Hello I'm the G-man!

Hey Everyone I'm the G-man. My real name is Gerald and if you want to know what I look look blow up Mr. Johnson's photo of four rooms and you will notice there is a black guy in the photo!!. That would be me.  :D (iphone cameras...)

I will be Directing one of the short films in "Sauced" and I will be co directing the beginning, interludes and end along with R.A. Johnson.  I'm so excited for this project because it is a great opportunity to pool all of our collective talents for something bigger.

As you already know we are going to do something awesome, so let me break it down for you. We are going to shoot a feature length film have four separate directors and a slew of cast members all on a shoe string budget. It's times like these I look up to Robert Rodriguez and "El Mariachi" for inspiration because he really did do so much with so little. I take it as a challenge as well, and it keeps me motivated to work with outstanding people, such as the awesome team we've developed here.

I've directed 2 short films which you can check out on our youtube channel (soon!). And I've shot plenty of other types of videos, learning a monumental amount of skills and information on each. The first thing I shot (not the films I mentioned) we spent 11 hours on a 30 second scene. On the last film I directed,  we shot a 10min plus film in less than 12 hours. The latter was for a 48 hour film contest. So if there is one thing I learned about its efficiency!

Now I'm no master of film, nor am I qualified to give lessons of any sort. However I feel I should share my past experiences and do my part to keep all those who take the time to visit our production blog up to date. Why?? So that I can better myself as a Director, Screenwriter, Producer, Camera Operator, Editor, (the list goes on...) and a student of Cinema.  And help those who take the time to talk to us and comment toward that same goal.  Of course I will be talking about all of the above and more on this great journey so stay tuned.

Thank you for reading! And check back with us soon!!


- Director G-man

Storyboarding for a KickStarter video

A little protein and Powerade for the Storyboarding process.

An example of perfection for motivation.

Hey Guys, It's R.A. Johnson. Today we worked on storyboarding several scenes from the script that we will hand over to an actual artist, as you can see from the pic above with my lego/stick figure characters, that we suck! Artistic ability doesn't matter in a storyboard situation, because as long as you sketch out specific angles and certain visual elements, you can always hand them off to a real artist, or even discuss and describe them to your D.O.P and/or cinematographer and they can really breathe life into it. And even if you're not handing them off to anyone else, they work great as a checklist if your shooting your own sequences or films.

 With ours, we want to make a KICKSTARTER VIDEO. Since we don't have any footage to show in a presentation, I thought it would be cool to create a storyboard trailer of our movie "SAUCED," so that we have a visual to show people. I recruited my talented friends Kool Keith and Jeff Buckholz to help us with the graphic elements of the movie. Kool Keith is a motion graphics artist who offered to help us with a really cool opening credits scene, not unlike the Naked Gun intros. Jeff Buckholz is an illustrator who will be drawing our storyboards for the trailer, as well as designing several logo's for the in-movie business.

 I really feel like an open forum and/or roundtable discussion helps me a lot with the progress of my story writing and character development. While writing, in my head I actually play out the parts of all the characters in a scene, and try my best to write it perfect. Then I will discuss it out loud with my partners, and most of the time, while I'm trying to describe what's going on with my scene, I will come up with something way better just discussing it out loud. Also, being opened minded and checking your ego at the door is an absolute must.

 Do you guys have any storyboarding tips or tricks? How about writing with another partner, or writing alone, do you have a preference? Let us know in the comment section below. Also, are you guys working on any projects? Tell us about what's unique or difficult about it.

Screenplay Writing With Partners.

Hey guys, this is R.A. Johnson, I am one of the partners of Guerrilla Coast Pictures. I am a team member first and foremost as well as an actor, writer and director for our company. We are starting this site as a Production Blog, and at least for me, a Motivational Journal.

Today, I blended together the first 7 pages of our screenplay. Initially, Gerald and I wrote separate versions of the opening of our film, "SAUCED," and after discussing the highlights of both versions with Gerald, Eric and myself, we came to an agreement on what the final draft should be. So I pieced it together like a Script Frankenstein! Hopefully it will come to life! Muahahahaha! (Did I just type out that evil laugh?)

I am writing the screenplay using a FREE SOFTWARE called Celtx. It is a great free software with a lot of cool attributes. There is no excuse of not writing an idea out because you can't afford Final Draft etc! You can do it!! There are a lot of free options out there to get started.

MOTIVATION POINT#1 : Think about this while writing for your characters. The motivation for Tim Roth's character in "Four Rooms" to actually enter, stay and/or come back to these crazy rooms was: 1. Money. 2. Sex. 3. A large gun pointed right at me. and 4. Money again. These are factors that would keep us the audience going back into these rooms as well. They are realistic drives but at the same time exaggerated and pushed to the limits so that we can suspend belief into this Diagetic World and escape reality for a moment and think: Damn, I can't believe he just did that!? Or, wow, I could never do that!

What are your thoughts on character development? Anybody else use Celtx? Comment below and gives us tips, tricks or opinions on whatever! And as always, KEEP WRITING!