Yesterday was not my favourite day in this process.
Last night I had to tell one of our actors that we'd cut her scene in the film - relegated it to the vague promise of "DVD extras" should that ever be realistic. It's a reality I've been prepared for in general for quite some time. And most of our actors know that cutting is a reality and that their only or best scene could end up on the editing room floor. But this was a special case.
I don't even know where to begin explaining the needs of cutting for time to a child.
Worse yet, the child in question was my niece, Kassandra - "Kaz."
I talked to her Mom, my sister, Tara first so she knew what was coming and could be prepared to console. I figured that once I told Kaz, that anything I said would be irrelevant - I'd be the bad guy and that the chances of any reason being heard coming from my mouth would dwindle towards zero.
I'm not sure that Kaz fully appreciated what I was telling her at first. I led with the 'up' side - that her scene would be in the DVD extras (ugh - now I HAVE to follow through on that promise or forever be a monster). She said "I don't care. That's okay."
I explained how her scene was cut due to no fault of hers. The scene preceeding it was too long, too technically compromised and ultimately didn't truly forward the plot. It DID add a nice extra dimension to one character and provide back-story... back story that turns out to be a lie, so removing it definitely changes the film. But the scene following - Kaz's scene - is the punchline to the faux back-story scene. Without the set-up the scene is pointless. It's too bad. It's a funny scene. Gets laughs every time we screen it. Unfortunately that isn't enough - especially when we are seriously trying to shave time.
I went on to tell her how happy I was that she was in my film and that she would always be in my film in my heart and mind... and that's where I started to lose it.
Kaz gave the phone back to Tara, and I commented on how I was taking it worse than she was. Tara told me that as soon as she turned over the phone her stoic facade crumbled. I'm guessing that not being in the film is lousy for Kaz. For two years she's been looking forward to being in a movie. She has told friends that she's in a movie. I made a liar out of her. I'm so sorry for that kiddo. Perhaps she was being 'strong' while she talked to me, or perhaps it wasn't until she heard how it was affecting me that the gravity of it sunk in. Either way, I feel like shit.
Picture lock is days away now. Tonight is our last test screen - the first in ages. This time for some folk with industry insight. Should be interesting. Hopefully it'll lift my spirits a bit.
06 May, 2009
28 April, 2009
Ski Bum Musical
Went and saw the celebratory screening of The Staff: A Ski Bum Musical the winner of this year's Telus 72 Hour Film contest.
The crew was predominantly made up of guys from our crew from Beast.
They were runners up last year, this year they rocked the house.
Congratulations guys!
Cross Posted on The Truth & The Signal blog.
The crew was predominantly made up of guys from our crew from Beast.
They were runners up last year, this year they rocked the house.
Congratulations guys!
Cross Posted on The Truth & The Signal blog.
22 March, 2009
Big UPs for The Pucks!
Just a heads up...
Friends of "The Beast..." and contributors to the film - they wrote and recorded a song for the film "More than Just a Woman" which appears on their imminent album "Martha" - The Pucks have a couple of shows coming up in Vancouver.
They are playing this week - Wednesday March 25th - at the iconic Railway Club; and again in early April they will be playing at the opening of the new Vancouver Convention Centre... in fact they will be the first band playing at the opening - which will make them the first act at the VCC EVER!
Congratulations to them!
See y'all at the show!
Friends of "The Beast..." and contributors to the film - they wrote and recorded a song for the film "More than Just a Woman" which appears on their imminent album "Martha" - The Pucks have a couple of shows coming up in Vancouver.
They are playing this week - Wednesday March 25th - at the iconic Railway Club; and again in early April they will be playing at the opening of the new Vancouver Convention Centre... in fact they will be the first band playing at the opening - which will make them the first act at the VCC EVER!
Congratulations to them!
See y'all at the show!
04 March, 2009
Green chain opens this weekend against Watchmen
Just a quick link this time...
My buddy Mark Leiren-Young - who appears in "Beast..." - is opening a film this weekend.
It's called The Green Chain.
I have credit as the Director's Assistant - whee!
It stars BSG actors Tricia Helfer & Tahmoh Penikett - as well as voice-actor extroardinaire, Scott McNeil; Leo Award winning (for this film) Jillian Fargey; Brendan Fletcher, August Schellenberg and Babz Chula.
But what I really wanted to comment upon was the awesome - if terribly sobering - article Mark wrote in the Georgia Strait about the realities of Opening Weekend.
My buddy Mark Leiren-Young - who appears in "Beast..." - is opening a film this weekend.
It's called The Green Chain.
I have credit as the Director's Assistant - whee!
It stars BSG actors Tricia Helfer & Tahmoh Penikett - as well as voice-actor extroardinaire, Scott McNeil; Leo Award winning (for this film) Jillian Fargey; Brendan Fletcher, August Schellenberg and Babz Chula.
But what I really wanted to comment upon was the awesome - if terribly sobering - article Mark wrote in the Georgia Strait about the realities of Opening Weekend.
16 January, 2009
The Beast is finally seen...
A watershed moment.
Yesterday Craig, Mike, David and I gathered together to watch The Beast of Bottomless Lake for the first time front to back on one piece, properly edited.
There is still a lot of work left to be done, but the perspective has significantly shifted. We now have a 'whole' by which to compare against. It also means that I have been robbed of a stock answer. Almost every day I hear some variation on the declaration 'I can hardly wait to see the film!' to which I regularly quip "Yeah, me too!" Simple, but not without its own subtle wit.
But I have seen it now. It's not final, but there is a lot more clarity as to what this particular beast is.
We have a few weeks wherein we are each going to watch and re-watch and compile our own individual list of notes, wishes and thoughts on how to improve the edit; then we will make some high impact changes as time will allow and put that next version in front of a test audience or two... or three. What exactly we get from that remains to be seen, but we'll make our final fine-cut edits based on the ammunition and insight we get from those sessions.
Then we move on to sound, FX and colour correction...
Our intended goal: to be ready to submit to the Toronto Film Festival.
02 November, 2008
Art? Life? Which is immitating which?
Okay, this has nothing to do with us, but it is about independent film making.
If you read the entry wherein I posted the full text of our Reel West article, you'll recall that in the article I noted the phenomenon where the making of the film becomes an analogue for the film itself.
Sometimes that's only the tiniest glimmer of the circumstance.
Warning, this one is fucked up.
If you read the entry wherein I posted the full text of our Reel West article, you'll recall that in the article I noted the phenomenon where the making of the film becomes an analogue for the film itself.
Sometimes that's only the tiniest glimmer of the circumstance.
Warning, this one is fucked up.
19 August, 2008
Take 2
I really intended to post something before this past weekend, but circumstances had other plans for me. Just your run of the mill 'not enough hours in the day' stuff.
This past weekend - August 15th to 17th - we did pick-ups and reshoots on "Beast..."
For the most part it was fun and at a relatively relaxed pace. Though the last day didn't quite work out as planned, but I'll get to that.
Friday we had a late morning start and spent a lot of the day at the park & beach picking up a handful of small shots that we've discovered in editing that would highly benefit the story telling within the film.
In the afternoon we moved over to Craig's apartment. The timing was less than ideal in that we were a dozen or so people crammed into a one bedroom apartment at the hottest time of the hottest day of summer so far (a record breaker, in fact) and we had a couple of 1K lights shining down upon us.
We got some coverage of Leanne and I for two differnt scenes, and then added some additional inserts and pyrotechnics that we'd been unable to shoot last spring.
The pyro was amusing. I had consulted David Barkes last year on the matter, and combined with some previous theatrical application, we'd decided to use flash paper in a metallic garbage can. There was a lot of paranoia about the effect, though I was confident - I'd used flash paper in my bare hand on stage, I knew it was as safe as could be expected. Nonetheless it was prudent to be extra prepared with extinguishers and other devices intended to contain the fire should everything go wrong. After all that prep, the initial problem was quite the opposite. Due mostly to technique the paper didn't catch fire - the matches were out by the time they got to the paper. When that issue was worked out, the first actual working shot was spectacular and got great oohs and ahhs from everyone. The flame had actually gone so high that it was a bad shot, so we had to do it a few more times. The last attempt - where we used some extra paper for longer burning time and shot it at high speed (for slow motion) - was truly spectacular. I did a dance of joy.
Burning things... fun.
We ended the day with shooting a scene we'd originally decided to cut.
Those of you familiar with Moby Dick will be aware of the chapters that I refer to as the 'documentary' chapters. They don't technically advance the narrative, but they do add something to the book. Chapters on the nature of the colour white, the variety of whales, the use and creation of marine rope... there are dozens of these chapters covering a huge range of topics.
To the best of my knowledge, no other work based on Moby Dick has ever tried to include this aspect of the book - which is one of it's more fascinating features. Granted, it's not such an easy task. The structure of our film allows us a unique opportunity to include an equivalent - documentary interview moments with fictional Ogopogo experts, who each provide a small tidbit of information or thematic layering to the whole. We cut the 'Sheriff Snider' interview during principle photography last year because of scheduling issues. But in editing we've discovered that we don't really have enough experts to sell the trope. So we added 'Sheriff Snider' back in. We also added a brand new expert to be shot first thing the next day...
Saturday began in the afternoon. In my Mother's living room, filming one of our favourite actors, Mary Black, who we've been trying to get into the film for ages, but it has just never quite worked. Mary was very funny, and she nailed her brief 'expert' monologue in no time.
From there we went to our editor's office to shoot a few inserts to existing scenes against his handy wall. David Nykl and I got to revisit our only two hander scene, though only for a very brief moment. Ironically the scene is dominated by a torrent of verbal effluvia from David, while I say almost nothing... but guess which character's arc is being improved by the new version? You guessed it, mine.
Back to Craig's for dinner and to wait for nightfall, as the rest of what we had scheduled was all to be shot in the dark. Dinner - put together largely by Elaine, Craig's wife, was as good as we had anytime on set - and we had a number of fantastic meals served up by Garner and Janet in the Okanagan or by Jill and Scott at the postal plant. We also got to show those who were present a small portion of what has been edited thus far. It was an unintended side effect, but everyone was pleased by what they saw and the already good mood was raised to genuinely high-spirits.
The evening was a mix of inserts of various props doing various necessary things as well as getting additional detail of both David on his own and Roger and I together for the 'wedding scene' so that we can better refine and pace the gags.
Saturday was a little extra fun for me as Jodie (my girlfriend) was able to join us on set and help out. She'd never been on set before so it was a novelty for her. She took all the pictures we have included.
Sunday morning we were back at the home of Brian Sizer, for the most part to get additional footage of Roger and I interacting again - this time for the 'going to bed' sequence, which is already fairly amusing, but with better coverage and more precise performances should play much better on screen.
The shoot up to this point had gone quite well. But it would stumble a bit in the next few hours. We were longer than expected at the Sizer house, and there were a small number of miscommunications in getting to our next location. The sunny day had brought far more people than anticipated to the location and parking became a nightmare. Noise was too much for the dialogue we needed to record, and as if that weren't enough... the sun which had been oppressive for two days began to disappear as we were approaching the last two scenes we truly needed it for. Argh!
We bailed on that location and went to our next one, crossing our fingers that we'd have a chance later in the day to finish up. Suffice to say that the weather didn't do what we needed it to do. We DID get what was intended to be the last scene on the schedule - which didn't need the sun - but we didn't get those last two scenes. Mark Redsky had come out to set and never got used. I hated having to do that to him, but he was good natured about it.
We finished up the weekend with pizza and beer back at my place. It had not been the plan to finish there. We'd hoped to be in the park! But that same damned weather ruined that plan at the last moment too. We watched the rain from my balcony, knowing we'd have to all reconvene yet again, but the mood was positive.
Everyone had seen a good chunk of the film in it's current state and could appreciate how the good work we'd done in these last three days would improve it manifold.
We're hoping to shoot those last bits next weekend - or as soon as possible thereafter. But Craig is going in for surgery next week and he's going to be largely unavailable as a director for a bit. We'll pretty much have to temporarily forge on without him. Sooner the better to finish up is the philosophy. The needs of the remaining footage to be shot is fairly self-evident and we already have the template of the existing footage to go by.
Hope for sun.
This past weekend - August 15th to 17th - we did pick-ups and reshoots on "Beast..."
For the most part it was fun and at a relatively relaxed pace. Though the last day didn't quite work out as planned, but I'll get to that.
Friday we had a late morning start and spent a lot of the day at the park & beach picking up a handful of small shots that we've discovered in editing that would highly benefit the story telling within the film.
In the afternoon we moved over to Craig's apartment. The timing was less than ideal in that we were a dozen or so people crammed into a one bedroom apartment at the hottest time of the hottest day of summer so far (a record breaker, in fact) and we had a couple of 1K lights shining down upon us.
We got some coverage of Leanne and I for two differnt scenes, and then added some additional inserts and pyrotechnics that we'd been unable to shoot last spring.
The pyro was amusing. I had consulted David Barkes last year on the matter, and combined with some previous theatrical application, we'd decided to use flash paper in a metallic garbage can. There was a lot of paranoia about the effect, though I was confident - I'd used flash paper in my bare hand on stage, I knew it was as safe as could be expected. Nonetheless it was prudent to be extra prepared with extinguishers and other devices intended to contain the fire should everything go wrong. After all that prep, the initial problem was quite the opposite. Due mostly to technique the paper didn't catch fire - the matches were out by the time they got to the paper. When that issue was worked out, the first actual working shot was spectacular and got great oohs and ahhs from everyone. The flame had actually gone so high that it was a bad shot, so we had to do it a few more times. The last attempt - where we used some extra paper for longer burning time and shot it at high speed (for slow motion) - was truly spectacular. I did a dance of joy.
Burning things... fun.
We ended the day with shooting a scene we'd originally decided to cut.
Those of you familiar with Moby Dick will be aware of the chapters that I refer to as the 'documentary' chapters. They don't technically advance the narrative, but they do add something to the book. Chapters on the nature of the colour white, the variety of whales, the use and creation of marine rope... there are dozens of these chapters covering a huge range of topics.
To the best of my knowledge, no other work based on Moby Dick has ever tried to include this aspect of the book - which is one of it's more fascinating features. Granted, it's not such an easy task. The structure of our film allows us a unique opportunity to include an equivalent - documentary interview moments with fictional Ogopogo experts, who each provide a small tidbit of information or thematic layering to the whole. We cut the 'Sheriff Snider' interview during principle photography last year because of scheduling issues. But in editing we've discovered that we don't really have enough experts to sell the trope. So we added 'Sheriff Snider' back in. We also added a brand new expert to be shot first thing the next day...
Saturday began in the afternoon. In my Mother's living room, filming one of our favourite actors, Mary Black, who we've been trying to get into the film for ages, but it has just never quite worked. Mary was very funny, and she nailed her brief 'expert' monologue in no time.
From there we went to our editor's office to shoot a few inserts to existing scenes against his handy wall. David Nykl and I got to revisit our only two hander scene, though only for a very brief moment. Ironically the scene is dominated by a torrent of verbal effluvia from David, while I say almost nothing... but guess which character's arc is being improved by the new version? You guessed it, mine.
Back to Craig's for dinner and to wait for nightfall, as the rest of what we had scheduled was all to be shot in the dark. Dinner - put together largely by Elaine, Craig's wife, was as good as we had anytime on set - and we had a number of fantastic meals served up by Garner and Janet in the Okanagan or by Jill and Scott at the postal plant. We also got to show those who were present a small portion of what has been edited thus far. It was an unintended side effect, but everyone was pleased by what they saw and the already good mood was raised to genuinely high-spirits.
The evening was a mix of inserts of various props doing various necessary things as well as getting additional detail of both David on his own and Roger and I together for the 'wedding scene' so that we can better refine and pace the gags.
Saturday was a little extra fun for me as Jodie (my girlfriend) was able to join us on set and help out. She'd never been on set before so it was a novelty for her. She took all the pictures we have included.
Sunday morning we were back at the home of Brian Sizer, for the most part to get additional footage of Roger and I interacting again - this time for the 'going to bed' sequence, which is already fairly amusing, but with better coverage and more precise performances should play much better on screen.
The shoot up to this point had gone quite well. But it would stumble a bit in the next few hours. We were longer than expected at the Sizer house, and there were a small number of miscommunications in getting to our next location. The sunny day had brought far more people than anticipated to the location and parking became a nightmare. Noise was too much for the dialogue we needed to record, and as if that weren't enough... the sun which had been oppressive for two days began to disappear as we were approaching the last two scenes we truly needed it for. Argh!
We bailed on that location and went to our next one, crossing our fingers that we'd have a chance later in the day to finish up. Suffice to say that the weather didn't do what we needed it to do. We DID get what was intended to be the last scene on the schedule - which didn't need the sun - but we didn't get those last two scenes. Mark Redsky had come out to set and never got used. I hated having to do that to him, but he was good natured about it.
We finished up the weekend with pizza and beer back at my place. It had not been the plan to finish there. We'd hoped to be in the park! But that same damned weather ruined that plan at the last moment too. We watched the rain from my balcony, knowing we'd have to all reconvene yet again, but the mood was positive.
Everyone had seen a good chunk of the film in it's current state and could appreciate how the good work we'd done in these last three days would improve it manifold.
We're hoping to shoot those last bits next weekend - or as soon as possible thereafter. But Craig is going in for surgery next week and he's going to be largely unavailable as a director for a bit. We'll pretty much have to temporarily forge on without him. Sooner the better to finish up is the philosophy. The needs of the remaining footage to be shot is fairly self-evident and we already have the template of the existing footage to go by.
Hope for sun.
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