Batmitzvah's, Barmitzvah's & Stephen King.

What a bland day so far. The cloudy weather isn't helping either. One day down, four more to go.

On Saturday I finally shot my very first event, a Batmitzvah. Man I forgot how much shooting wears you out. It's been almost a year since I've shot anything of significance. I was beat and enjoyed the remainder of my weekend relaxing. To my surprise it dragged major ass. Finally. ---- The montage I've been painstakingly putting together for the past month or so was a hit. Everyone loved it, people asked about, they wanted to know who worked their "magic" creating such a great piece. It felt great to know that I accomplished the task. All I wanted was the family to love it and they did. Oh and yesterday I was offered another "gig", this time a Barmitzvah. I had a feeling this would happen and I'm excited at what else will come my way.

While I write this I figured I'd update everyone on one more thing. I've decided to go back to my roots as a writer. I started off writing short stories and just recently I remember how much I enjoyed doing so. I even want to dust off my old stories and re-write them. I'm already excited just thinking about it. I got inspired after I started reading Stephen King's "On Writing" A Memoir of the Craft. For all my writers out there please GO BUY THIS BOOK! It is an amazing look into how Mr. King came to be the writer he is today and his thoughts on writing in general. Oh and Mr. King if you ever happen to read this, THANK YOU! I needed this book without even knowing it, glad I found it.

One more hour until I clock out. I shall use this time to read, something I seriously need to do more of. Until next time. Peace

Chris Jensen-Soto
Writer/Director/Artist
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3786598/

Let me start by saying....

.... Miscommunications are a bitch.......that's all I'll say on the matter. This week has been a complete and utter blur, I swear I feel so drained, yet it's not even close to being done. I still have the Batmitzvah to shoot on Saturday and the montage for it is pretty much complete. ---- Let me just say this though, you'd think that putting pictures, video and music together would be a snap.... think again. You must be thinking, c'mon how hard can it be? Well think about it this way, you have well over 150 photos, four songs, and some video to mix in. You have to create an engaging (meaning not boring people to death) montage that will WOW the family members when they see it. It's the equivalent of a Quinceañera for Latinos, so I jumped into it with that mindset. But still you ask, what's so hard? Again, not hard......tedious, time consuming work is what it is. Timing the photos and video to the music, actually giving the entire piece a nice pace that's slow enough for people to enjoy every photo, but not something that will run over 10 minutes. Oh and you sure don't want to speed through the process or you'll end up with a complete mess of a montage. Every cut, every "beat" within the montage was done for a reason. It's the beautiful art of editing....and I cannot stop saying this but I look forward to doing this FULL TIME. I know deep down I will very soon. God definitely has plans for me and I am waiting ever so patiently for those plans to surface.

Another cute baby pic to express how I feel.

So here I am at work, exporting the final cut (I hope) of the montage and looking forward to the 2 days of "peace" I have before I shoot my very first event. It's going to be one hell of an interesting day....I'm sure I'll blog about it that very night. Until then, Happy Thursday folks......Peace.

Chris Jensen-Soto
Writer/Director/Artist
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3786598/


Photo above found via Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dallaportfolio/

April Updates

It's Sunday night and I'm exhausted......the weekend flew by as usual, but I got a lot of work done. I finished up the montage for the Batmitzvah I'll be shooting this Saturday. Will be sending out to clients in a few minutes for approval. It was an interesting experience, something I had never done before, but I feel I definitely got the job done. Here's hoping that this only brings more work in the future.

Since I've been busy with that I haven't had time for anything else. Now that the montage is out of the way I can focus on my own projects......finally. My first priority is DAYDREAMER, It's so close to finished I want to do just that, FINISH IT, it's long overdue. Once that's done I can focus on my next project GHOST STORY. Pre-production is coming along very well, I'm hoping to shoot in June or July.

The collaboration with fellow artist Brian "Cuojoe" Tolbert of DAGDAFILM is nearly ready to be shot. Production should begin in May, look for more info in the coming weeks.

Besides that my focus now is to create my official website and publish it. All my work will be readily available along with my various demo reels and other work I have done. My goal is to GET MY NAME OUT THERE and hopefully get some paid work in the process.....this I hope will be my year. ----- Okay, I'm done for the night.....a full 40 hour work week is ahead of me and I know it will be a long one. Goodnight all.....Peace.

Chris Jensen-Soto
Writer/Director/Artist
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3786598/