Screening Trailer

Back from Austin

The following post was written at the airport while waiting for a flight...

Here I sit, at Metro Airport, an hour and 20 minutes before my flight is scheduled to leave, listening to the track Danny Zott wrote to supplant the Tom Waits song in “The Killers” through ipod ear buds with a missing left ear piece cover causing major distortion in that ear. But it’s better than mono. Which I guess kind of sums up things for me lately, listening to a beautiful song but in a less than satisfactory way due to conditions beyond my control (cheap ass earbuds!) while I wait.

We’ve got a sneak preview screening on the 26th at Quay St. Brewery. I feel it’s ready for a public audience, although I would like the audio to be mastered a little bit more. We’ll make comment cards and hand them out and hopefully get some positive feedback and can use it to tighten the film, if it needs tightening. I have no idea what the turn out will be, how it will be received and all that jazz. I know that a lot of people are going to be in town, so there’s potential for a huge turnout, It’s also the day after Xmas so who knows. Sooner or later you’ve got to have your first film premiere, a real premiere, so why not now, right smack-fuckin’-dab in the middle of some serious life changes. It’ll be interesting to see how those who know my work through Suck the Cool Right Out and Almost Evil respond to this piece. “The Killers” is as serious as a heart attack, but there are some funny moments. There’s some stuff in there that I found downright hilarious, hopefully audiences will too. An audience seeing my film. I think that’s the first time I’ve put it together, in written text, that ultimately this thing, whatever it turns out to be, is for more than just those of us involved. This needs to be seen by as many people as possible, and we’ve put in all this hard work, all the hours planning things out, all the brainstorming, all the late hours editing, to make sure that when it does, its hopefully well received, as ultimately the goal is to use this film to show what I can do with no budget and use it to finagle my way into getting someone to put up some money to make another one, a longer one, something on a larger scale. We’ll see what happens.

A week ago I was unsure about the music, I was pretty sure it would come together and I put my complete and total faith in Danny that he would make it happen. I guess really, I’ve had to put my faith in a lot of different peple through this project and hope that they came through. Actors who had little to no experience. The generosity of strangers to let us use their buildings to film in. A lighting director who had absolutely no experience working on a film. And I guess, ultimately, I had to put a lot of faith in myself that I could make it all happen. In hindsight, there was one major mistake I made, and that was to put my faith in someone who, lets be perfectly honest, had a lot going on in his life and probably should’ve just been focusing on getting well and I should’ve found another sound man. Live and learn.

But back to the music. I sat down the other night and went through and made some executive decisions about what music should go in the diner scene, what songs should be playing in the background, so that Danny could work on them and do what we were planning on, which was to create a hybrid sound of today and the 20s. I had already narrowed down what I was thinking about to about 60 songs. Surprisingly, weeding through those songs took a lot less time than I thought to find what I wanted, about 3 and a half hours total. It might’ve taken longer, had I not struck iron a few times and found, what I deem to be, the perfect tracks on the first try. Louis Armstrong’s “Go Down Moses” was the 3rd track I tried in the place that it ultimately is in, and like “Lazy River” I knew the insant that I watched the film with the music playing in the background that it belonged. I kind of wish I could’ve just done a complete Louis Armstrong soundtrack but I think that would’ve been a tad excessive, and I’m glad to get in some other artists from the 20s. So after I bounced the wave file of the songs playing in the diner, I sent them to Danny and within 48 hours he had some amazing work done to them. Todd, Ryan and I watched the film first with just the plain songs in the background on Tuesday. They both were pretty happy with the choices I made, and were absolutely in love with Go Down Moses. 48 hours later, I had a the scored version from Danny and we watched it and everyone agreed that the change and the improvement was significant. Actually, that’s a bit of an understatement. I have written about how Danny presented me with a challenge thus far: providing amazing music that I loved and wanted to use, but music that was quite different from what I had in mind from the start and it had started to change the mood of the piece, not in a bad way, just in a matter of fact way, from what I had originally envisioned. But what he did with the diner scene…goddamn that motherfucker brought it all together. What I now have in the diner scene is exactly what I had in min when we started: dirty guitar providing an unnerving-tension-building-background to what’s already a pretty tense situation. And the way in which he did it, using the same notes, chord progressions, and sounds, ties in with everything else that had already done. I cannot write enough about how pleased I am with what he’s done and am grateful that I was able to meet him through Chad and our paths were able to cross we could work together. I hesitate to say this, because this little film is nowhere on the scale of “Good Will Hunting” and won’t be seen by nearly as many people, doesn’t have an Oscar-worthy performance (sorry Cliff) or a comedy legend, but if the right people see this film, Danny could very well find himself in the position Elliott Smith was. Which would be fitting because he has a lot of Elliott Smith’s style in him, just not the whole heroin and heart break, depressing as hell, way.

I’ve made a lot of new friends through this process and I feel I’ve grown exponentially as a filmmaker and probably as a person. After the creative outburst sessions, those nights where I’d have an idea and we’d spend the next few hours figuring out how we make that idea happen, I think that the whole camaraderie and overall sense of teamwork, was my favorite part about the whole thing. It’s hard to deny that there wasn’t a real sense of excitement surrounding us these last 3 months, justified or not. We, as a team, were creating something out of nothing. An idea, a dream, a pretty straightforward adaptation of a Hemingway story and ambition, add in a lot of hard work and all the technical fun stuff, and we’ve got a 40 minute film that is being sent (and hopefully accepted) into film festivals. I lead the team, it was my vision that we started with and I was the one responsible for it in the end, it all came down to me. Because of that, right now, I’ve got a lot more confidence in my ability as a filmmaker and just in general. I put something together, a 40 minute film, and no matter how it turns out, that’s a pretty significant accomplishment in itself. Although, I don’t really feel that way. To be perfectly honest, what I did with “The Killers” and how its turning out…it just feels like that’s what I’m supposed to do. It’s what its expected and that the bare minimum I should be doing is putting together a little no-budget film that will be seen by some people and then who knows what. There’s not a lot of sense of accomplishment, not yet, and that’s not a self deprecating thing, its just that I don’t really don’t have a sense of what we’ve made yet. It’s yet to be seen by strangers or people who didn’t have some involvement in it, be it acting in it, working on it, or just being around us while we were making it. The 26th will be judgment day for this film, for what I’ve done on it, thus far.

Countdown to the first screening...

Well, I see it's been a long time since I've updated this.

The film is nearly done. Danny Zott is putting the finishing touches on the score. I'm satisfied with 99.9% of the cuts. There's one that I still want to tweak. Rich Cox and I will have to sit down and do a final sound mix, compress some stuff, etc. I've got to touch up the credits and pick a final font for the title. And that's it.

If all goes as planned, it will premier Dec. 19 at the SC4 Theater. Then, if Dutch from GKC comes through, we will hopefully screen it at the GKC movie theater at the Birchwood Mall. The same movie theater that I've watched so many movies at, including the rereleases of Star Wars. That'd be surreal as hell.

In the last month I've grown entirely sick of "The Killers" at one point. After spending almost every day working on it, thinking about it, for 3 straight months, I had to get away from it. Todd and I went to Chicago, which was an adventure in itself. And even then, I couldn't get away from it, as Zarlo, whom we went to visit, wanted to watch it.

Some random thoughts on various aspects of the film:

The score - This has been the most difficult part of the entire thing for me. When I wrote it, I didn't have anything in mind, I tried to keep it a blank slate. At the time of writing the screenplay I was listening to a lot of Radiohead. Actually, when I wrote it last December, I was only listening to Radiohead. As we started filming it, Radiohead was still heavily in the playlist but Tom Waits started to infiltrate. Wilco found its way in my playlist as well. During editing, those 3 were heavily influencing me as well. I watched a lot of Jim Jarmusch's films at the start of editing. In fact, at one point, when I was really unsure about how to proceed with the opening sequence and what to do (before I even came up with and wrote what is now the first scene) I sat down and watched Down by Law twice. That had such a huge influence on me. I don't know if it shows (it probably does, although I think it shows more subconsciously in the running sequence, it's almost a reverse of the opening tracking shots) but when it came time to put temporary music in, I put in "Jockey full of Bourbon" during the walking/introduction to Nick Adams sequence, knowing full well that it would be replaced. I added "Goin' Out West" from "Bone Machine" to the running sequence, and of course "Come on up to the house" to the final scene. In hindsight, this was probably a bad idea. While it was the closest to what I had in my mind, it was also improbable to repeat or imitate and presented an extremely unfair challenge for anyone who would score the film. So when Danny gave me a rough cut of music it, even though I liked the music on its own, it didn't have the same feel as the Tom Waits did. Of course it wouldn't, Danny and Tom Waits are so far apart, but in a good way. It took me a while to grow accustomed to what Danny was doing for the movie, and after we talked about it, he actually tried to incorporate a little bit of Tom Waits' "dirtiness" into some it, while still keeping it distinctly a Daniel Zott piece of music. I think what he's got thus far is great, and I really think the only way I could find something that I would like more would be if Tom Waits himself would somehow take an interest in a film that was shot on a budget of about $100 and score the entire thing for me, something that's not bloody likely.

The other interesting thing in terms of the music that happened occured when I put in "temporary" music to submit the film to the Ann Arbor Film Festival. Todd and I searched for some interesting open source songs from archive.org, a place for all things public domain. We came upon a Louis Armstrong song, "Lazy River" that I just threw on top of the walking/introduction to Nick Adams scene to have music there. It was only when we watched the film afterwards, that we realized just how perfect the music fit. The way things happened on cuts, how it tied in thematically, etc. Just pure happenstance. And from reading all sorts of interviews with Jean Renoir, Fritz Lang, Orson Welles, Charlie Chaplin, etc. I came to realize that this sort of thing does happen and its the good filmmakers who take notice of it and accept that sometimes chance is more perfect than anything they could come up with and to run with it.



Pacing/Cuts - I ended up cutting 3 scenes from the film: Ed's scene as Cab Driver in the diner, Nick Adams leaving Ole Andersson's apartment and Nick Adams hailing and driving around in a cab after he leaves the apartment.

Cutting Ed's scene was the most difficult, as it was short and Ed was hands down the best of the walk-on roles. The reason I cut that season was 2-fold. First, pacing. The diner scene was already running a bit long. I could have cut the Angry Man scene or Rich Cox's scene. Cutting Angry Man scene would've left no comedic relief from the tension of the entire hostage situation in the diner, and as Hitchcock has taught me through his work, you have to give the audience a little breather or else you'll suffocate them and they won't be willing to go along with you for the rest of the film. Cutting Rich's scene would've been problematic in transitioning and cutting from the previous scene, so that option was out as well. The second reason I cut Ed's scene was that it allowed me to get rid of a problematic close-up shot of a clock and to cut out some extra lines between Max and George that didn't really do anything to move the plot along. If anything, they caused confusion ("you're friend Andersson's not coming" says George. "We'll give him another 10 minutes" says Max...to which they give him either 5 more minutes or 15 more minutes, depending on how I cut it). I tried to avoid any and all close-ups in the entire film. The closest thing to close-ups are some tight shots of Nick Adams during the running scene and the close-ups of objects that open the film. Other than that, there are none. There were a few reasons why I decided not to shoot in close-ups. The first, is that it exposes your actors, and with amateur actors I felt that would've been unfair to the actors and the characters they're portraying. The second is the message that a close-up sends to the viewer. It says "THIS is more important than whatever else you've seen" - and there's not one single thing that I felt should've delivered that message once we got the film rolling, except for the exhaustion on Nick Adam's face when running.

Cutting the scene with Nick Adam's leaving the apartment and the cab scene were much easier. For starters, they were rushed when we shot them. I found a way around some continuity problems, (which will make it on the eventual dvd and probably on this blog when I have a chance to encode the scene) but it just didn't do anything for the narrative. Even if we had spent an entire day shooting these 2 scenes I still think I would've cut them. The only thing the scenes did was to move Nick Adams forward in time and space, and through the miracle of montage and edit you don't have to worry about that, a fade can do the same thing in less time.

Some of the other cuts that I made were minor in nature. I cut off about 15-20 seconds of Emily (Church Mom) trying to make small talk while Jim (Max) smoked his cigarette ignoring her. Again, the diner scene needed to have the pace picked up a bit, and while she had some great nervous improv lines I had to cut them for the greater good of the film. The question then became where to cut. It came down to 2 choices. We cut back from George cutting ham in the kitchen to her telling Max "Boy...I'm really running late for Church...Do you go to church?" or straight to her asking him "Do you go to church?" At first thought, I wanted to cut straight to the "Do you go to church?" line for pure comedic value. When she enters the diner one of the first things she says is that she's running late for Church, and I thought it'd be funny to drive home the idea that she's this church mom, by her just asking this complete and total stranger if he went to church. Had the inflection in her voice been different, I might've gone with that, but as it stood, it felt odd and awkward. So I started with the previous line. As it stands, just about every one of her lines is about church, so she's still the super-crazy church lady, she's just not a total creeper about it.

The walking/introduction to Nick Adams scene has undergone a lot of minor cutting that amounts to a major facelift. As it stands now, the scene is 3:33 long, and that's how it'll be in the final film. The first cut of that scene was about 6:45 long. The scene has the same exact meaning and everything, the only thing that's different is that every shot is shorter and a few shots have been removed entirely (ones that I either didn't like, there were issues with the camera being shaken by the crazy fierce wind blowing off of the river, etc.). It's funny, cause when I first emailed the scene to Jim and Cliff they both suggested I try and get it under 5 minutes and I thought "how the fuck am I going to do that without butchering it?" but I've learned a very valuable lesson: if something needs to be cut down for time considerations, you can always find a way, if you're careful, to do so without butchering the essence of the scene.

Many more thoughts on the film, life in general, changes, etc. but for now I need sleep

Ugh.

So, so much has gone on, been updated and worked, changed, moved on, progress, step forward, step backward, side-step, tango, salsa, chupacabra, since I last wrote.

Too tired to get into a full update right now, but we've shot the first scene and it turned out pretty good, a lot of people like the lines, the dialogue, etc. and I wrote that from scratch, that's not Hemingway's stuff. It took us twice as many attempts as I had thought it would be, but it's done. Sort of. I might want to reshoot a single inside shot or two, but that's simplicity.

Then I spent a marathon sound editing session last week with Rich Cox, in hopes of getting it ready for submission to the Ann Arbor Film Festival, which had a deadline of Saturday to be submitted. I got it in on time, although with temporary music, because none of the composers had their score finished.

Which has been a whole different headache. Part of the problem is me, I keep changing my mind about what kind of music I want. When I started, I heard something very Tom Waits-y and as poppy as Wilco, but not further. Since then it has morphed and developed into something very strange and I don't know what I'll get. But I met with Danny Zott tonight and I think he's got a pretty good handle on it. What I heard thus far gave me a good impression, although there's one song that I'm going to have to really give a second listen too, because its such a departure from everything I've tried in the scene (the walking scene) before.

Lots of personal changes and going through various stages of becoming a reclusive werewolf in an attempt to get the film done and trying to maintain some sort of humanity that I've managed to hold on to thus far. Oh and we've got a black president. Yeah. That'll be pretty awesome. I think. We'll see. Here's hoping.

Mission: Get Music Rights

I have a new mission. I got too antsy waiting for my composers to give me something to cut the final scene to and I started playing around. I think I just made it impossible for anyone and everyone who attempts to score this scene to match this, in my opinion, perfect mix.

So of course, I'll have to try and get the rights to it. I don't know how much that'll cost or if I'll be able to do it. New mission though. I'll end up spending more money on the music clearence than I will on the rest of the entire production! Still, watching it the first time with the sound, gave me goosebumps.

There was another neat little coincidence that occured when I was just throwing some Tom Waits songs that I thought might provide an interesting sound, onto the timeline to see what happened. I put "Little Box of Poison" over this long static scene and it gave the entire thing new life...instead of being this threatening rattlesnake-pit feeling it became a tango between George and Max...

Interesting how music can change the mood.

I've got the entire opening sequence planned, both in what it will be and how we'll shoot it. We're going to shoot some images of things in the car and I want to try and do a montage of images to build a mood even before we see Max and Al. By the time we get to Nick Adams, hopefully the audience will be wondering "what's it all about?" We'll see.

Update

Getting close to having a solid cut. Need music score for the running sequence, the taxi cab sequence and the shaving sequence. Need to shoot the opening. Gotta email Jim and Micki and find out when they're available to do so.

Gotta start working on the audio mix this week. Lots of work to do on that I fear. Just getting levels, a consistent "white noise"/background noise level throughout and then adding the sounds of whatever else I want (such as refrigerator's kicking on, street noise, buzzers, birds, etc.)

Nov. 15th is the deadline for the Ann Arbor Film Festival, that's my target date.
December 14th is the deadline for the South by Southwest Film Festival. How awesome would it be to screen at one of the biggest baddest film festivals around in my first 3 months being in Austin?

That's right, I got accepted into UT. Now I just have to figure out how to pay for it. Yah that'll be fun.

The weather has been kicking my ass and then rubbing it in my face. Wet and cold. Fuck. Need some sleep, that won't be interrupted by spasming muscles and shooting pains. Nor weird fucking dreams, although I just finished watching the entire Disc 1 of the Complete Quay Brothers Collection, so good luck with that.

The score...oh boy the score...who the fuck knows what's going on with that. We'll see what Sadat comes up with tomorrow. Hopefully Bob and Danny send me something soon too.

I need to secure some funding now. I shot the film on a shoestring budget but each film festival is about $35-$55 to submit too. I've also got some ideas for DIY distribution and all that jazz that might try and break the mold. We'll see. In the meantime, money makes the world go around and pretty soon we're gonna spin off our axis.

I haven't slept a wink

Couldn't sleep. Just the thought of those shots not working kept me up. I finally gave up trying to fall asleep, got up and have been tweaking for the last two hours. Got it working pretty good. I have a rough cut of Scenes 1 through 4. Scene 5 (running scene) will be nearly impossible to get anything close to what I want until I have music to go with it. I've started to think about maybe some old negro spirituals or gospels or something. I don't know. Lots of ways to go.

Scenes 1-4 (without the rest of Scene 1 which we have to shoot soon) total 24 minutes and 58 seconds. That may or may not go down depending on what kind of cuts I make to what I've got now. Most of what I'd likely want to tweak is untweakable because of the lack of coverage, which is a result of a lack of time, which is a result of a lack of money, which is the result of a lack of an executive producer, which may be a result of the poor economy. This being my first film is also a definite factor. Minor tweaking, cutting a few frames here, extending a few there, etc. will of course happen. What all this means, is when I finish with the intro, it will be about 27 minutes long from the first image until Nick Adams leaves Henry's to try and save Ole. The running scene will be anywhere from 70 seconds to 5 minutes, depending on the music, how the clips come together, etc. There are 3 more major scenes, each will be about 90 seconds long, left. There's also the cab scene, which I can make short or longer. All in all, the film will easily be pushing 35 minutes, maybe closer to 40ish. Not too shabby.

I need some fucking sleep.

Weary progress

Breaking the scenes up into beats, and editing on those beats, has helped make significant progress in the last 2 days. In fact, the entire first part of the diner scene, up to when Al takes Sam and Nick to the back, I have almost done. I screened that and the intro scene (which makes up the first 15 minutes total) for Todd, Kayte, Sadat and Emily tonight and everyone really liked what I had thus far. I was so excited that I came home around 11:30 so I could continue working...which is where I ran into issues.

The scenes after Al leaves have presented a tricky problem after working on them tonight. Some of it came together pretty good, but some of it isn't coming together as easily. The problem is, that there's only 1 angle of George and 2 angles of just Max. What I've found, at least in the part that is giving me problems, is that I need to rely on a long take and at the very end of the take, there's a missed line, but I can't really throw to another angle at an earlier beat because there isn't another angle with the appropriate coverage of the essence of that beat (George's reaction). I played with it for 4 hours straight tonight, and I think I need to step away until tomorrow evening and look at it again.

One thing that looks like I'm not going to be able to use, are those cut-away shots of Al in the mirror, with the light coming down. Maybe it's just me but they seem too disjointed when I cut to them without any sort of way to make clear where it's cutting too. It's unfortunate but I'd rather not use it if it's going to cause some confusion, even if it is a cool looking shot.

I've got some ideas for the intro now that I'm pretty psyched about and think they'll work perfectly for what I want to establish. It means another day of shooting, when we can get some good weather and schedules work. I think we're going to use Todd's Volvo (Swedish car used to kill a Swede..ha) so we just have to figure out how to rig a camera up on the hood. That'll be fun.

I need some sleep...I've been so wrapped up in editing that I've neglected my online creative writing class work this week, which I hate doing, and a whole slew of other stuff, including having Billy Wilder's "Ace in the Hole" paused in my dvd player since Sunday night (at this point, I'll just have to restart it, and I'm only 30 minutes into it anyway). Gotta get priorities in order, and while this film is #1 right now, I can't make it the only 1.

Finally, while nothing is set in stone yet...I think I'm going to aim for having a sneak preview screening the day after Thanksgiving. By then not only will the film be cut together, but that'll be plenty of time to do audio work, get the score done, match the contrast and brightness of all of the shots in succession, etc. And while it won't be the final, final cut, I think it's a pretty good idea to screen it in front of an audience to get reactions, see what works, what doesn't, all of that jazz, before I finish. Although, knowing me, from reading Kubrick, Welles, Lang and Hitchcock interviews I have a feeling I'm going to do the same thing they all did: obsesss over every little detail, tweak, or think about tweaking, little things here and there, up until the first real screening and in Welles case, in the middle of a screening.

Worky work, busy bee

What a strange thing life is. Sometimes, no matter how things seem to change, they're really the same. Tonight, Sadat had to be rescued from the Raven and while I was waiting for him to finish closing up, I played the new Far single for him on the computer there. As I was sitting there, watching him clean up some stuff it hit me: 10 years ago, possibly to the day, who knows, we were doing the same exact thing. I would always hang out and wait for him to get off of work. Usually it was at Spencer's Gifts. And we would listen to new music, and 10 years ago, the last Far album came out (1998 - Water and Solutions) and now there's a new single (after the band has been broken up for like 9 years). Sadat's still working somewhere and I'm still in town to be around waiting for him to get off of work. Strange times. But it'll be coming to a close soon. Austin is calling and it's time to answer and move on.

Afterwards we went to Le Club Roche and played some pool and Todd was there so we discussed some things. I've been emailing Cliff and Jim Frank back and forth about some ideas for the introduction scene. After swapping emails, I cut up the scene a little more on Saturday and trimmed a minute from it without causing too much jarring disorientation. Now I have to decide how I want to set it all up, if I go with my original idea of 3 street corner shots of random traffic before we get an external shot of the flower shop, or if I want to introduce Max and Al earlier and if so, to what extent. Still trying to figure this out. Hmm.

After I got home I started editing again. I've been giving it some time to settle in my head after watching Scene 4 clips the other day and I was able to figure out right away which ones I wanted to use, so for the most part (beyond sound editing, and the possible trimming of a few frames here and there) this might be what goes into the final cut. I'm not planning on uploading every scene as I finish it but I want to show a little of the progress.

What I ended up doing, is breaking the scene into beats. There are certain mood shifts and volleys of dialogue and attitude back and forth and I tried to time each cut so that each beat and cut is one of those mood shifts. When I did that, everything seemed to fall into place, as far as where the cut should go. Now, when other eyes see it, will they see the same? I don't know, but I have a cut that I'm pleased with right now and we'll see how I feel tomorrow and next week and tweak from there.

I've got some ideas for a really short film, like 7 minutes long and mostly dialogue that I can only do if I can find the right actors for the 2 parts. I've already got someone in mind who would be absolutely perfect for one of the roles, but don't know anyone who would fit this second part. Then there's the matter of convincing the first person to do it. Writing it should be fun, adapting and modernizing an 18th century play. And there I've given away one too many hints.

Act 2: And it begins.

So, I started editing tonight. I wanted to get the first scene done, as I plan on meeting up with the Zotts on Thursday or Friday to discuss the score and see if they can't come up with something then. I ended up getting a fairly simple first cut, although I fear it's a tad long. After, I uploaded it and emailed the link to Danny and Phil so they could maybe even get a head start on ideas. Here's the link,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q76V0rWWLZQ

If the right music is there, I think it might be good. I really want to establish Nick Adams as this care-free, happy-go-lucky guy. A walk in the park, playing with dogs and cheerfully delivering flowers...I would think that gets the point forth.

One thing that makes this scene lengthy is that I decided to shoot almost everything in very wide shot, with Steve being very small in the frame. I choose this for two reasons: One. When Max and Al enter Henry's everything gets very tight, spatially in the framing, and how I intend to edit it. I wanted to have a contrast in the shots to reflect the tension and the change that takes place in Nick Adams. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I'd like to primarily use that shot-counter shot with Max and Al on each side of the frame with the painting in between and then the other one with George in the middle, we see the back of Max and Al and Nick Adam's is in the mirror. Then, when he faces death and has to think about it, accept it, Nick Adams is now seen in that same tight shot, with the painting behind him. Two. I wanted to speak on the insignificance of Nick Adams, as one person in the world. The film is about Nick Adams, but indirectly. The main conflict (at least by its billing) is Max and Al killing Ole Andersson. But the conflict at the heart of the story, is the inner-conflict that Nick Adams has. You could even say it's Nick Adams vs. Death at one point. And Death wins.

A little break

I decided to take a little break from everything to do with the project. I've been reading a pretty good book about editing wrote by the guy who edited Apocalypse Now and The Conversation. There's some good ideas.

I think...the target start date...is...Monday.

I've already looked at some of the footage, just while capturing it to the harddrive and there's already a few things that have me a little bit perturbed. Just details that we missed (two of them because I didn't have a widescreen monitor, and the third because I couldn't look at the shot while we were shooting it).

There's a whole lot that I've got buzzing around in the skull. It's a tad bit weird to seriously think about being a filmmaker, for income, with the entire financial system in this country potentially on the brink of collapse. I mean, if the entire house of cards collapses, what's that mean for the state of monies available to make films? I suppose the people escaped to their silent films during the last one, but today they've got their TV's to numb their minds. Oh well, I guess the only thing you can do is know that there are many different business models that can be taken with the internet and digital screening, etc. Maybe traveling showings. Lots to think about.

I've been thinking a lot about the next project, as I try and push "The Killers" out of my mind for a while. I've picked up 4 books that I'm going to be reading through while I edit: a new trasnlation of Grimm's Fairy Tales, a new translation of Aesop's fables, a book of the Marquis de Sade's short stories and a book of Samuel Beckett's short stories. I've also got Lewis Carroll's complete stories sitting on my shelf. I think I want to do some sort of really fantastical fairy tale, using the snow, the Michigan forests, the iced over rivers, and some of the other more interesting natural locale. I also would like to try and get down in those tunnels underneath the city. We'll see. As it stands now, if everything goes as I hope, I won't be leaving Michigan until January 2nd, so I've got 3 months to edit "The Killlers", write the next short, and shoot it. That's plenty of time, if I buckle down and use the writing process to take a break from the editing process, yet still keep the creative juices flowing (although I think I'm going to be doing a lot of painting throughout this). Trick with that is keeping the ideas seperate.

I've been reading a book of interviews with Stanley Kubrick and between that and looking over the footage, thinking about the shooting, I've come to the conclusion that the only way to ever achieve anything close to the success he was able to attain, is to develop a sharper mind, an even keener attention to detail and I need to shoot, shoot, shoot, until the actors drop from exhaustion. I'm sure Steve'll appreciate hearing that.

That's a wrap.

We just finished the flower shop scene and some odds and ends shots for the title sequence. I'm going to grab some dinner, take a nice long walk for the first time since this whole thing started and relax before the cast/Steve Barker going away party. More later.

Almost done.

We got 90% of the first scene tonight. Tomorrow we shoot at the Flower Niche from 4:30 until 5:30 and that's it. Done. I've got a lot to write about it, lots of thoughts, but for now, I need rest. My right back muscle feels like it's all twisted up like a twizzler. I need some rest and am very drained right now. Exhausting but it feels good to be nearing the end of shooting. Then comes to the real hard part.

Cousin Jon and I met up at 3 pm and went to the park and figured out where each of the shots would be, so that when we came back with Steve, we were ready. As luck would have it, we got another freighter in the shot. I wish we could get one going the opposite way tomorrow for the running scene, but that's probably nitpicking.



After we got that, we went over to Mrs O'Donnell's bf's place to deliver flowers to her for the last scene. We also got my mom in a scene, with our goofy-ass dog Maddie, in the park.

So much more to say, but I just don't have the stamina to sit here and type it. Lot's of thoughts colliding around in the skull. Tomorrow's a big day. So far so good it seems. We'll see.

Day of Puppies

Today felt very scattered and I don't have a very positive feeling about what we accomplished or lackthereof. In hindsight, maybe we should've taken a day off to recharge, but with Steve leaving Saturday, we don't have that luxury. Basically, there wasn't any plan. I couldn't plan a walking route because I didn't know if Steve had gotten ahold of Dotty, and Dotty turned out to be more elusive than we thought she would be, so Steve couldnt get ahold of her. Add that in to the late start and the sun-light issue and we didn't get what we wanted to get. We did get one of the flower deliveries and some "night-time" running shots, and I think we got a reasonable amount of good footage for the Cab scene. But from first shot of Nick Adams entering Henry's, where there some puppies in the window of the building along the route, Steve wasn't very focused and was all like "puppies!!" We should've known, at that moment, that the day wasn't going to be one of the better days.





Afterward, Todd, Steve and I brainstormed about the opening sequence, because Todd and I agreed that we didn't like how off-the-cuff, unplanned the day was. We've got a pretty good idea of how we're going to shoot the opening sequence now. Basically, we're going to place Pine Grove Park, spatially, south of the area down Quay St, in the film. Nick Adams starts South and heads North to get to Henry's and has to run south to warn the Swede. Tricky editing and shot placement tomorrow will be key but I think we've got a pretty good grasp on the whole thing.

I need rest though, because my back has been aching something with murderous intent. Long day tomorrow and it starts early. I gotta get us in a flower shop.

Day of Accomplishing

We set out to get the kitchen scene and the rest of the Swede shots. We got both.

Cousin Jon and I got to the B&B around 5ish and we setup where the Swede's bathroom would be. After that, we got everything ready to take over to the Black River Cafe. Timing worked out pretty good because just as I was finishing the Pad Thai from Bangkok Star, Sean arrived, and
within 10 minutes Steve and Todd arrived. Just as we gathered all of the things we'd need and started to get out the door, Lusk arrived and we were ready to go.

We got to the Cafe and they were still cleaning up, closing down the kitchen, so Sean, John, Steve and I ran through the scene a few times sitting down and discussed what we had in mind for some of the lines, what's going on in the scene, thematically, etc. Then Todd and Jon started setting up the lights for the scene. Jon had to stand in the freezer to hold the light that bleeded out into the room to expose Steve and Sean, who were tied up together. Actually, the tying up part, that's what took the longest out of everything. Longer than setting up the lights, and running through the lines to where we had an idea of the scene.

We got 2 shots with some of the same lighting, we just had to move the camera in a bit.

Next we setup the lighting for when George comes in and unties everyone. It took a little bit of back and forth guessing until we got it right, but I'm very happy with the look of the final angles and lighting with them.

An interesting thing happened during the last take, and it's another prime example of why, next film, I want more time to rehearse the scenes with the actors. Mid-way through shooting, Sean finally found the character of Samuel and really came through, to the point where we reshot the original walk-in angle with the new attitude. After we got a few good takes of that, I gave Sean a simple suggestion "be a little bit more angry, and stay behind and clean up your kitchen after Al just took it over. This is where you work, your livelihood and show your anger about the whole thing." He took that and gave me probably the second best moment of improvisation in the film after Jim blowing smoke in Emily's face after she asked if he went to church, he picked up the rags and slammed them against the wall in disgust.

These are the moments that can really make a film special and they only come out when the actors are living in their character's skin and start really acting, and it's so hard to bring them out when you shoot the scene only 15 minutes after running it for the first time with the rest of the actors.

We wrapped up shooting at the Cafe and Sean and John were officially done for the film. I have to say, I'm really really glad that I asked both of them to play the parts they did. I know I originally wanted the funnier O'Donnell brother to play Samuel, but my original idea of having the beginning vaudevillian, almsot Chaplin-esq funny to make the sudden change in mood when Max and Al start giving orders never really materialized and having Adam playing Samuel with the rest of the film probably would've seemed out of place. It's nice little happenstances like that that can make a film too.

We brought the camera and equipment back to the B&B while Todd and Jon took down the lights and Cliff was waiting for us. We had to setup the lights still, and I started to worry right then that we'd run late, as I knew he didn't want to be there super long. First thing, we reset the lighting for a close-up on Cliff, and I'm glad we went ahead and did that, because I think it'll really splice well with what we already have.

Next, we had to setup the crazy light contraption to get that fan-blade shadow I wanted. We had tried it out the other night and knew it would work, but it was still a hassle to get it up, and there was a close call for a minute where I thought for sure my Tota light attached to the end of the poles was going to smash the wall or window.

So once they got that going, we had to get the fan going. For the effect I wanted, the blades where going waaaaaay too fast. We had to slow the fan down somehow and we had a few ideas. First, we tried to duct tape heavy nails to the blades, but we didn't have enough nails for all 5 blades and only taping them to 3 blades made the whole thing wobble and unstable and didn't even slow it down all that much. Next, we found a box of screws and taped about 8 giant screws to each blade and turned it on. It was slower, but not slow enough, and because the fan blades were plastic, they started to give and next thing we knew, the screws were smacking the framing in the fan, and we had to kill the juice before we had a deadly turret on our hands. Then Todd had a great idea: just attach some string to the blades and have someone pull it, like a yoyo. Sure enough, after my dad brought some fishing line, we had the fan going the way we wanted and we got the shot we wanted.

After that, we had to decide how we wanted to light the shaving sequence. Todd was on that quick and within 20 minutes we were rolling. He was on the ball all night, except when he tried to throw the ball of yarn in the photo below, through the rafters and it landed in the wash basin, getting soaked.

I'm really happy with the look of both, the side-on shot and the "in the mirror shot".

After that, Cliff was done shooting as Ole Anderson. I was thinking on the way home, it's interesting how you develop a working relationship with certain actors in groups. The only other actor that was in the scenes with Cliff, was Steve. But Jim, John, and Micki had a ton of scenes with Steve, so there's this weird grouping thing going on in your head and how you to start to relate to actors and see how the thing is playing out. Jim, John, Steve and Micki all had each other to play off of, but Cliff really had to work off of Steve and just dig deep, and I think that's probably a lot harder for an actor. I think, for me at least, it also influences the tone and everything else, from lighting and probably eventually the editing. I felt more at liberty to go ahead and do some neat dark shadow stuff with Cliff's shaving sequence (it's hard to notice in the still above, but he's casting double shadows) because all of those scenes between him and Nick Adams have that kind of stuff going on, it works consistently. It'd be strange, I think, to throw in a scene with the Killers and light it really extreme contrast, etc. because they, for the most part, exist in well-light shots. At least in my mind, what I've seen thus far. Anyway, back to my original point, I imagine there's an even more extreme influence when you're doing something where you might have 3 or 4 actors that are working alone with you in scenes and maybe never working with each other. Lots to learn and that's good. Always room for improvement.

Which reminds me of something Steve said last night. He complimented me (or he was being a sincere asshole) about being flexible and open to criticism and new ideas. It hasn't occurred to me through the movie much but I guess in hindsight, I've probably been more open to other ideas than someone who directs like a dictator. The way I see it, if you're on my set, I've asked you to be there and there's a reason for that. Why surround yourself with cast and crew that you don't trust, think you can't learn anything from, or who never have any ideas better than your own. If you're a total control freak and can't take input, making films, being the collaborative art that it is, might not be for you. Even with Kurosawa being such a control freak, he still found people that he trusted and worked with everytime. There's a reason why he had the same script supervisor for almsot his entire career.

That's what excites me about the editing process, even with all of the stress and fear that comes with it: to see what happens when you take your original ideas and bring them to life, with everyone else involved adding something to it. The whole thing is bound to change and evolve into something else that you could never imagine. Now will that outcome be for the better? Here's hoping.

We film tomorrow, 5:30. Steve's gotta deliver some flowers, do some running and get in the back seat of a car. And then. We're. Done. Scary. I know.

Day of Trouble making.

So after a much needed 2 day hiatus in the schedule, we returned to filming tonight, as the sun literally started to peak through the thick cloud coverage that had been in the sky all weekend.

Dan, John and I were waiting for Steve and Todd, getting some odds and ends taken care of (clock shots) when Steve text'd me asking if we could put off shooting until tomorrow because he didn't have any hot water to shave with and he was "a little drunk." If he wasn't leaving Port Huron in 5 days, I would've said yes, but as it is, I told him to get his drunk-ass down there.

By the time he arrived it was too late to get some exterior shots with the flowers. At the start of the night I said "let's get 5 of the 20 shots left tonight." We'll be able to get at least 9 of them tomorrow when we do the kitchen scene and then the rest of the Swede. That'll give us 6 shots to get between Wednesday and Friday.

Eventually we decided to pack up the equipment and go on a guerrilla-style trip in the car. We first went back to the public housing building to shoot some exterior stuff, just to have a building to establish where the bedroom scene with the Swede takes place. Steve had just finished his second take (running along the sidewalk, through the parking lot, up to the doors) when some crotchity old hag told us they were going to call the cops on us. Here's Steve explaining:

After that, we decided to go to the Raven and get one of the flower delivery interior scenes. Looking at it now, I think I might want to redo it and light the back of the room more. I'm not sure. Alana from the Raven played the girl getting the flowers, Debra Sample (because the card was for Samples and the Beck song "Debra"). Either way, after 20 takes we had a few good ones to choose from and it was time to move on.

Since we were just down the street from the Harrington Inn, we decided to go and see if that'd work for the building for him to go in. That was what I wanted originally, and the more we talked about it, the more it seemed that it wasn't really the kind of building that you would find a bedroom like the Swede's. But we shot it anyway, just to have it in case I decided later that it'd work and if we couldn't find anything better.

It was while we were sitting along the sidewalk across the street from the Harrington Inn, trying to think of where we could find some stairs, when the cop showed up. The hag from the public housing building did call the cops on us. We played it cool, explained to him that we were shooting a film and he was like "yeah, just don't scare them, they're old people and don't handle fear well" or something not quite so blunt. The cop suggested we check around Pine Grove Park, and I think he thought we were talking about exterior stairs, but we headed that way anyway, when we saw the Port Huron Hospital parking garage, with 4 fliights of stairs, illuminated like the Holy Grail over that castle with all the loose religious chicks in Monty Python. We parked and investigated. All the doors were locked, but as we walked around, we realized that the entrance where cars go in, A) was open and B) was not being stationed by a lot attendant, so we just went in through the garage, shot 3 quick takes of Steve running up the stairs, and got the hell out of there. 10:30 and we had 3 scenes down.

As we were walking out of the parking garage I mentioned that we should call a cab and just have Steve get in, and film it from a ways away, when Cousin John brought to our attention that we were standing across the street from the cab depot. What the hell? we thought, and went over and asked them if they'd just let us shoot that. Sure enough, a nice Penny West, swung around and picked Steve up, let him get in, and drove around. 4 shots done.

We decided to go back to the B&B, see if we could find Kayte, who lives across the street and who'se hallway we wanted to use as the Swede's. We had to ask her neighbors if we could plug in a light and Todd explained we were shooting a moving in the hallway, to which we heard the lady ask "why would you want to make a movie about our hallway?" Anyway, we got the scene, in two different lighting setups. I can't decided which I like more, probably the darker one (yes they're an homage to Orson Welles/Stanley Kubrick. Bite me).

We got that done, and that was our 5th scene of the night. Afterwards, we went back to the B&B and setup the lighting for the Swede's bedroom scene tomorrow night, and planned how to shoot that. Todd's got lighting ideas for the kitchen, and we'll have 2 hours to get it done in. No or never. Long day tomorrow, but should be a blast. Wednesday we won't have to film until 6ish, so I can sleep in all day. Should be fun. We'll see.

Rainy Day

The rain has been nonstop since Friday. It's made a) it impossible to shoot the exterior scenes we still need to do, b) impossible for me to go outside and use my cell phone, and c) back pain flare up like crazy.

Haven't heard from Cliff, but I'm hoping we can shoot the rest of his scenes tomorrow evening. We've got a plan on where to shoot the hallway scene, hopefully we can get that done as well, and hopefully, if it doesn't rain (major if there), we can shoot some more stuff with Steve.

My goal is to shoot the kitchen scene on Tuesday. To do that, we need to find a kitchen. First Ross Bible's kitchen was our kitchen but they bailed on us because the movie's about murder and they're puritanical hypocrits. We had 2 kitchens sort-of lined up to shoot that scene today. The Black River Cafe, which is on Main St, said we could shoot there today but then they flaked on us and the only available time they can do it is probably not going to work. The Vintage Tavern was our other option and there was some confusion as to who was supposed to call the owner and when, so that fell through. But, even if we can't film tomorrow, my goal is to secure a kitchen to get those 2 scenes we need to film in there, shot.

The biggest hurdle to get done before Steve leaves is the first scene, Introduction of Nick Adams. Steve and I discussed it last night, and it won't be a hard scene to shoot, just a lot of work to get done, although I've been thinking of ways we can make it easier (natural lighting outside, single shot indoor scenes) so we'll see. We need to find 2 people to have flowers delivered too, and then we've got to actually get the flowers, or fake flowers, or whatever and do that. That needs to be done probably Wed and Thurs. I'd like to get Steve's scenes done by the middle of the week so he doesn't have to worry about that stuff his final few days in town. I just hope we don't have to reshoot anything, and if we do, I'll need to find out fast what needs to be reshot.

Last night Steve, Todd and I were hanging out at Steve's friend's house and Todd and I started discussing potentially starting another project once this one is done. We both had the same idea: a stop-motion/live action mix of Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" but the key to it would be to get Steve to help. He thinks he could do the same work from Portland that he'd do here, but I dunno. Gotta finish this one first before we move on to the next project. Either way, we got Steve to agree to stay in Port Huron if we could get 100 signatures on a petition for him to do so...as of now we have 5.

The one thing that I've been thinking about lately, is what I would've done differently with this film, and what to correct next time around. So far I've come up with the following:

1. Have much more time to rehearse before shooting. It's rather unfortunate that by the time we finished shooting Max and Al's scenes, Micki and Jim had finally gotten into their character's skins. It kind of makes me want to go back and reshoot some of the earlier stuff, but that's just not feasible.

2. Have a widescreen monitor. Or shoot in full-frame. There's already been a few scenes where I can see something in the very edges of the frame that shouldn't be there. A book-bag, a light stand, a bounce sheet, etc. They didn't show up in the monitor because it was squishing the video format and it's hard to pickup tiny stuff like that in the small monitor in the camera. I still think we were able to compose some really interesting shots, and there's a lot of geometry going on in the framing, but it'd be nice to have a widescreen monitor next time around.

3. A better grasp on sound. The only thing that worries me is some of the dialogue that we don't have many takes to choose from might be tied to other audio, like a chair moving, and we cant do anything with it in post. That's something that I'd like to work on next time around.

4. Storyboarding. I've always thought storyboarding was kind of stupid and a waste of time when you can sort of picture the shot in your head anyway. What I discovered is that, even if you can get that same shot, it'd probably be a lot better to have them drawn out so you know how the shot's will transition. That's one thing I didn't plan on, particularly because in pretty much everything I've done, filmmaking-wise, in the past, I've never had multiple takes/angles of stuff, it's all been live shooting, no retakes, etc. When you edit that, there's a certain flow that helps decides the cuts, you have to stay in somewhat of a linear fashion. With this project, not so much, and so while we got all the shots I wanted when I foresaw the film, I don't know how well they're going to splice together. We'll see about that.

5. More time to shoot. The whole thing has been rushed a bit, between having only 22 days from the start of the film until my lead character leaves the state, and only having x amount of days in the B&B. I would have liked for us to be able to really take our time and only focus on getting 1 scene per day, but that would've required 23 days of shooting. While I don't think any of the shots, etc. were rushed (except in the case of when the soundman was literally trying to rush through stuff), it would've been nice to really take our time and instead of getting 2 or 3 good takes and 1 perfect take per setup, we could've gotten 4 or 5 perfect takes per setup and maybe even do 2 or 3 variations of the scene within each setup.

There's probably more, but I need to lay down right now. I've been sitting at this computer all day, capturing video to my harddrive in seperate files, broken down into scenes and takes, etc and my back feels like I've got giant fish hooks digging into it and someone's trying to reel me in. Fun times.

Here's some stills from some of the footage I've captured:

Nick Adams trying to convince the Swede to leave town.

"What about the bright boys and the Mexican?"

"Do you go to church?"

Shot.

Counter-shot.

"You, Mexican, stand right there." "Whatever."

"Use yr head bright boy."

Max and Al about to leave.

Odds and Ends day

Woke up today at 12:15 in a panic, thinking I had told everyone to meet up at 12:30. It was raining, which meant that beyond my back aching like holy hell from working on the film all week, it ached from the rain too. I almost called everyone to cancel the shoot, especially when most of the shots we still needed where going to be facing the windows that wouldnt be quite so bright as they should be. But we're running out of time and I wanted a day (tomorrow) to look at all the footage and double check if we need to reshoot anything.

First we did the shot of Max and Al walking into the diner. That didn't take long.

Then we did the "kitchen shots" of Micki around the corner. The lighting was awesome, I hope they fit in nice as far as editing goes.

Next was the establishing shot that we ran filmed pretty much the entire film in.

Then, Sean O'Donnell finally made his appearance as Samuel, the Mexican. That was good fun.

After that, we went over to...a building...to shoot the elevator scene. It wasn't perfectly setup how I wanted it, but hopefully, through the wonders of montage, we can make it work.

We're getting really close to being done. We've got to do the following:
Close-up on the Swede for Scene 7 (with Nick Adams)
Scene where the Swede smokes sitting under the shadows of the fan blades, 2 angles, one of him in close-up and one wide-shot to see him put his ciggy out and get out of bed.
Shaving scene - probably 2 angles interspliced, as best we can.
Kitchen Scene - there'll be 3 setups for this and will take the longest I'm sure.
Nick Adams introduction - this'll actually take the longest, but it's just Nick Adams delivering flowers and making people laugh and be merry, shoot that around downtown.
Nick Adams running to warn the Swede - more of this.
Nick Adams entering the Swede's apartment building.
Nick Adams in the Swede's hallway.
Nick Adams hailing a Taxi Cab
Nick Adams in the "taxi".

and that's it. Actually, the more I look at it, the more I realize that we've got quite a bit to do still. Hopefully, if the rain holds off, we'll be able to shoot the stuff with Nick Adams running tomorrow night, the Swede scenes and the Kitchen scene Sunday night, maybe Nick Adam's in the Swede's hallway/entering the apartment.

I'm exhausted, but it's a good feeling in a way. I'd rather be in pain from doing something creative and fun than from just being in pain. This whole thing has been a lot harder, and while it's exhausting, it's something that I'm pretty damn sure I want to do again. I was telling Micki, Jim and Lusk earlier that my next film project might be something with that John North Wright stuff. We'll see. I've got some interesting ideas. First, this projects need to be finished.

I'm looking forward to getting more than 7 hours of sleep. Money says I'll end up crashing for something like 11 hours.

Long ass day.

So today we had a marathon run of filming. Lusk, Jim Frank, the Eppley Brothers, and I started around 12:30. Micki got there around 4:10, and Steve and Todd arrived around 6:00 pm. We all left around 10:30 pm. We got, in the can the following:
2 angles of Scene 3f
3 angles of Scene 3m
3 angles of Scene 3a-3d

We still need to get all of the scenes with the Mexican (Sean O'Donnell) in them and a few more scattered shots.
I'm just hoping beyond hope that what we've got thus far edits well. That would be the biggest disaster possible. I don't know why I'm worrying about it, probably because it's my first real film and so there's all sorts of pressure on, and if there was one way I could screw up (beyond shooting everything in hazy focus, or accidently erasing a tape) it'd be that.

The shoot did not feel like 10 hours. It just went by. I didn't really feel my back acting up until about an hour after we finished, when everything sort of settled down. Now it hurts like 8 bitches on a bitch boat. I need to get a good nights sleep because tomorrow will be another long day, most likely.

Micki and Jim were great today. John, as always, was too. Steve didn't have much to do, and he kind of got overshadowed during the actual filming but watching back some of the stuff, he was doing some great reaction work. I need to pay more attention to that kind of stuff while shooting.

Instead of giving the actors all sorts of directions on how I want them to deliver each line, I decided to give them a basic idea of where I saw the character going, let them work it out a little bit, and by the end, hopefully they'd have the character pretty well developed. I just think that its never going to be exactly like I saw it in my mind, so I might as well let the actor fill in some of the blanks and become something fresh, even to me. So far it's seemed to work really. I could've gone to everyone with very specific choices, but I guess I chose each cast member based on the characters' personality anyway and what I kind of hoped they'd bring to the table. I've been so happy with all of that thus far.

One thing that makes this high pressure for me is that, in a way, I feel like this film will live or die by my direction and editing. The screenplay is based on a classic by one of the greatest 20th century writers, the actors are all great, as well as the set and lighting. It's all on me then. If it sucks, it sucks because of me. If it's passable, it's passable because of the cast, script, etc. The only way it's going to be great is if what I bring to the table doesn't fuck up everything everyone else is bringing. So we'll see. It's been a blast and a long journey. Not too much longer to go. It'll be nice to finally get this goddamn story out of my head and see it with my own eyes. Here's hoping, we'll see.