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Feb 01 2016
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Black History Month

By Music, Reviews

Today is the first day of Black History Month, and I wanted to kick it off this year with a short post sharing one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite musicians of all time…who just happens to be black: Charles Mingus. This track, Jump Monk, from the album Mingus At The Bohemia, is one of my favorite examples of composition that includes space for improvisation, and just one of the best jazz tunes of all time in my opinion. Thank you Mr. Mingus. I did my own very loose interpretation of a cover of Mingus’ Work Song…

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Jan 11 2016
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Kevin Sandbloom — 12songs/12weeks

By Music
Kevin Sandbloom has launched a new crowd funding campaign for his next album, and it works basically as a song subscription. Kevin is a brilliant singer and songwriter, and you should definitely get in on this. You can sign up on his site: But if you want to know more before you go off to another link, here is what he has to say about it: Hello all. I’m raising money to release a new record and I’m doing something a little different. I’m doing a 12 week campaign, releasing a song a week to contributors in the run up to the…
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Jan 08 2016
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Top 5 TV Shows of 2015

By Film, Reviews

Continuing our series of Top 5s of 2015, here are my picks for the best TV Shows: #5. Drunk History The brilliance of this show is possibly masked for some by it’s silliness, but it is brilliant none the less. They are telling the stories of the unsung heroes, or telling the truth about the stories that our history books lied to us about in school. And it is absolutely hilarious! #4. Inside Amy Schumer 2015 was definitely Amy Schumer’s year. Comedically the last few years have been all about Louis CK, but Amy’s show really started tackling feminist issues and…

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Jan 06 2016
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Top 5 Albums of 2015

By Music, Reviews

Okay, I did movies on Monday — here come the top 5 Albums of 2015. Let’s jump right in… #5. Il Sogno Del Marinaio – La Busta Gialla There are really only 3 albums that REALLY grabbed me this year, but there are a couple of other artists that grabbed me with some older stuff that I wasn’t aware of until this year too. There was about a month that I spent completely entrenched in my iTunes library genre of Punk (which doesn’t have much, by the way — mostly band with either Henry Rollins, Mike Watt, or Ian MacKaye) which led me to…

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Jan 04 2016
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Top 5 Movies of 2015

By Film, Reviews No Comments

I’m not normally going to post this often, but I’d like to get off to a good start, and also it’s the beginning of the year — it seems like a good time for something like this. There are going to be three posts this week. One for movies, one for albums and one for TV shows, all counting down my top 5 for 2015. This ones going to be about the movies. I’ll try not to have any spoilers, but if you haven’t seen any of these just skip to the next one. So here goes! #5 — Kung Fury It’s only a short…

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Jan 03 2012
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An Update On Mark

By Other No Comments
Hello folks. You know what gets old? Every time I post to one of my blogs it seems like I’m saying “sorry it’s been so long since I posted blah blah blah.” I’m going to try not to do that any more…starting next time. It’s been a long time since I posted, and a lot has happened. I’m going to see if I can catch you up. Let’s see; Overcoming Going Under is almost finished (and you can read about the progress of that over at the OCGU blog), I’m pretty far into a documentary/performance/dramatic feature film about Singer/Songwriter Kevin…
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Mar 22 2010
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IMDb to Add Web Series Category!

By Film No Comments
I came across this today – IMDb to Add Web Series Category, So What's a Web Series? Just about the time that Mark will be launching into the web series arena IMDb will be adding a category for us. This is good news! I’m finishing up the edit on the first three episodes…I’ll have more info about the plans for the future when the first episode is complete, so stay tuned!
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Mar 06 2010
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Rough Times

By Film, Reviews No Comments
Hey, sorry it’s been so long since I wrote a post. It’s been a rough couple of months. Rougher than the previous year even – I’ve been barely scraping by. I’ve been trying to raise the money to finish OCGU and I did manage to get the first episode of Mark in the can. I’m looking forward to starting the edit on that too. I got certified by Apple in Final Cut Pro too. So some good stuff has been happening too. Anyway, I got inspired to write a post today when I saw that the dvd for a film…
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Oct 29 2009
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DIY Steadicam

By Film No Comments
So here is the first post of a series I’m going to do on DIY projects I’ve taken on that have helped me with film making or Image making. The first is a DIY steadycam that you can make for about $15 with parts from the hardware store. Professional Steadycams are very expensive and this option is pretty good if you are working on a budget. I’ve seen some variations that I’d like to try out but this one served me quite well while I was shooting Overcoming Going Under. The directions I followed were from Johnny Chung Lee, and…
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Oct 15 2009
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Notecards & Color Codes

By Film No Comments
Last time I talked a little about my process for keeping a writing notebook for ideas, and I mentioned that I eventually transfer these notes to notecards. I guess the majority of my writing training comes from high school term papers, because I reverted right to the notecard process and it felt very natural to me. I find that the majority of the work comes in the early stages, the idea stages, before the pen really hits the paper. I feel like if I have done my work right to that point the story will just flow out and it…
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Oct 08 2009
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More On Writing

By Film No Comments
I was thinking about my post regarding script writing and I realized I left out some stuff I wanted to talk about – my process! I have found some neat ways to go about the early stages of writing along the way that work really well for me, and they might be helpful for you too. When I am about to dig into something new that I am not totally sure how to proceed I often find myself comforting my fear of the unknown with copious research. Whenever I think, “well, I’m not sure how to do that.” or “well,…
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Oct 01 2009
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Breakdowns

By Film No Comments
There are several computer programs that can help with script breakdowns, but I’ve never used them. They look pretty good but honestly I couldn’t justify the expense because it’s possible to do it the old fashion way with pen and paper. There are forms that are pretty standard for script breakdowns and I found a template online which I modified a little for my own purposes, but basically it is a form with boxes where you write down all the things and personnel you’ll need for each individual scene. Here is a link to my breakdown template in Excel format…
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Sep 24 2009
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The Script

By Film No Comments
Of course writing the script is the least expensive part of the the whole film making process right? Well, if you don’t count your time being of any value that is. It takes loads of time, that’s for sure! But you don’t need any equipment. It will be the road map for everything you do throughout the rest of the process so it’s definitely worth taking the time to get it right. They say “writing is re-writing” and at first I thought that sounded silly. It was a daunting idea to think that when I was done writing something that…
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Sep 20 2009
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Welcome

By Film, Music No Comments
Hello. My name is Anthony Garcia and I am a filmmaker and a musician. I am working on the final edit for my first feature film Overcoming Going Under and somewhere along the way (probably while looking at the budget and trying to figure out how to raise a little money to help finish OCGU) I thought it might be worth while to start a blog about DIY filmmaking. See, I got Overcoming Going Under in the can for a little under $10,000 – and that included the camera! What is considered an “Ultra Low Budget” Film by the Academy…
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