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Showing posts from January, 2011

PASSION and MEDS

You know people are always amazed when I tell them about how hard I work and for how long and they ask me how I do it... and in my head I'm like "DUH there's this thing called PASSION" I live in the U.S. as you know.... and I'm always shocked to find out how many people are on anti-depression or anti-anxiety medication... because I know THOSE FUCKING THINGS KILL YOUR PASSION! I haven't dug up the research but I'd bet that the countries that are revolting against they bullshit leaders right now have lower rates of anti-depression or anti-anxiety med use... it's like if your a guy and you get on that stuff its like removing your BALLS... come up against some opposition when your on med's... and you'll probably collapse in the face of it... you give up... you fold... you quiver and want to just run away and hide and wait till its over... in other words I believe those med's make COWARDS. Where the fawk are the great passionate American a

THEM people got GUTS!

Ya know the saying "NO GUTS NO GLORY".... Recently in a few places...the people got fed up with the regimes running they countries in opposition to the peoples interests and tried to say GTFO.... If you followed what went on in Iran with the people trying to end the reign of a President whose lies are really only believed by the older generation who watches TV and believes mass media lies... once those old people die... the younger people will rise again and topple that regime... If you saw what happened in Tunisia where they DID get the shitty "leader" to get out NOT after he stole %30 of the countries gold... BUT he's gone... And now what's happening in Egypt... those people are really brave! THEY'VE GOT GUTS! AND I APPLAUD THEM ALL! When you get pushed so far against a wall... you can either roll over and die OR FIGHT and they are FIGHTING! In all of those instances the government enlisted the countries military to fight or control the PEO

Filmy stuff dance

The only news I heard out of Sundance this year wasn't about any films or like how great they were or anything... it was about Kevin Smith's self distribution plan... I watched his Q&A which you can see here... I feel the same way about most everything he said about the film biZ.... and although I was never a part of it I figured as much from my brief interactions with film industry "professionals" So I opted out and self distributed WATS with Jamie formerly of FilmBaby now of INDIEBLITZ.... As far as the HOLLYWOOD types went...I didn't want to waste my life, time and energy with such useless, clueless people who don't know how to do anything except throw money at problems and hope they get fixed... IF I would have played they game and got into I BET I WOULD STILL BE IN MEETINGS NOW trying to negotiate making my next film... BUT I said FUCK ALL DAT NOISE IMMA MAKE A NEW FILM! and BLAM I've got one! AND thanks to word of mouth or somethin? I stil

The price is right?

So a friend told me about this lil Mexican bakery that opens at 5am and since I live like a vampire I'm just winding down my day around 6am... So I ride my bike over there this morning and order some Jalapeno/cheese thing and these two little custard things... then I'm about to pay and I see something up on the menu called "Vampiro" ...its like a juice drink....its name seemed in line with what I should drink...so I order it... the woman rings it all up and NO LIE the total was $6.66... she seemed as surprised as I was... Without saying too much....Really STRANGE things have happened to me all my life hence the monikeR... I've had a number of people ask me to tell them my true stories of the "spooky" variety only to have them ask me to stop a few minutes later ^ ^ I have YET to really tap into this in a film.... I start with HSM... BUT my next film will get into it much deeper... You cannot have power over a thing if you are subservient too it...if

More edit thoughts

So I finished the rough cut of the first 20 minutes... Before teh discussion lets look at Walter Murch's priority list for making a cut... 1. Emotion - How will this cut affect the audience emotionally at this particular moment in the film? 2. Story - Does the edit move the story forward in a meaningful way? 3. Rhythm - Is the cut at a point that makes rhythmic sense? 4. Eye Trace - How does the cut affect the location and movement of the audience's focus in that particular film? 5. Two Dimensional Place of Screen - Is the axis followed properly? 6. Three Dimensional Space - Is the cut true to established physical and spacial relationships? Now for HSM I'm assuming the music IS the emotion... it is the natural emotional flow so if I cut to the music I am cutting on emotion... I already cut out a ton of "cool shots" because they were not moving the story forward in a meaningful way... they were just saying "look what a kewl shot I R!" and

SO I got some music!

So I got the first 20 minutes of the music from Endika tonight... and it is AMAZING! I've been listening to it nonstop since I got it... and I did start to cut with it as well... it works GREAT... I seriously did like 6 fist pumps while cutting haha... We also decided to see this new way of working all the way to the end... so I will cut to the music as it is...I will MAKE IT WORK and not ask him to revise or change the music at all... It's a matter of principle I believe... we made a decision to work this way at the start and we'll finish it like that... I guess its more of a music video workflow eh? BUT the music is based on the script so in theory if we're on the same page then the music and the visual flow should fit together well... since I'm a pretty creative editor I have no doubt that I can make everything work... its actually more of a challenge and more fun this way AND I always cut to music anyway so jes... I finished making the teaser trailer... but

Ready for the ediT

Since I'm finishing edit preparations and start on that tomorrow I've set a few rules for myself in regard to the workflow... MUSIC IS LAW: Since teh epic genius that Endika is created the music I know that in its natural state the music will contain the purest form of the narrative so I will follow it as my editing/pacing roadmap... he is going to give me pieces of music with accompanying text files that notate what event in the film happens where for each piece of music... So when I start a sequence I will first sync all these moments with the appropriate clips and then go from there... LESS IS MOAR: There is 3 hours and 25 minutes of "raw footage" so I have to cut a TON to get it down to 2 hours... my instinct is always to let things breathe more BUT I will have a different strategy on this film... I will let the breathier longer cut be used for the "directors cut" type deal on the dvd while the quicker paced one will be used for general release...

Art/Film and mental illness

I could walk up to someone and say "The giant mechanical envelope folding trilobite from the fourth dimension refuses the call of the illuminatus trilogy because dolphin's have more folds than Jim" I could say that because I was being "creative"  and "quirky" er some shit....or I could just be "mentally ill" Where is that line? What part does art play to keep mental illness at bay? Some of us like to have our own little in jokes that we use with our groups of friends... some people have "in jokes" that only they understand and then they get upset or frustrated because no one knows WTF they are talking about...and then they become aggressive and accusatory... I think that's when you become mentally ill... you get lost in your own convolutions figuratively AND literally... This past week since I was waiting on renders and didn't have any intense work to do... I felt like my mind was being torn apart 0_o I felt.... well....

Post Notes

So I just finished reviewing all the finished clips for the whole film... 0_0 It's definitely intense and NUTS 0_0 All the "raw" footage combined is 3 hours and 25 minutes.... So I'll be cutting that down to 121 minutes for no reason other than because it is divisible by 11 haha Of the 1660 rendered compD shots there was 37 errors I must fix and re-render now...all of them were just fx issues where I need to go back and pre-comp the bulk of the layers and just leave the adjustment layers with the grade and look on top... so its simple work... a few shots I must of forgot to render 0_o because they weren't in there... So I'm gonna have my 1am lunch and get to work on that so I'll be ready to edit Monday....

Rendering: DONE

So all the composites finished rendering tonight... So what I'm doing now is taking all the clips which are 10bit Sheervideo quicktimes... and I'm rendering them out as PhotoJpeg quicktimes for the offline edit... I simply have an ONLINE and OFFLINE folder with the same file structure and the quicktimes have the same names like 0001.mov in each directory so I'll cut with the offline then just switch the names of the folders to online ^ ^ So once I'm finished with this... I'll watch every clip and make notes on any errors... then I'll fix and re-render the bad shots... once that is done I'll copy all the final shots to a drive and put it in a safe deposit box so I can sleep better ^ ^ Then I'll import and organize all the clips into bins in Premiere and start editing! So I'll be starting the edit on Monday...

Teh Business?

So up until now when it has come to the business side of filmmaking I've been a total unprofessional jerkoff ^ ^ I could have probably made 5x as much money if I would have sold stuff people wanted like soundtracks, posters, shirts, toys... but I didn't 0_o You know when we go through traumatic experiences we rush back into doing the things that make us comfortable ....2007 was a rough year for me artistically and all that so I decided to let go of WATS and move on into a new project.... I've seen lots of other independent filmmakers come and go and most all of them probably capitalized (when it comes to making money) better on they time in the limelight than I did ...BUT most ALL of the them FADED AWAY...maybe they made the money they wanted and bounced? Maybe they were one trick ponies and they did they trick so now theY done? BUT I'm still here ^ ^  In running away from it all and going to work on a new film...I've made like... A NEW FILM ^ ^ A new chance

Assimilation: SUPA RANT ^ ^

If you as a lone unique artist views the rest of the normal world as the BORG trying to assimilate you the world will probably make a little more sense to you... and its easier to see who is friend and who is enemy... Usually if you go out and create something totally different from what everyone else is doing you'll find that it is usually met with a lot of resistance and people will try to talk you into doing something a little less "extreme" or "different" and more like so and so who is already famous or established er some shit.... THEY ARE TRYING TO ASSIMILATE YOU...set PHASERS TO GTFO! ^ ^ Everyone pretty much walks the same path and they want you on it too so you can bitch and moan about all the same things...nothing that MATTERS mind you but just random chatter to pass the time... the weather... pop culture... politricks... team sports... since the borg are just relay nodes that are part of a larger whole...they generate no original thoughts or impul

Indelible experiences vs. Social media butterflYinG

As you hear more and more about how "social networking" sites are a requirement to be successful with your independent film project it kinda of seems like you NEED that to be seen or heard... as you probably know my new film nor I have a Facebook page, a twitter account or any other type of web presence besides this blog and my youtube account... So I clearly am just some weirdo shutin with no friends IRL or online...OR I have some other type of strategy... My strategy is to create INDELIBLE EXPERIENCES... I believe instead of always "being there" whether it be online or through communicating with people I know in real life... I choose instead to bank on my film's being indelible experiences... I put so much into them and they are so different I believe that even know people see over 9000 things a second they won't forget that weird ass film with the doll and the 8bit stuff... so even if years go by they will remember it... I don't need to constantly

Animated Samurai films are perfect for a solo effort

When I started out on the new film it was a straight up Samurai film but now its not... its something in its own world which is good BUT if you look at a Samurai film and Japanese style swordfighting vs a Kung Fu film and Chinese style swordfighting it's easy to see which one would be easier to do as a solo effort or with a really small team... So since I like the samurai style swordfighting so I kept that style for the film... Raizo Ichikawa as NEMURI KYOSHIRO In a traditional Samurai film there isn't much swordplay in a "swordfight" scene cause those d00d's are out to kill with one strike... so its more about the build up to the actual killing blow in the big showdown...and in the showdown it's really just two guys with intense faces in still poses... its all about the MUSIC...its the music in those scenes that really BRINGS IT... So I knew I needed GREAT MUSIC in this film to make it work... Now contrast that to a kung fu swordfight scene... its more

Compositing Completed ^ ^

So I just finished compositing the last shots just now... So it'll take about a week for them all to render...as you can see rendering is a bit behind... Once they are all done rendering... I'll import all the 10bit Sheer rgb mov's for all the shots and render them out to Pjepg mov's... then I'll watch them all and make notes for errors...and after they are all reviewed I'll fix the errors and re-render them... but all that should not take very long..perhaps a day or two... So it took me about a month to comP all 1660 shots... the only time it slowed down was on shots where I had to add in practical elements to enhance fx... like on gunshots, things bursting out of the ground etc... I shot my own little library of practical fx awhile back with my lil Canon hf100... BUT I only used about %10 of them as most of them I shot the wrong way... I shot most of the elements too close.... I should of done wider shots so I could use them like sprites instead of elemen

What do you want this blog to cover for the new film?

So as I'm getting ready to start publicizing the new film and shift the discussion over to it I'd like to know what kind of things you would like me to post about here... I'm making a super basic site for the film which will have stuff about the story, characters, images, videos, making-of info etc... but that will be static once I put it up... I'm thinking you'll want some more in depth stuff here and things so you can follow the films journey and where ever it ends up ^ ^ ... so please let me know what you'd like so I can add it to my queue ^ ^ Making of stuff? Breakdowns? Technical details? Workflow? Business stuff? Behind the scenes... in recording the music and voice actors? How the film came to be what it is now? I'd like to know what you want from a film's making of blog or whatever but haven't seen before... stuff that you think would be helpful to you in making your films etc... Thanks for staying with me all this time and I hope

No more games kids + comp progress+ fake artists

 This blog's comments section and my email box are not a playground for irrelevant cypher's and attempts at creating internetS drama. Filmmaking is SERIOUS BUSINESS ^ ^ So I prefer to spend my time and energy doing that... and I'm sure most people would like me to do that instead of getting emails and going wha?! huh?!  for like 5 minutes....  Soooooo there's only like 100 more shots to composite! So if I go nuts I could finish it tomorrow OR the next day if there's a lot of tweaking to be done... BUT it's going to be great to have it all rendered and put on a backup drive and placed in a safe deposit box so I can sleep at night 0_0 I'm always like WHAT IF?!?!? as its kinda scary when a few years of yer life are sitting on some hard drives... So as I'll start editing soon... a new phase so I'm like OH yeh gotta get back into editing, read some books and the like... but reading about editing is like reading about dancing... its all about the feel

Only 200 more shots+ Shoulder ChipS

So I just finished compositing the biggest and most complex sequence of the film which happens to be the one with the most decapitations ^_^ and hopefully its the one where you go OOOOHHHHMYYYYYYYGAWWWWWAAAAAYYYDDDDD while yer watching it.... So now I've composited 1400 of the 1600 shots...as you can see its getting close to being done... The renders are still like a week behind my work but that's no big deal... The 22 rendered sequences take up about 800 gig's on disk.... when its all rendered should be around 1.4 tb's... as long as it will fit on a 2tb disk it's fine... Of course since my work is my life I worked through Xmas and New Years as I have nothing really to celebrate on those occasions BUT I will celebrate somehow when the entire film is finished and locked... maybe I'll drink A BEER ^ ^ OR I'll be like my new role model Tezuka Osamu and just get right back to work on my next project... I'm really looking forward to my next challenge.