Acting With Ninja Steve

a whopper commercial

Her Lone Lothario

Her Lone Lothario from Exploding Toys on Vimeo.

Shot within the last 2 weeks of November. On average, Seth only makes 1 film a year. its a quota thing. We wanted to make this as profesional as we could. this short was part of the final projects for George Maguire's Theater 50 Acting For Camera class at Solano Community College. Everyone in this film was a student... If we could grade them, they'd all get A's.

and her is the trailer for it:

Eleonora

My good friends in Eleonora just released their EP. you can buy it online @ raincityrecords.net for only 6$!... check them out @myspace.com/eleonora

ELEONORA teaser from Exploding Toys on Vimeo.

Skin Deep

This all started with us just messing around. during a break between takes of an action sequence we were filming, Seth got Jamiel and Alonzo to filmprov a dramatic scene. Jaime saw the footage and convinced them to eventually do a real scene.

Blind Date

Just us messing around with our dolly

Expect to see more of this dolly in our upcoming work.

Stimulating..... recut

The recut edition... we trimmed off about 30 seconds and made things a little tighter, i think it flows better.

Pain at the pump (super old)

This is one of the first things me and Jaime ever worked on, we were so bored. Look at my hair. Haha

Got that Swine Flu

a last minute psa for an online film competition for the California Department of Public Health. Super last minute, the deadline is tomorrow. well, wish us luck!

The Grate Confrontation

Don't Let the Cougar Cry

This short came out of nowhere. We gathered up our props, looked at them, and came up with this story on the spot. no script at all. we don't really know what this is about so we just say that its an art piece. i guess its open for interpretation. it was suggested to us that this is about an imaginary cougar coping with the loss of his only real friend... thats sounds about right.. I think we'll go with that.

Problems Of Men

So this little 46 second hit is actually one of those spur of the moment projects. Originally we had planned to short a short called "I aint gay" but we got kicked out of the location. We were shooting it on a soccer field and all of the sudden a bunch of little girls came and they kicked us out. So we spent about 20 minutes wandering the school in search of another spot to film. We decided that we should film at that same location still so we thought of something else to do. We asked the lady that runs the library if we could shoot there and she basically said that she didn't care.

BTS: T&B2

Terry and Berry and The Lady of the Night

Finally this one is done.... i'll post comments about it later.

We made this short in June of 09... it took us a while to get this up because we had been looking for a music composer to do the song for the end. Ultimately we just decided to do the song ourself. Which turned out great btw. This is one of our favorite shorts and the second time we worked with Brigitte Valdez. The three actors make such a great combo. Filming it was a blast. We shot this @ the Indian Ally in downtown Vallejo, and to our surprise we didnt have any problems shooting in public.

Terry and Berry

So here is Terry and Berry... This was the first time we shot with Jimmy (on toilet). Adam was actually naked. And Jaime's parents were downstairs thinking that we were shooting a porno. We tore through an entire jar of pickles for this short. We shot T&B2 later on in the year but its still in post. look for it soon!

ELEONORA in the studio. Completed

So here is every video that we did in oregon.... everything, done.... check them out @ myspace.com/eleonora ALSO check out the DAY 3 PART 4 video to see Jaime puking!

so much editing, so little time!

wow, so many band videos, so much editing. I'll have to admit that this part can be really fun, but most of the time i hate it so much. My computer goes through hell every time we take a workload this huge. I think I'll be done with everything by the end of this week. Thanks go out to Seth, Victoria and Alonzo for making the shoot go so smoothly. Expect me to lose my mind yet again during this editing binge.... but thats a good thing, I need this drone work so I can keep my mind off my other problems..... - Jaime

LOOK ALIVE

Mozart Season

Man Up! Nancy

The Subtle Way

more on the way!

A LOT LIKE VEGAS

MORE TO COME!!!!!

Teddy The Toast

So this is Teddy. if you havent noticed, we have a thing for googly eyes. check out his myspace @ myspace.com/teddythetoast

Brig And Me

Brig and Me from Exploding Toys on Vimeo.

thanks to Rachel and Canepa Deli for letting us shoot there! this is the first time we worked with Brigitte Valdez she is awesome. plus the Deli has great sandwiches. its located in downtown suisun. Check her out in Terry and Berry 2! (which is coming out soon!)

funny thing

honestly, its getting around. slowly but surely. the funny part is that Jimmy told me that people keep asking about the name Exploding Toys. and the main question is: so what, do you guys really blow up toys? ....... wtf? in short the answer is: no. if you want the long answer the answer is: still no. so now I'm actually in the process of writing a short little psa stating that we here at ExplodingToys do not partake in, or advocate the explosion of child playthings... look for it soon.. Plus we're gearing up to have major content rolling in soon so keep checking back!

The Anniversary

So heres The Anniversary. Shot locally in one of the Exploding Toys' office space. This was one of those shorts that we took are time with. Adam Serafino and Michael Doppe are two really good actors. This piece was short enough that we had this crazy idea of what if we did it twice with them switching characters?

behind the scenes with the rats in the alley

The escape pod

what the hell?

Mo's Photoshoot

@ the academy of art in sf. finishing off the last shot of The escape pod while we were there thus killing two birds with one stone

My best friend MAP

This guy is a stud.. for real... famous one day i tell you. the voice in the background is

none other than the great George Maguire. Baby Snakes!

Laughter is the best medicine

Laughter Is The Best Medicine from Exploding Toys on Vimeo.

jaime: thoughs about this short:

This is still one of my favorite ones. we shot this when during a week where my parents were out of town, we had plannede to do as much as we could in that span but i think only this and STIMULATING were the only ones that got made. this one was really fun cause it was raining that day so it just looked like crap outside, which was good cause it just fit the situation. we had a blast editing cause we needed to ADR and foley a lot of sounds (basically making sound effects). it stopped raining halfway through the shoot so we had to Foley the rain by sticking the mic back in the room and then spraying water on the roof with the hose... plus the skateboard dolly is the shit.

Suzee Dearest

Suzee Dearest from Exploding Toys on Vimeo.

so yeah, this was made back in november of 2008. this is one of the first projects we all worked on together. its nostalgic now. the reason its getting posted is because so many people keep asking for a better quality version. so we slapped it onto vimeo.

this short pushed the creators and actors to their creative limits. no one survived. Seth and Jaime develped caffeine addictions. Jaime's insomnia resurfaced. Omar really got killed in that scene. Woodland made us all sick. We almost got arrested many times, just to get the shot.

there are so many stories about what happened during the making of this thing. that should deserve its own blog, but i'm not going to bore you.

Hugs Galore

Hugs Galore from Exploding Toys on Vimeo.

filmmaker comments:

this was a really fun shoot. the first time we had production stills. Check our myspace for them. the biggest problem we had was light as you can tell the shadows were everywhere. Originally it was written that this scene would take place in a bathroom but we felt that it would be all too similar to the scene from Terry and Berry, so we changed it to the field which is Hanns park in Vallejo. Below is a little extra something from this shoot.

Love hurts leeroy from Exploding Toys on Vimeo.

The rats in the alley

adam had a show, so jaime and victoria tagged along and took so video and pictures

the techno breakdown is the shit...

Another Music video overload

some of my favorites from the past few years - jaime

back to our normal broadcasting....

check out Victoria's photoshoot w/ Bear and Bull fights!

ELEONORA and OREGON part 6

END OF NIGHT 9

Leaving the studio again. I showed Luis some of my songs. He said we should do some acoustic work together...maybe... if I made an album, Id call it "The Bi-polar diaries"....Tear her wrist.... Eleonora's song called Kevin Run gets its name from Home alone.

DAY 10

- morning... Last night we went to a restaurant called Sweet Tomatoes. its like Fresh Choice around here. They let us take all the bakery goods. finally a break. We didnt even them either, they just offered. Out in the parking lot we prayed and thanked god. I'm not one for god but i was just as thankful. I thanked Erin the manager also. Squidward slept in the drivers seat last night. he looked so uncomfortable cause he's the tallest one here. On the end of night one, Luis was joking around and said in the video blog that La circa and the Subtle way doesnt' sleep in vans. which they have though. I thought to myself... who among my filmmaking peers does this? or better yet who can do this? I'm willing to bet that if you took all them and put them in a room and asked them if they've ever got into the shit, did real fieldwork, eat crappy food and sleep in shitty conditions, all while filming and editing all day, you'd get a room full of pockets.

ELEONORA and OREGON part 5

DAY 7

waking up this morning was extremely bad cause we got kicked out of 2 wal-marts so we ended up staying at a park near the Ryan the Producer's apartment. Chris and Squidward are watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall on my computer right now. I'm all caught up on editing right now so it wasn't a problem for them to watch it. They kinda needed it. I had a text conversation with Amber today. I told her that I honestly can't imagine how my life would be if I had never met her. I really belive my life started in '09. Alfie is finishing tracking guitars today. I'm sleepy but I can't take a nap cause my ipod is charging, and sometimes I feel that in oregon, thats the only way I can really fall asleep.

DAY 8

I didnt write much for this day. Except that I'm editing and day 7 is loading onto youtube.

ELEONORA and OREGON part 4

End of Night 5

Lisening to Identity Crisis by Thrice. Download innerpartysystem. I'm seriously on music overload. Everyone is super tired. I'm getting tired also. Crankiness is going up also. I feel like I've connected with everyone on certain levels, maybe cause its just that I'm a new face. A little refresher from the norm. I just poked myself in the eye with my eyeglasses. ouch.

END of Day 6

I'm almost caught up on my editing. I'm almost excited about that. Squidward (Greg) did some stop motion today. That was funny. Alfie is tracking guitars today. I took a shower. Talked to Amber a little. I miss her. So I guess our last day will be on the 26th cause the 27th is a show in Ceres, CA. I think its the 21st today. Right now, as I'm writing this, we're trying to get to the Wal-mart in Vancouver, Washington. The one that we were staying at put a sticket (sticker/ticket) on the van saying that we'll get towed if we don't leave. Its only a 24 hour parking lot and we've been there for a couple of days.