Bloodwood coming soon in Fall 2009

My good friend and fellow filmmaker has made the great leap into his first feature film with "Bloodwood". This HD feature was shot with the help of (ahem) my Canon XH-A1 camera and a lot of great talent up in Northern California. Check out the trailer below. For More info just go to www.bloodwoodmovie.com

Bloodwood movie trailer 1 from Arcadian Entertainment on Vimeo.

Frogband Demo Reel #1

Here is a demo reel from Frogband Productions. We are working on a second reel and will post soon.

Herofest 2009 directors panel

Herofest took place on May 9th 2009. Myself and the other directors had a chance to speak to the audience about how they made their films and other things.

Herofest 2009

So I'm about to go see my latest short that I directed called: The Experiment (more on that later) and what can I say I'm pretty geeked out that few Bay area folk are gonna check out the next Frogband Flick. More later.

Four Score and.....

Well people of the world, we can all breath again, and be grateful that hard work and optimism has beaten fear and greed. But now is not the time to rest on our laurels. We have been given a do over and we can't f*#k it up this time. It's been a long time that I would call myself an American, or proud American for that that matter, but as I think back a few years when I saw our new president speaking at the 2004 DNC convention I knew I had to keep my eye on him. As a 36 year old black man growing up in this country I am one generation removed from the years of segregation. I remember my mother sitting me down to tell me of a time when she couldn't drink from any water fountain or when she had to sit in the balcony of a movie theatre for entertainment because of the color of her skin. I remember my parents putting in front of the television so that i could see Roots and they talked to me afterwards to explain how my ancestors were brought here as slaves and what that means today . From looking back to this I turn my head to look forward to some of the children that I have come across from teaching and I am realizing that they are now 2 to 3 generations from the sting of blatant racism and we must tell all of our young ones of a time when little johnny's best friend Tyrone couldn't come over because he was black so that they can appreciate the freedoms that we all share now. I say this to make mention that all of us are now in this together. Things are coming to past and unless we want our chickens to come home to roost (if i may pull a Malcolm X here) we cannot make a liar out President Obama. It is our responsibility to take it to the streets when it comes to health care, the economy, our natural resources and taking care of our planet. If we want our new leader to get some work done then we have to meet him half way. we have to control the big companies with our hard earned money and we want things to change if they want our business. we must invest in our smaller businesses and give them our patronage and keep our money on main street. We can do this America. Let's take our country back.

BCM Summer Shorts film fest to screen Agent:XX

Hey,
Agent: XX was invited to the BCM film festival. This is very cool because the first time it was screened in front of an audience, it wasn't finished and I had a tight deadline to follow as it was created for the 24hr film festival sponsored by Diesel. So for those of you in the Berkeley, CA area I hope to see you there. For more info follow the link below.

http://torridproductions.com/betv/summer-home.html

Frogband Productions presents: Agent: XX

Agent: XX was a really exciting collaboration between Arcadian Entertainment, and Frogband Productions. This short was entered into the San Francisco filmrace for 2008. Even though we didn't get into the top five or six on the filmracing website. I was able to put the finishing touches to what I believe to be a fun and light hearted project. I also found a great film composer in Mr. Javier Kadry. To hear more of his work click here http://www.javierkadry.com/home


Starring: Megan Soto, Lily Balsen, Loren Simpelo, Jocelyn Truitt
Directed,Executive Produced and Edited by: L. Jeffrey Moore
Written by: Joshua Siegel



Agent: XX - The best video clips are right here

It's been a long time...

Alright Folks,
Shooting a film, performing some Shakespeare and other life events are no excuse for not updating the blog. As it stands now Frogband has been in post production on "Borders" a film directed by Tyrel and produced by myself along with the help of many friends and family members finished production in early December. We are currently putting the finishing touches on the final cut as well as recording original music for the project. This project will be a first for us as this is the first time we have had to deal with the Screen Actors Guild as our short stars Jesse Ventura, Dominique Swain and Nate Maher. The process was mostly harmless but it really boils down to having a great union representative and patience. We had a great time shooting and both Ty and myself are proud of what we have accomplished. This weekend yours truly will be directing a project for the San Francisco Film Race. The competition will take place April 25-26 where filmmakers will write direct and edit a 4 min short in a 24hr period. Fellow friend and filmmaker to Frogband productions, Joshua Siegel will write the as of yet untitled short. Okay that's all I got...Later. Up Next, my David Lynch binge
Lj

Independence Day.

Here I present my latest lashing of thoughts into letters, letters to words, and words to sentences. In the words of a great friend of mine "restaurant season" is upon us here in LA. Time to bring on all the gushing, the crocodile tearing, and the "fuck I didn't win!" expressioning. I will admit this year I am totally invested. Ever since that rat fuck piece of film school hackery "Crash" liberal guilted it's way into a best picture win I voluntarily tuned out except for rare breaches to see if my man Harry Dean would get some love for "Big Love". This season however I am pulling for a great friend to win a few for his behind the camera work. Not for his ego or the accolades but for the hope that any nomination or win will get him more leverage to continue his work behind rather than in front of the camera. Shit! I can feel the sidetracking begin time to get back to the main rub of the post, after perusing the various nominees for the Independent Spirit Awards I've come to the conclusion that I was under a dubious spell. I always assumed it was the award ceremony for the best and brightest of independent films. An award show I've always enjoyed. However some nominees in the various categories were perplexing. They didn't really scream indie film making to me. I chomped down on my cigarette holder in anger and started to pound away at the keyboard in fury. You can't call "Juno" an indie film it was made for 25 million bucks(at least that's what Wikipedia says)! "A Mighty Heart" was produced by Paramount Pictures or I'm sorry their small totally ignored splinter cell Paramount Vantage! "I'm Not There" was distributed by The Weinstein Company and produced by Killer films who have almost forty films to there credit, many of them high profile "independent" films. I'm not taking anything away from the artists and producers who made these fantastic films, but the powers or money behind a lot of them really don't scream independent to me. Then the name of this award giving entity jumped out at me. Independent SPIRIT Awards. These awards are for films made in the "spirit" of independent films. That realization sparked another. That there really is no proper definition of what is an independent film. A massive argument took hold of my brain. What should the definition of an independent film be? A film made outside of the studio system? Well if that's the definition then the recent Star Wars prequels fit that bill. Well those can't be considered independent movies they were made with too much money. But by that reasoning you can't count "Juno" as an indie film because they spent 25 million on the making of that film. That's a lot of money for a film that is essentially nothing more than people in various rooms talking to each other especially with the advent of digital film making. (On a side note what I mean about the "people in a room talking" line is that if you strip away the fantastic story, performances, and direction on a purely physical production level it's people in rooms talking to each other which in the world of film production is generally easy to shoot.) But in the defense of Juno's indie cred we all know one of the big five would never green light a film with a truly original female centric story. The mind continues it's whirling Disney's Alice In Wonderland Tea Cup ride. All the arguments regarding the definitions of what makes an indie film an indie film is really a snake eating it's tale because every side of the argument leads into the other. Unless you simply strip it all away and call an independent film a movie that is made for very little money, with relatively no stars in front of or behind the camera(that means you Van Sant), a production company made of relative newcomers, and no means or conections to big distribution and big publicity. I realized then that thankfully the Independent Spirit Awards have an award for just that kind of independence in the "John Cassavetes Award". An award given to a feature made for under 500,000 thousand. Well at least those nominees are true, at least in my mind that is, to what an independent film should be. Sadly my insanity was only quelled for a short time as questions started to rise out of the mists again. Who needs awards any way? But then what would happen to restaurant season? Where would all the industry types go on a Wednesday night in January? Would the star fucking stop fucking? Would the fucking stars stop starring? Would Damon and Affleck finally admit to the perjury of "Good Will Hunting"? Would Speilberg and Lucas finally admit to their pig fuck on intelligent film making? Would Paris stop Hiltoning? Would Von Trier stop art fucking? Would Gallo finally bathe? Would Akiva delete his Final Draft program? Would Fox come out of the closet? What about John? Would Halle give Bassett her Oscar back? Would liberal Hollywood stop believing that liberal lawmakers are really against the war? Would Ratner go back to his roots where he belongs? Would sequaling and remaking finally dry up and blow away? Would teenagers stop dictating content? Would the strike end? Would the unions end? Would the studios end? Just too many goddamn questions. Fuck it, I'm going back to not caring.

Mahalo,

T

It's been a long time coming, but persistence pays off

As I'm sitting here at my computer listening to the new Becky Schlegel cd that my wife got, it dawned on me that it's been awhile since my last entry. Especially since I promised an entry about my favorite topic superheros. Ya know I'd like to say that since it's highly possible that we might just have a Black presidential candidate in the months to come that we should take this time to focus on our American myths and that is...the graphic novel. As a kid this is all I could ever think about as I sat on my swing set with my latest issue of Superboy or Flash Gordon (enter ahh ahhh here) on my big Buddha belly and daydreamed that I could be those people leading heroic lives. Not once would I ever think that because of the color of my skin would I never be able to do all of those things. Fast forward a few years to when milestone comics made their debut and offering something new to the market place it was refreshing to see heroes that looked like me. Even during the death of Superman when Steel came about was I like wow this is cool. So as I look back at all of these things I have come to this conclusion: as an American it is vital that we keep our myths and legends alive. It gives us our strength, hope and something to gage ourselves as we tackle everyday obstacles. It is even more important that an American of color, who has been bombarded with images that does not look like him or her, have something just as important and great to look up to in order to have that same feeling of being the next great hero. Just a thought.