Month: August 2012

Tough Questions Require Tough Answers

This week I’m about to do my interview session for my film and I’m nervous as hell. I’ve mentioned this a couple of times on my blog about preparing for this interview session (The Hardest Part of My Film, Stepping In Front of The Camera) and let me tell you I’m still nervous about doing this.

It’s not that I’m afraid of being in front of the camera but I’m gonna be talking about my personal life, something that I never talk about not even to my closest friends. I’m also nervous about the questions that I came up with for my session and they’re really tough questions and in all honesty I don’t have the answers to those questions that I put together.

While I don’t have definitive answers, to me that’s a good thing because that’s what I wanted. I wanted to create questions that would put me in this position, not questions that only had one word answers. These questions make think and evaluate my life and being in a wheelchair. These questions put me in a very uncomfortable position and I like it that way. It means that I have answer these tough questions.

I feel that doing this session will have to force me talk about problems and issues in my life being in a wheelchair. I’ve never opened myself up like this before. This will be the most important part of my film and if I’m gonna get people interested in my film, I have to be in front of a camera and answer some tough questions.

Justin

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New wheelchair brings new film challenges

The many new gadgets and buttons on my wheelchair

So it’s been over a week since I got my new wheelchair and I absolutely love my wheelchair. So far I’ve had a few kinks like the fact that my new chair is a speed demon and I have to really be careful driving it because I’ve crashed into a lot of things around Chicago during my first week. I’ve to get more adapted to way this wheelchair drives compared to my old wheelchair. I’m a good driver but I just have to get use to my new wheelchair.

While I’m dealing with those kinks there’s one challenge that I completely forgot that I was going to deal with and that’s how my new chair was gonna affect how I shoot my film. The reason this is a challenge because my new chair and my old one are completely different. For example, in my old chair when I would film the camera would be in my lap and that’s how I was able to film while I was riding in my wheelchair. In my new one I don’t have the same luxury of putting the camera in my lap because of size of my new chair which is smaller than my old one.

This is a huge challenge for me especially since I’m getting to close to end of the shooting part of my film. I will stop shooting my film in November and with that deadline I set, I have to figure out between now and November how I’m gonna handle this. The next few months are gonna be tough for me now that I have my new wheelchair but if anyone can take on this new challenge its Justin Cooper

Now I have to go and see if I can tame this speed demon that I call a wheelchair. Wish me luck!

Justin

My Experience Working On Deadly Embrace

Well after a week of shooting Deadly Embrace, I’m back on my blog and ready to continue working on my film. For the next two weeks I’m preparing for my interview session that I have planned for The Wheelchair Chronicles. I’m so nervous about this because it just me talking about my life, but I’ll talk about that as I get closer to my session date.

Today I wanted to talk about my week-long experience working on the film Deadly Embrace. We started shooting last Sunday (August 5th) and I was nervous as hell when I first arrived on set because I didn’t know what to expect or how everything was going to work out. Now we two production meetings before we started with the director of the film Alaric Rocha and he explained about what was gonna take place but I was still nervous about the first day.

My nervousness disappeared quickly as we were working on the set and I got a chance to get to know the cast and crew. The people who I met the first day were great and we worked very well together because we were working on one common goal and that was to make this film really great. I

was also nervous because I was 2nd Assistant director and my responsibilities were to create the call sheets for the cast and crew, to call the actors, making sure people were on set, etc. but as the week went along I got comfortable with my responsibilities and now I know what goes into being an assistant director

The cast that assembled for this film were just amazing, real people. I gotta give a shout to Don Markus, Elisa Dei, Madrid St. Angelo, Dagoberto Soto, Jay Disney, Katie Lanigan, Grace McPhillips, my dude Johnny Colon and the rest of the cast. It was a pleasure working with you all.

I gotta thank Director Alaric and 1st Assistant Director Priya Yavagal for giving the responsibilities of 2nd Assistant Director. Thank you for entrusting me with that responsibility and giving help when I needed it. Alaric, I hope you film is big successful because I saw first hand the work it takes to make a film and the work that you put into it and Deadly Embrace deserves the success it gets.

Also I gotta give a big shout out to the crew. The camera crew, the grips & electric crew , hair/makeup, wardrobe, D.I.T., sound, art, the production assistants, producer, and everyone else I forgot to mention you guys put serious work and it was an honor to work and be apart of this crew.

Finally, I want to thank my new friends. I gotta say this, all my friends on the set you all are awesome. You treated me like a real person and I thank you for that. I had an amazing time with you all and I will never forget you. Thank you for making this a wonderful experience for me.

Justin

 

Blog Update (Version 2)

Well I started working on Deadly Embrace as 2nd Assistant Director. I said in my earlier post that I was gonna post everyday while working on Deadly Embrace but due to my responsibilities on the set and my responsibilities with putting together call sheets, emailing and calling cast and crew, I’m not going to be able to post the way I wanted to. I will not be posting anything until Monday August, 13th the day after I’m done working on Deadly Embrace. Thanks to everyone who has supported my film and this blog, I truly appreciate it.

Justin