NEW YEAR STATUS REPORT 🗓️

Hi everyone, you may (or may not) have noticed that I went dark here on the site for the second half of 2021 after HOWIE! #3, but I'm finally back to check in on all of my creative endeavors. Here is the long-anticipated (by me) WLDWLF end-of-year archival status report. If you can make it to the end I think you’ll see why I didn’t have much time to check in on the website. 😎

HOWIE! EPISODE 4

During the 232 days between May 30th and January 17th, we worked on the fourth installment of our animated miniseries, HOWIE!. We're really happy with how it came out, and grateful that a whole 138 people watched it. One industry professional even called it “not something to expect TV or Feature Animation people to get excited about”!!!

If anyone is interested, there's definitely some interesting behind-the-scenes content I could post about the episode. Let me know!

Now the finale is all that is left for the HOWIE! saga, and we’ve begun to assemble it. We’re looking forward to seeing you on the other side when it’s ready…

INCOMING MAIL

While animating HOWIE! #4, I was also serving as one of two lead editors on a USC advanced thesis project with my editing partner, Olivia Pearce. Our super talented peers filled the rest of the crew positions and the final result came out extremely professional!

Me on set with the camera & lighting team making sure we had the necessary practical elements to enhance the visual effects. A real burst of pink light on the set will help sell the idea of a magic portal, etc.

Incoming Mail is a 12-minute short film set in 1985 about a Hollywood-wannabe high school senior and her eccentric rocker best friend who use a magical mailbox to write letters to the future.

As the editors, Olivia and I had to select the best takes, fit the whole story into 12 minutes, and try to make it all make sense for an audience. It was a fun and stressful challenge to attempt pulling off all the proper emotional/narrative arcs, and we certainly learned a lot from the experience.

Additionally, I served as on-set VFX supervisor and did all the visual effects for the film including the title.

It was very rewarding working with the team to dial in the looks for all these VFX shots. You can see everything all together in the final film by clicking here, the password is "480"!

Screen Shot 2022-02-14 at 1.51.26 PM.png

Update: Since I started writing this blog post, we found out Incoming Mail was one of a few films selected to represent the best of the best advanced work coming out of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts in a program called “First Looks”. It will now be sent out to industry scouts and professionals and maybe some of us will get job offers! Perhaps all those hours in the dark editing basement were worth it… ;)

IVES

On top of both H4 and I.M., I was taking a stop-motion animation class where we physically crafted animated projects using new mediums each week. We also took time to study the origin and history of each technique, along with plenty of inspiring examples.

I set super high standards for my projects even though I had never done these types of videos before. I was able to combine my digital skillset with some outside-the-box physical production, and ended up creating a series of eight experimental shorts that I'm really proud of. I've finally renovated the "Experiments" section of the website, and now have a gallery for these stop-motion vids at the top.

My final project in that class is the one I think is the most interesting in every way.

"IVES" is an abstract representation of the lifelong arc of the American composer Charles Ives. He started out writing more traditional pieces and then branched off to explore the concept of "dissonance" which he found multitudes more interesting. A lot of his experimental music was ahead of its time, and people didn't see it for how clever it was until it was too late. Towards the end of his life, he lost the will to compose entirely, but is now celebrated as a genius.

I had four weeks to conceive this idea, pitch it, refine an animatic based on feedback, test the technique, and animate. All assets were created by painting on glass and snapping progressive pictures on a down-shooter rig at 12 frames per second. All paint was black and the glass canvas was white. Color was added digitally for more flexibility.

I definitely want to revisit this concept in the future because I think it's a good parallel to what a lot of artists go through as they try to find their unique style. I can picture a boldly entertaining film that synthesizes the cinematography of a live-action period piece with the surreal vibrance of these abstract animations. That’s for another time, though. For now, I hope you like this idea in its infancy: “IVES”.

The thing I loved about making these projects is that they brought me back to a simpler time when I made art with physical objects like tape, scissors, paper, etc…. To bring these ideas to life I had to spend hours in the animation labs sculpting, cutting, carving, drawing, erasing, and painting. That was sort of therapeutic, to be in the zone making tangible art again after creating digitally for so long.

SLEIGHT DISTURBANCE

Now it’s time to talk about the recent project that I might be the most excited about. In June of 2021, my good friend and former-producer Rohan Palla hit me up and told me he wanted to practice his cinematography. He gave me an offer that I couldn’t refuse (as someone who is not a gifted D.P.) : Write and Direct anything I want and he’d be happy to shoot it.

By lifting the burden of capturing the footage off of my shoulders, Rohan had given me the ability to focus solely on directing. Therefore, I’d be less stressed and the project would actually have a way better chance of getting made! We met up at Starbucks and the path forward for our collaboration was pretty clear.

See- I have this one script that I’d been trying to make since I wrote it for an assignment Sophomore Year. It was fully supposed to be made, but the day of that shoot one of my actors spontaneously dropped out. That day, we scrambled to think of something else on the spot and ended up creating BLACK SHEEP instead. Since then, though, people haven’t forgotten about the script. We revived it the next semester and practice-pitched it in a Producing class, where people genuinely responded pretty well to the premise. Because of that, I was determined to make it for my Junior Thesis, but uh… Covid happened. Long story short, it was f*cking time to make SLEIGHT DISTURBANCE.

***A rough still from SLEIGHT DISTURBANCE, my next live-action short film. This 10-minute experience is coming to an internet near you in the medium-future.***

I don’t want to give too much away, but SLEIGHT DISTURBANCE is the story of a passionate beach jogger’s eventful run-in with a persistent street magician. The film may or may not explore the concept of a never ending magic trick.

Rohan and I immediately took on co-producer roles, and started trying to make this film happen in the 20-day window we were both available. I began buying props and renting gear out of my own pocket, and we launched some camera tests and location scouts. We also enlisted the help of our friends Ellery and Diya to form a small skeleton crew for parts of the shoot.

My best friend and frequent collaborator, Jacob Giancola, essentially flew out to LA to take the role of The Runner, while we auditioned professional actors online to cast The Magician. That’s where we found the talented Taylor Brooks, whose well-produced self-tape audition caught our eyes, along with his intimate knowledge of the history of magic. We utilized some of Taylor’s favorite magical influences to strengthen the vision of his character.

If you paid attention, you’d have already asked yourself “wait, if you shot this in June of 2021, why hasn’t it come out yet?” Good observation! That’s because, (believe it or not), I was already working on HOWIE! Episode 4 at the time, and I vowed to finish that first to avoid overloading myself and burning out. Now that H4 has dropped, SLEIGHT has my full attention.

So far, I’ve completed a rough assembly cut of the story, which turned out pretty solid despite some production challenges we faced on set (i.e. getting kicked out of Venice Beach for not having permits)… Now I need to get some feedback, polish it, and do all the VFX shots and titles/credits. We’re looking at a few more months of effort, but hopefully it will debut at the 2112 Studios Film Festival we are planning some time in May. If you’d like to stay up to date on projects like this, I recommend following @WLDWLFFLMS on Twitter and turning those sweet, sweet notifications on!

Overall, I’m really grateful that Rohan had the idea to combine his dramatic eye with my absurd/comedic directing impulses. The resulting film is unlike anything I’ve ever seen and I hope you share a similar appreciation for the unique experience when it becomes public. Perhaps around then I’ll give it its own blog post with more B.T.S. details on how we pulled it together so quickly. Please stay tuned!

SWEPT UNDER / SANO / THE CLOSEST WE’LL GET TO FLYING

Some of the best things I did last Summer involved working on my friends’ passion projects and trying out new on-set roles!

First, I tried my hand at Production Designing my pal Ethan Soo’s historical horror film, Swept Under. “Inspired by true events in American and Cambodian history, Swept Under is a short horror film that sheds light on Southeast Asian history and the legacy of the Vietnam War today.” Click here to watch a little teaser with more info about the film that Ethan made.

This shoot was fun because some of the crew got to sleep over at the set in Orange County for a few nights, which led to some great bonding. My P.D. partner, Emily Kim, and I were tasked with sourcing all the props for the film and making sure they felt authentic. We consulted with Ethan about the characters, themes, and aesthetics of his vision and did the best we could to bring the props and settings to life. Our biggest challenge/task was to create two nearly-identical copies of this suspicious-looking red rug with black dots. Oh, and to get it to stand vertically!

I had never worked as a Production Designer on a film that wasn’t mine, so this was a whole new experience for me. Emily and I both used new physical and mental tools to accomplish our task, and seeing the actors interact with our props on set was super rewarding!! Whenever the film is ready, I’ll make sure to promote it :)

Next came the time to shoot SANO, a historical surf epic by my friend/housemate Josh Greene. Click here for another tonal teaser he put together about the context and style of the film. This was another multi-day shoot, so we all drove down to San Clemente and stayed at Josh’s house for a few nights.

I bounced around on this set a lot, serving in roles like Key Set Production Assistant, First Assistant Cinematographer, and other miscellaneous jobs across the iconic locations.

While this set also had its challenges (more location issues, accidentally going swimming in a private drinking water reserve, etc.) lots of memories were made and Josh is nearly finished editing the film. If all goes well it should be the closer at our 2112 Film Festival.

My personal favorite part of this experience was secretly taking over the SANO instagram page, where I started creating my own content and weaving the narrative that Josh was holding me hostage on the set of his film. I even ate sand to commit to this bit, and now I am known as “the guy who ate sand”.

The last new role I attempted this summer was Colorist, meaning I did the color grading on our friend Madeline’s short film The Closest We’ll Get to Flying. This was a scary task for me since color grading is HARD, and it was my first time doing it the proper way on someone else’s film. After many sessions of collaborative work we ended up very happy with the looks we dialed in and I’m excited to have had this touch on the final product :)

RAPID FIRE WRAP-UP

I know everyone is very busy so I’ll start speeding this up. Here’s all the rest of the various undertakings I was recently working on or have in motion for 2022:

WLDWLF MERCH

One of my current goals is to bring WLDWLF out of the virtual space and into a tangible form. Besides a few stickers that I own, there’s no way for people to support the brand and have it grow by word-of-mouth. This is something I really want, so I’ve partnered with some artists and an apparel printer to create a high-quality piece of merch that people would actually want to wear. The only problem is that I still haven’t landed on anything that I absolutely love.

I have too high of standards for this stuff so I want it to be a mix of meaningful layers and cool aesthetics that works for everyone. Stylistically I want it to be both surreal and minimalist. We’ll be continuing to work on this when we can, but here was my best personal design so far:

PRODUCTION COMPANY BRAINSTORMS

Speaking of graphic design, I started thinking about potentially evolving my brand when I graduate college. Nothing against WLDWLF, I just think a new professional alias could go a long way as I begin to pitch and develop bigger projects. However, (like the merch), I won’t commit to anything unless it’s infused with lots of meaning and truly resonates with me in every way. Here were two concepts I drafted for an assignment, I’m sort of indifferent to both so WLDWLF will stay alive for now.

LINKTREE

When I was working on promoting HOWIE! #4, Incoming Mail, and my stop motion projects across social media, I realized I should have a reliable “shortcut” to all my latest projects. I knew of this service called Link Tree, and finally pulled the trigger on making one for myself. This is just an easier way for me to link people to the projects I talk about more in-depth on this website that no one visits. If you’re intrigued by anything I’m promoting, you’ll now be able to find it quickly through the links in my Instagram and Twitter bios. Or, memorize this address and type it in yourself, it’s pretty easy! www.Linktr.ee/JCHERV

WOLFPACK WRITING PROJECTS

Some people may know that I’m also a screenwriting minor, so I actually spend a lot of my time writing/outline/brainstorming scripts. Here’s a small update on what my primary writing partners and I have been cooking up alongside these other production projects. We are really excited to keep developing all these and start entering some of them into competitions!

Short Films:

Komodía: A satirical story about the invention of comedy in Ancient Greece.

Untitled Pizza Project: A sci-fi comedy about a futuristic Pizza Delivery system.

OSKAR: A quirky comedy about a fashion designer who finds himself forced to work for a dangerous client.

TV Series:

Good Intentions: A semi-autobiographical genre-fusion show about a group of creative friends who bond over posting their weird videos on the internet.

Legendary Larry: A fantasy comedy show about a Postman who originated in a Dungeons-and-Dragons-esque universe and escaped to our world.

Feathers: A semi-absurd show about three birds from New Zealand observing humanity from the treetops of a coastal resort.

Unamused (working title): A show about an amusement park employee whose life has gotten away from him.

Features:

Winner Winner: A thriller/Hollywood satire about Game Show fraud.

Varsity B: A cyberpunk tennis highschool road trip movie (parody of lots of tropes/genres) about a school tennis team that mysteriously disappears.

Vendetta Sky (working title): A comedy about two kids who get sued by a washed-up rock star for accidentally plagiarizing his song.

LOOKING FORWARD

Thank you for reading this far, sincerely. This post has taken me months to finish since all these details, ideas, and experiences constantly jumble around in my head while I’m also creating new ones. In 2022, I’m continuing to do some freelance Editing and VFX for USC projects, and I also T.A. a film class and work in the USC Editing Labs.

It’s also time to start looking for jobs and housing next year, so this is a huge period of transition. My plan is to try getting into the editor’s guild (a 100-day process) and see if I can secure a living for myself while I continue writing and directing this backlog of ideas on the side. Ultimately, I’d love to get on set or into a writer’s room and eventually create and run my own shows. As always, if you’re interested in keeping up with my creative journeys, you’re in the right place. This website is my corner of the internet and I want to keep expanding it to provide any and all types of entertainment you could ever need. Another big goal I have since launching the site is to get a 24/7 curated livestream up and running so I can screen some hidden-gems from my own catalogue and feature the work of other artists I know. That way you can always come to the site and see something new/interesting at any time.

Also, I got myself a PS5 and have been gaming a lot since I can’t currently do my other hobby, playing drums. When I move to a new house next year, I may set up a music studio / streaming room and start hanging out with people live. Okay- I better stop writing before I commit myself to enough ideas for multiple lifetimes. See you in the next post, comment below if there’s anything specific you want to see! -JC 💜🌙

BACK TO ALL POSTS