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.