Boring Monkey

And it ends and it begins again

2012-01-07T00:48:00.000-05:00

It is the future, once again. Those first few days of the year where you keep writing the wrong date on checks (people still use those?), where you still haven't broken your resolutions, and where you keep telling yourself that you're living in the future because it's past the year two thousand. Well, the future has become the present, as it always will. And we will always try to discard the past in chasing after that future, which will also become the past. Eventually. And it will end and it will begin again.

That Thing has finally ended, just uploaded the last episode the other night. And now I am truly done with it. At one point I did want to put up a blooper reel, had something half edited. However, the hard drive in which That Thing resided on died a few months ago. I had most of the important stuff backed up, but in order to finish that reel I'd have to recapture the twenty something hours of tapes again, and I just don't got it in me to expend that much time and effort on it anymore. Need to move on, discard the past and all that.

Twenty-eleven in general felt like a drag. I don't think I got much done. Concrete work on my own stuff at least. Wrote a few scripts, most of which died at the first draft. Did shoot some stuff at least, refueled my desire to make things again. So it begins again with a new script. This fifty page thing I finished a few days ago, that I'd like to make a twenty-something minute short out of. The real challenge is going to be to try and attempt to shoot it within the next month, which means there's a lot of work ahead that needs to get done.

I think I got the hardest part out of the way, the transcribing of the words from handwritten paper to a format that can spit out pdfs. Writing, I enjoy writing, most of the time. Sure, sometimes you get stuck and frustrated, but you put enough time and burn enough brain cells and the problem will be solved. And once it is, there's no better feeling than have your brain send those electronic impulses through the nerves to the hand, where a pen will turn ink into words. The sensation of those strokes must be what... each stride a marathon runner feels on the twentieth mile of a race. And when you cross that red tape? So nice.

On the other hand, typing those words in again is about a mundane activity as I could think of. Utterly boring and near exhausting to do, but it must be done. It used to be that I'd revise while it's being done, but that just slows it down even more, best to churn through it and work it out later. But yeah, that's done. Now it is time to edit. Need to cut this script in half, and soon. Want to send a draft to friends eventually, then to actors and then? Production time. Edging ever closer to the edge of that cliff, near jumping off again. Haven't done it in years, hopefully I don't hit the ground too hard.

Buried Memories

2011-10-26T01:01:00.001-04:00

No matter how much I disparage myself when reflecting on past works, I'm still glad I made them. Usually it takes a few days for that new project smell to wear off and I begin to hate it, and with That Thing I knew it was awful by the third month into editing. But I don't regret making it. Aside from the fun of taking part in the process, the lessons learned from the reflecting on the mistakes made afterward, there's at least one more good excuse for making something when it was made. It becomes a little time capsule, preserving a moment in time.

Much like a picture of yourself looked back on decades later, revealing stories told so long ago you nearly forgot them. I remember hearing somewhere that memories work like a record, as in the vinyl platters that spin around and make music when a needle is dragged across. The more times you play that record, drag that needle through and wear down those grooves, the more warped and noisy it becomes. A memory you don't think of is like that sealed album going for exorbitant amounts on ebay; when it's actually played back all these years later it's as beautiful and warm sounding as the day it was pressed, as faithful a reproduction of musicians playing fifty years ago as you're going to get. That dusty 45 you keep spinning every week? Full of crackles and pops, sounding like frying bacon. But it's yours, you know where every imperfection is, and if you hear the restored CD re-release you'll think it sounds like crap. That's not what you remember, it's too clean.

A roundabout way of going about it, but yeah. Film is kinda the same way, making one at least. That Thing was an attempt at trying to preserve a few of those memories. 138th Street in The Bronx, in particular. I've been walking down that road for decades, or at least riding the Bx33 on it. It doesn't feel like it's changed much, but when you walk that path every day you realize those grooves have worn into your subconscious. It's probably cleaner than it was twenty years ago, but I didn't notice that gradual change. It's the deep scratches that catch the eye, like when they finally closed down The Key a few years back. It was this roller skating rink, not that I went there much. The mother wouldn't approve, she was kind of overprotective. But it was this brightly colored building that was always there, until they painted over those pink and yellow walls. I think there's a window factory there now? It feels like a shame that it's gone, a place buried in the memories of the regulars and any photos living in a shoebox somewhere. A small unwritten piece of history, without anyone to tell the tale.

I guess I wanted to try and save a few of those memories in a form that's more permanent than a shoebox and hearsay. And sure enough, another scratch was made on 138th about a month ago. That Kentucky Fried Chicken on 3rd Avenue was torn down. The one featured in the second episode of That Thing. That story wasn't too far off from the truth; back in the days of the old South Bronx people did say that they sold pistols behind the counter of that place. The mother wouldn't approve of stepping inside that place either, though she never elaborated on why. I think I heard the story again when reading “Amazing Grace” by Jonathan Kozol, but it's been years since I read that book. They closed it down, then reopened years later only to close it again. Might just have been slow business that killed it the second time. And it stood there for years, until they knocked down those walls.

138th Street obviously isn't the same place anymore. I just tried to dig out what few memories were left of that childhood before it was all gone. And now that old fried chicken place, and a bunch of other little stories live on.

Impotent.

2011-10-23T01:45:00.000-04:00

Can impotent be a feeling? A state of mind? Not just a sexual dysfunction? 'Cause I'm kinda feeling that way. The pipes are working, it's just the brain that's feeling limp and lifeless. I don't know, when your being revolves around something you're currently incapable of performing, it kinda gets you down. Makes me feel like a waste of a human being.

Been hacking away at another idea for a script over the last month or two. A self imposed deadline for a first draft of a half hour short is about two weeks away, and I only scribbled out maybe three usable pages. Traveled to my usual spot today in hopes of churning a few more out, but only got through about half a page of the usual wrote and tired dialogue between the main character and a potential love interest before realizing that this was the crap I was trying to avoid. More of the same tripe. Ugh. Now I want to toss this idea in the trash, it's going nowhere. It would be the third script I've ditched in the last year, since I finished that feature length one that I wrote in two weeks and ended up hating.

Hating everything that your hands create, doubting every step. Makes you want to stop walking. Lying in bed doing nothing sounds like an easy life. Why can't I do that for a few years?

Feeling really useless right now. I don't know what I'm doing with my life. I've practically resigned myself to the fact that I'm not going to have a normal life. Forever alone and all that. It gets lonely sometimes, but more than that it's like I have no purpose. I admire the 99% of Americans doing the nine to five, living life the only way they know how. Sure, a third of the day is given to the man, and another third is devoted to sleep, but the third left over? That's freedom right there. Not just economic freedom, but a mental freedom. You're reasonably assured a stable couple of decades.

Meanwhile, what the fuck am I doing aside from wasting time? Spending time in front of a blank page, wanting to destroy the pen in my hand out of frustration of not being creative enough to create anything. Or succumb to urges of substance abuse, but being too chicken-shit to even do that. Just end up pacing around for hours, thinking about entering that bar but coming up with a hundred and one excuses to do anything but. I'll do it tomorrow.

Today was a waste, I'll do everything tomorrow.

One Hour Photo

2011-10-07T01:04:00.001-04:00

Shooting film is a pretty neat thing. There's something near magical nowadays about the physical aspect of it. You mean to say that when you let light fall on this plastic sheet for a fraction of a second, then add a bunch of chemicals, the whole process will uncover an actual picture?! How quaint.

It does change your mindset when shooting, even when just observing the world around you. You start to see pictures, stories that can be told by stopping time to that fraction of a second. You carry around a camera in hopes of catching that brief instant that walks the fine line between documenting a happening and capturing a genuine moment.

The flip of the mirror becomes the blink of an eye, and with that you move on. With a digital camera you can futz with it, take a half dozen shots in search of a good picture, but when you're shooting film you do the thinking before you pull the trigger. You slow down to find the light, the composition, the meaning behind the shot before you even shoot it. I've learned a lot in the few months I've messed around with it, and I'm only scratching the surface.

The only real bummer with film is that it costs money. At least there isn't that huge initial investment, just a slow chipping away at your wallet. To the tune of about ten bucks a roll. It's not bad, considering that covers the film, development, and scanning to a cd, with results that could look as good as a shot out of a camera costing two grand. And the instant gratification isn't nearly as cool as popping in a disk of stuff you took weeks ago and taking a gander. But it can't always be that easy.

Picked up a roll from the local CVS that does one hour photo, stuff I shot over the summer but only just got the funds to process. Usually the first thing I do is check the negative, make sure something is on it. Looked alright. But I couldn't take a proper look at the scanned pictures until I just stumbled home a few minutes ago, when I ran into this:

lol. I didn't take this.

Heh, I think think they mixed up the CDs. It isn't the first time it's happened either. Guess I'll be stopping by the CVS again tomorrow. Not to hate on them, they do a better job with the developing and scanning than any other affordable place within walking distance (Edit, a few days later: Scratch that. How do you cut the negative through the picture?! Sigh.). It's more amusing than anything else.

A Merman I Should Turn To Be

2011-09-01T01:43:00.002-04:00

On the eve of summer, as children return to school and I return to the routine that is the daily grind, I look back on the last two months and realize that it was more productive than I've been in a while. You know, I did stuff. Actual stuff, not sitting around complaining about the heat. Maybe it helps that it was a relatively mellow August, the humidity didn't really grind me down like it usually does. Shot stuff, edited stuff, got shit done.

Most importantly, I came to the realization that I think I finally found what I want to do with my life. You see, I got this weird habit I've been following for the last ten years, more like most of my life: I'm a quitter. A lazy quitter. I get into an activity, say for example playing music, or anything really. At first I like it, it grows into a near obsessive fondness, and then when I hit the point where I've invested too much- I grow tired and bored of said activity. End up quitting cold turkey and move on to the next obsession leaving it all behind, including the folks associated with that activity. Not with this film production thing, I think I love doing this more now than I ever have.

There was a period a few months after That Thing where it got dark. Invested two years of my life making a mediocre flick, wasn't in much of a mood to do much. But I guess I recovered? Working on various no-budget productions of friends over the last few months reinvigorated my fondness for this work. Despite waking up at four in the morning and running off two hours of sleep I enjoyed doing it. If I could somehow figure out how to make a living doing this then I would never work another day in my life.

The biggest obstacle in the way? I think I'm still half-assing it. Dipping my toes in, not going for broke. Am I content just doing this stuff in my spare time? I've got a friend who's an actor, he's been at it for years, trying to catch a real break. Dude just got into a prestigious school for his masters, potentially diving into a mountain of debt. But he's doing what he wants to do, he's happy. I'm too chickenshit to take that sort of risk. But could I see myself doing anything but what I want? Six months ago I was having a conversation with this cinematographer dude, well, at least as much of a conversation as I could muster, and the dude had some profound advice. How many people want to do what I want to do? Hundreds, thousands in New York City alone? What would make me stand out, why would they pick me over someone who wants it bad? There's a bunch of folks trying harder, I'm just dipping my toes in. Ain't going to swim that way. If I want to do this I can't half-ass it. Why haven't I listened?

On another tangent... I let my youth pass me by. I saw it come and go, utterly self-aware of the process of growing up, refusing to accept that was the way it was supposed to be done. Nothing in particular, I just mean living life. You were supposed to make a fool of yourself when you were a kid. Say stupid things, be socially awkward. That's how you learned the right things to say, how to act in the company of your peers. I'm normally not one to regret things, but I regret not doing regrettable things, making mistakes when it was expected of you to. Where I'm currently standing, not only am I self-conscious of the learning process but it's all sitting underneath a layer of being too old to pull that sort of nonsense. I'll have to rip off those scabs eventually.

Tangent number two, since the fingers are still in the mood to type. Crowd funding in its various incarnations: what's the deal with that? Specifically in regards to film-making. Am I just getting old and cranky or does it seem like a stupid idea? Asking random strangers for money to make your own selfish project? Most independent film is selfish, don't mean it in a derogatory way. I guess you gotta have enough of a ego to believe that what you're creating is worth other people's time and ticket sales. But to extend the hand and beg for cash before you've even made it? I don't know, what happened to maxing out credit cards and subjecting yourself to medical experiments to raise the cash? If you have to ask for it, do you deserve it?

I don't know, been seeing filmmakers who I follow on the social networks trying to raise large amounts of money for large projects, but they already have large followings they've earned over years of providing content in one way or another. They've put in the work, they'll be fine. But what gets me are the fools who are trying to scrape together two grand for a short. What could you do for two grand that you couldn't do yourself? How many fans do you actually have? Ones that enjoy your work so much that they would dig into their pockets during these rough times and hand you money for what in the end is the selfish endeavor that's called independent filmmaking?

Who am I to be talking this trash in the first place? I know nothing about money. All I know is that if it's a story worth telling I'd tell it by any means necessary and forgo the two grand in rental fees. But I know nothing.

Final tangent: Listening to Jimi Hendrix's “Electric Ladyland” while crossing the Madison Avenue Bridge at two am the other night was beautiful. The tracks ceased to exist and the songs melted into each other. The old lady asking for change or drunk group of Mexicans throwing their styrofoam cups of beer at me as I walked home couldn't harsh my mellow. It was just a very chilled evening.

Sitting

2011-07-15T02:54:00.003-04:00

Sitting in front of a computer. Not doing much of anything really, just watching microwaves explode on YouTube. Thinking about anything but what the mind has been on as of late.

Sitting on a bus. Air conditioned, though it was actually a nice enough day today. Watching various women sit across from me, all shapes and sizes. Thinking about those women, where are they going, what's in store for the rest of this day once they get off the bus. Wondering if they're in relationships, what sort of music is blasting through those earbuds. Noticing a fancy ring, watching them reach their stop and get off before I do.

Sitting on concrete steps that lead into the Hudson River. Watching the sun set. A pretty clear day, not much in the way of clouds, which makes for a boring magic hour. At least the waves were alive and kicking, relentlessly pounding against those stairs to no avail. Took off my shoes, let my pale feet soak in the warm breeze and a few brief moments of the sun's rays. Stayed until it was dark and the few strangers also watching have left, the only company were a few confused ducks. Lots of quacking, I'm assuming asking one another for directions. Far be it from me to point the way.

Sitting on a bench at the High Line, once an abandoned elevated railroad track turned into a beautiful park. Watching the moon rise. Found a small part of park with the lights off and it didn't occur to me until after I looked up as to why that was. The brightest moon I've ever seen, I look down and see I'm actually being illuminated by that blue glow. I've never seen that happen, after all these years I don't think I've been outside during a full moon in a place that wasn't saturated with street lights. Saw a bunch of folks pass by, nearly all in pairs. Hearing small glimpses of conversations, wondering why nobody else seems to notice.

Sitting in a subway train, watching the stations pass by. Given up on thinking, just zoning out on some music when I notice the mother with her child getting on. I give my seat up, stand the rest of the way home.

Heat of the Summer

2011-07-06T20:14:00.001-04:00

Haven't been sleeping well lately. For many reasons. Being in the midst of summer is chief among them. The humidity feels abrasive, moving through it creates a friction I'd rather not subject myself to. Doing anything feels like a chore. I don't really feel like doing anything.

Last night I was up until four or five am, the norm for this time of the year. Accompanied only by an increasingly old fashioned circular fan to push the air around. That and a water-bug about as long as the sandal used to squash it was wide. The heat tends to drive them out of whatever crevasse they were hiding in. Once I did drift off I had strange dreams of doing battle with twelve foot tall roaches, gladiator style with a sword and shield. Wasn't a fair fight, they had three sets of weapons against my single pair of arms.

Awoke sometime in the afternoon, tried to muster up the energy to do anything productive today. This entry is about as good as it got. I have had the time to start catching up on a backlog of “This American Life” episodes, a pretty cool public radio show if you're not familiar with it. A list of shows sitting on the ipod stretching back to late November, kept putting it off 'cause of work and such. But the list is being whittled down, and now I worry about what am I going to do once I actually catch up. At this rate I got another two weeks to go. What then?

So what's the deal with...

2011-07-05T01:08:00.000-04:00

I know, a shitty way to start a post, but yeah. So what is the deal with people trying to take pictures of fireworks?

I’m down over around the west side of Manhattan, not having anything better to do when it hits me that the fireworks are about to start in half an hour. So I follow the rest of the sheep, hundreds slowly marching towards the Hudson River. Around 11th or 12th avenue we run out of street to walk as it’s packed with folks sitting on sidewalks and cops swarming the place. Figured I had a decent enough view of the sky so decided that was a good a place as any, across the street from the northeast corner of the Javits Center.

A nice warm summer breeze wafting by. A generally peaceful and jovial mood around. And the smell of hot dogs all around, two carts within a hundred feet doing business. Then that familiar whistle rings down the street, everyone rushes to their feet and the explosions begin. I will say fireworks are a cool thing, I've been missing out these twenty-something years. Actual fireworks, those things are loud and just create a very satisfying rumble, and the light in the sky they create are a sight. Once it began I quickly realized how pointless those television simulcasts I used to watch as a kid were. It’s akin to a roller coaster or porn, watching it just ain't the same. I enjoyed being a part of that today.

All that being said, what’s the deal with these fools with their cameras feebly trying to take pictures of it? You guys have a chance to watch this majestic spectacle in person and what do you do? Watch it through a shitty three inch display while firing away at the shutter, and getting shit for pictures. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with photographers doing their job, but I look at this sea of people filling up this street and at least one in four have that telltale glow of an lcd illuminating their faces. I got some dude to the left of me popping a flash every minute, always chimping down at the screen to take a glance at another lame shot, then trying again.

I mean, you have a multi-million dollar television crew shooting everything, you have dudes with the proper lenses and tripods probably taking way better shots from rooftops, you ain’t gonna get shit in the middle of the street with that thousand dollar camera loaded with the stock lens while shooting at the shutter speed a flash would induce. Why bother? I assume it’s because they have to try and justify that thousand dollar purchase, have something to show the friends when they get back home.

But why bother? You’re missing the forest for the trees. It ain’t about the fireworks man, it’s about the fireworks.

Yeah. Happy Fourth of July, folks.

Aimless.

2011-07-03T02:02:00.002-04:00

Once again, the night before. Always waiting 'till the last minute to write these things, not like anyone is reading them anyway. But just in case you are, and happen to be reading it between the time it's being written and 8:30pm on Sunday, July 3rd, feel free to stop by the Anthology Film Archives where we'll be screening That Thing in its entirety. Open to the public and all.

In an e-mail I sent to the cast and crew the other day I felt like that's the only motivation I could think of to come. How often do you get a chance to sit back and watch a thing you made on the big screen amongst the company of friends and strangers? If anything it probably will be the last time. Too broke to enter the flick into anymore festivals, even getting into this one felt like a strange stroke of luck. I also feel like I've finally moved on, That Thing was a thing I made a while back, feels like a forever ago. Shoot, last time I watched it in its entirety was the screening over at Lehman College about a year ago. But then again I don't think most filmmakers actively watch the fruits of their labor for any sort of pleasure. Tomorrow will probably be a painful experience.

I suppose that usually is the point, to make something so that it can be seen. You're not saying anything if nobody hears you say it.

Life has been odd lately. Ups and downs that are messing with my head. Usually life's passing me by at a slow and steady clip, but the last few months have felt like I've full tilt run into brick walls, followed by taking a moment to admire the wall before dusting myself off and churning ahead again. Another shitty metaphor, I know. Been doing things, living, but I think my quality of life has suffered because of the living. Going between being calm as a cold river and stressed as a tree torn apart by the wind is... another shitty metaphor. It's also an odd way to live. It probably also only makes sense in my head. Not much in the way of deep thoughts tonight.

Sense is something I don't have much of at the moment. I swear I'm not drunk, though I wish I was. Let me try and get some sleep for tomorrow.

Episode One

2011-05-23T00:29:00.000-04:00

So, uh, I shall begin another blog post with the word "So". So yeah, the first eighth of That Thing has been uploaded to the internet. Free for the world to see, to judge, to be entertained by or to move on and be entertained by the millions of other video things that compete for that brief blink of an eye that constitutes our lives. It is out there and I can finally stop trying to hype it up or make excuses. If you're curious enough, by all means please watch. I would appreciate it. Hopefully you'll dig it enough to seek out the next episode and so on, subscribe and maybe even comment, if it stirs up enough emotion and motivation in you to do so. Whatever you please.

I've been finding it difficult to write this entry, for at least a few reasons. Already at a third attempt at trying to definitively put down the last word on That Thing, and perhaps that's why it's not coming out easily. I've wanted that thing to end for years now, never to waste another thought on it. But here I am noodling on words for a vaguely egotistical purpose, thinking somebody actually wants to hear the how and why we made this thing. I suppose if nothing else it would be good to get this out now, a confessional while I can still remember what went on while making it. But nah. Ain't feeling it.

Simply put, the shooting of that thing wasn't that interesting. No real drama or anything, the shoots themselves came and went mostly without a hitch. Maybe we ran over schedule once or twice, but otherwise the shooting wasn't interesting. To me, the editing was the entertaining part, a slow decent into madness and such, but that's the part I actually wrote about in earlier entries of this blog. I don't think I could come up with any neat stories of behind the scenes happenings. Makes it difficult to come up with anything worth reading.

More importantly though, I don't want to sit here and explain That Thing. If I had to do that, then what was the point of doing it in the first place? That'll accomplish nothing but spoil whatever the viewer had in mind, taint their mental image of the flick. The one screening we had sometime last year, it was an alright evening. Got to watch the movie with a few other folks who were all going in completely blind, the best way to see a movie. But what happened after, the post screening Q&A, that wasn't fun, at least for me. People asked the obvious questions, the why was this like this or that like that. And I dislike answering those questions. If the viewer cared enough to ask, they should care enough to take a second to think about why it was done that way in the first place, right?

Don't mean to get on a high horse about that sort of thing, it's that borderline pretentious half of me speaking. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't really feel like saying anything. Sorry about that. If you have a question I'll try to answer it, but I'm not contributing anything more to this conversation other than the work itself. Hopefully it speaks for itself.

Near a week away...

2011-05-07T03:24:00.003-04:00

Yo, it's been a while. Haven't been feeling the urge to write lately, a lot of nonsense on the mind, most of which wouldn't make for good reading. Wouldn't want to subject you to that.

So what's been going on? First off, I wrote up an entry describing some of the trials and tribulations that were run into during the making of That Thing, at least the ones I could recall while not getting far into the specifics. It's over at a cool blog called “Tell Me About Your Movie” and my entry is one among near a dozen other directors takes on their first features. Not surprisingly, I'm probably more down on myself than most of the others, but I suppose that's par for the course. Check it out over here.

Other bit of stuff resembling news: That Thing is finally being put on the internet on May fifteenth, two-thousand and eleven. Took long enough I suppose. Only held off for as long as I did because of a desire to actually see it played at a festival, not too much luck in that regard. Maybe luck is the wrong word, but it is the word I use whenever I run into someone asking how that whole process is going. What else could I say? Simply put, the movie ain't that good, not better than the likely hundreds or thousands of other feature length films also competing for the handful of spots. I've accepted that, but when you tell someone that it feels like you're fishing for a compliment. Nothing to do in that situation but shrug your shoulders and blame luck for your misfortune.

So it didn't happen. So now I'm going to put it on the internet in hopes of having at least a few folks watch it. And it's weird because now I gotta try to convince people to click on a link and spend at least a few minutes every few weeks on something that only a paragraph ago I admitted to not being that good. It's an awkward paradox. I mean, I don't think it's bad, but of course I'm going to hate it, but does that mean that it's actually bad or do I hate it because I made it or... and so goes the conversation that takes place in my head every time. In any case, it's happening so I might as well make the best of it, self-deprecating blog aside. Spread the word, hope it garners at least a few new fans by the end of it all, get some momentum going, try and build an audience for the next thing.

Put together a new trailer for the date, check it out. Once it starts coming out check back here, I'll probably be recalling whatever comes to mind back when we were making it. It'll be as close as you're going to get to a director's commentary from me.

One last thing to get out of the system.
Fear has been on the mind lately. Trying to figure out where it comes from, its purpose. The chemical reaction it ignites both in the human mind and body. I guess it started back when we were more primitive creatures, stopping our crude minds from doing stupid shit and making our bodies run full tilt when danger approaches. We've inherited that mechanism, but despite being self-conscious of it we still don't understand or have control over it. Well, maybe some, that's why there's always a two-hour wait for the latest roller coaster at Six Flags. The thing I'm trying to figure out is why fear is so capable of both paralyzing and motivating at the same time. Even the simplest of acts, ones so second nature as to continue the propagation of the human race can be caught up in the mind and trapped by fear. For years one could be caught in that loop of not daring to do anything for fear of that unknown.

But of course it works the other way around too. Once that threshold is reached, the fight or flight instinct kicks in and now you're pushing harder than you have the rest of your life. Just like that. A switch is flipped and now steps are being taken to make up for lost time. The big problem with this though is that instead of running on confidence and courage you're still running on fear. At least you're going in the right direction, but there's going to be some stumbling along the way. And what happens when that fear runs out of juice, do we slow to a stop? Just give up? Or is the human will to live (living in its many definitions) persistent enough to endure?

Just a small sample of what runs through my mind at three in the am. Night, folks.

What do I know?

2011-03-28T23:16:00.003-04:00

I know so much, and yet nothing at all. Hear what I'm saying?

So, one thing I've been doing lately has been amassing large amounts of information about cameras and where that sort of technology is heading. The nerd in me doesn't need much of an excuse to come out, it craves information like I crave a slice of pizza every afternoon. Just one ain't enough, lets try all these toppings and the fifty different pizzerias between where I work and where I live. I crave it, I obsess over it. That ain't a healthy way to live, in more ways than one.

I have a knack for remembering the most inane of facts, camera model numbers and perspective ratios of various lenses when mounted on cropped image sensors, all that shit. Google doesn't help with this problem, the answer to every question I ever wanted to ask is just a few seconds worth of typing away. This is a bad thing, right? Of course it is. All the knowledge in the world won't make a good movie. Not that I didn't already know this, but it was something I kept pushing aside.

The original moderately crazy plan was to write, shoot and edit a movie before the Sundance 2012 deadline, which would be September. Ambitious, I know. I sorta finished a first draft, but forget that. My head was already racing ahead to trying to figure out a budget, ration off enough cash for a new camera and a few lenses, a computer for editing stuff, a bunch of audio shit, lots of nerdy shit. Lots of numbers, trying to squeeze as much bang for the buck by going over hardware specifications and countless reviews. Stressing out over trying to raise the production value but hey, I didn't even finish the script yet!

Last week, tried to push all that technological stuff aside and focus on starting the second draft. It takes a few nights of starring into a blank piece of paper before it finally hits me; this script ain't it. Sure, I could add a few more scenes and try to convolute everything, that was the plan. Wanted to pack the flick full of crazy shit, but in the end all that would accomplish was to obscure the actual root of the problem.

Strip away all the words and what do you have?

Rip the 50mm f1.2 lens off the latest Canon HD-SLR that's sitting on the dolly tracks surrounded by a few thousand watts of lights, and what do you have?

It finally hit me, a movie, at least the movies I want to make, aren't necessarily about what's on the screen. It isn't about the words the characters are saying, it isn't about how good it looks, it isn't about how expensive or low the budget is. It's only about striking some sort of emotional chord in the viewer. Making them actually give a shit about what they're seeing. If you don't get that, then it's all nothing but a masturbatory exercise in flaunting a prowess over technology. Not to say that the craft should be disregarded, far from it. But without that core story everything else that comes after, from script to the final cut, is pointless. It all needs to serve that unexplainable something that makes a good movie great and makes a mediocre movie forgettable.

Decided to kill the script, at least for now. Being on the other side of turning words on paper into a feature length film, it would feel irresponsible to take what I wrote and make a movie out of it. Perhaps after a few years worth of perspective I can look back on it and see if I can scavenge anything from it. I'll probably find another use for those words, but for now I feel like I need to start from scratch again. Try and make something new. Something worth watching. Heh, just wish I figured that out sooner.

Inducing Vomit

2011-01-20T23:35:00.005-05:00

New Year's Eve, I was pulling what has now become an odd sort of tradition. Wandered around Manhattan before the ball dropped, only to find a spot somewhere along 42nd street a few minutes before and at least be around others who would exercise that pre-kindergarten education and count backwards from ten.

This year I wasn't so lucky to even have that, got suckered into standing at a spot that some odd European tourists were staked out at. A small crowd built up around them, convinced that this particular spot had a great view of the tower. I figured that they would know, there were people with expensive cameras waiting, so I joined the rest of the sheep. You could absolutely hear the Times Square crowd as the seconds were ticking down, a wave of noise and energy which left the folks I was hanging out with utterly confused. A quick glance at the ipod with built in watch confirms the sad fact; it's a minute after and we missed the new year. A group of young girls, wanna be revelers realize their error and makes a run towards the mobs, but everyone else knows it's futile and slowly mopes away. No big deal for me, seen it the last few and there's always next year. I'm guessing it sucks for those tourists though, think I actually overheard a mother of one of those families request that if anyone back home asks, tell 'em they were witness to the dropping of the ball.

The story doesn't really have much of a point other than to illustrate the lame way in which I spent what most would consider a joyous occasion. The only other mildly note-worthy occurrence was the odd sight I spotted a bit after when passing by one of the many bars overflowing with humans. This guy, probably drunk and not feeling too well, burned his face when trying to induce vomiting using the same fingers that were holding a lit cigarette. A sad sight, but one that I think describes the way I've been making use of the last few weeks since.

I've been writing a bunch. Been meaning to for months now, had plenty of ideas I wanted to cover, but it just wouldn't come out. Few days after the new year, I wandered by a Starbucks and figured, why not? Went inside and after sipping on a hot chocolate, took the pen to the paper and just started madly scribbling shit down. Made a habit of it for the following two weeks and the end result is that I now have the first draft of a new script. So there lies the problem. Over the course of writing it, there was this odd arc of satisfaction I had with the material. At first it was just crap, but it was a first draft so it was to be expected. Somewhere around the halfway point I fell in love with it, a work of art! And then up until the last few words committed to ink and paper I hated myself for even writing it down.

Writing that much that quickly is very much an act of inducing vomit. Somehow I found the gag reflex and it all just came pouring out. My regret is that perhaps I may have been holding a cigarette in the hand when doing so. A lot of what I wrote was, if not blatantly personal then at least seeped in old memories. I would be afraid of showing most that know me this crap, it probably says way more than I would care for. However, once those last few words did come down, I fell in love with it all over again. I think it's either the best or the worst I've written, maybe both at the same time. So what do I do with it? Right now, I think all I can is move on to the second draft, make sure the stuff I like makes it to the page while the rest becomes more subdued. But it needs the stuff I hate to make the good stuff work. I don't know, I guess we'll cross that bridge when we cross it.

Yikes, think I wrote way too much, guess I still had some bile left in the gut.

Been a while, Deleted scenes

2010-11-04T22:02:00.002-04:00

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

2010-10-14T23:30:00.003-04:00

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

2010-07-25T02:53:00.005-04:00

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

2010-07-09T00:16:00.002-04:00

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

2010-06-12T03:11:00.000-04:00

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.

2010-05-13T03:35:00.001-04:00

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

2010-04-16T03:16:00.004-04:00

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

2010-03-18T00:12:00.002-04:00

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

2010-03-02T00:39:00.003-05:00

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

2010-02-20T01:37:00.000-05:00

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

2010-02-12T16:04:00.002-05:00

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

2010-02-06T03:57:00.000-05:00

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

2010-01-22T04:17:00.007-05:00

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

2010-01-12T23:01:00.003-05:00

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.

2009-12-24T01:04:00.004-05:00

So, it's in the can. We have wrapped up principal photography on That Thing. Heh, always wanted to say that, corny as it is. Over a year and a half since we began, stretching out fourteen actual shooting days over that time. Though that's not including the two canceled shoots due to bad weather. Twenty four tapes are sitting on my shelf, each with almost an hour's worth of stuff. So it's done.

It really didn't really kick in for a few days. Saturday was the last shoot, and it was so cold. Of course some crazy hyped up storm was making its way towards the east coast on the day we were trying to wrap this up. We were well below freezing, and while that doesn't phase me much since I actually enjoy the cold weather, I always forget that others aren't so tolerant of low temperatures. Definitely slowed us down, as trying to memorize lines while shivering was more difficult than anticipated. The chase scene helped to get the blood pumping, but by the end of the day we were still half an hour behind, a bad thing when you're racing against a sun covered by clouds. But after a long day, it got done.

I proceeded to sleep for about sixteen hours. Then I got up and did nothing much to celebrate, just wandered around the Hudson shore on the west side of Manhattan, with nothing but fresh white snow on the ground for as far as the eye can see. Since then I've captured the rest of the footage and slapped together a quick trailer, and only now am I bugging out over finally finishing this movie. Maybe it's the whole seeing a year and a half of your life flash by in about sixty seconds that does that.
On a side note, there's something very enjoyable about cutting a trailer. I don't think there's much else in terms of video that's more... purely visual than piecing together a trailer. You got twenty something hours of raw footage and you have to find these tiny snippets of emotion that say just enough, and find order amongst this chaos. Every frame really counts, since in a minute you only get to have a little over a thousand of them, after titles and such. Cut one frame too many, and the shot becomes garbage, saying nothing and instead only being. Not to mention the goal is to grab someone's attention, gotta come up with something out there to do that nowadays.

Anyway, yeah, over the course of editing the trailer and afterwards, I think I've watched those sixty seconds at least fifty times by now. Like I said, I'm flipping out. It's actually done. It's all there, I somehow got all these people to do this? And I created this thing out of nothing, and... yeah. I'm just glad to have it done. Too often I start something and never finish, but here it is.

I'll start editing for real next week, so much work ahead. But the hard part's over.

The Reshoot

2009-12-14T01:34:00.013-05:00

Reshoots usually aren't a good thing when you're trying to make a movie and are pressed for time. I think that goes without saying, but hey, that's the situation I just ran across. Pick-ups are one thing, technical foul ups are another thing altogether, but asking for a reshoot on an entire scene of your cast and crew just because you weren't pleased with how it looked the first time usually isn't cool. But hey, that's the situation I just ran across. And I think, I hope it was the right choice.

This ain't the first time I've run across asking for a reshoot. Come to think of it, every 'major' production I've done (major being the two shorts and That Thing I'm working on right now) has involved a reshoot of some sort. The first one, Green Monkeys,wasn't too bad, since it was the first. We were so far ahead of schedule it wasn't too big a deal. We tried shooting the majority of it in a studio set, and when I looked the footage it was obviously overkill. Sure, we got to use the school's fancy cameras and microphones, but it just didn't look real. It felt very... off. Ended up reshooting the whole thing with a shitty hi-8 camcorder, and had to redub all the dialogue because it would have sounded awful otherwise. Looking back, I think it adds to the charm, and wouldn't have it any other way. It was the right decision.

The second production, Electronic Pinata, the reshoots were mostly for technical reasons. Decided to shoot on film of the Super 8 variety, and we had to reshoot one scene three times because of various problems related to that. The first time, I think I screwed up the back focus on the camera or something, because every shot was running into various levels of being out of focus. A bummer, to say the least. Passed if off as a test to the actors so they were mostly cool with it, but we did it again, and this time when it came back from the lab a lot of it was scratched up, and not in the quaint old time film-y look. I believe the problem was narrowed down to an expired case of film. And so we shot it again. Had no choice.

It all worked out in the end, but there's always that fear when you start dialing those numbers to your actors' cell, that they'll be outraged and refuse to work with you again. Especially when you got no money to pay them, you're basically asking them to further waste their time because of your fuck-up.

Which brings us to yesterday, reshooting one of the scenes in That Thing. The reasons for doing it over? A few, the major one being the same problem I had with Green Monkeys. It didn't feel real. The location felt empty, too much hand held footage that felt amateur, and too many shots in general that I thought distracted from the important part of the scene, that this couple was on the verge of splitting up. To rectify that, we just moved to a different room and locked off the camera to do the entire scene in one shot. A bit drastic but I think it was the right choice, though I suppose we won't know until the movie is over and done with and we get to see it in context.

There was one side benefit to this, I think the acting improved dramatically. Perhaps it was because we were doing the same scene over and over for two hours to get a solid take. Or the fact that having the whole thing in one take forced the actors to step their game up. Or maybe it was a combination of the two, but the result was that it felt real. Where as before I was worried about the scene being a poor introduction and giving off a bad impression, now I'm getting the vibe that this crazy movie thing might actually work out.

Only one scene left to shoot, then it's all in the can. Lookin' forward to lifting this weight off the shoulders.

Four Years Later...

2009-12-04T13:02:00.006-05:00

Dang, took that long for me to get around to this? Heh, since I made that first post a little over four years ago I think we've seen the mainstream rise and subsequent fall of what is known as blogging. Most normal folks seem to have given given up the drawn out sentences and paragraphs for social networking and brief farts of words encompassed in the hip new brands like Facebook and Twitter. Even MySpace is so last year. But hey, I remember back when we had to piece together shoddily written html in a text editor along with gaudy animated .gifs, only to upload it to Geocities or some other relic of the free webpage hosting days that are now long past.

I guess I'm not saying anything you don't already know. I'm just wondering aloud why do so many of us feel the need to broadcast what was once considered the mundane happenings of everyday life? Perhaps we know that we are easily amused by peering into the lives of others, and like the idea that someone else out there might be giving us that same sort of attention? More likely, I'm just looking way too closely into it.

Oh well. I could never figure out what to write in these "First post!" sorts of things. I suppose I could just say hello, however that comes off as plain and pedestrian. I could tell you what I intend to write about in this blog, but that almost seems pretentious to me as I'm not really the type to plan too far ahead. So I guess I'll just thank you for making your way through these mutterings I typed up, and hope I didn't scare you off from stopping by again in the near future. Because there is some (what I like to think is) cool stuff ahead. Hopefully I won't keep ya waiting too long.

Testing...

2005-10-09T18:21:00.000-04:00

The Blog of the Boring Monkey... is alive?! Yeah, I guess.