Filming the first scene

Okay...so for this scene we had to create the effect of aliens landing and abducting the main character's dad...William Bullard. I wrote this to show the imaginative mind of the main character, and it comes at a point in the story when...well...anyway, you'll see it.

My pops worked the effects...creating smoke from some pine straw I raked up. Creating the alien was fun. My homegirl came through and did the make up on my lil cuz. Using some of the makeup from my previous years' Halloween costume as Avatar, I made a few alterations and we pulled ourselves together an alien!

That whole costume was pretty inexpensive to pull off, but it gives me the classic old skool alien from the 50's...at least this is what I imagine...kind of fused with some new modern age retro style. LOL

The neighbor's to the family house in Hope Mills saw the lights posted up outside late that night, with little patches of fire smoldering in the road way. It was just a matter of time, but yes...the police were called on us! Well, it was more like the Sheriff...lol. Nonetheless we were informed we couldn't make fires in the road (who knew?) Minutes later, the back up came by...just to "check things out." LOL...By that time we were finished with shooting all the scenes we needed, and had enough footage for the shot.

Working with everyone was cool, and even though we had differing opinions for a bit on how best to shoot the scenes it was all directed at the same cause. Enjoy the photos!

Filming THE BEANSTALK: an introduction

We began filming for webisodes of THE BEANSTALK's first episode: Jamal and The Beanstalk this past weekend! Its been a long time coming. Many late nights spent typing away at the keyboard at a novel that was imagined over the course of two years. Mostly handwritten at first, it took another two years to type it...then another three manifesting the dream into reality.

I began by drawing pictures on my wall about it, then poems, later a screenplay for a children's production. Even reading classes; however, as of late curriculum has been developed, a website, the screenplay transformed and now...filming! I never even thought of this but once, and was reminded by a close friend that "Yo...we should film live action sequences of your book dude!"

A pause...and then..."yeaaa!" And the dream was born. Since that time...I have written lesson plans, tutored from the piece, administered assessments, and finished a screenplay all while making contact with a graphic artist to begin work on a graphic novel based on the screenplay.

In love with the movement of passionate things in my life I feel alive and blessed to be a part of something bigger. On the road to making this happen I began to realize that all the pieces to the puzzle are available to me, just putting them together is the challenge.

I came to Fayetteville to visit family and found that my cousin has been studying how to edit movies...and has become quite good at it! Not to mention, he has all the software to make this happen. That said, the first two scenes that were shot have already been edited and cued. I feel so blesed to have been able to be apart of this, and to enlist the help of family members and friends in future shootings!