This Memorial Day

So this music video has already been out for a month already but I think it's a good time to remind everyone again. "Bring em' Home" was a video I did with my brother this past spring. I want to show it again to those who haven't seen it for the message that it expresses, and how appropriate to on Memorial Day weekend.

My brother has been pushing the video to get the message out there, bringing our troops home to their families. The video also deals with many other issues, but you would have to see it to understand.

The idea originally came from a producer friend of mine, Kevin Kane. Kevin immediately got the gist of the song after I was just about to go a different direction. He came up with the idea that a beard can represent different points, bad and good, about America. And one character can have different shapes for each beard.

"Weird..." we all thought, but it all made sense. Me, my brother Quincy, Kevin, and Quincy's producer Jon Leidersdorff creative minds began to race as the script for "Bring em' Home" quickly came together.

Click HERE to view the music video. 

New Music Video

So after doing the "Bring em' Home" music video, me and my brother Quincy wanted to funk things up a bit. We decided to do a video that is mostly stop-motion using his song "Sunshine."

The story is simple but for the style it is not. We wanted to use the idea of copy machines and how we all copy our faces or body parts onto paper. Something that every one has done. If not your missing out!

Sever months later I am still in the edit about to finish up. This work is very tedious and only gets worse as it goes along.

Click HERE to view behind the scenes of the video. You can see behind the scenes of "Bring em' Home" as well.

Capturing

Okay, for all the money I've spent for film school, one thing I have learned is capturing the mood and image. For my film about Brooklyn I blogged about a week ago, one thing I am dedicated on doing is having a sense of realism to everything. Making the mood, the characters, and cinematography all line up to not just grabbing the audience, but not letting go!

One of my favorite things is shooting photos on my dad's old Chino 35mm still camera from 1976. He got the camera when he was sixteen after someone gave it to him when they ripped off a hardware store. And about three years ago he handed it down to me. Looks like I got a hot camera...

Anyway one of my goals this summer is to take this camera and shoot all of Brooklyn for this business plan focusing towards my next film. Capturing my neighborhood of Brooklyn and expressing the quality and attitude of Williamsburg/Bushwick. Also keeping that grungy old 70s film look. By capturing the sense of realism in photography, I then plan to use this as a platform for my stylistic approach for the film.

Keeping Horror Horrifying

Horror has been one of my most loved genres, but when I think of horror movies now a days it only does one thing...piss me off. Everything is predictable, nothing puts you on the edge as much anymore. Only in a blue moon does happen. Now it's just an over used formula, victim A, then moves on to victim B then couple C, then repeat.  One of the few people that make good dramatic and suspenseful films is Glass Eye Pix. But that's one of few who still do.

I guess I got sucked into this genre from watching too many Scooby-Doo episodes as a kid, but I think a good mystery, suspense, horror, and strong drama sprinkled on top, is something that could be amazingly awesome. Soon or later the genre will shift gears from gore horror after the "Saw" movies don't make money anymore and find a new type of horror to sell for a while.

But the artist in me really wants to bring the old style back. Films that make you scream and really draw you in for more. This got my brain turning for the last year just when I was finishing up my thesis film for the School of Visual Arts. As crazy as it was for my thesis year, I myself found that I was going a little bonkers, that made me think of my next big attempt, "Johnny Comes Home." For the past year I have been going back and forth re-writing. Getting help and advice from my friends in the biz. A script that involves not just horror by a characters surroundings, but horrified by himself and his abilities.

The film also deals a lot with post dramatic stress of a soldier returning home from Afghanistan. Modern day conflict is something I wanted to make apparent in the script, cause every good story I believe has to have a strong dramatic element to it.

Now that the script is finished, the next step is tackling down someone who would want it. Here I come world!

A Brooklyn Tale

When I was a kid, never in a million years would I think that I would be living in the big apple. It never made any sense to me, and I swore that I would never live in NYC. Years later I did what I told my self as a child not to do, I moved to New York. But the greatest thing is discovering new places in the city And one of those places is Brooklyn. To me it's like Manhattan in the 90s, 80s, and 70s. At place where artiest, models and crazy people live. The old Manhattan is now the new Brooklyn.

Now from what I've seen, film productions have been popping up a lot in BK. Sure they have been shooting in BK, but they really aren't shooting BK. The style, the culture, the people in the community. I feel like it has be come a land of young adults in there 20s with an unclear direction in their life but yet nothing worries them. This subject is rarly touched upon in movies, and when it is can be very impactful.

It's here where I realized my next film is. A story about love and revenge. And a major part of it takes place in BK. If I shoot here, I want to show what is really going on here!

Lifted Pictures

So the more I work with my brother, (Quincy Mumford), The more I feel like I need to work in music since the young artiest is a musician. For three years now I've done press kits and music videos for the little runt. But it has just been recently were I realized that I could really make something out of this. I might not be able to play guitar, piano, sing, or have any musical talent what so ever, but I can hear the song or tune and relate it with images so well. It is at this point I have decided to make "Lifted Pictures" a spin off my brother's company, "Lifted Enterprises." Brother companies....get it! Well producing and directing music videos is great with my brother but it's time to work with others and share the creative environment of film making.

Here is the video that will start it all, Click HERE.