Thursday, October 21, 2010 4:43PM - By Krystal Clark
James Mann and Brandon Nicholas are the directing team of the coming of age indie drama, Desert Son. The film centers on Phillip, a teenage boy who learns how to survive in an unconventional circumstance when he’s dropped off in the middle of the desert by his alcoholic step-father. He meets and befriends a beautiful young woman named Lucy who takes him in and makes him a part of the pseudo-family she’s created with her unstable and verbally abusive boyfriend Jack.
The trio live together, work together, and eventually commit crimes together, which adds a life altering element to their already unhinged set up. The story has a lot of twists and turns that you don’t see coming, and Phillip is dramatically changed from the naive and defenseless boy we meet in the beginning of the film.
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Wednesday, January 20, 2010 9:36AM - By Mali Elfman
After as brief hiatus for the holidays, Do Not Disturb is almost fully edited with music, Foley, and an awesome animation by Andy Windak on it’s way. After looking through all five films, although I loved what we shot, I wanted a little bit more of a set up for the film as a whole and each story individually soooo… welcome to the underbelly of our currently unnamed hotel! Maureen and I grabbed Death Takes a Holiday Inn director Brandon Nicholas, a small crew of Zach Voytas (DP), Tyler Harrison (AC), Drew Aiello (Gaffer), Sahib Dhanjal (AD), Brent DeGraff (DIT), and Edan Mason (Sound) and some equipment from Indie Rentals (yet again, the best place to rent from in LA for indie filmmakers) and put everyone in the two tinniest shooting spaces we could find and shot 14 more pages written by yours truly in two days!
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Monday, December 14, 2009 9:01PM - By Mali Elfman
***Updated: New Video made by Laura Aguirre Added***
Our fifth and final film of Do Not Disturb, entitled Death Takes a Holiday Inn, written and directed by Brandon Nicholas, starring Diva Zappa, Jason Alan Smith, and myself, Mali Elfman, was wrapped a couple of weeks ago and we finally have a little behind the scenes look for you to watch!
All the films are currently being edited and are headed towards picture lock by the 30th of December. After we raise a bit more money they’ll all be on their way to being scored (we’ll announce who is doing that soon, we’ve got some really talented people in the works) and color corrected.
Enjoy…
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Friday, December 4, 2009 10:18PM - By Mali Elfman
We just wrapped Do Not Disturb two days ago and while on a major come-down and tearing apart our set, I received a few stills from our grand finale taken by photographer Brendan Holmes. Our final two films, Intrinsic by Jon Mann-Krieger and Death Takes a Holiday Inn by Brandon Nicholas both use the same cast in two very different stories that interlace with one another. Both directors had one day to shoot their film and another cross over day in which they shared the set. It was probably one of the most difficult ways of doing things but somehow it managed to work!
Below are photos of our two directors along with cast members Jason Alan Smith, Diva Zappa, Troy Garity and myself…
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Wednesday, December 2, 2009 10:26PM - By Mali Elfman
Above you have Diva Zappa, Jason Alan Smith, and myself, from Brandon Nicholas’ Death Takes a Holiday Inn and Jon Mann-Krieger’s Intrinsic!
It got rather sticky towards the end… literally, Diva and I were stuck onto almost everything we touched due to the massive amounts of fake blood poured (and squirted) all over. I managed to stain my computer and walk into a bar looking more bloody than I am in the above picture, she some how managed to stain (almost) nothing and clean herself off before appearing in public (apparently, I still have a lot of learning to do).
Aside from having to sit in make-up chair for 5 hours today, we had an amazing shoot. We wrapped Death Takes a Holiday Inn, our grand finale for Do Not Disturb and the entire film series. We posted some bloody photos earlier but here are a few proper photos taken by our set photographer Brendan Holmes for ya….
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Monday, November 23, 2009 9:54PM - By Mali Elfman
Today has been one of the longest days of my life but I can proudly say that IT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING. Despite the minor fires that erupted earlier, everyone is on track and ready to get moving on Do Not Disturb! We begin shooting tomorrow morning at 7am. I got to approve my first call sheet today 
And yes I LOOK like I’m just laying around on the bed in the picture above but I was actually blocking a scene and talking on the phone to our Script Supervisor Maia at the same time (multi-tasking rocks!), so there!
Only 24 hours ago we were far from where we needed to be, mainly due to the lack of hands due to the lack of budget. Director Brandon Nicholas officially saved all of our asses…
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Sunday, November 22, 2009 3:21PM - By Mali Elfman
Another update from my first production Do Not Disturb! There’s no such thing as weekends or late mornings on a Mali Elfman Production! We’ve been onset since basically since they would allow us. It’s all coming along… almost on time.
Yesterday we managed to actually get ahead of schedule, but due to problems with the carpet (they gave us two separate ones! AHHHH!) we’ve now been pushed back. Also, we has some curtain and painting problems which are being fixed as we speak.
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