The Premiere & Things to Come

The only thing I can say about my premiere was that I didn't get to film any of it and my opening speech sucked. The whole week before I was a nervous wreck as early reviews came in and I realized this film may not go over too well in the heart of the "Bible Belt," we've come to know as Hickory, NC. I was petrified. The night before the premiere I watched The Departed. (Best Movie I've seen since... Maybe the English Patient.) Anyway, this movie relieved me for the simple fact that it was up for Best Picture and had every cuss word known to man it. There was blood and guts and well-- A hugely opinionated movie like Meter is really not all that bad. The next day, I found myself worried again, but as Mark and I took a break from lining chairs, Mark had a really good point when he said that, " Intelligent people come to these sort of things. They are open minded and we should not have an issue." As two people strong filed into the CAST Theatre. I began to get nervous. My introduction was terrible. My mouth was dry. My eyes wouldn't focus and I kept saying, "Uh..." The lights went down and I stepped out of the theatre and watched from outside the doors. As the final blast went off I stepped back in as the credits began to roll. We had a small response and three people got up and left before the credits were over. As the lights went up and I drug Freddy and Mark up to the front the ovation was loud. In fact they were standing. I spotted friends of my parents up on their feet applausing the movie. My nervous level shifted to relaxed and controlled as we began the Q & A. As people asked questions I realized that this film had become much bigger than I had ever imagined. It may do OK at film festivals. If nothing else put us on the map in North Carolina, so when the time was right we may be able to garner a couple of investors to take a chance with us. I walked out of the theatre with perma-grin. It was over. Now, we would only have to do it again when we entered and were excepted to festivals.

I hadn't felt this good and inspired since I showed Jobbers to the cast and crew and we realized that the movie nobody understood had become a cult classic. Mandi said the day after that she had never been so proud of me. My father had not shown in fear that if the film would have gone the other way his reputation and standing in the community would have been jeopardized, but I found out later he had stepped off the slopes, (he went skiing,) to call Mom because he couldn't wait to find out how it went and Mom had to tell him... " Your son did it. They all loved it." I had made my mark. Three days later, I'm still having a hard time sleeping. I just can't shake that moment when we walked to the front and people were standing, smiling, overwhelmed.

When one was asked, "How did you like the film," his response was, "words can't describe it. It was something you are just glad you were apart of." I was glad I was apart of it too. This is the last entry I will do in the 'Meter Journal.' If this film is excepted to Film Festivals, I will begin a new journal of the journey it takes. I almost can't wait to see what happens next...

Here is a small video tribute of the process of 'Meter.'
The Making of Meter

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.

If you record bad sound....

The picture, effects and sound editing is complete. It’s been a hella’ two weeks, but the film is shaping up.

The next steps: 1) Sound Effects
2) Score
3) Color Correction

Then the movie will be done. ANYBODY and I mean, ANYBODY who plans to shoot an independent film, I will tell you if you have $100,000 to spend on one thing for your production and Tom Cruise will do your movie for that, forget him. Use the money for a PROFESSIONAL SOUND GUY. We had picture issues where people walked through our frame, lights and signs in frame and they took no time to fix. We had to generate gunfire effects from scratch, because I decided last minute not to waste money on another effects program and they took no time to do. But then, came sound.... It has killed me dead. We shot in a cab with a boom mic on each actor with the windows up and it did not stop our audio from having somebody else laughing from a half mile away in it or in another instance, the bar down the way. It was quiet until somebody went in or out of it. We had little bursts of band music in and out of shot after shot, that I could not hear, because I was not sitting behind a soundboard with ambient proof head phones on or a stereo mixer in front of me. This issue has not only caused hours upon hours of audio fixes, but ultimately will also hurt the film all around because it doesn’t matter how well I cover up the blemishes, if somebody plays this movie on DVD with a stereo surround system they will hear the inconsistencies. The only option I may have left is to try and use sound effects in the bad spots and hope it works. My timeline for this movie, (audiowise,) is shot to hell already if you take a look at the screen shot underneath. All this and I still have the mastered sound, surround sound, and dolby digital bullshit to go through.

Somebody told me once, if you shoot bad sound, you get bad sound. I listened and knew that and did everything in my power to keep us from having bad sound, but because of the elements and uncontrolled environment of even something as small as the inside of a cab, I managed to record bad audio. Do not sacrifice this step in anyway. Hire somebody who knows what they are doing and do it right the first time. It will make everybody’s job easier.






I’ll show you an example of this bad sound in my next entry that has to do with all of the film.

Meter Trailer

I had planned on doing the trailer as I waited for Ryan to complete the score, but I actually finalized the special gunfire effects late Friday night and had not scheduled a babysitter to complete the Sound Editing sessions, so I thought I would utilize this time to make a quick teaser. I have an alternate I will throw up here next week, but I tried to tell a little bit of the story without giving away the twists so... I hope it’s a little coherent.

Hitchcock, Where are YOU!!!???

You know whatever happened to creative expression? I finished cutting picture on Meter Friday night and have showed it to a couple of the producers, family and friends and their first remark is, "What's with the out of focus shot?" When I was writing this film, envisioning it, explaining it and storyboarding it, this shot during the finale was to be out of focus and hazy. It always had. I drew this shot out and storyboarded it. I've shown everybody this shot. This is one of the first that stuck out in my mind to make sure it was done properly. OK, sure their points are valid--- NOOOTTT!!! They asked me why I didn't shoot it in focus and blur it in post--- Because that's not an out of focus shot. They asked me why I didn't go out of focus and the rack back in right at the end--- Because that's not an out of focus shot. They asked me why I didn't shoot one in focus to just make sure it works--- Because--- I didn't need to. I wanted my out of focus shot.

Now they've all got me worried that everybody is going to think that. Maybe they are looking to hard, because honestly in the midst of the chaos taking place it works great. I mean surely people watching my film aren't going to walk out saying, "What the hell was the camera man thinking? That second to last shot was out of focus." I mean really? I've ran camera for many years now. If I had not intended that shot to be out of focus I would have turned the ring and you have a twelve minute movie with not one out of focus shot in it. There is not one frame that is not dead on and then in the midst of the chaos I spoke of, we have an out of focus shot-- Wouldn't you think it was intended. Surely, people who know a little about movies would know that we probably shot that take a handful of times and the "camera man" didn't notice all six times that the camera was out of focus?

Please tell me American Cinema hasn't come to this. Hitchcock would never have to explain that shot. Hell, Soderbergh or Mann would not either. They're camera movements and tactics are revolutionary. My one of out of focus shot is a fucking scab!!!

Filmmaking can suck an egg.


*I would tell you why it's out of focus, but it would spoil the ending.