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!")