The Perfect Excuse

Lately (as you can read about below) I've been feeling guilty about neglecting my post-production duties in lieu of having fun this summer. I know I should be busy in the editing room working on my video short, but I'd rather enjoy this wonderful weather.

So I started thinking about possible excuses I could give to people who ask me how things are going with the project. Suddenly, the answer dawned on me, courtesy of our Commander-in-Chief, G.W. Bush.



Joyce: When are you going to finish that movie?
Me: Mission Accomplished!
Joyce: You mean it's done?
Me: Didn't you hear me? Mission Accomplished!
Joyce: So when can I see it?
Me: SEE it? It's not READY yet! What part of Mission GODDAMNED Accomplished DIDN'T you understand?
Joyce: (stunned silence)

HOLY SHIT! G.W. used that phrase to perfection! I can put everyone off simply by saying "Mission Accomplished" over and over, while not actually getting ANYTHING done! It's fucking BRILLIANT!

Wow, I only WISH G.W. could run again, 'cause I'd vote for him this time for SURE! He's given me the perfect excuse for not completing ANYTHING ever again. I fucking LOVE "Mission Accomplished"!

Thanks, George. I don't know what I'd do without you.

An Apology to my Blog

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Dear Blog,

Look, I know I've been ignoring you lately. It isn't you...it's me. Honest. You're fine. You've ALWAYS been fine. The problem is with me. I don't want to be insensitive to your needs, but it's just that lately I've had things I had to do. And sometimes, that means I might not have enough time for you. I'm sorry.

You have every right to be angry with me. I've behaved badly. I've ignored you to go out and have fun sailing almost every day. I really don't want to hurt you, but I have to be true to my feelings, and right now I'm kind of in love with my sailboat.

We can still be friends, can't we? In fact, you'll always be special to me. I'd like to think that when this little fling is over, we can get back together and have things just like they were. Just think of this like a little vacation from each other. We can still stay in touch. I'll even make it a point to drop you a line every week or so. It's just that things are different now, and we both have to accept it.

Listen, we're still friends, right?

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God that was creepy. I started feeling like a sleezeball just for writing it!

Anyway, things are a little up in the air right now regarding our projects. Between Antony and me, we've got a lot of vacation time we'll be taking this Summer, and there's always the boat calling me. But we're still working on getting our shows on the air, and I'll be posting stuff on a regular basis, but not nearly every day like I was when we were in production. I expect to get this back on a normal basis sometime after Labor Day.

Thanks for reading, and don't worry, there will still be stuff worth reading here. But don't forget to shut off your computer and enjoy the nice weather once in a while!

Oh no, not ANOTHER vampire movie?

Not a lot happening on the movie front right now. We're still trying to get our requisite TV shows put together for broadcast on public access so we can qualify to use the Premiere editing suites for the flick; the Casablanca stations don't allow for password protection of your work, and we've already had a problem with some moron deleting Antony's project off of it. Once we can use the PC-based systems, we can easily backup to a USB portable drive.



I had an idea for a vampire movie yesterday, so I wrote up a quick treatment last night. It's a horror/comedy, which seems to be a genre I'm slowly being seduced into. I don't know why, but I've always gotten a kick out of being frightened and laughing at the same time. I'm going to watch "Shaun of the Dead" for inspiration.



Monday evening my wife and I invited Antony to bring his family out for a sail on our boat. I'd never met Mary and their son Brian before, but they're really nice and a lot of fun. Brian did a great job steering the boat, too. He's a natural born pirate!

An Update

This is an Update. I'm not doing it because I have much news to report. Because the fact is, I don't. But so many people are bugging me for updates (well, the voices in my head are...hey, they're imaginary people too!) that I'm going to post something here.

However, I CAN promise there IS stuff going on, and it's really interesting. It's just I can't say much about it until things develop further. Call me "Mister Mysterio" if you wish, but I won't fold under questioning.

By the way, right now I'm watching Morgan Spurlock's "30 Days" premiere on FX. It's quite good. He's captured the same humor and manic documentary style that made "Supersize Me" so much fun. He's like a slimmer Michael Moore, minus the vicious conservative backlash and slurs about where his loyalties lie.



Morgan Spurlock and fiancee Alex
Speaking of TV, I just saw a commercial that made me cringe. Please, somebody tell me that the new show, "The Princes of Malibu" is just a sick joke, that they're NOT making another reality show about spoiled, rich kids with no moral compass or consequences for their actions. For fuck's sake, has sociopathetic behaviour suddenly become "cool"? Would I be cooler if I was MORE of an asshole? (Of course, my wife would debate whether that's even POSSIBLE)

Oh, and this week I watched "Pi" (the 1998 David Aronofsky movie; awesome flick!), "Kinsey" (not bad at all), and a guilty pleasure: "Fight Club" (ya gotta love that potty-mouthed Helena Bonham Carter). Faulted though it is, Fight Club is a crazy wild flick. Check your logic at the door and step aboard for a fun ride.

Okay, that's my non-update Update. For someone who didn't have anything to say, I sure as hell took a long time to shut the fuck up.

Transferred the last day's footage

Last night we transferred the mini-DV footage from the final day's shoot onto DVD and VHS. There's a total of maybe 170 minutes of footage for our 10-minute short. We've got a LOT of great scenes with our actors, plus a bunch of freakin' hysterical moments for our blooper reel!

Here's James looking very creepy in his costume. Eat your heart out Bergman!



Below, Michael emotes terror for a big scene. Check out how the wide-angle lens makes the walls curve; I think it looks really cool and helps convey the feeling of anxiety that the scene contains.




We're trying throw together some quicky TV shows for broadcast on Public Access, because once we have 4 or 5 shows done, we'll "graduate" to the bigtime editing suites and be able to use Premier to edit our flick.

I've got about an hour of sailing footage I'm going to staple together to make one or two 24-minute shows, and hopefully get them scheduled for broadcast in a few weeks. Ant taped an Hispanic festival last weekend, and he's trying to cut that for another show. Plus, my friend Lori has gotten her cooking show nearly done, and I exec-produced some of them, so they'll count as "my" shows when they're broadcast.

With luck, we'll be able to meet the minimum requirement shortly, and have the luxury of working with the high-end editing equipment. We owe it to our actors and ourselves to do a great job with our movie.

Post production

Time to edit our flick. Here's what we need to do:

1. Transfer all our footage to the editing workstation. We have about 2 hours of filmed material we need to sort through.

2. Edit a rough cut. Ant already put together about two minutes, and it looks really good. Once we transfer the rest of our footage, we'll assemble a complete rough cut.

3. Examine the rough cut for pacing and continuity. Make notes for additional editing and any scenes that require an additional shoot.

4. Cut a more polished version of the movie based on our notes.


No, we didn't shoot on film; I just like this picture
5. Work on the audio. Since we've had various microphones and some audio problems, we'll have to work on getting better sound. It's been said that nearly 50% of the success of a movie is because of good audio. If you have a great picture but uneven sound, you take your audience out of the story.

6. Work with my friend Lori, who's a composer and performer, to produce a soundtrack for the movie.

7. At some point, get the reshoots if needed and edit them into the mix.

8. Put it all together and hope for the best.

That's where we are now. We're also in pre-production for our next movie, which we'll shoot as soon as possible. But for now, we've got the editing station reserved for this coming Monday. Now the REAL work begins!