My First Commercials, pt. 1

I've been lucky enough to book some ads out here in sunny LA. Here's some funny stuff that happened while shooting them...

VEGAS.com, my first big commercial. I was shocked, utterly astounded, when I first saw the callsheet (the document that gets emailed out the day before listing the times all of the cast and crew need to show up.) It seemed like hundreds of people. And all of them would be staring at my dumb face. The most I had ever worked with was maybe 20, and that was a huge deal for me.

I was instantly petrified with fear and nervousness. Which worked out well because the first shot was of me driving a Segway (which I had only JUST kind of learned how to use) OVER A TINY PATH ABOVE A GIANT 50 FEET DEEP POOL FILLED WITH SYNCHRONIZED SWIMMERS. With said hundreds of people staring at me. I was not aware this was in store. The path was maybe four feet wide, and I was so scared I would drop right into the water and ruin everything. 

So I took it cautiously, until they started yelling at me to HURRY THE HELL UP. Then, barely maintaining, I got yelled at to STOP LOOKING DOWN. Umm, ok. Then they yelled at me to do my lines, WHICH NOBODY HAD TOLD ME I HAD. Such a nightmare.

Then it got easier for a bit, but I still had to say all these lines (as a terrible memorizer) while zooming past people in bizarro costumes doing inhuman feats of strength as if it was no big deal. Oh, and the FOUR HUNDRED extras staring at me while 40 performers swung from wires and junk. World class Olympic athletes from around the globe are BALANCING ON EACH OTHER'S HEADS and I have to like, "Whatevs I'm a professional letz do it." 

Also, please note how my employee lanyard suddenly appears in the last shot. Where did that little guy come from? Dear god, the angry blame assigning arguments that went on about THAT screw up. I know now that the art department and wardrobe department messed that up, but being so new I thought everyone was mad at me the whole time, which meant by hour 14 of that day ol' Barak was an enormous emotional mess. The last shot of the day was the first you see in the ad, where I'm in the dressing room, staring at some girl changing. She originally was supposed to be bare breasted but they scrapped that at the last minute, which I was so grateful for. That would have just been the stressful straw that broke the camel's freaked out back and I would have just exploded into a zillion little pieces.

Whatever, a cool experience and a cool commercial. One more thing, I booked it because the director kept telling me to be more "languid" during the audition. I had no idea what that meant but whatever I did must have been hella languid.

HELLA languid.

Drawing Requests

Every once in a while I'll head to Facebook and ask for any drawing requests. These are some of the results...

Sweden

Got back last night from a trip to Sweden, where I shot some more spots as the Lovinator (see youtube.com/mer for the other spots). Spent time outside of Gothenburg and in and around Stockholm. It's a beautiful country, full of rad people that know WAY more about West Wing than you.

Here are some random Instagrams and Vines from the trip!

           

           

           

           

Bounty Killer poster is finally up

Our movie premiers this weekend in the Dallas Film Festival. Sooooo excited for it to be born. Here's the poster art. I am the small speck driving a motorcycle-powered post-apocalypse gypsy-trailer across the wastelands.

Bounty Killer

Bounty Killer

Easter Eggs 2013!

The newest batch of celebs and pop culture kids and other things my mother has never heard of. Took me a few weeks to make this. Hope you don't hate it!

EDIT: I realized I didn't include Ron Swanson and felt like a real idiot. To make up for it, I threw in some Bacon and eggs. Correction, ALL the bacon and eggs.

Ron Swanson and Bacon and Eggs

Ron Swanson and Bacon and Eggs

Screenshots from this weekend

So some of us made a short film this weekend that I got to write and direct. I've been warned against posting pics of it till it's ready by Tim Neenan, but I can't wait with stuff like that. Everyone did such an amazing job. I'll probably take them down soon, but wanted the crew to get a sneak preview. Now to edit and edit and edit and then get it scored and have the sound designed and the color corrected and then re-edit it and then title it... 

Space Mountain- with the lights on

The last time I went on Space Mountain in Disneyland, it stopped right as we reached the top. The lights came on, friendly employees climbed the stairs, and after twenty minutes we were given a push and got to see the ride in a way most people haven't.

It's surprisingly new and, although you normally feel like your raised hands could be chopped off any second in the dark, we found there was at least a dozen feet of clearance the whole way, most of it with a nice footpath right next to it. Kind of a cool experience...

Vine

Vine is a new app that is essentially video Twitter, letting you make 6 second videos that go on and on into eternity. I hope it catches on. So many challenges and opportunities for creativity in such a restricted format. You can only use your phone's camera, no editing (except for starting and stopping), no saving for later. Here are a few of my first attempts at Vine...

Colored Water:

How To Draw, Lesson #1: Horse

Macro lens + My eye

Current sketchpad:

Get the app and follow me!

A Grateful City

Been working on a graphic novel about my robot man for a while, but the progress is slow, so I'm just gonna post little pieces on here as they get nearly finished. This section has something to do with the way Los Angeles can make it's residents feel...

Game Shop Ep. 7

If you haven't checked out our web series Game Shop, do it. This is like the only thing I've ever asked of you.

I wrote this episode with some talented guys. I'm proud of it.  Hope you don't hate it.