Merry Holidays

My major edit idea turned out to be a great idea. what i did was switched the first two scenes. I swaped the news scene and the double teaming so now we open with the double teaming sequence. It also worked really well with the Credits. Mike Tapia helped me with fonts and doing some photoshop and the credits are looking really good. Almost done with the opening sequesnce. 

So i picked up Randy's stuff on Saturday. There was a bit of a snafu and the microphone we intially borrowed didn't work. We had to go back to Randy's and switch it out. we did some recording but it got late (like 2am) and i lost motivation so we called it a night. Haven't picked it up yet. I emailed him about doing it tomorrow night. Molly's got to work and i got no one to hang with for xmas eve. Might as well get some work done right?

I spoke with Tom. He's in town for the holidays. We're going to get together on Friday the 3rd and go through the movie for a few hours going over the spotting i had emailed him. He wont get anything done till he's back in the UK but that's ok.

I almsot got the ADR with Kristin done but the plug got pulled at the last minute. I'm going to use a recording studio in a post house that Antonio works at. I spoke to the manager there and they're going to let me use it for only $50 for an hour. Kristin promised early January she'd get it done. cross your fingers yet again...

I met with Antonio about the Effects. He's almost done. I have to re-import him some footage for one effect, and he's working on a different one while he's waiting for that footage. I'll import it tomorrow and bring it to him after the holidays. But the effects are nearly done. Just 2 shots left.

I didn't get too much done because there was the ASU graduation, My friend Tristan came back over the weekend for the holidays and wanted to hang out, and also my good friends Daniel and Kellie Swier had there baby girl on Saturday. Molly and I spent a lot of time over there on sunday. Also i've been doing things and chores and stuff to get ready for Texas. I'm going with molly's family for 5 days to visit more family in San Antonio. We leave xmas day. So i prolly wont post again till after the new year.

Merry Holiday's everyone (john ;) ) ! Peace!

not as progressive, but progress none the less

I finished all the frame adjustments. It feels really good to have a milestone done and finished. i ended up staying up till like 4 in the morning the last tuesday i posted finishing it.

So i was going to borrow some stuff to do some sound recording but randy didn't have a recording devise, just the mikes and cords. So I looked into renting a portable sound recorder, the same one we had on the first foley stuff we did, and it was going to cost me like $150 with a $500 deposit. Yeah... so i was like no thanks. So after that i did a little more research and decided to borrow randy's stuff and hook them up to Grady's handy cam and record to mini DV that way. That's the way all the original audio was caputred anyway so it will match the movie. We were going to start recording this weekend but there was a hick up with finding a place to play some sirens. I drove all over the valley and even out of the valley looking for a parking lot or venue to play some sirens and record them but nobody wanted to let me do it :( i also had the ASU capstone screening to go to so that took a day out of my week. it took a whole day cause i went to both showings. they showed the film that i had gone up to the reservation to work on. turned out pretty well considering the circumstances. Saturday i spent the day with molly ( we bought an African Spurred Tortoise. ) Sunday i spent roughly 9 hours scheduling Randy's capstone with Stephanie. She signed on as the 1st AD. So ANYWAY.... i didn't get a lot done over the weekend. Then to top it all off, it has rained all week, which means i can't do my sound recording. I could do some interior stuff, but if it rains hard enough it'll pick up on the mic. So we'll just wait till it calms down. hopefully this weekend it'll clear up.

ASU Graduation is tomorrow so i'll be going to that.

I blitzed Kristin on Tuesday after noon and I got contacted by Kristin on Tuesday night. We texted back and forth for a bit. now it's been 8 days and nothing. i called her again today. i'll guess i'll just keep trying.

Antonio and I are getting together Friday about noon to go over some of the effects.

Haven't heard from Tom. I think he's in town. I'm going to email him tonight and try to call him tomorrow.

I spent last night working on the credits and fonts and stuff. I spent a few hours today trying to place some things into the movie. It's not working out too well. Not sure what i'm going to do. I had a drastic idea for a major edit. I'll do it and see what it looks like. It shouldn't interfere with tom's work. We'll see.

Productivity

I had a very productive week last week.

I'm over halfway through adjusting the framing for the film.

Grady and I finished going through the film for a list of foley work to be done. we're going to start recording this friday. i may get equipment from a friend, Randy, to do the recordings that way i wont have to rent anything. yay.

I've decided to put all the marketing stuff aside until i finish teh film. so no poster or website or trailer work until the movie is done. that's what i'm doing.

i also decided a while back not to cut my hair till i finish the movie. it's getting pretty long. i figure more incentive to keep working hard.

I had a hard time getting a hold of antiono about some effects stuff but he finally got back to me late last week. we need to get together because aperently some of his files got curropted.

Grady and I spent 3.5 hours spotting MH for tom. I emailed him the list and he's going to take a look at it. He's actually coming home for the holidays. He'll be here on the 16th. wow. i just realized that's next week. i'm going to try to get together with him to discuss the scoreing further.

Kristin is proving hard to contact again. i blitzed her today. Facebook, email, myspace. hopefully she'll contact me....

Giving Thanks

I am thankful for the all my friends and family that have supported me through this project. I am also thankful for the oportunity to do such a thing. That said, i didn't do a thing over Thanksgiving.

Tristan

In the last two weeks i was half as productive as i wanted to be. Tristan, one of the exec producers, and one of my best friends, is left town for good. There were a few events that i just had to go to so yeah. I also was asked to PA on a shoot that Stephanie was ADing. Steph was one of our gaffer's on MH. So all in all I probably worked only part time for the last two weeks. Hopefully back to full time after thanks giving.

I finished adding all the roomtones and effects that we have and i have to say i'm fairly pleased. Right now Grady and I are screening the movie for additional recording. It's taking about 1/4th to 1/5th time to do it. What i mean by that is for every minute of the film we're spending 4 or 5 going over it and over it looking for what needs to be added. it took us 3 hours to do 30min so yeah.... we're about a third the way through right now. 

I'm also about 30min through now with frame correction. I knew it would make a difference but it's making a much bigger difference than i anticipated. Which i think is great!

Kristin has informed me that her internship is over after thanksgiving. So she'll have a lot more time. I'm calling her on Friday.

Music is at a stand still as i haven't found time to spot. I'm going to try to have something for tom to work on by tonight.

Normalized

I seem to have started this habbit of posting on wednesdays. not sure why. So my first week went of full time work on the movie went fairly well. It was a little difficult to get up early in the morning and get down to tapias but it seems to be getting easier.

I have finished normalizing all of the dialog and I feel great about it. There are only maybe 2 or 3 real concerns i have in terms of quality and continuity. there's a point at which we where ADRing a light coversation between vic and steve (ashton and price) and then they have scripted lines. well we didn't adr the scripted lines, only the conversation, and the jump from the ADR to the in camera sound is really jaring there and doesn't match. I was afraid things like this would happen but i was also prepared for it and i'm sooooo happy that there are so few places where that accured.

i've started putting in the roomtones and sound effects and it's going pretty well. the foley we did worked out well but i'm finding that there's a lot more that i have to do. I did a lot of foley and even though i know i didn't get it all i didn't reallize that i barely did half. owe well. i plan on renting equipment sometime in the next two week so or so. The roomtones are 50/50. Half the time they work and half the time they don't. the only reason they don't work though is because they were recorded to low. we need to record room tones at a higher volume level and turn it down, rather than the oposit. kind of like taking a high quality picture and scaling it down to a thmb as apposed to taking a thmb and scaling it up. get my drift?

i did hear from kristin and she said she's trying to find time.

i got a bunch of responses from the craigs list add. i'll respond to some of them tonight.

i also posted an add for a VO artist for a new trailer. i got a bunch of responses which is good. i'm not going to approach anyone until i have something to work with though.

Tom liked some of the music i sent him but some of it he didn't think worked for the movie. which made me sad but that's alright. he did have a good suggestion about moving some placements of songs and that got me really excited. he also sent me some original work for the film that Molly really liked. i'm still undecided but i have yet to hear it and see the picture at the same time. That's the next step. He also said he's anxious to get working on some other stuff and wanted me to spot the film out for him. I'm going to try to do that either tomorrow or friday.

That's about it. I know nobody reads these things but if anyone has any questions feel free to post them and i'll do my best to answer them. Except you Dan. Don't post a thing. i'll just delete your comments.

Late Start

So my last day at work was last thursday. i ended up staying at the theatre from 10pm-6am. it was a long night. mostly i was just hanging with the employee's and talking seeing as it was my last day. there was a cleaning crew that we had to stay and supervise. whatever, then halloween was friday night. I had to hang with family sunday night and today i spent 5 hours driving around phoenix trying to get finger printed so i can apply for a job as a substitue teacher. so in short, i'm not as far along as i'd like to be after my first few days of only working on the movie. 

so far i've normalized about half of the movie. well, i've normalized half the dialog. it's going pretty well. haven't found any problems since i changed all those file names. which is good.

I sent a few of the songs i'm thinking of using in MH to Tom in  england to start editing them to the movie. i'm anxiuos to see what he does with them.

i've started going through footage picking shots for the new trailer. i'm excited about some of my new ideas. 

i had to let frankie go as the cartoonist. he just hasn't shown me anything in 4 months and i need something really soon. i posted an add to craigs list. we'll see what comes of it.

i've been working on framing the picture. it's coming along nicely. i'm about 10 min into the film. i've gone shot by shot and i'm surprised how much i'm moving the frame around. i'm also doing some motion and zoom effects to get rid of canted angles and lessen the effect of shakieness some hand held shots have. it's working very nicely.

i finally was able to talk to janaki about the kind of equipment they have. he was fairly rude to me. lied to me and said he never got my phone calls. what a load of crap.

I have yet to hear from kristin again. but i'm calling her every day.

Mover and a Shaker

I did four posts today cause i thought each topic deserved it's own little section.

since i'm starting working 6 days a week i'm going to be kicking everythign in the ass and getting things moving. as grady calls me, a mover and a shaker, that's what i'm going to do. move and shake that shit up. 

in fact, i spoke with Kristin today. TWICE! She's totally down and still wants to be involved, which is such a relief to me. she's going to try and look into a time to meet. If i don't hear from her by thursday i'm going to giver her a call.

One Day Left

So a few days after my last post i had a horrible day at work. It was so bad i don't even really remember it. so i quit. I quit. I'm soooo happy i quit. i didn't walk out or anything. i texted molly from work and asked if i could quit for my birthday. I've paid off the credit card debt i owe her dad but we still owe the 1600 for the car. we've been trying to save money to pay that off and to save to move to LA. But i just hate my job so much and also Mike Tapia moves out of his house on Dec 1st. I don't know where he's going but i need to finish the movie and he may not be around. Then what the hell will i do? So i did a lot of talking with molly and we decided it was best that i quit. I put in my two weeks and my last day is tomorrow. well, it's my last schedule day where i really have to work. i'm going to go in thursday night and screen a movie one last time and turn in my keys. but the last day i have to spend 9 hours there is tomorrow and it's the last day i'll have to wear my suit. i'm so excited. So today is tuesday (wednesday morning). I have to work 12-9 wednesday and then on thursday i'm going to tapias. i'm going to screen my movie thursday night, then on firday it's halloween. Saturday is Nov 1st which will be the first day that i start my 6 days a week of working full time on the movie at tapias!!!!!!! i'm very very very very very very very excited. Almost there. I think i see the finish line.

i'm going to substitue teach on in about a month or so. that's how long it takes to set up.

Bad Stain

I was absolutly exstatic when i got contacted by Chase Stain, owner of Bad Stain Records, who is a member of the Band Numbers on Napkins, the one i was trying to contact for so long. YAY! he's givin me free rain with any of his music to use for the movie. he also gave me some CD's from other bands to use as well. Right now i have 5 or 6 songs the i'm most likely going to use. i'm so happy. the songs work well too. he's giving it all to me for free. i know he wants the publicity and exposure and i don't blame him but i don't really feel that right about it. So what i'm going to do, although i haven't told him yet, is give him rights to the footage of MH for any kind of Music Video for any of the songs i use in the movie. I'm debating on weather or not i want to take that project on myself once the movie's over. Maybe i could use it as well for marketing materials for MH? i'll make the offer to him, but we'll see on me doing the video. i'll post again about it later.

in other related music news, i recieved some ques from tom but haven't placed them in the timeline yet. i really need to email him. i think i'll try to do that tonight.

Slashie

So i don't know if i've spoken of this before or not but i'll go ahead and explian it just in case i didn't. When i captured all the footage 2 years ago in final cut, i followed the file path that the window suggested. so all my files where named according to Scene, Shot, Take. The file path suggested is this SceneNumber_Shot/Take. So in example, this is the file for scene 283 shot 4 take 2: 283_4/2. well most technical people know that back splashes are file path and programing formating or something like that but i guess i'm not most people. after all it was suggested by final cut! anyway, so these files worked absolutly fine for 2 years....until...Sound track. when i worked in sound track, after spending days and days making the project files, whenever i alted a file, the / in the file caused an error and it wouldn't save. IT WOULDN'T SAVE!!!! Grady and I figured out that if we went into the operating system and altered the name of the file to something like 283_4--2 and then reconnected the file then saved, closed the project then reopened it, we could then save our progress for that particular file. Well, with 1180 somewhat files that got really really really annoying, so i decided to fix them all. It took me 9 hours. I had to go and manually change the file name for all 1180 somewhat files so that none had a / in them. then i had to manualy reconect each file in final cut to it's original source file with a new name. after that i had to sent the sequenses to sound track and cut and paste each of the new sequences with the correctly linked files back into the original project files with the ADR synced and such. it was a giant pain in the ass. i'm only half way done right now with cutting and pasting but it's not that bad. so FUCK YOU SLASHIE!!!

Home on The Res

"Home" is a student film being made by a very good friend of mine. He's a native American, Navajo to be specific, and he's making a movie based on the reservation. I've been meaning to help him on the project a lot for the last few weeks but never really got a chance to because of work and short notice. But i was able to head up to the reservation over the last weekend with him and help him shoot the rest of his film. It was a great experience. But, it meant i didn't work on MH as much as i had meant to.

Over the last few days it's been a pain in the ass trying to get everything organized. i had some hick ups with file paths and crashes so i had to end up recreating all the project files for sound mixing. It took me pretty much all day but that's ok. I ended up cutting the film into 3min-4min sections. there's about 25 project files. But with the projects being so much shorter than before there will be no more crashes.

I still have not heard from Frankie, Tom, or the band i was trying to contact. not sure what i'm going to do about it.

I bought a PC to TV converter box today so that i can hook up a CRT (tube TV) to Mike's computer so i can monitor image quality while color correcting. i had fun setting it up. it looks nice.

I'm feeling a bit of a time crunch because Mike's going to be moving out of his house on Dec 1st, which is only 7 weeks away. so i'm scrambling now to get this done. Grady and I set a bunch of deadlines for ourselves to help keep us on track.

I started going through all the old call sheets to start working on what the movie cost in deferrals. it was fun to go through all the old call sheets.

Final Final Cut

Whoops, I didn't realize it's been two weeks since i last posted. Sorry. Things are moving along. Here's a recap.

We got final cut up and running on tapia's computer, all though it took a little bit of trying. Hopefully it'll be the "Final" Final Cut system we work on. it's working well. I've made the sound project files and we've been working on them as much as we can. it took a few days to get the project files put together correctly and to add all the ADR to the new time lines. We had some confusion at first with time codes and beats but it got resolved. The equalizing is working much better than i thought it would, which is a relief because i'm glad something is going better than i thought it would :). we've even started dabbling a little with mixing some room tones and sound effects in. but not much.

Sound can get a little boring so we switched for a day and did color correction. It looks like we're going to do all of the color correction through final cut instead of trying to do it through another program like Color. My reasoning for this, and Grady agreed, was that working in soundtrack has been such a pain that adding another software application with another learning curve would be just too much. Final Cut's features should work just fine for what we're doing. I've emailed Antonio about it to see what his opinion about the whole thing is, plus i realized i might be messing with his effects shots if i go color correcting so i want to make sure we're working in sync with each other. 

I did some research on gun shots in movies (just watched movies with gun shots in them) and was amazed to find that the effects looked very very similar to what Antonio had done for MH. I emailed him with a few changes and he sent me the files i asked for so i can pick the best effect shot for the scene. Haven't had time to really analyze them yet but i will next week.

Tom responded to me and said that he was going to start working on the movie early last week. I have yet to hear from him so i emailed him tonight about it.

I emailed a band i'm interested in working with last week. no one responded so i emailed all the members on the website tonight. hopefully they'll get back to me.

I heard from Frankie about the posters. He said he'd get something to me by the end of the weekend, but then emailed me Sunday saying that he had some unanticipated things come up and couldn't get me anything. he said hopefully by the end of this week. i'm glad he emailed me to let me know. I'm anxious to see something though.

i've decided to install Adobe Premiere on My laptop so that when the movie is done, or when i can't be at tapia's i can work on the trailer(s) from home. i'm excited to start doing those sorts of things.

I spent a few hours a couple nights ago going through old emails collecting names for the credits of the film. that was fun. looking at all the old emails flooding back from i was in prep and deep in production. memories. i'm sure it will be fun to read this blog when it's done too.

My cousin's ex said that it's fine to keep using his services for the movie for free. YAY!

I bought new glasses. They should be done next week. Hopefully i'll see better :) 

That's about it for today. Thanks for reading!

ADR DVD

I still have yet to hear from Kristin Kelley about doing her ADR. So I've been calling her every day now for two days. today i looked at her myspace and saw that she updated her blog this morning about how she's due on the 25th of this month or something and that their probably going to induce. I knew she was pregnant again, i just didn't know how far along or anything. So i'm called her back and told her i would call her in a few weeks once she recovers from the birth. so until then i wont mention this again.

I was able to burn a DVD of the ADR files at low audio sample rates. it seems that i could export all the audio at lower bit and sample rates and the speed wasn't effected. Grady and I watched the DVD last night and took notes. There are a few lines that we need to go back and adjust for better syncness. there were also a few mistakes where i had left a file on the timeline but those are easy fixes.

Are next course of action will be to start going through all the dialogue and getting it to the right levels for the movie. Grady and I agreed that we can't really move on now until we get final cut up and running. We're going to have to import all of the original audio as the separate files that final cut uses, but to get it wee need to access the timeline on final cut. Also, we're going to have to break the project up into chapters because having the entire movie as one project file is too much for tapia's little computer.

I have a friend that i talked to that's going to help me upgrade Tapia's computer to Final Cut 6.2.

I emailed Tom about when we could start working on the score. doing the long distance thing from London should be interesting.

I emailed Antonio about the effects and he responded immediately. i had emailed him last week and he said he had just plain forgot about it. which is fine. he said he'll have stuff for me tonight. I like working with Antonio

Frankie has seemed to disappear again. This poster cartoonist thing is turning out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be. I emailed him. hopefully he responds.

I emailed My cousin's (now ex-)finance about what to do with the websites, as he's no longer going to marry my cousin. If i have to pay him he wont charge me much but free is great. We'll see what he says.

Htz and Bit Rates

I had an awful day last Tuesday. For one i thought i was done synching and when i was exporting all of the tracks to burn to a dvd i realized i missed an entire character. sigh. We need to burn a DVD with all the ADR and watch the movie with the ADR and takes notes. Well when i started to burn the DVD i got a failer notice that said something about improper formats. this was at like midnight because it took almost 2 hours to export every track from every project file. so Grady and I tried to add the tracks to final cut and listen and not only where some audio tracks out of sync, there were sound bites that where not there in the ADR timeline. Like off take stuff, me giving the actors direction, etc. We where very very confused and it was late and we where tired. After fiddling around with exporting at different setting and stuff we were able to figure out that what was happening was that some tracks where at different bit rates than others and also different htz rates than others. we dicided to give up and go home. i had an aweful rest of the night. i just couldn't sleep and i had to work the next day, plust i had to get up early and pick molly up.

so i'm at tapia's now. it's friday, a few days later, and i finished synching the last actor that i had missed. now i'm updating this becaue i can't work anymore here. I need to talk to antonio about how to export correctly out of sound track to make a the ADR DVD and i need to figure out a way to update mike's final cut before i could work on color or framing.

i met with miguel. we talked about some legal stuff and caught up a bit. it was good to see him. he said he might be able to get me a few paying gigs over the next few months which would be awesome. He also said that once the film is completed if i wanted to do anything comercially with it i need to clear through the "ASU" Film committee. that makes me nervous but he said there's nothing to worry about. he's seen the movie and i'm not a student anymore so i can't see why he would lead me astray. he also mentioned off handeldly about how if the film did make money the School might want a very small portion of the income for the use of equipment and mentorship, which i don't think he's %100 wrong but it will be a very touchy subject when we get closer to that point. a friend of mine said i should find my own laywer to figure it out. i'm not sure what i'll do yet. right now i just want to finish the movie.

nothing from Kristin Kelley or anyone else i emailed. we'll see.

Cameo

I ended up working five days this week even though i was supposed to work only four. oh well. I was going to spend all day today working on the movie but Molly had a doctor's appointment and Nate Klaer wanted me to do a Cameo in his movie. My Cameo consisted of me and another ASU graduate greeting a student like the ghosts at the end of return of the jedi. apparently you become like a ghost when you graduate.

So i only got to work on the movie for like 4 hours today. I didn't finish syncing the ADR like i thought i would. I'm planning on finishing it up tomorrow.

I email Kristin Kelley, now Kristin Clinton, about finishing up the ADR. I know she's busy with all her baby stuff. I prey to god she can help me and finish her ADR. I think it will be very unfortunate for the movie if i have to use a new actress for all her audio.

I spent a few hours over the last few nights downloading all the old call sheets from the movie, to start working on what the film actually cost as well as a lot of paperwork and data. one of the things i'm going to do is go back like i did last summer and try to remember things from each day to create a post about how the shoot went. the call sheets should be able to spark my memory.

I finally heard back from Miguel. i'm going to meet with him tomorrow and catch up as well as talk to him about movie stuff. I'm also meeting with Switzer.

23 Days

Today is September 4^th. In 23 days it will be exactly two years since we started rolling camera for this movie. Back then it was called Freshman: (with various subtitles). So my last post was titled Summer is slipping away. Well, slipped it did. It’s been over two months since my last post. What I’ll do now is wrap up some of my topics from my last post and then I’ll get into the new stuff. So….

I think I worked a total of maybe, MAYBE, 10 days on the movie this summer. Unfortunatly all I did was work. Work and go to weddings. I did get promoted at the theatre. I’m now a manager and am learning some valuable skills. Right now my primary responsibility is in projection. My typical shift consists of me running all the projectors and the projection booth in the 16 auditorium multiplex for 9-10 hours a day. Some days I love it and some days I hate it. I was going to go down to part time (3 days a week) sometime around this month to work on MH. I’ve almost paid off the debt I owe Molly’s dad, however, I broke the door of their mini van in the middle of august and added another $1600 to my debt. I’m making a bit more money but not enough to pay off the debt any quicker. So I’m staying at my job full time for now. No idea of when or if I’ll go to part time before we move to LA. Thankfully though, my shifts are so long that I ended up working like 50-55 hours a week and I told them I can’t do that and molly agreed so now I’m only working 4 days a week instead of 5. This gives me more time to work on the film.

I found a new guy to do my posters. Frankie. He’s only sent me one draft so far but he’s got a better education than Johnny and more experience with these sort of things so hopefully he’ll come through. I’m going to email him tonight to see when I’ll get the next thing from him.

I sent some notes to Antonio today in regards to the gun shot stuff he’s working on. He also sent me a few drafts of a mock interface for the camera POV shots. He’s done some good work so far and is always quick to get back to me. I’m so glad I’ve got him working with me. I don’t know how I would have done the effects stuff with out him.

Grady still texts me a lot about working on the movie. Molly and I had our last wedding 2 weeks ago and since we’ve been back I’ve been working on MH again. Because I’m only working 4 days a week it makes it a lot easier. I can’t use the lab at school anymore so I’m working at my friend Mike Tapia’s place. He’s got all the stuff I need to work on the sound for the film. His final cut is two old for the project files I have (same problem from the lab) so I’m trying to figure out a way to update his application. Hopefully I can make it work, if I can’t I’m sure I’ll figure something out.

In terms of working on the film, I have no idea of a time table for when it will be completed. I know that I don’t have a whole lot of work to do for the film specifically, and I have a huge amount of post post work to do. What I mean by post post work is marketing and business materials. I try to work on post post stuff when I can’t be working on the actual film, like right now. Below are two lists of what are still left to do for both post and my coined term post post:

Post:

ADR Synching
ADR Recording for Final Actress
Sound Effect Organization
Sound Effect Placement
Room Tone Placement
Music Scoring
Music Selection
Music Clearence
Music Placement
Mixing
Credit Finalization
Credit Creation
Effects Finalization
Effect Placement
Framing
Color Correction
Mastering

Post Post:
Website
Website Content
Trailer(s) (which include everything in the post list but all over again L)
Posters
Post Cards
Business Cards
Press releases (for varius things)
Deliverables (for which I’ll explain more later)
and everything else I can’t think of

It may seem like there’s a lot more to do on the movie then after but believe me, everything on the post post list seems much more daunting to me than the stuff for the movie.

So that’s all I’m up for posting tonight. I know I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again. I’m going to be posting more often now that I’m working on the film a lot more again. Sorry to keep everyone in the dark for 2 months.

Summer is Slipping Away.

So after reading my last post i have come to a conclusion. I am an idiot. I can't spell or write to save my life. Whatever.

So now I've been at this job for a month. My dissatisfaction with it comes and goes. I was correct on the grooming part. I've had my first of 3 interviews for management. a pay raise will be nice.

I fired johnny (posters dude). he never emailed me or texted me or anything. i even gave him an extra week on top of what i posted 2 weeks ago and nothing. i feel bad cause we're friends but i need to get my stuff done. Well, i guess alls fair in love and war...and...business? sure. Anyway, i've got a new guy. I sent him johnny's drafts today and i'm trying to set up a meeting with him.

Antonio sent me a clip of the muzzle flash of a gun shot and it looks pretty good. at least that's moving forward.

Grady texts me once every 3 days or so saying he's worried about the movie. I just can't seem to be able to find any time to work on it. I don't think i've been in the lab in the last two weeks. Especially with all these weddings and my job. I've been to 3 weddings in the last 6 weeks.

I'm anxious to go to part time to get back to working hardcore on MH. I'm going to try to talk to molly tomorrow about some sort of time table. I'm also a little nervous cause i can only use the lab through the summer, and summer only has 7 weeks left :(. I have a few other resources (friends with similar setups) that I'm going to look into about working on the movie if it goes past summer.

The Bow Tie

The worst part of my job is this awful bright blue bow tie i have to wear. i think however, that the company is grooming me for a promotion so i wont have to wear the bow tie for too much longer.

It's been about 2 1/2 weeks since my last post. When i got home I was officially served papers and the process had begun. my old credit cards were sueing me. I say were because i was able to settle with them outside of court but i had to borrow money from may father in law. So now i'm working at my job full time trying to pay off my father in law off. Not much has been done on the movie. I finished syncing a few actors and have moved onto others, i'm still trying to get Kristin Kelley to come in and do her 45 min of ADR, I met with Antonio Chang about doing the special effects (gun shots, camera interfaces, etc. That's about all that has gone on in the last 2 weeks. I've spent all my days off at the lab working on synching but it's slow.

I have two goals i'm working towards right now at my job in order for me to go to part time and start working on the movie a lot more. My first goal is to pay my father in law off. It's only $2000 so working full time i should be able to pay that off pretty quick. Molly and I are trying to live cheeply too. My other goal is to get promoted. I'll get promoted, pay off my father in law, then go part time at work to really kick it in gear for the movie.

Oh, and Johnny has until Wednesday to finish the posters. We'll see what happens. I sent him an email saying that 3 months is ridiculous for this kind of thing and that if he doesn't kick it in gear i might have to find someone else. so we agreed on this Wednesday for his final drafts and then i know i'll have notes and he'll then have 3 days to get the notes taken care of. So if this happens then we should have are art for the website by Sunday. no promises though. you know how this goes.

Another decision I've made is to stop giving a time table for the completion of the movie. I'm just going to work on it. I'll tell people when i hope to finish it but i'm going to stop saying things like we "should" or "will" have it done by "specific date", right now cause of the job stuff i hope by the end of july. i HOPE.

Still nothing on the IMDB status. no rejection, but no approval either.

J.O.B.

Yeah, so i got a job. I start next week and starting friday i'm out of town for 4 days for a cali wedding. I'll be working on the movie all day today and all day tomorrow but that's it for this week and who knows about next week. the job i got is full time so.... we'll see. Oh yeah, i work at Harkin's theatres. need you're popcorn cleaned up? i'll be right there.

probably not full time

So for some reason i didn't post the last post correctly. So i posted it today. Sorry.

So on thursday, The day i found out we didn't get into the lab, i recieved a phone call from some creditors and found out i'm being sued for credit card debt. I knew i had the debt and i have every intention of paying the cards off, i just couldn't when i was in school. I was going to wait a few more months before i got a job to finish the movie but because of this it looks like i can't wait. the debt isn't much, just a couple grand, but you know. got to do what you got to do. So i'm looking for a job. i made some progress on the film on thursday. I'll go back to my posting template when i post on monday but this post is just to let everyone know that pretty soon i might have a job and my time devoted to the movie will suffer. i'm going to stop giving an estimate for completion as stuff keeps coming up. i'm just going to say it'll get done when it get's done. so.... that's it.

good and bad news

Good news is that i'm back. I took a hiatus from all aspects of responsibility and celebrated my graduation by doing nothing but watch movies and play Grand Theft Auto IV. I also bought a new bird cage. But as of today i'm back on the movie. In fact, i'm back on the movie full time. I'm not a student and i'm not employed. Molly and I discussed it and because we are so busy with weddings and commitments and such, i'm just going to work full time on finishing the movie. Because i took about 2.5-3 weeks off, the completion goal is going to be backed that much as well. so now we're looking at a completion in mid june. At least everything on my end should be done by then. we'll see about tom.

Bad news is we found out today that we didn't get into the IFP Rough Cut Lab. I was prepared for the disappointment but was still disappointed non the less. I thought we had a much better shot at it this year than we did last year. Oh well. The movie isn't really for the hardcore "independent" audience anyway. It's only independent cause i don't have any money. Not cause I stand for or against something. :)

WOP Screening Response

I'm not posting in the usual format cause nothing new has happened except the screening. The "work in progress" screening went really really well actually. I was very very nervous. I thought the movie was going to look awful, sound awful and a whole bunch of people were going to see it before it's done. Thankfully only 8-10 people showed, it looked pretty good, and sounded pretty good. I was pleasantly surprised. People laughed steadily and were actively engaged the whole time. The screening turned out to be a breath of fresh air for me regarding the project. I hate getting burnt out on the footage but there's not much i can do. The screening has re-motivated me. I'll try and keep it in mind while i start to get burnt out again in the next few weeks as we're finishing up the film.

Why Dan Why?

Picture:
Effects
Nothing New

Color
So apparently Dan hasn’t done a thing and asked me the other day if I want someone else to do it. I’m starting to doubt whether he’ll do it at all. I really don’t want to add another thing to my plate. Maybe I’ll just have Grady do it to give him a break from sound. I’ll have to talk to Dan about it.

Credits
Nothing New

Picture Misc
I’ve been playing around with exporting from final cut. I want to make sure that when the movie is all said and done and I do the final export, that I export at the highest possible quality, etc, etc. I played around with doing a little exporting for the old trailer for the new website. I also was trying to cut off the bottom and top black bars so that the picture is just the widescreen picture as apposed to a full screen image with black bars on it. i figured out a way to do it but it seemed to hurt the image quality. There’s a few people I need to talk to about it.

Sound
Effects
nothing new

Room Tones
nothing new

ADR
I haven’t called Kristin yet. I keep hoping to get an email from her. Maybe I’ll call her tomorrow. I’m starting to worry she’ll file a restraining order on me or something. I’ve got a contract with her signature that says she’d come in for ADR, but who knows. I just wish she’d communicate with me more.

Mixing
syncing is still taking longer than I thought. This group project in particular is taking a long time. Grady’s been taking a few days off, come to think of it, so have I. It’s hard for me to work in the lab because I get distracted by friends and people who need help. I’m anxious for the semester to get closer to ending so that the lab dies down.

Music
Nothing New

Misc Sound
For ADR syncing I started a “group” project in sound track in which I am putting together all of the off screen dialogue that’s more of a “director” thing. I’m trying to be effeciant so I can get all this syncing done and this is stuff that Grady wouldn’t know what to do with. It’s going ok so far.

Marketing
Website
Nothing New

Trailer
Nothing New

Posters
Johnny sent me the finished poster for the four guys (adam, ben, kent, and josh). It looks great. I spent about 2 hours doing detail work, just cleaning up individual pixels that didn’t get filled in with the paint bucket tool he was using. But I didn’t want to bug him with that stuff that’s not really creative work but more bitch work. I can do that. It’s good to try to do the bitch work for the people that work for you for free. It’s the least I can do. I talked to Kenny today about doing the Photoshop work with titles and credits and stuff. He’s real good at stuff like that.

Misc Marketing
Nothing New

Misc in General
screening is tomorrow. Should be interesting….

WOP Screening

So here’s an email I sent out to the cast and crew and some other people yesterday:

Hey Everyone,

I found out last night that we will be doing a MH Work in Progress Screening, hosted by the ASU SOTF this coming Sunday 4/20 at 4pm in Neeb Hall at the ASU Tempe Campus. We will be screening the version of the film that was submitted to the 2008 IFP Rough Cut Lab 3 Weeks ago. Even though the picture is locked the film is NOT finished. If you choose to come to the screening, the version you will see will have no original music (only temp copy righten material), No color correction or frame adjustments, no ADR, Foley, or Room tone work done, absolutely no mixing and No credits. The film will be completed by the end of May and there will be a cast and crew completion screening where you will receive our copy of the film.

Please email me if you have any questions.

So with that said, here’s my update for today

Picture:
Effects
I’ve been conversing with Antonio over chat and email and he’s on board. We need to get together at some point but I don’t think it’s going to be until the beginning of May

Color
Dan still has the footage and still should be working on it as we speak.

Credits
I’ve begun email people about names of people that should be in the credits, like special thanks to people who approved things that I never met. That kind of stuff.

Picture Misc
As I work meticulously on the sound syncning I’ve noticed a few shots where the actors look into the cameras. Most of them are on simple shots with no dialog so sometime in the next 2 weeks or so I need to go back and review all of the takes and see if I can find a better one. I wont change the timing of the edits at all, so the picture lock will remain the same, just going to try to swap some stuff out for other stuff.

Sound
Effects
nothing new

Room Tones
nothing new

ADR
I have the space reserved for the 26^th and as of right now Ali and Jamie are coming from California. I need to email Kristin today. I emailed her a week ago about coming in on the 26^th and I never got a response. I’ll try again today. If I don’t hear back from her by tomorrow I’ll start calling her. As I’ve been synching I’ve found a line we missed for Ben. So he’s going to come in on the 26^th as well. And we also have one last line with nate that we didn’t finish back in march.

Mixing
syncing is STILL taking FOREVER. We will finish doing the sync on the aDR by the end of the semester, in fact we should finish by the end of this weekend, but it is incredibly tedious and an awful process. Oh well, I guess it’s my burden to carry. And grady’s :P

Music
I met with Tom for a mini spotting session yesterday. It went well. He’s stressed cause he thinks the movie needs pop culture music in some places. Hopefully he’ll be able to let go of that as we don’t have any money. Haven’t heard back from Danielle in a while. I wonder what she’s up too? Also, some of the temp music I found online may actually be free to use. I need to make some phone calls to find out. I’ll let you know.

Misc Sound
For ADR syncing I started a “group” project in sound track in which I am putting together all of the off screen dialogue that’s more of a “director” thing. I’m trying to be effeciant so I can get all this syncing done and this is stuff that Grady wouldn’t know what to do with. It’s going ok so far.

Marketing
Website
So I went to start really putting all the pages of the website together, at least in terms of code, and I hit a really big snag. It’s complicated so I wont bore you with code jargon like I bore you with film jargon, but suffice it to say, I can’t do what I wanted to do. I’m going to have to work with separate pages instead of just one. Oh well. Someday when I’m a big powerful executive ;) I’ll pay someone who knows how to do this stuff to do it the way I want it.

Trailer
Drew hasn’t responded to any of my emails. I hope I don’t have to recut a new trailer myself. Schools almost done. I’ll let you know.

Posters
I had a real productive day with Johnny yesterday. We got a whole bunch done. He sent me a bunchof drafts and was popping stuff out left and right. Hopefully we’ll be done soon but I don’t want to put a timeline on it cause who knows.

Misc Marketing
Nothing from IMDB

Misc in General
We submitted to the IFP Rough Cut lab again. We should find out if we are accepted around the 15^th of May.

So nothing has been happening with this so called “screening” on the 20^th for like weeks. I have been asking Miguel and other people what room the screening will be in so I can do some tests for over a month now. Well I hadn’t heard from anyone for so long I decided about a week ago to stop panicking about having the movie in a watchable state. Well, Tuesday I had an AFA thing to do with Tapia in which Miguel attended and he ever so slightly leaned towards me and said, “the screening room for Sunday is Neeb Hall if you want to do your tests.” Well that’s just great. There’s absolutely no time for me to do any tests and the movie is certainly not in a watchable state. He noticed I wasn’t too happy about it and asked me about the movie and I told him what I just stated above. Anyway, so I was mad for a couple of days but then got over it. I’m just going to screen the copy I sent to IFP. I figure, if it’s good enough to submit to IFP it’s good enough to screen for my peers. And I truly believe that only a few cast and crew and my peers will show up to this thing. The school is doing Zero advertising for it. Plus they just sent out an email about Switzers capstone screening at the end of April and most students are confused and think that there is only one screening. Even some of the students screening keep telling me as of yesterday that the Sunday was canceled and moved to the 28^th (which is Switzers thing). I know this isn’t true cause I talked to Miguel about it yesterday as well. So like I said, I’m not panicking and I’ve just sort of given in. I’m going to finish the movie and sell it and it will be wonderful. Yay.

How i feel right now

Snycing sucks :(

Synching Sucks

So my apologies for not posting for a week. here's what's been going on.

Picture:
Effects
I never posted to Craig's list cause i got a response from the notice i sent out to the AFA. I'm probably going to be working with an old friend on the effects stuff. Antonio Chang. I'll have to email him later tonight to give him more details of what I'll need.

Color
Dan has the footage and should have be working on it as we speak.

Credits
i've started working on the credits. At least designing the lay out and stuff in photo shop. i'll have to go through all my old paperwork to lock it in when i'm done. it's good though cause it gives me something to do when i can't be in the lab or do anything else.

Picture Misc
nothing new.

Sound
Effects
nothing new

Room Tones
nothing new

ADR
Kristin couldn't come in this weekend :( . Adam came but Ben was like 3 hours late and we only had 10 minutes to get the Double Teaming is gay dialog. We got it, but it was a close one. All the stuff i wanted them to do together had to be split up. the facility let Jamie McKeel and us come in on Sunday so i shortened her time to an hour and brought Ben in for the other hour. Adam had to keep re arranging his schedule cause of Ben being late. Thanks Adam. Also, Jamie McKeel was late on sunday so i switched the hours around and called Ben to see if he could come in early. he did. thanks Ben. We almost had the cops called on us...again. we did the ADR with jamie where she had to scream like she was being kidnapped. i can't wait to be done with this. i only have 3 actors left. Jamie Isreal and Ali Steltzer, who say they're coming on April 26th. after i confirm with them i'll reserve the space. then it's just Kristin. She emailed me saying she was super busy. not sure what to do next in regards to her. we'll see.

Mixing
syncing is taking FOREVER we only have 4 actors done right now and we've been working in there, both me and Grady, for almost 35 hours this week. i have a sneaking suspicion we wont finish syncing until the end of the semester. god i hope not.

Music
Danielle emailed me back. IFP will be no help for music. Also, the distribution company said out right distribution rights are not at set rates and highly depend on the situation. so it looks like we're going to need to get to the artists to get the music we wont.

Misc Sound
Nothing New

Marketing
Website
Still no website cause still no art.

Trailer
Haven't heard anything.

Posters
i talked to johnny on Wednesday of last week. he sent me some stuff and i had more notes for him but i was exhausted so i emailed him the notes on Thursday. he said he would have a lot done for me by the end of the day and also that he could have everything done by this Tuesday. he had a double shift this weekend so i didn't bug him. i just thought i'd let him be. i feel sometimes like he thinks my notes are saying that he's not doing a good job when really my notes are to make the good job he's doing better. even if i say that to him i'm not sure if he believes it. i'm kinda at a lose about what to do. Also, i think he has a hard time grasping the idea of a work timeline. i mean that when he tells me he'll have stuff done, i don't think he's lying, i think he really thinks he'll have it done, and doesn't realize exactly how long it will take him to do stuff. he said he'll have stuff for me tonight. i know, we'll see.

Misc Marketing
I submitted to IMDb. we'll probably get rejected. but what the hell. I also forgot to submit the info with amanda melby and john schile attached. oh well, if we get on i'll add them, if we don't i'll include them in the next one.

Misc in General
the phoenix film festival was this weekend. I had to work there on friday night as one of my responsibilities as a member of the ifp advisory council. Also, i had to go to my brother in laws on saturday for his birthday party, and then sunday i decided to take the day off after ADR and go back to the festival instead of working on syncing. so that's what's going on.

Still no website :(

Picture:
Effects
I'm going of putting a post out on craigs list and also the AFA's list serv to look for an after effects Artist to do the muzzle flashes of Jason's gun when he fires it. I'll try the AFA first and then i'll try craigs list.

Color
I had thought that cause Dan hated the movie so much he wouldn't want to do the color correction. I was wrong. He was supposed to bring me his hard drive today so that i could transfer the all the footage to him. He forgot it.

Credits
Nothing New

Picture Misc
I spent an hour and a half yesterday at the lab working on my "logo" or whatever it's called. you know, the little 3 second movie before the movie that represents the production company. like the pixar lamp jumping thing, and the bruchiemer tree getting electricuted. if you still don't know what i'm talking about i'm sure you've seen the guy fishing from the moon that's the D in Dreamworks? yeah, that little video. the one i made for Captive Run is cute. i like it. it was easy to do, and fun.

Sound
Effects
Grady and I (and Molly) went to the down town dorms yesterday. it was OK. mostly the people were still rude and unhelpful.

Room Tones
We weren't able to get a room tone for the hall way. The people in the lobby were too laud and the staff wouldn't let us go where it was quiet. oh well. Screw em.

ADR
I'm burning my second to last ADR DVD right now. I'm finishing up ADR this weekend with most of my people. There have been some scheduling issues with the last 6. i'm so burnt out on the subject i don't want to talk about it. I'll let everyone know how it went early next week.

Mixing
YAY the sound track thing actually kinda got fixed and worked well. i don't know what happened but it just worked. Grady's here now and we're working on the syncing.

Music
I ran into Tom yesterday and he lost his voice screeming in vegas. we didn't talk about the movie or anything, i just thought it was kinda funny. oh those composer types. tsk tsk.

Misc Sound
Nothing New

Marketing
Website
Still no website cause still no art.

Trailer
I sent the scripts to drew. He said they'd help.

Posters
Still nothing.

Misc Marketing
Nothing New

Misc in General
Nothing new

No Website Yet...Maybe Tonight?

Picture:
Effects
Nothing New

Color
nothing new.

Credits
I started working on the credits last night. I'm going to do them in photoshop and then import them as an image file and then apply motion to the image making it crawl from bottom up. the title cards will all be done in photoshop as well. I'm going to just use Word to write them out and then copy and past into a photoshop file. I'll deal with fonts and color and stuff later. for now i'll just make the base file, then manipulate later.

Picture Misc
I finally let Dan watch the movie. He hated it. He said it was an embarrassment to him in terms of cinematography. I think that's a little extreme but i do think he had his hopes up way too high. He'll come round i think. Somethings he'll never get over i know, like the fact that some shots are not 100% in focus and stuff like that. Oh well. Not everyone will like the movie.

Sound
Effects
I scheduled to do the rest of the effects Tuesday.

Room Tones
Same as above

ADR
Saturday I went to the lab to get some work done and then was going to go and do ADR with Jacob. He was the only one i had scheduled as Ali and Jamie didn't come this past weekend. On Saturday at about 12:45 i realized i never sent instructions to Jacob an where to go. He was scheduled for 1pm. So i emailed him and went to my phone to call him and realized i didn't have his number. So Grady and I waited for two hours outside the facility on the off chance he might check his email and come running over. he didn't. later that night i got an email from him saying he was waiting at the film studio across campus for about the same amount of time. Oh well. We'll just have to reschedule. My bad.

I got an email from John Schile today asking about ADR and saying that he would make himself available. It's nice to get emails like that every once in a while. Fortunately i don't need him, which is one less thing i have to do, but it's no secret that i would like that attitude from everyone else.

Mixing
Saturday i meant to start mixing at 11:30 but didn't get started till 6pm cause that's when jon was supposed to leave. See Misc in General. Well, he was supposed to leave so i could do mixing but then he and his producer decided they had to burn a couple of dvd's which took a few hours so Grady and I decided to try some mixing in another program. actually the original program i wanted to use, sound track. So we imported the movie as one big file, which was on the hard drive, and then just synced the ADR to it. Grady hadn't had any sleep and got frustrated and burnt out and went home early. I stayed and worked for 5 hours and then Sunday went to the lab and did the same thing and finished Alicia and Ben in terms of syncing their ADR. Molly had to pick me up at 6pm so at 4:30 when i finished syncing Ben i figured I'd play around with exporting the sync. The idea was that we sync all of one Actor's adr lines into one time line, then mute the original sound of the film and export. The desired effect would be an audio track that's the length of the movie with the only sound being the ADR of that Actor. If we start the audio track at the start of the movie all the lines will be in sync. Well, that's the desired effect. It's not what's happening. I don't know the software that well but I have no idea what's going wrong when I export. I spent an hour and half yesterday trying to figure it out. When i export some of the tracks are missing in the final ADR file and there are some lines that i deleted from the time line. So I'm frustrated because if i can't get this to work I'm going to loose the 8 hours of work i did figuring out this program and syncing these two actors. I'm going to the lab tonight and working till 11pm so i'll try and figure it out then.

Music
Danielle Emailed me. She talked to a leasing company for Music rights and It's going to cost a little under $2000 per song for their services. I told her to call them back and ask how much for all out rights :) just curious. She needs to talk to the record labels or artists directly. She should get back to me with more info later this week.

Misc Sound
Nothing New

Marketing
Website
So those of you who read this production diary will note that there is no website up and it is Monday the 31st of March. The website is set up and ready to go, save for a few details like font color and stuff but i'm waiting on Johnny's artwork before i lock in those details. Grady and I spent the 2 hours waiting for Jacob on Saturday going over how some website code works. He was getting a little frustrated cause he couldn't' remember how he had done it a long time ago. It turns out that Grady built a web based game that uses the same effects i wanted the website to do. Well, he sent me the final code yesterday and I was able to build the website fine. There are still some pages that aren't done but, like i said before, i'm going to publish the site in small pieces to try and build excitement for the movie. The first day it goes up it'll just be the home page. Then the synopsis, then the cast, etc. each day i'll put something new on. But i need Johnny's artwork as it's the foundation of the site.

Trailer
So drew came into the lab Sunday when i was working on doing sync stuff. He showed me what he had, which wasn't much, and he said he was having a really hard time figuring out exactly what to do. While talking to him i had a bit of an epiphany. I should have done this way back when i first had him agree to do it. I told him i would send him various versions of the trailer guy scripts for him to edit to. The trailer guy is that ominous voice that's like "in a world....torn by change....blahblahblah." So i had the epiphany that if he had a few varieties of scripts like that it would give him a back bone to edit to. a through line if you will. I meant to send him that stuff last night but i just got to busy with other stuff so i'll do it after i finish this post.

Posters
There was typo in the previous post under this subtitle stating it was Tuesday. it was actually Thursday. So today is Monday and as of yesterday at 5 i had not received any more drafts from Johnny. He worked a double shift on Saturday so it makes sense that he didn't get anything done that day. he also worked yesterday and didn't get home till 5. I texted him and asked if he was still going to get everything done and he said yes. I think he didn't realize how much there still was to do. Because the website isn't up you can guess he didn't' finish. He sent me some a few drafts and i only had one note for one of them, other than that they were perfect. So i'm waiting now on the rest. he's at work and said he gets off at 4 and would send the rest tonight. so hopefully we can get the site up tonight. we'll see.

Misc Marketing
In his email, John Schile suggested in terms of marketing that we should submit the film to IMDB. I don't think they'll except it yet, but what the hell right? i'll submit this week.

Misc in General
Saturday I went to the lab at about 11:30 and Jon Baranick (an actor in the film, and a fellow film student, and the best man at my wedding) was working that day and needed the computer i edit on. In earlier posts i talked about the problems with the software in the lab in terms of different versions of final cut and how i'm limited to only 1 computer in the entire lab cause it's the only computer with the capability to run my project files. Well, Jon is working on his capstone called "Fat Guy P.I." which will also be showing at the capstone screening in 3 weeks and his producer set up the project files on the new version of final cut so Jon is under the same constriction. So now not only do i have to only use 1 computer to work on the movie with, i also have to compete with Jon for it. Stupid. refer to my earlier posts to see how i feel about this software Upgrade/Downgrade issue.

Picture:
Effects
Nothing New

Color
nothing new.

Credits
Nothing New

Picture Misc
Nothing New

Sound
Effects
Grady and I spent all of Monday night, and Tuesday day getting the rest of the room tones and started doing sound effects. We have probably 60% of our sound effects recorded. pretty much we just need to get into the dorms to do the rest. I'm going to schedule that for next Tuesday.

Room Tones
We got almost everything done. I'd say we have about 90% of our room tones. done. they're pretty easy to get. The pain in the ass is driving to every single location. it takes us 4 hours to record 30 minutes of room tones.

ADR
So i got an email on wednesday morning from the ADR facility guy saying that there was a major coplaint on saturday because we were too loud. Stupid. Stupid Stupid Stupid. it frustrates me that this is giving us such a hard time. I just keep telling myself it's the cost of free. I talked to jamie and he said he and ally are going to try to make it out here. We'll see. Also, I talked to kristin and she said she's just swamped and goes to ASU west so it's hard for her to come to tempe. I emailed her asking if she'd like me to wait a couple of weeks and let things calm down for her. we'll see what she says.

Mixing
Grady and tried to start synching the stuff we've been getting yesterday. I say try because there where some issues on what program and how exactly we are going to do it. I got an other hard drive for 2 reasons. One was because i ran out of space, and two was to split up the work, so that i can work on one file on one hard drive while he works on the other. Well it turns out the soundtrack pro sucks at transfering files. So we thought, well ok, we'll sync everything in final cut to make it easier, and then export to Sound track so that we can do the mixing in sound track. Well because of all these technical problems it sort of negates the whole working on two computers at once. Especially because final cut only works on the one computer (see earlier posts). So whatever. I'll see if i can work it out tomorrow while i'm at work.

I met with swtizer yesterday just to give him an update on where i am. I told him i was nervous because i'm so close to the end of this project and i'm stressed by the ADR situation and i jsut want to get the 6 actors done. Switzer didn't seem to care about the ADR and was more concerned with mixing. I told him we were mixing in the lab and he asked what kind of speakers we had and i was like, um. Headphones? he said that's awful because we have no idea of what the movie will actually sound like in a theatre. So switzer said to contact a mixing company and ask them to mix the movie for free. Ha! Janaki came by and suggested the same thing. They said i probably wont get it but why not ask and hopefully they'll let me at least listen to the movie in there facility. So i'm going to start making calls to those places later when i have my original music. I don't want to waste an opertunity like that on temp popular music i can't use

Music
Nothing new.

Misc Sound
I need to do room tones and sound effects in the dorms where i shot and the lady that i used to be in contact doesn't work there anymore. i talked to the new lady and she was incredibly rude and treated me like some sort of deviant who wants to rape the residents. i had several email exchanges with her over the course of an hour where i kept trying to come up with solutions to her concerns in terms of what time, and where we would do the recording and she was very short with me. Finally i sent a long nasty email explaing how i was a student at the university that she worked at and that she was not only not helping with the educational process but impeeding it and bla bla bla and just ranted and raved and then she emailed me and asked me to call her. I talked with her and pulled out my Poly Sci side and apologized for sounding rude but i was frustrated at being treated like someone who's trying to make porn at the library. I didn't say that but you know. I was all polite and sweet and she gave me what i wanted. were going there on tuesday. Actually, i found out later in my meeting with switzer that he had sent her a few emails as well. I had cc'd him on the emails. So i guess that helped. It's just stupid. It's me and grady with a microphone. why such a headache? but whatever. I could actaully proabably double another dorm but that fact that she told me no in such a rude and irational mannor pissed me off so i fought it.

Marketing
Website
I've decided today to do the launch with a section of the website at a time every day. Small sections to to lengthen it out. So when i launch the home page on sunday it should take about 3 weeks to put everything up which is just in time for the screening. I'll have most of the site done and could put up the whole thing by sunday but i think this will be better to get people excited about it and keep them excited rather then let it die down after a week.

Trailer
I met with drew and he said that he didn't have anythign ready for me to see yet but that he would do everything he could to get it done by sunday. i gave him the same spiel i gave Johnny (see next entry)

Posters
I met with Johnny Monday and he had some good stuff to show me. I was a little nervous because it seemed like he hadn't gotten a lot done since the last time i saw him. What he had done was great. He had forgotten some stuff at home and said that it was better so we decided to get together Tuesday night as well. On tuesday night, my fears about him not getting things done were put to rest. He had more great stuff to show me, and on top of that, he drew a drawing right in front of me and it was great. he said it only takes him about 10 minutes to pop out a draft. I asked him if he thought he could be ready by Sunday and he said yes. This is what i told him (and drew about the trailer). I said my biggest priority is quality not deadlines. He's not getting paid and i wish i could pay him but I'm not so i don't have that leverage. So i said if something comes up or it's not enough time. tell me. i want it to be the best that it can be and I'm not as concerned with deadlines (although it would be nice to meet at least one deadline. He sadi that he understood but that he could do it. So far, today is tuesdday and he's sent me several drafts and they just keep getting better and better. I've included one on this post as a little treat and preview of what the posters will look like when they are done.

Misc Marketing
Nothing New

Misc in General
Nothing new.

Almost Done with ADR

Picture:
Effects
While editing the opening credits scene I did notice that there is an effect i might need to do. In the wide shots i had to open up the lens to get a good exposure and unfortunately that blew out the back light on the TV. So in the wide shots the TV with the news on it is very bright. not uninterpretable, but bright all the same. when I shot the insert, it was way to bright because it was the only light source for the shot. So i shot it both ways, open and a little blown out, and stopped down so that it was clearer. but this made the plastic frame of the TV get a lot darker than it is in the wide shot. in the wide shot the TV is silver and in the insert it almost looks black. i may do some matting and compositing effects mixing both shots so that the image on the tv is nice and visible with the stopped down image and the image of the TV frame is still silver with the open lens shot. We'll see if people notice this little continuity error before i decide to go ahead and do it. it might not be a big deal. we'll see.

Color
nothing new.

Credits
While i was re-editing the opening scene today i decided to move the movie title credit to a better spot. i think it's going to work well. originally it was over a wide shot of the dorm, and the words "Madison Hall' came up. Instead, i moved it to a shot where Mike and Jeff are ripping down Melanie's posters. it looks good.

Picture Misc
As I hinted at above. i did some editing today on the credits scene. I think I've locked the picture. i worked on it for about an hour and half this morning. it's a simple scene so it was pretty easy. i need to run it by a few people before i lock it down though.

Sound
Effects
Nothing New

Room Tones
Grady and I are going to try to finish recording the rest tonight.

ADR
So Saturday we got most of what we needed done. We finished with Vic, Mike Z., Lauren, Josh, and started with Ben. We were supposed to do Kristin but her son had had a bad night so she couldn't come in. She was going to bring her son with her but i think it's for the best that it didn't happen. I've been thinking that it's probably not a good idea to bring her son to one of the sessions. She's got to get upset, swear, and hyperventilate and stuff and i don't want to upset him. Plus it would probably be hard for him to be quiet. there was a little bit of a fiasco in terms of Lauren just cause she had a crazy day with lock smith's and easter plans etc. I'm still not sure what happened. Unfortunately I had slipped up and didn't add her email address to an email i sent out last week with instructions on where to go and what time. So she tried to call me and email me but i was doing ADR and had my phone off. but she finally made it and we were able to finish her up. It went well. Now all we have left to do is Ben, Adam, Kristin, Ali, Jamie I., Jamie M., Myself, and Jake. The only firm person i have for this Saturday is Jake. Ali has yet to get back to me on what day she can do it. She's coming into town this weekend and she said she'd do ADR but i haven't heard back from her since i had my saturdays restriction imposed. Also, I talked to Jamie I. via AOL instant messaging the other day and he said that he's worried he wont be able to come to phx from cali cause of financial issues, which i told him i completely understand cause i don't have the money to bring him here either. Adam is coming in two weeks so that should be fine. Jamie M. can't do Saturdays EVER. so i have to gravel and beg for the ADR place to let me in at some other time for a few hours to get her done. wish me luck on that. I'm going to call Kristin today to try and schedule something far in advance.

Mixing
Today while editing the opening scene I spent some time syncing the all the different shots of the news. i took on shot and took the entire scene and laid down the sound and synced the other shots of the tv to that one audio file so that anytime you see the tv in any shot it's sync to where the news broadcast is currently at.

Music
I think i'm going to look into using a Sum 41 song. I just asked Danielle about it and she said she's making phone calls today.

Misc Sound
So i forgot to mention in the last post about this master list of sound info that Grady and I made. It took us roughly 10 hours or so to go through the entire movie and write down every que for every sound effect, room tone, and ADR line. it's roughly 7 pages or something like that, single spaced.

Marketing
Website
I spent a good few hours yesterday tweeking some of the javascript. I have no idea what i'm doing. but whatever, it seems to be working fine. Yay free ware online! i'm a little nervous about not getting the art work in time. Everything else should be set to go.

Trailer
Drew, the editor for the new trailer, got back to me and said he was going to have it done by this week. i have my doubts as i haven't seen anything yet, and not that i don't think he'll have something done that he thinks is "done". but i'm sure i'll have some sort of notes. If i'm wrong great! if not, oh well. we'll just keep working at it and have it out asap.

Posters
I had a hard time getting together with Johnny over the weekend. In fact, we didnt' get together at all. I'm meeting up with him today at the brewery where he works.

Misc Marketing
Nothing New

Misc in General
I bought the Hard drive. It's goign to make life soooo much easier. it was a little more than i thought though. ended up being $308 after tax. Oh well. still worth it by far.

Major Update

Ok, so I feel bad. I know that I said I would start posting on this blog on a regular basis and I want to. I really do. And I did…well, for a few weeks anyway. I talked to my brother in law who lives in texas at one point and we talked about it. He said something that kind of made me feel better about not posting very often. He said my blog reads like someone who's to busy to post on their blog. Well, that's how I feel. But, I think it's important for myself and for the people involved that I do make time and do keep up with it so I think I've come up with a plan. From now on I will try and post every other day. What I think is happening is that I'm doing so much through out the week that at the end of the week it seems like a daunting task to sit down for 20-40 minutes and type out all that's happened. Maybe if I post every other day they will be smaller posts and there for less daunting.

As you can see, I've also decided to create separate sections (which I was doing informally most of the time anyway) to help organize my blog better.

So let's go ahead and start shall we?

Picture:
Effects
I still have some Visual effects that i need to get done. I'm probably not sure when i'm going to do them but just so you know what they are here's a bit of a break down.

1. I need to create a camera interface for the shots that are the POV of Jeremy's camera. Like time code and cross hairs and the little recording led etc.
2. I need to zoom in 10%-20% in on the image to get a closer shot that i didn't get on set. So essentially i need to take a medium shot and make it a close up. this gets tricky because i have to find the right balance where i don't loose noticeable picture quality when i zoom in.
3. We need to add realistic gun muzzle flashes to the scene where Jason fires a gun. Not sure how I'm going to do that yet. I only need one or two so hopefully we can sell it well. Maybe i'll put a post on craigs list or something for someone familiar with After Effects.

I believe that is all the effects that i need to do for this movie.

Color
Dan and I have yet to go over the picture. We need to sit down and watch the entire movie and go over frame adjustments and color pallets and then start color correcting. I'll probably start to worry about this in 2 or so weeks when i've got the majority of my sound recording done and am working only on mixing.

Credits
Occasionally this goes through my mind but i quickly dismiss it as one of the last steps i'll do. I just don't have time right now.

As for the opening credits, I have to finish editing the opening scene before i can even think about how, what, who, etc.

Picture Misc
The only thing that falls under this category in terms of picture is the last scene i have to edit. It's actually the first. I've put together a rough cut of the scene. I'll talk about it more in the Misc in General Section further down.

Sound
Effects
I have taken the master list of ADR/RoomTones/Effects that Grady and I did and have put them into separate files. Yesterday when I went out to do Room Tone recording I brought the list with me to see if I could get any of those effect via Foley work while i'm out with Grady and the recording equipment. I got a few sound effects that i needed, like when i was doing room tone during the Jeremy arrest scene i was able to record the sounds of the elevator that Tyler was hiding in. the dings, and button mashing, etc. There are 4 pages, single spaced, of sound effects we need to find and or create so this will take a few days to compile.

Room Tones
As i stated above, last night, Grady and I went out on the town getting room tones. I was supper late in the lab creating an ADR DVD and didn't get out of there till about 10. We had planned on starting at more like 6pm and going to every location that we shot the movie at through out the valley with our sound equipment and just sit and shut up. we need to record about 1 minute of audio from each location. Well, since I got out of the lab so late we ended up just walking all over campus getting various outside campus room tones (as a lot of the movie takes place out side on campus) and various sound effects too. once we have all the room tones done we'll then take that minute at each location and lay it down over the scene that takes place at that location. if the scene is longer than a minute than we just loop it. This is done to create a consistent background/ambient noise for the location that the scene is taking place in. Normally (and ideally) this is done on set by the sound crew when the scene is being shot but we just didn't have time and frankly, i just didn't want to. When you're on set it's always easy to say, "eh, we'll just fix it in post" but then you've created an entire day's work for yourself. reap what you sew i guess.

ADR
I almost don't want to write about this section. Not that it's been going bad or anything, just more that so much has happened in the past month that it seems daunting to sit and write about it. Anyway, I had stated in the previous post that i found out the ADR facility was open not from 8-5 but 8-6 and then proceeded to rant about how i wish i knew that before. That doesn't make much sense that an hour would be so significant. It actually is not supposed too. It's a typo, the ADR facility is actually open from 8am-9pm, so actually that's 4 hours outside of business hours. Needless to say we took advantage of it today. as of right now we have 13 of our 25 actors done. So far the sound quality seems to be just fine. One of my initial concerns was that the movie is rated R and i didn't want to offend anyone with the actors yelling obscenities all the time at the facility. we only had one incident with Alicia. It was the scene where Alaska wont let Jason into her room. She's yelling at him through a door and while we were doing a take someone knocked on the door and asked if everyone was OK. Apparently there was a line of people outside the booth all concerned that something was going down inside. no harm no fowl. A nice little chuckle it gave us. oh well. I made a large mistake in terms of ADR scheduling though. For the first few days i didn't give enough time at all for the process. I figured we would have about 8 hours of audio when all was said and done of ADR takes for the movie. I seem to be about right as we have about 4 hours of audio right now and half the actors done. The mistake i made was telling the facility that we had about 8 hours of work. It has worked out to where we need about an hour to get fifteen minutes of audio recorded. So we spend about 16 hours in the facility, 8 of which on one day, getting ADR so far. Well, the facility closed for a week during spring break, (which was about a week ago) and i had sent a few emails requesting time to do ADR for actors that were coming in for the Easter weekend and such. Well, i didn't get a response for a few days until finally, my contact emailed me and said that he was sorry but that the management had decided that "The only firm option I can give you at this point is possibly some Saturday time, the lab is open from 10am-4pm". I was a little stressed by this. Actually, that was a horrible day when i got that email, a whole bunch of other stuff went wrong and i had to scramble and send emails like crazy to all the cast to see if they could change to Saturdays. I sent my contact an email with 2 major concerns. However i started the email on a positive note, letting him know that i was fine with this and that we film students call this "the cost of free" (which is true, if they're giving it to me for free i have no leverage but to grovel). My concerns were this: 1 being that I still have 16 hours of time i need in the facility for the other 12 actors and that takes up almost 3 of the 6 Saturdays left in the semester and other students need to use the facilities, other student that have more precedence then me because it's not my department. I also was concerned because he gave me a Firm option to Possibly work on Saturdays. How is that firm? so i asked for complete confirmation on that so that if it's loose, i can find alternatives. I also started looking for alternatives either way. I had heard a rumor that the film school bought (or made) a portable ADR booth so i went to the studio to check it out. It seems they made it cause it was a joke. and if they did buy it, man what a waste of money. Grady and I checked it out and basically it's some PVC pipe glued together in a rectangular form with bed lining egg crates glued in between the pipes. It was a sorry sight. well, i heard back from my contact at the facility we had been using and he gave me a concrete confirmation on using Saturdays and also laid to rest all of my concerns. so that's what we're doing. I have 6 actors today and we're filling up the entire 10-4 time slot in the booth we've been using. so that's where we are so far. now, here's a bit on the process.

Basically what I did was take the ADR break down sheet that i got from the original sound break down sheet and created an excel file. Then I separated all the actors dialogue ques in sequential order. Basically recording according to actor, then time code. Then Grady and I entered each time code into the timeline of the picture lock and manually typed out the line(s) that needed recording. so from there i also copied a portion of the scene with the line(s) it and significant head room and tail room and opened a new timeline and created a loop. Then i exported the loop as a separate movie file and then have been organizing and authoring ADR DVD's by date and actor. So for today I made a DVD yesterday with a main menu and links to 6 other menus for the 6 actors we have. In each menu are links to each Que loop that the actor needs to replace the dialog. as of right now i have about 6 ADR DVD's today's being one of the biggest. I try to recycle my loops as it takes a long time to create them. what i mean by recycle is if say Kent has a shot where he's in the background with Josh and we just need them mumbling, i'll use Kent's loop on Josh's DVD instead of creating the same loop again for josh. I think it saves time but who knows. So when the actors come in i set up my lap top and put the DVD in. Grady starts the equipment and I start the DVD and they just try to recreate the que while watching the loop and trying to match their performance and sync to the picture. The facility is small but it's free. Grady, me, and the actor are all in the same booth but that doesn't seem to affect sound quality. Grady listens to the soudn't being recorded and I have a head phone splitter on my laptop that i split the sound with so that the actor can listen to the original audio and i listen tot the original audio as well but keep one ear out of the headphones to listen to the new audio the actor is creating. It's always awkward at first but then the actors get used to it and move along smoothly. Thus far we have done the following

Steve Murphy
Amanda Melby
Kate Haas
Kent Walter
Alicia De La Vega
Kasim Aslam
Nate Klaer
Ryan Murphy
Brad Golden
Jen Ball
*Colin Redemer
Danial Kunz
Jon Baranick

Still Left:

Vic Martinez (Today)
*Josh McDermitt (Today)
*Lauren Monroe (Today)
Ben Folsom (Today)
Kristin Kelley (Today)
Mike Zduniak (Today)
*Ali Stelzer
*Jamie Isreal
Jamie McKeel
Jacob Detharidge
*Adam Roa
Jared Mercier (don't laugh)

6 of our 25 actors that need to do ADR don't live in AZ anymore so they're coming form out of town. I *'d them above so you can see who. Colin already came out and i was nervous about his ADR because i had scheduled only 2 hours before i had realized how long it was actually taking us. But it worked out and we breezed through it. Colin saw the movie as it is now while he was here and said he was impressed and that he can see it will be better than he thought it would be. that was motivating. :)

See i told you there was a lot in regards to ADR. Sheesh.

Mixing
Haven't really started this at all. We plan to start syncing the ADR we already have sometime this week.

Music
Tom is back on board. When Tom and I met last and he said he probably wasn't going to be able to do it (before he sent the email saying he wasn't) he asked what i would do if he couldn't. I told him 2 things. Send out emails and craigs list posts etc looking for a composer and also plead with administration to use the editing lab over summer to finish up the mixing of the project. Turns out that i'm considered a student by the university until the start of the Fall semester of 2008 even though i graduate in may. So i'm going to try as hard as i can to finish the mixing before the semester is over (depends on if tom can get it done in time) but if he can't it's fine. So that's why he's back on board. plus, like i told him, i couldn't imagine anyone else doing my first feature. Tom's music saved and/or tripled the effectiveness of the other 3 films that i did with him. I did send out emails and stuff looking for other composers, but everyone that emailed me was very very flaky and/or didn't know what they were doing. It was stressful until i found out about the student status thing.

There will be a campus screening of the movie on April 20th for a capstone presentation, not a premiere or anything, but the school is requesting that I show the film. Actually, i had approached them about it back when i thought it would be done in time, but now i know it wont and they still want to screen it, just with temp music. So i'm looking for temp music and i'll have to start mixing that soon if tom doesnt' have stuff by a week or so before the 20th. Also, Danielle is looking into copyrighted music that we need for the movie. Nothing on that yet.

Misc Sound
I think i've covered everything in terms of sound.

Marketing
Website
The website is moving along fine. I wanted to have my "marketing blitz" out by now, but that just wasn't realistic. I should have, depending on the art work, the new website launched by next sunday. it looks good so far. I'm toying with launching different parts of the website one day at a time to try and raise hits and get people excited about the site and the movie.

Trailer
From what i understand via emails and meetings in passing with the editor, the trailer is in a fine cut stage. I emailed him at the beginning of the week to see where it is but have yet to hear back from. I'll email him today about it. the new trailer wont be out by the time the website launches but that's ok if i do like i said in not launching the entire site at once.

Posters
My poster guy is AWESOME. He did a few drafts so far and they look great. I'm going to try to meet up with him sometime today to go over everything. The posters are going to be the main art for the site so I want to make sure they are done in time. he says it shouldn't be a problem. he's also doing 5 character portraits. I can't wait to get them out.

Misc Marketing
There's a girl i sit next to in one of my classes that is a writer for the state press magazine. I feel temped every tiem i have that class to be like, "hey, i got a story for you" and pitch my movie. I was in the state press once before for LOTD and it was great. I'm going to approach her at some point, but i think i'll wait till the website is up. (i know it's dick but it's an opportunity i don't think i can waste)

Misc in General
Ok, so, as of 3 weeks ago we finally had on official PICTURE WRAP on Madison Hall! YAY! we shot the last scene with the RA making posters with the news on the TV in the background. It took me a long time to get the news graphics set up but i think they look great. So I shot it all by myself, well, my wife Molly helped :) and the actor too. ok ok. Anyway, the way it will work is the scene sets up the idea of the college environment with the school news on in the background and the quiet hours posters being made. the opening credits will go over the quiet hours posters. i still have yet to finish fine editing the scene because i've been so busy with other stuff but i'll get to it.

Over spring break i did nothing. Well, nothing on the movie. I figure it's my last spring break of my college career. Super smash bros Brawl came out and i and some friends played it for 4.5 days strait. i lost 4 pounds cause i barely ate. it was awesome. incredibly awesome.

I'm buying a new hard drive today because I've completely run out of space on my laptop, 500gig hard drive, and 4 gig jump drive. WD Terabyte at costco for $250. can't beat it.