Research

So there was a problem when I decided to make this movie.  I had never thought about how to make a documentary before. Most of my work was music videos.  I knew how to make rappers from Tampa and Atlanta look cool, but I had no idea what was the history and ideology of making documentaries.  Luckily, I have UCF's Lisa Mills as a faculty advisor. She's an award winning filmmaker and big thinker on the subject of what is documentary filmmaking? This is a link to her latest movie...
https://vimeo.com/27645118
She pointed me in the direction of some research that over the next weeks and months I read...and read...and read...until I felt like a had a pretty good handle on things.   Other people must have felt that way too, because they asked me to teach a class on the history of documentary film production. Forgive me if some of the things I post in the future are alittle to film theory and not enough specifically related to the movie.  Please comment, or send me an email, if you'd like to know why I posted something or if the connection isn't clear, I'll be happy to explain further,  and honestly it does me the huge favor of helping me see when I need to crystalize my information.

In the beginning...

I don't know how many of you are interested in this, but its part of the movie so I thought I would include it.  When I got into grad school I was hell bent on proving that I could make a micro-budget comicbook movie based on a comic that I was working on with a friend. A great many people said that it was crazy, so I decided to move on to another idea.  I took about two weeks just thinking and trying to come up with something else. Nothing seemed as interesting to me as investigating the idea of what heros are, and why we treat them the way we do, which a comicbook movie is the perfect vehicle to use to explore that question. My mom pushed me pretty hard to come to the dinner that they were having for the ship that my dad was on when he was in the Navy, the USS Randolph.  So I asked my friend and cinematographer Brian Macaione to go with me for the day to St. Augustine and see what there was to see.  That day we recorded about 6 hours of footage.  I was deeply moved by the stories that were shared with us, and I was completely engrossed by what I heard. Sometime on the long ride back, I realized that this movie about the men of the USS Randolph could be what I had always intended the comicbook movie to be. These were actual heros.  People that had won the war in the pacific and been a breathing part of history. To me that is who they are, but to themselves and to each other, they are a much more humble thing. And that lack of hubris, is what I believe makes their story so interesting.

Another Sad Statistic:

With in the next 6 years we expect to lose 90% of our Vietnam War era veterans.*

*this statistic comes from the same study conducted by the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2008.

Sad statistic:

Within the next five years we are expected to lose 98% of our surviving World War II veterans.*

According to a study conducted by the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2008

The Plan

So here is the idea.

I am going to go a road trip with my dad.  We going to visit the places that were important to him, when he was in the Navy: Great Lakes Bootcamp in Chicago, Scranton where he grew up, Old Bridge where he lived when he was in high school, Brooklyn where the Randolph often came into port, and a few more places that I will reveal as we go along.  To further understand the experiences of my dad, I will include interviews with many of the other surviving alumni of the Randolph.  I hope that in treating the history of the ship and the movie in this way, we will gleem a unique perspective on being aboard an aircraft carrier in the United States Navy.

Happy Father's Day

Thanks Dad...for everything.

And thank you to all the servicemen apart from their children today.

Me talking about me

Hey Everyone,

Here is a little interview I did, talking about some of the stuff I'm working on.  We talked about comic books, teaching, and this doc.  Please give it a listen if you have a couple minutes. I'm somewhere around the middle.  Thanks to Alan Mehanna, for putting this all together.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/fun-games-ramblings-from-108/id519945568

We will now resume your regularly scheduled updates

Hello Everyone,

Sorry, its been so long since by last post.  I have been producing a movie called The Tailor's Apprentice.  The experience has been something challenging and rewarding a way that I can't really put into words.  Unfortunately though, it has taken up almost every moment of my time.  We shot for a week in Philadelphia, and then the last two weeks here in Orlando.  As the movie wraps, I find myself in the enviable position of being able start work on a movie as personal as Blivits! is.
Over the next few weeks, I will be posting more and more stuff.  Some of it will be how you can help make this movie a reality and some of it will be entertaining.  Thank you for sticking around and continuing to read about this adventure.