All In – Backflop 2011

This is a short I wrote, filmed, edited, and directed. I decided not to act here as we did not have a team to take care of the equipment, sound, etc… basically we were two behind the camera and 3 to 4 in front of it. Quite a challenge. I tried to create a sober atmosphere with the lighting I had.

The story is inspired by the song “el Tahur” by los Tigres del Norte, and also by an actual story that took place in India.

The film was shot in two days, to allow the actors enough time to rest, as well as to have many takes of the same part. The actors were new to this, so it was easier this way to ensure we had some acceptable takes.

We also messed up with the sound on the first scene, which we had to fix through voice over. Due to the ”croupier” actor being on holidays I put my voice for him. My Italian accent was not great, but it was short enough to be acceptable.

Citas Maripuri – 2011

I got a new MacBook Pro, so I was playing with it, and when I started a camera program that came with the computer, I was delighted… So I started talking to the camera in my native language (Spanish) as if I was in a dating site.

Also to try it out I wanted to use imovie, for very quick editions so this is the result.

So far it has been the funniest thing I have ever done for the Spanish public, although I have to say I haven’t done much for the Spanish public, or any public in general.

Midnight Cookie – Backflop 2011

After a few months of innactivity, we were joined by Justin Baker, with whom I did some acting class in the past, in order to film a fast pace short without words.

We were aiming to shoot a night like film in a short time and with a limited set of people. However, when I thought of limited set of people I didn’t expect no people at all. We had to put everything together with just three people, including preparing the set, lighting, camera, directing, acting…  When you can’t focus on just one thing, or on just a few, it makes it easy to make mistakes.

Well, I tried to fix some of these issues in post… and it wasn’t easy. Still proud as usual of our result, here you can enjoy some slapstick style comedy.

A Simple Job – 48 FP 2010 Utrecht – Backflop

After almost two years creating some small shorts we were ready for our next challenge. We submitted our entry for the 48 hour film project in Utrecht.

As we only had 48 hours to create the full film, including script, editing, and exporting of the film; we had to focus on our activities. So for the first time I decided to step out of my acting role to move into scripting and direction.

With the biggest crew we ever had, but still being the smallest crew of the competition, we managed to deliver a short but intense story about two foreign criminals confused by the language barriers on a simple job.

We are requested to create a “Buddy film” with the following components:
- A goldfish
- The line “the summer is over”
- Character Kirsten Neumann, a haiku poet

The end result is not perfect, and no we didn’t win any prize. Although considering that we were the only non Dutch group on a festival supporting the Dutch film, it was expected.

Still we are really proud of what we managed to achieved.

Monkey Blindness II: The Wool Menace – 2010

A new episode of Monkey Blindness, the story of a man who can’t see monkeys properly, and a monkey that tries to revenge the death of his child.

A walk in the park can be a dangerous activity when revenge needs to be served. But the man and the monkey are not alone.

We met with Reinie Chamonal in order to look for good filming locations, as we hadn’t done a film recently we decided to improvised some monkey story. We found a couple of spots and decided to go for a very simplistic story.  The monkey was going to fail on his attack a few times.

All of a sudden the sheep that were there went after Saloua and she got really scared.  After we finish laughing a lot from the incident, we decided to try getting the sheep involved in the film. All of a sudden it became a revenge story within a revenge story.

Filmed with my new Canon camera, I wanted to try the handheld stability, auto focus, and different angles.

The second objective was to create a known character set with Monkey (now with a name: Bratt) and the Monkey blind man.

Left Turn – Backflop series 2010

Our latest production. This is a script I thought from a story that I was told in Mexico from a taxi driver.
The real story differ from location (a real taxi) and the end. But the concept was very similar.

We had lots of technical challenges in this film. First location, a car is by far not the easiest places to film. It has very limited space and the different between exterior and interior light is a nightmare. Second, the camera and audio, sometimes the focus was not good, sometimes the audio wasn’t good at all. We had to do a lot of voice over and editing to correct it. And third, the green screen for the car in movement was hard to get right due to Sun light.

The script was rehearsed and played multiple times, so the end result is pretty satisfactory. As well we played on each other, so we believed more on our roles than in other occasions.

The dangers of soul migration – 2010

This is just a test video fully improvised. I wanted to see if I could work with editing software to recreate a ghost experience.
I set the camera in 3 positions, trying to get the right level of focus with the existing light. That’s why it’s so dark.

Other than the editing experience I gained, it was interesting to plan the actions according to what was going to happen next. As I had to use natural lighting I was in a real rush to get this filmed.

Notice a pillow appearing and disappearing a couple of times

Like A Butterfly – Backflop 2010

There is nothing sexier than a beautiful woman in distress. That was the premise when I wrote this little piece. Finally things turn out very similar to the original idea, and despite of far from being perfect, we are very proud of our results.

This was the first time that we could rely on a more professional actress, which helped us to get better results on our performance, or at least Reinie’s, as I didn’t have much dialog with Teresa.

I focused a bit more on the direction and less on the acting, something that you can notice.

This was filmed all together in one day at a friends place. We had a really good camera and a basic HD camera. This made the whole thing a bit difficult, as the takes from the basic camera had very different look from the semi professional one. Still we managed to get most of the takes we wanted, and the result is pretty convincing.

Our next step is to improve our lighting techniques, despite of having a good set of lights, we just ensured that there were no areas with big shadows or completely white.

Like a Butterfly
Uploaded by Backlashprods. – Watch feature films and entire TV shows.

This is by far our most successful film, partly because it relates to bondage… which wasn’t intended, but well, it gave us more views than usual.

Monkey Blindness – Backflop 2010

Another episode from the Backflop series. This was filmed in Barcelona during my Christmas holidays. My cousin just started a filming course, so I thought it would be cool to put something together.

The story was made the very same morning when I saw that I had to monkey dolls that I could make a story with.

This is the first video that I edited myself, with the challenge of having to add a whole soundtrack. No original audio could be used as there were people (children) talking on the background.

Reinie added the voice to the monkeys, which I believe gives a better depth to the film.

It was the first time I had to do proper reverse acting, unfortunately I wasn’t very successful, but I learnt my lesson.

Barton Fink (Part 2) – DAA 2010

This is the second scene of Barton Fink from the Department of Acting Amsterdam workshop.
We had to adapt the scenery to theatre and our prop limitations. As used by John Goodman, we couldn’t have a shotgun (hard to get in Netherlands and probably illegal), so we swapped it by a knife (still illegal to carry around). I used syrup based fake blood to recreate the situation where Charlie just killed someone outside the room. We also removed the fact that there were other people with Bart before and a mysterious box.

The red colour doesn’t help to the camera, still it was intended for theatre, giving it a more dramatic gore look.

Funny enough, I couldn’t cut the tape behind Vincent, I almost panicked, they put it too tight! We ran the risk of cutting him, likely no harm was done.