Week 42: H. Hammouda

October 15 - 21

New York

 

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This was a really fun project to work on and made for a really great week! I felt myself starting to get a cold on Monday, so I consider my week having started on Tuesday, when I pulled an all-nighter writing the script for this movie. I must've written four or five drafts between midnight and 6:00am. We then shot the movie on Thursday, shooting from somewhere between 4:00pm and midnight. On Wednesday, I bought comic books.

Halfway through shooting on Thursday, I felt myself getting really sick. My eyes were sore and it physically hurt to look at anything, let alone stare at a camera screen for six hours on end. It hurt to talk too! My voice was getting so dry and raspy. While most directors snort cocaine during a shoot, I was drinking gallons of lemon-infused chamomile tea. During the B-roll, you can hear me struggling to get directions out to my actors. 

And then on Saturday and Sunday, I edited the thing for almost 10 hours straight each day, only taking a break to go see Queens of the Stone Age on Saturday night -- because the best thing for a sore throat is screaming the lyrics to some of your favorite songs. On Monday, I ended up having to be up for 40 hours straight because I didn't get any sleep between finishing the movie and going to work, so that was fun too. Wait, did I say fun?

But in all seriousness, this was a really great experience. It's a firm belief of mine that the best way to get better at your profession is to just go out and practice it, so having to make a short film in under six days was probably one of the best things everyone involved with INTERVENtion could've done. Big thanks to YourUncleRichard for reaching out to us to do this! And best of luck to whoever is doing week 43, I'm really looking forward to what you make of this!

 

Other projects that I'm working on include "Lee Paxton: Blade Jogger", about a delusional police officer who's convinced himself that he's a Blade Runner, in addition to "All Aclone", a movie about a man who is socially awkward and isn't sure if he can make friends, so he decides to clone a woman that he wants to be friends with in order to practice being friends with people. I'm hoping to turn "All Aclone" into a feature one day, so that'll be a very fun one to work on. 

My Vimeo page is https://vimeo.com/hhhammouda, where you can find my directing reel, among other works that I have done. You can also follow me on Instagram at 'thewisefoolHHH' for updates on projects that I'm working on, in addition to pictures of cats and dumb things that I do around New York City. Thanks for tuning in!