I’m super stoked to announce that “This Is My Home” has been accepted into the United Film Festival in Los Angeles! The film will be playing on Sunday, April 28th @ 4:30pm at Los Feliz 3 Cinemas (1822 N Vermont Ave, Los Angeles, CA). It’s playing before the feature Bible Storyland. You can buy your tickets here or learn more about the film festival here.
Hi Friends! It’s been a while since i’ve given an update on things and stuff, so with 2012 coming to a close I figured this would be a prime opportunity. This is My Home has hit over 650,000 views! Kelsey and I couldn’t be more ecstatic! I was actually able to watch it on my Virgin America flight first hand – it was still playing in October, 3 months after it first started it’s run in the skies.
I haven’t been able to push out much more content this year. I spent most of my time focusing on how to really get This Is My Home out there to as many eyes as possible. Towards the end of the summer, it was submitted to five 2013 film festivals – so we’ll see how that goes!
I’m making a promise to myself that in 2013 I will release at least 10 videos. I will be working closely with my good friend Ian Scott to rock some stuff out. We had our first creative meeting yesterday and i’m really looking forward to making some awesome content in the new year.
And that’s that! Happy Holidays!
Maybe one day i’ll add a new section to this site which features some select writings if I end up doing more of it in the future. For now though, while the pickings are slim, I just wanted to share a few things with you here in the blog. Every now and then I write a lesson for Vimeo Video School. Below this paragraph full of words, you’ll find links to all of them if you feel like you want to learn something. For instance, did you know tungsten lights originated in Tungsteny, Italy? You can read all about it in my Light ‘Em Up: Basic Lighting lesson. Here’s a list of all the lessons i’ve written to date. Go learn something.
Light ‘Em Up: Basic Lighting
Control The Sun With A Matte Box
To Infinity Wall And Beyond
Gaff Tape: King Of Tapes
White Balance
How To Assemble A Crew
What Is A Neutral Density Filter?
How To Stop Shaky Camera Syndrome
Getting Started With Adobe After Effects
Who’s Who On The Crew?
Battery Basics
Early this morning I got a tweet from @boctor, who was kind enough to send some kind words my way after watching This Is My Home on a Virgin America flight. Along with it, he sent a picture of it playing on the in-flight television and it’s a picture that I will forever cherish. It’s a dream come true for me – it’s a dream I didn’t even know I had – to have a film I created to be playing on 9 inch television screens 30,000 feet up in the air.
I’d like to thank BoingBoing, Xeni Jardin specifically for this amazing opportunity. BoingBoing has been a favorite website of mine for a long time now, and for them to present this opportunity to us has been absolutely incredible. And of course, one billion thanks go to Anthony Pisano, because without him none of this could have ever happened.
You can watch This Is My Home on BoingBoing TV on any Virgin America flight throughout the month of August.
A lot of people have been wondering how exactly we came across Anthony Pisano and his incredible home. Well, take a journey with me, won’t you?
On an unseasonably warm November night while Kelsey and I were walking to get ice cream, we paused on the sidewalk, gazing past the open door of what appeared to be an antique shop. Bright neon sign in the window, Frank Sinatra music blasting, it seemed like a great place to pick up a few odd trinkets. We both shrugged our shoulders and began to walk in.
It was then that an elderly man sitting outside, who we presumed was the shop owner, spoke up – “Hey, ladies first”. He was right, how rude, so we switched our places and once again began entering – “One other thing” he said, “Just so you know, nothing inside is for sale. You can browse all you want, but you can’t buy anything”. What an odd tactic for an antique shop we thought. As we were looking around the first room in this railroad apartment, about half way through we spotted a desk area, but beyond that, the lighting began to fade, and figured the area was off limits. Standing in the middle of this place, suddenly it hit us – “Wait a minute” we thought. “Are we in this guys’ house?”
We made our way back out front and asked him, all he told us that we were unusually quick and implored us to go back in and continue exploring “Go all the way to the back,” he said. “You have to really see everything.” Hesitantly, we walked back inside and started our second look around. This time, as we walked past the desk area and into the shadows, we spotted a bed – yup, it suddenly became clear that this was in fact this man’s home. Past the bed, we were greeted by a friendly cat sitting atop a piano sitting right at the corner of the kitchen. After about 15 minutes we wandered back up front, thanked him for letting us peruse his home and then went on our way down the street to get our ice cream.
What else could we say at this point? We weren’t quite sure what to think. We knew we wanted to know more about this man, but we also had a feeling that it would be extremely selfish to keep it to ourselves, we knew that there must be an incredible story behind this house of wonder. After enjoying our ice cream, we walked back over to the man, who was still sitting outside “So, we have a question” “Yes?” “We’re both filmmakers” “Yes?” “And we find your home fascinating” “Yes?” “And we’d like to kn…” and just then he cut me off. “Just ask me already!” We presented the idea, which he accepted warmly with an excited smile. We set the date for 2 months later, once Kelsey returned to New York and we shot the piece in 4 hours on a much, much colder February night.
It was a wonderful night and we captured many of Anthony’s stories, explored his home more in depth and spent a good 20 minutes trying to find Anthony’s camera shy cat to no avail. After we left Anthony’s house that night, we were both floored. It’s all we could talk about for hours. What a friendly, fascinating man – there’s not a single other person like him in New York. We knew we had captured something really special and couldn’t wait to show it to the world.
As of this writing, less than 2 months after it’s release, the film has 450,000 views. It has been written about in The Huffington Post, Roger Ebert’s blog, Oprah’s blog, and Yahoo Canada. It made it to Front page of Reddit, went viral on Buzzfeed, BoingBoing, Gothamist, New York Magazine, The Daily What, Devour, Flavorpill Blog, Laughing Squid and Vimeo Staff Picks. It will be playing on the in-flight TVs on Virgin America flights, and has 2 scheduled screenings in Australia and 2 more in the UK. We’re absolutely thrilled with the success of this film and have nobody to thank but Anthony. Never in our wildest dreams could we have imagined it would have gone this far and we thank you all for watching and sharing it.
We visited with Anthony a few weeks after the release of the film to show it to him and to just catch up. He let us know that people from all over the world, as far as The Netherlands have showed up at his home and told Anthony that they found out about his place by watching our film. When he’s not home, kind notes are left at his door for all the people who missed him, hoping to catch a few seconds with New York’s most heartwarming man.
I’ve got a bunch of projects in various stages of completion on the horizon that i’m excited to share with everyone. First, a short documentary called “This Is My Home” which features a man in the Lower East Side of Manhattan who lives in a place most people mistake for an antique shop. You can watch a teaser video for that right here.
Next up, there are two cooking videos I shot for my girlfriend’s blog TrialAndErrorFood.com. The recipes include Baked Apple Rings and Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries. They were absolutely delicious and I hope that comes across on the videos. You can watch the one we did for Key Lime Pie a few weeks ago right here.
Lastly, i’m hoping to ramp up production on Playing for Pocket Change again. It’s been over a year since we posted our last episode and i’d really love to produce 10 more of these. Due to scheduling conflicts, this has proven difficult to continue but this is going to start to become a priority for me to push through – so you should expect something soon!
Aside from that, I have a bunch of ideas churning around in my head for other projects i’d like to do. 2011 was kind of a quiet year for me in terms of video production but I promise to come back this year with more content than you can shake a stick at. Seriously, put your sticks away, don’t even bother.
Hey. So, after years of having my stuff scattered all across the internet I decided to finally create a space where all of it can co-exist peacefully. On the site you’ll pretty much see everything i’ve done video-wise, except my earlier stuff which has been omitted for good reason. I didn’t know a thing about copyright laws back then so most of it has been removed from the internet. That being said, the great majority of my video work is now on the site – in the future i’ll add my photography, art and written work which i’m sure you’re all just dying to see. Thanks for stopping by! I’ll update the blog section with news and new videos as they’re released. Cheers!