Blackmaiin Goes to Washington DC

OMG! I haven't update in forever, well anyway the past couple of weeks I’ve kept busy with writing little things here and there and I just got back from Washington DC. My little cousin was in the capitol to accept a Presidential Scholar award. My mother and I were invited to watch her receive her medal for being such an accomplished young woman. It’s great to see youth at it’s finest. These kids had talented skills inside and out of the classroom. I was thinking back to when I was in high school and receiving accolades for being an All-American athlete and what not and it’s always amazing to look back at but what’s done is done. I don’t really care about what happened in the past, it’s all about the present and the future. I feel like it’s counter productive to dwell on the former accomplishments and not shoot for new ones but that’s just me.

Anyway, I just finished reading another book called “Street Lawyer” by John Grisham and the novel takes place in D.C. So what did I do? Of course I took out the camera and went sight seeing around the places where the fictional story took place. It’s real cool to read a story and kind of pretend you’re in the authors shoes seeing where scenes take place and describing how each setting was put into words. In the future I would LOVE to write a screenplay for this story because I already had casted characters in my mind and played it out in my head.

Well, that’s really all I have to speak about today...these next two weeks can turn out to be phenomenal as my black friends are coming out to play for a few days so some new videos will definitely be in effect.

K BYEEEEEEEEE

Out Of The Mountains...

Ok ok, soooo the Black is Back. After a great 7 days of relaxation in the mountains I’m back into the swing of things. Well, not exactly the “swing” of things yet but back in the neighborhood. When I went away I took in the sights while being elevated in the mountains and just trying to get in touch with mother nature and all. Since it rained 92% of the time I took advantage of basic cable and cheap beer.

With my final draft application open and no phone service I just went ahead and started writing anything and everything that came to mind. A couple of scenes from my movies here and there, a few shorts and random scenes aka the works. Once I was completely isolated I basically said F**K the rules and I’ll free ball it lol. No schedule, no time limits just whatever the F I wanted to do and log it on paper. After every night I would just make a short video talking about what I accomplished on that day. Needless to say most of these videos were done between 4 and 5am so I was pretty much wrecked at these times haha. After reading and watching what was done I was pretty surprised on how much stuff made sense to my sober eye.

I did have the chance to go hiking one day and made it up to the highest point of Massachusetts. That was also a small accomplishment, being that I was wearing sandals and a cut off tee-shirt during a three minute hail storm. Altogether the trip was great, Frenzy also had a pretty decent time I believe. In any case I would make a photo album of the pictures I took. HA! of course I’m gonna do that BUT i’ll also make a video sometime this week with the pix and a cute song in the background. Until next time.........

K BYEEEEEEEEEEE

Episodes 1-5 Are in the Bag!

Okay soooo some of you guys are aware that I finally got Final Draft 8 to begin my writing adventures. For some reason I can never focus on just one project at a time so I decided to get cracking on our show "Roomies". These short episodes are about me and my three buddies who share an apartment in the city. Obviously the shows are all scripted, giving me the opportunity to practice my writing skills. Each episode will be between 8-10 minutes (hopefully) and are all comedic. I just want to say that I'm happy because I finished writing the 1st drafts of 5 shows. When I return to NYC we'll go over the scripts and edit edit them so we can make the show as funny as possible. In time I hope to include random guest appearances of our friends and so on. There are 16 episodes I wrote summaries for and will get through them within the duration of the summer.

I decided to start small with Final Draft instead of going all out with my first screenplay. Writing an entire movie is real intense and I'm still getting used to this new software. This is definitely an adventure when creating a story. At times i'll forget that I'm the only one reading what I write at first so i'm allowed to make countless mistakes. In time i'll pick up on everything I need to since I think i'm a fast learner lol.

Welp, it's my 4th day here in the mountains and I can say that it's peaceful and all but I'm beginning to miss the loud noises and FAT foods at every corner.

That's all I have to chat about today so BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Pong Tournament...Epic FAIL

Oh how the mighty have fallen lol. This past Saturday Dukes on 19th street hosted the 1st annual Beer Pong Tournament with Penn State vs. Syracuse for charity. My buddy and I signed up as soon as we heard of the event. Now us both being former football players, the competitive edge was already going to be there. For about two weeks we talked about how we we’re going to dominate the showdown versus Syracuse.

We were the first to arrive at around 12:50pm. The open bar was from 1pm-5pm so we had to get started on the drinks. The tournament was set to begin at around 1:30 so we socialized a little bit with other people at the venue. As the teams started to filter in, the announcer started pointing everyone towards their respective tables.

With the booze flowing, our competition didn't look intimidating at all. SO the rules were as normal for any pong game...10 cups, 2 consecutive shots made and the team gets the balls back, 2 re-racks etc. I was already in the zone, shooting 5 for 5 in my opening shots I began to get a little too comfortable with celebrations and high fives all around. I want to say we were leading by about 7 cups. Then out of nowhere the other team started shooting like Ray Allen in game 2 vs. the Lakers. About 5 minutes later the game was over and my confidence was shot.

OKAY so it’s only a pong game but these trophies they had were amazing and I wanted one on my wall mount in my room badly lol. After the devastating and embarrassing loss we slithered our way to the bar and just began taking advantage of the remaining 3hr and 15min open bar.

Next time their is an alumni event I hope we will either be more prepared OR won’t start celebrating until a secure win haha. The only thing that can sum up Saturdays event is TRAGIC, just TRAGIC.

We Made It =)

After a nice 3 months of studying, creating and preparing for a future in filmmaking, the big day has come. We had our final films screened and then received our diplomas. This program was called a “workshop” but I look at it as so much more than that. It was an opportunity to share ideas with others who have the same mind set as your own. I have to admit, it was pretty cool to see what we created on a big screen. Sure i’ve done work that could be seen on a television, but it’s so much cooler watching on a movie theatre screen with a bunch of other people present. In such a short time I feel like I learned so much and have gotten enough compliments as well as no-no’s to ingest and take it from there. When I was accepted into the program it was only to get an inside look on what I needed to do so I could complete the documentary (DC-17) The classes created a whole new flood gate though, opening my imagination to something on another level. I understand that this business is a challenge, but that’s what I love. Nothing should ever come easy and if it does, what’s the glory in that? I’m looking forward to working with my classmates in the near future with shorts and films just to combine our skills and create possible masterpieces later in liiiiife.

Here are 2 of the shorts I directed in school

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MZXD9MqDic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc535h51ogg


K BYEEEEEEEEEE