A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

 Happy Easter, Dear Reader.  This is just a quick update to let you know that the GoFundMe campaign for Popcorn Sky Productions' next film passed its first milestone - the $500-mark - this weekend.  As of this morning, the campaign has received 11 donations for a total of $525. This is a good start since it means that the screenwriter can now start writing the first draft of the script. I estimate that it will be around 90 pages long (or enough material for a 90-minute feature). I'm not sure how long it's going to take to write, but I will be working on the screenplay five days a week until the first draft is finished.  While this is a positive turn of events, this is only the tip of a huge iceberg. The budget we've drawn up calls for a minimum of $50,000; thus, we still have $49,500 to go before we can say "Mission Accomplished."  If you would like to make a contribution to our GoFundMe, you can do so here .

A screenshot of our GoFundMe page.  Hello, everybody. I just want to update you on the status of our new film, which doesn't have a title yet, so we refer to it as Untitled Sequel to Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss.  As you know, this time the folks at Popcorn Sky in New York City want to make a true feature-length film, with multiple locations, a larger cast, and a story with a running time of around 90 minutes.  This, of course, is a far more ambitious project than our previous ones. So far, we've managed to do four films of varying lengths with minimal budgets and small casts; the ones I've written on my own - at least as far as first drafts go - have two, three characters at most.  The film to which I contributed the least -El Grande de Corona - has a cast of five:  Juan Carlos Hernandez Adria K. Woomer-Hernandez Steve Arons Matthew Martin Ward Natalie Hernandez Clearly, we're not quite ready to compete with Cecil B. DeMille in size of cast or scope of s

  A screenshot from the script of Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss Hello there, Dear Reader. I’m writing this post because the folks at Popcorn Sky Productions – including this blogger – are starting work on a new film project that follows the characters from Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss into the realm of feature length films. The entire cast of that short film – Adria K. Woomer-Hernandez, Anthony Hernandez, and Juan Carlos Hernandez – who’s also our director – will be back in their roles of Ronnie, Jerry, and Guillermo Ronderos. I will return as well as one of the writers, plus I will be doing double duty as associate producer. While we do not as of yet have a title, much less a complete screenplay, we have a good idea about the story, its themes, and its characters. Here’s how Adria and Juan describe the project: The film is to consider the issues of political extremism (which we satirized in Ronnie) but this time around, let's look at the costs

My writer's credit!  On February 9, 2020, Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss made its debut as a YouTube short film. Since then, it has been viewed 1,257 times, which by YouTube standards is not impressive but still is gratifying for everyone involved. Of the three "shorts" that actor-director Juan Carlos Hernandez and I have collaborated on, Ronnie has had the most success, not just in the pageviews department but also as far as critical success is concerned. On our film's Internet Movie Database (IMDb) page , we only have two critics' reviews, one by Meg Learner of PersonaPaper, the other by Denise Longrie, a poet, writer, and longtime reviewer who wrote for many years at the now-closed review site Epinions. In her review , Ms. Longrie says this about the premise of a NYC family divided by politics in Trump-era America: These people love each other. Despite their differences, they still care for one another. Jerry brings home treats for

Hello, Dear Reader. It's Monday, March 2, 2020, and it's late morning here in my corner of Florida. Currently, the temperature outside is 73℉ (23℃) under partly sunny skies; per the forecast for the day, the high is expected to reach 76℉ (26℃), while the low for tonight will be 59℉ (15℃). Well, in three days I will be 57 years old. I have mixed feelings about this; on the one hand, I am glad to be alive and thrilled that Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss , the short film I wrote last year for my friend Juan Carlos Hernandez, turned out as well as it did. So far, in the three weeks since Juan posted it on YouTube, Ronnie has been watched 1,216 times (as of this writing). It has also gotten its first official review ; Blogger/reviewer Denise Longrie says Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss is an "amusing and enjoyable short." A still image from Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss.  She goes on to describe the dynamic of the family

The Battle of the Fulda Gap, August 1, 1985. Actual gameplay screenshot from a session I played of Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm. Images © 2014 Slitherine Ltd./Matrix Games and On Target Simulations Hello again, Dear Reader! Welcome to yet another edition of Bloggin' On, the no-reviews, no-politics section of A Certain Point of View. It's Friday, February 28, 2020, and it's a chilly day here in my corner of Florida. Currently, the temperature in my neighborhood is 58℉ (15℃) a few minutes after noon; it was colder earlier, of course, and I don't think that we'll see anything warmer than 60℉ (16℃). The low tonight is expected to be 46℉ (8℃), which reminds me of how cold my apartment in Sevilla (Seville), Spain, could get in late November or early December 1988. I usually like to start writing early in the morning; it doesn't matter if I'm working on a new script, a short story, a review, or a blog post, but I'm tap-tap-tapping on my keyboard no

"I love the ending. You have to see it to enjoy it." Meg Learner, PersonaPaper , Image from Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss © 2020 Popcorn Sky Productions Well, it took a little while ﹘ 17 days, to be exact ﹘ but Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss has gotten a couple of long-form published reviews. The first one was Denise Longrie's user review on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb.com ). Here is an excerpt: It's fun to watch the family members interact with each other. There's no malice. The different characters become angry and annoyed at each other. In less capable hands, their portrayals could have been cardboard clowns. However, even when they're at their most ridiculous, these characters remain human beings with depth. "These people love each other. Despite their differences, they still care for one another."  Denise Longrie, Internet Movie Database user review .  Image from  Ronnie and the Pursuit of th

The unsung hero of Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss. Photo: Alex Diaz-Granados  Hello again, Constant Reader. Welcome to another edition of Bloggin' On, the no-reviews/no politics section of A Certain Point of View where I basically write about whatever topics cross my mind or just vent about everyday stuff that saddens or irritates me. Well, it's Monday afternoon in my corner of Florida; right now it's mostly sunny outside; the temperature is 79℉ (26℃) and the humidity is low at 48%. It's so nice out that I'm almost tempted to go and sit out on the front porch and read for a while. That's something that I always say I want to do; when I lived in East Wind Lake Village, I used to go with a book to the nearby pool, lie on one of the deck chairs, and read for an hour, maybe two, out in the sun and fresh air. Here, I'd be content if I went out on the porch with a book and my Amazon Fire tablet and read for a while...but for one reason or

I'm still over the moon about Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss. © 2020 Popcorn Sky Productions Wow, gang! Man, it's been an amazing 10 months for me as a screenwriter. That's about how much time since my high school buddy Juan Carlos Hernandez first challenged me to write a two-minutes-long short film for him and his wife Adria to act, direct, and produce. I didn't quite manage to write a movie that brief; the short that is now A Simple Ad has a running time of 3:41, which is nearly twice as long as the requested length. Still, I wrote the script in early April of 2019, and it was uploaded to Juan 's YouTube channel a few weeks later. A relatively short time after A Simple Ad was shared with the world, Juan asked me to write a sequence for a film he was doing in the Big Apple with Adria and their son Anthony (a talented young man who I predict will have a great career on stage and screen). My contribution was modest, but it complemented what

Still image from Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss. © 2020 Popcorn Sky Productions Hi, Constant Reader, and welcome to another edition of Bloggin' On: Adventures in Screenwriting. Today I'll be talking a little bit about the music of Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss, as well as a few other tidbits about the making of the short comedy that Juan Carlos Hernandez, Adria K. Woomer Hernandez, and their son Anthony just completed and uploaded to YouTube this weekend. Now, as the screenwriter of Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss, I was not directly involved with the sound design of the 22-minutes-long comedy. That was done in New York City, 1,149 miles away from my corner of Florida; the movie's sound was designed and edited by Adria, who is our female lead and producer. However, because Ronnie was my creative baby, as it were, I did have some suggestions about the film's score, some of which I integrated into the script. When Ronnie

Illustration by Gerd Altmann via Pixabay Well, I posted Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss on several social media outlets, and so far the reactions to the film that I wrote for actor-director Juan Carlos Hernandez have been positive. As of today, no one has written a long, detailed review, but judging by some of the comments I have read on Facebook, Ronnie works as it was intended; it is funny and at the same time it reflects the divisions in the United States during Donald Trump's Presidency. Adria K. Woomer-Hernandez stars as Ronnie, the film's voice of reason in a chaotic environment. © 2020 Popcorn Sky Productions Dayna P. writes: OMG, I was dying! The mom was the best. I didn’t think she was actually going to say “fuck,” I laughed out loud when she did. ...drinking wine out of a regular glass... it is so funny. I see you got your John Denver in too. Norma D. writes: Wonderful! Terrific character portrayals, dialogue, and score ~ the concept

Adria K. Woomer-Hernandez in Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss. © 2020 Popcorn Sky Productions Well, Dear Reader, it's official.   Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss is finished and uploaded to YouTube. The long journey that began late last spring with a first-draft script titled Happy Days Are Here Again ended late yesterday afternoon when the film's director, Juan Carlos Hernandez, fixed a last-minute glitch (a digital artifact had messed up the next-to-last shot, and Juan wanted it gone) and posted it onto the video-sharing platform owned by Google. Ronnie is my third produced collaboration with Juan, an old friend from drama class back at South Miami Senior High in the 1980s. I haven't seen him in person since, oh, 1989, the year he left Florida to pursue a busy and successful career as a character actor in New York and other places. (You've probably seen Juan Carlos Hernandez on TV or at the movies; he has played many roles in movies,

Well, here it is, at long last. After several rewrites and a few unavoidable delays, Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss has made the transition from page to screen. Directed by Juan Carlos Hernandez, produced by Adria Woomer-Hernandez, and written by Yours Truly, this is, as Juan likes to call it, "a film about today." Credits: Starring: Adria K. Woomer-Hernandez   as Veronica "Ronnie" Rondero Juan Carlos Hernandez   as Guillermo "Guille" Rondero: Anthony James Hernandez  as Jerry Rondero Directed and Edited by: Juan Carlos Hernandez Produced by: Adria K. Woomer-Hernandez Sound by: Adria K. Woomer-Hernandez Written by: Alex Diaz-Granados, based on his original screen concept, Happy Days Are Here Again

Illustration by Mohamed Hasan via Pixabay "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." - Murphy's Law Well, Dear Reader, I had high hopes this morning about the release - on YouTube - of Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss. My partner-in-crime, actor-director Juan Carlos Hernandez, texted me late yesterday afternoon to let me know that he thought he would be uploading our short movie this morning. He even sent me two screen captures of the "Special Thanks" cards at the end of the credits sequence; "I have done all I can with this project," he said. Image Credit: Radio Maria Ireland As it turned out, during the process of creating the DVD, Juan noticed a digital artifact on one of the last shots. A digital artifact, per Wikipedia, " is any undesired or unintended alteration in data introduced in a digital process by an involved technique and/or technology." A good example of a digital artifact, in this context, is an

My screenwriter's credit as designed by director Juan Carlos Hernandez. Photo Credit: Juan Carlos Hernandez © 2020 Popcorn Sky Productions "Coming Soon to a YouTube Channel Near You...." The saga of the making of Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss is almost over. Eight months after I opened a new file in my copy of Write Brothers' Movie Magic 6 Screenwriter and typed "FADE IN: EXT. NEW YORK CITY- SKYLINE - DAY,"  actor-director Juan Carlos Hernandez (who has been my friend since we met as drama students at South Miami Senior High in the 1982-1983 school year) is putting the finishing touches on our new short (less than 30 minutes) film. Here's what I know: Principal photography is complete Reshoots and pickups, which are done when a director redoes shots that didn't come out as intended or does new ones if and when adjustments to the story are necessary, are done Automatic Dialogue Replacement (ADR), which involves getting the

Illustration by Gerd Altmann via Pixabay. Well, hello, Dear Reader, and welcome to the Thursday, February 6 edition of Bloggin' On, the blog-within-a-blog section of A Certain Point of View where I don't write reviews or political commentary. Right now it's late morning in my nook of Florida, and it looks like the cool weather we've been having here is about to get a bit wet and less dry season-ish. Right now, the temperature outside is 79℉ (26℃) under partly sunny skies; the forecast for today calls for a high of 82℉ (28℃) this afternoon. Tonight, rain showers are expected to affect our area starting around 10 PM Eastern; the low is expected to reach 60℉  (15℃). I haven't received any updates from Juan Carlos Hernandez about our comedy-drama Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss. If you recall, the last bit of news was that Juan and his wife Adria were doing post-production stuff such as automatic dialogue replacement (ADR or "looping"), color