Film

Currently in post-production:

SELL IN HELL

Written, directed, and produced by Blake Arnold and Keith Snyder

Previous Films:

1 is for Gun Silver award, Atlantic City Film Festival   I co-wrote/produced/directed, and composed the music.	Session 52 Bombay International Film Festival, New Orleans International Film Festival, Raindance Festival I co-produced, and composed the music.
Lady's Man I co-produced, and composed the music.	An illustrated essay on making short films with no money
When I lived in Pasadena, in the decrepit boarding house I eventually used in my books, one of my housemates was a USC Cinema School student named Dale Melgaard. I had a very small home studio -- three keyboards and a little Boss mixer, running off a Macintosh SE -- and he asked me if I'd be interested in doing some music for his Super-8 student films. The first one was "Philbert's Dumpster," a Chaplinesque silent, for which I did a piano score. That went well, and once Dale and I each saw in the other someone who actually finished projects instead of talking about them, we continued our collaboration on the rest of his student work. I became a co-producer as well as composer. One of his Super-8 films was "Session 52," a weird, dark comedy about Sigmund Freud and Charles Darwin. After he graduated from USC, he we remade it as a 16-millimeter short subject. That was one of my most striking lessons in determination. After a year of frustration, inability to find backing, and no money or crew, Dale came downstairs one day -- Kathleen and I were now sharing a house with him -- and ground out, "I don't know how we're going to do it, but we are by God shooting in December." Come December, we had a backer, a crew, a camera, the use of a special effects studio, and the use of a digital sound studio. We painted our living room gray, moved out all the furniture, brought in camera track, and shot our film. A year and two additional pickup shoots later (the DP messed up), we had a finished film. Dale sent it to film festivals, and it was accepted by three. We went to New Orleans to attend our screening and had a great time in the French Quarter. Dale and I also worked together on Lady's Man. A couple of years later, my friend and writing partner Blake and I decided that we'd make a short that we could use as an industry calling card. We gave ourselves a one-thousand-dollar budget and wrote a script. Here's the rest of the story