Random Action – Episode 3

My good friend Tom Otero thinks this is the best thing we’ve ever done. It is the first time we used any literary devices in out story. It’s amazing how much a framing sequence to make a story seem so much more interesting.

1. This is my only on screen appearance in the Random Action series.  Adam Rickabus survives this video to return as High Pockets in the finale.
2. When I first came up with the concept for Random Action, I didn’t know about Jeff Brown but I was friends with his brother Steve. When I found out he had a twin who would act for me every changed.
3. That hubcap is hanging in my room in my Mom’s house.
4. My glasses really broke on set so we had them fall off toward the camera. Lots of quick compromises were made to make this happen. I wish I still had the gumption to do that on all my projects.
5. Music is by Scott H Biram. He is a badass.
6. We bought a mattress at the Salvation Army to make landings easier. $24.
7. After avoiding the NERF aspect in Episode 2 we really embraced it here with the NERF shotgun.
8. At the 2:40 mark you can see Tom’s shadow fall across the actors when the camera spins. He feels he can never atone for this sin. I’m still upset about him hitting my knee on the one good drive away shot.
9. Tom ran the camera for all of this episode and it really shows. He’s fantastic at getting really dynamic shots. I have an old joke about telling which one of us was holding the camera in a given shot. If it’s a low angle shot Tom did it. (He’s short)
10. Steve speaks enough Spanish to correct my awful bit of writing at the end. Thank god.

Random Action – Episode 2

If you read my last post you now know more about Random Action that some of the people who were in it. You may ask yourself, what else could possibly be known about a series of student action movies? You may ask yourself, how did I get here? Well prepare to find out.

1. The most important thing for you to know is that our poor attempt to shoe-horn in plot weighs heavily on us to this day. We’re still working on making a coherent storyline long after the series is done.
2. So real the reason we shot in high contrast B&W is because we didn’t know how to white balance or get good contrast on the school’s camera. The Sin City motif didn’t was just a great excuse.
3. The sword sounds were recorded in my dorm room by myself. I used a cheap hammer and a piece of metal. This was surprisingly effective.
4. That is my robe that Jeff is wearing. Well, it was mine. I gave it to him as a gift at the premiere of episode 5.
5. You can see the bending of our plastic swords in several shots. We shot in order so it get’s worse as the video goes on. During the battle on the steps, Jeff is holding the blade so as to keep it from breaking off.
6. We’ve talked to people who do actual sword fight choreography. I’d like to take this moment to apologize to them again.
7. Finally, the last shot of Jeff getting hit by my truck is based on one of Robert Rodriguez’s 10-Minute Film School videos. The trick is to have the victim lay on top of the car and roll down onto the windshield. Brilliant right?

@EwzHealth

I’m trying something new. New for me. I’m taking control of my health and I’m going to posting about it to keep myself in line. I won’t be clogging up my site or my twitter but rather I’m starting up a new twitter account @EwzHealth where I will be tweeting my weight every day. This will help me keep motivated to lose those lbs. BUT it will only work if you follow me and show support, so please follow me on twitter or if that isn’t your thing keep checking in here and follow my posts on the right sidebar.

Random Action – Episode 1

I just got a new computer and as such I’ve been able to do a lot more with video compression and finally put my old videos online in HQ. As such I’m going to upload them here with commentary. These certainly don’t exemplify what I’m capable of today, but it should be fun to see what crazy crap I made going back all the way to high school. We’ll start off with my baby the Random Action series.

A loose history of the Random Action series is this: In January of 2006 I read Penny Arcade’s Official NERF Rules of Engagement. The middle panel, which takes the absurdity of NERF guns and mashes it up with overdramatic noir style stayed with me. The April before, Sin City, hit theaters and as a big comic nerd I was hooked. That led to the Sin City style open for the 2nd season of Random Acts. Random Acts was a sketch comedy group that I was a founding member of at Butler University. Tired of doing just comedy my friend and oft-times business partner, Tom Otero, and I decided to do an action piece. I remembered an idea I had come up with the year before that would have featured future Without Troy star Kent Livingston. Kent was out and our new friend Jeff Brown was in. The title, naturally, would be a pun based off of our parent series.

The shooting of the first episode took about an hour. Right behind the camera people were walking to class so all of the voices were re-recorded later. Eric Weiher made his sole appearance as our ninja kidnapper. He’s a much better actor than what you see here. My co-director Tom makes an appearance at the end as the eventually named, Marlowe. Marlowe would grow to be possibly the most compelling character in the series due in no small part to Tom’s performance.

Music is by the amazing Tomas Diablo. He kindly gave us permission to use his music and I can’t thank him enough for that.

The Random Action series grew out a lot from here. It’s incredible how much it’s changed.

Robert Randolph at the Vogue

This was actually my first show at the Vogue. It’s a cool place.

The music was great. The opening band, Blue Moon Revue, deserves much love. We chatted briefly after the show. Check them out. I’m breaking my no linking to MySpace rule for these guys.

Robert Randolph was amazing. Seriously great. My only problem was the crowd around me. One girl was angry at another girl for dancing too much and so she poured beer on her back. Some people just want to cause trouble.

The real highlight of the night was Joanna getting on stage. Seriously. So. Cool.

Ewzzy and Jay Hit the Zoo

Animals

I got stuck at an intersection because a flock of Geese were all up in my way. What’s the deal with geese? I know, it’s the ‘tude.

Next, while I was home for the 4th of July, I saw a kid terrified of a pony. This is all the courage he could muster.

That is all.

New Computer!

I am so pumped about this. I’ve been saving up for a new computer for work purposes. My laptop wasn’t exactly high end when I bought it and couldn’t handle exporting large projects from Indesign. My new Dell Studio XPS? Unstoppable. It’s name is Balder.

One little problem. The dang thing didn’t come with an OS! I promise I ordered one. This wasn’t a decision I made. Seriously check out this completely clean partition table:

That is an empty terabyte you’re seeing. After some wrangling I got Windows 7 installed on it and I love it.

St Louis Arch Panorama

I was in St Louis for a buddy’s wedding and I had an awesome time. I took a bunch of pictures and videos that you’ll be seeing here soon.

Please Internet, Make This Mashup!

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PLEASE!

Santo Contra Los Clones

How did I take this long to find this? It's El Hijo del Santo fighting movie monsters made by a mad scientist out to clone Santo so he can unmask him!

Iron Vampire

Demon in a Bottle is probably Iron Man's most famous storyline so it's only natural Marvel would want to pay tribute to it with their next line of variant covers. Last time it was Zombies, this time we get vampires. I would normally be skeptical of the idea, but using the non-reflection of vampires as the gimmick for the cover is brilliant. Kudos to Salvadore Larroca for his genius tribute cover to Invincible Iron Man #31.

The Flying Trapeze

I’m sure that I posted this before but I’m now convinced that this image is the greatest picture I’ve ever taken. Here’s the story: I was spending a lovely day on the Santa Monica Pier when two children walked up to the fence in front of the flying trapeze. They were both wearing capes. Capes! These children wear ready to fly. I wish I was better equipped to capture the moment but my camera phone did its best. Liberal use of Photoshop has enhanced the photo to printable quality.

The Flying Trapeze by Andrew 'Ewzzy' Rayburn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.