Transporter Tests

Okay Team, this one barely qualifies as a film. Like most kids with video camera's in the 80's and 90's, before computer editing, home studios and youtube, we did the magical video of "transporting". You know, making you disapear, WOW, and appear SOMEPLACE ELSE.

And took keep the Star Trek theme going, we had these Star Trek original phaser guns that worked like Laser Tag (you remember Laser Tag right? How about Photon?) where you shot each other and they made noises when you hit. One of these collectors items is featured in the film.

Full of amazing technological advancements, this is a quick one. Alas, there's no Craigo Hair in this one, sorry folks.

DARK NIGHT

DARK NIGHT



Like a good star trek episode, this one is about time travel. Okay, it's not, I realized after I started the blog that Neurobashing was NOT the first of the CraigoCloassics that I had in my possession. I had in fact a whole slew of videos from...drums please...9th Grade!

Yep, the time when I had the most incredible fricking hair ever. You thought Neurobashing was good hair, wait til you get this. And wow, the glasses were cool. The other guys just look really really young.

This is the first of the videos we did with David, Chris, Tom and myself at Tom's house. (You'll get to recognize the location in upcoming thrillers). We experimented with some amazing special effects, and had our typical "too much exposition" issue before we got to the true "horror" of the piece. It even includes an amazing David Lynchian shot of a fan.

With a lot of these early films it's hard to claim that I was the sole "director" or creator of the piece, because I'm really not. It was a collaboration of all of us wanting to make movies the way that kids do when they've got time on their hands. And the joy of making these was incredible. Sure they all suck, but it's wonderful to get creative with friends and just screw around.

Now from the plot of this, and others, you might think we watched "Alien" & "Aliens" a few times...and you would be right. In fact a lot of our early films will have very familiar plots. I think I'm still trying to make movies that good. Ridley Scott, James Cameron...watch your backs dudes.

PS: The Enterprise model is the same one J.J. Abrams has on his desk in the "Star Trek" extra features. So maybe that's a sign...maybe not.

Neurobashing

NEUROBASHING

Here we go!

It's time for "Neurobashing". Brilliantly named after the main song we used in it. (Hey, you gotta start somewhere). This isn't actually our "first" movie, but it's the first one that didn't just desentegrate partway through into us running around the house yelling "danny, no!" as if we're in the Shining. (Those may show up later, we'll see).

My friends Tom Milian, Dave Warner & I had gone to my girlfriend's house one Sunday afternoon with Tom's video camera in tow. (For whatever reason I didn't have a video camera growing up. Which is either a bad thing, thinking of all the sure to be masterpieces I could have made, or a good thing, thinking of all the sure to be masterpieces I could have made). Anyway, on the way home we started shooting this video about being late for school. It was all edited in camera, and was about 2 minutes long.

Well, we liked it so much, we thought we should do a movie from waking up and racing off to school. We shot in order (no editing machines for this), and came up with skits along the way for it. We then used Tom's audio dub VCR (anyone remember those things?), and added music and very high tech sound effects.

You can see here why perhaps I chose to be behind the camera rather than in front, then again, my hair is pretty incredible.

Enjoy

craigo

CraigoClassic Begins...

Hey Team,

So there have been a number of requests to see some of my old films online, films from college in Iowa and even high school in Texas and before... Okay, I'm exaggerating, I have a few friends who want to see my college film "Stryker Reed and the Exploding Vampyre Whores" (and who wouldn't?) Because of that, my friend Dan Kraus' "Francis Ford Iowa" blog, the fact I've been wanting to do this for a long time, and that this year I will be shooting a new feature horror film called "Straight On Till Morning", I decided it was time to revisit the past and bring to you:

CraigoClassic

A series of "films", some good (relatively speaking), some not so good (more accurate), and some downright terrible (brace yourself for "Plate Techtonics"), that I'll be posting here over the coming months. It's a chance to walk down memory lane (for me) and a chance for all of you to laugh at me (or at yourselves) as you witness the history of my filmmaking "career" thus far.

I'm going to post them (more or less) in chronological order, which means you get some bad ass high school action (with me doing some acting no less) and then we'll drift into the college films and on through my first feature film (what?), which will be broken into nice and easy 10 minute or less segments for you to view at your leisure. CraigoClassic will stop before 2001 and the making of "The Closer She Gets" (www.theclosershegets.com). That, after all, is another story entirely.

I promise nothing. In fact, many of these I haven't seen in quite some time, so I might be more embarrassed than expected when I post them. But I'm going to post them all, without editing, for better or worse.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy (I hope)

CraigO