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.