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About Matías Bombal's Hollywood

“Matías Bombal’s Hollywood” is a program of current movie reviews and content within a classic Hollywood and broadcasting framework.  Matías Bombal’s reviews of current cinema are black and white and in high-fidelity monaural sound to intentionally highlight the film clips of the movie being reviewed, which are shown in full color, surround stereo (if recorded that way) and in the correct release theatrical release aspect ratio.  The reviews may be seen here at this web-site, on the MABHollywood YouTube channel, in select independent theatres world-wide, and heard on radio in some markets.  It is also found in social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. In print form, they may be found at Valley Community Newspapers.

How did it come about?  Tony SingingEagle of Tony SingingEagle (.com) initially approached Mr. Bombal with the idea of You Tube vignettes that would showcase Matías' knowledge in many subjects, and unlike many You Tube sensations where a mere iPhone and poor lighting (if any) shake away in front of the originator’s subjects, this would be a professionally photographed series of quirky shorts to reflect Matías’ singular personality.  Some tests were done, and Matías thought that the project lacked a focus.  He could not, for example,  on YouTube, discuss old movies or music, for in selecting examples to talk about or reproduce would cost a great deal of money to pay for the legal rights to use that material.

After shelving the project for a while it occurred to Matías that clips of films in current release are made available to all types of media for the purpose of promoting those movies.  These could be obtained without need to pay a royalty or usage fee, if included for purpose of review in a video segment for a current or forthcoming release.

Since Mr. Bombal’s experience in cinema and music is vast, it seemed a novel perspective that an expert in the movies’ past “golden era” would comment on NEW Hollywood films.  His knowledge of old cinema plots that recur in new films would give a view of how well that plot device might be used in its latest incarnation.

To add elements to set this program apart from anything that also covers new films, Mr. Bombal hit on the idea that the setting for these reviews should be a place familiar to him and comfortable.  Since he’d spent many years in radio, the studio set has been built to look like a vintage radio station, complete with acoustical tiled walls and vintage fully functional RCA ribbon microphones.  The show appears to be a live radio broadcast from another era, yet, the subjects and movies reviewed are entirely contemporary.  The RCA 44-BX you see on the announcer’s desk is the actual device used to record the sound of the show.

The show is photographed in full HD 1080p with a Canon EOS 5D Mark III camera.  Although it is full HD, Matías has instructed that black borders frame the modern HD rectangular image to give it the feel of films before 1954 which were square in appearance, or the Academy Ratio.  Matías’ dear friend in Hollywood, noted author and portrait photographer Mark A. Vieira suggested the perfect finishing touch that sets it apart from anything else currently available for this type of content:  It is black and white, with the exception when film clips are shown, as those appear in the correct aspect ratio and in color.

The musical theme of “Matías Bombal’s Hollywood” is a 1984 composition that was written for Mr. Bombal by his friend Charles William Midgley, who gave Matías the score when he was just 16 years old with instructions to copyright it at once in Matías’ name which Mr. Bombal did.  The selection is called “Bombalino.” It is presently performed by Jim Jordan at the 1929 mezzanine lobby M.P. Möller theatre pipe organ of the San Francisco Fox Theatre.

All the graphics, titles and intertitles on the show are created by Chad E. Williams.   His treatment of the title sequence is reminiscent of the art and titles of the short subjects and newsreels of Hollywood’s golden era.

 

Chad E. Williams Photo
 

Chad E. Williams’ Williams Etc. Productions provides all post production services for “Matias Bombal’s Hollywood”.   This includes all image editing, titling, audio editing and marriage of picture and sound elements.  He also is responsible for the upload to YouTube in full 1080p High-Definition each of the subjects on the MABHollywood YouTube channel.  He also transfers our production work, reviews and other materials to DCP 2K digital for theatrical projection of our reviews, releases and other subjects.  If that were not enough, during principal photography of each subject we release, he is the Director of Photography and sound recordist in the MAB studio and when on remote.

Mr. Williams is a producer, artist, sound engineer, editor, author, and musician based in Sacramento, California, for the last 25 years.  In 1989 he began documenting local musicians with his mobile recording studio Nonconformist Muffin.  His video production skills were refined in 1997 by co-producing/hosting RAW TV, a Northern California based music and entertainment program seen on the NBC affiliate KCRA-TV 3 and KQCA-TV58.  Working freelance as a video editor/producer he created hundreds of local, regional and national television commercials.  Mr. Williams found broadcast radio experience in San Francisco, producing/engineering a spoken word and music program The Pomo Literati at KUSF 90.3 with Frank Andrick from 2003 to 2006. Mr. Williams produced several documentaries for Drum Corps International including a short for the Denver, Colorado based Blue Knights in 2006 which won a Telly Award.   He has spent the last four years crafting a documentary about Norcal Noisefest - the world's longest running experimental music and sound art festival. He is a published poet and his photographs have appeared in several newspapers and magazines.

 

 

In January of 2014 “Matías Bombal’s Hollywood” expanded to the big screen via theatre subscription service to independent movie theatres world-wide.  Our reviews are electronically drop-boxed in the highest quality 2K Digital Cinema Packages to these theatres, some of which, like the two screen Plaza Theatre of Laurieton, New South Wales, Australia  (www.plazatheatre.com.au), runs them on screen prior to feature films in place of, or augmenting previews of coming attractions.  Some movie venues show our reviews on lobby monitors between shows.

We hope you enjoy “Matías Bombal’s Hollywood”!

 

Matías in the MAB Studio
Mr. Bombal in the vintage radio studio set.  N Magazine photo by Dennis Spear

 

 

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