Happy Boxing Day!

Well, thanks in part to this week's holiday festivities, I've only really gotten through one scene since the last update, and I'm not even very happy with it. This is Scene 9, the infamous Roosevelt Park shoots, the infamy of which remains seared into the memories of those who infamed it. The forming of this scene constitutes a valuable lesson in the filmmaking process, so I will use it as an excuse to ramble on about the enigmatic and oft tortuous threads of thought it illicits in me.

First, a brief recap for those of you who weren't there. In this scene, Our Hero's girlfriend is out jogging with her best friend, and reaches out for advice regarding Our Hero's recently declared intention to move to Japan with her and get married. This was the second scene we attempted, after the (even more infamous) computer pod fiasco. Although we started early in the morning, we didn't get all the coverage I wanted because of a scheduling issue. Partly this was because I didn't really know exactly what angles to get, so we ended up filming a couple that won't get used at all in the final cut. The lesson? Good storyboarding saves lives and kills germs.

So, later on in the filming schedule we went back and filmed a few more angles, including some good close-ups. As I said in last week's post, this scene has some of the most coverage of any of the scenes I've worked on so far. Unfortunately, as I soon discovered, we made one tiny error: nobody remembered the exact choreography the actresses had used the first time, and I (silly me) didn't make a point of reviewing the original footage to find out.

So, ironically, although I have tons of angles of this scene, it's very difficult to cut between them because of some horrendous continuity problems. Basically, the actresses come up to a bench after their jog, do some stretches, then sit on the back of the bench as their conversation progresses. The later part is easy, because the closeups work really well there. It's that first half, when they are doing the stretches, because they don't do the same stretches in the same order. It's understandable that no one remembered; there were about two weeks of frantic slacker filmmaking in between the two shoots. But just a few minutes of reviewing the previous takes before we started shooting would have saved me a lot of trouble now. You know, that whole "I don't care if it takes an extra minute, wear the condom" thing.

On top of the choreography continuity, there's shadow continuity, which I've decided is simply hopeless. We were shooting in the morning in a park shaded by a variety of deciduous and evergreen trees. As a result, the shadows are splotchy, inconsistent, and rapidly changing. I've given up hope of actually making those consistent, since I'm having so much trouble as is.

Also, the sound is inconsistent. It's not bad, because you can always hear the actresses' voices clearly. The problem is that we were shooting outside in a busy city with a shotgun mic, and when we changed camera angles we changed the position of the mic. As a result, the "background noise" of cars and such sounds different in every angle. I'm confident that our sound gurus can monkey with some dials and make it all mesh together well, but it's probably going to be a lot more work than most of the other scenes. Conclusion? between leafy shadows and city sounds, shooting outside sucks. I think the key is bluescreens and digital backdrops. Screw the real world.

I hate to sound like a whiner here, and that's probably how I sound. It does bother me a bit that this scene is going to take some more work to polish, but that's okay. And in the end, there will be some continuity errors that anyone watching closely will be able to pick up on. Oh well, such is the sad story of no-budget guerilla filmmaking.

Next up is another scene that is going to wreak havoc with my already fragile mental wellness; the Anodyne pool hall scene. Shot entirely out of order with only my unfaithful memory to guide the chaos, under constant pressure from the management to get the hell out, and with a rooftop adventure like a scene in a Billy Garberina movie gone horribly wrong, it proved to be yet another exciting chapter in this production's twisted tale. But I'll get into that next week.

Happy #holidayname Everyone!

One, Two, Seventeen!

Well, I'm happy to report a lot of progress this week. The rough cut's now up to seventeen minutes and three seconds! I just finished Scene 8 a few minutes ago. This length will definately change by the final cut of the film, since there are a couple places where I don't have some shots I need, and I may alter the opening titles a bit once I get some more desert footage. But it represents progress nonetheless!

I thought I'd post a picture to illustrate the problems I mentioned before about scene two. Since these bits were filmed at wildly different times, the lighting doesn't match up at all. The difference is that we didn't light the empty room when we filmed it. Big mistake, as you can see:


So, somehow or other, this'll have to be re-shot. The shot of Leland is fine, we just need an empty room at least superficially similar to the other rooms in the house. On the plus side, we never see the room in any other shots in the movie, so it can be any empty room anywhere so long as the paint color is similar.

There are a couple other issues with some of these early scenes, but we probably won't re-shoot any of them. For example, there's this shot in scene three. We tried to use blue gels to enhance the "computer monitor's point of view" aspect of this shot, but unfortunately the actors came out rather darker than the background:


Due to a capricious twist of fate, a lot of these early scenes were the ones we had the most technical difficulties with. For example, for most of the filming of scenes 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 21, I was the only crew member. I worked the camera, set up the lighting, and recorded sound. Oh, and we did all of those in a single day and in a terrible rush. Needless to say, they came out mediocre at best. In fact, when I get to scene 21 I'm going to give serious thought to whether or not it can be cut completely, because everyone is out of focus in every shot! Sigh.

Scene 4 was the easiest scene yet, because there's only one shot in it. It's the scene where Clint posts a "Roommate Needed!" sign on a bulletin board and then goes into his job interview. Scene 5 was also only one shot, so it was just a matter of choosing which take to use.

Scene 6, which is supposed to be a series of shots depicting the last happy night of Clint and Jessica's relationship, is going to be a little more complicated because I don't have all the shots I need. Well, more than that, I don't even know exactly what I want it to be. Since it'll probably be set to some kind of music, I may wait until I get some music picked out to help me visualize the shots. For now I just tossed together a shot of Leland and Anna on the couch watching TV and a time-lapse shot of an Albuquerque sunset.

Scenes 7 and 8 turned out to be the toughest I've had to deal with so far. Through some creative editing, I was able to get them done, but the time constraints and my technical incompetence really show in these two, especially 8. We just didn't have the coverage we needed there. As a result, there are a couple of random cuts to Davis (Richard Boehler) playing his video game that cover transitions between takes. A bigger problem is the recorded sound in all these scenes; since I didn't know what I was doing, the sound ended up way too loud and some of the louder lines got distorted. I'm not sure if there's anyting we can do about that, but I really hope there is.

Next up is Scene 9, a scene which looks like it'll be hard to edit for exactly the opposite problem; we have a LOT of coverage of this one. This is the scene at Roosevelt Park that we had to do some re-shoots of. Between the two days of filming, there's about an hour and a half of footage for this scene.

In quasi-related news, I finished the Leadership class for my MBA this past week. A couple of you may remember me asking you to fill out leadership surveys about my leadership style and such. As I expected, I came out with good scores in the "Inspiring a Shared Vision" category and rather dismal in some of the others.

Among the questions I did best on were "Seeks challenging opportunities to test skills," "Finds ways to celebrate accomplishments," and "Appeals to others to share dream of the future." The three I scored worst on were "Makes certain that goals, plans, and milestones are set," "Expresses confidence in people's abilities," and "Is clear about his/her philosophy of leadership."

In a way, having this class immediately after making the movie was suspiciously providential. It gave me a good chance to reflect on the experience and put things into perspective using prominent leadership theories. I think part of the problem is that I'm not really a leader by nature; I'm pretty introverted and task-oriented. In other words, I'm much better at doing things by myself that don't involve dealing with people.

As a result, I'm not used to having to express my plans and ideas to other people. Like when I'm thinking about writing a novel, I don't really need to lay it out for anyone else, I just work it out in my head. I'm also not a planner by nature, I prefer to figure out things on the spot. On the other hand, I feel that I was able to handle crises pretty well. I'm sure plenty of people would disagree, but I'd point to the fact that we did in fact get the filming done despite a host of crippling problems. But nowthat I have a much better idea of the sort of planning needed for afilm project like this, any future projects I'm involved in will be meticulously planned.

I realize that I'm not as good as I should be at encouraging the people around me who need encouragement. This tendency caused a lot of pain and frustration for some people on this project, and I'm humbled by the fact that any of them have been able to forgive me.

Better Late Than Never

Okay, so I look like a moron now. Giving a big speech about regular weekly updates and then not doing one the first week. I can just feel your confidence in me slipping back into the lightless abyss whence it came. I could explain to you why it slipped my mind, and tell you about the ten page paper I had to write, school project I had to write, unexpected medical emergencies, Christmas shopping, letter writing, etc., but you'd still call me a slacker anyway. And yeah, I deserve it.

The good news is, I've got scenes two and three done. Well, "done" is a bit of a misstatement, since while I was working on them I realized that I need to redo a couple of shots. Nothing with the actors in them, just establishing shots mostly. Oh, and one shot in scene 2 that's just all wrong. It's a POV shot of Vince's empty bedroom. Problem is, when we filmed the empty room, we didn't light it the same way we lit Leland's reaction shot, so it looks totally wrong. I've tried to make do by fiddling with color settings and stuff, but it's just not happening. Of course, someone lives in that room now, and emptying it out again is out of the question. So, if anybody you know has a totally empty room with white walls, please let me know.

The filming of scene 2 was not at all pleasant, as anyone who was there can testify. We had to do it in about two hours on a friday night, on short notice, after I'd already moved out of the house and Sean and Wes had moved in. Our cameraman was in Boston for the weekend, and crew volunteers were a scant few. Despite it all, though, the scene came out okay. Not good, barely passable, but okay. With a little creative editing I think it can work.

Scene 3, the first computer pod scene, came out fairly well also. That was another legendary debacle, and perhaps a portent of the terrors to come. The computer pod scenes were the first thing we filmed, during a long, tough night. Even though we learned a lot after that, the scene cut together all right.

The main thing I'm worried about is that it won't really be funny. Maybe I just lack perspective on it, but so far a few ad-libbed remarks by the actors have been funnier to me than the lines that were supposed to be humorous. I've had people criticize my dialogue, and I can't really disagree with them. If I ever direct again, I may give the actors even more freedom to improvise and take things in new directions. It might even be fun to do a Christopher Guest style movie, where every scene is improv, if we could get a group of actors together who wanted to try it.

I'm about to watch the newly-released Return of the King extended edition DVDs. The extended version clocks in at something over 4 hours. I mention this because, in a weird way, it's related to my decision to make a film of my own. It was when I was watching the special features on the extended edition DVDs for The Two Towers that I realized I wanted to try it. I was watching one of those behind-the-scenes documentaries and for some reason I just started thinking that it's really not that hard to make a movie, because doing it is so fun.

I suppose that, in a way, this means that I've been working on this movie for over a year now. At this point last year, however, all I was really doing was just thinking about it. I didn't start writing the script with any seriousness until February, so that's probably a better anniversary. I'll have a rough cut done by then for sure, and probably come back to Albuquerque in early February to do some of these little pick-up shots. I may end up with quite a few; I've only gotten through three scenes and I've already got four shots I need to do (or re-do).

More soon, I promise, and this Sunday I'll start posting weekly (really for reals this time). By then I hope to have another few scenes put together.

It was the apotheosis of deserts. . .

6 November 2004. It's been almost a month since my last post, in which I declared my intent to finally buckle down and get workin'. So it's only fair to ask, I suppose, what I've gotten done in that time. The honest answer is, not much, really. I've only really started editing full-time this past week, but now I'm in full editing mode, so things are getting done. I feel terrible that I've neglected the website, too. So, from now on, I'll have a blog post here every week on Monday morning to let everyone know what's going on. I may post during the week as well, when something interesting and noteworthy occurs, but in any case you can be assured of new content every Monday.

I'm hoping to get a rough cut of the whole movie done in a month or two. The more I work with it, the more I realize that cutting it together in the right order isn't going to be the hard part. Getting it to look good, cleaning up the audio, doing foley work, etc., will be the hard part. But one thing at a time, right?

I do have some progress to report. I've been working a lot on the opening scene and the opening credits this week. I haven't gotten the beginning completely finished, because I've decided I need a few more shots that I'll get next time I'm in 'burque. The basic structure is done, however, and I'm pretty happy with the result.



For those of you who weren't there that day, it was a brutal shoot in the middle of nowhere beneath the searing, naked rays of the Sun. The scene is pretty long - about 3 minutes - and mostly consists of Our Hero (Leland) and Andy (Aaron) running out of gas and setting off for town with a gas can. Using the bed of Sean's truck as a dolly, we filmed the scene about 10 times, trying to get that one perfect take. Because the situation was so miserable and setting up for each take took a lot of time and work, we only ended up getting one angle:



Having only one angle in a 3-minute scene makes things tough, since it leaves you pretty much stuck with picking the best take. But since this is the first scene of the movie, and since I haven't come up with any better idea for how to present the opening credits, I decided to cut to black title cards during the scene:



This allows me to change takes with no one being the wiser. This allowed me to take the best segments from each take, and the final product is, in my humble opinion, pretty entertaining.







I haven't exactly figured out the order that people should be listed in the credits. I'm sure there's some official formula that I'm just not aware of. A couple people have told me to just do it however I want, and that sounds good to me. I'll probably list the actors in order of line count, since that seems pretty fair. Leland will be first on his own card, since he had about three times as many lines as anyone else (!). The number of title cards will basically depend on how many times I need to switch between takes, so once that's finalized I'll figure out how to spread out everyone else.

Incidentally, I put up the few photos I took in the Gallery section: check them out. I know I promised a month ago to get the rest of the behind-the-scenes photos uploaded. I will get them up there, I just have to use a very annoying interface for uploading so it's usually easier to decide to clean the bathroom instead. I will start uploading pictures as soon as I can, and I'll post here to let everyone know which ones are up.

If you weren't there for the desert shoot, you may not have heard the story of how we rescued some dogs that had been left out there by some soulless, worthless scumbag:


Left to right: Sonora and Saffron.

When Adam and I got out to the location, these two dogs just sort of appeared and started following us around. They had no tags or anything to identify them, and they were so far from the city that they couldn't have just wandered out there. We managed to get them some water and put them in my (air conditioned) car during the shoot. Afterward, Drew took them home until a home could be found for them. It took him a couple months, and I was starting to suspect that he was going to keep them, but he did finally find a new home for them. They now live with a nice retired couple.

Well, that's about it for this week. Come back next week for the next update. Same bat time, same bat website, and all that. Next on my agenda: Scene 2!