Last Fall, I reteamed up with the main forces that brought you The Other Side of Darkness for a coming of age paranormal thriller, The Obsidian Mirror. The trailer drops today and I wanted to raise awareness and talk a bit about my experience.
Adam and Vinny reached out a year prior to ask me to read over a new script. It was exciting and ambitious. It featured 4 teen leads facing a horrible darkness. I connected right away as it gave me throwback, 80s, Spielberg vibes. But, I had no idea how they could pull off onscreen what was committed to paper.
Over the course of several drafts, they honed the story into fighting shape without losing the intensity, the mystique, or the charm, but I still had no idea how they’d pull it off.
Eventually, they floated the idea of me taking on a role and I agreed immediately. Having watched them work on The Other Side of Darkness, I knew it would be cool to get on that set, even if only for a couple of days. Turns out, the role was expanded and I got to watch a lot of really talented people up close and learn a ton.
Adam and Vinny are releasing the first trailer/images/website/merch today at obsidianmirrorfilm.com and I’m asking y’all to not only go watch the trailer, but if you dig it, please please please share it on your socialmedias to help word of mouth. The cast and crew worked hard and don’t have a big promo budget or PR people to raise awareness.
I’ll have more info and photos and stories as we get closer to the release of the movie, but for now I don’t want to share any visuals that production hasn’t shared first. Stop reading and go check out the website when it launches at noon today!
A few years back I had a wack-a-doo idea for a short film that showed the same 15 seconds of a man walking across the screen over the course of years as two people talked on a bench off screen. I began filming my dad, Robert Esper, walking the same little area: sun, rain, snow, sleet or whatever else the world threw at us. He was patient, willing, and showed up whenever asked (for those of you who know how busy my parents stay, you’ll understand). When we started I had almost no equipment aside from a third-hand HD camera and a 5th-hand vintage lens that apparently had survived wars, I didn’t have lighting/audio equipment, no script, and I had no idea how to capture decent footage.
As we shot, I imagined things the people on the bench might be saying, and decided they were co-workers and the man walking was their boss. Though he ran this huge company, he didn’t dress or act like a billionaire. He was kind, compassionate, and generous. The very land he walked through was a nature preserve and park he protected via a huge donation and named the place after his wife, who had passed away.
I bought a few lenses and learned some basic tips, but still I was mostly pointing and shooting at the mercy of the weather and availability. I made every rookie mistake you can make, while inventing a few new ones (I’m an overachiever, you see). One of the biggest mistakes was erasing a data card before the footage was completely transferred, so I lost a few days worth of walking/sweating/planning/shots from the main walking area as well as from a few hours spent at a local city park, shooting my dad traveling around for the intro of the movie.
During all this time, I asked a few folks to act as the two people on the bench, but I was embarrassed/worried/unsure of myself and my abilities and nervous at getting someone to commit multiple days for a film that might end up terrible. I found the first piece of the puzzle in John Cesa, a smart, funny comedian in the area, who went to college with my wife and who had directed a short of his own back then that she acted in.
I explained the concept and told John that most/all of the dialogue would be improvised and then chopped up to match the length of shots of my dad waling. Coming from improv comedy groups, he had more experience than most in handling that situation. John jumped on board, but waited and waited and waited as I kept telling him I was getting closer to ready to shoot.
I found a location near his job, but struggled to find the second person to accompany him. I wanted to add diversity to the cast (age, race, gender), so I limited my search and eliminated myself from getting cast in my own short.
A chance meeting on the set of a short film, being produced by a CSU student on their campus, led me to meet an awesome actor, who I thought perfect for the role. He and I discussed the story and as a guy trying to make his first demo reel, he came on board with excitement.
Winter was coming to a close and I wanted to get some shots of the two men talking on the bench with snow falling, just in case I needed something to intersperse with my dad-walking footage. I scheduled a lunch meetup at a park in Parma.
I set up my camera, some props, and some outfit changes to help sell the time lapse element. John showed up, ready to role. The other guy called and canceled about 15 minutes after we were supposed to start… I didn’t want to waste the efforts or waste John’s time, so I pressed record on my camera and on my digital recorder and we spent about an hour freezing and chatting. John was great and solidified what a solid pick he was.
But I didn’t like what I brought to the table.
The bummer was that within a week the snow cleared, a rainstorm came through, and then a heat wave, so we could’ve simulated all 4 seasons by shooting 2-3 times that week or the next.
I challenged myself to write an actual script and when I got into it, I found the process fun and exciting. Carving out an actual narrative from such an abstract idea proved a necessary step in making the original concept gel.
By 2025, I had a lot of footage of my dad, a script, an actor, and a general idea how it could all come together. I enrolled my wife into playing the third part. She has a theater background and has been involved in some films as well (check her out in Dwellers and Bunker Heights).
Knowing my limitations, I hired Ryan Freeman to run sound and scheduled 4 hours to complete the rest (all of the dialogue shots) of my film. We gathered at a small park area near my house and got rolling. One camera, one lens, on boom mic, and snacks. (a tasty lunch too).
Everyone involved was cool and helpful as I navigated my first time “directing”. We got about 92.4% done of what I wanted, which was more than I expected. I bribed my daughter to come play a small role about 2 weeks later to film one last scene. I couldn’t ask Ryan to waste a day driving across town for it, so I grabbed a mic and ran audio myself as I shot.
Using DaVinci Resolve (teaching myself as I went), I dumped the footage in and began splicing/slicing/dicing/dragging/cutting the narrative into shape. I reached out to David Mansbach, one of the most talented musician on the planet and he allowed me to use a few of his songs during the film, heightening the intro, the montage, and the credits.
I designed a cover, cut a trailer, and submitted to 8-10 film fests. Thus far, we have won 3 awards, 2 honorable mentions, and got positive fedback. A few festivals didn’t select it, and we have 2 more that haven’t decided yet, but…we are getting a foot of snow today and many are stuck at home bored, so i’m thinking, why not throw it out into the world today to help pass the time?
Aside from lunch, snacks, and hiring Ryan the film had a budget of zero and while you can easily tell, I feel pretty damn proud of what we were able to accomplish. I don’t know if the film is what I expected or wanted, but I am beyond thrilled that it became something and it can be out in the world.
SEE YOURSELF IN is my debut short film and I hope you’ll carve out 12 minutes at some point to watch it. Thanks to everyone involved, like the extras: Vanessa, Owen, Mom, Craig, Amber, Coco, Skyler. If you don’t blink you’ll also meet Calvin Lucas Esper, our puppy we added to the family back in August, captured in the last bit of filming my dad did for the picture.
I have several other short scripts in the hopper, but now I know enough to know when to call in the cavalry, so if you’ve ever wanted to help on a project, drop me a line and let’s make something. Stay warm.
Hello all, I have been hard at work looking to get my screenplay Both Hands In into production, while still learning and growing as a screenwriter. Part of that journey is to reengage with audiences in a way that I haven’t done since Chuck passed away. I have restarted my tiktok account and will be posting semi-regular unscripted/unplanned movie reviews and also detailing my journeys in writing, acting, and still making music at an elderly age. Part of that is learning about Ai, which is not a path i want to explore right now, but I have been challenged by a fellow screen writer to use it outside of my writing and creative projects as a learning tool…
I am not hip or flashy or coming with hot take headlines, so I know I am not in touch with what catches fire on social media, but I hope you check in from time to time as I navigate these waters. Yelling into the void is unsettling, so any feedback and interaction is appreciated.
Also, keep a look out for a crazy, over the top, uncomfortable yet also funny slasher film, Satan’s Peak that recently wrapped shooting in the canton area. Helmed by my buddy James L. Edwards and boasting a really cool cast, the movie will offend almost everyone at some point, but can also entertain for the entire runtime.
Up next, I film a blink and you’ll miss is role in Kingsbury Run detailing Elliot Ness and his time in Cleveland chasing down the torso murderer.
I am not sure acting makes the most sense for me as something to pursue, but I love working with people I trust, producing scripts I believe in. To that end, I have one more role lined up for later this year in an exciting movie, that I cannot announce yet. And possibly something I’m set to film this Summer that I also can’t talk about yet, but it is an intense movie, written and directed by someone I’ve worked with before.
I hope y’all are doing well. Sorry I haven’t had any news on my thriller novel “In The Watershed” I thought we were close to having a home for it a couple times, but nothing happening just yet.
Ages ago, eons ago, I wrote a book. It started with a simple premise involving two friends, one lucky and one not as they went through life competing with each other. When I started the book, I didn’t know there would be a love triangle, but when a female of interest crashed into their lives and joined the fray I was helpless to intervene. The initial idea had the two friends primarily face off in various sports until they both went off into their careers and started families and found new ways to compete. The first thing i wrote for the book was going to be the last line, “and there I was shaking hands with the luckiest man alive” or something close to it.
Around that time, I heard a news story on the radio about a husband and wife who had an argument that caught my attention. I turned out that as they yelled at each other, the husband’s mother-in-law had come over to visit. She heard the commotion outside and called the police. When the officers arrived, the couple had patched things up, but the mother-in-law insisted she didn’t feel safe, so the officers took the husband into custody. He got understandably angry and resisted enough that they took him to jail to cool down. It happened to be the start of a holiday weekend, so he was stuck in jail for several days. The couple was supposed to travel, but he missed his flight.
I can’t recall if the wife ended up going on the trip without him…but i think that’s what happened. I thought it would be great if the lucky character from my book was on that flight and he hit it off with the wife or they had been old friends and they reconnected and she fell for him.
I initially intended this story of lucky vs. unlucky guys to be a short story or possibly a novella that would fit into a novel I had a rough outline for and a few chapters typed out. The idea being that a character from the novel would tell the story within the larger novel, but it turned out that the two competitors, who were now also competing for the same gal, had more to their story than I realized. The larger novel took place around a plane crash, so the story of the arguing couple totally fit and I thought it would be super cool if she was on the flight and she was the one telling the story, but…
When I started fleshing out the lucky vs. unlucky story it grew way too long and complicated to remain inside of another novel. It became its own fully realized book. I wrote it out and rewrote it a few times as I learned more about writing and lived a little life of my own.
I found a small publisher, who suggested a few edits to help it fit their more romance genre books, and after another rewrite they published the book in 2015. The launch of the book was a mess…partially my fault and partially theirs, which was a huge bummer. I hated the cover they designed…I hated the little bit of marketing they wanted to do, and worse, they abandoned the new imprint they spoke about which would focus on sports romance books, so it really stuck out with the rest of their offerings.
Now, I dunno, it’s not a world-changing novel…it’s got its charm, but it isn’t a classic they will talk about in class decades later, so it was never going to be a hit or sell a million copies, but…I like it and I worked fucking hard on it. Yes, you can say every author works hard and their first few novels are typically awful, but…
Anyway, five quick years pass by and I get the rights back to the book. It sits around collecting dust as covid hits and all that jazz. At some point I opened it up and started to do a quick edit. I recognized some of it’s faults and cut loose some things that I was too stubborn to delete the first go-round, but I didn’t want to change the spirit in which it was written…in a small house with babies being born and struggling paycheck to paycheck and with that hopeful gleam and magic of pushing through, you know?
But, then it sat for a while. Why?
I wrote a couple other books and signed with an agent. She mentioned that after I got a book published I might find a better spot to re-release the lucky vs. unlucky story. Oh, just to backtrack, the original title for the book was like “laughing at the luckiest man alive” or something…Since the story ended up more about snippets of life over a long time with a theme of determination and with the sports angle, I changed the title to “A Life of Inches.”
WARNING: If you look up that title, you’ll see some sketchy books about John Holmes (whoever that is, right?), so proceed with caution.
Back when I wrote the book, and had planned on self-publishing, I hired a famous Italian artist named sanjulian to paint a cover of the book. I love the cover and even though it was expensive and no one uses painted covers anymore, I was super excited to have it.
I pulled the trigger yesterday and put it up as an ebook only on Amazon and was able to use that painting and some extra elements to design the cover. I dig it:
anyway, now it is out in the world and all i can do is hope people find it and give it a chance. If you are enrolled in the KDP program through Amazon it is free to read, if not, it’s only 1.99. You can follow this link to it here:
I have other stories about the book and a lot of great memories from writing it, but those can wait until after you have read it and hopefully recommended it to a friend. Thanks.
Posted inmy writing, this guy!|Comments Off on the determination to re-release a book about determination
In Almost Famous, Jimmy Fallon says, “If you think Mick Jagger will still be out there trying to be a rock star at age 50, you’re sadly, sadly mistaken.”
While I’m not 50, I can see it looming closer through the windshield. Also, sure, you can sneer and point out that aside from a crush on Rae Dawn Chong (before I was married of course), Mick and me have very little in common, but I have tried to write and record music through my adult life on my own terms. I am proud of many songs I’ve been a part of and can except responsibility for the ones I don’t feel the same affinity for.
Writing and recording music is a crazy weird process that provides many challenges for a dyslexic, adhd, brain like mine and when you add other people to the mix(and money restraints and technology limitations and a dozen other issues) it becomes quite the mission impossible.
The Firmary is a rock band that I have been involved with since 2003 (though we took a severe break between 2006 and, uh, 2021-ish). In that time we have written a lot of songs i really enjoy, but without a set drummer and other factors our live shows and recordings haven’t always matched the level of the songwriting. In fact, all we have managed to release since coming back is a seven song EP and a couple digital singles.
Over the past two years, we have played a handful of shows while working with 6 or so different drummers (some live and some studio guys helping us record) and have tried and tried and tried to finish our second batch of songs. The process has been a grind and our progress has slowed to a crawl at times, but it appears we have five new songs close to ready to share. These songs are not the whole batch we originally intended, but they represent a trying era for The Firmary and deserve a life outside of our collective minds.
I really dig how these songs have turned out and I find myself excited to hear the EP, titled “Get Up”, named after one of the songs on the EP. Adam Probert has taken on the bulk of the mixing duties for these songs, which include the first two songs started by Joshua to get recorded and the first song started by me, which is probably the least firmary-sounding song ever recorded by The Firmary.
Our friend, Sam Hudson helped us with the cover by snapping some photos of herself (see image below). She probably didn’t know the risk she was taking in volunteering her time, talents, and image on an EP that for all she knew could be terrible. Here is the working cover for our EP:
But, Sam, it’s too late to turn back now.
When will this EP see the light of day? I have no idea, but soon-ish seems like an honest answer. will there be physical copies? No one uses CDs anymore, and we can’t afford to press records, so…maybe. We’re looking at options. I am an old curmudgeon who still prefers physical media, so maybe a small batch of CDs for those of you like me. Didn’t you post that you were possibly done with recording and writing music like five months ago? Yes, and the post still stands. I wanted to see this release through to the end and thought it would be done in late Spring/early Summer…which shows how naive and hopeful I remain after 25 years of delays.
Will The Firmary continue? That’s a question for the other guys. I plan on writing and recording music in some form or another until I die, but the band isn’t driven by me. William, Joshua, and Adam are guys I respect and admire and have been lucky enough to work with on various projects through the years. They deserve a solid singer with drive and passion and talent (hard to find a better looking singer than me though). If that is me, awesome…or if we say, ‘hey, this has been a tough process and we were getting older and need to set The Firmary aside (even if just temporarily), I’ll support that 100%. Lord knows I don’t plan on being onstage moving and shaking like Mick Jagger forever.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Making Music still? Really?
