Gone Back To Galveston at Last
I arrived back in Galveston after a tortuous and emotional year of closing a highly successful medical practice where I served as Practice Administrator. In that role, I was applying every skill set I had from filmmaking to branding to search engine optimization. After closing, I made the decision to move back to my hometown of Galveston Island, Texas. It was a huge decision but I decided that now is the time to get back to doing the kinds of projects I did before...and more. Since back..it has been a mixed bag of concern over personal friends in my life. So that's what I put my mind down to do. Help as much as I could help. My dear friend Ronny Mozara died during this time and it took my breath away in grief.
I think it did that to many people. I love all his family so much. There were others to help.
I lived on Postoffice street across from UTMB for 6 months with the wonderful family of Dr Begram Chatuev. I could see two of my father's buildings from my outside courtyard and strangely I feel his presence. Love the place where I am and have had an amazing experience getting to know Begram, his family and friends. Баграм. Спасибо за то, что ты мой хороший друг
I started creating and posting almost Diary Videos of my days here. I feel like I am seeing a Galveston I once knew with new eyes. This first one I produced after the amazingly eventful first 40 days home.
Great to be home. I am meeting so many people. I am very excited at the possibilities of creating a new vision for a "Creative Galveston". Galveston has so many important and powerful thought leaders. I see so many opportunities for that leadership to expand as a National voice. Personal relationships with people here are a bit complex for me, sometimes awkward and unpredictable and also delightful and filled with humor and love. Been awhile since I've seen so many smiles. Galveston has changed and I am slowly getting my bearings. But the scale of Galveston is growing back on me fast. Each day seems like a week. Here is Day 42 below.
I started exploring areas of Galveston that maybe I had missed. And then, unexpectedly, I made an incredible creative discovery by simply just going and looking. Armed with my iPhone 11 Pro Max shooting 4K at 240 fps I filmed this really cool piece of Texas History. I didn't know how astounding the footage was until I got back home and saw the footage on a large 30"screen. Wow, it feels like something so new and undiscovered. I haven't met anyone who has texted or posted that they had really seen this before. (127GB upload)
Had a bit of push back on the Texas Museum Group site because as a "home movie test", I used Led Zeppelinand the amazing harmonia track as a test in the video above. Just a personal experimental video to explore the possibilities. The love of history feels like a gift to me. History needs to speak to a new generation. I feel like a recognize some of the faces. Ready to do the commercial version! Bring it on. I later went back and produced a BEHIND THE SCENES video to show some of the details of what I first saw.
Then we were hit with a "Shelter-in-Place" Order by the County of Galveston. I was invited by my friend , Susan Posnick to nominate a worthy doctor for a "Hero Award" for a doctor impacting the Coronavirus. One afternoon, I went to UTMB and shot a few 4K videos, came back and did a live type intro then produced the video honoring the Galveston National Laboratory (GNL) as a team for their contribution to the Coronavirus Pandemic. Blood and tissue samples of the first victim in the USA (Washington State) came expedited here to the GNL. This is a very high security Bio Level 4 facility and believe me when I tell you that they have the brains and technical resources to make some meaningful inroads to getting to some short and long term solutions for this Coronavirus.
I was pretty bored of the shelter-in-place directive and going bonkers not getting out and seeing and interacting with people. So I made my Diary Video for Day 55. But damn, for some reason, it took a very long time to upload to Vimeo. Well it was 4.5 Gigabytes. It failed to upload on Facebook.
Of course most who follow me know that I am working on and developing a Feature Film to by shot in the backdrop of Galveston. It is called "The Night Ain't Got No Eye". I will reveal a lot more about the film here as my writer and I flush out the treatment. Based on actual events and relationships here in Galveston but fictionalized to an extent of my deep understanding of the main character.
I produced a short teaser test video on the film. It gives a clue to some of the drama of the film. It also gave me an opportunity to experiment with foley sound design. Over many nights, I found several locations to consider for a site for the primary filming. It is amazing to conceptualize a dramatic program in the detail that it takes. The lighting. The editing. The moments. The sounds. The expressions. The tight editing needed from a dramatic moment in time to captivate an audience. It is a lot of work and I want parts of it to be edited and shot a la Hitchcock percision.
This a story close to my heart. There are some astounding location possibilities in Galveston. What an incredible tapestry. There is an amazing courtroom scene. My main character was in her mother's womb when her Father was murdered. Her mother raised her playing in the cemetery next to his grave site. She learned a few extraordinary things from her mother and found that she had acquired a gift of premonition and insight. Her heart was filled with love.
I've been toying around with some footage that I shot on two separate evenings. All my life, I passed the ruins of this building that was surrounded by a fence with barbed wire. I went by the location real slow the other day and could see through the fence. I decided to pull around to the alley way. The fence hadbeen torn down in the back. I had never been inside the property of this historic location but I present it to you today.
Day 102 - Shot on Galveston Island, May 7, 2020. The Flower Moon and the last SuperMoon of 2020. It was Day 52 of the Covid-19 quarantine. This video is called C A L A D A N.