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Your first film / video...do you still have it?


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If so, lets see it. (Unless you are embarrassed....even then, suck it up and let's see it!) Always interesting to see some of our backstory / history. 

From various moves, storage units and mismanagement I lost all my early films. But I do have this early one. (but not by my competence, it is just luck.) This was the 4th 8mm movie I shot from 1975. I used most of the film I shot for the project as one takes as I could barley afford the few rolls and processing to make it. I made it for the final exam of the beginning cinematography class at L.A.C.C. . When it came time for the public grading exhibition they blocked me from showing it. I guess it was a little too much for them. (In the early 70's L.A.C.C. was $6.50 a semester for all the classes you wanted to take.)

This film was lost as well, but I found it in my mom's garden shed after she died. She had it in a bunch of trash packed in shed ready for dumping. I'm lucky she was kinda a clutterer and didn't get around to trashing it. It was in the hotbox shed stored outdoors in L.A.'s baking heat for 20 years.

The film is a reenactment of the hoochie show Barbara performed in the carnival in the 1940's and 50's. While not exactly 'X' rated it is a notch above 'R' me thinks. I wish I had did a better job, the material is very rare.

https://archive.org/details/GoneUpInSmoke

https://archive.org/search.php?query=gone up in smoke teoli&and[]=mediatype%3A"movies"

(Both links are for the same film. Sometimes the Archive has trouble with one of the links. YouTube wont for for it.)

 

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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Ah, that was when Waters was still hungry to be a filmmaker. In a recent interview he said he had no interest in filmmaking any more. Sad. If it is in your blood, you keep going until the end. 

Here is his interview:

https://archive.org/details/FilthElderJohnWatersStillPlentyOfRulesLeftToBreakNPR

Now all Waters talks about is his funeral plans.

Back in the day I saw Pink Flamingos at one of the midnight shows in L.A. My girlfriend broke up with me in the parking lot. She said if I liked that film she was done with me.

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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Ohh gosh, one of my favorite topics! hahah 

I started with documentaries as a kid, mostly shot on super 8. One day I'd love to clean the film, scan and edit them. In their current condition, it's not really worth examining. 

My narrative filmmaking life has been plagued with starting projects and not finishing them. Usually it was due to school and the scope of the project being too large, with limited resources. So I do have quite a few false-start productions which are fun to watch. One day I will go back through the tapes and assemble something worth watching. As they stand, none of them are even prepared for viewing. We did shoot two shorts as a kid (pre drivers license) that were pretty fun, but they're quite embarrassing and even though they show skill in storytelling, they don't show skill cinematically because they were made with two people, with lock down shots because it was only two of us behind and in front of the camera. 

When I got my license, things changed dramatically. I wrote a script called "Homework" which was basically a re-telling of Goonies. Three kids find a map in a library and decide to follow the trail. Meanwhile two bumbling idiot bad guys found remains of the map and decided to follow it and beat the kids to the treasure. We had a week to make it and after our 2nd day, one of the kids got violently sick and we waited for him to get better. One of the other kids parents decided to then take their kid on early holiday as we waited. The whole thing fell apart very fast and even though we did schedule to finish the shoot, scheduling conflicts prevented it, which is really too bad. What we did shoot was great stuff, but sadly because it was shot out of order, it's hard to really assemble what we did. 

My first "big" finished production was called "Savage Polka", which was supposed to be like Monty Python's flying Circus. However, the talent didn't want to write and every sketch we DID write, sucked more than the unwritten one's. We fought amongst ourselves quite a lot and eventually the whole thing fell apart, but we did shoot two 22 minute episodes before any of that happened. We wound up broadcasting both for a considerable amount of time however, which was great. A few years ago I decided to take the best sketches and compile them into a 30 minute show that was more akin to the music and style of what we wanted originally. The result was something called "Savage Polka The Movie" and here it is! Shot on 3CCD Hi-8 camera with Canon Glass and mastered on 3/4".  

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xbgqueob3cuohcz/Savage polka small.mov?dl=0

I did a few very successful productions for the TV station after this, including a great documentary about my high school, which actually was shown to new students for over 10 years after I graduated. (It's on my vimeo if anyone wants to see it) 

The summer after graduating high school, I wound up producing a fun little short film on 16mm that kinda defined my filmmaking for the next three years to come. Black and White reversal, standard 16mm, hand held and lots of post audio rather than set audio. We shot 3 movies like this back to back: "What a Difference a Day Makes" 1998, "The ID Project Revisited" 1998 and "The Perfect Moment" 2001-2002. The latter of which, took two years to make due to scheduling conflicts and a loss of the lead actor, requiring re-shoots. I was going to use it as my thesis film for the masters program at Emerson. However, they wanted $12k for the degree, even though I had finished nearly all of the requirements. I wound up moving to Los Angeles instead and the rest is history.

As a side note, I did co-write/co-direct and shoot a short film in 1999 called "Elvis and Me" that took us most of the summer to prep, cast and shoot. We had a string of unfortunate events, from someone breaking into my car and stealing my camera and all the behind the scenes footage we had shot, to a very odd casting/scheduling issue that kept us waiting for weeks. In the end, we shot around 3/4 of the film, but three critical scenes were not finished, so the film was really never finalized. It really sucked because we worked super hard on it and really got nothing out of it. Few years ago, I found the work print and transferred it to digital using a piece of crap machine, just so I had a copy. I put the original flatbed audio to it, added a few title cards and wound up getting something out of it, even though it looks like crap and it's not our original intention. Shot on a CP16, with Vision 1 250D and 500T. https://www.dropbox.com/s/o3gssfb25luvjpp/Elvis and Me.mp4?dl=0

What a Difference a Day Makes 1998. Shot on 16mm Black and White Reversal with a Bolex H16 and Zeiss primes. Transfer done with a projector and screen. 
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6xoed9djrs7fw6a/What a difference a day makes.mov?dl=0

The ID Project 1998. Shot on 16mm Black and White Reversal with SR1 and Angenieux 12-120 zoom. Transfer done with a projector and screen using a DV camcorder. 


The Perfect Moment 2000 - 2002 16mm Black and White Reversal with SR1 and Angenieux 12-120 zoom. Some Bolex H16 with Zeiss superspeed glass and some Vision 1 250D and 500T material as well. Transfer done on a Spirit Telecine and colored at FotoKem. 

 

 

 

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