Finally had a "good run" this weekend. I'm back with Team FX again, training to do the half-marathon in February. I'd been so busy with the movie, working on it late at night and not waking up early enough for the Saturday team runs. But, the last few weeks, I've managed to join them for a couple - the 4.5 & 5.5 milers. This Saturday, for the first time, I felt like I could have kept going after finishing the 5.5 assigned miles. My breathing was steady and not too gaspy, my legs were tired but not in pain. I certainly didn't WANT to keep going after I finally trudged up the last hill, but I really could have. This augurs well.
In movie-news, Kevin has started delivering the remaining cues for the LOH score. Really good stuff and we've talked about maybe a few more bits of extra music for him to add. I'm hopeful he'll have the whole thing done by the middle of December. I pushed back our mix date a bit, so we've got some more breathing room. |
Birthday boy tomorrow. Turning 34. I'm starting to get lines on my face. I started finding some gray hairs in my beard before I shaved it off this summer. Time is marching on and I am starting to see its footprints on me. Eh. Not so bad, really. Thankfully, everyone else is going through the same thing, so it's not lonely. Scary, vaguely depressing sometimes, but not lonely.
I'm happy that my birthday is in the fall. My favorite time of year. Getting to wear jackets and all that. I'll be in Colorado for Thanksgiving this year, so I'll get a taste of winter in a couple weeks. Kinda can't wait. |
We're sending the movie out wider now, to festivals, to people who can help with festivals, etc. The music is still not done, nor is the sound mix. But, we are eager to learn its fate, to figure out what 2010 is gonna look like for us as we launch this little guy on its journey. So, a lot of trips to the post office.
I am watching a lot of movies lately, some for pleasure but most for other purposes. It's very hard to watch movies and not think about my movie, this movie. Comparing, contrasting, trying to learn from others successes and "mistakes," trying to see the future. I can't wait to not think like this anymore. Let the future be written!
I wish I was deeply embroiled in a new script right now, but with the little bits of work I have to do on the movie, and my other various responsibilities, I'm finding it impossible to find enough time and will to sit down and do the work. Hopefully as life slows down a bit for the holidays, I'll make time.
I'm turning 34 in a little over a week. I'm okay with it. |
Did the little ADR session yesterday morning, actually with Heather and Alex. Some of it was looping - them trying to match the exact cadence of some of their lines so that we can replace them with cleaner-sounding versions. Very tricky stuff, but fortunately Tom Hammond's got a pretty sweet set-up. Some of it was added dialogue - just little off-camera line-changes that I'd been wanting to get for a while.
Spent the rest of the day cutting that stuff into the movie and finally sent it off to the sound editor after midnight. I did take a movie-break to go check out a shorts program at the Austin Film Festival that included a buddy's short. His was definitely my favorite. A lot of the others just... meh. I did really love the final version of HARMONY AND ME, which I finally got to see the night before. Bob Byington really shaped it into a fine, fine film - charming, funny, poignant, with a great supporting cast of familiar-to-me faces doing some of their funniest work. And, the scenes of Harmony stumbling to learn the piano and taking a stab at composing succinctly capture the healing powers of creativity. I've found myself singing that little song-fragment of Harmony's to myself many times since Friday night, perhaps because that's what I'm so embroiled with right now in my own work... "the finishing touches! the finishing touches!" |
Spent about 4 hours in the editing suite last night but only ultimately adjusted 3 shots in the whole movie. A lot of that time was devoted to trying out an editing suggestion that folks have been suggesting from the very first screening. But, I think it's gonna stay as is. My barometer for what changes are correct and which aren't is the I-miss-it factor. If I can make a change and then I have to remind myself that I made it when that moment passes by the film, I know it's a correct change. If that moment passes by, and I miss that excised bit of dialogue or the combo of shots, then I know I've got to put it back. If we were to take out this almost-2-minute section, I know I'd miss it every time I watched the movie. Selfish, yes, but the whole act of making a movie is selfish, so whaddayagonnado?
Looks like I'm gonna do one more little looping session this coming weekend, as Alex Karpovsky will be back in town for the Austin Film Festival. Actually, a bunch of friends are gonna be in town, so it should be a fun, fun time.
Oh yeah, and Paranormal Activity really was a freaky-ass movie. Scary movies so rarely work on me, but going to bed the night I saw it, I swear I heard a demonic presence moving shit around in my house. |
| » Octoberiffic |
|---|
I've never been a big fan of Halloween and dressing up and all that guff, but I do love me some horror movies. Such love has led to a strong blog-crush on this site Final Girl, run by Stacie Ponder. Can't even remember now how I stumbled across it originally, but I've been enjoying her October project, which is to review one new-to-her horror flick a day. Reading her takes on craptastic titles like Mausoleum and Creeptales surely are about 100% more entertaining than sitting through the movies could actually be. Her review of the TV-movie Bad Ronald was an interesting read, since a couple people have identified it as a movie with some similarities to LOH. Never even heard of it, but based on her synopsis, I can see why people might see a vague connection.
My October project seems to be finally dipping my toes into the whole Terror Tuesday phenom at the Alamo. I've been a long-time fan of Zach Carlson's reviews of the films he selects - always the first thing I do when I pick up the bi-monthly Alamo calendar is to read his synopses, as well as Lars's teasers for the Weird Wednesday titles. Last week, I finally went to a TT - the 1988 remake of The Blob - and had a blast. I'm pumped about Night of the Demons next week and Halloween III the week after.
The horror appetite extends to online viewing, too. Finally caught the amazing short, TREEVENGE, which has played at a boatload of festivals. It's by the dude who did the winning Grindhouse fake trailer HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN, which still makes me smile.
So, even tho it's still only October, get ready for about 15 minutes of extremely gory Xmas-themed hilarity. Part 2 has the real gooshy stuff.
Oct. 14th, 2009 @ 04:35 pm
|
| » Beeswax tonight! |
|---|
Goodbuddy Andrew Bujalski's third feature opens at the Alamo South tonight. Are you going? You should, because...
1. It's a great, incredibly well-crafted movie.
2. You will see great performances by many talented folks like Alex Karpovsky...
4. ...the Hatcher sisters...
5. ...Janet Pierson...
6. ...the Zellner Bros...
7. ...Kyle Henry...
8. ...Bob Byington...
9. ...and me!
10. It's a movie that was made in Austin, is about Austin, is dripping with love for Austin and all its Austin-ness.
11. Andrew is a true gentleman and deserves to see a big crowd for the film's hometown premiere.
12. If you're an AFS member, you can get it in to the 7:05 show for $5.
Seriously, 12 reasons, that's a lot.
If you can't come tonight, come later in the week. It's playing til Thursday and if it gets the Austin-love it deserves, it'll play longer.
Don't be Bees-whack and miss this one.
Oct. 9th, 2009 @ 12:25 pm
|
| » new demo |
|---|
Yesterday, we got a chance to show LOH to a new demographic for the first time, courtesy of John Pierson's producing class at UT. Basically, what he does every year is have filmmakers, both local and otherwise, present their new films, in various states of completion, to the class with the idea that the class will choose one of them to collectively represent and/or promote on its festival run. It's an incredible, hands-on, real-world opportunity to learn the toughest and most mysterious side of the indie film biz from the guy who literally wrote the book on being a producer's rep. I wish I could have had an opportunity to take a class like that back when I was at UT. Maybe I would have sold the first movie a lot sooner.
Regardless of what happens with the class & LOH, it was a great opportunity for us to see how the movie fared with a majority-college-aged crowd. Most of the groups we've shown it to so far have skewed older - late-20's/early 30's and above. And, unsurprisingly, it didn't seem to be a film whose natural audience is the early-20's crowd, though the class did seem to really like the film as a whole. An instructive moment is when the only actor in their age group first showed up on screen, both me & Megan could sense the class perk up, pay attention and laugh a bit more than other audiences had at those scenes. The other characters in the film are at least a decade older than anyone in the class and are therefore perhaps a bit harder to relate to initially. Kinda fascinating stuff.
Thanks to the kick-ass projection equipment in Studio 4D, we also finally got an opportunity to see the film projected in its native HD format. Sharp! Bright! Details! Finally we got to see all of what we actually shot in those 3 weeks back in Jan/Feb. Groovy.
Tonight I've got to get cracking on a spotting list of effects & tweaks to the sound to send to our sound editor in NYC. Will involve watching & re-watching every scene in the movie. Tedious, but necessary.
Oct. 8th, 2009 @ 04:54 pm
|
| » hits away! |
|---|
Sent off a DVD of LOH to you-know-where yesterday. Fingers crossed.
Did a bit of additional dialogue recording this week with Heather & Chris, just trying to plug in a couple gaps in some scenes that had been bugging me for a while now. Was fun to work with them, and our trusty sound-guy Martin again, even in a totally artificial "dialogue replacement" context.
Now, it's on to working on the sound. I've gotta export the sound files and send a drive up to our sound editor up in NYC. He'll work on it through til the end of October and then we'll do the sound mix with Tom Hammond at the end of November. Very happy to have him on board on this. He did amazing work on Dear Pillow and The Cassidy Kids and it'll be a real pleasure watching him work his magic on this sucker.
I also surprised myself by doing some writing this weekend. Jake & I have been talking about a comedy script since I was in LA back in early August. We've been working on the outline and are gonna try to tag-team the writing. I did about 9 pages on Friday night, to add to his initial 3. I really have written nothing since doing on-set rewrites of LOH back in Jan/Feb, so it felt great to be blazing on Final Draft again.
Before I go, let me ask you a question - do you want to have your mind blown? Like straight out of the back of your skull?If you're not yet familiar with the work of Laz Rojas, you should watch this first to get a sense of what the man can do. Back in the mid-90's, Laz put together an "audition reel" of scenes from his screenplays and played all the parts himself, and shot the entire video by himself. The audition tape got passed around on the underground tape-trading circuit and eventually Laz started putting the clips up on Youtube and the like himself.
Anyway, he just released these "erotic studies" of some of the ladies in his cast of 100 characters, inspired by Playboy's Centerfold Video. They are astounding. Think what you want about them, laugh at them, be made uncomfortable, whatever. But you must recognize the man has...
1. craft
2. balls
Okay, are you ready? Watch this video.
Oct. 4th, 2009 @ 12:56 pm
|
| » color correct, score coming along |
|---|
This weekend I got to work with my friend Toby on the color correction for LOH. Now the movie's looking all pretty and color-balanced. The one issue I've discovered with the Panasonic HVX is that dark interior scenes tend to go red with that camera, so a lot of what we did this weekend was Visine that mf-er - get the red out.
I was astounded at how much Toby was able to do with the application Color. We could mask off certain areas of the frame and brighten just that portion, boost the brightness on certain shots, without adding too much video noise, that were so dark I was never able to really see the performances. An incredible amount of control over the image, with a pro-sumer application that you needed no special equipment for.
As much as things have changed on the production side of movie-making over the last 20 years, with first DV then HD and now super-hi-def cameras like the Red, the real revolution has occurred in the post-production world. It would have cost tens of thousands of dollars to get that kind of color correction done on my lil indie movie even 10 years ago. More thousands for the rental of an AVID, or a Steenbeck if we went back 20 years. Post-production sound, fuggedaboutit. Nearly every tool you need to get a film screening-worthy can fit on a laptop nowadays. Of course, having talented people who know how to use this stuff - that's still absolutely essential. Fortunately, we've been lucky in finding some post-production cash so I'm able to pay those talented people (a fraction of) what they're worth.
Kevin's working on the score and has already send me some cues that make me giddy. So very excited to be in the home stretch now.
Oct. 1st, 2009 @ 09:07 am
|
| » 90. There. |
|---|
Pix-lox, yo! Was at it til 4am last night, but it's done. For now. At least until Kevbo sends me new music cues, which may necessitate small adjustments. But, until then, this baby is in its crib.
Didn't do a whole lot of editing last night, actually - mostly just watching, stopping, watching again, trying to see the movie with fresh eyes, however impossible that task is now. But, I am happy to say that the final scene got me in a way it hasn't in months - brought a lil tear to my eye. Whether because of the content or becajust coming to end of this long, long process, I can't say for sure, but the tear was there.
Whatever happens with this movie, even if it just ends up as a DVD on my shelf, I can look at that DVD and confidently say:
1. It turned out the way I wanted it to.
2. I'm proud of it.
What more is there?
Sep. 23rd, 2009 @ 10:38 am
|
| » <90, almost there |
|---|
This weekend I put in a lot of editing hours (was at it Sunday for almost 12), but I still have one more sequence to work on before (soft) picture-lock. I ended up putting back in a couple scenes that had been out of the movie for a month & a half or so, but wasn't sure if they should stay. So, I had David & Megan come by Sunday night to look at the cut. They reiterated to me that they weren't needed, so with the other trims I had made prior to that, the running time dipped below 90 minutes for the first time. Never thought I'd get it down that far.
The two scenes I added were in response to some of the comments/confusion that came out of our round of rough-cut screenings. But, both David & Megan pointed out that adding information at the expense of pacing, flow and emotion is the wrong thing to do at this point. While people will have questions after watching the movie, it's usually because we are asking them if they have any questions. As they're watching it, they're absorbing information and making implicit connections, making their own story up as they go. Spelling things out may only add more confusion rather than clearing it up. Sometimes when you're editing, subtraction is addition.
So, tonight, I'm gonna try to finish this thing, and then finally, happily, give it to others to work on for a little while.
Sep. 22nd, 2009 @ 08:45 am
|
| » late nights |
|---|
I'm trying to picture-lock this thing by Monday. Or, rather, I should say I'm trying to "soft-picture-lock" it - get it to the point where I can send it to Kevbo and promise him I won't make any more picture changes until he sends me new music cues. Last night I was struggling with re-cutting this one montage sequence to make it fit with the music cue he sent me based on the cut as it was 3 weeks ago. Took 3 hours to get it into reasonable shape. I always end up doing this around this stage of the editing process - getting music before the picture is locked then making changes to picture to fit the music, but then needing the music to change again. Urk. Difficult.
I was up til 3am cutting, but not at home. Finally my lil circa 2005 Mac Mini reached the end of its capacity to deal with the big-ass Final Cut Pro file, so a friend is graciously letting me use his editing suite to take this mother down the home stretch. It is nice to finally be editing away from my home. Having the LOH hard-drive sit mutely on my office desk, accusing me of procrastination, was getting to me.
It's gonna be all late nights for the rest of the week, as there's so much going on with AFS this week. Went to the screening of The Horse Boy Monday, Irma La Douce last night, The Windmill Movie tonight and then our lil TFPF celebration tomorrow night. Too much, too much!
Sep. 16th, 2009 @ 03:34 pm
|
| » 6 screenings in 5 weeks |
|---|
The last one was in New York, one week ago. Had about 25 NYC friends there, many of them folks who lived in Austin and moved away at various points. Every screening is just totally nerve-wracking during, as I'm sitting in the back, my face twisted with anguish when folks don't laugh at the parts they're supposed to, and then a big relief afterward when people come up to me and tell me how much they liked it. I figure the people who didn't like it just slip away quietly, which is fine. But, I hesitate to say that I don't think there are whole lot of those.
It was a grueling schedule of screenings but each was important and valuable. I feel that now I really do have all the information I need - there are things that I can change and will try to, things I can change but won't and things that I can't change and will have to just accept, and hope audiences will accept. My plan now is to try to just go ahead and lock picture in the next week or so and send it off to Kevin Bewersdorf, who is doing the score, I am very happy to report. He gave me a great score for Grammy's and his first drafts have already been fantastic.
I enjoyed the lovely cool weather in NYC and was happy to see that the worst of the summer is behind us here in Austin. We might even have highs in the mid-80's this weekend. Whatthewhat??
A couple new things to point you to. The long-lost-in-limbo Cabin Fever 2 is finally coming out and the Alamo & Austin School of Film are partnering up to do a local premiere on Sept 23rd. I have been enormously interested in seeing this film since the director Ti West first told me he was thinking of casting Rusty Kelley in the film after seeing him in Dear Pillow. We even name-checked Rusty's appearance in CF2 in the copy on the back of the DP DVD release, figuring it was gonna come out soon after the Nov. 2007 street-date. Lions Gate apparently wasn't happy with Ti's cut and is sat on the shelf for a couple years while they figured out what to do. The cut being shown on the 23rd is not the director's cut, but I'm still very excited to see it, for Rusty's performance alone. A couple days later, I will get to see finally Ti's House of the Devil, which he again had some public tussles with the producers over but ultimately won.
Another Rusty Kelley performance will be available to you on IFC at the end of the month - they're showing The Cassidy Kids again. 5 times, starting on the 21st. Checkitout.
Sep. 10th, 2009 @ 12:18 pm
|
| » encoding... |
|---|
I have so far managed to avoid making any DVDs of LOH - even the screenings I've done so far have all been playing a Quicktime file off of a laptop plugged into a projector. But, there are a couple people who I need to send the movie to at this point, so here I am late at night, waiting, waiting, waiting for the encoding to finish. To kill time, I ended up going to the Alamo Ritz to check out their Music Mondays selection, Downtown 81. A strange movie, not exactly good, but definitely fascinating as a cultural time capsule of early 80's New York City. It follows a 19-year-old Jean-Michel Basquiat, before he was the commodity he became, bumming around the city, trying to get someone to buy a painting so he can pay off his landlord. He wanders into clubs, other downtown artists and many musical performances in his quest to get paid (and laid too). Some bands I'd heard of, most I hadn't, but the biggest revelation was Kid Creole and the Cocoanuts. They did two full songs, recorded live on stage (pretty much the rest of the movie is dubbed because apparently the original sound recordings were lost) and both knocked me out. Here's one of those performed on Saturday Night Live that same year. Tell me you can't hear Prince in there, as well as Stop Making Sense-era Talking Heads. The band was fantastic and clearly influential.
Aug. 24th, 2009 @ 08:53 pm
|
| » 25 from 244 |
|---|
That's how the numbers shook out for this year's Texas Filmmakers' Production Fund. A record-breaking 244 projects applied and only 25 got something. The recipient list is here.
My condolences to all those who applied but didn't end up on the list. I was right there three years ago and continue to be in that disappointed place time and time again as I pursue this filmmaking adventure that seems more and more like folly the older I get. But, the older I get, the more I recognize that it's the only type of folly that I really get a kick out of. And so it goes and so I keep going.
Speaking of, now that the 16-hour days that comprise the TFPF panel session are behind me, I can focus on my own movie again. Right, Bryan? As soon as you finish this lil blog-post, you'll open up Final Cut Pro and start making those tweaks to the cut, right? Bryan? Bryan, what are you doing? Are you going to the fridge to rummage for food? Are you lying down with a book you've already read? Hey! Hey!! Who's going to do this shit if you don't??
Aug. 17th, 2009 @ 08:49 pm
|
| » 93. Ladies love Lovers? |
|---|
Since the screening in LA last weekend turned out to be somewhat of a dude-centric one, I decided to try to do my first Austin screening as a ladies-only event. Again, right before it began, as the room filled up with smart, savvy, accomplished women, I started to feel like maybe this was a terrible idea. Why was I putting myself in front of an all-female firing squad? But, once the screening got going and they were laughing EVEN HARDER than the guys at the LA screening, I finally calmed down. And, the discussion afterward was simply awesome. We spent most of the time just talking about the characters - why they did what they did, what was plausible, who was a jerk and who was redeemable. And, it was nice to hear some dissension on those points; once you get to the point where not everyone is telling you the same thing (this scene sucks, this scene is great, etc.), you know you're getting close. And, I cut out 10 minutes since LA, so maybe I really am close to picture-lock, or at least within sight?
I need to have at least a couple more screenings to know for sure and probably at least one of those will be another out-of-towner.
In other news, the running team that I began my adventures on trail with is back up again - with a slightly different name - Team FX Austin. They're still looking for runners to join - ideally folks from the film community in Austin. Could that be you, Dear Blog-Reader? Running that half-marathon in 2008 was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life, but so rewarding. I managed to raise over $1,000 for the Austin Children's Shelter doing it - again, incredibly rewarding. So, think about it...
Aug. 11th, 2009 @ 10:19 am
|
| » well, that was awesome |
|---|
Got back from Los Angeles late Monday night, where I did my "out-of-town preview" on Friday. The screening really couldn't have gone better. I was in major freak-out mode beforehand. Megan had to kind of talk me down on my way to the bathroom, make sure I wasn't going to lock myself in there. But, once the movie started playing and folks started laughing, and then they kept laughing, I actually started to enjoy myself. And, the feedback afterward - amazing! They all really, really dug it. The acting, the writing, the shooting, the whole enchilada. I think we were all surprised at how much everyone liked it. There were some very good notes, tho, and an urging to get it down to the 90 minute mark, or at least start the 2nd act 10 minutes shorter. I scribbled as much as I could, in between chugging beer and smoking cigarettes to try to get myself calmed down.
Beyond the success of the screening, it was great to see so many of my great friends together in one spot, folks I haven't been in touch with nearly as much as I should have been since they've moved away. I reconnected with other folks as the weekend went on and I got to leave LA with a pretty warm feeling, warmer than usual when I leave that place.
So now I've got more work to do, but now I have a reasonable suspicion I'll be trying to make something good into something great, rather than something bad into something just okay.
Aug. 5th, 2009 @ 09:47 am
|
| » 103. Ready for the 1st real screening |
|---|
It's been as low as 100 minutes in the last couple days, but based on the notes from Monday's screening, we added back in some stuff, re-worked some moments. The first act is much shorter. Yay! And now there's music! Yay!! It's kind of a schizo temp score, with big orchestral pieces, a couple pop-y tunes and some more spare, subtle cues, but I think it at least conveys an rough approximation of the tone we're going for and smooths out some clunk.
Today, D-Lo's just trying to finesse the sound a little, take care of the ambience shifts. Then we export and make DVDs before we leave early, early tomorrow morning for the "out-of-town-preview." I'm feeling pretty good about it right now, but I am sure to be shitting bricks on Friday night before showing it to some trusted friends with sharpened filmmaker brains. Depending on the response, I may do an Austin screening next weekend, too, or find a deep hole to bury the hard drives in, along with my hopes and dreams. Okay, not really, but screenings like this always have the potential to be real turning points, acute pivots on the movie's path to becoming what it actually is. Something that you thought was totally working turns out to be mush and disappears from the movie forever, a scene that you thought was weak turns out to be the whole point of the movie, or you'll find yourself re-shooting a whole new ending (which happened with Dear Pillow). The only for sure thing is that whatever I think about the movie right now is gonna be wrong after Friday night.
Jul. 30th, 2009 @ 12:46 pm
|
| » 104... kinda the 1st screening |
|---|
Last night, David & I showed the film to an audience of 3. 1 person who didn't know anything, another who had read the script but wasn't there for shooting, and then Megan, who was there for everything. It wasn't absolute torture!
Actually, it was pretty good. It's such an instantly valuable experience to watch a rough cut in a room with people who don't know what's going to come next - you're forced to see the movie through their eyes - "I wonder if that made sense," "I wonder what they made of that moment," etc. Sooo helpful. The comments afterward were very encouraging and sparked my brain for at least three more minutes or so that could be trimmed easily. David & I did that when we got home, so now I think we're somewhere in the 104 min (1 hr. 44 min) territory. My goal is 95-100 minutes, so we're really not that far off!
Still need music, tho. David's been listening to a bunch of scores, trying to find some temp stuff that'll work for now. We're racing to get ready for the first "real" rough-cut screening, which we will be doing out of town on Friday night. Kinda how Broadway does it - do a test run in Hartford or New Haven before doing the real premiere in NYC.
Jul. 28th, 2009 @ 10:59 am
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
poyboy's journal