Category Archives: Blogs

These are posts that follow my musings about my adventures.

Unknown's avatar

Aspiring Episodes 1 – 6

by

Under the Holding Pattern Productions banner, three men, Adam Skolnick, Kelton Reid, and Danny Ferry, decided to create a comedy web series based on two ne’er-do-well screenwriters, their inept talent agent, and their adventures in Hollywood.  The results were Aspiring, with the tagline, Livin’ La Vida Screenwriting.  We follow these unlikely heroes as they stumble into the office of a bona fide producer with a stolen script as their calling card.

Aspiring Episode #1:  In which Adam and Danny get mixed up with a demanding petitioner while Kelton, their agent, miraculously secures a Hollywood meeting.

Aspiring Episode #2:  Adam and Danny, realize they have not written a word of a script, and must resort to thieving from fellow slacker screenwriter pal, Paul.

Aspiring Episode #3:  Now armed with Paul’s script, Adam and Danny bring the treasure to Kelton, their agent, who loves it.  And they celebrate their triumph with a pair of local beauties.

Aspiring Episode #4: Danny and Adam receive a pregame talk from their agent, Kelton.  Armed with the tools for the big meeting with Ronn (with two Ns) Howard, our boys are on the brink of the big time.

Aspiring Episode #5:  Awaiting the backlash of the meeting that went very bad, Adam and Danny get hired to watch over their haunt, Flying Saucers Cafe.  Kelton finally catches up to them and tells them just how he feels about their self-destructive antics.

Aspiring Episode #6:  Their dreams all but dashed, Danny and Adam agree to watch a movie at their ol’ pal Paul’s place.  Turns out the movie they watch is from the script they stole, Bull Durham.  It was not Paul’s work at all, but an actual famous Hollywood motion picture.  But there is hope.  Something to do with what the boys blurted out during that botched meeting with producer Ronn Howard’s office.  And it might have to do with a picture deal.

Unknown's avatar

Client: Guided Heights. Pre-Production, Day Two

by

Ferry Boat Films and Guided Heights Massage owner and proprietor, Joshua Marable, went location scouting for the video we are intending to shoot for his business website.  We first went up Flagstaff Mountain to a lookout onto the Continental Divide.  After Joshua carried his heavy massage table to the location where we wanted to shoot, we assembled and set it in place.  It was amazing how the massage table, a beautiful hand-crafted thing, fit perfectly in the spot we intended for it, as if this location was meant to be.  Here is a photo of its intended position.

We descended the mountain, ate tacos at Chipotle, and stopped at the driving range at Gateway Park.  Joshua, the generous producer, treated me to a bucket of balls and even let me use his driver.  Afterward, we went looking for a barn for the middle segment of his video where the characters are intended to pass through in a dreamlike birth of joy and freedom.  We found nothing there at the edge of town so we drove toward the Boulder Reservoir and found the open grassy field for our characters to frolic through.  Here is my favorite shot of the grassy field.

Joshua spoke of a barn he had seen further down the road.  We went there and there were no openings to the mostly boarded up and condemned structures.  But upon turning the car around, a heavy wind picked up and we spotted a shed.  It was spooky how the shed door was suddenly thrown open as if to invite us.  We stopped the car, stepped out and ninja hopped over a a chain, onto the ghostly property.  The landscape was just beautiful, wild yellow flowers and dried wild wheat belw furiously back and forth.  The wind howled through the power lines above.  It was all something out of a dream one suddenly wakes up from and a sense of longing and passing time stirs the soul.  Joshua stood there and took this photograph of the shed.

On the way out, we discussed further what talent we would bring to this small production.  Who would be willing to be adventurous with us, maybe trespass a little.  We have yet to find the woman who will get the massage in the video and we have yet to find the interior location of the large living room at the beginning and end of the piece.  But at the rate we are going, we will have both soon.

Unknown's avatar

Highway of Legends

by

MUSIC VIDEO of a road trip to the Great Sand Dunes in the San Luis Valley, Colorado. Featuring Markus Guentner’s 2006 ambient track, “Altocomulus Opacus”. Music courtesy of Kompakt recordings.

http://vimeo.com/28485678

Unknown's avatar

POW WOW

by

A music video of the Denver March Pow Wow.  This Pow Wow comes once a year for three days where Southwestern Native American tribes arrive to dance.  It was a feast for the eyes and for the soul.

http://vimeo.com/28114522

Unknown's avatar

Working Out with the Iron Yogi

by

Peter Seamens, better known as the Iron Yogi, has kicked my ass twice in two weeks.  Once while doing an accelerated Yoga class so hot and sweaty it dripped into my eyes and my abs felt like they were on fire.  And then again this morning with a very enthusiastic group climbing his Fit Wall.  I felt sore in places I never knew I had.  I have never felt so alive and I will definitely be doing it again.  If you want an amazing place to exert yourself, where when you are done, you feel like you can accomplish anything, go see Peter Seamans, the Iron Yogi in North Boulder.   You have to try the Fit Wall, it’s fun, it’s different and you’ll feel great.  Here is his website:  http://www.ironyogistudios.com/

Unknown's avatar

Starting My Business

by

I have decided to start my business, Ferry Boat Films.  It has been a long time coming, but after having taught in the public schools for the last seven years and gaining a great deal of professional experience and security as far as income and benefits, it is time I pursued my passion for filmmaking fulltime.  This comes as a difficult decision because of what I will be losing, namely a sure paycheck and reliable work.  But I know that writing, shooting, editing, and working with actors and clients, inspires and excites me.  So I am starting a web-based video production company called Ferry Boat Films.  I would be able to write, shoot, and edit for you or your company’s website, commercial documentary films, educational programs, events, infomercials, real estate presentations, sports videos, training films, and narrative short films.  I have a story-telling, cinematic style and I merge that into everything I make.  Formerly, I was a member of a movie-making co-op with the handle of Holding Pattern Productions.  After wrapping our last short film project in early August, that co-op has since disbanded and been resurrected as Ferry Boat Films.  I will soon be picking up the Sole Proprietor moniker to make this all official.  But in the meantime please know that I would be honored to work with you in making movies for your business.  It is certain that on-line advertisements increase sales of your product and I offer competitive prices to make your vision a reality.  If you want to join forces and create moving images that will bring customers and income, please call at 303 501 0696, send me an email at ferryboatfilms@gmail.com, or write me on Facebook.  I am eager to bring your vision to the web.  Thank you for reading this post.

Unknown's avatar

THE FINAL SCENE OF HEAT

by

-+-+-

Heat is the film that commanded me to make movies.  I saw it with Chris Kish in Louisville, Colorado, in 1996.  It changed me forever.  I’ve watched this scene hundreds of times in my life, studying it to see what makes it tick, to make sure that I’ll make something like it someday.  Of course, it’s power comes from the nearly three hours that have led up to this point.  Just before this final scene, the main “bad guy,” Robert DeNiro’s Neil McCauley, has escaped with his dream girl and has every opportunity to flee and ride off into the sunset, but when he catches wind of one last chance to settle a score with Kevin Gage’s Waingro, a double-crossing animal of a criminal, who severely tainted a score in the first act and who tried to have Neil killed in the beginning of the film, Neil cannot resist and turns away from the escape path.  Bad move for him, great for Vincent Hanna, the Al Pacino character who has finally caught up to him.  We care for Neil because he follows a code in his world.  He is a sociopath, but we still hope he gets away because he has worked so hard and has been through so much to get to this point.  Fortunately, director Michael Mann snaps us out of it: ya can’t rob banks, even if it’s your profession.  And so this scene is the inevitable conclusion to this world.  Neil must be stopped and though he was a criminal, he deserves a compassionate witness to his death, even if that witness is the cop who brought him down.

Watch how Vincent looks off into the distance, wondering how in the world he got there, in the middle of this bizarre, blinking, future field.  And Moby’s God Moving Over the Face of the Waters is the final flourish that grants the picture epic status.