10 August 2011

Been awhile. Updating the world as to my progress climbing this mud-hill called indie filmmaking.

- Showed Thirty Proof Coil to an entheusiastic crowd on 9 July 2011. Calico Cooper and her friend Tiffany Lowe came into town and proceeded to raise hell, anarchy, and hemlines.

- Received two negative reviews about TPC; one by some asshole that thinks Ernest Saves The World is the best movie ever. Go fuck yourself Eric Scott Morrison. You have the time and energy to run down my modest $4K movie, let's see what you've ever created and sent out into the world, douchebag. Seriously. GO. FUCK. YOURSELF.

- Got a little bitter about some douchebag's review. I'll get over it eventually.

- Landed a gig editing a documentary for a company that has told me they can't pay me. Aweseome. I've got plenty of my own free projects I can work on, thanks.

- Speaking of gigs, Andrew Ellis and I are the soon-to-be receipients of an Idaho Film Grant, which will help us fund the shooting of our new film Honor Among Thieves. Which I should be revising instead of updating this blog.

- My daughter took tenth place in the nation for her National History Day project junior division documentary. How many other projects were involved? Around 20,000. Way to go, Roo!

- I have scripts laying on the table waiting to be transcribed into the computer. I really need an agent. Go figure, I've been saying this since I was seventeen. Perhaps that writing on the wall won't get any clearer.

- Bagel Shop Bebop has been a resounding success for a webisode; I should be editing the latest editions instead of updating this blog.

- My "Best Ever Albums" book of reviews is almost half completed. Yay!

- My script The Troupe is in local production with an estimated budget of HOLY SHIT! Yeah, I can't talk about it, but it's more than ten bucks.

- I will be a judge for the H48 - the adult, Halloween version of I48. That's right, blame me.

- I have since started watching Netflix streaming, and have decided it's like crack cocaine for filmmakers.

- We had a cheap BluRay player for almost a month before actually watching a BluRay disc on it. What was it? The special features for Blade Runner, of course.

- Feeling anxious; ready to shoot Honor Among Thieves in four weeks. Did I mention I need to finish the script re-write?

Best of luck to all area filmmakers, and remember: when Eric Scott Morrison disses your film, TELL HIM TO GO FUCK HIMSELF!!!

=P

2010 is in the Archives, Baby.

This is what I worked on in 2010:

- Finished Vagabond Lane and showed it to a modest crowd.

- Wrote a script called Despair, ID - which would end up being a movie called Thirty Proof Coil.

- Blind emailed Calico Cooper a pitch to play the lead - sight unseen - in Thirty Proof Coil. She accepted and my jaw hit the floor.

- Participated in i48 2010, not being very excited about the whole thing. I don't know if I'll be playing in 2011, but then again...

- Spent a week in New Plymouth, Idaho directing Thirty Proof Coil with some really cool people.

- Edited Thirty Proof Coil for four months. It's a dang good movie, if I say so myself.

- Wrote two feature scripts in October and November: The Nihilists (Part One) - which is a story about how two people are going to change the world in spite of itself; and Coffee Shop Bebop - the episodic tale of a Coffee Shop and the stories that occur therein. The nice thing about Coffee Shop Bebop is that it marks the first time I've collaborated with my fourteen-year-old daughter, Ashley. She's a fine writer - just ask Andrew Ellis, who is going to produce/direct the series over the first third of 2011.

- Produced the Idaho Short Film Program KURZE HOSEN 2010 - a collection of Idaho short films by Idaho filmmakers. We played at The Flicks to a modest crowd that ensured we'd think about doing a 2011 version... perhaps.

- Wrote the SPF 2 Directors Challenges - which are all about directors being challenged. Clam City Pictures has won twice in a row.

- Started a neo-noir crime story that I'm almost finished writing.

Things we lost in the fire-sale of 2010:

- the Idaho International Film Festival is dead.

- Silverdraft Studios never really got off the ground and - by all accounts - is dead.

- a number of film making acquaintances have left me feeling a bit like Charlie Brown on Valentine's Day, but I suppose that's the nature of all things. I have made new friends, and don't lament not being invited to certain parties anymore. Much.

- Walking to Jungo was going to be shot in August of 2010, but Thirty Proof Coil demanded too much looking after, so that massive undertaking has been put on indefinite hold for the time being.

That's that, I suppose. I'll try and post more often in 2011. Who knows... perhaps someone might read this as well... =)

Will

VAGABOND LANE 2010

This last Saturday - 6 March 2010 - marked the end of a long road for me and Lana; the local public screening of our film Vagabond Lane. With the help of Andrew Ellis, we screened the film two times that night at the Egyptian Theater in downtown Boise. We had media support prior to the film: a Twitter blitz, constant Facebook updates, mentions in the Idaho Statesman's Scene section, an e-interview with local NBC affiliate reporter Maggie O'Mara, plugs on the radio and even an NPR interview. It's safe to say that - insofar as the press is concerned - we hit it pretty well. Certainly, it could have been better - major coverage on the television would have been nice, full-page ads in the paper would have been nice, lengthy articles with photographs would have been nice, but yeah... what we could get for free, we got a lot of it.

And it still didn't help.

Out of a possible 1,540 seats in the Egyptian Theater, we sold... 178. I would almost guarantee that everyone in that theater is less than two degrees of separation from me.

Insofar as covering the costs of leasing out the theater, we were good - we lost six bucks. Insofar as this was a fundraiser for Vagabond Lane's festival run, well... not so good.

Am I irritated? Absolutely. Not only was it ludicrous that we couldn't sell 300 seats, but it's ludicrous what this says about the residents of Boise. Let's do some math.

The greater metro area around Boise in 2008 had a population of 587,689 people. Let's say that it's gone up a bit since then, which is true - I just don't know the exact figure. BUT... I can say without a doubt that the population of the area isn't any less than the 2008 numbers show. That means that we reached .0003 % of Boise's metro area population with our film.

Three ten-thousandths of a percent.

The number's only slightly better when you look at Boise's city population of 2008, which was 205,314. That means we reached a whopping .000866 % of the population. Eight-point-five ten-thousandths of a percent. Wow.

Greg Bayne tried to teach me; I didn't listen. "Boise," he said, preparing for his documentary about Jens Pulver, "is not a film town." Clearly it isn't. Clearly the masses of Boise voted with their wallets and chose to stay home, rather than see an Idaho film that represents a point in Idaho culture. Hell, even the price was right for movie watching: we only charged a general admission price of six bucks. Six bucks to sit in a grand old theater, watch members of your community perform something that is (if I say so myself) of higher quality than your standard "good" community theater presentation (which, of course, costs twice as much to attend)? At that price, I'd attend every screening of every local film - and I'd bring friends.

But Boise isn't a film town.

Certainly, I can be as guilty of this as the next person. I haven't seen every local film presented, and I feel some guilt over that - but I also feel that, at $10 a ticket and when you're as broke as I am... nope. Can't do it. I suppose, then, I was projecting a little when I set the ticket prices for Vagabond Lane at $6. I was empathizing with the community -especially since I'm in an economic vise-grip as well.

But that's aside from the point. The point is this: if people in Boise actually valued local independent cinema, then they would have been at the film (films, actually - I'm not the only indie filmmaker in this city), regardless of the price. As it is, it appears that only .000866 % of the population of Boise has any interest at all in developing a culture of local cinema and film making.

Which brings me to my real-for-reals big cheesed off epiphany. Of the individuals in town that present themselves as some kind of gear in the machine that is local film making - actors, directors, editors, producers, musicians, sound people, costumers, etc. - very few came to the film. Certainly, there were the actors and the like that I have relationships with that land somewhere between "friends" and "acquaintances". Those people showed up. But those self-important pseudo-professionals that live in the community and wave their "Look! I lived in Los Angeles for two years! I know what I'm talking about!" metaphysical resumes in the faces of anyone who might listen and/or benefit them in some way - those people didn't show up.

Fine. Clearly if the Boise film making community doesn't get its act together and start supporting one another, then it is doomed to crumble upon itself. That means the members of that community - regardless of personal feelings - need to quit playing silly reindeer games and foster support for one another. That doesn't mean we all work on each others' movies; that doesn't mean we have the floating $100 bill that goes to fund one project after another, but is really just the same $100 bill changing hands every six months; and that doesn't mean we have to BELIEVE in the projects or the contents of the projects themselves, but merely in the idea that developing a film community in Boise is good for Boise and our culture. Until that time comes, we're just a bunch of egotistical self-righteous children with entitlement issues.

As a final note, I had a small number of cast and crew members that didn't come to Vagabond Lane because they were actively trying to sabotage the screening. For some reason, they think they are in competition with me. I understand. I am their scapegoat, their despised tyrant, their nemesis. All I can say to their behavior is that it is childish, short-sighted, and they will not benefit in any way by acting as such. While I will continue to support Boise filmmakers and the grand ideal of fostering a culture of Boise independent film, I cannot support these individuals, because they have behaved despicably. They are beneath me, and are a cancer that needs to be carved away so that the host body may survive. This is the last I will write of this issue.

Vagabond Lane is finished, and now makes its way onto the festival circuit where - most likely - it will die the death of most independent films. That saddens me, but the realization that this is the likely result of four years of hard work does not discourage me - rather, the opposite. I have made projects before (and during) Vagabond Lane; I shall make many more after.

Here's to Boise film making.

Will

9 March 2010.

The Gods of Technology Have Won This Round...

Sigh.

I've put off writing this because it's just... yeah.

For the last three years, off and on, I've been working on my indie movie, "Vagabond Lane" - a film that has cost upwards of $60,000 to complete. Three weeks ago I finally hit a video lock, and I was two weeks from finishing the whole damn thing, only needing to add the dialogue replacement that I needed to record for two scenes.

The light at the end of the tunnel was not only visible, it was bright and brilliant and shiny and all those things that one can find at the end of a My Pretty Pony or Care Bears cartoon. I, as they say, was pretty damn happy.

Until last week.

Last week my car had to go into the shop, my Panasonic DVX100-B died, and the computer I was editing VL on decided to play shy. It sorta went like this:

FADE UP on WILL sitting in his living room, preparing to edit VL for one of the last times. He's all sorts of happy, and can imagine an angelic choir singing above him. He boots up his trusty iMac.

A frown crosses Will's face as a GRAY SCREEN OF UNHAPPINESS appears on the iMac monitor. It reads: YOU NEED TO REBOOT YOUR IMAC (along with a bunch of other stuff). Will frowns, holds down the power button and waits, then reboots his computer. Will's frown is joined by wide eyes as a GRAY SCREEN OF UNHAPPINESS appears again on the iMac monitor. It reads: YOU NEED TO REBOOT YOUR IMAC (along with a bunch of other stuff).

Crap.

Now, at this point, I'm as calm as I can be - after all, I've saved finished and rendered files to my externals, so... no problem, right?

Wrong.

Somewhere in the last three weeks of editing and saving and rendering and all that crap, my nicely processed scenes had turned into blocky and ugly crap - somewhere FCP had decided to re-render them out at the lowest possible quality and...

... and yeah.

So here I am. My car is on life support, my camera is still awaiting a guts transplant, and I'm working on a borrowed computer and knowing that the borrowed time I've spent editing this movie was spent six months ago, and I have to QUITE LITERALLY re-edit and re-capture all the video footage for the movie.

The positives of this whole thing are that it gives me a chance to make an even better movie, and at least the audio mix is still intact. Still, I feel as if I'm reaching into the dark grey storm clouds to grasp a few tentative silver linings. I feel as if I've let everyone involved in the project down, everyone I've EVER KNOWN down, and proven myself to be an abject failure at this whole "movie thing."

So yeah.

Yeah.

The God's of Technology hate me, and the only thing I can do is pick my ass up out of the dirt, pick up the pieces and carry on towards the finish line that was dangled in front of my outstretched hands and then yanked away by that evil bastard Fate and his or her cohorts. The last week has sucked; every time I thought of the movie, I just wanted to put my head in the blender. But time heals blah blah blah and I'm getting back into my skull with some sense of perspective and a few ideas that I can still do this. It's just a real bitch, and to all of you that have supported me in this project, all I can say is "thank you" and "please be patient with me."

Will

Suspended animation in the blogosphere.

I've got a plate-full of things I need to get done, and the Internet sucks up a lot of my time. So... I'll be back later.

Thanks,

Will

Render time fill: David Lynch

So I've moved on to the next three minutes of editing happy happy joy joy hurry-up-and-wait; while not doing audio (which requires lots of headphone wearing), I get to have something rolling on the tv in the background for those joyful 30 minute stretches when the Mac is rendering all the color correction and manipulation I'm doing. This week: David Lynch.

I started off with Twin Peaks: The Complete Second Season, having watched the first season a week ago. While I fully accept my membership as a former "Peaks Freak" from back in the day (ah, college...), it's been a bit of a disappointment watching these episodes for the first time in 17-18 years. While the first season was damn near brilliant, season two jumps the shark with the solving of the murder of Laura Palmer. Every episode after the culmination of the mystery is a pale imitation of what Twin Peaks was supposed to be. Not that there weren't some great moments: Billy Zane's star was created in season two, looking like a young Marlon Brando. David Duchovny plays a DEA agent in drag (and more animated than that FBI agent he would embody two years later), and Lynch's directing and writing of the "bite me, you ABC fools!" finally was an inspired flipping of the bird to network brass. But, for the most part, Twin Peaks' second season (post Laura Palmer) was sad because it became that which it had mocked so well: a crappy soap opera.

Next I watched Inland Empire. Three hours of a barely-scripted Lynchian universe where Laura Dern goes from normal to absurist puppet in... hunh. Not as fast as the viewer would like, actually. Inland Empire has moments of brilliance draped in curtains of tediousness. I can't tell if it's Lynch dipping back into the experimental nature of film, or if it's Lynch dipping back into the well of his already well-known bag of tricks. Dern is unfortunately miscast in this piece; while she undoubtedly knows the short hand needed to work with a director like Lynch, she too seems to be re-hashing her acting crutches (most notably her ability to cringe. Don't get me wrong, cringing is a tough thing to sell on film. However, we've seen that from Dern, like... a thousand and two times). There's a lot going on with Inland Empire, but most of it seems to be coming from Lynch's discovery of a new toy to play with: the digital camera. Not my favorite Lynch movie, but fine enough to have playing in the background while waiting for FCP to finish rendering.

Finally, I let spin the latest release of Eraserhead, Lynch's first feature-length film. It took Lynch almost 6 years to get this sucker finished (which makes me look speedy by comparison), and it's still as convoluted, confusing, and brilliant today as it was back in the '70's (or '90's, when I first saw it on a bunk VHS). A GREAT film, a testament to the use of absurdism in film. Salvador Dali would have been proud of Eraserhead, as it is the legitimate offspring of his Un Chien Andalou.

Whoops. Render is done. More next time.

Will

Update While I Wait For Rendering...

So I've been sinking three weeks into the same 3.5 minute scene on Vagabond Lane, and I notice that I've been sitting with my head in the box for roughly 8 hours tonight, and I notice that I have to be up in two hours, so... yeah. Figured I'd blog about stuff while I wait for my latest stab at compositing multiple images to render.

It seems that the unemployed discover the public library about 2 years into their unemployment - depending upon the financial support they get from their significant other and whether or not they have cable/satellite TV. At least, that's the boat I'm in, as I've found joy and treasure at the branches of the Boise and Nampa public libraries. Specifically: DVD collections that most video rental stores don't have. And Redbox? Convenient as heck, but don't try to watch anything more than six months old... However, the DVD's at the local library do leave some things to be desired: anything "popular" has a good shot at being scratched. No biggie for me, since most all the movies in the library are quite old (non-fiction titles being the exception). BUT! Foreign films are generally in pristine condition, and there's a sizable number of titles. Just this week I've enjoyed Run Lola Run, Stalker, The Red Shoes, and Dark Water (Japanese Version) - with no skipping or annoyances (other than a lot of reading going on). If you're a fan of the foreign film and don't like waiting for the Netflix queue to catch up with that Lars von Trier flick, go hit the library.

Speaking of Stalker, I'd watched this movie years ago on a bunk VHS copy, and I must say that digital makes all the difference. At just under three hours in length, Stalker is a test for the viewer - but one that pays off in spades. I'd forgotten how much this film influenced me in subtle little ways. Nice bit of film school, this Soviet-era flick is.

I'm eagerly anticipating the filming of the next A 'n' W production. Andrew calls it my, "European art film" - which is as good as any description, I suppose. Working title is Sunyata: The Space Between Leaves which - if you have any Buddhist inclinations - you'd understand completely. However, since most people reading this blog are more than likely poorly versed in their Buddhist philosophy (myself included), I'll throw down a brief definition:

"Sunyata, meaning "Emptiness" or "Voidness", is a characteristic of phenomena arising from the fact (as observed and taught by the Buddha) that the impermanent nature of form means that nothing possesses essential, enduring identity. In the Buddha's spiritual teaching, insight into the emptiness of phenomena is an aspect of the cultivation of insight that leads to wisdom and inner peace."

So... yeah. I'm dipping my camera into the void on this one.

Click. The clock just turned 4.00 am, and my render is complete. More blog later.

Will

"I wish the kaiser were back..."

Sorry, but the title was the last line of dialogue I heard coming out of the television set. Today I checked out four movies from the Nampa Public Library: Run Lola Run, Key Largo, Dark Water (Japanese version), and Cabaret. First thing I think of while watching Cabaret is, "Hmm. Yep. Bob Fosse did direct this," followed quickly by, "Liza Minnelli. What the hell happened to her..."

Well duh.

But, I mean... aside from the alcohol, drugs, partying, sex, over-eating, and rampant debauchery, I mean... jeez.

What the hell happened to Liza?

Other stuff: Vagabond Lane is kicking my ass yet again. How much? Well, as my daughter and I figured it today, yesterday I spent 14 hours compositing flames into a flame-less scene. A flame-less three second scene. I'm starting to understand why the SFX guys on Lord of the Rings were sleeping at the studio during those last thirty days or so...

The Oscars happened a couple weeks ago, and I thought it was a great broadcast. Liked the five previous winners doing the introductions for the actor categories, liked Hugh Jackman (although he seemed to disappear for long periods of time, making me wonder, "Hmm... do the Oscars really need a host after all?"), hated the Baz Luhrman directed music montage of confusion and weirdness (although Beyonce looked dang good), missed Jack, and really, really thought it sucked that Sean Penn won Best Actor over Mickey Rourke - and then thought Mr. Penn was very classy about the whole thing.

Speaking of The Wrestler, I think Darren Aronofsky is one of the lead dogs on the sled team, along with Fincher and Boyle - all-in-all, it's a great time to watch movies.

...but there's still a bunch of Beverly Hills Chihuahua's being made out there, and for crying out loud... REALLY? I know five people that could make brilliant movies IN BOISE for 1/100th the amount of cash Hollywood spent on the animators for BHC, and yet they can't get anyone to look at them because... because...

Because 1) they live in Boise; 2) they didn't go to a California film school to schmooze with the other filmmakers; 3)they didn't come from a rich family; 4)they don't have an agent; 5)they don't have a manager to help them get an agent;6) they don't have a chance.

Depressed now.

Vagabond Lane is pretty good. I hope to finish it soon.

Will

Microbudget Filmmaking: The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

I'm listening to the soundtrack to Darren Aronofsky's 2006 film The Fountain as I write this; you might go and find a copy of that excellent soundtrack for yourself.

A lot of people ask me, "so, how's that movie you've been working on going?" Now, I've worked on two other movies in the last couple years, but we all know what they're asking about: Vagabond Lane. Even last night while visiting with my mother, she asked me how it was coming. Apparently, people are getting tired of waiting.

Which is funny, because they were tired of waiting six months after principle photography was done, so... yeah.

In 1962 some filmmakers in England made a movie called The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. I remember about 18 years ago I saw a print of this in a film class I was taking at U of I, and - for some reason - it stuck.

Why? Because it was so, "good?" Not to my mind at that time (but I'm sure it deserves a further viewing; I was a film idiot back then); I slept through half of it. And yet... almost 20 years later it has still claimed it's small bit of grey matter in my mind. Maybe it's the title, and all the things that are associated with the connotations that the phrase, "long distance runner" imply.

For my purposes here, I'll attempt to make a parallel between microbudget filmmaking and long distance running.

About three months ago I witnessed an epic fail at a local film festival. I don't think anyone involved with the train wreck that occurred would debate whether or not the event in question was an epic fail or not, but just to be nice, I won't mention any names. In a nutshell, a locally produced microbudget film missed it's deadline for the festival and had to show a bunk rough edit off a lo-res DVD. Needless to say, it was painful watching this flick, a pain that was only overshadowed by the pain I felt watching those filmmakers I liked that had worked on this project squirm with embarrassment. However, with every failure comes a moment where one can choose to learn something - even when that moment happens to someone else.

The thing I learned was that, as a filmmaker with limited resources and no money to my name, I'd better take the approach that this is a metaphorical marathon that I'm running, not a sprint. Since I'm overseeing every aspect of Vagabond Lane - a movie that has missed a number of self-set deadlines already - I'm stuck with a couple realities:

Since I have no money, all I have is time.

And there you have it. By it's own definition, a microbudget film has no funds, thus forcing the question, "how does one make a quality film with no money?"

Answer: Take the time to make sure everything in the film is a good as it possibly can be.

My daughter - she's 12 now - and I were discussing this very thing between hands of Uno at our favorite coffee shop. She asked me what I had been working on the night before, and we ended up in a conversation about compositing for film.

(Yeah, she has a pretty developed idea about what goes on in movies; in her notebook she carries a Behind-The-Scenes book about the production of one of the Narnia movies, and she's always showing it to her friends between discussions of Twilight plot lines...)

Yet I digress. The point of our conversation was that I was working on THIS SCENE in my movie that was taking A LOT OF TIME - which was frustrating - but I DEALT WITH IT because I DIDN'T WANT MY MOVIE LOOKING LIKE CRAP.

Here, I'll show you what we discussed.

In Vagabond Lane, our heroine - Carrie - ends up in a Hell-like place where she is forced to dig potato-ish things called woobles. In this place she meets an innocent named Simon (played by Ben Kemper with an unbelievable sincerity), and they talk in the shed where the child slaves of the bad guy get to spend their remaining days like so much cattle. Now, aside from the fact that my camera operators shot the scene on two cameras at different frame rates (an issue I'm still fighting to resolve, but a light is shining on that issue and I think I've defeated it), my set designer failed me miserably. That this woman still has a head attached to her upper torso is testament to either the fact that I have incredible self-control over my own anger, or that her head was so far lodged up her nether-regions that I couldn't find it to tear it from her shoulders.

So here's the shot: Carrie (played by Chelsea Sheets) is in the open-faced shed next to one of the interior walls. Slide one shows the raw footage.

Not a bad shot; the lighting's good, there's a nice sense of light/dark symbolism in the composition, and you can't tell from the shot that there's a jet plane flying directly overhead every 45 minutes. However, there's a problem: if you look to the wall behind Carrie's head, my set designer obviously didn't take into consideration that this shed was supposed to look like a weathered cattle shelter, not like something recently bought from Home Depot, with MADE IN CANADA stamps all over the darn press-board.

Now, in the mythology of the film, I can get away with this, because there's this "magical realism" aspect to the film where it makes perfect sense in the confines of the story that this old P.O.S. shed actually did have parts bought at the Home Depot at the Nexus of the Universe, but ... really? Do I really want that crap in my film? Hmm...

In the edit of the film, I have to do some serious filter work, and in slide two is that same shot of the shed wall, and now those damn ink stamps are coming out of Carrie's left-hand ear:


Hunh. That looks like crap. Really bad crap. Crap crap crap. Maybe the set "designer" should have spent more than a week working on this stuff...

So, yeah. Since we didn't have time to fix this problem at the shoot, I've had to relegate it to post-production work, which is a pain in the tuckus. So what do I do? Well, for starters, I try to blend in/remove the wood-stamps as best I can, to no avail. Ultimately, I decide that I have to just make it a bit less conspicuous, and the best way to do that is to tart up the place with even more graffiti. To do this, I first have to mask off the offending area, as in Slide Three:


Notice that the dark masked area doesn't cover the entire wall; the reason for this is that Carrie's head AND THE CAMERA are also moving in the scene, and I can't have her head drifting in and out of the dead zone of the masked area. Since this is a short scene, I feel I can get away with a "general fix", as opposed to a "detailed fix" - which would take me considerably more time, and is always an option down the road, should I feel that this shot is too distracting.

Anyway, I've got the masked area, now I need something to fill it with that's gonna make the wall look less like it came from the local lumberyard. Off to trusty ol' Photoshop I go, and put together a plate of random graffiti that I think looks kinda' cool:

This gets slapped behind the masked shot of Carrie and...


Hey! That doesn't look bad at all! I can buy into the idea that these kids have been drawing for generations on this stupid shelter, it doesn't look like INDUSTRIAL WOOD STAMP coming out of Carrie's ear, and it's only distracting if it's being looked for.

So yeah... phew! Crisis averted, right? Not quite. Remember how I said that the camera and Carrie are moving in this scene? Yeah. That means that the plate I put behind the original plate needs to sync up and move in the same directions and speed as the "real" wall. Now, there's lots of ways to screw this up, but the only sure-fire way to deal with it is one frame at a time, and that kind of sucks. How much does that suck? Well, this particular shot is three seconds long. At 24 frames per second, that comes down to 78 frames that I have to painstakingly adjust - or else the illusion is broken, and the person who plopped down his 10 bucks in the theater feels robbed.

So, bottom line: how long did that three second shot take me to do?

Roughly 40 hours.

Yeah, this microbudget filmmaking stuff isn't really a sprint now, is it...

Lesson learned: if you have no money, then make sure you spend time instead. And if you do neither... well, yeah. We won't go there, since I've already made enough of those movies.

Will

Vagabond Lane News

Ouch.

So, apparently there's something to this whole, "be careful when you update your software" - type thing.

Long and short of it: an important project file for Vagabond Lane up and became corrupted on me this week. It's not an Extinction Level Event for the film by any means, but it does make a longer trip out of a short one. Fortunately, the video lock is A-OK. Unfortunately, the audio build-up that was in that project file is DOA.

End result? All the audio tracks have to be rebuilt, and I better hope I'm happy with the video edit I have, 'cuz changes will mean a complete re-build.

*sigh*

At least I have enough of the film locked and saved in different files that this isn't going to be too much of a set-back (as if it already wasn't a year late and several dollars short...), but still... I was hoping to be done with this darn thing this month.

Will

Vagabond Lane News

Ouch.

So, apparently there's something to this whole, "be careful when you update your software" - type thing.

Long and short of it: an important project file for Vagabond Lane up and became corrupted on me this week. It's not an Extinction Level Event for the film by any means, but it does make a longer trip out of a short one. Fortunately, the video lock is A-OK. Unfortunately, the audio build-up that was in that project file is DOA.

End result? All the audio tracks have to be rebuilt, and I better hope I'm happy with the video edit I have, 'cuz changes will mean a complete re-build.

*sigh*

At least I have enough of the film locked and saved in different files that this isn't going to be too much of a set-back (as if it already wasn't a year late and several dollars short...), but still... I was hoping to be done with this darn thing this month.

Will

South Park Leads to Cultureal Appreciation; in Related News, Hell Freezes Over.

Leave it to South Park to force some culture down my throat by accident. Y'see, I'm catching up on all the SP episodes I've never seen (quite a few), and I happen to watch Quintuplets (original air date 4.26.00), an episode wherein Kenny McCormick has to learn how to sing better so the boys can have a "successful" circus (or whatever). Kenny pops in a "singing for dummies" - type tape, and lesson #3 is: Sing Con te Partiro. The tune hits a note (pun intended) with me, and I spend the next fifteen minutes hunting down the song by Andrea Bocelli.


South Park leads to opera appreciation. And people say nothing good ever came of South Park. Go figure.

More Poster.

Don't mind if I say so myself, I kinda' dig this poster.

The Highly Contested Election For Adams County Sheriff

Poster I made for use in the film; not the film poster itself. But... Hmm. Maybe it could be with some tweaking...

Jungo

Started looking around the world on Googlemaps the other day and relived my "lost in Nevada" trip to Burning Man 1998. A fine three days were spent there (wish it had been more), and with the price of BM tickets any more ($250!? Are you kidding?) as well as gas and everything else, I probably won't be going back there any time soon without sponsorship...

Yet, I digress.

On that trip in a large, fully-loaded 12 person van weighed down with a functioning 12-foot high trebuchet (!), while the Angry Hippie / Bi-sexual / Feminazi played the role of Copernicus; while Theo ground out of reality on a couple of psylocybin caps; while I mentally disappeared into the vistas of the desert as they passed, I, speaking into my mini-cassette tape recorder (suddenly I realize where that device had disappeared to, as the Feminazi took umbrage to a number of my recorded comments; alas, the recorder was destined to fall off the earth, wasn't it...) sagebrush, sagebrush, sagebrush... ; and while the Disgruntled Stoner Yet Horny Hippie Who Would Fail In Landing The Feminazi rode shotgun and roasted in the 100 degree sun and talked about all things inaccessible, if only to get into the hairy leggings of the Feminazi; as the sun was setting only an hour after taking the Untravelled Shortcut out of Winnimuca, why oh why did the shadow not fall behind us as we headed west toward desert craziness, but to our port side?

Alas, Copernicus Bi-sexualius Angrius took a wrong left at the Q-shapped sagebrush bush, delaying our arrival at the Black Rock Desert by five hours.

Re-living that journey, I took the opportunity to view the desert from the spy satellite view and see just where we went wrong when I came across JUNGO:

Interested, I Googled some more and came across this Wiki: http://www.blackrockfriends.org/wiki/index.php/Jungo

Which houses this pic:

And now I know what to do for the current script I've been sweating bullets over for the last month when I should have been editing that two-year-old movie of mine...

Will

When Current Projects and Vanishing Point collide.

When I first saw Vanishing Point on the telly, it was subjected to all the bastardizations that network television enjoys fostering on those things that might be considered, "possibly offensive." What I remember is a lot of car stuff, but I really remember the naked chick tooling around on her motorcycle in the desert. Hey, I was a kid, and you didn't see naked - even conservatively cropped naked - every day on the tube.

Fast forward to twenty-some years later and my roommate at the time has picked up the recently (at the time) released DVD version of Vanishing Point. Only upon watching this version did I realize what those network bastards had done to put VP on the television: not only did they crop, cut, dub and edit at nausem, but they had broadcast degenerated crap version of the movie to boot. How do I know this? Well, my memories of Ms. Naked Biker Girl are clearly of her riding around the desert at late sunset - an image which caused her to be in a bit of a haze and difficult to see (go figure).

In the movie as it was intended to be seen, however, this is clearly not the case, as Ms. Naked Biker is plainly grooving to the vibrations of her desert bike during the mid-afternoon at the latest.

Crazy.

I bring all this up because I think that those late-night broadcasts of these "cult" movies didn't do them any service: many people probably have similar memories of VP as I do - kinda' fun, but really just a movie that aspires to B-movie status.

Thank goodness for DVD. Not only do we get to see the movie as it was ment to be, but we can view it with an eye towards analysis without fear of - literally - not getting the whole picture.

I'll continue this later (I feel an essay coming on...), but I'll leave with this: on a metaphysical level, just exactly what does happen between 10:02 and 10:04 am Sunday morning in this movie?

I've got my theories; maybe you have yours.

In any event, I'm watching VP because I'm doing an homage piece to it in a current script I'm writing - homage in the sense that VP captures the emotional and philosophical aspects of the film I want to make. Am I writing a remake? No. They did that in 1997, and - from what I've read - it wasn't that good. The curious thing is that Viggo Mortensen was in the "Kowalski" role in the remake, and he's exactly the cat I'd like to cast in this script, so... yeah. A little weird serendipity going on here.

Hmm. What other news... Vagabond Lane is coming along with a schedule to be finished by the end of the month (sans potential voice overs. Yes, it IS that difficult to edit...); I've shot a few project with Andrew since then, and been all-in-all working on getting distribution for our early movies.

More sometime down the road. Film hard.

Will

VAGABOND LANE LIVES.

Been awhile since I've blogged, so here's the skinny:

End of June / Start of July I played Sound Guy / Grip / Actor on the Ellis - Cosho production of The Highly Contested Election for Payette County Sheriff. Came home and had to go into "filmmaking decompression" - something about being on location for 5 days that is annoying as hell: just enough time to get used to working on a film, just enough time to get to know everyone, just enough time to ... well, yeah.

And then it ends and we have to come back to reality.

So... twelve-hour days and I can't wait to go back and do it again. But not so fast, not so fast.

At the beginning of the year when I came down with type II diabetes, I made it a priority to start getting all my accumulated projects completed. That started with A Season For Brooding (soon to be playing at festival(s) near you), and has now moved onto Vagabond Lane - and in that order because we started Season... six months prior to VL.

Anyway, last year at this time I was still working on the first rough edit of VL - and hating every minute of it. I'd walk by the computer and it was like the damn thing was taunting me:

"Will... come edit. COOOOMMMMEEE EEEEEEEDDDIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTT!"

*shudder*

About that time I ran into Josie at the Flicks and she asked me about VL; I told her it was coming along one frame at a time. Unbeknownst to her, she gave me some great advice, something along the lines of, "hey, man, it's your project, it's your movie - do it your way."

So I took about ten months off from the damn thing. Let it percolate, let it simmer in the box (so to speak), and gave myself some perspective on the whole thing.

It's a whole new edit now, and a whole new movie as far as I'm concerned. Sure, the story's the same, but I'm back to "playing" - instead of digging in the dirt for a damn wooble.

About 1/4 done - and I mean "locked"-type done, I expect to be finished in about three-to-four weeks.

Yay for me.

Will

Stan Winston is Dead.

'Nothing is impossible.'

RIP, Mr. Winston.

alternate posters

Ellis and I discussed the posters and have come to the conclusion that they should all stand alone instead of being tagged with the A Season For Brooding title. Here's the new versions; I like them better than the others because they're cleaner / less cluttered.

Will

Boise Filmmakers. No Tourists.

Blue Smocks

Something fun. You know. Zombies. Smocks. All we need is a thermonuclear device and voila... "fun."

Will

Boise Filmmakers. No Tourists.