Bang Bang! – Feature Film Official Teaser Trailer…and a Great Experience

I didn’t create this awesome trailer for the upcoming Bollywood action flick, Bang Bang!, but I had the pleasure of working on the film in July 0f 2014 as the camera department media manager, as well as a crew recruiter, while the project was on location in northern Cali.   My job as media manager / data wrangler, or DIT (Digitial Imaging Technician), entailed logging, transcoding, properly organizing and backing up the precious footage of this shoot, all shot on two RED Epics with all the fixings and four GoPro Hero 3+s (Black Editions).  Basically, if anything happened to the footage it was my fault!  🙂

This shoot was for a HUGE stunt performed on Clear Lake in Lakeport, CA.  The stunt called for a 14x National Barefoot Water Skiing Champion named Keith St. Onge and an Albatross plane.  The rest, I’ll leave for you to see when the film comes out.  I know I can’t wait to see it!  And I’m positive some of this stunt shoot’s footage will surely be used in the official theatrical trailer to come.  Having dealt with it first hand, I can honestly say it looks fantastic.  And I’ll be sure to post as soon as the trailer is released.  The full film is due out October 2nd.

For now, check out this awesome teaser!  Feel free to read below for further info on this shoot and my further responsibilities.

*****UPDATE******

The final theatrical trailer was released a while back (and the movie is now out).  So, here it is for your viewing pleasure.  The big scene I worked on has clips at markers 0:06-0:07 and 2:16-2:21.

 

 

This is the original teaser below.

 

 

The other job I took on as a crew recruiter entailed having to find certain crew positions for this gig.  Much of the crew were from L.A. and India.  But they still needed a few more talented crew members.  In the end, several of my dependable colleagues were brought on board with my strong recommendation, all accomplishing fantastic work in their respective positions as assistant camera, GoPro specialist and production assistant.  It always makes me feel good when not only do I successfully do my job, but my colleagues are successful as well.  After all, it’s a recruiter’s main task to ensure skilled and professional people are brought into the mix.  Otherwise….FAIL!!!

My colleagues’ success is extremely important to me not simply for the reason of my personal status as a recruiter for other people / companies, but more so because it is one of my goals to build a large network of true professionals to call upon for jobs like this, or, to rep my company one studios.  It’s all about who you surround yourself with, you know?  People I bring into jobs are essentially an extension of myself.  And if you want to produce quality you have to have quality people working with you.  For high grade jobs like this you have to have a certain level of experience within you and within the people you bring aboard.  And having successfully provided such people means I’m on the right track with my networking.  Got to keep pushing!

It was a great time with even greater people.  All were professional and truly cool!  Very thankful and blessed am I to have gotten on board for this project.  Already some lasting relationships have been made and I can’t wait to work with many of these fine peeps again in the near future.  One such person is stunt coordinator Andy Armstrong, of the recent The Amazing Spiderman 2 and many other films, who I’m set to work with again in October of 2014.  Even the visual effects artist on staff, Joshua Saeta, has proven to be an excellent dude in offering a kind hand to help in the daunting task of my visual effects for my current feature film project, Fight 4 Your Life.  The advice and any hands on help he will give is certainly a gigantic blessing, as he’s worked on films such as The Matrix and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.

And these are just two of the many rad people I met on this project.  Heck, I was even able to work alongside a bit with the director of the film, Siddharth Anand.  You know I’m always looking to learn from my fellow directors!  Again, truly blessed.  Put in the work so you can back up your claims.  Then it’s all about the networking!  Good stuff!

Thanks again Gary and Kris of G and K Media, who got me on this one.  It was an especially good shoot for them…..Gary won $30K off a scratcher that was given to him, the lucky dog!  You guys rock and I’m lucky to have met you.

 

– B

 

 Believe it.  Do it.

 

 

PopSugar – I’m A Huge Fan – Emma Stone – TV / Web Episode

Recently, I had the pleasure of serving as assistant camera operator for a shoot for PopSugar at their San Fransisco offices.  The shoot was for PopSugar’s TV show I’m A Huge Fan.  And the celebrity associated with this particular episode was Ms. Emma Stone!  She was pretty awesome, I must say.  Not only was I fortunate enough to shoot Ms. Stone, but I also had the opportunity to shoot The Amazing Spiderman 2‘s director Marc Webb.  And, yes, I’m happy to say many of my shots were used!  Not too bad considering it was a 4-5 camera shoot.  I suppose being the newb on set made me step my game up…..Just thankful for the work!  We shot on Canon C-300s.

This particular episode was in conjunction with the release of The Amazing Spiderman 2, for which Emma and the entire cast, along with Mr. Webb, were going around the country to promote at the time.  Although the other members of the cast were there at the PopSugar offices the day of this shoot, my job was only to aid in the sit down interview shoots with the young starlet, her director and the winner of the I’m A Huge Fan contest, who was a sweetheart.  Below you’ll find Parts 1 and 2 of the shoots I served on.  Notice Jamie Foxx and the rest of the Spiderman 2 cast throughout the videos!  Dang, would have loved to have met the Foxx man!  Oh, well.   Gotta keep it professh!

 
– B

 

 

In this next video I make a very…very…short appearance.  Notice me in the light blue shirt with the hat at the 1:20 – 1:21 minute mark!