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 Yo! Hope your week is buzzzing along. I’ve had my share of ups and downs, but I really can’t complain.So this week’s oldieo video is a personal favorite called FRANCO MUST DIE. This short was my Production 2 final shot first semester senior year. My filmic landmarks over four years at BU are as follows:FRESHMAN YEAR: I drank and slept a lot.Back then I was the male version of Lindsay Lohan minus the 300 STDsSOPHMORE YEAR: I purchased my first 16mm camera - A Swiss Bolex that didn’t have a corrected viewfinder so I had to guess what the frame looked like. Also purchased an $11 light meter that couldn’t produce a reading if it were 10 feet away from the sun. Shot some embarrassing sample projects before knowing anything about film production (I’ll post those here when I run out of better material).Summer after Sophmore year I worked on former BU Professor Stephen Geller’s masterpiece MOTHER’S LITTLE HELPERS in Providence, RI. The film and Stephen are both giant pieces of shit, but on the shoot I made some great BU friends and really learned how to light for film and TV.I’m glad I spent $160k on college to learn film from a pervert, egomaniac, and apparent part-time traffic cop. Vonnegut is rolling in his grave, you hacky asshole!JUNIOR YEAR: Production 1 rolls around, I film LA CIUDAD EN VIVO with my long lost Spanish friend Joan as my portrait exercise. I’ll post this another day and rant all about it then. My final project for Prod 1 was RONNIE BUNUEL which you’ve seen here. I purchased my 2nd camera - a wind-up, 16mm from the Soviet Union called the Krasnorgorsk-3 (or K-3). I still have the ol’ K-3 in my possession and plan on shooting something small soon.The Honda Accord of 16mm film camerasThroughout the year, I was cutting class like mad to professionally Gaff shorts, commercials, politicals - you name it, I lit it. I’m 19 and making $350 for 6 hours of work lighting Bernie and Phyl’s furniture commercials. The crew on the Geller shoot really taught me well, and I definitely took advantage of my schooling.“I haid ah nightmahea Douctoa Phyl. Everyone’s tellin’ me NO! NO, NO, NOOOO”Summer after Junior year I was in line to gaff my first independent feature. It was a big deal at the time - Phoebe Cates and a few other names starring, a good working DP shooting - all the elements to yield promising future connections and work. However, in July they decided to push the production back to fall of 2004, which would cut into my Senior year at BU. In good conscience I couldn’t miss an entire semester of my last year in college, so I ultimately passed on the project. Completely heartbroken, I was wallowing in self-pity until my Dad kicked me in the ass and demanded that I shoot something for myself instead of working on other people’s projects. So in three weeks time, I scraped together a cast and crew of 30 people, 5-ton grip truck, HMIs, track, even a crane to shoot my half-realized 35mm pet project BOTTOM OF THE NINTH. It was most assuredly my opus to date, and I am quite proud of the fact that I was a 20-year-old kid who put together such a large production by himself, but the final cut of the short was never produced because of damaging sound issues. Still the fact that I produced and directed a project like that on a wing and a prayer inspires me to this day to keep struggling until I get the next opportunity to showcase my abilities. I have one clip of BO9 assembled, and I’ll post that in the future and further discuss.SENIOR YEAR: First semester is Production 2, and my first exercise shot is I DID A BAD THING. Our final project for the class is FRANCO and the only other thing I shot all year was the ever-goofy REGULATORS music video.Since graduating I really haven’t shot that much. We did ANTUANUA then the CLOSE QUARTERS webseries with Garrett Morris, but even that was about two years ago. I need to get behind the camera soon- with my recent studies and overall maturity in life(ish), I know the next time I shoot something serious it will be my best creation to date.BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME, LET’S TALK ABOUT YO…FRANCO MUST DIE!I nominated myself to write and direct our group’s final project like the pompous little prick I was. Our group consisted of Brent Christo - Dir, John Longino - DP (the guy with the “fuck you” glasses whistling in REGULATORS), Liz Berry - Sound, Producer, and Bridget Carbury - Set Design, Producer. The night before our story outline is due in class, I come up with the hairbrained idea to write about a 12-year old kid who travels to Chicago to kill Oprah for screwing up his family. Obviously I couldn’t use Oprah or else I’d receive death threats from Winfrey’s 140 million woman malitia, so I created an arrogant TV talk show personality named Franco. Essentially, FRANCO MUST DIE is an attack on mindless TV and its effects on a regular adolescent boy’s family. His mother is a zombie that repeats everything Franco advises, his sister is proud of her floozy ways, and his father loses his job because he pretends that he himself is a talk show personality. Danny (played by the incredibly talented CJ Sheppard of Medway, MA) decides to ride bikes with his neighborhood pal Jamaica across country to kill Franco at his studio - as if getting Franco off the air would solve his problems at home. Anyway, there’s almost a cute moral at the end, then Franco gets accidentally killed and Danny must take over as the new host. The initial ending was lost as the reel it was on didn’t process correctly. Instead of cutting to an epilogue, we originally filmed Danny’s family on their living room couch watching their son host, but still in the same brainwashed frame of mind they had from the outset (as if to sprinkle a little 1984-doomed mentality on top).Our talentless professor Sam Kaufmann not only disliked the story, but CHALLENGED me to shoot everything in two days time. He thought I was a baffoon (practically called me as such in front of the class) for thinking I had the ability to shoot 6 complicated scenes with different locations and designs in a matter of two days, but I argued that I had production experience and can “sew like the wind”. He ultimately signed off on the project, and weeks later chose ours to close out the production 2 screening of 8 featured films. At the screening, our cute product was very well-received, and I can objectively attest that it was the best production of the night. I recall my classmate Sarah Newbold approached me after the screening. Her uh art(?) film was panned by the audience, and she sulkingly belittled my project to my face. Provoking me, she argued that my film was a success only because of the cheap jokes that have mass appeal (basically labeling the audience as a bunch of morons for not appreciating her work of art). Similar to RONNIE BUNUEL, I had my fair share of critics and rivals on this project, but I personally enjoy the final product and look back on the entire production process fondly.FAVORITE MOMENT: Well two actually. The Danny training montage is classic - CJ is just so talented, a real diamond in the rough. He had no previous acting experience, but he took direction well and we got along swimmingly. The first shot we filmed on the project is when CJ tackles the shit out of a trash can when prepping to assassinate Franco. He nails it in one take, and I instantly knew we had something special with this little raspy-voiced charmer (By the way, CJ must be about 18 now, and probably wants to kick my ass for some reason…and can most definitely kick my ass inside-out). My second favorite scene is between CJ and his sister Debbie, as she pokes holes in her boyfriend’s condoms so she can get pregnant. Her dialogue and delivery, and CJ’s reactions still crack me up….Actually, the raw video footage of Franco (Dennis Lemoine), Artemis (Jason Raffile) and Shemp (me) on the Franco show is GENIUS. I’ve never EVER seen J-Raff more hilarious and on top of his game, even the talented Dennis was struggling to keep up with his sheer genius in improvisation. I emailed John Longino earlier this week in search of a copy of those dailies, and he said it’s a long shot, but he’ll try to locate it. I really hope that somehow surfaces so I can post it and prove to you I’m not a liar. There’s a moment where J and I fight like the white trash we are, and he is screaming, “I hate you Shemp!! You stole my pizza like you stole my baby-factory, we’re no longer freinds!!” If you listen closely during the credits, you can hear some of that amazing dialogue. Fucking priceless!It was a fun shoot, a solid little project and an important landmark in my ongoing affair with cinema. I think my personal big three (chronologically) are RONNIE BUNUEL, FRANCO MUST DIE (BO9 if it were completed) then CLOSE QUARTERS.Please encourage me to top them all with my next short - it’s going to be a real winner, I can feel it callin’ in the air tonight.Adieu,Brento Christo

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 8:52 pm and is filed under Oldieo Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.