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.