Y'all, I'm Pro

So, I've been feeling pretty good about the movie and, by extension, myself.

And then I was reminded that it's never a good idea to feel good about myself. By the abrupt and unpleasant realization that I evidently do not know how to use a head-cleaning tape. Someone who I saw vaguely as an authority figure in highschool told me that you should run the whole head-cleaning tape frequently, the whole way through (around 5 minutes) , and then rewind it. And for some reason I never bothered to check and learn that's about the absolute last way that you should use it.

Head-cleaning tapes are very abrasive, so you are actually supposed to run them infrequently, for about 5 seconds, and throw out the tape once you eventually get to the end, which, incidentally is way more intuitive when you actually think about what is happening and how the equipment works.

So, I've been randomly wearing out an important part of my camera, because I can't pay attention to what I'm doing.

Go. Me.

On the bright side, as I maybe(?) mentioned, even though there is still a whole lot left to do, I can now actually see the end of this project in a very tangible, non abstracted, very movie-like kinda way.

Help Me If You Can...

Because this one section is. not. go.

Do the drugs and dance go back to back? 20 minutes apart? 30? When does the freaking bracelet scene happen? Gr.

On an unrelated note, some stills from the reshoots:

It's like, that one sequence in The Hobbit where they all chill at the horse dude's house...

I think I have discovered my problem with updating here, and, as promised in the title it is exactly like The Hobbit (the book, not the animated feature which is, incidentally, my Favorite Movie Of All Time and doesn't contain said sequence, probably for the reasons I will outline below.)

But you know how in The Hobbit there is that the brief section where after they get rescued by the eagles they all rest in the house with the dude with the horses and dogs, and they all have to let their belts out a few notches because they are finally getting enough to eat? (Obviously I pretty much don't). And it's a relatively long while in the story itself, but, unless I'm horribly confused, Tolkien doesn't spend much page time on it because everything is going well, so it's totally boring?

That's kinda been the problem with this movie. In terms of what's been going on on-set I don't really know what I can say that's terribly interesting... Describing shooting would pretty much look like this for every single day:

We were a little behind schedule, the actors were all terrific and don't seem at ALL like they belong in silly indie films, and Peter was indispensably awesome/awesomely indispensable. At some point in the day, we all felt either a little or a lot burned out.

Describing editing is even worse:

I stared at the screen, and frantically hit hot-keys in an attempt to will a cogent structure into being. Then, I freaked out over the fact that the politics aren't coming through clearly. Then, I got really excited when an actor perfectly synched up with a music sting. Then, I decided that I needed to A. add more scenes B. add random archival footage or C. seriously consider adding animation. Sometimes I edit scenes.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

Although from my perspective there is plenty going on, there's not the kind of drama that I can easily write about, for the most part it's been a smooth (if overly extended and overly ambitious) little project.

So I don't really know what to do about this little blog. I do want to blog more, but I'm thinking of switching to a more general film-related blog that is more general and less project centered. We'll see. I'm getting close to the point of putting up an actual webpage for Sheila so I'll probably wait till then before making any changes here.

Until then, (my dear, like, 2 readers) keep an eye out for my little-less-then-month-on-average updates here!

RE-SHOOTS!

Ah, the dreaded re-shoots are. finally. getting. DONE!! Muy exciting :D

I don't think that they will be completely done by this weekend, but I feel optimistic that they will be shot, synched, and edited pre-break. Which means, accept for the faux-vlog and photo footage we'll have a pretty final draft going.

I'm almost on schedule! YAY!

Updatesville

Yoha...

Canary, possibly the only person who checks this blog, told me that I have not wrote here in forever. Something new and different...

Soo, updatesville: I am done with the rough-cut with my footage, and the re-edit of that rough-cut. Through this process, I've decided that I want to add a pretty substantial set of scenes in order to clarify the lead's relationship. So I'm currently writing new scenes, and we'll shoot them (hopefully) the next two weekends.

From there, the next/last major thing that I need to do is edit the historical footage into a docu/visualartsy thingamagig -- accompanied, most likely, by psuedo-vlogs with Sheila and Tommy.

The two less-major things that I need to do are a mini-photo shoot, and finish the dance scene, and of course do color and sound sweetening.

 Yup, so that's the update. More soon...

Whoot!

Well, I have evidently failed at blog again. But, I did manage to get all the scenes I had rough edited! Unfortunately, rough means very rough, but that still means that I now get to work on a very satisfying stage of editing. So, yay. I might try to post here once a day, cos otherwise I forget this exists. Yup. that's my exciting story. 

Aaaand, now for some amazing pics of Canary and Peter!

Is It Wrong?

If I use a take just because I like Canary's hair in it?

To Be Approximately Precise...

I've rough-edited around 56 scenes and I have around 24 of the footage already shot left.

This thing has too many freaking scenes.

Working on this sequnece was a lot of fun though.

The Long and Winding Edit...

I've known a handful of people who can edit films quickly and well. I'm kind of horrified by them.

Here, for those of you who are curious is my exxxxxtremely professional editing workflow. PResented as a photobooth journal in sepia!      


1. Edit a rough cut. (I'm currently about halfway done with this) This is I take the footage, chop it up and make scenes out of it. After this is done it will (optimistically) sorta resemble a movie, but in the way that teenagers sorta resemble adults: if you don't know better you could be fooled into thinking that you were looking at the final product but you just reeeally aren't.

2. Do a sound mix-y - music-y - type-y edit. Wherein I get an actual cut.  For me the logic of scenes/sequences etc is based as much on sound as image so this is the stage that typically feels like things are actually coming together.

3. Color-correct and sound-sweeten. Try to make everything seem pretty. Or at least, like better. I'm currently ridiculously nervous about this stage because I really don't know how to do either of these things. I'm hoping that if I just believe hard enough, the color-correction fairy will appear in the middle of the night and do it all for me.

There is also a chance that somewhere in there I also have to shoot some extra coverage and an eensy scene or two, but I'm not admitting anything.

But I'm not super excited about it.





So, yeah. In retrospect this is probably mostly just interesting to me, but there you go. My goal is to have the rough-cut done by the end of the month, and the project completed by early May.

Or, if that is too ambitious, before the world ends in 2012.

Peace!