Staff Blaster

If you prefer to think of me as a classy guy, do not watch this video.
If you prefer to think of me as a wedding filmmaker, do not watch this video.
If you prefer to think of me as a normal human being, do not watch this video.

Still curious? If you would like to think of me as a crazy kid who loves making movies, then hit play...

Staff Blaster from Jesse Tarnoff on Vimeo.

So... what IS this? Well, it began as a 100 hour film race. We got the prompt on Thursday night at 5pm. Ben and Liza came over to do some brainstorming and we decided we'd take it easy and brainstorm Friday and write later that night. Well Friday night my good friend Terren was back in town and we had a night out at the bars.

At the bar we toyed around with doing an over the top action movie. The next day, we got together, hydrated, and decided that we'd just make a movie as we went along. We piled a bunch of guns, costumes, and camera equipment into the back of our cars and headed out to film.

Saturday night was a drag. After getting most of our shooting done, I imported the footage and took a look. You can't imagine how terrible and how bad this footage looked. Not only that, we didn't even have a story.

Then I brought the movie into the editing room. It started to pick up steam when I paced it out. It started to come together even more when I did some coloring samples. I spent hours cutting, tweaking, searching through footage, timing music, adding sound effects, and laughing at the ridiculous movie before me.

We showed the movie to the crew Monday night. We were all pleasantly surprised at the final product. I mean, if there has ever been a case of turning garbage into anything more, this is it. Don't get me wrong, I know this movie is still a piece of, well... whatever it is. But damn it's perfect.


Also, this was the most fun I've had filming a movie. Possibly ever.

48 Hour Film Awards!!!

The film we submitted for the San Jose 48 Hour Film race has won 4 awards!!! Our film, Nellius 5000 & Zupitron: Ultimate Battle Buddies was shown to a large audience at the awards show. The awards we won were:

Producer's Award: Best Overacting
"Nellius 5000 and Zupitron: Ultimate Battle Buddies" by 4QR98 Pass

Best Writing
"Nellius 5000 and Zupitron: Ultimate Battle Buddies" by 4QR98 Pass

Best Choreography
"Nellius 5000 and Zupitron: Ultimate Battle Buddies" by 4QR98 Pass

Runner Up for Best Film
"Nellius 5000 and Zupitron: Ultimate Battle Buddies" by 4QR98 Pass

Here is the link to the 48HFP website where the awards are announced.

Congratulations to our team for the epic 48 hours of epic filmmaking mayhem.

A Coin for Courage (24 Hour Film)

We submitted this film for the San Francisco Film Racing
event of 2009. We were up against something like 14 other films. The theme of our film had to be "Embarrassing" and we had to include a key in the film. We actually couldn't think of anything Friday night and just went to sleep. With 13 hours left we came up with our idea, and had the film done with 30 minutes to spare.

For some reason the judges absolutely hated our film. Perhaps it was the violence, perhaps it was the style. The judging was so unfair that we lost "Best Costumes" to a film where their actors were wearing T shirts and Jeans. Yea.

However, in all fairness, it was our first film race and we learned a couple things. First, we learned that making a pro-war/pro soldier film for a competition in San Francisco isn't the best idea. We were trying to do something different that what everybody else was going to do with the theme "embarrassing." We decided to take it the dramatic route, which nobody else did. We've since decided that we should play to the audiences expectations, and not try to stand out in THAT way.