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!