Side Panels: Production Day 4

Let us put the harddrive crash-debacle behind us now and enjoy a brand new Side Panels minidoc! This one goes perfect with today, which is Halloween (be safe, kids). I won't reveal much of the context of what's going on, but as you'll see, this day of the shoot was the most relaxed, playful one we had.

Tonight I managed to edit just a short scene, and I've also been outlining a new idea I have for a video that will compliment the movie. Right now, however, I'm going to backup my P2 files on yet another drive. Happy Halloween!

Harddrive Crash

Post-production suffered from somewhat of a crisis this weekend that I now feel comfortable writing about. My entire movie, including the captured footage and the Final Cut editing track, was on an external 1TB harddrive. When I’d connect that drive, I’d leave it on the floor by the tower. Friday night I went in to watch some footage and log some scenes as usual. As I was doing this, my foot grazed the drive and it tipped over to the side. I was afraid of a wire popping out which would mean a device removal, but I didn’t expect anything worse than that. But it turns out that even though the little drive (which was only a month old) fell to the side (on a carpeted surface), something inside broke. It wouldn’t mount on the computer and it was making a really bad clicking sound whenever it was started up. I could not get to my movie at all.

This drive is a LaCie from the Apple store. LaCie’s warranty would fix the drive for me for free, but the data on the drive would be lost. I called the Apple store to see if there was anything they could do, but it’s out of their scope. I then stopped at Geek Squad at Best Buy and they were powerless too. Apparently, computer-fixing companies aren’t big into either repairing harddrives or recovering data. There are special companies for that, like DriveSavers.com out in California. They’ll recover data from harddrives that were in explosions, and they’ll do it in very little turnaround. But they’d cost up to $5,000.

I was pretty sure that my DP Mike still had the footage on his video cards, and I had already logged everything I had edited. So I found myself wondering which was more worth it: getting the footage from Mike and re-editing from start, or spending thousands of dollars (that I don’t really have, but dammit this movie needs to be finished!). Then something occurred to me that I had completely forgotten:

Flashback to the final day of shooting. My 1^st AC, Garreth, was dumping the video cards onto my 1TB for me. Garreth knew I also owned a 500GB drive, and he told me that as soon as I got home, I should backup something called “the P2 files” onto my 500GB. At the time I really didn’t understand what kind of files they were, but I went home and did it anyway. Thank f*ckin’ God I listened to Garreth.

It turns out that P2 files were the files from the video cards, but compressed(?) in a different format. In other words, I had a backup of all of my footage, just in a different form. I called Mike the DP to see about how that gets imported. All I had to do was open Final Cut, click on transfer, and open the P2 folders. Final Cut imported all of my footage and converted it into the right format. As for the editing track…well I had that too because Final Cut autosaves every once in awhile onto my computer’s internal drive.

So last night I finished importing all the footage onto a new 1TB drive and reconnecting most of the media. My movie’s back. I lost a weekend of editing time, but I learned some valuable lessons. (1) Harddrives off the floor. They look sturdy but they’re surprisingly delicate. I’ve got them on the desk behind the monitor now. (2) Back up everything, and always listen to Garreth. He is the hero of the day (yes, I’ve been keeping track of all of the “heroes of the days”). (3) I know how to do some stuff in Final Cut Pro that I didn’t before, so that’s kind of cool.

When I thought all was lost, I went into such a state of denial that everyone kept asking me why I was handling this so well. Inside, I was dying though. Editing this thing was one of the few things that has been keeping my mind at bay lately, and to lose that (over a stupid foot grazing a harddrive) was a thought I wasn’t prepared to handle. I’m so glad this crisis was averted, and let’s hope for a smooth post-production process from here out.

Look for a new Side Panels minidoc either tonight or tomorrow.

Side Panels: Production Day 3

Today I edited what I think is one of my most favorite scenes so far, and I'm now at the start of the film's third act. I also spent a little phone time meeting some new people, including some bands and a motion graphics editor. But let's look back on the filming with an all-new Side Panels minidoc. In this edition, you learn how we basically took care of makeup for the entire shoot

I'm going to try and get another Side Panels up within the next few days. The next one will give you your very first look at the ridiculously gorgeous Jennifer Stone as Zombie Gal (I'm sure some of you talkbackers will love that). Stay tuned!

Open letter to my cast

To my cast

We shot a lot of footage in a very small period of time, so we did a lot of cramming. Add to that all of the problems big and small that would arise (some being issues that you guys were never even made privy to), and you have one stressed director.

As I'm more than halfway done editing my rough cut though, I'm realizing that through the rush and craziness of the filming, I might have not done my best job expressing my appreciation of you guys. It's something I had planned to do for some kind of wrap party or film premiere or something, but I should do it now while it's sill somewhat fresh in my head (can you believe it's almost been a month already?).

You guys all fit your roles perfectly. If you'd watch this footage, you'd agree. You'd think I hired so type of big bucks casting agent to find you guys...that's how well you all fit your parts. The fact that I personally handpicked each and every one of you if one of my proudest achievements in this film.

But beyond the great acting job you all did, you did so much more. You guys traveled to Long Island. You waited around for hours some days before your turns in front of the cameras. You volunteered to drive other castmates back. You took cabs when I couldn't get to you. Above all...you guys never...ever complained. You made things so much less stressful on me and pleasant for everyone involved in the film. From the most sincere corner of my heart, I say thank you. Thank you so much for your patience, time, and commitment. You have my respect, and I hope I was a good enough director for you guys. I am in all of your debt, and I'll make you proud as I continue editing this.

-Your Lovable Director

Rafael Rivera is Awesome.

Throughout this project, our "go to" guy for comic book art has been Rafael Rivera (let's also give props to Vinny Bove, who's given us some major art pieces including the "Purgatory Comics" logo). Rafael has given us Ace Amoeba (based on my concept), Zombie Gal (based on costuming by Angela), and if I ever get myself a tattoo, he's my guy. Here's a little piece Rafael did with the three "Bagged and Boarded" leads!

Keep in mind, the man has never seen a clip of footage...this is done solely by the few video captures he's seen. Rafael rocks. Give his web site some love. I totally feel like making an Adult Swim cartoon series now.

PurgatoryComics.com

http://www.PurgatoryComics.com

ZombieGalComic.com

http://www.zombiegalcomic.com/

Editing this bitch

So I've been editing a rough cut of the film for the past few nights. What I've been doing is pretty much watching every single take of each scene, and then logging what I like, what I don't like, and why we probably can't use that take anyway (ie. out of focus or bad mess ups, etc). At this point I've got about 10 minutes of film edited in a rough cut (as in, no soundtrack, no color corrections, and I need to go back and tweak some cuts, maybe swap some takes). Anyway, if you're a fellow filmmaker and you're reading this looking for advice, here's the one nugget I'd like to share:

For the love of sweet Christ, have a continuity director on your crew.

Each cut I edit is a battle because I'm trying to match the actions of the actors. Unfortunetly, my actors don't like doing the exact same thing twice (ever), so this has been a royal pain. If I had someone on the set whose sole job was to watch for things like this, my life in the editing suite would be a lot easier. A continuity director would also catch things like wardrobe changes, style changes, and so on. Now, I purposely kept my crew as small as possible because we were shooting mostly in a tiny store and even with the few of us, the place was packed. But for your bigger productions, treat yourself to a continuity director.

I'll keep you all posted on editing. I would like to cut a trailer in the near future. I'm also playing with some ideas on how to change how the movie begins (I'm really liking my current one that nobody knows about yet...). In the meantime, here are a few more tasty stills of my leads, mostly from inside the store:

Cola

Evan

Berner

And what the hell, here are two more completely random shots:

Click any image for an enlarged view. As much as I might sound like I'm complaining, I actually really do enjoy the editing process. When I hit a snag, it's a very satisfying feeling to find a creative way around it. Plus, naturally it's just cool to see everything come together.

I am still in need of some kickass music for the soundtrack. If you're a musician or you know a great band, have them send a demo to Warm Milk Productions Inc, PO Box 474 Lake Grove NY 11755.

BaggedandBoardedMovie.com Launched!

The official website for the film launched tonight! Now this blog kinda has a home. I used the site to archive those Side Panels videos and give a little information about the film. I hope you dig the main page, I had a lot of fun making it.

Couple of things worth mentioning...that is not the official "Bagged and Boarded" movie logo yet. Just a placeholder. Also, the main page of the comic book was photoshopped from a scan of an old Marvel Tales: Spider-Man comic book. Why is that significant? Because that's the first Spider-Man comic I ever bought (from a rack at a 7-11 if you can believe it). Just thought I'd share. Enjoy!

Side Panels: Production Day 1

Here's a little look at our first day of production. It'll give you a little fly on the wall look at our shoot at Southaven County Park in Brookhaven. Well mostly it's just us chasing birds around. But you'll get to see some of the crew, and also just the tiniest glimpse of the scene in the film where Cola (Angela Benedict) meets Danny (Vinny Bove).

Southaven is a large, beautiful park to shoot at, and some of our scenery shots are gorgeous. However, the park is near a major highway as well as a student airport, so traffic sounds where always an issue (not to mention a nearby shooting range). Next time I do location scouting, I'll have a better idea of what kind of stuff to look for...like...no nearby airport and shooting range. The day one footage looks gorgeous.

On the Set: Day 10 - THAT'S A WRAP!

It's really hard for me to grasp that today, we wrapped on production. After spending nearly a year preparing for this, and having thousands of things going on in my mind at once, my brain seems to be having a difficult time accepting that this shoot is in the can. Yet here I am, home, reflecting on our final day.

We were in the comic book store early today, thanks to the owners Thomas and Vinny. Now I can reveal that their shop is Golden Memories Comics and Toys, a fun little store in Selden Long Island. However, in the movie, the shop is called Purgatory Comics (which you guys already know).

The first scene we did in the store was a scene that Tim dubbed "The Beast." It's a huge scene with a lot of drama, and it's about 7 pages of script. Once we slayed the beast, the day was a little more relaxed. There were a lot of things to coordinate as the day went on, yet somehow things kept falling into place. We had a cameo today by my longtime dear friend Laura O'Connor, some cameos from some new friends (as in, I just met them today), and we were all treated to Angela's delicious homemade chili.

I'm not an overly religious man, but sometimes I wonder if something, somewhere was looking over this production. Nearly every snag we hit seemed to turn into some type of blessing in disguise . . . and there were just so many points where the pieces of the puzzle would fall so neatly into place that you would swear this was all meant to be. It's late and I'm getting all philosophical here. I just feel like a lot of things over the past few months were meant to go exactly the way they've been going.

What's the next step? I'm gonna play with the footage, but I'm not really going to dive into editing until at least the weekend. I need a little rest first, and I need to sleep in really late this Saturday for the first time in what feels like months. Then I'd love to get back to working on the movie's website, and also cut a teaser trailer. In the meantime, I've been collecting music for the soundtrack. Angela's about to go on vacation so we can't do production stills or an official wrap party until she returns.

Keep checking on this blog as I'll be sure to constantly update it on the status of the project. Plus I want to go back and share a lot of thoughts of what kind of things I learned as a first time director. And hopefully some of my damn cast will post more of their thoughts too (hint hint guys). We're only getting started over here. But I want to thank my outstanding crew of Mike, Garreth, Abe, and Dan, and also my dedicated cast that did this all for the love of it and never complained once. Meeting these new friends alone made it all worth it.

I am soooooo glad I get to go to bed tonight without worrying about tomorrow's call sheet.