This identical sound effect was used seven years later by George Lucas, for the trash compacter scene in Star Wars.

Thanks for the Support,
Daniel Hess

Today's News

So now that I have sent Voicebox out to two festivals the anticipation builds to see what happens next. I hope that I get in but I won't know for a little bit I just hope good things happen.

Anyway today it has been confirmed that I will be getting back into filming high school football games again! My first gig is going to be September 8th at Navy Stadium, filming the Patriot Classic. I am excited since last years event was a lot of fun, and this year only one game is going to be live which takes a lot of pressure off of me, the rest of the games are just for highlights. I am glad to be doing football again and am excited to be getting more paid gigs.

I may have another group of gigs coming up but nothing has been confirmed yet, supposedly I will know by the end of the day so fingers crossed for everything to work out for it. Besides that it seems I will be filming a music video on the 9th of September and I am in the process of finishing up the Three Beers Later music video.

Random Movie Fact: In the 2001 film The Others, the disease the children have is an actual disease known as xeroderma pigmentosum. It is very rare with roughly a thousand people in the world that have it.

Thanks for the support,
Daniel Hess

Racing Towards the Finish

As of right now I am working on my friends final student film project. It is freaking intense and crazy. They have only a few minutes to get the project done and then turn it in, after all that the screening of the film is tonight. I am going to it and can't wait to see the finished film since I have not seen much of anything from it. I am excited and hoping they can get it all done.

Besides that I have to finish up my own film project Voicebox and turn that in by next Tuesday and also turn in a final paper for my English class. After that I am all free and ready to go! I am so excited to graduate and get everything done!

Thanks for the support,
Daniel Hess

A lot on the Horizon

So as I look out today I see a lot places I can go for a long term freelance goal. Today I made a call to a company a friend of a friend said might be hiring, I called today and the owner is on vacation but tomorrow he is going to look at my email and set up a time to meet with me, hopefully this can work out. I have re negotiated things on two of my three upcoming music videos to get enough money to not lose money on everything, so essentially I am just breaking even which is still ok at this point. In addition I have this job editing which gets me a cool hundred per video I complete which is a nice thing to have as well. Also I am really trying to push the concert filming/music video production end of things here which I hope picks up soon. Finally, I got approached by a guy who does high end concert filming that I hope I can work with soon on some gigs as well.

There are also some other things that are just in talks right now so I don't want to give out too much before I know more. However I think things are moving along nicely and with the money I have gotten selling stuff plus my last two paychecks at my job I think I will be safe at least for a little bit. I just have to spend like no money for a while.

Thanks for the support,
Daniel Hess

So...

As an update to yesterday's post once I got to school things got even better. In my Fiction since WW2 class our first big paper got pushed back to April 10th from April 5th. Then after that I had my Film and Literature class but our teacher was over 20 minutes late to class so everyone made a collective f*ck it and we all wrote our names on the board to say we came then we left. So it was quite the easy start to coming back to school after break. It was a nice and fortunate day for me. I hope this streak continues for me.

Onto other news my DP and Sound Guy just got back from their trip in Europe so I will be talking to them shortly either today or tomorrow to get all the dates officially marked down for film Voicebox. From that point I hope I can still rent some nice lenses to pair with the 5d Mark III we are going to be using for filming. Lets hope all goes well though.

Final bit of information here I am going to be making my next experimental film today so on Friday I will hopefully be posting that to Vimeo for everyone to check out. It is going to be a little while until my next short narrative piece comes out or at least until I finally get off my butt and finish Love is Undead which I have to do soon, I just can't bring myself to do it for some reason.

Thanks for the support,
Daniel Hess

Selling Everything

Today turned into a huge sell sell sell day. I went through all of my stuff and made a huge pile of things I want to sell to get rid of. It is almost all old video game stuff that I just don't want anymore and at this point it is looking like I couldn't give this stuff away. A few years ago I did the flea market once and made out like a bandit but that was before the economy got "bad." Now it seems like no one is buying but everyone is selling. When I wasn't selling junk it seemed like the exact opposite and it is funny how that works. Otherwise it was a day to get ready to go back to school tomorrow...after an extended spring break (since I didn't go to school on the Thursday before) I am not ready to go back. I want to just keep having way more free time then I know what to do with and being able to work insane hours (even though it kills me). This break wasn't fun really it was more like a time to face the issues I don't tackle during school because it would drive me insane if I did. So unfortunately I did a lot of working, fighting, getting ready for my film, and not enough basketball playing.

Once this semester is over it is a year off of school for me and then going back to get my masters...then the plan is to become a professor and then at the same time make films.

P.S. I am selling a lot of Sega stuff (Sega Saturn, Genesis, 32X, Game Gear, Nomad, Dreamcast and a whole ton of games). If there are any items you would like to see if I have or just wanna talk about film feel free to email me at mind_confided@yahoo.com

Thanks for the support,
Daniel Hess

What we like about...

Daniel Hess

Everyday I see this old piece of paper that my 11th grade teacher Ms. Brown printed out and laminated for everyone in the class. It is something that I have kept all these years and it makes me smile even on a bad day. She made everyone in the class write one nice thing about every other person in the class. It was a corny thing we had to do for homework that turned into something pretty cool. I just wanted to share the comments I got on the paper.

"I like how you put a lot of energy into everything. Your hard work is noticed."

"He's smart and has pretty eyes (dun-dun-dun)."

"Dan is helpful and will explain things to me."

"Dan is very smart."

"He's very smart and won't think twice about helping out."

"Dan has a future in rapping. He makes awesome raps."

"Dan is very funny and can handle criticism well."

"Dan is very hard-working."

"Dan explains things to me when I am confused."

"He talks to everyone!"

"Dan always does more than he has to."

"He's good at being involved in school."

"The fact that Dan sits next to Marina and her laugh shows he's a strong individual."

After all that my teacher added a comment to the bottom.

"Dan - I truly appreciate your diligence, your positive attitude, and your playfulness (except the orange incident). You are my philosopher, and you will go far in life."  -Miss Brown.

This takes me back to a simpler time when school seemed hard and every day was a new adventure. Now a days it is all work and little play. I loved high school and will always miss it, I guess I can be an overly nostalgic guy but that was a time when I felt like the whole world was in my backyard. A time when I had so many friends...a time where nothing could get me down. 

Thanks for the support,

Daniel Hess

Making Moves

So yesterday I had my meeting with the principal from my old high school Sparrows Point. The meeting was fine, I was clean cut and dressed up, super professional. He was more than willing to help in any way that he could but as far as nailing down the school for the weekend things were completely out of his hands. As soon as I got into the fact that I would need extras and filming on the weekend it moves into a category that the county has to deal with. Apparently they would need to have custodians on duty to clean up any messes we make while filming even though I offered to clean up after all that stuff. He is going to contact the county and get back to me but things aren't looking too good as far as right now. That leads us to the past 24 hours...

Last night was total breakdown mode which happens with every production but this time especially because of the location trouble so far. Well I had to work and just was not in a good mood, because as a student filmmaker I hate the fact that I have to limit my visions because of not having money. I am a firm believer in making great work but the things trying to stop that are numerous. It is sad because if I had a million dollars to throw around the schools wouldn't hesitate to have me film there even if the project was shit. On the flip though if you have a great story but no cash to throw around no one wants to be around you.

So to the present day, I went crazy emailing every school I could think of and didn't hear back from anyone except Dundalk Elementary who told me to contact the communication department in the school, then when I did the second I said anything about filming they immediately transferred to the guy who runs the department. I left him a message and haven't heard back yet. I can see myself fighting this guy because whenever I say I want at least 50 extras for the film and want to do a little bit of decoration the conversation takes a left turn to nowhereville. Sorry I don't want to just settle anymore, and making a believable film takes some set decoration and extras. Lets see how it goes.

Thanks for the support,
Daniel Hess

HDR Test

The meeting about using my old high school didn't go as well as I had hoped today so I decided to do something I have been wanting to do to cheer me up. Without further ado here is my first HDR test, I call this photo The Trailer.

Thanks for the support,
Daniel Hess

Big Changes For Tomorrow

So today I have been running myself ragged in a day that should have been a lot more chill, mainly because my morning class got cancelled but I didn't realize it until after I got up to Towson which sucked. So after being up for all that time I went back home took a shower then got my hair cut, then came back for an audio interview, now I am going to class, then ditching my last class in favor of talking with a good friend about being DP for my next big film project.

Tomorrow is making me nervous because I have the all important meeting with the principal of my old high school. This is vital to the film because I need this location since the majority of the story takes place at the high school, if I get shot down it will be devastating. We will see how it goes but I shaved the beard and cut the hair and bought a nice outfit all for tomorrow. It is huge to me.

Other than that I can really start to see all the shots I want for the film and the vision is really starting to come to life which is exciting because the more concrete idea I have, the better it will be come filming time.

Thanks for the support,
Daniel Hess

Working Things Out

Today I wasn't able to attend my lighting class which I thought would be no big deal but my teacher actually ended up calling my phone and asking where I was. I was shocked but it was something that couldn't be stopped since my car was driving so funky I didn't trust it going all that way. It turned out to just be transmission fluid and it is running much better right now. It was nice that things worked out that way though because it gave me more time to study for my quiz tonight and also get some much needed rest.

Also today I worked more on Love is Undead which has all the music set as of right now and the color correction is almost 100%. Now I am just working on the sound correction as well as the dreaded last step of adding the bullet/blood effects which I hope go a lot better than the last time I tried to do it, which looking pretty bad. The nice thing is that I am getting there and once the regular semester starts I will show it to some people/professors and once I get a final blessing I will send it out.

In other news I am trying to lock down this editing job which looks to be pretty basic but for each edit I do I get $100 which is pretty sweet since the work seems pretty constant. Once I get the ball rolling on that I hope to do at least one edit a week which after just a single month would be $400. We will see where it all goes but I hope it ends up somewhere nicely.

Thanks for the support,
Daniel Hess