Teasing a Tiny Explosion (#DM48HFP)

In roughly 30 hours Des Moines will never be the same. Why? Because it will have experienced the demented short film "Trigger Words" produced by team Tiny Explosions.  Care for a taste?


Good gravy was this weekend fun. Here's a few pictures I snapped to take you behind the curtain:

First off, Tiny Explosions lucked out and didn't pull one of the harder genres; i.e. Drama or Film De Femme (don't ask), we pulled Vacation or Holiday Film. The guy standing next to me when I pulled the card laughed very loudly and said "Good luck!" Apparently his team hated it a few years back, luckily we didn't have the same experience. After every team found out the genre they'd be working in we got the standard elements:
  • Character: Chris or Christina Samuels, a Musician
  • Prop: a Coloring Book
  • Line: "Let's Do It"
We wasted no time the elements were announced, Brian and I packed up and headed for my basement.



The next five hours were all about brainstorming, fermented beverage consumption and basically goofing around in my basement. The hardest part was deciding who was gonna play what part. We had basically four major roles and four bit parts. In the weeks running up to #DM48HFP I asked everyone I thought could contribute if they were interested in joining the team. I might have over done it because I can't think of very many short films that need 15 actors. Our main roles went to my filmmaking partner Brian Hogan, his wife Erin and older daughter Bickley, the second lead went to one of my best friends Jordan Jensen, a guy who had never acted in his life. What can I say, I saw star potential in the kid.

After we had the script set we did the easy stuff first, the pic above is Jon Hoffmann doing a little radio d.j. voiceover work.


Saturday was filming day. There are more pictures than this but I don't want to spoil the entire flick. Let's just say Saturday was ridiculous and everyone pulled their weight and then some. As the day pushed on and we got slightly behind schedule, I jumped on the computer and left the directing of the last couple shoots to my more than competent friend, A.J. Hodgeman.


After filming wrapped, everyone grabbed dinner -prepared by my wonderful wife Marieta- and pretty much split. Brian, Erin and I worked on tweaking the film and at 10 p.m. or so, our friend Mike Marcovis came over to help write Chris Williams chart topping song "Let's Do It." This song is absolutely ridiculous. Think Dead or Alive's "You Spin me Round" but chalk full of innuendo. I'm thinking about burning a bunch and handing them out at the screening.


Sunday? Complete snooze fest, editing, blurring logos, and laying the soundtrack, but hey! We beat deadline by 30 minutes. In the end, 48HFP 2012 was a blast and I simply cannot wait for Wednesday's screening of "Trigger Words." A huge amount of thanks and praise needs to be given to these people.
  • Brian Hogan
  • Erin Hogan
  • Bickley Riley
  • Jordan Jensen
  • Aaron Riggs
  • Jon Hoffmann
  • A.J. Hodgeman
  • Marieta Boberg
  • Josh Larson
  • Jolene Schultz
  • T.J Trevillyan
  • Mookie
  • Mike Marcovis
  • Jacob Rosdail
  • and my neighborhood

Hope to see everyone Wednesday, August 1 7pm at the Fleur Cinema and Cafe in Des Moines.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

This book should not exist

Image
It's late on a mid-October 2015 night and I am struggling with whether I should buy a $1,200 last-minute ticket to California to be with my family for my mother's emergency brain surgery. A week prior everyone was together in my house for an adventurous weekend climbing a wind turbine and celebrating my grandmother's 90th birthday, now we are on the eve of my mom going under the gamma knife for emergency brain surgery. Turns out she has a size-able tumor growing on the surface of her brain.   It's a bit of miracle that the tumor was discovered in the first place as my mom's routine cancer screenings didn't usually include brain scans; however, she had been complaining of blurry vision and balance issues, plus she had become quite irritable having been pushed to take FMLA from work to deal with what she thought was post-cancer "brain fog." Thankfully her doctor had the good sense to add it all up and include her brain in her next cancer scan. Sure enou...
Read more

Finding "Clarity" in 1999

Image
I distinctly remember Tuesday, February 23, 1999. I was still living in Iowa and immediately after school let out I road with a friend to Best Buy so he could pick up Eminem's freshly released second album. Always down for a hang, I road along as there was one album I had read about and wanted to see if it was in stores. That album was Jimmy Eat World's Clarity . On the ride home I didn't bother asking to put in my purchase as my friend was not a rock fan. So for the next hour or so of cruising we blasted Slim Shady at painful volumes. For those uninitiated, this was the "Hi! My name is (ticka ticka) Slim Shady" album. I was indifferent to rap so it got a little long and tiresome by roughly the third time through the album. When I finally listened to Clarity it underwhelmed. Nothing on the album is lyrically hook centered on kinetically riff focused like later Jimmy Eat World releases. For a 16 year-old ska and pop punk super fan, Clarity go...
Read more

My Favorite Creative

Image
As I type this two drastically different things are happening; I'm in California for a film festival and my mother, Linda Boberg, is lying in a Des Moines hospice bed. In fact she started hospice care the day I flew out here. As you can imagine, I'm experiencing quite the emotional tug of war. When you have a kid you commonly examine where they get certain traits. I've always been able to parse that I get my emotional, empathetic tendencies from my mother and my pragmatic, compartmentalizing skills from my Dad (another raging tug of war at the moment). This list could go on forever, but one thing I've never fully understood is where my creative drive came from. Now with the writing on the wall, it's obvious my mom flipped the creativity switch. It wasn't until my Mom self-published a novel at 65 years old that I understood how creative she is. In the last three years she's self published half a dozen books and written many more. Her first bout of cancer in 2...
Read more