black betty

BLACK BETTY: Deviant Children’s Webseries Pre-Production Is Back On Track

It looks as if things are back in full swing with Nicholas Ortiz and his independent production company Deviant Children for forthcoming webseries, Black Betty. The company took to Instagram on Thursday to share the following update: View this post on Instagram A post shared by @deviantchildren Pre-production commenced earlier this year with meetings that followed but left off this summer with a tentative hiatus. As of this report, rewrites are currently underway with rehearsals expected to take off early 2020. Black Betty took off last Spring as a shortform action thriller released on YouTube with Krystal “Honey” Pizaro. Betty is a black leather-clad vigilante with a mysterious past who fights her way out of a nightclub through a gauntlet of henchmen. The original short scored three awards in two categories at the sixth Urban Action Showcase Film Festival last year. The webseries will be woven as a simultaneous series […]

BLACK BETTY: Writer/Director Nicholas Ortiz To Expand Short For Independent Webseries/Feature Film

Lee B. Golden III

Independent filmmaker Nicholas Ortiz has begun pre-production this week on Black Betty, a female-fronted action thriller webseries now in production via his NYC-based Deviant Children Productions banner. The project will be spun from his original Spring 2018 proof pilot which snagged three awards in two categories at the sixth Urban Action Showcase Film Festival. “Nick is on his bullshit!” jokes dancer/choreographer and actress Krystal Pizarro who led the narrative in the title role, earing Best Actor in the Angels Of Action category at the UASE. “There’s a reason why his company is called Deviant Children Productions – that man always has something up his sleeve and he knows what the hell he’s doing.” In the proof pilot, Betty is a black leather-clad vigilante heading through a gauntlet of henchmen as she fights her way from captivity out of a nightclub. The webseries, which will be tethered as a workable feature […]

DEVIANT PERSPECTIVES: If Looks Could Kill…

“Well, pumpkins, looks like it’s the age-old dilemma. Style… or substance.” – VIDA BOHEME Peter Lawton In my time, I’ve watched quite few indie action projects, hundreds if not thousands by now and there is always something that sticks out about most of them, something that just didn’t sit well with me. It’s only in the last year that I finally was able to pinpoint this flaw as it were, as I continued to expand my own skillset as a filmmaker. That flaw is a lack of Visual Theme. As an Indie filmmaker, having a visual style, a particular way of creating a film, is really important because style is visual information and we as artists work in a visual medium. This is known as “Mise En Scene” or “Visual Theme” in traditional filmmaking and it’s something I wish more indie action filmmakers took seriously. Too often, indie action films […]

THE BLACKER THE ‘BETTY’, THE SWEETER THE ‘HONEY’: A Word With Filmmaker Nicholas Ortiz And Dance Wunderkind, Actress Krystal “Honey” Pizarro

Lee B. Golden III

L to R: Luis Candelario, Krystal “Honey” Pizarro, Nicholas Ortiz, Christopher Montague, Grace Rivera, Hector Soria Deep in the deluge of all the online action shortfilms you can find, there’s a ample number of beginners who are either just starting or have quite a ways to go. At the end of the day though, its desired effect upon delivery rests on a handful of key factors – most prolifically being a director who knows and understands the genre, as well as the mechanics that entail. Nicholas Ortiz, born and raised in the Bronx in New York City, comes from that very comprehensive DNA, instilled long before Blockbuster outlets became a thing, and engrained with an inherent interest in household movie favorites – bookended by an action horror comedy classic. “My cousin Jeppy walked into her living room with a tape in her hand and said ‘You guys need to see […]

DEVIANT PERSPECTIVES: A Constructive Analysis Of Independent Action Cinema

BTS Photo: Krystal “Honey” Pizarro on the set of Black Betty (2018) “Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance”– Some Dude Who Probably Learned This the Hard Way. In the world of action cinema, quality certainly reigns over quantity; A single well choreographed, well shot action sequence can excite more than two and a half hours of “lights and noise”. However even in action films both large and small, not much is mentioned of the things that had to come before that DVD started spinning in your player. Action filmmaking is highly technical, more so than most other genres that tend to offer more creative interpretations of on screen physicality. Being an indie filmmaker is already tough, but indie action filmmaking takes those challenges and complicates them even further. As of this article, we are just over one week out from going into production of Black Betty, a action short film that […]