Got off to a slow start today. Mostly because I wanted to be able to get the last episode of True Blood before heading into the internet-free zone. Haven’t watched it yet – but I assume it’ll be worth it.
Traffic sucked. A lot. Construction AND an accident, in the same spot – a rubber-neckers heaven. So what’s normally an hour drive was more than double.
Went up into the attic of the summer kitchen at the farm, the area I decided would be best to set up my edit suite. Wasp infested. I had a conversation recently about the importance of wasps. We couldn’t think of one. I imagine that they play into the food chain in some manner or form, but I honestly believe that if wasps disappeared from the planet, nothing would change. Granted, I am not a killer – however, I’m a fan of assisted suicide – so as a trick learned from Emily’s mother, we left bowls of lemonade by the windows. And it’s their own fault if they go after it. So I’m somewhat guilt free.
So now I’m set up in the summer kitchen. The table here is a bit wobbly, I don’t think the table top is attached to the base, so I’ve put my RAID on one end and me on the other, so it balances it out and doesn’t tip. Or it hasn’t yet.
So today is all about getting settled in. I think I’m going to do some photoshop work tonight on some of the Haley pictures to make them look more like “ads”. I’ve got five days until people come up to see a screening, and for my Sundance-Rough cut, so I’m in good shape.
Day Two
There are at least forty dead wasps in the bowl of lemonade. It could very well be one of the more disturbing things I’ve ever seen. I’m still debating whether or not to take a photo of it for the blog. I suppose the answer to that question will be given in a visual representation above.
Another great discovery today was free wi-fi. The farm is on a six acre lot on the outskirts of Kitchener and a few years ago some developers started putting sub divisions on the area surrounding it. So outside of the woods and gate there are a bunch of boxes made of ticky-tacky, otherwise known as houses – and while taking Ephraim for a walk this afternoon I discovered that THEY DON’T PASSWORD PROTECT THEIR INTERNET! It’s like a buffet out there. So while I doubt I’ll post, I do have access to my e-mail, which is lovely.
Editing wise it was a good day. I finally tackled the last Haley scenes and it’s a doozy. Lots of whip pans in the scene which makes it easy for me to steal from different takes without it looking like it. All I have to do now is edit the last ten or so minutes of the film. I decided to be brave and screen what I have so far for myself today (which is roughly 90%) of the film. I took notes on things that I definitely need to work on – but to my delight it’s feeling pretty good already, even at this early stage.
My goal tomorrow is to have a completed assembly so that I can start tweaking what needs to be tweaked.
Day Three
So it’s now been a week since I’ve finished shooting the film, but before I update you on the editing process – an update on farm life.
The wasps have returned and seem uninterested in the lemonade bowl. My neglect in emptying said bowl has probably deterred them from going near it. The fault, dear readers, is with me. However, the weather has taken a turn to the cold this afternoon and so they probably won’t be bothering me much anyway.
I’ve also been trying to rig up a stereo to my computer to get slightly better sound than my iMac speakers. This is still a work in progress.
So I’ve got an assembly of the entire film now. It’s coming in at 1hr, 49 minutes including a temp credit bed. Not bad for an assembly. I’ve got a list of notes I need to address while working towards the rough cut I plan to screen this Saturday(right now it’s Wednesday). I think in the end a good length for this film will be between ninety and a hundred minutes. It’s a tough film to cut down based on the way it’s shot and there’s not really any scenes that are extraneous. We’ll see what has to happen to get it down (assuming it needs to get down).
Okay. I’m going to BBQ and take my son for a walk amidst the trees. Maybe we’ll see more deer that live on the farm in the bushes. I’ll take a picture of I can.
Day Four
Today saw an up and a down. The film is officially to the point where I need to have other eyes on it. It’s my director’s rough cut, coming in at 1:48:34 – a pretty good length for a rough cut I think. However, when I exported the huge ass file (at 26gigs it was actually smaller than I expected), it was out of sync. Not at the beginning, but it did a drift that, by the end, had it about two or three seconds out. I spent the evening calling Zach (my DP, and a wiz when it comes to all things technical) back and forth trying to trouble shoot but nothing seems to have worked. I’ve got a back-up plan that I’m going to try to see if works tomorrow. I want to be able to pre-screen the film for my wife before everyone comes up on Saturday, so that she can tell me all her brutally honest thoughts.
Crossing my fingers that I’ll be able to make a screener.
Day Five
Success! So I decided to export the film into small chunks and then patch it together in DVD Studio Pro and it worked like a charm. I could also cut and paste the individual chunks into one big quicktime file, but this works for now. Hurray!
So I screened the film for Emily, which is extremely helpful to me because I find that when you’re watching something you’re making by yourself that you’ll let things slip, but as soon as you put someone else’s eyes in front of it you become wonderfully self conscious about the stuff you know, deep down, isn’t working. Emily is also one of my most blunt and trusted critics – she has no qualms about crushing my artistic spirit – a good thing to have in a wife. The good news is that, even in this rough stage, the film works. There’s some parts that need a little extra TLC, but nothing that can’t be dealt with. Feeling very good about it right now. So I’m all set up for tomorrow when Anthony (producer) Zach & Yvonne (DP and sound), Meaghan (production designer), and last but not least Mary (actress) come visit us at the farm and we screen the film. Everyone’s excited except Mary, and I don’t blame her. I can’t stand watching myself on camera either. Looking forward to their thoughts. Will report back soon.
Also on a farm note, I tried to take pictures of the deer yesterday, but I fear I couldn’t get close enough. I finally saw a buck yesterday, I’ve never seen him before, just the younger deer and the women-folk. So by my count there’s at least seven deer in proximity to the property, but if I had to guess I’d say there’s about a dozen that come and go.
Day Six
Today was screening day. I’d already made the screener file so there was nothing to do today for the film besides wait, and so my wife deemed that it would be Daddy and Ephraim day – which was a good call.
So of course when Eph and Em woke up I spent an hour writing up re-write notes for another script I’m working on with my writing partner. If all goes well I intent to attack the hell out of that script while I’m still up here in the wilderness.
So we had a few cancellations for people coming up, but all the invited crew members were able to make it, which was the main thing. Anthony, my producer, Meg my production designer, Mary, one of our leads, and last but not least Zach & Yvonne, my DP and our sound.
We had a nice little feast of burgers and things from the vegetable garden here on the farm, gave Meg a tour of the property since it was her first time up, and then played some board games.
After dinner… we screened. It went really really well. Some areas of concerned played better with a bigger audience. Some areas still stood out and so I’m going to work them as best I can prior to submitting to Sundance. Today is the 19th. The film HAS to be in Utah for the 25th. So tomorrow is all about tweaking the sound and doing some little picture adjustments and sending the film off ASAP. Then next week will be about writing and relaxing a bit. Visiting my family for a day. All good stuff. Then when we get back we’ll screen for the investors and start making a post-plan for the immediate future. What really needs to happen ASAP is getting the film in front of people that know nothing about it and getting their thoughts. The sooner I can do that, the better.
Day Seven
Today was all about sound. Because I cut in sequences and then put them all together, the sound levels inside of the sequence are always fine, but from section to section they’re too loud or too quiet. So I spent a big chunk of today ironing out the sound and doing a few smaller notes that we discussed after the screening last night. Anthony e-mailed me some more notes but I won’t have time to incorporate them before sending the rough cut off to Sundance. I’m in the process of writing up my music and graphic notes which have to be sent off with the rough cut. Sundance is fine with the film being unfinished, they just need to know which elements are still in flux.
So now I’m just building the DVD which I’ll let format overnight and then I’ll watch it first thing in the morning to make sure there aren’t any glitches – and then I’ll send it super-wicked-fast delivery to Anthony so he can send it off with the other forms.
Day Nine
Make no mistake. I was lazy on Day Eight and wrote nothing in this farm journal. In truth I’ve done very little on the film in the last two days, although I had a good talk with my producer, Anthony. We went over some notes he had that I’ll incorporate sometime before I return to civilization. I’m getting excited to start showing the film to people and to get feedback from those who know nothing of the film. Right now it’s just minor tweaks. I’m also excited to start looking to see if we can get festival rights to some of the songs we want, and I’m even more excited that we’re sending the film off to Sundance. It was one of my big goals to have a worthy cut ready, and I think we’ve accomplished that. The film will continue to improve over the next few weeks, but its core is there.
Outside of not working on the film I’ve been catching up on writing, which I’ve neglected since having gone into pre-production on this film. When I get back to the city I’m going to seriously consider buying a new laptop so I can keep on top of it more wherever it is that I am.
Tomorrow I’m going to my Dad’s to finally go through the stuff I’ve been storing there. He’s about to put his house up for sale so I’ve finally got to clean my shit out. I’ve bought three big Tupperware bins. Whatever doesn’t fit in them gets thrown out. That’s the rule for tomorrow. Wish me luck!
Day Eleven
So I only used two of my bins yesterday! That being said I only got through about half of the stuff. A return trip will be needed, but I found some great stuff. My thesis from film school – about budgeting. A lot of the stuff I learned doing that paper became super helpful in making Paul Shepard. I also found some great board-games, some movies I forgot I had (homemade) and some writing of mine from high-school. It’s probably all pretentious teen-crap, but there could be some worthwhile nuggets in there.
So today was spent working on the rough cut that I’ll be showing to our executive producers upon returning to the city. Emily’s parents have joined us up at the farm and they want to see the film, so maybe tomorrow night or Saturday. Either way, I think I might or might not watch it with them. Haven’t decided yet.
Day Twelve
So I decided to watch it with my in-laws after all. They are the first audience that knows nothing about the film going into it. So for that alone I was excited and nervous. The worst thing that can happen is you show your film to someone new and it doesn’t make sense, or they have a lot of questions about things that you thought were clear. And this film is talky, and I’ve always been cautious about that. To my delight there seemed to be no confusion at the end. Some laughter through-out, and in the end, the only issue was my father-in-law said, “Now that’s a dialogue film. Not an action film. Who is going to watch that?” A very valid, very good question. I mean, really, hopefully everyone! But it’s a low-budget film. It’s not going to take a huge audience to make the money back. I suppose I’ve never really talked about it in this blog, but the plan right now is to hit the festival circuit and see what happens distribution wise. Our investors have been awesome about not seeking out distribution before and seeing where the cards lie. It’s going to be an interesting road coming up. With the landscape of independent film constantly changing, I can’t to see what happens with all of it.
So I’ve still got two more days up here at the farm, but I’m not sure if I’ll have anything else to report, film-wise. My father-in-law mentioned inviting a friend up to see the film, a film professor. We’ll see. If not, this will probably be my last entry for the farm series. I’m going to take the rest of my time to do a polish on a script that my writing partner and I plan to send out for feedback soon.
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