Jamal goes anime!

Okay...so I have this idea in my head that in the final ten pages of the script when Jamal is climbing the beanstalk...it's going to be kind of hard to effectively film that with the limited technology I have access to. What I have decided is that I will turn that last part into an animation! I'm very excited about that...especially seeing as how I love cartoons. When the first episode is published it will begin as a regular book with one to two pages of color illustrations dispersed throughout. However, when it gets to the scene when Jamal sees the leaf sticking from out of the concrete...it becomes a graphic novel written like a comic book! This is a dope idea because it coincides with how the film will be shot. I have been working with an illustrator...Ronald Jones from AIU. He is a talented 2D artist and is doing my pre-production for me, which entails designing the characters, giving them different expressions, and eventually making a storyboard. I am also going to have him illustrate the graphic novel portion of the book. That way the cartoon images will be the same as the book images. He has come up with a few faces that I thought were cool. I narrowed a few down to what I liked, and then he focused on those with new expressions. He also redrew the body of Jamal and gave him some clothes. This is an awesome experience! P.S...I chose number 2 Enjoy the pics. Q. Kalique

Jamal and the Pawnshop!

It's been a year and a half since I actively filmed on THE BEANSTALK. Balancing a school life, work life, personal life...with that of my dreams and passions has been a challenge, but one that is worth the struggle! That said...filming on Feb 9th at the corner of Blvd. and Monroe in Atlanta, GA was an experience to be remembered. For this scene Jamal, the main character, is heading to the pawn shop to get some cash for an old TV and some clothes for his mom. Things are getting tight in the Bullard household and it's time for Jamal to step up. I also wanted to film the opening in which the old homeless man holds the sign telling everyone that the world is going to end. I was able to shoot both on the same day which is awesome, considering I've been trying to get this shoot done for some time now. My first and second choices for the pawn shop fell through. God bless Robert Barber at Step Up Thrift Store. He was so accommodating..he allowed me to film in his store, allowed me to use some of the clothes off the rack and even agreed to act in it as the Pawn shop owner haggling prices with my main character! That was such a blessing. Having Mr. Tony on the corner with the sign obviously caused a lot of staring. People looked curiously from their cars in passing, but he stayed in character and even began to yell directly to them that "The World is Coming to an End!" The shot came out very funny and entertaining...I was impressed by his "4th wall". The result was a believable shoot that will fit very well into film. Antwain, my main character, did an excellent job as well. He is 15 and I've been working with him for about as long as I've been trying to film this. Initially, he said he was a little nervous about pushing the shopping cart down the street with the TV and clothes in it...and then haggling the prices in the store and talking to the homeless character on the sidewalk. However, I think Mr. T's performance showed him he could be free and really engage in the character while ignoring all that was going on behind him. I literally had to take like 100 video shots of the scenes. It was a long process, but in the end I got a very good collection of footage to work from with my video editor. Check out the photos...let me know what you think! Peace y'all! Q. Kalique

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!