Beatrice & The Bike Thief

We were just informed that my script for the short movie "Beatrice & The Bike Thief" has been selected to be in this years A Place Called Sacramento Film Festival Oct.4th at The Crest. This ought to be a fun one... It's a Disney-style comedy with kids on bikes...and Beatrice who fancies herself as a detective... on the trail of bike thieves.
We'll be casting by the end of May and hope to start production in June. We will have the website up soon... www.BeatriceAndTheBikeThief.info

Visit by The Governator

Yep... Here he is driving up to The Studio Center with his entourage. First thing Arnold did was to walk into my office where I was talking to my brother (and Chief Editor) Fred, asking "So Vhat are you two up to?"... After welcoming him to The Studio Center, I told him we run the place. The Gov then says, "So, you're not doing much of anything then?" I had to retort,"You've been dealing with too many studio people haven't you?" He says, "A few... Nice to meet you"... he flashes that big smile, shakes hands and walks back into the studio to do his thing.

New Metal Scupture Logo on Building

Fred Casanova is preparing to mount The Studio Center Logo onto the building.

As you saw in previous photos, Fred built the logo himself... Talented guy, besides being our chief Final Cut Pro guru!!
The finished logo is being mounted into it's final position... It's really cool. Wait until you see the back lights !

New TV spot

Ryan Todd was in the studio again...this time as producer, with Chad Turner directing a spot for a communications company. As usual, Dave Bunge did an amazing job of lighting the three sets... From the simple table-top work , to a hip lounge scene, to the fun "walk up the side of a wall" greenscreen trick. Eric Maddox brought in his Sony EX1 High Def camera ( just like the one we have in-house! ). Toby Annis and Mike Booth headed up the crew of about 7. These guys are all pros and shot the whole thing in a day.

New Building Logo Being Made

If you've been by The Studio Center anytime in the last few months, you might wonder where you are. All you'll see is the "915" near the front door. Since we repainted the building with new colors...and a bit more sophisticated I might add... we had to paint over the old logo. That was OK because we had plans for a new metal sculpted logo to go in it's place. Since this is also a piece of art, things just take longer than you might expect. But as you can see, the work is in progress! It's really gonna be cool!

Swap Meet Great Success

Wow...It was great fun...and we sold a lot of stuff... Although I was the first to break my first rule: We shouldn't just sell stuff to each other. Craig Witter had a Matthews BeefyBaby light stand that retails for $200 and he was only asking $10 since it had a broken set screw ( I knew I could fix )... My 10 bucks came out of my wallet so fast... and it was only 8:30! Didn't realize it later that some others were running to get some cash to buy these bargains. Ya know, it's the Quick and the Dead at these sales.

Seriously, my thanks to all those who participated since the weather turned a bit cold on us, but no rain. We had people coming from the Bay Area and Lake Tahoe. CFAA made a few bucks selling coffee and donuts! Plus great networking. We all decided we have to do this again this summer... AND WE WILL !!!

Jim Finnerty in doing a spot

Well known Northern California on-camera talent Jim Finnerty was in the studio last week doing a green screen spot with our High Definition Sony EX1 camera. The guy is amazing. Not only does he nail the spot on the first take, the subsequent takes are all about giving the producer a number of different reads so they have a great choice when they get to post production edit. This is the prime example why people say it pays to hire a pro... Ya get it right the first time... and it looks more than right, it's great!!
You can also catch Jim on KVIE's "America's Heartland" where he is now a Producer besides being an on-camera host.