At the Editing Suite

First a quick update on the writing contest I mentioned in the last post. The assignment I got last weekend was for a political satire that took place in a tattoo parlor, and it had to include a hard hat. Yikes. I did the best I could so we'll see in November how many points I get. The way this is set up is so no matter what, I get to do a second script next month. I hope I get a genre more suited to my style next time.

Today I stopped by John Kilgour's editing suite, as you can see in the pic above. We went through the film together and made additional sound changes and corrections. I could nitpick this film forever, but I promise you guys I'm almost done. Anyway it was very productive and we made some strides, and it was really cool to watch the film in it's original, uncompressed glory again. It was so gorgeous.

Last night we had a mini-photoshoot out at Hidden Pixels Photo, courtesy of Vanessa Zimmer and Benn Fielding. We shot mostly Angela, and some of me for promotional materials (I'm so unphotogenic...). The concepts were a lot of fun...I'll post some images soon. I also taped a little video footage so maybe I'll put that up as well. We're going to whip up some Cola poster art and DVD sleeve art, and possibly yet another relaunch of the web site. Stay tuned.

Happy Halloween!

Film Status Updates.

I just watched another disc of the film dropped off by Digital Cuts. I'm amazed at the color correction job John did on one particular scene. I used to cringe when that scene came on, but now I can actually watch it. I'm hoping to meet with him soon and get the film back in my hands so I can do just a slight more tweaking on my own. Then it'll be done. Done! Such a weird concept. I feel like I was just watching my first rough cut. It's come so far since then ... so many little fixes here and there have really shaped this into a good little movie.

Unfortunately the movie being finished won't get it into your hands right away. The next challenge is finding a third party who will get an HD movie onto standard DVD without too much quality loss. I'm at a complete loss in that field. I'm a writer. How I even managed to get this much done, just being a writer, is beyond me. I think I'm pretty awesome for it. Shut up, I can flatter myself in my own blog.

I'm very anxious to get writing again. I've been inspired to write what I think is a fun dark comedy with a science fiction edge. It also probably rips from my personal life much more than Purgatory Comics, with the main two characters in this each being a representation of two conflicting aspects of my own personality. It's too much to get into here but I've already outlined most of it and when things calm down, I'll crank out the first draft.

I've also entered the NYC Midnight Movie Madness Competition again. It's the only writing contest I enter, and I've been doing it for about four years now. It's a great exercise for me: they give you a genre and subject, and you have a set amount of time to write a script. Usually I enter their summer contest but I missed it this year, so I'm doing their fall contest instead (but the scripts can only be 5 pages or less). That should be a fun challenge and I'll keep you guys posted.