"Well, I am."

                         MARISSA
          You know you're not the only one.

                         LARRY  
          Doesn't matter. 

                         MARISSA
          It does matter.

                         LARRY
          I'm not going to do it.

                         MARISSA
          Well, I am.  


Yay!!

I finished Scene 50!!  Woo hoo!

Now I have:

• Larry's suicide (attempted)
• Bill's coming out
• Friends gathering outside hospital room while 
• Amy sings to Larry inside
• Friends in Larry's hospital room.  

And that's it!!

Oh, well, plus some insert shots of clocks and the hairpiece, and I have to figure out whether or not I'm including the montages -- but editing-wise, I can smell the barn! 

Can I get an Amen?

Not so much

Well, it's Thursday now and I am still plugging away at Scene 50 -- the handheld "Showdown" scene.  It's much harder to put together than I expected, and my distraction level is high -- house- and dog-sitting -- so it's extremely slow-going.  I probably won't make my Dec 31st deadline at this point.  Not that anyone cares about that but me, really.  We shall see.

Entering Week 4

According to my well laid plan of a page and three-quarters per day, I should be finishing Scene 50 today.  I got some good work done yesterday after a few days of really dragging (depressed because I didn't get a job I REALLY WANTED, for which I had a second interview - hard to work devotedly under those circs), but I think I am about a day behind -- and I'm not sure I will get much done today.  Still, I had some "cushion" days built into my planning, so I'm not really too concerned yet about meeting my Dec 31st deadline.

Which is to say....

I am hereby announcing that I believe that within the next NINE DAYS, the rough cut (picture) of Seeing and Believing will be done!  God willing and the power doesn't go out.  Now, we just want to see it!

As of tomorrow, and then for four days, I will be house- & dog-sitting.  I think I'll be able to do good, concentrated work there.  I'm counting on it, in fact.  Why wouldn't I?  In any case, those are my "big Christmas plans" so it's not like editing will be competing with visiting family festivities or anything.

What I'm really hoping is that I'll be able to finish the narrative by the end of the 29th (Sat'y), and then have the 30th to shoot a couple things (ha! both clocks, actually -- one in the dining room, one to be next to Marissa's detached ponytail) and string everything together.  On the 31st, I might be taking a bus to Philly to see me mum, but that might happen on the 1st.  THEN, to start off the NEW YEAR right, I will start trying to figure out what's going wrong when I try to export and burn a DVD, because you know stuff will go wrong when I try to do that.

So that's the plan!

That man is on crack.

Scene 49 is now done!

This scene has the distinction of containing one of my favorite lines to say (see title of post).  It was the source of two separate takes-ruined-by-people-laughing -- one was me and one was Rachel A-O.  But guess what -- I had to cut the line!

I have loved that line for ten years, but it will not be in the movie.  It is lying on the proverbial cutting room floor as I type.  

Why?

Because it happens to be the ONLY time (I believe) (so far) that we managed not to get the line on camera in any way, form, or fashion and it's really not the kind of line that makes sense OS.  I mean, mayyybe I'll leave it in, OS, but the flow of the dialogue works just as well without it since no one actually answers him.

HOW did we manage NOT to get Kevin on screen for that last moment when he and Larry re-enter the dining room from the kitchen (where nothing was burning, despite Larry's sudden interest in such a possibility, moments before)?  HOW?

Coverage that whole day was weird -- as I said in the previous post (same day, both for us, working, and in the story).  The angles were weirdly directed, the coverage was oddly incomplete.  I had to put in a close-up of Marissa without its matching sound in order to have a transition shot from the MCU of Sarah and Amy to the last wide shot of everyone, otherwise, we wouldn't even have seen Larry running out the door and Marissa following him.  Not that that actually means anything to you, but since I don't believe you exist, reader, I'm just going to say it like that and not explain myself.

I'm about a day behind now.  Nervous about Scene 50, which I start tomorrow.

Scene 50 is the Showdown and it's the only scene we did fully handheld with some creative circling of the actors as they circled each other.  I cannot find my notes about it.  I lost them, and then found them recently (I remember my joy upon the discovery), but now I seem to have misplaced them again.  Or maybe I only dreamed about finding them, because I cannot imagine why I wouldn't have just put them with everything else.  Ugh.  It's okay -- it will mean I have to start the scene ffrom scratch, but that's probably appropriate, if more time-consuming.

Also, the world is ending tomorrow.  Happy Solstice!

Odd Bird, That One

Hi -

Well, "Frazzled" is DONE.

Yay!!!

That scene made me really nervous because, as I"ve said 3,000 times, we had to shoot it over two days and it was really emotionally intense. That was the one I had even tried to farm out to someone else, but now I have DONE IT!  Woo-hoo!

And what's more, I also have done Scene 47.

In Scene 47, Marissa is wearing almost all red, indicating that she is now feeling good and open and powerful.  She's getting it together!  She's also writing and she doesn't look like a something the cat wouldn't even drag in.  Bill comes in behind her, as he does in an earlier scene, but unlike in the earlier scene, he does not startle her.  She is nonplussed.  Why?  Because she's calm.  Because it's three-quarters of the way through the movie, that's why! 

This is the scene where Marissa says that Amy is "an odd bird, that one" and Bill responds by saying, "Watch your mouth" (also a reference to an earlier scene when the two are discussing Marissa's use of the expression "I'm just a bad penny"). 

The scene itself, we might say, is "an odd bird" -- For one thing, the coverage is terrible, and what there is, let's say, is not the way I would set it up now.  The one WS is just downright weird.  There's way too much negative space!  (oo - will have to put that and "coverage" in my glossary)  It's so weird that I think I must have been doing it intentionally for some artistic reason that is now lost.  I'm trying to analyze it and figure out what I would have been thinking if I had been me.  :)  Regardless, we crossed that DAMN 180 LINE again -- annnnd you can see Jenny & Mark's kitchen through the doorway as plain as day, which really kind of stinks because the Jenkins' kitchen is where we shot Bill's kitchen.  We didn't shoot in Jenny & Mark's kitchen at all.  Hmph.  I cut around it pretty well, I think.  Maybe we can just pretend it's a pantry on the way to the kitchen. 

This was also the scene where we wanted to show Marissa dropping a piece of paper, which would then float to a very specific place onthe floor where Sarah finds it in the next scene.  We stopped numbering the takes after a while.  I'd guess... 20?  

After several different versions, trying to cut around the kitchen and the weird framing and the jump over the 180 line, I think I have ended up with an okay rough cut of it.  A challenge MET!

Now I move into the hard stuff:  Sarah and Amy reading aloud, "That man is on crack," and the Showdown!

Almost frazzled

Well, I have almost completed Scene A45!! 

This is the ""frazzled" scene where Marissa is crying on the couch, overwhelmed by all the pain she has experienced in the world, and Bill tells her, "If you're going to be the sufferer, then you have to be the savior also."  I haven't decided whether or not this is really deep theology or terrible hubris -- but there it is!

Off to Maine to visit my step-mom for the weekend.  I hope to edit there a little, but I'm not sure how the days will go (ahh, the beautiful wonder of my new little hard drive).

In any case, I am still right on track timewise.  I got a little ahead, and I'm not ahead anymore, but I'm encouraged by how things have gone.  Halfway through the month now, I can say that I stand a pretty good chance (God willing and the Charles don't rise) of finishing the rough-cut-minus-montages by the end of 2012! 

Tentative woo-hoo!!

Why...

...won't you post comments?   

Why?

It's because you're not there, isn't it? 

Starting Week 2

All righty!

I have finished 40-44!!  Yayy!

Scene 40 is supposed to be flashes into the down-and-out guy's mind, and in truth it's not exactly "done," but I've got some thematic filler in there.  All three montages will just have to wait until January, I think.

Counting that filler as something though, I am now "one day" or 1.75 pages ahead of schedule.  This is a good thing, because tomorrow I start Scene A45 - "Frazzled" - the scene where Marissa is crying in the dark and Bill counsels her.  It's six pages long and will take me probably four days (possibly three if it goes well).   This scene was really tough -- and it's one of the hardest scenes for me to watch/engage with because I should have been a better director for it.  I mean, I should have been a better director ALL ROUND, but this scene is so vital to the film that I can get furious watching certain things fall through the cracks, etc.  I will try to stay calm, though, because I am on a mission!

I managed to stay relatively calm for both the "you're f*king nothing" scene and the "I'm a people person" scene, both of which featured professional actors outside our central cast of five regulars.  It is clear to me watching these scenes - which came out well enough in the end - that I was a little intimidated by their experience or something -- I did not give them enough input. :(  Still, it is neat to have the fresh faces and energies in the movie.

PLUS - our own Jack Martin has two lines in Scene 44 (in the park on Comm Ave).  He plays "Somebody."

SOMEBODY:  Excuse me--
LARRY:  It's 12:45.
SOMEBODY:  Thanks. 

So, Jack, you're Somebody now! 

I'll probably write mid-Frazzled once, and then when I have finished that scene!  Man, I'll tell you, that will feel like quite an accomplishment!  After that, it will be the "Second Dinner" sequence, which includes reading Marissa's prose (I have no idea how to handle that) and Larry & Marissa's "showdown" on the street.  THEN it will be the suicide sequence; THEN Bill comes out; THEN Amy sings.  Then the ENDING.  No flies on these scenes! 

So -- until mid-frazzle....

"You weren't supposed to DO that!"

Scene 31:  After their nice "get reacquainted" dinner, Marissa and Larry adjourn to the "piano room" where Marissa tries to get Larry to "try the game."

LARRY:  But it wasn't real.
MARISSA:  We thought it was real.
LARRY:   We were little.  Little kids think Santa Claus is real!
MARISSA:  That's because adults tell them he's real. 

Larry is unconvinced but Marissa is undeterred and proceeds to "read" the piano bench.

The whole first part is one long take.  The O/S shots we did to insert were over the 180 line so they were not usable at that point [SEE: handy "Glossary," tabbed above, if need be].  It feels a little slow, but it's also okay -- symbolically, it's unifying.  It works symbolically not to cut until Marissa announces her "discovery" that alienates Larry.  Then we "separate" them visually to match the emotional truth.

I decided to try a little 'Homocide: Life on the Street' technique there:  Fans of this bygone, "revolutionary" TV show will know that they regularly edited scenes with certain moments/dialogue repeated or with intentional jumps in smoothness (a character might be to the right of a desk, then suddenly "jump" to behind the desk through a discontinuous cut).  Since this is the moment that their world turns upside down -- an "inciting incident" in a way -- I chose to represent this by making the world seem disjointed and rocky -- to model visually the instability and "shocking" nature of the event.  I repeat a couple lines of dialogue and put in a couple jumps.

Now, we didn't shoot it with this idea in mind, and it could be that someone with more experience with this sort of editing could do a more effective job than I (for example - I'm wondering if I should put in a flash frame somewhere, but I'm not sure how) -- AND this is the Rough Cut, so I'm calling it "DONE."

This means that I have supposedly "edited" 9.5 pages in three days.  Being ahead is going to be key because I'm sure that I will lose some ground on some of the more cut-heavy scenes.  Gain ground where you can!

Today I will try to do Alan/Down-and-Out-Man's "You're f-ing nothing!" scene, but I'm realizing as I look at the script that I was going to have another montage there -- the "montage of pain" -- as Marissa notices him and experiences his loss and struggle, etc.  Dunno exactly what I'll do about that.  Might need to ask someone with liquor bottles in their house to shoot a couple images for me.  Could this be YOU, invisible reader??  I have a great website for transferring the video...

Two down

Okay!

We're off to a good start.  This is especially nice because I'm sure there will be some very aggravating moments, too. 

I did Scene 29 yesterday...

It was a rough shoot on the street (somewhere - don't remember where we were - Dorchester somewhere, I think) with passers by and trucks and people whistling -- plus it was a very bright day, so as we walked, we moved in and out of shadows.  Were we aware of this at the time?  Probably.  We got a Verizon employee to be an extra at his truck, but he kept looking at the actors walk by, which makes it look like he's looking at the camera, because of the angle of his glance.  Too bad.  Ridiculous ice cream. 

Then today's job was to figure out if I had a version of Scene 30 already done because this was the very first scene I ever did -- I was going to (in 2004, I believe) use it as the frame of a trailer.  I recall sitting in the Caribou Coffee on Hennepin and 22nd St showing the scene to Marty W. on his cool portable monitor.  "You guys were really serious, weren't you?" he said in a pleasantly surprised tone.  He agreed to edit our movie for free.  Yay!  A year or so later, he gave the tapes back, having not had time because real life took him over.  Boo! 

The problem today was that all I could ever find was a squeezed QT file on the finished scene that was also slightly pixelated, for some reason.  It was not usable.  But where were the original clips??  I searched for an hour or more (even got my old PowerBook G4 to come on - a tricky task - and in there was a folder called "Old iMac" -- found some S&B original budget sheets, etc -- but no video files) and was just about to give up, when I tried One Last Thing -- which worked!  Yay!

SO:  Scene 30, after minor tweaking, is DONE TOO.

Now the real work begins!  Or, er, begins again!

The Scene List

I gotta tell ya, after looking this over, and thinking about how long it took me to do things before, I am less confident that I am even remotely capable of doing all this in four weeks.  I'll do my best! 

Here's the list:

Plan for December, 2012

Greetings!

It is December 2nd.

I spent November poking occasionally at the trailer, but mostly working on a different project -- my National Novel-Writing Month (AKA "NaNoWriMo") novel.  The challenge of NNWM is to write a 50,000-word "novel" in 30 days (average "real" novel length is actually closer to 100,000).  One can do it alone, or meet at regular "write-ins" with other writers (sometimes as many as 50+ in a room).  It's a lot of writing in a month.  It was my fifth try and the first time I WON!  Yay! 

Somewhere in the late-middle of the month, already with as many words as I'd made in the entire month last year, I decided to try to ride the tide of determination/obsession out of November and into December, changing my project goal from 50K words to Full Rough Cut of S&B.  "Thirty days and nights of literary abandon" is NNWM's slogan -- could I do something similarly crazy to really get S&B done in 2012??!

There are some key differences that make transferring the experience not exactly easy.  For one thing, NNWM is an international event in which 10's of thousands of people are participating.  There are forums and buddies and e-mail pep talks from "real" writers, and there are those "write-ins."  If one doesn't want to go it alone, one has many, many opportunities to connect with people who are doing _the same thing_.  Psychologically, this is a big boost -- misery loves company and all that.

The other main difference is that 1) writing 2) from scratch 3) for yourself 4) for a project that others may or may not ever see is an entirely different task than 1) editing 2) existing footage 3) on a collaborative project 4) that a lot of people will see.  Writing from scratch "with abandon" is not editing existing footage that others have some stake in.

NONETHELESS.  There are overlaps!  And I have decided to do my best!

There are some things that might interfere:  job-getting, for example.

But I'm going to try to think of it as an average of a page and three-quarters a day x 24 days.   The page-count system may not pan out as viable - the scenes are so different from each other - will present very distinct challenges.  But I figure, it is at least a way to think about how much work it is, and to gauge at the end of each week how much progress I've made (four 6-day weeks = 24 days) -- it should be 10.5 pages per week. 

NOW: let's all acknowledge that this might be IMPOSSIBLE.  If I were able to do 10.5 pages per week, would I not have?  So I dunno.  But NNWM has inspired me, so I am going to TRY!

In service of this end, some kind and generous Friends from my Quaker meeting have offered each to call me once a week:  one on Mondays, one on Wednesdays, and one on Fridays.  I am hoping that the combination of guilt and support, company and venting outlet will keep me going! 

YOU TOO, whoever you are, if you want me to succeed at this, are invited to e-mail me, FB post to me, or comment here at any point to let me know that you even know I am doing this and that you care.  WHOEVER YOU ARE. 

I will post here regularly throughout the month to keep you apprised of how ludicrous this effort turns out to be. 

So - until next time...

Peace,
Rachel

PS - The trailer is on hold except when I might work on it as inspired in the month.  It might be easier to do once I have a whole rough cut, anyway.