First, I suppose, is the personal:

1. Big things are happening these days! I’ll start with the personal:I moved to Silverlake from the valley. As someone told me in Hollywood the other day, “Congratulations! The jeans just got a LOT skinnier.” I pride myself on wearing pants that simply fit, this will not change. In the process of the move, I realized how hard it is to shut down a freelance operation for nearly a month (long story) and continue to make clients happy. I have a good friend to thank for keeping my reputation squeaky clean.

Now the professional:

1. This very morning saw the debut of “You Look a Lot Like Me,” the 130-minute documentary edited and helped shoot. The rather intense subject matter of intimate partner violence isn’t easy to face, but the theater in West Hollywood was packed with supporters. Despite being such a political issue, not a single viewer complained about misrepresentation of their segment of the community… something we were not necessarily anticipating. It’s funny, though, that I must have spent 1,000 hours on this project and I STILL teared up a bit on multiple occasions.
2. In lighter news, I shot the first half of a western web series with a director I haven’t worked with before. A trailer was put together out of some of the raw footage: CLICK HERE TO SEE IT!
3. In news not quite as light as the western but not nearly as heavy as the documentary, I will be shooting a great and simple (I find those two to often exist concurrently) concept commercial that was given a grant by Mofilm – Cannes. I’m excited because when it was pitched to me, I couldn’t help but say “awwwwwe” and get a warm feeling inside. I’m sure you’d feel the same way if you read the treatment, but you get to wait until it’s finished. Too bad.
4. Paris! Oui. Je vais à Paris pour l’été pour étudier la photographie! Mon français n’est pas bon, mais je veux apprendre a tout en France. While I’m there, I might be putting together a cool little stop-motion short film with a Parisian friend I met in Istanbul last year. Plenty of content to come with that.
5. Lastly, the Happy Body Slow Brain live DVD is in the final stretch. The editing is done; I am just waiting on the final mix. It’s been an incredibly hard wait because I just want to show everyone I know how amazing these guys are. The whole “good things come to those who wait” mentality has done nothing for me. Nothing at all.

I’m cutting it off there… I’ll keep typing through the night if I don’t stop myself. It’s kind of like a mental inertia where it becomes easier to just keep going than it is to find a way to provide closure to the posting.

À bientôt.

Oh, and here is a picture of the “super moon” from last night:

-Whispers Within did very well at the Santa Barbara Intl. Film Fest and won an award at a previous festival in Oregon. After the notify date arrives for the Nashville Intl., we are putting it to rest for good. It had a good run.

-The new film, Bar Tales, was shot just a week after my return from Istanbul and is now complete. It’s way more audience friendly and has been very well-reviewed. It begins the long festival circuit within a couple months and features the same core crew (Producer, Director, DP, Music Producer) as Whispers.

-You Look A Lot Like Me, the feature doc promoting the awareness of Domestic Abuse / Intimate Partner Violence, had a successful campaign on Kickstarter and is within a month of completion. The director, Chloé McFeters, has already begun the festival submissions and is seeking various educational distribution outlets! It’s going to be great to get that into the world finally.

-Most recently, I Produced, Directed, DPed and Edited a ten-song live performance for Happy Body Slow Brain as a first act of the New Year. The post production process is nearly complete and the performances are unbelievable. I uploaded a little outtake below to show you how awesome these guys are:

More later! There are a handful of fun projects in the works that have yet to receive the green light!

-Keith

“There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse.
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.”

The Turbans and an Old Man from Keith Lancaster on Vimeo.

-The fifth cut of the first assembly of the “You Look A Lot Like Me” documentary has been completed. We move on to the second assembly next week! In the last month, we KILLED our Kickstarter goal with the help of over 100 contributors. It’s an amazing feeling to have so many people willing to help with something that means so much to us.

-A first day of camera tests and B roll went down just yesterday for a new project that I can’t talk a whole lot about – but I will say that it involves lots of stunt men / women and I’m unbelievably lucky to have been picked to work on it in both a shooting and editing capacity

-My first ‘real’ commissioned job on Avid Media Composer is in the bag and the color work is also picking up. The final pieces to a new color-correction suite are on their way.

Add to the list two up-coming music videos, a shoot for Awkward Universe and a handful of post-production odd jobs and you get a pretty busy September.

Here are some related photos to keep you from feeling like this was a shallow post:

Hopefully, the next post will feature the most recent adventures of my intrepid Arri Alexa.

Thanks for reading.

The data management portion is overwhelming, but that will be sorted out within the week. Having shot the entire west-coast unit of the film, I can’t wait to see the story unfold in the timeline. This one just might do some good.

We spent the day with three grown men and a Vespa, shooting a promo for an upcoming web series called “Buena Vista.” The guys’ website is launching very soon at http://buenavista.ws/.

After sitting down and talking with the entire community, citizens and national figureheads alike, it became clear how much sense of community still exists in places like these. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such compassion among neighbors in my life;  the entire native community operates like one big extended family down to the way they raise their children.

The combination of culture shock and amazing views of untouched landscapes made for a fantastic final weekend of shooting. After today, production on the film is pretty much finished and moving on to post. I can only imagine how the director feels, having been in production across the country for nearly four years.