The merry merry month of May--my favorite time of the year! It's not because of my birthday, but because of the beautiful changes in the season. This is also a very busy and event filled month for me as well. Emily and I will be celebrating our two year anniversary on the 27th.



Other good news is that I have completed my spring semester of school and I've made all A's. This summer I will be taking my last two classes for my Associates degree and then I'm off to film school at GMU.



The most awesome update I have to share with you is about the 48 Hour Film Project we participated in. I am part of the student activities film club at Germanna Community College. We had put our first film on hold due to a season change so we participated in the 48 Hour Film Project (www.48.tv) and made a short film titled "Shadow." Once the competition is over, I will announce the release and post it on YouTube for all to see.



After signing up for the 48HFP, we began to prepare ourselves by filling out paperwork and planning ahead on what kind of story we would do. On Friday of the weekend, we traveled to D.C. to draw our genre: "Suspense/Thriller" was what we pulled out of the hat. Other requirements for the project were to have a character named Larry or Louri Gardner with a profession as a designer. A prop to be used was sauce and the line everyone had to include somewhere in their film was "I'll be glad when he's gone." With all paperwork turned in and requirements noted, we left D.C. and went straight to work.



At the director's house in Fredericksburg, we began to write the script since our story was already thought of. We even had an artist help us with the storyboard. I stayed up late that night working on music compositions that we would never use. At 6 AM Saturday morning, we began to shoot the film. After what seemed like an entire day of shooting, the director Luigi and I went to my office at Germanna and began the post production. From about 5 PM until after 1 AM (excluding a 2 hour dinner break), we had edited the entire film and burned the final to DVD.



There were a few mistakes I caught before we had turned in the DVD on Sunday. On one scene, my wireless microphone was visible on the bed. We also forgot to include the music credits and I mispelled the character's last name wrong. I fixed most of these minor issues after we turned in our production since there wouldn't have been enough time for us to correct them. The new version which I'll post on YouTube will show a better difference in the end credits.



All together, we had a good time making the film and the real reward for us was to see our own production on the big screen in the historical theater at Silver Spring, Maryland, along with the other films from this event. This summer, we will be doing another film festival in Richmond.



Aside from all the film festival hype, I do have one last announcement. I will be completing a music video that we began in May of 2007. Christopher Bright is picking up the drums for us again to cover song. We are re-remaking Mortification's 1992 classic "Terminate Damnation." You can hear my first version at our music page: www.myspace.com/jneigh4. Be aware, this is brutal Christian metal at its extreme!



Until next time, God bless! ~Joey