check it out here

lukeasa.com/blog

-Luke

p.s. follow me on www.twitter.com/lukeguidici !

yo yo.

hosting my blog on my site now.

www.lukeasa.com/blog

check it oouuuut!

-Luke


p.s. follow me on twitter! www.twitter.com/lukeguidici

Greetings and Salutations my interweb friends!!

The last two weeks I've gotten to see a bunch of music, here's a quick rundown for you.

Ratatat w/ e*rock & panther

E*rock was decent, maybe a little too dancy to start of the night with. Panther was really unbelievably bad. The signing was off key, there were no real lyrics just the same thing repeated over and over, and the music was simple and repetitive. Maybe it's an inside joke that I wasn't getting...or maybe whoever booked the show didn't listen to the band first.

The Union Line and The Local Natives with Venus Infers. This was my first time seeing Venus Infers. I really liked their music. Good, hard straight up rock. Kind of in the Brit-pop vein but without getting overly melodic. But seriously, 4 guys playing rock with the name "Venus?" It makes me think of a sad emo band w/ a chick drummer. The Union Line and The Local Natives were stellar again. I highly recommend checking them out.

Last night I saw Les and The Now at King Kong in Hollywood. Les has got some pretty amazing moves. Like James Brown amazing movies. I'm looking forward to seeing them play again.

I'll leave you with a couple of amazing commercials.







A couple years ago I worked for one of the robbers editing his short film.

..
"Leo" Movie - Director -Joseph Reitman - Celebrity bloopers here

Actually I think I got fired from that film. I cut the film, they needed to do reshoots and were going to call me after they shot. But they never called. Or responded to my emails.

Oh! I just found the film on IMDB. Watch it here. It was originally supposed to be a pilot...and they cut it down to 12 minutes. The film suffers for it. The script was made to be 22 minutes long. Making it 12 hurts the character arc and turns scenes into mere vignettes. A lot of the humor and subtlety is lost as it has to speed from one scene to another. It's so quick that you never really get to know the personality of Leo - which I thought was the best and most charming part of the show.

Oh well, the makeup still looks fantastic.

-Luke

Hello Faithful Interweb Friends!

Oye. It's been a while. Too long really.

Why haven't I posted? There must be a good reason, right?

Well....kinda, not really?

I've done a little traveling this summer:

San Francisco


Seattle


San Diego


Aside from that I've just been grinding away. It's a constant hustle trying to get more projects off the ground and to keep things moving forward. What exactly does this mean? Well in the past couple months I've written multiple music video treatments, worked with a writer developing a script for her to act in & me to direct, met with a producer for my sci-fi short, prepared and submitted a grant proposal for said short film, written a narrative essay, met with a sound designer for a short I completed a while back, talked with numerous production companies regarding my reel, sent my reel out to multiple managers and bands, had a meeting with a website regarding creating original content for them, met with bands, gone and shot test footage until 3am, talked with musicians in Seattle, talked with musicians in San Francisco, edited a music video, supervised visual effects for said video, and enlisted my Dad to location scout for me. And this coming weekend I'm going location scouting in NorCal.

Keep in mind...this is all in addition to my 40+ hour a week "day" job.

One project that has been completed is the video for Sirens & Sailors "Like The Sun." We shot some additional footage in Malibu ..>, Ann gave me some super 8 she'd shot in the Huntington Gardens, Lex gave me some rollouts (the cool effect when the film gets partial overexposed as the camera comes to a stop), and I hired Ben (who did the drawings for "The Real Luke") to do some visual fx on a couple shots.

I really like working with Ben. He's a great collaborator, has good ideas, and we communicate very well over IM. Which is really great since we both have "day jobs" and it's much easier to type a few lines then pick up the phone. I don't think we spoke on the phone or in person until he dropped off the disc w/ the completed shots. Basically I suggested to him that the video needed something extra...like a little additional visual kick. Something that could be seen almost as an aberration on the physical film. I wanted it to be slightly subtle, yet still psychedelic

Here's a link to our first test

A little refinement for our second test


I remembered that the first layer of film emulsion is the "blue" layer. Very briefly, film is a photo-chemical process, which means when exposed to light, a chemical reaction takes places, producing, in this case a picture. The actual piece of film contains different layers of emulsion. These are created using gelatin (that's right, film is NOT vegan) and silver halide. The different layers react to different wave-lengths of light, which produce a color image. That's why slight damages to film show up as blue or blue green. Heavy "trauma" to film - like "roll outs" happen in the red layer, which is the last layer before the backing.


So what does this knowledge mean in practical terms of the vfx?

Well generally like vfx, pacing, and intensity to increase in the course of my work. So it meant that at the beginning of the video the vfx would need to be in the blue spectrum. Then as the video progressed, they would move into reds and oranges. I told Ben and he worked his magic after effects skills to make it so.

And here's the finished video

Sirens & Sailors - "Like the Sun"



-Luke

Happy 1st Day of Summer everyone!

A lot has been happening recently, but it's all pretty much behind the scenes action...I'll update you all once it gets a bit more solidified.

In brief:

• Rotten Apples review on the music video blog, Shots Ring Out, read it here:

• Got the footage back from "Sirens & Sailors" shoot and the super8 looks fantastic

• Preproduction is picking up for my sci-fi short "Crux."


Here's a couple youtubes for your weekend:





-Luke

hello there interwebian friends!

I hope you all are having a wonderful memorial day.

Some new stuff happening, tonight I just finished updating one of my websites,
http://www.the-real-luke.com

It was a minor revamp of the site, I added the videos, my iceberg battle with a polar bear, and my trip to Japan.

It was a while ago that I went to Japan, so this update has been a bit in the making. I got held up with doing the drawings that would take me from Alaska TO Japan. Then one day it hit up me, that I had a friend who was a much better illustrator than myself. So I wrote up a little draft and sent a script and notes over to my friend Ben

Here's a couple before/afters




Check out the site for the rest.

Two weekends ago, I went out to the high desert w/ a couple of members of Sirens & Sailors to shoot a guerrilla style super8 music video.

We got there a little earlier and hung out for bit. Ann scored us some beers from some dirt bikers, and I tried to take a nap. (Which isn't the easiest thing to do w/ dirt bikes rowwwr'ing about)



Thanks were going pretty good. We found a great location, the light was killer, and we'd just done really long tracking move thru prickly succulents when...


Ms. Park Ranger and her meat-headed, white shirt wearing side kick showed up. She accused us of destroying plants. We denied it. We said we'd tossed a couple dead ones out of the way, but didn't hurt anything living. Then she asked what were were doing.

Well, it was pretty obvious we weren't just walking around. Tripod, boom-box, super8, and two girls dressed in cute little skirts. So we said we were shooting some super8, because Ann was visiting from Washington. We just kinda left out the whole "music video" part of it. Not that it really mattered. She still told us that we had to leave the park.

I wasn't very shocked about this, but the girls were really surprised that we needed a permit to shoot something so small on public land.

"That's California for you." I replied.

The whole thing about us "destroying plant life" seemed highly suspect.

First of all, were we really possibly able to do more damage then the 4 wheelers, jeeps, and dirt bikes?

Second of all was the non-ranger meathead with her. I smell a rat. Probably he saw the girls walking around the camp ground earlier and thought we looked suspiscious.

At any rate, we still got a little more than a roll shot off.



We left the park and headed out. We drove around the edge of the park looking for somewhere else we could shoot, and low and behold, we found a spot in between a frontage road, I5, and the back of a service station. If I shot it right (and I think I did) you'll never be able to tell.








I haven't seen the footage yet, so we might need to shoot a bit more...

At any rate, here's a cute little video I just was shown. It's a little girl watching my video for Voxhaul Broadcast's 'Rotten Apples.'

Enjoy!



-Luke

p.s. sign my guest book on www.the-real-luke.com!

Hello interweb friends.

Art Nouveau Magazine interviewed me a couple of weeks ago... you can read it here
www.artnouveaumagazine.com

The Real Luke Season 2 is complete!

If you want to see it in beautiful quicktime, you can check it out on my website. www.lukeasa.com/realluke.html.

This "season" was the most extensive thing I've done for 'The Real Luke' so far. Everything else was always just my sister and I.
Now I've expanded the cast of characters and opened up the universe a bit.

The production was a little challenging, we shot it all in 1 day, so we did it all in reverse. That is real facial hair after all.

You can see the change in my look.


Unshaven.


Beard Trimmer.


Razor shave.


We almost ran out of light...and we did run out of battery. For some reason I didn't have a full charge on both batteries. We lost it on the last shot. I suppose I would have like 1 more take of that shot...but I think it worked out alright.

Aside from that, the only real issue was the 90+ degree heat. In Washington State! Go figure! That wool mackinaw is um...not the coolest piece of attire. But, it was cooler than the gorilla costu....I mean Bigfoot must have been really hot with all that fur. Maybe he swam in a lake or something after I fought him off.


Season 3 is in the works...word is, The Real Luke might be going to the desert.

But before that, there will be a pretty sweet update to www.the-real-luke.com.

When last we left our hero he was in Alaska...and a Polar Bear was spotted near by. What happens next?

Stay tuned for details.

Here's a little exclusive for you all, some pics from the latest "The Real Luke" project...I'm guest starring in my friend's web series.






-Luke

Hello interweb friends,

This isn’t the complete list...but this is the list of bands that I’d like to see again.

Thursday
Low Vs. Diamond
Arthur Dent
Eastern Conference Champions
Le Loop
Make Model
Electric Touch
Big Bang

Friday
Dr. Dog
Moby
Basha Bulla
The Virgins
Handsome Furs
The Helio Sequence

Saturday
Sirens and Sailors
The Cops
Holy Ghost Revival
Nyles Lannon
Voxhaul Broadcast
Yaysayer
Black Mountain
Neon Neon
Two Gallants
Tokyo Police Club

Probably the best party I went to was the sxSeattle party thrown by KEXP (and others). I only stayed for 3 bands - cause I wanted to see Voxhaul Broadcast play...but all three were stellar. I wished I could have stayed for the other bands too.

Neon Neon was probably my biggest surprise band. Aria had told me about them, but I had really no idea what to expect. If you like electronic music - they won’t disappoint. Check out this mixtape I found of theirs. Free to download!

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/download/47233-neon-neon-mixtape-mp3

It was soooo much good music. So much so much. It’s almost overwhelming just thinking about it. For 4 straight days it like one non-stop rock fest.

I’m really looking forward to seeing "The Handsome Furs" when they play in LA in a couple of weeks.
4/12 @ Troubador

-------

This week is the first part of The Real Luke: Season 2. I’m gonna hold off on the ’making off’ blog until the whole season airs...don’t want to give any spoilers.


-Luke

Hello there my interweb friends!

So last Friday I uploaded the video "Two Friends."  It's the last of the "lost" footage that my Dad shot in 1978.  Pretty amazing to get to cut a story together with super 8 that my Dad shot before I was born.  There were even a couple of shots of my Mom, looking very young and beautiful, but not enough to put another piece together.

Two Friends

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Another job fell through this week - a music video that would have been shot in Toronto.  Several things were a little frustrating about that...it was a low low budget video, which wasn't a problem.  But their MAIN reference for what they wanted to do was a Feist video that must have had a budget about 100x what they did.  So make it just like this...ummm.  Then I never talked to the artist just the manager...and apparently they had different ideas of what was wanted for the video, because the manager loved my treatment, but it was too weird for the artist.  ahhh well.

In other news, I threw away about 5K in freelance work.  I pre-fired the clients.  Look, if I ask you a list of questions, and you can't respond in COMPLETE SENTENCES and then I have to ask you 3 times what your delivery date is and you STILL can't tell me...um my calendar suddenly got full.  Really full.  Like forever.  I've found that working with these sorts of people stresses me out.  And frankly, I'd rather work on www.The-Real-Luke.com and not get paid then work for jokers like that.

The other freelance job, despite my best efforts to make it go away is going to hang around.  *sigh* It stars a filmmaker/actor who's name you'll know, but since I'm talking ish, I'm not going to say.  They are trying to change a cut negative...which is a huge process...even a few minor changes will cost tens of thousands of dollars.  I've been hounding them again and again for a list of these changes: which they have been unable to provide.  Is it really that hard to take what you've done in an editing room and translate it to a document?  Like, I don't know?  An EDL or a change list?  If it is as you say "very simple" why are you not able to communicate these "very simple" changes?  Isn't that part of directing a movie, communicating ideas?

Ahh the mysteries of the entertainment industry...it's like this video, with it's questionable story telling, shoddy lighting, and overuse of logos, that has played at a bunch of festivals.


In a couple weeks I'm going to SXSW - really looking forward to seeing a lot of music and meeting a bunch of bands.  Then after I get back I'm going to shoot my first project with a CGI creature...

Next week...the first part of "The Real Luke" Season 2 will be premiering.  So stay tuned=)

I'll leave you with this awesome commercial.



-Luke

Hello there interweb friends!

Happy President's Day!

This was a good week. I finished up "Two Friends," the last one of the projects that my Dad shot in 1978. Expect that online next week.

There's a couple websites interested in featuring the "Rotten Apples" video, I'm pretty stoked about that - and once it happens I'll be sure to post the link to you all.

The shoot in NYC fell thru...I needed a bit more money from the label in order to pull it off in such short notice. They weren't comfortable paying that much right now - soooo it got postponed for a date TBD.

The best thing though is that www.lukeasa.com is finally up and online! It's been a long long time in coming. It took me 3 web designers before I finally found one who could do it. Not that the first two couldn't - it's just that they were friends doing me a "favor." Unfortunately that put me pretty low on the list of priorities. A valuable lesson for me...but a really long time in making my site a reality. I really like working w/ Kenny of Mey:design he did great work and he did it quickly. It's amazing what happens when you pay people.

Check out the site, let me know what you think. There are a couple videos on there that aren't on the myspace page...and of course, everything is in glorious quicktime.

-Luke

p.s. plus photos and a short story!