Improvisation – English Breakfast Radio show 2010
This was my second visit to the Amsterdam local radio show English Breakfast, targeted to the international community living in Amsterdam.
We were invited to talk about our latest adventures on Backlash as well as do some performance. Unfortunately Reinhardt was ill that morning so I had to find a way to keep the show on.
I kindly printed out a set of questions for Isabel, who hosts the radio show and I met on an acting workshop, to help me out. These questions were originally for me to read to Reinhardt. So this time I had to improvise Reinhardt’s role.
There wasn’t a well defined script, so it was in a way ok. I was really nervous, and the problem on radio improvisation is that you don’t get much feedback from the audience, so I had to follow my gut feeling, and that’s not always good, but I don’t have other way.
The interview part I need to work on for next time, still I was pretty nervous about what was coming next. And note that we also included EEDEM song from one of the backflop videos.
Clown acting – Phycho Killer – DAA 2010
First introduction to the world of clown as part of the Department of Acting training.
We didn’t want to rehearse the scene more than twice, including the first time that we put it together. This way we could allow enough room for improvisation and natural reaction.
The scene was pretty long so we were asked not to waste time. When we are on stage adrenaline makes everything to slow down, so sometimes we rushed moments that could have been kept for longer.
I certainly enjoyed experiencing clowning and the freedom that came with it.
Eedem – Music Video – 2009
This is the first music video that we made ourselves. I decided this time to get more behind the camera instead of in front of it. I wanted to learn the view of the director and camera.
The whole video was shot in one day using a single camera. The story was put together with Reinie, the main character of the video, who also edited it.
The main challenge was to recreate a world full of clowns with only three actors and in such a short time.
In the video I mainly play the doctor that tells him there is no solution to his not clown issue.
Considering the lack of resources and very limited effects, we are pretty proud of the outcome.
Agis Commercial for Hives (Netherlands) 2009
Most of the backlash team got united as extras for this commercial directed by Daniel Bruce.
We all did our best to fit in this bizarre setup. Most people had a pre-assigned role… Well more than a role was a character, as the commercial had to last for less than 2 minutes and there were like 50 extras. However, I didn’t have anything. I was just “making crowd” and learning some good filming tricks. Finally someone asked: “we need someone to get on the stage with the girls”, I didn’t even think my answer and jumped into the stage.
The girls had to perform a striptease… but they were almost naked already. So I jumped in to help by undressing myself. Finally you get 2 seconds of a semi-naked not so groovy man on minute 0:32!
They used a POV (point-of-view) camera, where the actor could see what he was filming, as well as the director. It was a cool piece of equipment. Also they had portable LED lights and even a stunt man… for a small step jump.
It was all for the fun!
Time Flies – Backlash productions 2009
Another backlash production. This is a story of meaning of life, survival, and scientific research on the world of flies.
This film was made with the minimum knowledge of filmmaking. We only had a “cheap” HD camera, house lighting, and nobody to check sound or video. And if that wasn’t enough, we could only edit the video with imovie and 2 days to complete the film.
Considering all the above, we put together an interesting video to watch. Ah, and I composed the soundtrack this time!
El loco – Backlash 2009
El Loco, a crazy idea to mix film noir and mexican luchadores in one single film. This has been the more technically challenging film to time due to many reasons.
I created a complex plot with too many situations. This was not properly expressed in the story board and to the camera man/editor. Also I had to change the script on the fly because we missed one actor and the actress. Thanks to Saloua’s help (zero acting training) we managed to put something together.
Additionally, there was a heavy use of the green screen, which limited the artistic angles that we wanted to use.
And finally, each of us had different ideas of what the film had to be, so it took a long time until the edition was finished.
Having said all that, I still think that the end result reaches certain level of quality and sets us to look forward new goals.
Reinie does a great job as a masked man, as only his eyes and body language could be used for the character.
The Video Conference – Backlash 2009
A new microbudget production with Backlash and K238Studios. Here we had to play all on real time with three cameras. We improvised half of the script as we thought there was some potential to increase the duration of the initial script.
Everyone was sitting in the same room facing a different camera and looking at different screens.
We did about 7 takes, all different from the previous one. Unfortunately only the last 2 were usable due to technical reasons.
Backlash – The Move – 2009
Laurel and Hardy’s the piano meets Escher’s staircase. This is our first little story sketch. We had a script but it wasn’t matured enough so we decided to semi-improvised. The problem when you improvise with one camera is that it’s hard to get different angles of the same sequence without a great deal of memory.
My stunt at the end of it cost me quite some pain.
Backlash – A killer on the loose – 2009
2nd sketch from Backlash. This was an improvised story inspired on tutorials from Video Mogul on how to film car crashes. We just spiced it up with some comedy.
Still the text was fully improvised and not filmed in sequence, so it was quite hard to get something that made sense.
