"A Very Short Story" Teaser Trailer

So Jay and I are currently in the filming phase of a short film we plan to submit to the 2nd annual UNCC Short Film Festival. Jay threw together this teaser trailer from the footage we've shot so far.



Credits so far:
Directors: Robert Jay Moore and Paul Lascara
Starring: Joel Sumner, Quinn Kishpaugh, Will Carter

Niner Online - Cautiously go Where the Wild Things Are

Hello no one. Here's my review of WTWTA. That's right, I acronymed it. And that's also right, acronymed is a word. Acronym got verbed. You know where this is going.

Niner Online - Cautiously go ?Where the Wild Things Are?

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Call for ideas!

Hello reader. A friend of mine is part of a group that is starting up an alternative arts magazine called "Shadow." It looks really fun, and Pete, my friend, is a really good graphics person.

I'm going to write a new short story for their first issue. I'm excited about it because it's an opportunity to write something truly aberrant.

aberrant=wandering away or straying from a defined path, hence figuratively diverging or deviating from any moral standard.

It's that figurative part that I'm going for. So anything that pops into your head that is depraved and/or sticky, just yell at me in the comments. Be it known that anyone who criticizes my purpose here will be written into the story and used thoroughly.

3 new articles for Carolina Weekly Newspapers

It's a banner week for me and the freelancing. Two front-page stories in University City Weekly, (the big feature article on the Newell farmers market, and a follow-up on the fatal police chase from Concord Mills, to do with the officers in the chase being cleared of any wrongdoing). I have a third article also, on the most recent Cornelius Board of Commissioners Meeting.

I'm rapidly learning part of my function is to condense information and make things interesting that appear not to be, even a little bit. Case in point, this is a typical Cornelius Board of Commissioners Meeting:

"blah blah blah blah blah blah blah budget blah blah blah blah blah blah blah town blah blah blah blah blah blah blah petition blah blah blah blah blah blah blah potholes blah blah blah blah blah blah blah sidewalks blah blah blah blah blah blah blah"

SERIOUSLY.

I condense that so it sounds better, and by the time you're done with it, the understanding is: "The town of Cornelius spent almost two thousand dollars on a traffic study that offers no solutions, and the consultants required to make sense of this poor information will cost even more money."

I expect this is a phrase you will hear me say often, so enjoy its novelty this one time: Your tax dollars hard at work.

Huntersville Cheeseburger in Paradise boarded up

The Carolina Weekly newspaper group, for which I have started freelancing, has launched a new, much better website. However, I don't yet know how they get print articles onto the website, and when. The latest article of mine that I can find is this one about the Huntersville-area Cheeseburger in Paradise suddenly closing.

My article about the death of Docia Barber has been transferred from the archives to the new site, and almost a month later is still one of the top stories reachable from the home page.

First articles in University City Weekly

Graduation was May 7th or something like that, and here I am May 29th freelancing for the Carolina Weekly papers.

I say first articles because they decided to run two separate articles on the subject, an 84-year-old woman was killed when a shoplifter fleeing the police in his car ran into her car. The articles are here.

Feeling Good Enough to Run

The video quality that blogger provides was so unsat that I decided to put the ipod running commercial thing on vimeo. So here it is again. It looks only slightly better.

Feeling Good Enough to Run from Paul Lascara on Vimeo.

Made this for my final film in a video editing class. I forgot to put credit for the song on there. It's "Feeling Good" by Muse. The film, which is a sort of spec commercial for iPod, was reasonably well-received by the class. The universal comment was that the cuts were too fast to see what was going on, unless I told them what was happening. After I told them, the more-or-less 'plot' was readily apparent. This is the first film I've posted on vimeo, though I've been making films for 2 years now.

iPod running spec commercial

After the eventful shenanigans of the past month or so (a skateboard film sans skaters, a hemingway adaptation sans actors, and a hasty, spiteful metanarrative on both of those), I have completed and turned in my final film project for Video Editing II. Here it is, starring Luke Michalski.

"Observe and Report" Review

Back with another review for NinerOnline.com, this time it's "Observe and Report." In a sort of rare happening, the film was screened in McKnight Hall on the UNCC campus, free for students. This is what has happened every time I've mentioned the film:

PAUL
...(blah blah blah)..."Observe and Report."

PERSON
Huh?

PAUL
Mall cop.

PERSON
Oh, yeah!

PAUL
Not the one with Kevin James.

PERSON
Kevin James?

PAUL
King of Queens

PERSON
Oh.

PAUL
The one with Seth Rogen.

PERSON
Oh!

It's 8 AM. Do you know where your talent is?

This morning I flopped onto the floor like a beached whale, because it was 7 AM, that's oh-seven-hundred. Normally I wouldn't be up at this time on a Saturday, or any other day for that matter, but today I was shooting a short film I wrote, my final project for my video editing class.

At 7:55, with Bojangles in hand, I make it to the parking lot where I'm supposed to meet my crew and talent. Talent meaning one who has talent. My actors, essentially, although they aren't actors. They're skateboarders, so that's their talent, I guess.

Malerie (crew) is there at 8. Thomas (crew) follows in minutes. Finally, Tiffany (crew) arrives a few minutes later. Then I receive a text saying Ben (talent) hurt himself last night, and Adam (talent) has a stomach ache so bad he can't move. Michael (talent), the guy who sent me the text, didn't answer his phone. Johnny (talent), their normal cameraman, didn't answer his phone, either. Everyone who is actually supposed to be ON camera, rather than behind it, is MIA. Maybe we should stop calling them 'talent.'

I know I'm not the only person who feels this way. The most I'll say is that I hate needing talent to make my ideas happen. While we were waiting, Thomas said "I hate actors." My instructor Rusty has also said "I hate actors." Thomas told me Alfred Hitchcock said "actors are cattle," so I checked on it. He did say that. Hitchcock also said:

"Disney has the best casting. If he (Walt Disney) doesn't like an actor he just tears him up."

"I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle."

"Watchmen" Review

I can't tell you how happy I am that this first real post is such a legit thing to talk about. Tuesday night I took my seat next to other members of the Charlotte press and watched an advance screening of "Watchmen." Lawrence Toppman was there, even. I could've reached out and rubbed hit cute little elitist belly. Speaking of Lawrence Toppman...guess who just beat him to the presses? That's right. My review of "Watchmen" is in print before his. So pick up a copy of The University Times or read my review at NinerOnline.com

Blog 2.0

My lonely follower, and anyone who visited this site before today will notice that my blog has been redesigned...okay I changed the background color and the image behind the title, that's it. It took me forever to make those decisions, and they aren't even the important parts. The most important change is the title, and that decision took months. After much contemplation and then bouncing the idea off a friend, I settled with the following. It's from a poem by Sir Philip Sidney, the man who brought the sonnet to the English language:

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,--

I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe;
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others' leaves to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sun-burned brain.

But words came halting forth, wanting intention's stay;
Invention, nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows,
And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,

Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
Fool, said my muse to me, look in thy heart and write.

(Sidney, 1554-1586. http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/sidbib.htm)

This blog is supposed to be about my work. I'm an English major and film studies minor at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. I try to be a fiction writer. That's what I want to do most. I'm the A&E editor for The University Times/NinerOnline.com, the student paper. I also have film projects every now and then for my Video Editing class that I'll bring up. Right now I'm working on a short (2 min. max) documentary about the rare book collection in the UNCC library. And I'm a member of In Medias Res.

So those are the sorts of things I want to eventually do for a living, it's what I'm interested in now, and it's what this blog will be talking about.