"Of Genies and Goldfish" teaser

[abalex]

This is the teaser for my latest work. It's a 25min short film that I've completed recently. I've created the characters and story and my friend Jonh Chan wrote the screenplay. Up and coming actor Charan Prabhakar accepted the challenge of becoming the barber. He did a great job.

Cool story:
Charan works as a bellboy at the sundance resort. He've seen Robert Redford many times and has talked to him. He will be working at his yard this week and will try to give him the "Genies" DVD as a gift. Will see what happens.

Synopsis:
A retired genie from India is living a humble, new life in America as a barber. Still holding fast to the principles of his former profession, he takes on a lonely young boy as an apprentice, one who has the potential of obtaining the mark of the tiger and following in his magical footsteps.

Thanks to all of you for your patience and support. I've submitted this movie to 20+ festivals, many of them international. The short it's an official selection for the New York short Film festival, UVSC film festival, LDS film festival and DV awards. The movie it's been preselected by the Strasbourg film festival in france and the LA short film festival, we're waiting for the results.

business and technical specs:

The budget was 600 dollars.

Lighting: We've used 2-1200 HMI and 2 kinos for the barber scene
and a tungsten kit for the basement scene all provided by our friend Phil Shepherd.

DP: Director of Photography Andy Velasco is from chile and has 18 years of experience. He worked on many international commercials and feature films. He shot the national "Little Giant ladder commercial", if you're familiar with it.
What else?....hummm

We've used 2 dvx cameras one was the A version and the other was the old version.
We shot the whole movie in 3 days, friday, saturday and monday. We've worked for 12 hours a day, ate lots of pizza and sandwiches.

Please take some time and check the teaser for the movie:

http://homepage.mac.com/villalbafilms/iMovieTheater3.html

thanks
George A. Villalba
Director

[PaPa]

nopt too shabby there!

i watched the whole thing , so you got the job! kept the attention span going!

From the short little teasre, i could tell the acting was so so. Im not sure what it is about sound that makes or breaks it but from what i could tell, the sound was good, clear and not noisy but it still doesnt sound like FILM sound. Not sure what quality is missing there, maybe just a bit of EQing, not sure where tho.

The Framing was great, so not much to say there.

This may be due to compression, but i would try crushing the blacks a little more and playing a little bit more with some CC as it still felt quite videoish.

Cool, show us more!

[abalex]

Thanks Papa for all your comments. You're right I don't know why it looks a little videoish, I think it was the compression. I did some major CC on the movie. The chinesse guy is not a pro actor but I think he did well. Compression was done on COmpressor, 800kps, quicktime 7.

thanks
g.

[markcheng]

looks good! keep us updated on the bellboy thing! mc

[tomyboy342000]

George, if only you could streamline the whole film for everyone to see! To everyone, it is really a great piece of work. The lighting and acting is really good and from the fact that he used a DP - who knew how to light for film, this short is really a step up from just everyday work. So many shorts are shot with the DVX and people depend on it for all the image work and quality, but you went to next level and did a hell of a color correction as well as got it to resemble HD, in some small respects, though it is still SD. Great story. The STORY is what counts and this film has a cute story and I hope it goes to many more film festivals! Great work on it. Very professional and I like your Robert Rodriguez/cheap Mexican soup opera feel to it as well. (Just kidding!) See you on the flip side!
-- Tom

[abalex]

thanks tomyboy342000 for the kind words. I've really enjoyed working on this film, we laugheda lot , we ate a lot and we made more friends.

One thing though, the movie looks 100 times better on the DVD than the compression you guys are watching.

Again thanks for the support!

g.

[tomyboy342000]

George, dude, leave me a comment or critique bro. Thanks!

[abalex]

Thanks for the comments!

g.

[tomyboy342000]

Good work.

[tomyboy342000]

Dude - who hooked you up with that lighting package? How were you able to get "Andy" as your DP - he's like a famous DP from Paraguay isn't he? I saw his international demo reel and the stuff he shot on film is so awesome. The commercials he did for the airlines were really cool as well. You have his email?