Category Archives for Comedy

The Reel Deal

Holy moses, I’ve finally cut together a reel! Hopefully this gives you, my discerning reader, a solid impression of the projects I’ve been involved with over the past three years. That impression will hopefully be described by you, while you share the living daylights out of it over social media, as “a fun-as-f**k film portfolio of frothpocalyptic proportions”. Go forth.

For more of my film work (and full length videos), check out claudiaflick.com

Credits

Films in this reel:

‘Frisky’ (feature film), Brass Razoo Collective, 2015. (Director, Writer, Producer)
‘Winning Formula’ (feature film), LFL Entertainment, 2015. (Writer, Producer, Art Director)
‘FroyOG’ (music video), Heaps Funny Shorts, 2014. (Co-director, Writer, Producer)
‘Keith and Kev’ (webseries), Heaps Funny Shorts, 2013. (Co-Director, Writer, Producer)
‘Wookie Error’ (webseries), Heaps Funny Shorts, 2012. (Co-Director, Writer, Producer)
‘Cupid’s Arrow’ (short film), Emma Leonard, 2012. (Cinematographer)
‘Dead Broke’ (pilot), Do It Live Productions, 2012. (Writer, Producer)
‘Pissy Chrissy’ (music video), Do It Live Productions, 2011. (co-director/writer/producer/editor)
‘Banjacks and Pervis do Hackney’ (webseries), Do It Live Productions, 2011. (Co-Director, Writer, Producer)
‘Sebring feat. Danny Trejo’ (music video), Do It Live Productions, 2010. (Co-Director, Writer, Producer)

Music:

‘Dropping Out Of School’ – Brad Sucks
jamendo.com/album/31187/
Licensed to the public under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

P.S. I moved back to Sydney. YEW!!

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Boobs and Bridges

Frisky Film Movie Poster

Talk about Northern exposure… Or NorCal exposure…

Slap your eyeballs all over the poster for my feature film directorial debut, “Frisky” (director/writer/producer).

Frisky is a comedy feature film about two twenty-somethings who move to San Francisco to chase their career, but end up chasing tail instead.

Very high brow stuff, as the poster implies.

The film is a patchwork of my own experiences (or things I witnessed others doing) throughout my move from Sydney to Los Angeles for film school in 2009, then again to shoot a pilot in 2011, then for love from LA to San Francisco in 2013. Only it’s just one story. And it’s heaps good. For serious. And the writing. Also good. Like this paragraph. But seriously, it’s going to be a ripper of a film, so stay tuned for more very shortly.

As for the poster, The finished product holds true to the original concept sketch that I drew on the back of a script to pitch the idea to Christiana, the film’s cinematographer/DP and the poster’s photographer. I then fiddled for more time than what is reasonable with the graphic design in Photoshop to produce this beauty!

concept sketch on someone else’s script
concept sketch on my script
alternative style

We’re hella legit. Even IMDb reckons so... So keep an eye on our Facebook Page for the San Francisco screening in late March 2015.

Postal Party!

hedgehog

So legends keep doing nice stuff for me and special occasions keep popping up so I keep on posting out the personalised greeting cards! Here’s the latest crop…. I hope everyone had a very merry Christmoose.

thank you
birthday
thank you
30th birthday
wedding
christmas
christmas
valentine’s day

SFX = Scale Firey Explosions

kaboom

There are many reasons for my comedy feature film Winning Formula (writer/producer) to have taken about three and a half years since its original conception with Anna Bennett as “Dead Broke” in 2011. Personally, it was my first feature film so everything was a learning curve, but at every road block we pushed forward. There was no less than a metric shit ton of improvised problem solving at each turn. Not sure what that converts to in imperial, but by anyone’s standards, the quantity of shit was immense.

Included in the pile, was a car explosion scene that I had written into the script (rookie) and we had nonchalantly said during production “we’ll do it in post” (double rookie).

Fast forward to post production, we discovered quite far down the line that two significant (and rather large) scenes needed to be reshot due to audio issues that could not be adequately rectified with ADR (which was a blessing in disguise as they were reshot as far more impressive scenes than the originals). The only thing was, we blew the budget that was set aside for the afore mentioned explosion scene.

Bummer.

When post production gives you lemons… bugger lemonade, make it into Smirnoff Ice. We’re turning this scene into a classic gag, using scale models à la Indiana Jones… AKA “traditional special effects” (AKA waaaaaay cheaper than the real deal).

So I’m thinking to myself – where do I go to find someone with a penchant for pyrotechnics, a whole lot of property, and a solid collection of earth moving equipment? It’s got to be my Burning Man mentor, Glenn.

Klaus and I researched fake explosions (it’s corn starch, not just regular flour, by the way), we ordered some miniatures of my car online (they only came in blue so we sprayed them sliver), then Glenn took to the side of his driveway with a bobcat and our scene was set.

bingo
Diecast model of my car
protecting ‘glass’ from spray
spraying
one at a time
doneski.
Glenn and his bobcat
earthworms galore
adding sand to “make it look legit”

So here’s my appalling cut of our explosion scene – the cut that ended up in the film is far shorter, with far craftier editing, so you’ll have to watch that when it screens (keep your eyes locked on the facebook page)… But in the meantime…

(If we lock in a decent distribution deal, we’ll reshoot the explosion scene at full scale. My fingers are firmly crossed.)

Oh Snap!

IMG_1163long4

 

Oh snap! It’s my brand-spanking-new photography website! And it has a clever wordplay in the URL just like the title of this blog post… What a treat!

Feast your eyes upon www.claudiapic.com

Here’s my pitch:

Do you have an appalling LinkedIn profile pic of you draping yourself over a work colleague (tastefully cropped out) in a shiny paper party hat while clinging onto a glass dirtied with the remnants of a piña colada? Call me for a headshot.

Are you a brilliant actor, singer or dancer who has been photographically jibbed up until now? Does your agent constantly say “For the love of all things holy, Susan! Get a decent gosh darn headshot instead of this headsh*t!”? Call me for a headshot session, Susan.

Do you own, or have designed a house or building that deserves to be immortalised and publicised? A structure that demands documentation, so that it may finally bathe with its peers in the lofty glory that only the architectural works of Rem, Zaha and Frank have known until now? Call me for shoot.

Does your pet blow your mind? Ever wondered why none of your friends can see why? Put an end to all those underwhelming ‘doesn’t-do-fluffy’s-good-looks-any-justice‘ images that you keep posting online: The ones with the ill-placed shadows and out-of-focus stares. Stop being a tightass and invest in what you love. You need to call me.

Do you have a rock on your finger that’s weighing down your hand like your inability to decide on a sensational wedding photographer is weighing on your conscience? Call me, and let’s do this romance thing right.

Call me Claudia, call me Claud, call me Thedarclaud, call me whatever you like… just make sure you call me. Actually, it’s just email listed on the site, so do that. It’s the 21st century for heaven’s sake.

P.S. Can you believe the freaking Golden Gate Bridge shot with the bird?! That thing is straight-off-the-camera, no editing, right-place-right-time, mother-nature-meets-engineering-masterpiece, pure photographic glory. I may never take a better photo than it in my life. Fact.

Winning Wiggler

There’s no firm (ha) excuse for this gratuitous (or should I say gratuit-ass) bot-bot video, but hey – it’s a teaser. And it’s my bot-bot. And my movie. So please, enjoy.

… I promise there’ll be a real trailer shortly. And a real movie too.

In the meantime, check out the Winning Formula facebook page for updates.

Froyo Hands In The Air

Screen Shot 2014-06-17 at 1.01.31 pm

… and wave ’em like ya just don’t care!

This video fuses the summer’s hottest soft-serve delight with the aggression usually only reserved for urban street fights.

Here’s what the critics are saying:

After originally forming as a late 90’s underground Froyo movement, The Ice Kold Crew rose to prominence in the Los Angeles rap scene for their EP titled ‘Soft Serve Swerve (cum get sum)”. The much anticipated single “FroyOG” is the first from their studio record “Drip Drip Boom”, set to be blowing up the nation later this year.

An immediate hit, this jam features the smooth flow of foxy blonde Zana Lantana, an Australian hip hop artist said to have been the inspiration for Iggy Azalea’s latest album “The New Classic”, while the lyrical poetry of LL Chilli Swoop, OG Yogi and Chubb E Lumpkinz give us exactly what we expected: Solid Gold.

Open wide and get a mouthful of these infectious beats.

It’s ice cold. Enjoy.

Some may say that Zana Lantana’s rap is about twice as long as it should be. And to those people I say this: Probably.

Thanks to the Nash fam for the delicious title of this post. You guys are poets.

Thanks also to all the legends who made this video possible: Namely LL Chilli Swoop, OG Yogi, Chubb E Lumpkinz, Lance the Dance, Jonny Z, Travis, Pru, Klaus, Tow, Holly… and all those unnecessarily tolerant people at Yogurtland on La Brea and 3rd, Los Angeles.

Busting

Sometimes things just need time to ripen. Not the case with this footage that took me two years to finally edit into webisodes. No hurry on the turn-around time there, clearly.

We shot this in London during 2012 as we rolled around in a delivery truck. For all you frothers out there looking to catch some more carry-on with my old pal Anna Bennett, here’s the first one of three.