Sally

     For one of my recent directing projects I chose to do a short inspired by a scene in the film Wait Until Dark from the 1960s. The film stars Audrey Hepburn who plays a blind woman who must defend herself from intruders, one of which is played by Alan Arkin. The film is based on a play by Frederick Knott (who also wrote Dial M for Murder) so it's got a strong dose of suspense, which I love. One of my favorite scenes in the film is in the beginning when Audrey Hepburn arrives home and walks past the body of a dead girl, and doesn't even know it, I just had to nod to this fantastic scene by re-creating it in my own way.

Here it is: 

Scare LA Screening Experience

      

      Sorry I've not yet posted about my awesome Scare LA experience yet, but I figured I'd begin with the screening of Séance. It was really fun to see the short projected hugely like this and it was great to hear people's funny reactions to the fortune-seekers getting attacked. After getting a pretty strong round of applause, I was pretty happy with the showing. I was pretty pleased with how they organized the whole event, although I do wish they would have had a meet-up or mixer at some point for the filmmakers to get to know each other, only because it was hard to catch some of them; with all the fun going on downstairs at the convention, who could blame them for not sticking around for every movie. Overall, I really enjoyed the screening, as well as the whole convention. Monsters, shopping, art, and so much more!

    Also, I was super happy to get a few photos of Swamp Foetus being screened as well! Check them out here at Pumpkin Rot's amazing blog; What's Brewing. The audience was very impressed with it - you could tell by the "cool"'s and the "aw sick"'s... hey, it's California. 

   

   

Scare LA Update: Séance

"Congratulations! Seance has been chosen to screen at ScareLA! Your 

screening date is Sunday, August 10th. Your film will be screened at 3:55 p.m."

Couldn't be more excited for this news! If you're attending Scare LA on August 10th, check it out!

Séance now has its own Facebook page, so feel free to give it a "Like":https://www.facebook.com/seanceshortfilm 

Don't forget to check out the screening schedule for both August 9th and 10th so you can make it to the other awesome looking films, one of which will be Swamp Foetus by, my all-time favorite, PumpkinRot, screening on the 9th.

Here's my Bio (and very awkward headshot) on Scare LA.com - Appearances.

If you haven't gotten your tickets yet, here's a 20% promo code I can offer to my followers (you wonderful people) that you may type in when purchasing your tickets (VIP tickets not included): SCARESCREEN.

Can't wait to see you there!

Scare LA Update: Swamp Foetus!

Couldn't be more excited for my favorite haunter Pumpkin Rot whose short film Swamp Foetus will be screened at Scare L.A.! Congrats Rot, can't wait to see it on the big screen!

Pumpkin Rot's Blog: What's Brewing

Pumpkin Rot.com

See it here, but don't forget to see it at Scare L.A.!

"Séance" at the CSU Media Arts Festival!

I'm super proud to announce that "Séance" will be screened in the Cal State University Media Arts Festival tomorrow! The screening will be at Cal State Fullerton in the Mihalyo Hall from 6:00 to 9:30 pm. I'm looking forward to our guest speaker Donald Petrie and can't wait to meet new people during the mixer and view all of the student films in the screening. I'm kind of interested to see how people react to the film; I've never shown it to a large group of people before, so who knows...

'Séance' (Revamped)

    Recently I had a chance to re-edit an old short of mine, Séance. This short was initially called Vintage Séance after my blog. In fact, I kind of made it to promote the blog, but after viewing it later, I felt I could probably do more with it than keep it as a small promo.

    

   This time around the film is slightly quicker. I didn't have a great camera or editing software when I initially filmed it, but now I have taken the old footage into FCP (final cut pro) and have sped it up and tightened the editing a bit more. Unfortunately, I lost a lot of the original footage so I couldn't start from scratch. I mainly had to use the original .mov file and re-edited that as opposed to going back into original footage. 

    Because of this, the film still has its original filters, which I actually prefer. The old filters are just from iMovie but they still give off the look that I felt worked for this short. I really wanted to capture antique cinema (pre-talkies/ silent film era), which is why I chose an aged film look with a thick sepia tone. 

     As for the style and film elements, as well as character design, I wanted to really show that Southern Gothic style that I often lean toward, and incorporate a magical, but dark, side to it by having a séance gone awry. The séance itself also plays into the spiritualism movement, which was also common during the turn of the century/1920s era. 

    For the sound, I had my brother Bijan Sharifi assist me, as he is an expert. I told him I needed original music (since the music I originally had in the short was not my own) and I wanted the film to sound old and scratchy. He accomplished this with ease and made it sound even better than I had imagined. An extra slight reverb on the music made the audio sound a bit ghostly, which exceeded my expectations and made the film much spookier. 

For more information on Bijan Sharifi Audio visit Bijan Sharifi Audio or "Like" Bijan Sharifi Audio on Facebook. 

Take a look at the final cut of Séance on Vimeo:

Seance from Nina Sharifi on Vimeo.

Happy Easter!

This just cracked me up.

PumpkinRot 2011

Such amazing and impressive work from the amazing PumpkinRot this year!

PumpkinRot.com

2011: Photos and Film: "Swamp Foetus"

The PumpkinRot Tinies

The Hand That Bends The Spoon

My latest short! I just finished this film last week for my film final. I am mostly happy with the way it came out. Of course there are a few things that did not work exactly as I wanted, but I think, on the whole, I accomplished a lot this time around. Special thanks to Britney Arcadio, my best friend, who originally came up with plot, and for starring in the movie. Thanks also to Brent Perkins for acting along side her, and thank you Marshall Murr for being a great production assistant. PS, forgive the crappy lighting in the last few shots, we were racing daylight and had technical difficulties on top of that. Anyway, Enjoy!

Philips Carousel

Just saw this ad for Philips electronics in my film class yesterday and thought I'd share it here. It's edgy, eerie, and extremely well done. Click on the image below to watch on YouTube.com.

The Characters

While designing the characters for Vintage Seance, I collected many photos and images and created collages to fully visualize them. Out of the many photos in my collages, these were the best of each that really said it all.

The Widow

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The Gypsy

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The Stranger

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The Lady

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The Gentleman

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The Original Storyboard for Vintage Seance

If you think this looks messy, you should see it with all the crazy notes I added to it while filming.

Progress...

Finished working on the Puppets and their costumes, finally. I will be taking some pictures of them today and begin coming up with some final ideas for the set...

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New Short

Have been working on a new stop motion short, hoping to finish making the puppets soon so I can begin filming. Don't want to give too much away, but here are some images that really helped inspire me:

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Pumpkin Kid Film: Original Storyboard

Looking for a few notes and found my old Pumpkin Kid Film storyboard. At the time, I really wanted a short film that was a logo for my production name in my film class so a year after creating my logo, I decided to create this short with stop-animation.

The Original Storyboard

Another Intro Idea (Pumpkin Kid walking out of a standing coffin)

The Final Storyboard (Decided to have Pumpkin Kid sit up in lying coffin)

Watch the final product:

The Sandman (1992)

Sweet Dreams...

View Short Film Here

The Mysterious Explorations Of Jasper Morello

Great animation and style...

Ideas: New Short?

Thinking about doing a small short film and/or stop-animation soon, hopefully during winter break... must brainstorm.

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