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.