The Odds of Getting Even

I received some more good news this morning. Well, it wasn’t exactly news, well maybe it was... What am I talking about? It was pretty DAMN GOOD news. Freddy, my partner in crime, is a friend of Ving Rhames and they were talking and Freddy guided him to my website to check out the Meter trailer. He watched it and was apparently impressed with what he saw. I was telling Mandi the news and how, I don’t know, she could not put a name with a face on him. So I sent her a link to Ving’s profile on IMDB when I saw it... I knew it was in production when we were in Vegas for Ryan’s wedding but low and behold Ocean’s 13’s teaser had been posted. I had to immediately share it with everybody. This may be the only franchised series of films that still holds its weight in water.

Meter's Up

"Creating your vision on film is a dream. It’s watching the vision you created that is the nightmare. " -Me.

Well, as soon as I thought there was no end to post production of my film is as soon as I finished it. The final clean up, color corrections, score and sound effects went without incident once I arrived back to square one, (ie Audio Foul Up.) I’m not out of the muck yet. I have to run the film on a regular television, dolby surround set up and a 720 x 480 internet stream to make sure all the audio levels, colors and brighness stick to all consistently. (Not to mention, I don’t want to embarras myself.) I have confidence there will only be minor adjustments made. With that said, the premiere will be held two Saturdays from now. I’m excited to feel like I’ve accompished something I never thought I would do again. I’m stoked because I’ve managed to see yet another project through to its entirity and most of all, I’m appreciative of all the great people who made it happen like the generous business owners to the city officials who still promote and believe in self expression and ingenuity. And let’s also not forget Freddy, Mark, Mandi, Phil, Amanda, Muki, Karry, Chuck and Ryan who all in their own magnificient talents kept this movie from being filed away as a "nice try video." I don’t have any pictures to match the talents with the faces but I did manage to snap off this picture during the reshoot. (May be the only thing good that came out of the reshoot.) This picture in itself can speak for the understanding and respect we all had for the project and each other. For Meter is only the first movie-movie I’ve done in years but also will be known as the movie that put together ’One Roof Production Group’, a small band of actors and filmmakers who will collaborate on all sorts of projects. The buzz has already recruited five more talented people. There are four set to do through 2008.

The well oiled machine is being built. I look forward to working on it.

After the film is premiered, I have a cool in depth vignette that will show the whole process of making the short film. You, if you are or are interested in becoming a filmmaker, may find it insightful. I can’t show it now. It’s a movie spoiler.

Meter's Up

"Creating your vision on film is a dream. It’s watching the vision you created that is the nightmare. " -Me.

Well, as soon as I thought there was no end to post production of my film is as soon as I finished it. The final clean up, color corrections, score and sound effects went without incident once I arrived back to square one, (ie Audio Foul Up.) I’m not out of the muck yet. I have to run the film on a regular television, dolby surround set up and a 720 x 480 internet stream to make sure all the audio levels, colors and brighness stick to all consistently. (Not to mention, I don’t want to embarras myself.) I have confidence there will only be minor adjustments made. With that said, the premiere will be held two Saturdays from now. I’m excited to feel like I’ve accompished something I never thought I would do again. I’m stoked because I’ve managed to see yet another project through to its entirity and most of all, I’m appreciative of all the great people who made it happen like the generous business owners to the city officials who still promote and believe in self expression and ingenuity. And let’s also not forget Freddy, Mark, Mandi, Phil, Amanda, Muki, Karry, Chuck and Ryan who all in their own magnificient talents kept this movie from being filed away as a "nice try video." I don’t have any pictures to match the talents with the faces but I did manage to snap off this picture during the reshoot. (May be the only thing good that came out of the reshoot.) This picture in itself can speak for the understanding and respect we all had for the project and each other. For Meter is only the first movie-movie I’ve done in years but also will be known as the movie that put together ’One Roof Production Group’, a small band of actors and filmmakers who will collaborate on all sorts of projects. The buzz has already recruited five more talented people. There are four set to do through 2008.

The well oiled machine is being built. I look forward to working on it.

After the film is premiered, I have a cool in depth vignette that will show the whole process of making the short film. You, if you are or are interested in becoming a filmmaker, may find it insightful. I can’t show it now. It’s a movie spoiler.

Why Did It Have to Be Snakes.

Getting away from the normal drama, over exaggerated garble I type here, I received the best news thus far this year.

Are you ready?

Indiana Jones 4 is now in pre-production. It will come to theatres in the summer of 2008!!!! You have no idea how long I’ve waited to hear that bit of news.

Do you know how many years I’ve read the rumors and BS "Production News" lies. All of them spread false hope. Do you know how many "bootleg" scripts of INDY 4 I’ve read in the past eight years? I’ve read Darabont’s, Koepp’s, Kasdan’s and countless other’s specs. The stories ranged from Indy’s son going after Noah’s Ark to Indy coming out of retirement to find Jimmy Hoffa’s body.(Just kidding on the second one.) The others ranged from chasing Nazis, dragons, and all sorts of superstitious hocus pocus. I loved almost everyone I read. So now, it’s really happening and they are keeping the script under lock and key. In fact, there was one rumor where the script was actually being printed with invisible ink and only the key Execs had the "serum" to make it readable. Either way, I won’t cause a big ruckus over what it is about nor will I blow any money buying a pirated copy off eBay. I want to be surprised. I look forward to anxiously awaiting the open date. I look forward to news updates, teasers, trailers and all that other marketing crap. (I’ll be first in line to buy a movie poster for my new office and house.) Raiders was the movie that threw me in this tumultuous career path and I know Indy 4 will never, ever surpass Raiders but c’mon....

It took almost ten years of script writing to get Lucas, Speilberg, Connery and Ford to commit to it. It will be worth every minute, hour, day, month I have to wait. The last movie I did the countdown on was Miami Vice. It was at the casting stages when I heard about it. Indy hasn’t even arrived at the concept art yet so the next year will be painstakingly tough and although timing sucked and I never made it to the theater to see ’Vice’ on the big screen. ( I was in route on opening night when my babysitter bailed on me,) I will not miss Indy.

In the Summer of 2008, Payton will be two and a half and although she won’t be old enough to take, I’ll remember as I approach the box office that fateful Friday night when my father looked back at me as he paid for our tickets for Raiders with his eyebrow raising smile and said, "Here we go," wishing I could share that moment with her too. To end yet another rant, I hope it will restore my faith in America Cinema.

*Note to George Lucas

Please man, don’t cake it up. You got away with all the CGI in Star Wars, because, well you had to, but Indy is real sets, natural backgrounds. Indy is dirt, blood and real camels, snakes, rats and well, not real, nazis. If I see a thousand CGI’d snakes and not the real thing, you will ruin everything great about the series. I hope I’m not alone on this. George, Steve-- Please build sets. Not Green Screens. Put glass in front of the snakes, (even if we can see it,) not wire and key frames. Really blow up the tank and whatever you do, have the Prop Master round up at least thirty fedoras because again, if I see one CGI’d fedora fly off of Mr. Ford’s head and blow down a cliff or something, I’m going to really write you off, Lucas. (You were already gone until Star Wars Episode 3, so be on your best behavior.) Go back to your roots.

(I got a new set of brush markers. I had to try ’em out.)

For more information on Indiana Jones. Check out this cool site I discovered.

Adderall & Audio

For two months I have been abusing my prescription of Adderall. I don't know if it has helped or actually made me more of a mess. This film has taken its toll on me. From trying to find time to edit the film, to being a full time dad, to re-editing Jobbers, to the basic, "hustle and bustle" of my "paying"jobs, I have never felt more up to ears and unorganized in my entire life. I missed my scheduled premiere date by nearly two weeks and the clock is still ticking. I have worked on three hours of sleep, doubling and tripling up on my Adderalls to keep me going. New Years Day, I crashed hard. I realized I was going to have to postpone the preproduction stages and writing stages of the next two. I will not take all the blame for the delays, but nonetheless, this production was still on my shoulders. I paused post-production after reaching a stopping point where I almost needed my reshoots to continue. The reshoots were postponed two Mondays in a row, due to conflicting schedules leaving me on December 26th, (the coldest day of the year so far,) finally getting out there. To add to our frigid problem, two cabbies called in sick, so there was only one Cab in use that night. Leaving me having to transfer the shoot from downtown to the back parking lot of the Yellow Cab office. Nothing matched. We were pressed for time and of the forty minutes we shot, I ended up only using about fifteen seconds of it.

Some wasted tape of the reshoot.



Rewinding a little--

When I managed to work the editing magic to the point where I was set on picture, (minus the tedious color correction process,) I ran into the biggest problem yet. I had gone to a friend for help on my sound issues. I had uploaded a small clip for her viewing. The clip I demonstrated to her was the clip where I had the worst issue. She sent this elaborate tutorial with screen captures, and the works. I tested it and it didn't seem to work all that well, but I wrote it off as being new to sound editing and I had probably not done everything exactly right, so I pushed on. I imported the picture cut into Soundtrack Pro and nearly six hours later I still was unable to make any of that sound work. It sounded like they were speaking into an answering machine and not one effect or background ambient noise would change that, so I spent the next ten hours going back to Final Cut and figuring the fucking sound out myself. A day later, I did and once I did, had to track down every single clip in my timeline that had the first botched sound filter on it and change it. Upon finishing that I reimported the movie back into STPro and oddly enough, coasted through many of the background sound effects. There was only one issue... All the EFX I was using would all need to be tweaked so they sounded like we were hearing them from the inside of the cab. I told myself I would come back to that. Two days later, I had come to the finale, where again, I had my friend in Sound sending me some Grade A SFX straight from the HBO Series, 'The Wire.' I knew I would get every gun, scream, clip, cock sound I could possibly want and then we would be near the end of the grueling post period. I then got an email from Ryan who had just watched the film nearly two weeks after getting it. It was understandable. He was knee deep in work and we had a couple of jobs on the horizon ourselves and the last thing I should have done was burden him with the request for him to do the score. I began experimenting with instruments, trying to find a sound-- I gave up quickly-- "Well, we'll see what he comes up with," I said after realizing I don't have the foggiest clue how to play any instrument WELL. I had to wait on my SFX anyway, Ryan and I had some time to buy. Two weeks later-- Still no SFX. I guess somethings never change in my life. I had always stuck to the theory, "if you want something done, do it yourself." It's cliche' but I had gotten use to it over the years. Everybody from friends, girlfriends, employees, and employers had all promised me something and delivered nothing. (That's not saying a couple here, couple there. That meant 75% of the time. It was all talk. It always had been.) So needless to say, it had always taken me three times as long to finish a job, mostly because I had to do everything myself... This film... Would be no different. I began shopping Gunfire sound effects etc and to this moment still can't find what I want. I had shot some actual sound of the same kind of gun used in the film, but leaves, wind, and lack of echoes have me scrapping it. (Trust me--- I've already tweaked it every way possible. It's not what I want.) Here I am. Strung out on Adderall and lacking the energy to push on. I was so close to the end-- Maybe. The week off (of everything else) I devoted to this film had come and gone and I had unfortunately made a movie I couldn't submit to "On The Lot." I couldn't finish in time to start 'Tag Along' with a fresh mind and if I didn't watch it, the year it took me to find my creative spark and energy to make another movie, would burn back out. I hate to sound like a cry baby bitch, but I hate this shit sometimes--- Who knows--- I'm so tired, I don't even know if this makes any sense.


The Raw Sound





My Friend's Sound Fix





My Fix






*These sound clips will best explain themselves if you have stereo speakers etc on your CPU.