Sunday Synopsis - The Gift from Steve Jobs and an Actor's Call of Duty

Earlier this month, I imposed a challenge on myself to create 30 videos in 30 days, leading up to the World Premiere of "ABYSS: The Greatest Proposal Ever" (or TGPE, as I will be referring to it as from time to time). These videos are part of my YouTube webseries "30 Days - The Making of ABYSS: The Greatest Proposal Ever" -- a collection of mini documentaries chronicling the making of the project, with many behind-the-scenes images, interviews and footage clips not shown until now.

The point of it all is to help build more buzz for the January 15th screening and also re-launch my YouTube channel since I've neglected it for a long time. 

After starting this challenge, however, I soon realized that some major techinical limitations would make it very difficult to produce them on a daily basis. Now, I'm planning to make and post them in batches, to figure out if that can help make the process less stressful and the web series project more likely to be completed. While the first episode serves as a quasi-trailer, here are the second and fourth episodes about how Steve Jobs simplified our workdays as well as why actor Rodney Benson answered to the call of duty for participating in this movie. 

Episode 2 - The Gift from Steve Jobs, or What the iPad 2 Taught Cast & Crew about Multitasking:

Episode 4 - Why actor Rodney Benson took on the Call of Duty

Boy, it seems like year flew by so fast. Tell me this...

What are YOUR plans for New Year's?

*Those of you who are on Twitter -- if you feel like sharing this post or the links to these videos or commenting on them via a tweet, please use the hashtags: #TGPE #30DAYS #ABYSSMOVIE #GreatestProposalEver 

Monday Movie Meme – Race to the Altar

*Disclaimer: The Monday Movie Meme for last week was all set to go until my blog hosting company went down and spent hours dealing with an attack on their servers or whatever. Here’s hoping all is well on their end, going forward.

Did a whole week just go by?! Holy moly, time flies by too fast. The theme for this week’s Monday Movie Meme can be considered the next step to the Rules of Engagement that we covered a while back.

Call it “Part 2” to an ongoing series of themes, if you will...

First comes the proposal, then wedding bells start ringing – sometimes sooner than usual: Race to the Altar.

Share on your blog or in the comments section, movies featuring weddings and/or marriages that occurred faster than you can sing “Here comes the bride.” Movies that fall into this category often have characters that get hitched soon after they first meet. Here are my selections for this week’s Race to the Altar theme.

Fools Rush In

Two strangers get married after a one-night stand leads to an unplanned pregnancy, in this entertaining romantic comedy starring Matthew Perry and Salma Hayek. In the case of these well-meaning adults, what happened in Vegas did not stay there!

The Hangover

A married dentist gets a second wife while visiting Las Vegas for his best friend’s bachelor party in this comedy starring Ed Helms, Heather Graham and Bradley Cooper.

Desert Flower

A famed model marries her neighbor to avoid deportation from Britain to Somalia, in this biographical drama starring Liya Kebede and Sally Hawkins. Although the guy flirted with her on many occasions, they were not dating and his proposal was more like a business transaction than a romantic offering, resulting in one of the quickest nuptials I’ve ever seen played out in a movie.

What movies have YOU watched that feature people getting married soon after they first meet?

The Greatest Proposal Ever – A Movie Poster Reveal and World Premiere Screening Event

It’s official. After analyzing elements of various movie poster trends, my short film “ABYSS: The Greatest Proposal Ever” (TGPE) finally has some key art! I find it funny how much of the inspiration for the final concept came from some of the most unlikely sources.

Rather than worrying myself silly about how to come up with a super creative, ultra clever design for the movie poster; how to convince someone to make one for me; how to find money to commission a “proper” design, I went back to the basics. It didn’t take long to get results that I can be satisfied with, thanks to the three things that put the capital P in Productivity -- Pinterest, Polaroid and Palettes.

Who would have thought that the design of this project’s movie poster would be decided based mainly on careful comparisons of material provided by a social photo-sharing service and an electronics manufacturer?! Overall, I’m relieved to have found some workable design concepts when I did, given that the organizers at NewFilmmakers NY has selected “ABYSS: The Greatest Proposal Ever” to screen in their Winter 2014 Screening Series.

The World Premiere of the short film that took me like a whole year to develop – from its script stages to the post-production and beyond – will make its public debut on Wednesday, January 15, 2014 at 7:00pm at the Anthology Film Archives Theater in New York City.

Of all the pleasant feelings I have in being able to screen a project that I’ve spent so much time working on, in an actual movie theater, I’m just as – if not more – enthusiastic to have the opportunity to show my work in (what I believe to be) one of the best places on earth – NEW YOOORK! The concrete jungle where-dreams-are-made-of; there’s-nothing-you-can’t-do! We’re screening in New York, New York, New Yooork!

Thank you all for your continued support over the last twelve months. Here’s to another twelve months of more films, fun, forward movement and free thinking – for each of us and our friends, loved ones and neighbors. It’s crunch time. Are YOU ready?