By John Mossey | Editor-in-Chief
Jasson Alvarado Gomez is a student filmmaker here at MWCC, and is nearing completion of his first movie, The Black Diamond. The wonderful thing about Jasson and his movie is the fact that everyone involved with the process is a student. With an estimated runtime of a solid one hour and twenty minutes, it goes without question that the final product of The Black Diamond will be an indie movie like no other. This will be part one of a two part interview with Jasson.
A quick synopsis of The Black Diamond: Karla is a teenaged girl from California. When her parents die, she is placed into the foster care system. Soon she joins a gang in West LA. The members of the gang are older and they only want to use her to traffic a rare and valuable diamond to Mexico. The gang members kidnap Karla to surgically implant the diamond in her body without her consent. The foster care system learns of the gang and move Karla to another state for protection. She starts a new life, finds love, but the gang members will do everything to find Karla and retrieve the black diamond.
JM: When did you decide that you wanted to start making movies?
JA: When I was fifteen, I was just writing scripts and I had never made a movie before. And then at the end of 2014, I decided to start making a movie. I was doing the dialogue and trying to put everything together, and then I had asked some people if they wanted to be in a movie, and they all said, “Yeah, we all want to do it”. About 15 people had volunteered. I had a meeting in April 2015 with all the people who volunteered and I told them what they would be doing in the movie, and everyone was happy. Many of them left however, and I had to find new people when I came back in Fall 2015 as this is when I decided to start filming. I remember coming back to school and thinking, “What am I going to do now? I don’t have anyone.” But I did find new people, and we started filming one month later.
JM: That’s excellent. So the process is going smoothly?
JA: Yes.
JM: So what issues have you ran into so far besides the one you just mentioned?
JA: Yes, sometimes trying to get people together can be difficult. I might need six people for a scene, but people have to work and have class, and people do this and do that. Although it is hard to get everyone together, we still do it.
JM: Do you have any plans for a second movie or a follow up?
JA: Yes, that is the plan to have a follow up. But if it doesn’t happen, I would like to make videos with students at The Mount, kind of like TV Show. Like, we could have an episode every week that’s about five-ten minutes and we could do that for the whole year starting in the Fall of 2016. I would like to work with the media students to help with sound, lights, etc. so they can get used to it and get experience.
JM: Throughout the filming process, what has been a moment where you felt the most accomplished or happy?
JA: Just going home every Friday. You know, I come in on Friday and get the equipment, set up, I wait for everyone to come and film, I go home, and then I edit the scenes. It makes me happy to see what I had on paper before and now to see it on the screen; to see how it works, you know? That makes me happy. And we have so many bloopers, and those make me happy and laugh; to see everyone laughing and being happy behind the scenes. At the beginning, it wasn’t a big thing for us. It was hard to film the scenes at the beginning, but now that everyone knows each other, it has become much easier. We know each other, and we know what to do. I’m also happy that I’m not the only one taking something out of this. Everyone is taking something out of this. And that is what I tell them: This is what I want to do, but I don’t want this to just benefit me. I want this to benefit everyone, you know? People who act, people who are behind the scenes, people who are even just there to watch.
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