New updates coming soon. Promise.

Don't forget to pick up your copy of college times and turn to page 8!

Madison Hall now on IMDb! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1458930/

Meeting with web designer now.

Meeting with the web designer tomorrow. New site should be up in a few days!!!

Follow us on twitter! http://www.twitter.com/madisonhallfilm

Finished Chris Gore's Ultimate Film Fest Survuval Guide. Any suggestions 4 other books in the same genre 4 the MH team to look @?

We just got an email from with out a box. We're now eligable for IMDB. Our page should be up in a few weeks!

Slamdance received our screener. Everythings cool so now we're officially under consideration. Now we wait till november......

No Worries

The theater is paid for and secured. Nothing to worry about now but logistics. I had the President of the AFA send out an email the other day for volunteers to help with the screening. I haven't gotten a single response yet. I may just have to pull favors. I hope not though. Hopefully someone will volunteer. 

Molly and I spent the day driving around to businesses looking for donations to help with our silent auction to help raise more money for the film. A lot of rejections, but some promising leads mixed in.

I've started inviting everyone I've ever met to the screening. We better pack the house.

The updating every week day at noon thing has been going well. Facebook is giving me details on visits, interactions, video plays, picture views, etc. Some interesting numbers. Things are really erratic, but that's OK. 

Johnny did a new poster and we released it on Friday. Next one should be out this Thursday. Look for it.

I used my newfound web coding skills to format most of the social networking site pages for Madison Hall to match the official site. I think i did a pretty good job myself, thank you very much.

That's about it. 

Javalicious

I've been trying this new method of posting. I'm not sure I like it. I've been emailing blogger from my gmail. But the format is all funny. Maybe if I turn off rich formatting? I don't know. Well, we'll see.

I started watching those training videos. Neat stuff. I've already applied what I've learned to the parking page. Check it out. Every time you refresh the picture that's uploaded is random. :) Neat. www.madisonhallmovie.com 

I've been trying to get in touch with the theater to confirm and pay for the reservation, but the lady I was working with no longer works there. I hope this doesn't become a problem. I watched her put us in the theater's calendar, so I'm not really worried about it. But we'll see. When I tried to call to talk to her the manager on duty just told me to call the owner. I did. No response. I'll try again tomorrow.

I've been spending the last few days calling everyone who ever worked on the film to invite them to the screening. It's nice to get in contact with old friends.

Less is More

This was supposesd to be posted tuesday night. there was some sort of
error. sorry to the readers.
________________________________________________

Not much has happend in 24 hours since I last posted. But, you
know, more posts is better than not more right?

For the website I'm still leaning heavily towards doing it myself,
with the help of Ryan for hosting. So yeah.

I've started calling the cast and crew about the screening. It got to
be 8 p.m. and I figured it was too late so i'll stop. Pick it back up

tomorrow where I left off.

Been doing some more research on prices. Found some good stuff and found

some not so good stuff. We may have hats made. Neat huh? :)

I watched the first 3 tapes from shooting. It was rough. Especially
because so much from day two was so bad and unusable. It felt like

looking at old nude pictures of myself. Awkward.

That's it. I'm trying to post every two days now so the posts should
be way shorter.

Self Help

So I'm leaning towards saying screw it to trying to find a web
developer. I've spoken with a few people and the more i think about it
the more i think that no one can offer me something for what i'm
willing to pay that I couldn't do myself. A friend is getting me some
training videos on different programing languages and web theory
stuff. It'll be good either way because that means I can change things
or fix things if there's a problem later, and whoever designed the
site is gone. But, it's also making me think, why don't i just design
it myself? i don't know. I haven't made a decision, but i'm seriously
leaning towards doing it myself. Maybe I'm thinking to big for what i
want. maybe simpler is better. i don't know. The only thing i do know
for sure is that I don't wan to waste any money on something that I
could just do myself.

We released the second teaser poster today. It looks great. Keep it
coming Johnny!

We announced the test screening on facebook on Saturday. It's going to
be at Chandler Cinema's at 7pm on Saturday June 6th. After party to
follow at Iguana Max. I'm going to start calling cast and crew
tomorrow.

Swine Flu?

I had a great meeting with our primary investor on Tuesday, but then
got really sick all Tuesday night and all of Wednesday. no fun.

I'm in the process of interviewing all these people that have
responded to the craigslist add. blah. some good stuff though. i'm
going to give a screener of the movie to my prof that over saw the
project. I'm dropping it off at 2:30pm today. we'll see what he says.
i think he'll be impressed.

Not much else has happened.

Liar

I lied. I said I'd post tomorrow in my last post and it's been way
longer than that. Sorry.

I've spent the entire day today at home doing "business-y" things. it's
been fairly boring. Most are movie related but some are personal, like
dentist appointments.

I've been doing more research on web developers. It's been pretty
tough. I met with one last friday. I mentioned that in my last post.
Well the meeting went great. We ended up talking for like 2 hours. And
he totally gets what I want to do and knows how to execute it.
However, I just can't afford him. He usually does websites for like
$2500-$7000 and I told him I'd be lucky if I could raise $1000. He said
he'd spend the weekend going over some stuff and see what he could do
for me for $1000. I'd really like to raise the money though, because
I'd love to work with this guy. I also want to work with this guy because doing all this research is stressful. Everyone "business" in the Valley that does this sort of thing is
charging about the same. A few a little less, but it's obvious that
most of those companies that charge less are just charging you for a
template that you could just buy yourself for much cheaper. I made a
Craigslist ad today. About thirty minutes ago actually and I've had like 15
emails already, however, most of them seem like scams. A few aren't but most
feel like it. This is frustrating. The website is just so
important. I feel stressed everyday that there isn't a site up.
Hopefully this will work its' self out soon.

Speaking of money, we may have another investor. I don't know all the
details yet, though, so that's all I'm going to say.

John Murphy signed on to cut a few trailers for the movie. I'm excited
about this because I don't want to do it. Well, I do, but I also don't
want to spend the time doing it.

Jarvis and I spent the other day making little "making of" video's for
MH web content. It was fun. I'll post them periodicly.

I took one of Johnny's finished cartoons and made the first character
portrait teaser poster. It looks great. I'll change the picture on the
blog to it once I release it. I think I'm going to tomorrow. 

Tapia and I went to Chandler Cinema's the other day and tested the
movie out on their equipment in one of their auditoriums. It actually
looked and sounded a lot better than I thought it would. Not that I
thought their equipment would be bad, but just the DVD being
projected. We're like 95% sure we're going to be doing the
screening there. It's cheap and worth it. We also went driving around
looking for a place to do an after party/fundraiser as well. I think
we're going to do it at Iguana Max. We're also thinking about doing a
silent auction. Which could be really cool or really lame.

I'm waiting to hear back from Kenny's company on some more quotes for
less DVD's. I just don't think we can afford to spend $500 on DVDs, unless someone reading wants to send us a check.

Speaking of sending checks, I'm probably going to be meeting with our
initial investor sometime this week to figure the details of this
arrangement out.

As Usual

I say this all the time but I really need to post more often. I actually had intended to post last thursday but Mike wants me to have him "edit" my posts. So i sent it to him and he "edited" it two days later. We'll i'll keep having him do it cause (as you know) my spelling and grammer is just aweful. But i'm not going to have him do this one. it's been too long since we I posted last. Here's what i would have posted last thursday:

-------------

I was approached by a potential investor the other day. Money. Money. Money. MONEY!!!. Haha, just kidding. Well, not kidding about being approached. Nothing signed yet so I wont reveal who because I want to protect this person's privacy, but yeah. They were interested in investing a small amount of money (a couple hundred to a possibly a few K or two) to help with festival fees and marketing stuff. Every little bit helps. I'm also excited about this because if it goes through, it's more leverage to find other investors. People are more likely to get on board with something that other people are involved in as well, rather than floating the boat all by them selves. I'll keep everyone posted on what happens with this. For right now I'm working on getting this person a DVD screener so they can be better equipped to make a decision.

One of the things that Mike and I have been talking about (and we discussed this with our potential business partner as well) is that there are three major steps we need to take, even before we decide which way to go in terms of finding a distributor. The three steps are these: setting up a professional website, having a test screening for invites/cast/crew/vip's in a professional venue, and having professional DVD's made (for festival submission and cast and crew copies).  these will be important no matter which way we decide to take the film. It's important that our core team (cast/crew/friends/family) be as excited and passionate about the film as we are. We need to prove to them that this is legit. Not some crappy student film that we're just going to throw away. So I'm in the process of getting quotes for all these things.

The search for student web developers didn't work out so well. The student organization that got back to me said no one would do it for free.

Maybe I should try a different school other than ASU.

-----------

So yeah, that would have been it. I've been doing research on a venue for the screening. It's looking like the cheepest place is going to be $200 for the evening but i hesitate to do that because i want to promote as much professionalism as possible. I'm afraid that doing the test screening in a "$1 theatre" will make the film less credible. But maybe not. it's 750 for the next best thing and then 5000 for an AMC theatre. Retarted. I've got to make a decition on this pretty quick

I've also been doing research on DVD duplication. It looks like it's going to be the cheepest to go through Kenny's company. But i need to decide how many to make and in which manar. it's $2.50 a disc for full packaging (amerey, insert, disc art, shrink wrap, etc.). it's $1.50 for a spindle of DVD's that have art on the disc but that's it. Not sure how i'll do it yet.

I got a copy of the movie to my potential investor. He saw the flaws of the movie right away (which is good because it means he's got a hint of what he's doing) but over all he said he was impressed with the film. He used the word "Polished" specificly. I think that's good. Right? so i'm going to set up a meeting with him sometime in the next few days hopefully to work out the details and see if this is really something he wants to do.

The ASU film fest was this weekend. That was fun. 

I found a web designer that did a website for another local feature. I found this guy through the IFP vendor list. Hopefully this will work out. I'm going to meet with him on Friday to talk about options for the website.

Johnny's been calling me asking me questions about details on the poster so i think he's making progress. I asked him to try and be done in 2 weeks so that we can start making the DVD's soon.

I've got more to write about but i'm tired. I'll post again tomorrow. -GN.

Will It Work?

I seem to be on this trend of titling my posts with questions. but they're appropriate enough. 

So I had this idea. Well... more like i borrowed this idea. :) A few years ago a website for the sequal to one of my favorite video games was set up. Every week day the game developer would update the site with information regarding the game. maybe he'd announce a character. Or an Item, or a game mode. Sometime it would be something as lame as how to set widescreen or full screen. But every once in awhile he'd upload a trailer, or a video clip. those were great days. I checked the site almost every day for a year and a half. Just to see what was knew. And it was always something small. something that would only take me 5-10min to look at, then go on with my day. Well, i'm going to try that with MH. I've already started. I established a facebook "page" which is sort of like a facebook profile. It's actually way neater than i thought it would be. Gives me status on page views, photo views, interactions, etc. Other users on facebook become "fans" of my page and that allows me to send them updates. So, for the past 3 business days i've been updating the site. I actually have 2 months of updates planed out so far percisly to exactly what i'm going to upload on what day. and i've still got more content after that's up. If you read this and want to become a fan of the facebook page, or just check it out, here's the link: 

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Madison-Hall/85227223141

I hope to use this strategy with the main website as well. once i have it up.

speaking of the website, i spent a few hours today combing the ASU website network looking for student orgs or departments that deal in web development. I sent a few emails out and have already gotten a response from a student org. They just requested more info, but it would be so awesome if i could get someone to work on the movie's website that knew what they were doing. even a little bit. Of course it will be the same situation as with the cast and crew. Some sort of deferred or pro-bono work. I'm hoping to find someone that is interested in just building a resume. Someone who has skills in web development but doesn't have content to apply them too. cross your fingers. :)

I spoke with my brother in law the other day about a game for the website. He's going to start working on it. I'm really excited about this. I hope we can make it happen. I'm not going to say too much about this yet. I want it to be a surprise.

I met with Johnny the other day about the posters. It was a good meeting. Very productive. I think we're on the same page. He should be getting me some drafts sometime this week.

I got about half way through touching up the movie it'self. I'll finish tomorrow and start burning DVD screeners for Harkins and such.

What to do? What to do? What to do?

So.....

Now the movies done.....

What to do? what to do? what to do?

Well, i guess first things first. I've been watching the movie as much as possible on as many different platforms as possible. I need to make sure there arent' any universal problems that i missed, and that my exports and compressions are good. At least for the DVD anyway. So far i've screened it twice at home, once at Tapia's, once at my brother-in-law's (with him and my wife's parents - man was that awkward) and once at a friends house on his tube television. It's interesting how different the movie looks and sound on all these different platforms. I've found a bunch of problems so far. Nothing to bad though. A few situations where i forgot to bring the music down, or my mixing just didn't work like i thought it did. I should be able to fix everything in a day or so, then re-export another couple DVD's. Then be done for good on the film it's self. 

But once I finish it it's back to the same question. What to do? Well, a while back, John had asked me what my distribution plan was. that's something I need to work out. Steph saw the movie and thinks we should try and world premiere at the 2010 Slamdance Film Festival. Seems like a long shot to me. i never thought the film was much of a festival movie. more of a b-movie comedy. but who knows. I have a lot of thinking to do over the next week or two. I bought a book. Chris Gore's ultimate Festival Survial Guide It's pretty good so far. 

I also talked to Harkin's about both a completion screening and a limited release. It's gonna cost about $450 to do a screening. I got some money to try and raise. In terms of the release, it was an awkward conversation with one of their film aquaistion executives. he said that these things rarely work out and kind of talked to me like I didn't understand the industry at all. He started to explain to me that i should find a distributor and that the distributor would put the movie out in theater's. :) ha. so i told him that i'm more interested in a limited release to gain numbers to show to a distributor, and to raise money for the festival circuit. He started to warm up and said he would take a look at a screener. Sometime next week after i fix the stuff i'll bring him a DVD. I'm hesitant to do this at all though, because if we do a limited release, we shoot our selves in the foot for the festival cuircut. 

Basicly i've got 3 options:

1. Festivals, 2. Four Walling/Limited release through Harkins, 3. Approaching Distributors Directly. 

I got some thinking to do.

Completion. Now What?

I'm 2 weeks late on this post and 1 week late finishing the movie. But, IT'S DONE! yay!!!! I finished last thursday, April 9th, 2009.

All I did was mix and mix and mix the week after i posted last. It was very tedious to say the very least. 

The Phoenix Film Festival was last week. it started the 3rd, the day i wanted to finish by. well, by the 3rd i was not done. I was close, but not done. i spent all that day at tapia's working on the movie, and then took fri-sat-sun off. just getting a break from the movie, hanging with Molly, etc. Plus I couldn't really move forward because i was waiting for that song from nashville. they didn't want to email me a copy or anything. Instead they snail mailed me a copy. it came in the mail Tuesday. I was exstatic. I stayed up all night trying to finish to get it done for the 8th so that i could pull a scene and walk into my old capstone class and "turn in" my capstone. Well, come about 6:30am on wednesday i couldn't do it. So i had to leave to pick molly up from work. I could have gone back to tapia's that morning and finished but i was exhausted. So i went to bed and went back to tapia's that afternoon. I worked all day and at about 8:00pm on wednesday i thought i was maybe 2 hours from finishing. just going over stuff again. you know. anyway, i got a strange call. a number from new york. It was Chad Ohnstad. If you go back and look at my old posts, he was someone i had wanted to help me produce the movie. well he was in town and wanted to meet up. I told him i was about to finish the movie and he was like "no shit!". he came over and we caught up for like an hour and then he left to let me finish and i'd call him when it was done. well, as it has gone with the project since the beginnning. it took me roughly 3 times as long to finish as i thought it would. I finished about 3am on thursday morning. I started the export and burning process and it took roughly 3 hours. the first disc was done at 6am and I had to leave to get molly at 7am at the hospital. when i got back at tapia's at about 9am some how i feel asleep on the couch. i don't remember how. i just woke up. kinda strange. the first thing i did was go get a hair cut. Jarvis was with me. In fact, Jarvis was hanging with me the whole time i was working on the movie for the past few days. it was nice company. well, we went and i got my hair cut. then we met Chad and some other friends at Four Peaks and had a celebration lunch. Then we went back and watched the film. Everyone had great reactions. I was actually surprised. 

so that was about it. Since then i've taken a week off. just watching the movie as much as i can on different tv's and sound systems. there a few problems that i missed in the final mix that i'll have to go back and fix. but no need to rush. I watched the movie with Jason, he said i did a good job in the mix. The movie also looked really well on my TV i thought. i'm excited to move forward now.

moving forward now. right? now what?.....

Since the movie is done. I'm going to discountinue this blog and start a new one. www.madisonhallmovie.blogspot.com. As a fresh chapter in the life of the movie, i figure i'll create a new blog. plus, i'm sick of having to log into my old gmail account to update this one. yay for less log ins! :) see you on the new page!

Phew...*wipes brow*

Wow.

It has been a crazy week and a half. I just got out of the shower and am sitting in my underwear on Tapia's couch. It amazes me to say this....but.... Madison Hall will be 100% completed on Thursday April 2nd, 2009. The only thing that could mess it up is an act of God... or Tom. Tom should be completely done with the original music by the 2nd. here's what happened this week. It's a little blurry, but i'll try.

Tuesday, March 17th. (St. Patty's Day)

So I spent all day working at Tapia's. Molly had the day off so I took the car. I don't remembe what i worked on. Probably laying in foley that we had recorded. I was starting to feel stressed about recording the rest. just trying to find time to do it. I went home really late and ended up hanging with Molly, her friend Lexi, and my brother in law till like 3am. i was pretty upset about it because i had wanted to go to bed at like 11pm so i could get up early and go to tapias. I keep saying, i can see the finish line of the movie, so i just want to sprint to it. you know?

Wednesday, March 18th.

I woke up at like noon. Molly had to work at 7 so there was no way i was going to drive to tapia's, get there at 1 by the earliest and then have to leave by 5 to drive through rush hour and get home by 6:30 so she could go to work. So i just stayed home. I brought my computer into the lawn and hung outside with our tortious, bowser, and spent like 6 hours scouring myspace for music. I found 2 artists that i was interested in using for the philanthropy scene and 3 for the car scene. I messaged each of them, or their agent. I decided to message several people at once and keep my options open. waiting for two week for that indie label just to tell me i couldn't use the song i wanted but i could use any of there other songs for $20,000 was very frustrating. over all the whole myspace process has been frustrating as well. there's a lot of baaaaad music on myspace. So I rode with Molly to work and took the Light Rail to tempe and walked to tapias and stayed the night there. We did some more foley work and John Murphy came and helped us out. it was very nice of both of them to help me. Tom emailed me and told me that he wasn't going to be able to work on the movie again until the 28th of march because of school stuff. He said spring break started that day and he would commit to finishing the film by the 2nd of april. yay. :)

Thursday, March 19th.

So I laid more effects in. capturing the tapes is a little anoying. takes like 2.5 hours for each one. cause i have to log it, then capture it. lame. we did some more foley recording to i think. making progress. Jason had to cancel and switch to friday. That was fine. I heard from a couple of the people i contacted about music on wednesday. in fact, i heard back from 4 of the 5 artists I contacted. some emailed me. some called, some referred me to thier agents. etc. I emailed who needed to be emailed and held off on calls until friday. I spent the night at tapia's again.

Friday, March 20th.

I spent most of the day on the phone with musicians and with Jason. One of the artists i talked to was actually at SXSW with his band, which i thought was pretty cool. I hope to be there next year with MH. We'll see. :) he said he'd have his business parter and legal guy get back to me at some time. I still have yet to hear from them. I think they had hesitations because of the content of the car scene. it was a country song about love. we'll see if they contact me. I also talked to a local artist here in phoenix. She didn't really have time to talk to me i'll have to get back in touch with her on monday. I also was in email contact with someone from Nashville about a country song for the car scene. Unfortunatly the guy's agent was in Germany so i'll have to wait to hear back from her. Jason and I spent roughly 2 hours trying to trouble shoot the problem i'm having with exporting the credits from photoshop to final cut. we made some progres, but not enough. i'm going to be getting together with Antonio on  monday or tuesday the 30th or the 1st to figure it out. Jason also spent 3 hours teaching me some mixing tricks and the whole kind of basic concept. turns out it'll be a lot easier than I thought. I'm totally excited to start mixing. but i need to wait until i have all my effects in place. Molly helped me do some more foley work on friday night, and I went back to phoenix and stayed at home.

Saturday, March 21st.

Molly and I went back to Tempe and did a lot more foley work. it was productive. that's about it.

Sunday, March 22nd

I hung out with Family, and then Molly brought me back to tempe that night. I imported the latest tape that night and watched "Princess and the Warrior". It was pretty good.

Monday, March 23rd.

I spoke to that local musician that went out of town for the weekend. She sounded interested in MH and was willing to help. We planned to meet up on tuesday so she could give me one of her CD's. She's going to talk to one of her entertainment lawyer friends about a contract/release for the music. I spent most of the day syncing more sound effects. god, footsteps are the bain of my existance. i'm never doing another film that has footsteps again. I helped Randy do some pick ups for DOL and also met a homeless man name Jack on the Light Rail. First Jack i've ever met.

Tuesday, March 24th.

I met with the local artist and she seems excited to help. She gave me her CD and when i got home i played around with it. It'll work great. Molly REALLY likes it. I also got a call from nashville from that agents office. The agent was still in germany but her assistant or whoever said that the agent had emailed me and i had not responded. I told her i'd look in my spam and sure enough there it was. she had emailed me asking for more info on the project. Budget/cast/distributer, etc. I emailed her this long email laying everything out on the table. The nature of the production, how low budget we are, the content of the scene for the song. she said she'd talk to the artist and get back to me. I also spoke with someone in British Columbia today from a indie record label about a different artist for the car scene. she didn't seem thrilled with the idea but said she'd get back to me. I spent the rest of the day synching more footsteps. i tried to completly finish synching all of the foley we have. I wasn't able to. Oh well. I'll finish on wednesday. over the past week i've recorded almost 150 effects. i've only got something like 10 effects left to do. We're going to try to do them friday night.

Wednesday, March 25th. 

When i woke up this morning on tapia's couch, the first thing i did was chceck me email. In it, I had a message from that agent in germany. "I spoke to John and he said you could use the song in your film" woopeee!!!!! so that means i've got all my music. Contracts still need to be signed, but oral contracts are done. omg. i'm so excited. I updated the blog today and baught some headphones(advise from jason for mixing.) as soon as i post this i'm going to go finish synching the rest of the foley and start mixing tonight. i'm so excited. good week. good week. 

Holy Foley!

After i posted last week i sat down and started to watch the movie and take more notes on what needs to be done for sound. I got about 15 minutes into the movie when i realized...what the hell am i doing this for? i mean, i know i put all the sound effects from Soundtrack in and whatnot, but why do i need to watch it again? I was just looking at my notes constantly and confirming what i already had down. sure i'd add something or realize something every 5 min or so. But why waste time doing that now? i'm going to have to screen the film when i have everything done that i've already got notes for now so why not wait till then. yeah. so I did just let the rest of the movie play. but i didn't take notes. i watched it for color. everything looked good. i'm sure i'll see something i want to change at some point but for right now, good.

I haven't found music yet for the 2 scene i need music for. I haven't really been looking either. i'll get on it this week when i have down time. 

I had a very very busy week with foley. I ended up staying over at Tapia's for 2 nights working on foley stuff. I was able to find about 200 effects on sound track and so i had about 240ish effects to record. I think that's right. i could check but i don't want too. it's something liek that. anyway, we started doingn recording on wednesday night and did maybe 15 recordings. we decided to quit early because we werent' doing thing effeciantly. I had my notes that i had taken with grady a few months ago, but they were in chronological order so i kept having to go get props again and stuff. So we ended early and first thing in the morning on thursday i set about to rearranging my notes into a more efficiant schedule. doing all the effects in one location, with all the props i need, and doing one prop at a time and getting all the effects i need with that prop all at once. That sort of thing. It took me about 3 hours to rearrange everything. i was able to condense that 240 down to about 150. you know, because a foot step is a foot step, even though it occurs at 10 different places in the movie. See, in my notes, i had 10 different footstep effects writtine down. that would be a waste of time. So then we started recording again. Johny Murphy came and helped us out too. we got about 45 effects recorded that night so it was very productive. Molly helped me do effects Saturday night and we got about 20 effects done. Friday i imported the effects and played around with them. Today i did some syncing and the recorded effects are going to work great. which is so funny cause our recording method is so ghetto. highend microphone xlr to mini converter into a soccermom mini dv cam. we can record at 16bit audio though which is good enough for this. So right now i have about 70 our to 150 done. not bad. i'm going to be doing some myself tongiht. i've got a mic stand so it should be fine. a little awkward but fine. 

I finished the credits friday. Finished. All done. I've decided not to do the Where are they nows. i just don't think it will fit with the film. no opening credits either. Just the company logos and the main title. all the credits will be at the end.

I'm meeting with Jason this Thursday. I'm hoping i can do the importing of the old footage at Randy's this Friday.

Tom did a few of the other Spy ques and they're great. He went on vacation this weekend so nothing new from him for a couple days now. but almost done!

So, i think, if i kick it in the ass, and i mean REALLY kick it in the ass... I could have the movie done by Sunday...

...I know right? it's unlikely, but possible. Wish me luck.

Not Like A Woman

Sorry for skipping a week. I've actually been very productive. I just procrastinated too long last week on the blog. I've been working at Tapia's almost 35-40 hours a week. So when i get home i don't want to work on the movie anymore. and this feels like working on the movie...

Anyway, I readjusted the color on those scenes i had mentioned. I think i found a good balance in the scene where i was concerned about the red vs. blue. I have yet to screen it yet though. Will do that in the next couple of days or so.

Tom is very consistant. He keeps sending things. and 90% of the time they're perfect. He finally got the spy que to a place that i like. so he can move on to the other ques with the same theme. We're actaully pretty close to being completely done with all the orignal music. :)

I dove head first into MySpace. I've saved a lot of links to a lot of pages. I did find a PERFECT country song for the blow job scene. Like a Woman. www.jamieoneal.com. I spoke directly with the record label and they were really helpful. After a week of talks they utlimatly said no to us using Like A Woman, but they are sending me some hip hop stuff that they think would match thematicly with the film. I'll give it a listen, all though i have my doubts. I'm looking for something that Delialah would play. we'll see. back into MySpace.

I spoke with Chase Stain recently. Because we're so close to working on the final mix of MH I wanted to get all my i's dotted and t's crossed. He's totally down and is drafting up a release as we speak. I talked with him about a music video or two, using the MH footage with stuff from concerts or what not. i want to do this for them because i'm so greatful for them letting me use thier music for fee. and it would be good promotional materials for MH :)

So i finally finished laying in all those sound effects. God it was so tedious. Footsteps. so many fricken foot steps. anyway, i spent a day exporting the tracks and burning a disc and such. i'm going to watch it today and take notes on what I really need to record now. Hopefully i can do some recording this week, or even finsih :). that would be awesome.

I'm meeting with this guy Jason that did on set sound for Randy's film. He's going to help with the final mix. I'm excited to learn some things. it can be a real frustrating process.

So after lots of research I found that what i was doing with photoshop for the credits was the best way to go after all, and that the problems i was having were not because of the method, but more because of some technical settings in FCP...i think. So i'm almost done with the credits in Photoshop. As done as i can be until we lock the film. You never know when someone will get on board and i'll have to add them. so yeah.

I finished going through all my old paperwork for the movie. took my like 2 hours. but it was fun. I threw a lot of old stuff away. i'd say like at least 5 reams worth of paperwork.... It was old stuff that i didn't need though. like copies of the script, Day out of Days, etc. lots of copies  of things. i made alot of copies.

johnny has been working on the posters. he sends me an email every once and a while. i'm glad that's moving forward again.

I decided the other day to start importing old footage from the movie to help smooth over some area's that need room tone that i can't generate. like tunnels scenes and stuff. and wouldn't you know it? but the camera i borrowed from my bro in law wont read my tapes from teh DVX. it's a panasonic soccer mom cam. even though it's panasonic it wont read the tapes. sorry. correct that. it will read the tapes. it wont read the time code on the tapes. So i can watch and listen to the footage on the computer and on the monitor on the camera, but i can't import it. Son of a bitch. so i emailed randy to see if i could use his camera and his final cut to import. he said yes. I'm going to try to do that friday.

At one point i do intend to go back through the old call sheets and blog about each day of production. i have a feeling all i'll have to do is look at the call sheet, and maybe some of the shot lists and footage and it'll all come rushing back.

Big Giant Fucking Footsteps. (exuse my language.)

Haven't finished up the Color Correcting yet.

I did meet with Antonio and he took LOTD out of the film and put the news in like i wanted. YAY! it was really easy. there was also this tiny problem that i had noticed with one of the rendered effects he gave me. The exposure meter on teh camera graphics appeared to be missing a bar. We figured it out though. it was some wierd thing that had to do with Interlacing. He didn't make a mistake.

Tom has been sending stuff right along. It's great to finally be having this stuff completed. After working on the film for so long with out knowing what it would sound like, it's neat to finally be hearing it. We are having a bit of trouble with the Spy theme for the Urban Explorer guys. We're just not communicating very well or something. I don't know. I think it's mostly my fault, for not being able to percicly articulate what i want form teh music. We encountered this a bit on LOTD. He was  a little bummed about the whole thing, not getting it perfect the first time and all.  But i told him the other day that i never expected things to go 100% perfect. he sent me a new draft of the Spy theme last night. It's a step in the right direction but somethings missing. I spent like 3 hours going back and forth between it and credits today. I just couldnt' figure out what didn't work for me about it. I think i eventually hit it but we'll see. I emailed him my notes. he should get back to me by friday. he always sends me stuff on Friday. yay tom!

I have made a big decision recently. I have decided to abondon the quest for the two mainstream songs i wanted for the film. here are the reasons:

1. MH will have a mixture of Original Composed Score music and Local Indie music. So that being established, i think the songs might seem a bit out of place. Kind of like having a Big Star in the Blair Witch Project. It wouldn't have worked for that movie. This isn't that much of an extreme case but you get my point. I think having stuff that most people haven't heard before will add some consistancy.

2. I will not be able to get the songs for free. No matter how cheep they offer, i don't have any money.

3. I was watching this interview with Mickey Rourke about the Wrestler. He was talking about how he wrote a letter to Bruce Springstien asking him to write some music for the movie. He talked about how Bruce was an old friend and that it was a blessing he wrote them a song because they couldn't afford a Springstien song with a 5 million dollar budget...

So yeah. The only way i could get something for free would be to be personal friends with Faithe hill. Still working on that one. If it happens, then i might use the song.

4. Let's say i found some money? like, 10,000. That money would buy me rights to thiese songs for a limited amount of time. like say 2 years of Festival rights or whatever. Or let's say i get the songs for free, but can't sell the film or make any money off of it until all the rights are secured financially. In other words i could shop around teh film and do private screenigns with the music but couldn't sell it unless the full cost of the songs were in the contract. This kind of sutionation would greatly hurt the chances of teh film getting distributed. I don't want to MAKE any money on this. It would be nice to get my investers (me included) they're money back and pay everyone for thier work. But i don't want back end points, or whatever. I just want people to see it. I want it to be in distribution so i can get legitamete credit for the project. I think having those pre existing terms, like the unpaid for songs, would hurt our chances of the ultimate goal. 

I could keep making up reasons but those are the best. so it's onto myspace to hunt down more music. :)

Yeah, ok. So that pile of Sound Effects i found. Worst story of my life. Not really. It's just, it's taken me roughly 5 full days so far putting them in the movie and i'm only 2/3's through. it's one of the most tedious things i've ever done. Not as tedious as photocoping for 7 hours strait in Telford on the 14 days in GB trip but still, tedious none the less. Lots of Footsteps. Footsteps footsteps footsteps footsteps footsteps footsteps footsteps footsteps footsteps footsteps. And it's way worse than that. The effects are workign great though. it's definatly cutting what i'll need to record in half at least. and it's lots of hard stuff. Like police sirens, alarms, ambiance, etc. hopefully i'll be done by the this weekend.

I spent 6 hours today trying to figure out how i was going to do the credits. I was having trouble with the stuff i was doing in photoshop when i imported it. Here's a conversation i had with Emilio, a good friend, that i had today about the issue:

me: you know anything about outputting or exporting?

 Emilio: you talking final cut?

 me: i'm talking anything

 Emilio: sort of. what do you want to know?

3:28 PM me: eh

  it's complicated

3:29 PM i spent all this time making this high quality image file in Photoshop for the credits of MH

  and when i drop it into the timeline, FCP wants to render the image in terms of pixel reduction to match the quality of my footage :(

3:30 PM Emilio: make the image the same resolution as your video source

  that way it won't resample it as much

  there might also be settings to prevent that from happening

3:31 PM me: but that sucks. why would i do that? if i can help it i want to make my credits look as good as possible

 Emilio: it doesn't suck. it's the size of your source so it's going to look as good as your video

3:32 PM maybe if you make the credits a different file that you export in HD

3:33 PM me: yeah. i got to figure this out at some point. i've got some really deep techies that i can ask. frustrating...

 Emilio: good luck with that

3:35 PM read this... might help.

  http://www.larryjordan.biz/articles/lj_prepping_still_images_FCP.html

8 minutes

3:43 PM me: that'll help a bit. but not like i want it too

  here

  imagine this

3:44 PM you go to a movie theatre and watch "The blair witch project"

  it's on the big screen. the image is a crappy handy cam image. all pixelated out.

3:45 PM if you were to write the credits and titles in a font that uses the same pixel ratio as the crappy soccer mom camera, the text would be virtually unreadable on screen

  i want to avoid that with MH

3:46 PM i want to make all my credits Movie theatre appropriate. If i do that right now, on a big screen they are virtually unreadable because an A becomes some sort of 3 pixel concoction

  make sense?

  there has to be a way to make the titles look amazing.

  there has to be

  the image as already been captured

  i can't make that look any better.

3:47 PM but. The titles can be created from scratch

  just like the sound.

  you can have a 5.1 really well mixed soundtrack for a crappy looking film

  the same concept has to be able to apply to credits.

  make sense?

 Emilio: yeah, i get it

  i thought fcp had those kind of tools

 me: if it does, i don't know where they are.

3:48 PM Emilio: have you tried with livetype?

 me: yuppers

  i need to talk to someone who knows what they're doing with it.

  who's done this sort of thing before.

I know that's a lot but it was easier for me to paste it rather than write it out :)

Anything else, anything else? hmm. Big post this week. Sorry. Lots happening. Which is a good thing i guess.

OH! I noticed recently that i ahd a coment on a post a while back. John, to answer your question, here's the deal. our ultimate goal for this film is Sundance. Just kidding. DVD distribution. To have the film on the bottom shelf of blockbuster next to Minesweeper (directed by Uhl Bol) would be a dream come ture. We'll do research on indie and comedy film fests but this isn't your typical art house festival movie. so the film markets might be a better choice. Also, we'll talk to Harkins about doing a limited release here in the Valley kinda like Jakes Corner or Never Been Thawed. but that's a whole can a worms i don't know anything about. I'll let you know more when i get there and when i know more.

 

Dabbeling

So, as expected, after watching MH with all the color correction done there's a bit of tweeking i need to do. One scene i feel i should have never color corrected at all. There's a few shots that need to be adjusted in a few scenes but the scenes as a whole work fine. One of the scenes that i left alone, as explained in the previous post, really needs to be adjusted. I'll just have to find a mid point between the blue hall and the red room. Try to find someway to make both spaces work. Right now, with the way it is it just looks aweful. I'm sure i'll be able to fix it.

Everytime i watch the movie i have these editing urges. it's like, i want to start re-editing a scene or cut something out. grr. there will be some last minute edits at the very end once the movie is done. it's much easier to do that then to do it now and screw up the time code for the other people working on the film.

After watchign the film for color i've decided to take LOTD out of the film. There was a scene were two characters are watching it on a TV. I have it in the movie because in the script the characters were supposed to be watching a baseball game but it would be impossible for me to get rights to a real game and I never shot footage of a fake game for the TV. So what i'm going to do instead is have them watch the same news that melanie watches in the begining. I'm going to need Antonio to do the effect of transposing the image on the TV for me but that shouldnt' be a problem.

Tom sent me new stuff. Haven't synched it yet.

Nothing from the record companies yet.

I'm still debating about title cards. I'm leaning more towards time stamps  now. I think it might be able to move the film along more smoothly. We'll see.

I still need to do the Foley work but I did recently find a whole pile of royalty free sound effects that i think will work really well for the movie. Sometime in the next few days i'm going to through my list of what i need to record and see if i can find it in this pile. I'm hoping it will cut what i need to record in half. :)

I started dabbeling with the whole mixing thing. I found this really neat equalizer tool that will allow me to fix some of the ADR problems i have. The thing were part of the dialog is ADR and the other part is in camera. So far it's worked really well with one part of the double teaming is gay argument. The other it didn't work as good but i've got to play around with it. I also played around with some effects that create a "coming from behind a door" sound on dialog. I'm excited to start doing this kind of stuff.

True Color

As of this evening I have finished all of the Color correction for the film. At least I went through the entire film and color corrected.It took me roughly 4x the length of the film. As i was working i was figuring out ways to move faster through the film. It was interesting how some parts i didn't expect to be correcting i ended up making adjustments, and others i wanted to correct but ended up leaving the way they were. I decided to leave all the tunnels  stuff natural, the same way we left the sound. I think it's an interesting choice and adds something to the film. There was 2 scenes that i desperatly wanted the change the color tempature but couldn't because i door was open to another room in the scene that was lite with different temperature then the foreground. Both scenes are redish orange and the hall ways are blue so when i bring down the red the hallway turns into a windex blue that just looks aweful :( oh well. live and learn. it doesn't hurt the film to leave it red, it's just now what i wanted. Now i'm going to burn a DVD and take it home and watch it on my TV some time this weekend. I'm excited. This is another large milestone. I may have a few tweeks to do but over all it's done so that means that All that's left for picture is just finalizing credits, then only sound work left! :) wahoo!

Still need to do the Foley work.

Tom keeps sending stuff and it's great.

I spent roughly 4 hours over the past couple days on the phone and on the internet trying to track down who to talk to about purchasing the rights to the two major songs i want. Christina Auguilera's All i want is you and Faith Hill's Breathe. Each is owned by a different company so i have to deal with two seperate entities. No one seems to want to help me either. They keep telling me i called the wrong place or to email some else. I don't really knwo what i'm doing and am not 100% sure which kind of rights i want. i just want to talk to someone who will have some patients and go through all the details with me. I'll keep trying. 

I've been watching hero's lately and all the text has made me wonder about what MH would be like if i did a bunch of title cards through out the film. i might through some in for the time being to see what they look like.

I've been spending some time on myspace looking for music that could work in case i don't get the big music i wanted. i'm actually thinking it might be better not to use it because it would be so rare. i mean, most of the music in the film will be written for the film and local indie bands, so the popular music might stick out too much. i mean, imagine if in Lord of the Rings Coolio's Gangsta's paradise started playing in mordor? it woudl be really out of place right? obviously nothing would be that bad in MH but you get my drift. we'll see. 

10 Months Later

Randy's movie was an awesome experiance. We wraped on the 18th. I would have posted but my Dan flew back for a week from korea so i hung out with him most of the time. And we did a 24 hour film challenge through IFP. It was really fun. Now, back onto full time with MH.

10 months ago i sent out the first emails requesting the cast to send me their availability for a few weeks so we could record ADR. On January 7th, I finally finished all the ADR. That's right. Kristin finally got together with me. It was a little awkward, but productive none the less. And she did a great job. I knew about it a week in advance, even when i posted last, but i didn't want to sayanything cause i didn't want to jinx it. not that i believe in any of that crap, just thought why the hell not. But all the ADR is recorded. Woopie!!!

Over the last week i was able to go to Tapia's for a few days and synch all the Ali and Kristin ADR. I also was able to put in Kristin's Hyperventilating and the Double Teaming is gay argument. It's going to be challenge however, mixing those two bits because the original sound is so different from the newly recorded stuff. I'm going to email this new sound guy i recently met about some effects stuff.

Grady quit the movie. Well, more like Grady quit me. He was working on Randy' movie with me and one night my wife started yelling at him and he walked out. He wouldn't talk with her at all. He feels that he never does anythign wrong and so he doesn't have to listen to anybody. Which is too bad. I think he's very self destructive. Well, he didn't come to the set of Randy's movie anymore and he hasn't emailed or called me about anything so i guess he's done. Too bad. i'm thankful for everything he did do on the project however, and i will miss his help from here on out.

I still have some foley recording to do. I'm going to be using my bro -in law's camera with a microphone hooked up to it. Kinda ghetto but should do the trick. I'm going to try to start that by the end of this week.

Tom as been sending me stuff every weekend since he left. It's awesome. Only one theme hasn't worked so far (the spy theme for the urban explorers) but the rest has been great. I think it's safe to say that almost half the music is done. I'm going to have to start seriusly looking into getting the rights to the christina aguliara and faith hill songs though. Not sure when i'll dive into that but it needs to be soon.

I got all the stuff to Antonio that he needed. He finished everything and I got it from him last week. THE SPECIAL EFFECTS ARE DONE!!!! haha! things are really starting to wrap up. About time huh?

I emailed Johnny, the old cartoonist guy. I was looking through some old files and found his old toons and they were just great for the movie. And i haven't been able to find anyone that cared as much as he did or did as good a job as he did so i emailed him asking him forgivness for me basicly firing him. He said no forgivness needed and that he was very happy to be involved again. we're going to be getting together this week but i told him that i'm just going to let him do what ever it is he wants in terms of a time line for right now. My bigest priority is finishing the movie. I'm not going to try and jugle everything like i did last spring and summer.

That's about it. Things are looking up!

Styx

I saw Styx in Concert on New Years Eve. Just thought i'd let you know.

As you can imagine i didn't get anything done when i went to texas. That's just how these things go. I'm going into production on Randy Forte's Capstone starting on Saturday the 10th. So working on MH during that i have a feeling will prove to be difficult.

Things are pretty much the same. I still need to get that shot to Antonio. I didn't do any sound recording like i had planned on. Really i just decided not to. I chose to watch the Office instead.

I did meet with Tom and we did go through every que in the entire movie and we seem to be on the same page with things. He's going to start working once he gets back to the UK later this week. I've got to burn him a better DVD than the one he has. When i'm doing that i'm going to try to get some color work done. We'll see how this week pans out.