Hallelujah... finally done editing! PLUNGE set for Festival Circuit

I'm not gonna lie... it feels pretty good... being done with editing that is. For those of you who don't know I just recently produced a short film at the end of November  2011. Months of planning for that one big night of production... and things went great! Anyway, the premise of all this is that I have been editing for roughly two months strait... if your an obsessive person like myself... you should stray away from editing. Writing is one thing and acting is another... but editing... it's an obsessive craft... it's a man's game. 

For me I'm talking hard obsession. And after two months in the cave I'm talking unwanted weight loss, much whiter skin, odd sleeping hours (insomnia, hibernation), drastic increase in caffeine intake, and a desire to start smoking again... a habit I blew off not to long ago and am pretty pressed about. The sole cause of this is pure choice... you give someone like me unlimited choices... well I have to choose the best... and that means sifting through hours of footage to cut a film down to ten minutes. No sooner have I placed a cut then I have to do it all again... all of it.

The good thing about obsession is that it usually produces pretty good results... and I am very happy about the final cut. So when Ezra (Plunge's director) came over to take the footage away from me down to Anaheim for color correction and sound design... I didn't know what to do... I was free again... free. 

Now the fun part begins. So much creative time has gone into this project I can't wait to start getting it out there to the world. I'm holding a screening back in Oregon in December and am planning on one in LA between January and February to start spreading the word... it is gonna be some good times. 

From Left to Right: Cody Peterson, Soren Fulton, James Jeffery (back), Cal Barnes, and Director Ezra Lunel on the set of Plunge.

As the festival circuit nears, I anticipate 2012 more and more for the opportunities it is bringing. With Plunge coming in on it's last phases of post production, one experience starts to slow down as the next begins... and so is the life of a figure. However, I am very excited about my next project slated to begin this summer. It's a coming of age feature film... and we are courting the cast and crew as I write. We have some great ideas, some great ambitions, some great and talented people already attached... and of course... the most important... a great script.... (thank, thank, bow). Stay tuned and look for ways to be involved in all the great things we have coming up. 

If you havn't had a chance to see the theatrical trailer for PLUNGE yet... you can do so below.

Black Friday at the Cha Cha Lounge - A Review

It happens to everyone...

The day after thanksgiving, or better known as black friday to the dedicated, turkey-stuffed, shopping soldiers that somehow wake up at 5 A.M. to ambush the various warehouses and consumer meccas that stack themselves neatly in the burbs of LA block, by block, by block. 

Not here... not in this cave... and not in this stomach. After a modest vegetarian thanksgiving dinner of vegetables, mashed patatoes, yams, and some pumpkin pie I found myself waking up at a decent hour. I felt great. I felt normal. And I felt that nobody else felt the same way. The theory is simple. This is America, and people have no self control. There are only two options for the general public on black Friday... two extremities. One, your either at Starbucks at four A.M. with the rest of the broke moguls grabbing your 20 of strait black to wash down that still creeping feeling of being sick from your third piece of pie the night before as you roll your way down the sidewalk to best buy in hopes that portable hard-rives aren't completely washed out yet... or two, it's 3 p.m. and your still passed out as your stomach tries to figure out what the hell you did to it the night before, but you persist... your strong... you roll your gorged bodess out of bed, flip on the T.V... and muster all your willpower for that one last crusade to the kitchen for that day after thanksgiving turkey sandwich... mmm... lucky you.

That leaves me. I am on neither extreme. I am in fact feeling great! Well fed... with lots of vital energy. No Post Thanksgiving marathon for me... just smiles. So the fact remains, I am lone ranger. The one man that ate a normal meal on thanksgiving. The one man who was not sick the next day. As great as this may sound... it's not... in fact, it's actually a bit of a problem. You see while everyone else is hitting the gym, watching ESPN reruns, sleeping, or eating more food... I am out and a bout in the world... and I am indeed, yes indeed, flying solo today.

Fast forward >>>

So I spent the day alone. i watched films. Drank good coffee. Worked on my film. Wrote a little bit. Made some calls... it was all good, but somehow, something was missing... I mean it was black friday, and as white as I may be by genetic principle my day still needed a little color... by that I mean a lot.

Then it hit me... I don't know how... I don't know why, and I don't really care, but I was going to go to the Cha Cha Lounge... it wasn't really an option. I heard it was good time so I was going, and that was that. I was gonna pencil in this bleached out black friday if it was the last thing I was gonna do. Two minutes later I was out the door, I hopped in my GTI, and I busted out of hipstar village like a kid on halloween.

Five minutes later I was down Franklin and breaking right onto Glendale Blvd into the heart of  hipstar central... Silverlake, CA. In a matter of moments I bank rolled some trustfunder's Audi A4 out of the way as I downshifted my trusty five-speed into the sole remaining parking spot left on the Blvd... there were tears, screams, and kicks from the homeschooler but he left without much of a fuss after I gave him the old hipstar gaze... those guys love that. 

Now I've heard about this place, the Cha Cha Lounge, good things mostly. As I strolled up to the door some cool guy door man asked for my I.D. with his atmospheric, hipstar gaze. Of course, I knew exactly what to do so I just stared back for about 20 seconds until he had the courtesy of opening his mouth and telling me like a normal person that he needed to see my I.D. After the pleasant but uncanny transaction, I moved through that Cha Cha entrance and was pleasantly surprised to see that the place was blowing up. No day after thanksgiving kids here... most of the homeboys looked like they could use a good meal... I fit right in. 

Now the thing with bars is that most of the time they are kind of anti-climactic. If it looks good when you come in then give it a few minutes and you might not be feeling the same way. This ain't the case at the Cha Cha... the Cha Cha knows how to bring in the crowd... I'm talking manic pixie dream girls everywhere, hipstar bros sporting their winter carhartt's, pin up hippie chicks, post grunge ganstars making the rounds with their boys from 99 in true LA fashion. At that moment I knew I was where I was suppose to be.

My next move was simple, I did what every scrawny, brooding, aspiring artist does when good things are happening everywhere... I grabbed my $2.50 pint of PBR, an everyday-all day price that I a more than insanely excited about, and posted up hard. Not five minutes went by before I was getting eyes from a few MPDG's holding it down by their lonesome, so I ordered another pint of PBR and made my way over. Cool girls, not quite K-dog muse quality, but most definitely rad. One girl was down visiting from San Fran and the other was local LA... good enough for me. We burnt the place down in hi-fashion, closed are cards, and headed over the Lion for one last pint before calling it a night. 

But wait... nah... that's it... but it made my Friday black... if that makes any sense.

So their you have it... one marvelous Black Friday night at the Cha Cha Lounge. Now compared to some of the scenestars that hit Slake on the regular... I'm far from a scene-O-phile... but one things for sure, with a post-Garden State crowd and $2.50 pints of PBR, you could say I'll definitely be hitting up the Cha Cha in full hipstar get-up more than once this season.

 Now stop eating and go back to bed.

I've Been Wanting to Do This For A While... That Is... Document My Life On The Internet For The World To Read About

So it's come to this... yea... it has. I'm here, sitting in front of my computer screen and I have exhausted all and every current resource available to me... that's code for I'm bored, a rare state of being that a productive, passionate, upstanding kid like myself should never under any circumstance ever have to encounter. It's a saturday night, and while I should be out playing hooky with the cool kids or working on a premise for my next screenplay... I'm not. The truth of the matter is that I am indeed sitting here... starting this blog... and the fact that I really couldn't be more content at this moment hopefully conveys the true subtleties of the truly dire state that I am currently in. A cry for help might be in order... but the pure vanity that comes with seeing my thoughts blissfully scroll themselves out before me basically negates that option off the top.

My name is Cal Barnes. For those of you who don't know me... you will... I promise... so just be prepared for that when the time comes... until that glorious day of arrival I'll do my best to fill you in for the time being. I'm an actor/writer/ and producer living in Los Angeles. Originally from Oregon, I grew up like Tom Sawyer... I built tree-houses, scouted out exclusive swimming holes, jumped cliffs, sported a teenage mutant ninja turtle backpack, kissed a girl on my last day of kindergarten, and got into fights with other cool kids about who would win in a death-match between superman and batman... yea... I was that kid... and I wasn't

Junior High was all music and skateboarding. My dad had a boat so I grew up on the water. First it was tubing... then the notorious knee board that I rocked pretty hard for a while, then I took to wakeboarding... I could throw down some basic 3's and backflips which was a big deal at the time... the I started this thing called wakeskating which is basically skateboarding and wakeboarding combined... to this day it is still one of my favorite things to do in the summer. I played some sports too. I was fast and I could jump over my own height at one point in time (5'11)... not bad for a white kid.

I always had a muse... always... and probably always will. My daily prescription says "hopeless romantic" on the container but I don't think that's accurate. What it should really say is "Creative as Possible" because I find that's what a muse gives me... unlimited creativity. Whoever the lucky girl happens to be at the time is an eternal well of fascination which springs forth from her loveliness an endless supply of inspiration rendering what I believe is the most truthful and soulish art that I am capable of producing. My friends say I do it to myself... I say... hell yea. First it was all the indie darlings at summer camp (Camp Crestview, Portland, OR what what!). Then it was the senior track star... who I had a shot with, blew it on purpose, then beat myself up for years about it. Inspiration, that's all I have to say. Then it was the 25 year old girl from Portland who only dated christian musicians. Really? Why do I do it? Because I have too. It gives me a reason to live. It gives me a reason to wake up and it gives me a reason to write the brilliant blog to make all your pearly whites show. Would I like one to stick eventually? Yes. Do I have one right now? Of course... I'm doing the best work of my life... but I'll do her the honor of not writing about her until the future plays out. Bottom line... if I'm doing creative work... I'm musing hard. Yes this counts.

After Highschool I went to Maui, Thailand, and Nepal for half a year. Met some cool people. Then went back to my hometown and chilled hard for that Summer. It was a crazy summer. Some crazy shit went down. I donned the green apron at starbucks, became a vegetarian, ate nothing but donuts and pizza, drank nothing but coffee, started smoking, successfully became the most unhealthy vegetarian on the planet, bought my first car which I still have that I crush around LA with, a white VW 98 GTI Bang, Bang, hung out with the coolest girl I have ever met... everyday, and a whole, whole lot more. It was my Nineteenth summer... the summer that changed everything... the summer of my life.

That fall I enrolled in Portland State for a year for general study and creative writing... I had some good times... played in a few bands... chilled in a few coffee shops... was a bonified hipstar for while. How can I say that? Just follow the signs man. 5'11 a buck thirty five, skinny jeans, claimed he was in a band, a facebook holdout,  a diet consisting of coffee, beer, pizza and cigarettes... alright... alright... that's enough.

After finding some success in an acting class I took while in college I decided to come on down to the land of kicks and giggles... a lot of kicks... not to many giggles... at least for the first year, now things are going pretty good... after two years of reading terrible scripts I know what a bad script looks like... so it is my personal plight to simply write good ones... not just for my own sake, which it is, but for the benefit of my fellow actors, friends, and the other good people in this industry. I have written three original scripts so far... and have found the process to be one of the most liberating things i have done since moving to Los Angeles, just second to the art form that is self producing.

So now that you know a bit about me... who I am and whatnot... let me state the sole purpose for the existence of this blog. I want to document what I consider to be a pretty unconventional life... for my own entertainment yes but also hopefully for the enjoyment of others. This brings me to my first and only clause. If I'm going to do this... I'm going to do it right... and that's raw and uncensored. When Erika Albrecht from the SOCIAL NETWORK says things such as "The internets not written in pencil, Mark, it's written in Ink." She's spitting facts. Facts. And I intend to ink those facts hard. Here you will find everything relative as it pertains to an aspiring artist life in the land formerly known as Hollywood... nothing less... nothing more... this will cover everything from success stories, film experiences, screenings, premiers, parties, venues, film festivals, miscellaneous reviews, to nights out, everyday life and just the general randomness that happens all the time in this town. This is strictly a documentation of real life. No structure. No etiquette. Just documented opinions on things I experience. If I feel like writing something... I will sit down and write it at my convenience for all to enjoy as they munch their top ramen graham crackers from the other side of the computer screen . I just wanna be real guys (tears).

At the end of the day... I love LA... and am really excited about some of the cool things I think I have going here. So flip off the facebook and untwittle the tweets or whatever and trade one vice for another as you tune into what will be some of the most useful reflections on life written into existence for surviving on the streets of LA! BAM.