Been a while, Deleted scenes

Evening, folks. It's been a few months since the last time I've typed any words intended for public consumption. Not that I have much to say. That Thing is done, so I don't really have many stories to share regarding the last days of its production. Well, none that would serve any purpose without some context to have it make any sense. Once the pieces of that movie begin to make their way online I'm sure I'll have more to say. If nothing else, I'm just glad it's done and I can move on. Move on to what, I'm not sure. Been spending the last month or two trying to figure that out. Attempting to write things but I got nothing to aim for. Feels like trying to go somewhere without a destination, you'll just end up going in circles. Watching a bunch of movies lately, hoping some inspiration will strike. Not too much luck in that regard. Broad ideas of what I want, sure, but the devil's in the details. Gotta figure those out before I begin to fill in the rest.

Movie stuff aside, life's been kind of empty. Don't know. Don't really know what to say, how to explain it. Meh.

Hey! So this isn't a total waste of your time, let me show you the closest thing That Thing has to a deleted scene. A good eight or ten pages of an earlier draft of the script, one of the dozen pieces that once put together would hopefully make some sort of thematic sense. This story would have been one of the more complicated pieces to shoot as the location I had in mind, a very old abandoned library, was becoming harder to get access to. Trying to get half a dozen folks along with lights and a camera in there without bringing the attention of the guards would have been difficult at best. But beside that, even though this was one of the first pieces written, the movie as a whole veered off in a different aesthetic direction. By the time the script was somewhere near finalized this piece just didn't really fit anymore.

However, rather than let a bunch of words go to waste I got a few internet friends together and produced an audio dramatization of the piece. You know, like one of them old fashioned radio plays that you or I are probably too young to ever remember listening to over the airwaves. I find them fun to do since you kinda get to skip the production part of the process, going straight from words on paper to editing a bunch of pieces of sound together. Still sometimes mundane work, but hey, it got done eventually. Sent the script to voice acting friends shortly after it was cut from the movie, got around to finishing it about a year and a half later? Lots of small bursts of work separated by months of the project collecting virtual dust went into it, hopefully you'll take a listen and maybe even enjoy it.

It's called “No Smoking”, featuring the vocal talents of Matt Cruea, John Eberle, Cody Coleman, Kendra Braun and Amby Leigh. A bunch of the other stuff by Fernando Gil. Eighteen minutes long, and about twenty megabytes large.

No Smoking
http://boringmonkey.net/audio/(BM)NoSmoking.mp3
(Right click and save as)
And if you're curious, a quick and dirty video trailer is right below.

Trying to Accomplish Nothing

I wish I had something more profound to say. Wish I had anything to say, really, but not much has been coming to mind as of late. The movie was finished, a screening happened, and so far that's been it. Money has been tight so I haven't been entering it into many festivals, though to be honest I don't know if it's worth the entry fees anymore. I'd like to move on and write another script or two, got plenty of ideas for them, but something holds me back from actually sitting down and putting the ink to the paper.

You know you're drawing a blank when the best you can come up with are excuses for doing nothing. 'Hey, I could do it if wanted to, just not in the mood.' What's that covering up? Doubt, pity, fear? Don't know. At the moment the only tool I have to dig the meaning out of those lack of thoughts are crude, unrefined words. Language currently feels stiff despite the eagerness of the fingers to type anything out. Like I'm ready to run a marathon but can't decide where to go, so I just stay home.

Nonetheless, life goes on. Days will pass, and the status quo silently changes only enough to sneak by without notice. I will continue to stare at this blinking cursor until something more profound speaks to me. Hopefully when it does the eloquence will come more easily. Until then, I don't know.

Marching Towards The Storm

I don't know how relevant the title of this entry is going to be but it sounded cool when I thought of it yesterday, I was more or less literally marching towards a thunderstorm during the evening. Par for the course on a day that would have otherwise been uneventful, I was walking up the the park that runs up along the Hudson River, this time instead of a sunset you could clearly see dark, ominous clouds making their way down towards me. And instead of running back to civilization I decided to continue venturing north, towards the storm. On a hot summer day there's nothing better, it begins to slowly grow quiet as the joggers, bikers and tourists start evacuating, the wind starts kicking up something fierce, and then about two miles later drops start to fall. Anyone with any sense by now would run to find shelter, but I kept walking, starring at the sky and witnessing the rage of lighting and thunder, slowly coming in sync with one another. And once it did, that wall of rain began approaching and buried everyone under gallons of water. Makes a shower feel like a garden sprinkler in comparison. And at that point there's not much left to do but to soak it all in and slowly make your way home to change into something dry.

What does that have to do with anything? Not really sure. I guess if I were to make an awful analogy (which I am about to), I'm going to be marching towards that storm again tomorrow. In case you didn't hear yet, finally got the first public screening of That Thing coming up tomorrow, or tonight I guess, about eighteen hours from now. In case you actually don't know yet and are somehow reading this on the 25th of July, and happen to be somewhere near New York around 8pm, make your way to The Lovinger Theatre at Lehman College tonight, 'cause it'll be pretty rad of you to do so.

Anyway, the first public screening, yeah. Up to this point only about half a dozen folks have watched a mostly complete version of That Thing, who knows who many will tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it for the obvious reasons of course, but also nervous for the obvious reasons. I worry that we won't have a decent number of people show up to watch, it's a huge theater as it is, I hope it's not too empty. Didn't have much time to attempt and spread the word, I probably could have done more. I was so tempted to try and plaster the Bronx with fliers but this would have been a busy week even if there wasn't a screening. Having to prepare masters to send and other assorted things took up some time on top of everything else, I just couldn't make myself design and photocopy and tape up enough fliers to even make a dent.

The big thing that scares me though, what if people don't like it? Would anyone even tell me if they didn't? Putting something you work on for so long on public display is frighting concept. You're putting yourself on the line and unless some critic randomly strolls in and writes what he thinks of it, will I know what people think of it? I'll likely never be privy to the private conversations that'll happen once that auditorium empties out. Heh, the other day I got a random youtube comment on “One more cup of coffee” from some dude in Kentucky, along the lines of “Homeless people are murderers! Thank you so much for helping me see the light." Obviously sarcasm, and one would guess that he probably didn't like it much, or perhaps it offended, or he just thought the whole thing was stupid. Doesn't bother me though, I appreciate the perspective. But the thing I found curious was that he removed his own comment a day later. Even on the anonymous forum known as the internet people are afraid of saying what they think, how will I know if this movie I made is straight up bad? I'm sure I'll find out one way or another. Bah, I'm probably over-thinking things like I always do.

For what's its worth, over the last week I've grown a fondness for That Thing, not something I felt towards it before. Maybe because it's actually done, it's in a tolerable state and watching it doesn't make me want to rip it apart and put it back together anymore. Maybe it's because I have no choice anymore, I cannot take back what is about to be said in those eighty minutes tonight. It's out of my hands. And thus is the nature of trying to create anything, it's done, a small piece of your life is released out into the wild and you can't do anything but hope it speaks for itself. No choice but to march towards that storm and brave whatever elements the sky throws at you.

The Blank Page

The blank page. Nothing there but the possibility of everything. Shoot, I've been starring at this blank screen for way too long, and it's just a stupid blog post. Trying to physically write stuff on paper with a pen when you don't know where to start feels is a scary proposition in comparison. A void of nothing, only there to soak up ink. Where do I start, where do I go? So many choices that sprawl out in many directions, and without a map to figure out where each path leads. What if I take a wrong turn, will I have to turn back and start again? Even thinking about the task at hand has a paralyzing effect.

I feel like I'm out of shape, it's been a good while since I've sat down in a random location and started scribbling whatever came to mind. When I used to write a lot it would be for at least an hour a day, every day. Words came much more freely then. Now I'm struggling to type out this stupid blog post that's going nowhere. It's those first steps more than anything else, you know that it's going to take a while to get wherever you're going. Man, do I really want to put myself through all that? It's going to be a lot of words, a lot of pages to fill. A lot of scratched out words and torn out pages, lots of trial and error. That doesn't sound fun.

It's not like I don't have any ideas, that's the easy part. All this time not writing stuff was time I was spending thinking of things to write about. Vague ideas, rough ideas of events, moods, colors or the lack of, and hazy outlines of human bodies that only bear a slight resemblance to what might eventually become characters who speak words. It's just the sitting down and actually doing it that's difficult. Hopefully it'll get easier once that first page is done. And then the second, and so on. A step at a time, right? Maybe it won't be as awful as this stupid blog post. I apologize if you actually read through this. Ideas for blog entries are easy to come by, actually sitting down and writing said idea isn't.

Big Screens

Been a little while, been kinda busy. Nothing related to the movie, not directly at least. Just helping out a bunch of students with their first short films over the last few months, which cumulated into a film festival the other night. I've been to enough of these to where my nerves have dulled to the response from the audience to work I tangentially worked on. Even the awards elicit no real emotion from me, you get used to the mysterious judges honoring one film or another with first place despite your disagreement with the outcome. Though I suppose it should be said that I become so close to the various projects and their directors that I don't have the impartiality to argue with the choices. In any case, nowadays I sit in the back of the theater and chuckle while knowing there will be outrage, as there is nearly every year since the school began to award prizes. Not my problem anymore. Over the course of the last semester when working with these guys and gals, when the topic of prize money or what have you is broached, best I could do was to try and get across that first place is arbitrary at best, seemingly spiteful at worst. You serve no one by attempting to appeal to these arbiters of taste, so don't bother and just make the movie you want to make. Hopefully that got through, though I expect it didn't click for most until the night of the festival. At least the movies looked great on the big screen.

So how does this relate to my own movie? Not really sure, but I'll give it a shot anyway. Well, I've hit the point where I'll have to start digging into my wallet and start entering my work into a few festivals. Putting That Thing's feet to the fire, as it were. I told myself when I started making this thing that I wouldn't care about the festivals, that I would just toss this thing online and be done with it. Work on it long enough though, and I guess the goal has changed a little. A bit selfish maybe, perhaps egotistical, but I would very much like people to watch the entire thing now. The whole seventy-something minutes of thing there is, in one sitting. This movie, it's actually a movie and not a collection of shorts, at least in my mind. There's an arc, a message, a statement, a lot of things that would be lost if it was simply put on YouTube in pieces without context. So I gotta get it out there, see if any of these judges see what I see in it. Honestly, I don't really expect it to have much success, I don't know if That Thing is the kind of thing that would fill seats. But that's not my decision to make. There's nothing left to do except to start tossing disks in padded envelopes and tell myself that there's no chance, if only because it's a lot easier to accept defeat when you're not expecting to win in the first place. Hey, if I somehow do get accepted, then cool, I'll be ecstatic, it'll be nice to watch it on the big screen. But until then, I don't know. I'll probably enter a half a dozen or so, and if nothing comes of it then I'll cut my losses and move on to whatever's next.

Meh, not a very good entry, too much rambling that goes nowhere. I'll try harder next time.

It is what it is.

Guess I didn't get around to writing this 'till now, huh? So, the other week I got around to finishing the movie. Well, sorta finished, finished enough to fork over forty bucks and toss a disk of that thing in the mailbox, to a film festival whose last deadline was the day of. Such a long evening too, broke night, went nearly forty-eight hours without sleep to crank out something watchable. Most of that time was spent on audio, not nearly enough time though, hence why I'm not really finished. Frustrating two days too, I'm pretty sure I hit the breaking point with Final Cut, got to the point where making changes three layers worth of embedded sequences deep weren't registering on the final output, not to mention I had to hack the thing to five or so pieces so it would actually export without vomiting up 'out of memory' errors. But hey, it got finished, more or less. Hurray, I guess.

That Thing is a thing. It is what it is. It has become what it was meant to become, nothing more, not much less. It isn't anything but the thing that resulted from being the product of ink on paper that spread to a bunch of people which was then funneled into months of concentrated labor. It is what it is. Something I find myself saying with more regularity. It's such a meaningless statement, but one that somehow says just enough. I tend to stick that label on a lot of things I feel ambivalent about; I don't love it, but I got nothing against it either. It just is what it is.

It's a cop-out of a declaration, praise and insult all thrown into five words. Shouldn't be a surprise then that I lean on that crutch when describing that thing I made. It is what it is, a haphazardly thrown together flick that merely incurred costs of less than a grand in total. Peanuts for what is a feature length film. Try as I did, I couldn't elevate the apparent production value of the project beyond that much. But is that low budget aesthetic necessarily a bad thing? I don't know, it probably is. Probably just telling myself otherwise to ease the mind. I just keep telling myself that it is what it is. Nothing more, nothing less.

There's not much to do on it anymore. Once I'm done making the sound approach something near acceptable I'm putting the wraps on it. By the end of May I'd like to never touch that thing again, just live with it being whatever it is and move on to creating something new. No regrets, just putting an end to whatever would be a suitable word to describe the last few years.

Hobbling Towards The Home Stretch

Been a while. Tired, too tired to sit down and type nonsense when I could be spending the time trying to gather a few scant moments of sleep. If I was lucky I might have gotten four hours of rest any given night in the last two weeks. Some of it spent working on that thing, but lots of other work as well. Obviously missed the deadline for that other festival, bit of a bummer. Not to make excuses, not like anyone is reading this anyway, but it just seems as of late that I've had too many days that were 'One of those days', if you catch what I'm saying. Lots of shit went wrong at inopportune times.

Had a pair of headphones die out on me yesterday. Not the most egregious case of bad luck or whatever you want to call it, but I think it's one that nicely exemplifies the rotten time I'm having. For whatever reason the right side crapped out on me. They weren't a fancy pair or anything, I'm not going to shed a tear over thirty dollars worth of sound that lasted almost a year. But it happened in the morning, on the way to work. Too late for me to go back home and grab another pair, if I was to listen to anything I had to do so through only the left ear. You can't really enjoy music that way, or at least I can't. I'm easily distracted by the fact that I'm only hearing half the music. This music should be so much better, now it's just kinda hobbling about.

Constant compromises needed to have been made in the last few weeks in regards to that thing. Trying to do everything I had to do in a week was unrealistic at best. Assuming I would be able to work sixteen hours a day and everything worked it was still a stretch to think I could make that HBO Latino Film Fest deadline. Neither happened, so the deadline was missed. The plan was to spend the days using After Effects on a computer at a friends place to finish the small number of effects and do the color grading there. The computer I'm typing this on isn't suitable for the editing of HD video so said friend was gracious enough to allow me to work on it in his basement. The problems begin to arise when I realized that he no longer has a copy of After Effects newer than 7.0. The version he did have must have been at least six years old, too old to take advantage of various scripts and plug-ins I had to streamline the work I was planning to do. Not good. After a bit of panicking, the decision was made to fuck it, just do everything in Final Cut. Also an old version, old enough to not include Color. So a lot of the following two or three weeks were spent grinding out an attempt to do these otherwise simple effects in a very tedious fashion. Not fun at all.

It has taken way longer than I thought it would. And even still, I'm not pleased with the results. I'm wasting so much energy and brain cells on a lot of work I'm probably going to throw away when I have some actual free time over the summer to start that phase of post production over. However, more festival deadlines approach, so I gotta get something presentable done. Many late nights, many cans of Red Bull and bags of shitty fast food to sustain myself through those long days and nights. It ceased to be fun a while back.

It's like those headphones, you're just in the mood to crank up the volume and simply enjoy some good music, but that busted driver in the right earcup won't let you. It grates on the nerves, wears down whatever morale you build up. You know, sometimes you get into that groove, and that's when you're at your most productive. And then sometimes something will pull that needle across the turntable and that kills the mood. I'm telling ya, yesterday was just 'One of those days'. Sleep late, wake early, headphones die, lots of work, shitty food, and then you get to finally sit down and start cranking away at that movie. Then the record gets scratched, your computer decides to cease functioning. Just up and shut itself off at two in the am, and pressing the power button repeatedly does jack shit. Kinda sucks. You just don't expect an expensive machine like that to just up and blow itself up like that. Hope my friend still has his warranty.

Lousy way to end the night. Didn't lose much work since I habitually save often nowadays, but that just harshed my mellow. Was getting close having that thing resemble something complete. And now I gotta find another computer to work with. And buy another pair of headphones.

Time Out of Mind

Time is just one of those crazy things you don't think about until you realize you don't have much of it left. Unlike most things, like say, money, fame, or power, an abundance of time is usually seen as a bad thing. At best, saying something like “I got all the time in the world” is usually meant as an aside. Of course having too little time isn't very pleasant either, but you only bring up time when you don't have enough of it anyway so that's not saying much. Well, I believe I've reached the point where I'm talking about time.

It's almost April. We're only a little beyond halfway past March, but considering I started cutting the flick in January, April appears to have sneaked up on me. Back in January was when I sent a reminder to myself to enter a festival who's last deadline was the first of April, and here we are with a movie that is still not complete. I haven't even locked the picture yet. Oh man.

I was doing well to a point. After a slow start in the first few weeks of the new year, I started hacking away at That Thing like a mad man until late February, when that screening took place. Taking a break can be productive. You'll wear the brain down concentrating on something for too long, it helps to separate yourself from the work and eventually come back with a fresh perspective. However, I think I'm taking a break that's gone on a few weeks longer than it should have. I haven't looked at the movie since, but pretty sure I've figured out all that I need to, I've gone past resting and moved on to wasting time. It's that laziness at work again, preventing me from doing any work. That and still trying to shoot a few last minute pieces of stuff. Keep telling myself that once I get that stuff I'll get back to work. Hopefully I listen.

But yeah, an actual deadline is looming, I don't have all the time in the world anymore. I'm figuring if all goes according to plan there will be a point where I need to do two or three weeks worth of work in one. And that's going to suck. But maybe it's a blessing in disguise. If there was no deadline would I ever actually finish this thing? Or would I just meander about, forever tweaking and never finishing. Yeah, let's get this thing over with already.

BOHICA

Riding uptown on the... M5 bus, I think, after a nice afternoon of wandering about, I start getting calls. Calls I couldn't really afford to pick up since I was running low on minutes for my pre-paid, seven dollar cell phone I got a few years back on one of those day after Christmas sales. Nothing fancy, it has twelve buttons, a sixteen color screen that looks like something from the Windows 3.1 era, and the most annoying ringtone I could find since since the headphones usually do a good job of muffling the screams of anything less. Debit card has been maxed out for a while now, so if I were to inject a few more minutes into that cheap-ass phone it would result in my taking it up the ass in overdraft charges. Any other day and I'd just turn the phone off and wait until I got home to reply via e-mail or something, but not that day. That Saturday I was gathering some folks, trusted friends to check out a rough cut of That Thing and odds are that they would need directions, or to notify me of their running late (they always do) or something else somewhat important, so I couldn't just ignore it. Not much choice but to bite the bullet and BOHICA.

The M5 was an enjoyable ride up most of Manhattan, the headphones were spitting some enjoyable tunes, but I was trying to think of anything but this first screening. Wasn't succeeding, you work that hard on something and of course you'll be eager to finally show it off to someone other than yourself. If I were the type to get good grades in grade school I figure it would be like that feeling, wanting to show off your super fancy report card to your mom, or something like that. Except there's that F in spelling that you don't really care about, but mars the whole thing for her. I guess that's not too far off from what actually happened, though it was both more and less serious than getting an F in spelling. Bah, who needs spelling anyway?

You stare at something long enough and you lose all perspective on it. Repeat a phrase enough times and it loses all meaning, I think that's happened to me and this movie. I was starring so intently at the waves I forgot to look past them and take a glance at the ocean. I wasn't seeing the forest beyond the trees. It's been so long since I've taken a bath I've forgotten that I smell like shit. And insert another handful of cliché sayings if you so desire.

It was good to get a fresh perspective on That Thing. Nerve-wracking, but good. Constantly glancing around the room trying to gauge the reactions from the viewers faces, not really succeeding. I can't tell just by looking. Nonetheless, it was good to have fresh eyeballs taking a look and pointing out all the confusing, ridiculous, and otherwise bad looking and sounding things that were contained within those eighty minutes. I don't know if I took it well at first, certainly tried to put on a brave face but I don't know how easy it was to see past it. Inside it almost felt like the end of the world or something equally depressing. You know, spending all that time to create a pile of garbage and such. Oh man, if I wasn't so broke I would have liked to drown my sorrows away that night.

Time has a habit of healing all wounds, I have since become much more optimistic about the whole thing. Haven't looked at the movie since but coming up with a bunch of changes I'd like to make. A few extra shots I'd like to shoot, rearranging and shortening some scenes, uncutting a piece I previously thought wouldn't work but now might, that kind of stuff. Most importantly, the pacing needs a reevaluation. Aside from parts feeling unfocused, I can't just let the movie linger on, building up to something that doesn't resolve or relieve the tension.  I just hope I have enough, or am able to obtain enough in the next week or two footage wise to solve that problem. Like I mentioned before, part of me wants to move on. Just wrap That Thing up, take the lessons learned and make new stuff, but I can't leave it half-assed. Only another month or two of this is gonna be needed, can't waste all this effort without at least feeling like I've done all I can do. The screening accomplished that much, made me realize I have not exhausted the possibilities yet.

Really glad to have friends who weren't afraid to say my shit stank, would have been embarrassing to hop on the bus smelling as bad as the hobo who hasn't taken a bath in a few months. Sometimes you just have to bend over and take it. It's for your own good.

First Screening

So, progress is being made. Watched through that DVD a few times, reordered a few scenes, and kept picking at all the scabs I kept running into. Those awkward cuts that would distract, kept trying to smooth those over. Mostly successful, I think. Long nights this week, longer than usual because I was getting ready to burn a new DVD, this time for the consumption of eyes other than my own.

The time has finally come to show That Thing I've been working on for so long to other people. That Thing that's been floating around for years in my head, and is now in a mostly finished state. A bit scary, mostly because of the 'mostly' part of the mostly finished state. It's still a rough cut, and it's being presented as such, but that still scares me. I haven't had the chance to make it presentable yet, that part of the editing process comes after the picture is locked, and I don't want to commit to that until some folks have seen it, but I hate to show it in an unfinished state, and so on and so on. You get the idea. Sound is the big one, it sucks to go from shot to shot with each one having a different consistency of sound due to microphone placement and wind noise and traffic and such. Stuff that would be equalized and covered by ambient sounds and foley and compressed to make a legible sounding thing. For example, the raw versions of the scenes that consist of “One more cup of coffee” are in this rough cut, and it doesn't sound so hot. I didn't even do as much as I should have when I released the finished version of One more cup a while back and it still sounds so much better than what's on this DVD. Thankfully that's probably some of the worst sounding stuff so I'm optimistic about fixing the rest of the movie, but the viewers won't get that benefit tomorrow.

Then again, I don't think that's what I'm really worried about. I think I worry about the movie itself. How are those folks going to react? Especially since now there's probably going to be a few more folks showing up than I first anticipated, folks that don't really know me the way the close friends do. For their sake I worry about the presentation, but I also wonder how they'll take to that film-making style of mine. That rambling nonsense I tend to make, how's that gonna go over tomorrow? Will the movie make sense, will it resonate, will it bore? Above all else I just hope it's entertaining when it's all said and done and I how no idea how anyone other than myself will think of it. I don't even know what I think of it, as I mentioned before I tend to swing between love and hate on this thing, and I'm currently going towards hate. If I don't like it what hope is there for anyone else?

It's almost like I'm heading towards the gallows tomorrow. Awaiting judgment after being imprisoned for months. Not even remembering the crime I was charged with, let alone whether or not I even committed said crime. At the mercy of my peers, hoping they'll be kind but also wanting to hear the truth behind their thoughts, sticking my neck out ready and willing to receive whatever punishment I deserve. I guess either way it should be fun, I mean how often does one get the opportunity to receive honest criticism?Not actually losing my head, and what doesn't kill me could make me stronger. It'll make this movie stronger... God, that sounded corny.

Context

So hey, a few days ago a somewhat significant milestone was reached. Finally took the various pieces of That Thing and put them together, creating something that vaguely resembles a movie. Still a few holes that I'm aiming on putting some plaster over in the next few days, but the large majoritity is there. Hooray for me.

This rough cut is significant for a few reasons. The obvious one being that it signifies that this project is actually nearing completion, or at least something I can show a few folks and start getting feedback on instead of living in a void of solitude. Eventually you hit that point where you're not sure if that joke you wrote a few years ago and have scrubbed through dozens of times while editing even makes sense anymore, it'll be nice to see if those points of interest garner any sort of reaction from fresh sets of eyes. I can actually show this to a few friends without pausing every few minutes and feebly explaining why the timing's off or why this shot is too long or what some slug is filling in the space of. Not having to verbally run through the convoluted order of the scenes and watch as their eyes glaze over in confusion should be nice.

Speaking of which, the other reason I'm happy that I'm holding a quickly encoded copy of the whole thing in my hand is because I get to pop it into a DVD player and watch it. Away from the uncomfortable chair sitting in front of a computer monitor. No keyboard with a space-bar constantly tempting me to stop and quickly adjust this or that. I get to watch all these scenes in context and start looking at the bigger picture. Context. Already, starting to notice that scenes that seemed fine by themselves are way too long in their current states, when sandwiched between two other scenes. Because of that context now I could figure out that this could go there, could probably chop that in half and move another scene earlier to compensate and... that probably sounds really vague but you get the idea.

Most important I think, I'm finally beginning to see the waves. The delicate nuances of pacing that could make or break this movie. Over this last summer I found a really cool spot somewhere in Manhattan, stone steps that lead straight into the Hudson river without a fence or anything stopping anyone from jumping or falling in. A nice quiet spot where one could just pull out a notebook and scribble shit down and not be bothered. A great view of the sunset fading out and better yet, the sunset after the sunset. You know, where the sky and clouds turns into crazy colors and you sit in awe of what nature is capable of. Wearing headphones, as I tend to do, almost feels blasphemous there, it felt wonderful to just bask in the quiet, the only noise being the waves crashing against these steps. On nice windy evenings I'd just take off my shoes and soak in those waves.

Sometimes it was disappointing to see a very calm day, where the water wouldn't even rise above that first step, that's no fun. Sometimes those waves would become so fierce as to punch me in the face without my seeing it coming, and dousing my clothing in the process. Walking home with a wet shirt and socks ain't much fun. But on those good days where that river would mix it up, where I could sit in that serenity and become lost in various thoughts were always good days.

Or maybe this was just a labored and really shitty metaphor, got carried away. Sorry about that. But yes, with the context of seeing these scenes side by side, now I have to figure out how to take this flick through its highs and lows, the serious and funny parts, the crashing waves and reflective stillness, all without losing that delicate attention of the audience.

Hate/Love

Heya folks, quick update- still toiling away at the editing of the movie. Running late hours for the last few weeks, noticing a trend with regards to my disposition at the end of these days. I seem to have a hate/love relationship with That Thing. Always have, suspect I always will, as I do with anything else I create. Is that a common dilemma with director or writer types, or is that just my problem? It's this odd, frustrated sensation when I'm down, and a cheerful, optimistic state of mind when feeling good about whatever I'm working on. And it flips every other day.

A few months back while still shooting but having not shot anything in a while, I was feeling really down. Walking around as I tend to do when I have nothing better to do, I think I thought myself into a boiling point and furiously scribbled out the following;
“Trying to make a movie without money is a death-march of pain and agony one must endure to end up with a mediocre product. Right now I feel angry enough to kick somebody in the face while at the same time I just want to sit in some random corner and cry. I obviously can't do either, one would get me arrested and the other would get funny looks. I want to confide in someone these feelings of frustration but I'm not close enough with anyone that I think wouldn't be bored of listening to my whining. Right now I want to drink my troubles away but am too broke to do so, at best I might get slightly tipsy. What a shitty life I live.”

Man, kinda depressing. At least the bright side to that was I felt a lot better after writing that out. Like vomiting bad vibes out of the system. Sometimes it gets worse, but I suppose everyone has their ups and downs. A few days ago I was hitting a down. Having sorta rotten luck at the moment, shit poor for one. Have no money, for nothing. I got left is a Metrocard with about sixteen bucks worth of fares left. So to stretch that out as far as I can I've been walking to and from work, a good five miles each way. Which means I don't get much sleep since I gotta leave home at least an hour earlier, and I get most of my work done at night, which means leaving at ten and getting home near midnight. The walking ain't bad, if it wasn't for the fact that I'm also starving, most days I get by on toast with ham, cheese and oj for breakfast, and a can of Dr. Pepper for dinner since that's all that left in the work fridge. Not good, but I'm surviving. Heh, still got plenty of fat to spare, hardly even feel hungry. Oh man, one day I'll look back at this and laugh. Maybe.

Sometimes I really hate the movie. I'll working on it and telling myself that this is hot garbage. The best I can say is that it's my first movie, and the next one will be better. I just want to squeeze this turd out of the way and move on. But then sometimes I'm thinking it's great. Like today, finally putting music and some voice over into the mix, and I'm loving it. Today, the chase scene in particular was really awesome, like sit down and just watch it five times in a row awesome. I crawl out of the basement feeling pretty good. I think I can honestly say I'm about two nights away from actually putting it all together and getting a rough cut of the entire thing. Progress is being made, and that's really the joy of editing. Chipping away for weeks at this daunting chunk of raw stone and slowly carving it into something resembling a thing.

It's probably why I've been working so hard the last few days, because the end is actually somewhere in sight even though in reality I'm probably only at the halfway point. The self imposed deadlines keep getting pushed back, but I'm starting to get near an actual hard deadline if I'm to finish this by the end of March. Despite my hatred for this movie, there's still a part of me that wants to throw away money by entering it into a few festivals, and some of those deadlines are not too far off. Half of me still loves That Thing enough to be hopeful of a public screening. And the only way I'll find out which side is right is to finish this stupid thing.

Teaser Trailers

What is a guy to do at three in the morning when he has nothing better to do than sleep, but can't even do that? Kill time on the internet, I suppose. Which is what I happen to do quite a bit of. On this particular night I'm just browsing through Vimeo, typed “teaser trailer” into the search field and just scanning through the results and clicking on anything mildly interesting. Figured I'd jot down whatever thoughts come to mind as the eye catches these quick glances at what I presume are much larger productions which are in near finished states. Though already made my way through a dozen or so before I started, bit of a shame I didn't start doing this sooner.

“Brainwashed Love”
http://vimeo.com/8896502
Happen to be the first one I ran into, and I was quite impressed at first. Some decent typography work, a nice little catchy/poppy beat with some chip-tune-y stuff thrown in, I was getting pumped before I even saw any footage. And woah, this thing looks like it has a budget, nice lighting and color grading, and a really crisp picture. Looks pretty professional.
Oh, love story. Oh, guy and gal sitting at coffee house table eating ice cream. Oh, sassy girl talking frankly about fucking. Oh, projector room and stoned out dudes and bikes and emotion. Chick spinning around  in flapper attire. It's an 'indie' flick. Not my cup of tea I guess. Maybe I'm being a dick, but it starts checking off the cliches from the list in my head too quickly for me to keep up.

“12”
http://vimeo.com/8895957
Uh, it's Russian. You can tell it's Russian 'cause the dude actually uploaded it as a mkv file. Heh, who does that? Not us spoiled Americans with our Macs and our Quicktimes. Old people around a table. A knife, and ooh, explosions. Too bad I don't understand anything they're saying. And it ends on a serious note, I guess it's a serious movie.

“Death of the Dead”
http://vimeo.com/8875907
Not so serious is this zombie flick. Zombies seem to be a theme among teaser trailers I run into at three in the morning, but hey, this one was actually good. Don't think I've seen ninja zombies before, and while it starts off as another cliche low budget thing, it actually grows on me. I guess it pushes all the right campy violence filled comedy buttons. Production wise it's very nice, I don't expect low budget zombie movies to look and sound this good. Acting doesn't look bad either, the other thing that usually doesn't hold up in these sorts of things, at least as far as the leading lady goes. A light hearted popcorn flick I'd actually want to watch, cool.

“All In”
http://vimeo.com/8845997
Words flying at screen, generic action movie music, and production stills instead of footage? Lame.

“Up/Down”
http://vimeo.com/8830849
Welp, it's a shot of a candle flame, and some voice over. Not even a real candle, some shitty particle effects. Lame looking title, flashing some pictures of famous people maybe? Oh snap! Dude walks out of flames!... Kinda shitty. I only rag on this one because the director dude points out that investment opportunities are available, seems early to be asking for money when that sorry looking thing is the trailer.

“Savageland Pilot”
http://vimeo.com/8805931
Also lame, putting the HBO stinger before your obviously not on HBO video. It's a dude, walking down a poorly lit hallway. With no shoes on, mind you, wouldn't want to get the carpet dirty. And then, blinking. Does cutting to black and then back five times a second actually do anything other than annoy? It makes me close out of the window, that's what.

“It's Not the Same”
http://vimeo.com/8798759
This one is like the opposite of the first one, as in at first I hated this. Well, you got a guy and a gal, talking to each other. And the dude's a writer, and the music's kinda doing nothing. But it grows on me, I think because it is the opposite of the super polished 'indie' flick. There is a taste of a personal story in this, there's a roughness in this. There's a realness (if that's even a word) in this, in that it's not using lavish sets but rather existing in a small piece of the world, telling its own small story. The trailer does linger on a bit long but I'm curious to see if the movie actually goes anywhere, so I guess it did it's job.

"Minus8"
http://vimeo.com/8729151
It's an action movie. So stuff happens that has no substance. To me it seems obvious that the guys who made this are trying as hard as they can to make it look like this is an expensive production, and I can't fault them for that. But it bores me to tears. Generic action music, Lots of close ups of nothing just to emphasize that they have expensive looking props, and the whole thing takes place in a dark void. A bunch of guys that know how to use computers but didn't bother writing something that means something. Or at least I'm assuming so from the trailer. Checked their site and the 'exclusive' clip, and yeah. It's an action movie, I guess. Seems like the sort of thing where the 'making of' extras on the DVD will be twice as long as the actual movie. Very bland.


"Getting Outer Space"
http://vimeo.com/8687012
And one last one, 'cause I'm finally getting sleepy. First few shots and I'm thinking, oh no, bored white kids make another sketch comedy group. But wait, no, this one's actually good, or at least looks it. A coming of age thing, but it's cute, I dig it. I'm using too many commas, I'm going to bed.

Assemblin' an Assembly

So, I've been spending the last few weeks editing. Mostly my own stuff, though every once in a while other work comes in which slows things down a bit. I don't mind though, gives me a chance to take a break from That Thing. Editing is hard. No, hard isn't the right word, though it does become a grind at times, this being one of those times. Wading through so much footage is becoming a daunting, seemingly endless task that's bringing me nothing but frustration. Didn't help that the other day I lost three hours of work because I wasn't diligent enough in saving before Final Cut Pro crashed. Lesson learned the hard way I suppose.

The big thing, I think, is the clash of the present me and the me of a year ago. There's a small amount of pain being inflicted by listening to my directing the cast and crew, the same way some can't stand seeing themselves in photos or video. My voice grates on my nerves. More than that though, I'm constantly questioning choices made, trying to remember why they were done in the first place. Oh, if only I knew then what I know now... It's at least amusing when I find my present self hoping the past self does something like adjust the framing of a shot, or mention a different approach of the scene to an actor, then breathing a sigh of relief when the past self obliges. Laughing out loud at the little moments of genius an actor will interject or accidental moments of beauty that I didn't plan for or notice through the little lcd display become alive in retrospect. That helps.

I don't quite know if editing an entire movie by yourself is normal, I'm assuming it isn't, but it's been interesting seeing how much the self grows over the years. I mean, the person who wrote the script isn't the person who directed the shoot, isn't the person who is now editing what the other two did. Time has caused me to forget most of the thought process behind decisions made years ago, and thus the writer and director no longer exist on this earth. Would the self of a year ago argue with the self of today on the choice of takes, or how long to hold a certain shot? Would he object to an attempt to change the mood of a piece? To add or remove scenes or perhaps change the order? Guess it doesn't really matter, right now I'm hoping that I am removed enough from the shooting process to look at this footage without a bias of how it's supposed to be.

As one can imagine, it's been lonely editing alone. When I'm working on other people's projects, they're usually there. So I have an obligation (within reason) to always be attentive and productive. The hardest part so far has been trying to keep myself motivated. If I'm in a shitty mood then it makes it really hard to sit there for hours trying to work. I'll usually just end up leaving instead of stewing in my own frustration. A problem I've had since elementary school, I'll always put my all and then some when working on group projects, but when it comes to my own homework I couldn't care less. Well, I could, but not enough to actually do the homework, grades be damned. So yeah, progress has been slow. I think the lack of a deadline does that. But hey, got this far, no reason to quit now. Just gotta remember that a bunch of folks helped out with this thing, this isn't homework.