When Matt and I met, he lived in Newport and I lived in
Culver City. The ½ way point for us was Long Beach but Matt always came up to CC on
the weekends. When it came time for us
to move in, Matt wanted to live in LA even though his job is at the southern
tip of Orange County. We lived in Marina
del Rey/Venice for almost three years. We loved our time there but the commute
was taking a toll on Matt.
In February we started exploring Long Beach, it's a good mid point for both our commutes. We fell in love with the beach
town vibe, the sense of community and the diversity of the city. Once we figured out where we wanted to live, we
hired a realtor. We put a bid on a house
we saw on our second outing with the agent. Our bid got accepted and we closed
escrow in March.
I moved from NY to LA in January 2003 – I landed at Long
Beach Airport. The second time I “landed”
in Long Beach, I was wiser and better married (Matt is my 2nd and
last husband, in case you didn’t know). Life
has a funny way of bringing you back to where you started!
Another cool thing happened when we got settled in the new house, we filmed most of GHOOOUL! The “crew” was tiny – My friend Laura used her
Panasonic GH2 and she was the DP. I was very lax about this whole production. I
was prepared with my shot list and I got two amazing actors to play The Girl
and The Man. (I will write more about
the shoot in the next post).
Owning a house will be great for productions. We filmed in our neighborhood and all the gore took place in the alley behind our house. Carl, the SFX Artist was
walking around drenched in blood and carrying a fake head so I'm glad the alley shielded us from public view. I'm relieved no one called the cops on us!
There were a couple of people standing near the alley as we
set up the last scene, I was worried they were going to be nightmares
but they were really cool and just watched and stayed out of the way. They
clapped and laughed along with us when we
accomplished the final shot of the film.
Below are some pics
for your enjoyment. Thanks to Teri from DizzidentFilms for capturing the fun.
We had a ton of fun and I can't wait to make the next one.
xoxo,
