No Hero Films Blog

In my early days out here, I was constantly asking why I was spending my time helping others for free. I would help one guy out every Tuesday to make phone calls to people, move his gear from place to place, get the coffee for his workout video, the list goes on forever. For eight months, I slaved myself out to Silver Pictures. Did it make any difference to them whether I decided to leave them? Absolutely not. When I left, ten guys ten years older than me and four more days out of the week to offer gladly took my place. For two semesters, I exchanged criticisms with film students at SMC over the course of the Film Club. During all the heated exchanges, I still put my own money on the table to make sure two hundred people would have a good time on a Friday night. And during all of this, I was helping on countless sets for students and pros who were trying to get their film/video projects made. I was offering my camera (which broke), staying up to edit, learning how to load film mags, again the list goes on.

Most of the time I was happy. But every now and then I would ask what I was getting out of it.

It did not seem that far off a question to think about. After all, I felt like I knew some stuff. I thought I could handle the jobs being held by the people who were telling me what to do. I saw the stories and shots in my head. I was capable. Right?

I had bided my time for so long. I kept getting discouraged by seeing projects that I held in a low light. I was a witness to all the mistakes. Still, I was in no place to say shit until I took on the role of producer/director myself.

And then it came. Charlie’s Hair & Spa For Men. What better chance to put my filmmaking abilities to the test than to attempt to honor my father’s name and support my cousin (who convinced me to move out here) at the same time.

I was anticipating that shooting this thing would put me on edge in a way I am used to feeling when I am responsible for putting something together. This did not happen. What did happen was I was suddenly surrounded by the most capable and devoted people I have ever gotten to work with. I did not have to do all of the thinking because there were others thinking for me. I had Charles and Tim, guys I have only partially gotten to know, showing up to handle the sound. Thiago and Sean rolled in to help handle the camera equipment. I was honestly jealous of this. They learned more about that stuff than I got to learn. Mustafa and Tobias, guys I am acquainted with through the club, came by to cover areas I didn’t have time to cover. Bryn and Yonatan went above and beyond the call of duty by dealing with detail I would have not been able to take care of. Bryn kept me from even getting my hands dirty in some cases. (Ed- And don’t forget Mike! He was so intuitive that he actually labeled and categorized our shots to keep things running smooth between takes.)  Jimmy usually charges money to work as a cameraman or to rent out his HD Sony XDCam. He came onto our project with both services for free. Paul and Cory continue to show loyalty by coming back to act. Along with them, beautiful girls gave us the majority of their Friday. Not to mention a badass who has been given the name Edward James Almost. Haha but seriously Tom was a trooper, and I hope we get to work with him again. James was someone I could trust to handle shots and actors. I would never take a step back with anyone else and be comfortable letting another person handle directing. In this case, I was feeling relief that I had someone good handling the cast. We did all this with a little over a hundred dollars that my cousin supplied.

What it all comes down to is that a project like this is not something anyone can do. It is a privilege that must be granted by the people around me. And it is the reason why I have gone out, time and again, to do what I can for these people. They are the reason I got to construct such amazing shots and not have a heart attack trying to get them made.

I want everyone who came out for the commercial shoot to know that I am there to help you out 100%. And you never need to think I might be feeling like my time is being wasted. This was one of the best experiences I have ever had. Thanks for letting me have it.

-Christopher Pollock

This world isn’t perfect. All the dreams little boys and girls have about how things are supposed to be when you’re all grown up never come true for most people. If that were the case, we would “expect” those magical moments as opposed to “hoping” for them. Sometimes we hope so hard for these things that when our wishes and dreams don’t come true, our hearts are crushed and we’re left with wondering what could have been. At least this is how it is for me. When I was a little girl, I hoped and dreamed and prayed for the wonderful moments like my first kiss or being swept away by a handsome prom date. Well, my first kiss was hardly special and I didn’t see my prom date for 80% of the event. When you get older you realize that fanciful magical dreams hardly come true and what’s worse…you can’t turn back time when they don’t. Fortunately there is a place where the magic happens. Every script, actor, actress, set and music composition is a second chance for that magic. When we write words down on a piece of paper, we bring to life what could have been and the magic slips from fantasy into reality. Sometimes movies are like life’s way of saying “I’m sorry it couldn’t be that way…but lets go on a journey for 2 hours and make believe it was.” 

They touch the mind and heart in the places of make believe. Yes, I know it sounds cheesy but this is what movies do to me. Within the span of two hours, I can fall in love, experience a broken heart and fall back into love again. I can run from murderers and defeat villains. When I watch a movie, I rise and fall with the characters. I get angry with them and I rejoice with them. (Which by the way is why I absolutely hate when people predict and talk through movies. It totally and completely kills my mood) Movies give me a chance to re-live what was and what could have been and not only that…they give me hope that the magical moments in life do exist.

-Anesha Pereira

Film is a recent found love for me. I mean… the love was always there but I just realized it a couple of years ago. I was born and raised in Sao Paulo, Brazil, amidst punk rock, skateboarding and surfing with friends. I never really cared much about doing well in school. When I was 13 years old, I went to my first punk rock show and it changed my life forever. The energy was immense and I remember wanting to put a band together as soon as I walked out. So I did. The band “Bullet” was formed in 2000 along with 3 other neighborhood friends. I started out singing songs I had written in poor English and pretty soon I was taking guitar lessons and trying to compose songs. Bullet lasted for about a year and I went on to form another band with my cousin and two other great friends. 

The guitar player and I had recently seen P.T. Anderson’s “Boogie Nights” and we decided to name the band after Mark Whalberg’s character, Dirk Diggler. 

Due to watching the movie dubbed in Portuguese and understanding little about the English language, we thought the character’s name was “Dick” and so we named the band

 “The Dick Digglers.” 

We had t-shirts made with the name of the band and we even played a gig at a friend’s birthday. In 2004, the bass player left the band to join a Psychobilly band and we decided to end it. A few months later, the three of us found another bass player and formed “Cross Bones.”

 By then I had been taking English lessons and started to write songs in English. In May of 2005, Cross Bones recorded its first demo. Two days later, I left Brazil to work at a theme park in Springfield, Massachusetts. I lived there for six months and then moved to Boston where I worked odd jobs for a living, went to lots of punk rock gigs and finally met my Cali girl. After two years in Boston, I moved to Italy for three months, became an Italian citizen, and then moved to London for eight months. I finally decided that even though travelling around is great, it was time to go back to school.  

I can’t think of a non-artistic career that would do for me and Film sure is a helluva good option. To me, some movies transmit the same kind of energy that punk rock shows did when I was a teenager. Am I cut for Film? Not sure… but I’ll give it a shot.

Once at SMC, I joined the Film Club and was surprised to see that everyone was willing to help out at any given time. I wrote my first twenty-three page script for a short and, together with members of the Film Club, “Vindictive Swindlers” was shot.

Punk rock roots still remain among my Brazilian friends and Cross Bones got back together for a couple of gigs while I was in Brazil. Now I’m back in L.A. and finishing Vindictive Swindlers is a must!                                                                                                                                                                                             

      Thiago Tassini recently wrote and directed  his first film “Vindictive Swindlers” in 2009.  His editor, James Iliff, is an incompetent schmuck who is taking forever to complete post-production.  But its nothing to cry about- once James successfully crashes his English 2 class, Tassini’s film will move up the festival ranks and become a smash hit.  Or a cult classic. 

Once upon a time, there was a bright young girl. Unfortunately, she was held captive on the highest mountain, in the tallest tower, on the top floor. She waited for her Prince Charming to rescue her. Finally, on the 18^thanniversary of her time in the cold and dim tower room, she decided to jump off her balcony. “Prince Charming would never come for me”, she realized. Death seemed a far better resort than remaining in a tower for the rest of her life. The young girl climbed on top of the thin edge that separated a world of secure darkness and an unfamiliar world, filled with adventure and death. She closed her eyes and took in what would be her last breath. Then, she leaped off of the balcony. She was at peace and cherished her last moments like they were years stretching against time. But something didn’t seem right. She opened her eyes and realized that she was no longer falling vertically, but flying horizontally. She could fly! It took her 18 years to comprehend that it would never be a well groomed Prince with a killer smile that would save her, but rather, herself. She could’ve left anytime she desired. All it required was a leap of faith and a will for freedom. The enchanted girl was no longer engulfed in a haze that kept possibilities out of reach. Now that she was free, she exclaimed, “I finally get to do two things I have always dreamed of doing: eat a cheesecake and make films!!!” Shortly after, she landed in front of the Cheesecake Factory. The bright girl, quickly picked out a delicious cheesecake, but became sad when she realized she never had any money to begin with. Out of nowhere, a bearded man with glasses offered his credit card to the cashier. “Thank you so much,” she sincerely said. “You’re welcome,” he replied. “You aren’t from around here, are you?” “Nope,” she replied. “My dream is become a filmmaker. I’m Celia.” <cue music> She extended her hand and they greeted each other. 

The bearded gentleman suggested, “Well there is a pretty good film club at Santa Monica College that’s pretty great.” “Really?!” she exclaimed. “Then that’s exactly where I will start! Thanks!” She grabbed her cheesecake and rushed for the door. As she exited, she shouted back at the man, “And your name, good fellow?” “Oh, it’s Steven. Steven Spielberg,” he replied. She flashed him a giant smile and declared, “I’ll never forget you, when I make it big!” She anxiously took flight. As soon as she landed on campus, she raced over to the Film Club meeting. The cheerful girl sat down into the inviting room and took a delicate bite from her cheesecake slice. She nodded in agreement that the cheesecake was divinely delicious and that this was surely the right place for her.  

. . . Okay, although none of that is true, I think it sounds so much better than the truth. J I’m Celia Mandela Baron Rivera. Stage name: Celia M. Rivera (for all you slow people) No Hero Films just kinda fell into my lap. I signed up for Xombie Corps as the Assistant Director. I began doing the routine work and quickly realized that there was no female lead for our upcoming blockbuster. Meanwhile, I started rounding up past colleagues who I thought could do the role some justice. So, I offered to read a side from the script. Mike told me he was looking for a cute skinny blonde. Haha. I asked Mike a second time to allow me to audition. That didn’t go anywhere. By then, I found a prospective actress for the part. As time was closing in on the shoot date, I told Mike that I found someone who could carry the part. It looked very promising. But at a crew meeting, I gave it one more shot. Mike took a chance on a little caramel colored Celia. J I read a side. I walked out of there feeling relieved and satisfied. I didn’t mind if I didn’t get the part, but at least I gave it a shot. Mike very graciously gave me the part and the AMAZING Anesha filled my spot as the A.D.

      Xombie Corps had the perfect crew and cast. Filming it was the most wonderful experience. Now, Xombie Corps has a sequel in the works!!!

Lesson learned: Persistence is key! No one will hand you anything. Believe in yourself. If you think you don’t deserve a chance, there is no way in hell you will get it from anyone else!

(cont’d from below)

I’m surprised I ever made it to this city.  I’m surprised I got passed Vegas- it almost looked like we were gonna be… well, you know, stuck.  Whew.  Anyways, so backtracking a second- I have a warrant out for my arrest in Utah.  Thats usually the first thing I tell everyone when I’m a bit trifled with wine, because it turns ears and I love attention.  So my apologies for talking about the same thing over and over again like everybody’s grandpa, but get over it.

Warrant out for my arrest.  The Utah Sheriff pulls me over for clipping across the desert at ninety-five, and my truck looks totally stolen!  An old, grimy tarp covers up the back, surely hiding dead bodies.  And I don’t have any license or registration or insurance or tags.  

A flash light glares in my face, as my eyeballs start sprouting gray blotches and obscuring my vision.  My cousin Ben, sitting in the passenger seat next to me, is quiet and says nothing.  What happens next?

Did I mention we had bottle rockets?  Thats right, your thinking what I’m thinking- or at the time was thinking.  My brain trudged along at two miles an hour: I was in shock.  But I had a lighter in my hand for some reason, and Ben was sitting awkwardly on five cases of classic Kansas firepower.

We acted fast.  Being related as we were, it didn’t take much to read each other’s thoughts.  I reached into the glove compartment, casually dropping the lighter in Ben’s seat as I went.  I proceeded to dig around for a non-existent insurance paper, while Ben began twisting fuses together under his ass, pretending he had an itch.  Hey, it happens to all of us!  Eventually I handed the officer some arbitrary envelope with information of some kind in it, and began a fit of sneezing.  Ben lit the quiet fuse, and slowly let it burn…. (he later mentioned to me that was the scariest moment of his life.  Not so much the cop, but mostly the five pounds of explosives pointed directly at his nads.)

The sheriff opened the papers and shined the flashlight on it, clearly illuminating what looked like a sheet of MapQuest directions.  But that didn’t really matter- MapQuest one second, screaming bottle rockets the next.  

I quickly leaned back in my seat, and the high-pitched explosions were deafening.  My ears throbbed with pain, but I was very happy that stuff wasn’t exploding on my face!  Gas pedal.  Heart pounding so fast it felt like a vibration.  The thick nighttime fog covered us like a blanket in a matter of seconds.  In minutes, we were in the clear.

…And thats the story I tell when I’m relatively drunk.  In actuality, the officer kindly gave me a speeding citation, and we were merrily on our way.  I forgot to pay it, so thats why I got a warrant … and I used my Christmas money to pay it off…  But who wants to hear about the boring version of the story?  My new version is way more fun!

And thats what filmmaking is all about.

Good day to you.

-James Iliff

I may be introduced by Mr. Pollock as “the only cool European guy around”, and many may know me as the quiet weirdo in the background of every meeting. The truth is, I kind of like being an enigma for most of you because I was used to the exact opposite back in France. As a wannabe director obsessed with movies (and proud to be a complete geek), I sorta did the same thing that Mike, Chris, James and the others did with No Hero Films: I decided to create my own amateurish company named Turcas Films. From 2005 to 2008, I directed and wrote around 15 movies, all of them on Google Video or Dailymotion. I was the founder and the main director of that fake company (and we did not take ourselves too seriously with it, it’s just a fun way to make movies), and I like changing my position from the leader to the new guy in the No Hero community. I always dreamed of joining something like that, a true and passionate group, and I am pretty proud to say that I’m experiecing the very beginning of a great experience.

Personal problems and depressive behavior aside, I do not want to be considered as the Silent Bob of SMC. Over the end of the Fall semester and the Winter break, I did have a hard time finding my place, in No Hero or in any place. But that is about to change. As much as I love writing, I am a director, and I intend to prove that to everybody. I’m trying to make people watch my movies to realize that it’s not the first time I put my hands on amateur filmmaking. As soon as they/you realize that I just need to find my place and stop being silent, you will possibly hate me, but I’m fine with it.

Writing “Xombie Corps 2″ was a very good thing for me, because I needed to step back from my position of director and I really wanted to create something without having to direct it afterwards. It is not my job to put the “Xombie Corps” style in this sequel, and I really hope this project will become real when the next semester starts. I was really inspired by the No Hero community and the way they do things, and it’s a real achievement if this movie gets made. But as much as I want to write some other things with other people I respect in the group, I am already thinking about my first english-language movie, “The Alien Killer”. But since I don’t want to impose myself (yet!), I hope my zombie sequel will be picked up as an important film to make (and it has to be made in the next few months because “Xombie Corps” is still fresh), and seeing my name on the screen along with these guys will officially start my way into the group. Sorry if I sounded amazingly dumb or potentially pretentious. But that’s the way I am, and you will realize it pretty soon. Yep, this is a pretty cliché way of excusing myself while sounding smart!                                                                                                                                                                                       

     Thibault Turcas has written and directed a number of films, including “The Sniper At The Gates of Heaven”, “Exit”, and “Mexican Standoff”, all located in a country called France.  Actually, no one really knows who he is or how he got here, so if you have any information regarding the whereabouts of  Mr. Turcas, please call three one zero six zero zero seven seven eight two.*

The best way I can describe myself is to explain what matters to me the most. And what matters the most to me is to be apart of something bigger than myself. When I first flew out to Los Angeles, I knew virtually no one. I saw a flyer advertising the Film Club at Santa Monica College and I went right away. Once I was there, I met a few people. Everything was kind of up in the air for a while. The group was not solidified very well. I believed it could be better and started working to make that happen.

One year later, there was a new round of people in the club. Many of these people would go on to become some of my closest friends today. Once again, I was

searching to be apart of something big. When Mike dropped his plans to make a zombie movie, I jumped to join in on the fun. There is something about making a movie that really satisfies the drive that many of us share.

But this drive fortunately never goes away entirely. We have to keep working. The minute we stop is the minute we stop growing. No Hero is our excuse to keep moving forward.

Of course, for one to say they are apart of No Hero is no small thing. Those who make this claim must be ready to give their abilities and their efforts into the work. It is my goal to have something to give in this group, and so I can only keep working to prove that I belong here.

And so, I can only say this: keep an eye out for a short film directed by Christopher Pollock.

Well it seems I’m not cut out to be an engineer, really.  I can’t even figure out how to set up a badminton net, much less design hydro-electric solar panels in Bolivia.  Funny it took two semesters of calculus to mull that over.  Filmmaking was calling my name with a whining persistence, forcing me to second-guess everything I was doing with my life- all the way down to those wimpy sack lunches I ate every day at the dining hall.  

I had to get outta there.  I had to get the hell out of Kansas. 

And it had to happen immediately.

So me, my cousin, and two of my buddies packed up a Jeep with my clothes and modest book collection, and made for highway I-70.  It wasn’t my Jeep we were driving, no- it was one of my friend’s ex-girlfriend’s.  I don’t know how he convinced her to let us take it to Colorado, but he did.   I would have gladly taken my Honda, but fortune has it I completely totaled it the night before I planned to skip town.  I had needed to take a break from packing, and so I decided to test out the new GPS system my good-willed mother had installed as a parting gift.  Unfortunately, on my way home from the bank, the damn thing became too confusing for my existentially angsty brain processes.  Hey, its challenging to keep your eyes on the screen and the road at the same time, especially when the machine is demanding that you turn around every 300 feet!  After awhile it kind of felt like I was watching somebody play a videogame, and then I started thinking about how amazing it was that such a small device could detect exactly where every little road was.  I forgot it doesn’t detect cars, only roads- and so I mindlessly plowed into the person in front of me at an intersection 3 blocks away from my house.

Oops.  I guess my nasty smoking habit wasn’t about to get any better.  

So now its 5a.m., and the sun barely peeks through the industrial haze of the passing Frito Lay factory.  We were on our way to Colorado, and we had been learning that the Road offers no smiling guarantees- only vague misgivings involving coolant levels, tire pressure, and “whats that beeping noise?” hysteria that will make driving through empty western Kansas one hell of a mind trip.  

One of my buddies (I won’t mention who) of course decided to bring all kinds of illegal contraband (I won’t mention what) including a bunch of bottle rockets (just because they are illegal in Utah) so that the trip would be “not boring” as he put it.  I’m just trying to get to California at this point, and as the road stretched on things began to get rather emotional.  I can’t remember much about that first stretch, but I do remember my brother calling from New Zealand, and telling me I could take his red truck he left in Colorado and drive it to LA.  That way he wouldn’t have to pay storage fees anymore.  Around the same time my Dad called telling me NOT to take the truck because it hadn’t been paid off and the tags were expired.  My brother’s father-in-law called from Minnesota to say he was mailing the truck keys overnight to a Denver post office, my mother called from Kansas crying, and my sister called from Los Angeles telling me I had better know what I was doing.  

That afternoon my cousin and I picked up the keys from the post office, snuck into the Public Storage facility, and jumped the truck with cables we found in the back of the cab.  My other two friends had already left to go back to Topeka (leaving me with the bottle rockets) and my brother called again to inform me that the truck hadn’t been paid off, there was no insurance, the tags were expired, and creditors were after it.  He said to get my ass out of Colorado.

I complied with his advice.  We booked it straight out of there, and into Utah.  Unfortunately…. bottle rockets are illegal in Utah.

(to be cont’d…)