The actual GOH diary, Day 1

 Some of the extras, which in this case is 1 extra, the writer/producer(Luke), 

half of the FX team(Kaleigh, the prettier half), and a grip. (Habib!)

So I don't normally do this. I wait until WAY after a movie is past to begin posting diary entries. Hell, the Bounty diary still hasn't seen the light of day...

That's for various reasons. From simply not wanting to revisit the misery so soon to not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings.

But what you have to understand is that these are simply my thoughts in the heat of the moment. I don't dislike anybody in the cast/crew except that one person and they know who they are...(that's a joke, I don't dislike any of them, really!)

With that said, here is the agony of Day 1...

You do NOT want to know what Sharif was doing here...

Day 1 GOH 11-7-10

Started on time. Somehow fell behind—setting up the crane and getting people organized went bad. Literally didn’t shoot our first shot until an hour and a half after we were supposed to start shooting THE SCENE.

The crane does not go out as far as I had envisioned it, which kind of makes one of my cools shots not as cool. We move to the next crane shots.

Not a big fan of the shots. Seemed very low budget. Not a lot of extras, and some of them were told they were only going to be needed for an hour(?).

Andrew, The Servant, was technically supposed to be wrapped pretty early, but we ran late and I figured it was no big deal since he was crashing at Luke’s house. Turns out, he works the next day in Philly, so nope. We still had him until about 2am, so we had to go downstairs, shoot him out there, and then go BACK on the deck to finish the original shots.

Freezing cold outside. No actual craft service set up. I didn’t get any dinner. No time. Not much to drink.

Continued to fall behind. Everything is taking a while and focus is tough on a Red. The lenses we're using give some great shots by the depth of field is like from the front of her nose to your ear...

Some of the shots after the 1st start looking good.

The batteries aren’t recharging, so we’re having to run power to the Red for every shot. Not fun.

At the end it gets too late—we miss much of one scene. A pickup on the first day, a VERY easy scheduled day. I don’t know why first days have to suck SO MUCH but they do.

We wrapped, and by the time we cleaned up and packed up, it was 7am. Worked from 3pm-7am. Congrats on your 14 hour day.

Luke is insanely worried about his mom and how she’s going to react to the fact that people are in her house(and it looks that way). I mean, not much we can do. Hopefully she doesn’t ban us from coming back.

At this point she just needs to suck it up and figure after it’s over she can fix whatever got broke or dirty.
 

12/1/11 Update

Work continues! The picture is locked, and now we're hard at work on the sound. Sound plays a huge part of any good movie, and it's a place where a lot of no-budget filmmakers skimp, but I tend to put some significant work into it.

You know, when I'm not watching American Horror Story and playing Skyrim.

I'm joking, but only sort of.

And for those wondering--and in case I didn't say it--we think we'll be premiering the movie in March or April. The online scene should debut this month(fingers crossed), so keep watching!

Meanwhile, here's a little background I put together which may be a piece of the web site when it comes together. Look at all those suspects! (and babes)!

11/5/11 Update

Looping audio is about 90% complete. Foley work to begin shortly.

Am also working on the trailer for GOH.

Odds are good that the movie will be complete by December, but we probably won't premiere it until March or April, as scheduling a premiere and getting snowed out is expensive.

But you can expect to see a scene from GOH within a month, and the trailer could be before that.

GOH Update 9/16/11

This is a picture of me trying to get Richard Cutting in for looping...

Exported a smaller version of the movie in Quicktime, loaded it onto a flash drive and shipped it to master composer Chad Seiter. He got it this week and called me.

I'm happy to report he liked it a lot, and got it, which is something I was a bit worried about. See, the story is pretty complicated...

He's very excited to start work on it, and he's going to score the "deleted" scene first...the one we'll be putting up on the web in October. So you'll be able to see more than 5 minutes worth of the film on the GOH website, which should go active very soon.

In the meantime I'll be trying to locate all my actors and get them to come in for looping. I think we'll have a finished movie in November, and maybe we'll talk about a premiere. Not sure it's really a Christmas kind of movie, you know? :)

Update 8/23/11

Okay, been a hectic 6 weeks. Lot of personal stuff cropping up to get in the way of filmmaking, which is par for the course on low-budget shoots. And when you're a one-man post-production crew, when you get busy, the movie stops.

I have a complete cut of "Garden of Hedon". The film has been restructured a bit. They say films are made in the edit room, and the degree of truth in that differs from film to film.

My last film "Bounty" was pretty much the script in every scene. The edit was really nothing more than stringing the scenes together in the order they were written.

On GOH, I've reordered some scenes. I've even completely removed one five minute section of the film. It's actually a very good scene, but it just slows down the narrative. It's background that's introduced late in the movie, so I've decided to simply put it online first before you can see the film.

So what I'm going to do now is export the film with timecode and send a copy to our composer, Chad Seiter. He's unbelievably talented--he was Michael Giacchino's right-hand man on the television show "Lost" and "Fringe"(Chad composed much of season 2's score, and is on the soundtrack), and movies like The Incredibles, Star Trek, Land of the Lost, and more.

I'm really excited to see what new stuff he comes up with. He hit it out of the ballpark on FOC1 and FOC2. One of the best parts of filmmaking is laying in a score and seeing how the scene plays with music. It really can make a flat scene pop, or make a tense scene even more excruciating.

While Chad is composing, I'm going to be trying to get the gang back together to loop some of the bad scenes' audio.

Today's Who's Spiking The Camera features our club scene.

That's Annabelle Shore spiking the camera next to Caitlyn.

Here's Candy nervously spiking the camera during a crain-dolly...

this is the worst time to spike the camera.

6/25/11 Update

 We take our crew to the best places. Habib, inside "Murder Warehouse".

 P.A. Noah taking a two-second break.

Wow, didn't realize it had been so long since I did an update! Having some of those pesky personal-life issues that sometime get in the way of moviemaking.

Anyway, I have a rough cut of GOH completed in chronological order. I say it that way because when you're making a movie, a lot more is done creatively while editing than I think most people believe. Many people think the director goes out and shoots the movie, then hands the footage to the editor who edits it according to script.

Not so in many cases, especially low budget flicks. The editor is sort of the unsung hero, the guy whose job it is to fix anything that couldn't be fixed on set. (hence the term "Fix it in post")

But many times the editor can come up with something better than the way it was written, so it can lead to some great creative choices.

So the movie is now edited according to script, but I'll be changing the order of scenes, and unfortunately it appears that I'll be completely removing a scene that will remove some actors from the movie almost completely. It's unfortunate, but sometimes it happens. (Hey, it'll be a great deleted scene!)

Bigger problem is that we had technical issues on the sound, so much of the movie needs foley and looping. Never had this many issues with sound before, and it's going to add months on to post.

I'm trying to talk Luke into a September or October premiere, but we'll see.

Update 4/16/11 & Who's Spiking #5

Still plugging away at the edit. I took a week off to go to Vegas, but am now back at it.

I have one and a half scenes left to the rough edit. The current scene I'm in is kind of the big climax, so it's taking a while to edit. I just did 81 cuts in a 56 second time period. So yeah, there's some flashy editing in this one. The ADHD crowd is gonna love it. :)

Today's Who's Spiking features the return of lead actor Richard Cutting as he faces off against Manuel Poblete!

Also, another actor(John Bailey) tells me what he thinks of my directing.

Manuel Poblete on the left, Carl Stevens on the right.

Update 4/3/11 and Who's Spiking 4

Actor/Director Joe Ripple...he said method acting was the reason he had to drink the whole bottle.

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Been busting my hump editing. One scene in particular kicked my ass--the pickup that we shot in a Baltimore warehouse. Took me four straight days to edit. And that's the rough cut.

I'm now three scenes from being done the rough cut. Two big scenes and one small scene.

Put them on hold, as it's thundering here right now--editing machines get unplugged during storms. I refuse to take the chance of a power surge destroying all this work.

Anyway, two cast members got to see a brief clip with them in it--it's a very short scene that came out well, so I put it online unlisted for about an hour.

Today's Who's Spiking The Camera? features Matt, who not only spikes the camera, but he does it with a smirk!

Update 3/26 & Who's Spiking 3

Been rolling lately--am up to scene 86 on the rough cut. I think I have a pretty good chance of getting the rough cut done by March 31st, which is sort of what I was aiming at.

Then I will go back in and take a closer look at each scene, trimming and fixing minor sound issues, laying in ambients. I will begin marking "issues", things that will need fixing or possible pickup shots, along with dialogue that definitely needs to be looped.

Hey, what's that? Stripper pole + Kimberly Kerr= Fun

Today's Who's Spiking The Camera featuring Heather and JCVD. Remember, both of these frame caps are DURING a take! Fun!

Update 3/13/11 & Who's Spiking 2

Danielle telling me what she thinks of my directing

Am working on one of the more complicated edits--it involves Danielle eating about 20 different types of food, so if you were on set that night, you know what I'm talking about. It also involves Ryan Thomas getting a BJ

It was another tough night, and the scene has some problems. We had a problem with a shot where Danielle throws up--her hair kept getting in the way so you couldn't see the throw up. I never planned on using an insert, 'cause who really wants to see the throw up on the ground? But now I could really use it...

Then on another shot we have Danielle spin away from someone, and on the reverse shot she spins the opposite direction. Now the cut doesn't match. I don't blame anybody--the entire night's shooting was crazy, and we ran way behind.

But now I'm in fixit mode. I'm at about the 56 minute mark in this rough cut. I imagine the rough cut is gonna come in around two hours, which I will trim down to about 1hr 42 minutes or so.

Today's Who's Spiking The Camera stars Carl Stevens as "Leon".

Update 3/4/11

Many will recognize filmmaker David Cross

(though perhaps not sober, as he's pictured here on the set of GOH :)

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First 43 minutes of GOH is rough-edited together. It's got some good and some bad. I am, of course, my harshest critic. I think a lot of it is fixable through flashy editing, which was not my original intention, but so much for intentions...

Still, would REALLY like to reshoot one scene. We'll see...

Anyway...

I've begun playing a game called "Who's Spiking The Camera Now?"

If you don't know the lingo, "spiking the camera" is when an actor or extra looks directly into the camera during a take. It's a big no-no.

Anyway, have run into a number of takes when actors have looked right into the camera in GOH. I think it's just because the Red is so freakin' awesome they can't help it...

So here's the first installment of "Who's Spiking The Camera", and I thought it to be appropriate that the first one is our lead actor Richard Cutting! (and to play fair, all of these screencaps will have been pulled after "Action" and before "Cut!")

The Teaser is here!

As a thank you to all of you who are already on board with us, I'll unveil the teaser here first! Check it out and give us a comment on what you think and/or follow us with the button on the right!

UPDATE:

I hear you...you want it in HI DEFINITION, don't you? Here ya go. Change it to whatever your computer can handle...

CLICK HERE FOR THE HD VERSION


The regular is at the address below, and you can embed it if you want.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/MZhNwVLP6KM

Neglect!

I know...I been neglectful here.

Here's your updates--I've rough cut the first twelve scenes of GOH. That's right, about 20 minutes of GOH in a row! All of the audio has been imported and cut into individual take files which--believe me--is one of the least fun things to do.

I'm probably going to cut a few more scenes before I pull together some clips for a teaser. We had been asked last month to be interviewed in Rob Long II and Frank Lama's Smash or Trash TV show, and they want some clips so I've been looking for some stuff for them also.

So hey, pretty soon you WILL see some stuff one way or the other.

We actually shot a big pickup scene this month at what I like to call "Murder Warhouse". The Baltimore Film Commission got us the location, but it was pretty scary. Not a good part of Baltimore. And cold.

But we got a lot done...

Here's some more random pics.

 Richard Cutting and Danielle Lozeau before they learned to hate each other...

(it's a joke--everybody loves Danielle!)

(that's another joke at Richard's expense...)

 That is Dollhead Easter Bunny.

These are pics from pre-production when Jason Koch and Kaleigh Brown saved my bacon by coming in on short notice and doing a face cast of Andrew Ely.

Coupla Pics Courtesty of Joe Ripple

Fellow filmmaker Joe Ripple helped me out by taking some cool pics on set when he could make it out. I'll be putting them up here on occasion.


I have a rough edit of scenes 1-5 for GOH, and am pulling clips for a teaser.


Tonight though, we do a drunken commentary track for "Bounty". Our only wish, that Tom Proctor could be here with us. (Us being Me, Luke, Zig and Jared)

This picture is awesome--no FX were added or done to this picture. I don't know why she appears have demon eyes...a trick of the light.

 Mike Hodge came out and suffered some serious long nights with us...

 Wishing he'd said no when I asked him to star in the movie...

Cute extra with naked Heather-on-table