Trailer Update

Hey there!

Okay, well, Rich ended up being too busy to get all the way through this, but his "Dark Matter" piece was a real help to me.  It was close enough that it helped me get a much clearer vision of the trailer.

Coincidentally, while I was waiting out a busy spell of Rich's, a former student of mine named Kevin Smith (not to be confused with either "Kevin Smith," they guy who directed Clerks, OR with Kevin Bright, who plays Bill in S & B) wrote to express his interest in scoring movies.  Blah blah blah (days and things that you don't care about) and I'm using an original piece by Kevin in the trailer! 

We are fine-tuning it, but it is very close. 

Today, Jordan is doing what she has time to do to put together a third draft of the trailer, using Kevin's music and the structure that I came up with while thinking with Rich's piece in mind.

Chances are I will be doing some fine-tuning of the trailer after Jordan does her last work, since she's started up at Emerson again, but I am eager to see the new draft with good music - it will make a big difference in bringing us closer to done.   Exciting!

I have been totally avoiding thinking about what to say in my Directorial intro -- SO VERY MUCH don't want to do that.  What should I wear? 

Loe,
REA

Summer 2013 Update 2

Okay, well as per usual, my timeline estimate was off, but Jordan (the trailer editor) and I are progressing with the trailer. 

One of our biggest snares has been the music -- how to score the trailer.  It would probably be easier NOT to have music, but I really want it.   Jordan found two royalty-free pieces that were similar to what I want:  an Eric Satie that is too somber and rather over-used in movies anyway, and another thing that is just too Hallmarky - almost puked on my computer from the saccharine taste.

SO -- I asked my step-brother Rich (Rachard J. Hill if you're a SoundCloud member), who is a musician and likes to poke around with Garage Band, if he could possibly write us something -- and he has said "yes."  Yay!

For the past couple days we've been going back and forth and we're getting closer!  Once we have something, Jordan will be able to do a third "draft" and then we'll see where we are.

Jordan's an undergrad and has her own film projects to work on, so we're probably nearing the end of her involvement.  I hope we can get it done with her before she gears up for the new term.  If we're not quite done when she needs to bow out, I will finish the trailer myself.  I could not have gotten this far without her!

I've started to think about what I will say as the director in my Kickstarter plea.  I must say that it feels a little weird -- I don't know what I will say.  "Finishing funds" - ??  Not liking this part. 

Also -- I have no idea what "thank you gifts" I could give people if they donate, as is customary on Kickstarter.  Don't want to spend the money on that - that would be dumb. 

When the trailer is done, I'll post it here!

Peace & Light,
REA

Summer Update

Hi!

WELL. 

I just thought I'd quickly let you know that I have received the 1st cut of a Kickstarter trailer by the sister of a former student of mine (she is an undergrad at Emerson College).  It looks great!  We will revise a little, tweak it, and then get a Kickstarter campaign going before the end of July!!  (God willing and the Chas don't rise) 

YAYYY!!

Love,
Rachel

A Post-Post Post

Hello,

Just thought I'd let you know that I have not sent out most of the discs yet.  The four other (i.e., besides me) principle actors got theirs and then I bought some cheap mailers on line -- and then I realized that I'm way too broke to go mailing these things out to people right now.  Sorry!  Yet one more thing that will have to wait until I have an income.

I have been networking a little bit about finding an professional editor to "clean up" the rough cut, but to no avail.  I had hoped Kevin/Bill or R.J./Larry might know someone, since they work FT in The Biz, but neither has produced a savior so far.  I recently met someone who, I inferred, may work with digital sound - or went to film school for audio? - something.  It wasn't a good time for me to clarify this with her, but I'll be in touch with her again before too long and see if there's anything there.  Also, as the editing went along, I asked three former students of mine, independently, if they would like to help out -- two actually answered me -- but to no product.  I might give that route one more go, though, if through slightly different channels.  We'll see.  I'll keep poking around as I can.

I'm disappointed that only Christine/Vitta really shared her experience of watching the film after she got the disc.  It feels so strange to have this be such a big deal for me, to have been "connected" in this weird virtual way to these people all this time, and now that I have done as much as I can with it, to send it out and get almost nothing back.  It's bizarre.  Kevin, for example, called me very regularly for the first few years after the shoot, and then kept in touch less regularly but reliably for the last few years -- asking how it was going every now and then (wanting his footage!!) -- and now I wonder if we'll never speak again -- unless I send a note that we got an editor on board.  Why should it be any different?  For them it was one gig, and gigs end.  There have been plenty of projects and plays that I've been a part of, after which I don't expect to stay in touch with people.  That's the nature of the business.  It was a fun July (I hope it was mostly fun) more than a decade ago.  It wasn't life-changing for them; it wasn't their one big project.  I, though, have carried this around in my heart and psyche for a decade, feeling tied to them all this time.  Not to have a reunion and a "premiere" where we all got together and saw the movie as a group, sharing memories and wincing and laughing together, feeling our ambivalent pride together,  seeing the decade in each other's changed-but-familiar faces and all that, but rather to be divided off in the world, everyone seeing it independently - invisibly - in their "new" lives, has been rather anti-climactic and, honestly, sad for me.

But what that means, of course, is just that I need to make another movie.  A better funded movie with an editor attached.  And to get it done inside two years at most.  Right?  Right.  The answer is always to work again. 

Waiting?

Hi -

Some of you are waiting for your DVDs still - sorry.  I had the right number of discs -- but I didn't have but a few _envelopes_.  As I am broke, I have been watching circulars, hoping they would go on sale.  They have not.  Yesterday, then I went on line and ordered some.  You will get your DVDs when I get my mailers.  :) 


No developments on the editor and/or Kickstarter thing. 

It's raining. 

Love,
Rachel

Mail This

Okay, I figured out the burning and burned the 15 or so discs that I already owned.  The four principle actors (plus me) now have their DVDs -- or, at least, I mailed discs to Kevin/Bill, Christine/Marissa and R.J./Larry, and hand-delivered one to Rachel AO/Amy.  Now I will start mailing out the others -- producers and supporting actors.

It was great to see Rachel AO in person -- standing on the snowy street in Cambridgeport.  Made me really wish we could all have a reunion -- and could have had that reunion screening that I"d hoped for last summer.  Ah so.   

Christine/Vitta said she watched the "bonus material" (I included some bloopers and between-takes stuff, forgetting a few choice ones that I will have to put on the "real" DVD if it ever exists) and - what was it? - she laughed so hard she cried? 

Ahh, memory lane, you are an interesting, poignant place. 

I hope that we manage to find a "real" editor now to "clean it up."  But we'll see.

Peace,
Rachel

Burn This

Okay, here's what's going on:

I didn't have too much trouble exporting from Final Cut Express (it seems), and my iDVD seems to have made a perfectly good DVD menu and whatnot,

but the disc won't burn.

I keep getting an error message -- an "unexpected error," it says (what other kind of error is there?) -- without an explanation.

I can't believe how many different types of DVD
          A) exist
          B) I have in this box

+R?  -R?  Single-layer, double-layer, blah blah blah.  Just more of the side of "filmmaking" that I really wish I did not have to know anything about.  It's so boring and "unintuitive" for me that it's like brain torture.  This is the way I used to feel in Trigonometry class.  Why don't they just classify the DVDs as sines and cosines?  Every other term in math in 11th grade, we'd alternate Algebra 2 with Trig.  My report card went:  A, C, A, C, A.  Guess which terms were Trig.

Anyway -- I will poke around with it today -- look online at some Help forums and whatnot.  I really hope it's not that my laptop and/or operating system won't handle it.  (MacBook Pro from 2009, OSX.6.8)  I burned a test DVD, back when I was having those .avi/.mov import issues - a couple scenes totalling maybe 7 minutes? - so I know it the burning device works.

Vamos a ver....

What's Done Is Done

Yes, it's true.

I have now completed all that I know how to do (except I'm also going to stick some credits at the end once I sign out if here).

The movie really does need music, and a couple scenes really need to have the dialogue re-recorded without wind and traffic noise (Bill's coming out scene, unfortunately), and the BLOOD (in the sink, on Larry's T-shirt, on the bed sheet) needs to be color adjusted and possibly re-shaped if possible, and the montage needs some images that I didn't steal off the internet -- and if the whole thing ever actually looks like something I might "release" in some fashion, I would need to figure out what to do about the music licenses for "Piano Man" and "Ludwig's Tune" -- but I have now COMPLETED what I know how to do.

I'll do the credits (just temp, uninteresting, not complete), and then I'll burn a DVD to see what problems will arise there -- because you know there will be _some_ problems with that.  Then I'll solve those problems.  Then I'll burn 10 DVDs and send them off to actors and a few other people (like Jack -- and Greg Dancer if I can track him down). 

Then....  we'll see......

Update, Music, Connectedness

Okay, so, the "little bit" of audio fixing that I wuzgonna do has turned into a rather tedious and time-consuming process.  MAN - I really thought I was just about DONE!  Anyway, I'm progressing slowly -- at 43 mins, so about the halfway point -- and reeeeally intend to be done this week and to burn DVDs this weekend! 

Also want to add:

1.  I did pull some photos off-line and make a quasi-montage-of-pain.  It's not good, but it will tell you (and a potential real editor) what's supposed to go there.

2.  We really need music.  The quasi-montage (I mean, I guess technically it's a real "montage," but it's not really the way I would want the final one to look) made that all the more obvious -- as has going back through the film and paying particular attention to sound.

A friend of mine, not a professional film person, recently commented that she likes movies without music.  I tried to tell her that movies almost always have music, that it's a rare, rare indie arty thing that doesn't -- more likely to have less music in a documentary, but even those include very important music.  Movies have music.  She didn't seem to believe me.  I talked about how effectively dramatic silent scenes can be when they don't use music -- but that's because the rest of the film has music.  She told me in the same conversation that she really liked the movie In the Valley of Elah  (starring Tommy Lee Jones, with Susan Sarandon and Jason Patrick--who didn't get a single title card! what up with that??), so I watched it.  Of course there was music ALL OVER THE PLACE.  It really proved my point to myself and made me just that much more aware of how much Seeing and Believing needs a score.  Granted, it's not going to ever play like a movie like Valley of Elah -- but think of how important music is to sex, lies and videotape and Hal Hartley movies.  Yegads.  Hm.  So: music.

3.  Today I have been doing the audio for the scene between Bill and Marissa (in the Jenkins'/MIT kitchen) in which Bill is explaining his philosophy of "attraction":  "It's not the attraction to the thing that kills them.... It's a stupid reaction to the attraction."  This is one of those scenes (another is Amy & Sarah's argument about conservatism) that I wish I had done one more draft of -- or, more accurately, that I wish I could re-write from 2013.  I knew intuitively why those scenes were there, and how they were important, but I wasn't 100% clear consciously, and as written, I can see that others may wonder.

They are about connection:  How are you connected to other people and to the world?  How much do you see yourself (and everyone else) as a part of a larger web of connectedness?  What is the individual's role inside that connectedness?  (i.e., ESP and friendship as other expressions of "connectedness")

I was thinking this morning about what Bill should have said in that scene that never got articulated in the screenplay.  Here's part of the conversation:

-->

               MARISSA

     I don’t think lemmings fits with

     your analogy.  They’re not "attracted"

     to jumping off the cliff.

               BILL

     Sure it fits.  They’re attracted

     to community, to safety in numbers -

     and those are good things.

               MARISSA

     Good things that ultimately kill them.

               BILL

     But it's not the attraction to the 

     thing that kills them; there's no

     such thing as a 'fatal attraction.' 

     What’s fatal is a stupid reaction

     to the attraction.  They misread it

     and make a dumb decision in response. 

          (imitates moth

          hitting flame)

     You see my point?

What he doesn't ever say, that I wish he did say, is (vis.):  "Imagine how it would be if they weren't attracted to those things.  Imagine how it would be if a moth was not attracted to heat, or if lemmings were not attracted to community.  That would be much worse for them, wouldn't it?  Imagine if we were not attracted to things or to other people.  Imagine that!  We would just be... all... just in ourselves.  Contained in ourselves.  We'd be completely alone.  That would suck!  Wouldn't it?"

Now, on seeing that written out, I think it's probably too explicit and something a little more subtle would probably serve the movie better.  "But you get my point," as Bill says.

Ah well, time marches on.  In 2002, I did not know what I know now -- THAT's for damn sure. 

Not bad

Hey!

I shot the clock!

Not a bad match, eh?  For 2 miles and 10.5 years distance between the two - ?!

I think it's pretty legible, don't you?  It's almost 7 -- is that what it looks like?  Hope so.  Thanks to Cynthia Manson for the clock form her daughter's room.  It's not what I pictured in my mind, but I think it's compatible.  No?  Yes.

Meanwhile, the audio is progressing very slowly because apparently I had been less careful than I remembered during the first six months of editing.  Wow.  Sound is all over.  I guess I was going to pay someone to fix it -- but I can do some, so I am. 

Peace out.

"It's time."

Hello,

Quick update, since it's been a week:

I have not been able to get a good wall clock for the inserts, though I have been to three cheap stores and asked a half-dozen people.  Apparently people don't really do wall clocks much anymore.  Before too long (end of the month?) I will give up and just use the ugly stills that I found on the web (for the rough cut that I print some DVDs of).  I do have one more avenue of pursuit (a listserv at my Quaker meeting), and I haven't given up on stopping by thrift stores as I see them, but I'm not going to look forever.  When/if I secure a professional editor to make a fine cut, I will get the real deal -- even if I have to pay twenty whole dollars (ongoing unemployment makes that a no-go these days).  I'm also not going to do the montage of pain, I think, before I burn the DVDs.  Right now I have some still pix as filler, and they will do for now.  That's another thing that I will just figure out if/when the prospect of getting the movie ALL fixed up is real.

I have spent the last few days going back through the rough cut and adjusting the audio.  This is taking much longer than I expected!!  It is, fortunately or unfortunately, making things much better, though, I think, so it's hard to stop.  What I'm doing is adjusting the levels ("volume") from clip to clip on the timeline so that when people actually watch this on their TVs, the volume isn't going up and down and up and down all over the place in a way that makes it very hard to watch the movie.  Some of our recording -- mostly just the exterior stuff -- is not that great (traffic & wind make for loud background noise), and I can only fix so much, but, the interior conversations now sound much more "normal." 

I had thought to be burning the DVDs and mailing them off to actors in the next day or two, but now it looks like it will be another week, so I can get this audio improved.

Meanwhile, here's a picture of the ideal clock:

Ponytail at Dawn

This was my seventh shot (angle/arrangement of objects). There's a small chance I'll re-do it one more time with the light coming from the lower left (so the wall's not so bright in the upper right, the dresser drawer-pulls are visible below the clock, the hair-drier is slightly visible [to subconsciously suggest "hair style"], and the ponytail has a little more deliberate attention drawn to it), but I think this one is passable.  I did originally want to show the ponytail hanging on something, to be more reminiscent of the way we see it on her head, but I think this is okay.  I like the way the ponytail looks -- but I worry that I only like it because I already know what it is.  What do you think??

So -- first there's a shot of Christine/Vitta in Los Angeles in 2012, pretending to be Marissa in Somerville, MA in 2002, waking up with a pillow over her head; she looks up; insert this! (Rachel EA's bedroom in Arlington, MA in 2013); cut back to 2012 Vitta in bed; dissolve to Carson Beach, South Boston, in 2002 and Marissa watching the sun rise! 

I would have preferred to have liked the shot I got at 5:04, because 5:17 is a little late for her to get up, get dressed, and get down to the beach before the sun comes up.  We'll just have to pretend (" ") that the whole thing happens in early-mid August instead of July, so the sun rises a little later. 

In other news --

I went to Goodwill -- no good Bill wall clocks.  Then went across the street to Family Dollar, which was supposedly having a "clearance" sale.  There was one giant wall clock that I would have been tempted to buy if it were not $20 and/or quite to giant, and I seriously considered getting a $6 one of a goofy CHEF!  But it was just too ugly.  Had these shots been for the kitchen, I probably would have gotten it, but it would never fly in the dining room.  Too bad.  I shall keep looking. 

omg

I have finished the rough cut minus the inserted shots and the montage of pain. 

It's one hour and forty minutes.  I have filler where the inserts and montage go, so I don't expect the final rough run time to change much.  100 minutes on my 97-page script when I know a "real" editor will likely trim several shots/scenes is just about perfect.

O.
M.
G.

On My Directing of Actors

Hi -

I have noticed that in the previous two posts I used the expression "I can smell the barn" - ha ha!  Repetition lends emphasis, I guess.  I love this expression -- and clearly use it too often -- because I actually have experiences with a couple different horses that make me feel the accuracy of the allusion.  So it's very visceral for me. 

Anyway -- YES:  we are close!!

I have now finished (always rough) Scene 61 -- Bill's coming out scene!!  

Yayy!!!

Disappointing coverage on this scene.  We didn't get CU on Bill for his whole schpiel -- e.g. when he says "How could leave me??" and "I don't know what I would have done if you had died." 

What?  NO CU??  Who directed this movie?????

I think I thought that the big moment would be the "I'm gay" moment, but I was wrong.  The big moment is the confrontation.  We should have been able to see his process, the catalysts, the internal workings -- that's what CU are for:  the internal workings (see: Les Miserables).  Darn.  Oh well.  

But Kevin did a really good job, very committed.  Good on you, Kev.  There's one take where his voice catches -- I love it. 

Unfortunately I totally let Christine down in this scene.  She does fine -- I think I pieced together a scene that is cohesive and decent.  But this scene is a prime example of how over my head I was -- by which I mean:  by this time I had largely given up on trying to communicate what I wanted.  I had let the actors get comfortable in the characters they had created, and I no longer felt it would be productive to give a lot of character-direction.  If I didn't give her any guidance, she would do something that matched the rest of the movie, which I thought would be a good thing.  And that's what she did.  She made the same choice(s) about Marissa that she'd been making, completely consistent and reasonable, and I let her.  Little did I know that I would be searching ever single take (in every single scene) for traces of the character that I wanted (that I thought I had written). 

Bill says after much visible angst, "I'm gay."  

Marissa answers, "I know."

This is supposed to be >funny.< 

Instead, Christine thinks she's supposed to show Marissa's love and acceptance of Bill by being mothery and nurturey -- she thinks, because she knows that Mariss is on the mend here, that she's going to be full of inner peace and wisdom, and all that crap, and she wants to embody/show that, so she says her line softly and gently with a kind of angelic smile on her face.  And I let her.  That's what kills me now -- not that Chistine made these choices (they were intelligent choices), but that I let her do it that way, take after take, that I didn't even see how wrong it was for the movie, OR, if I did see it (and I don't remember doing so), I didn't say anything. 

This kind of delivery on this line, of course, makes the next few lines much harder to do, emotionally, for both the actors, because those lines don't come from that sort of peaceful, soft breezes place as written; they're supposed to come out of what had been a break in the tension (i.e., which we never got!).  The next lines are:

Bill:  "How long were you going to let me go on?"

Mar:  "I don't know.  I'm just kind of winging it."

So the actors sort of try to play those casually, as the language in them seems to call for, and yet they have to also keep up the drama-flow from the previous moment because It Was Never Broken! 

Aaaghhh!!!  WHO WAS DIRECTING???  Was there NO DIRECTOR there?????

Ugh. 

It has been one of the most important lessons for me:  "respecting an actor's choices" does NOT mean letting them do whatever they want!  I have seen again and again in the big emotional scenes that I let my poor actors flounder at times:  I did not direct them. 

Let me say it now:  I apologize.  I really am sorry.  I let you down.  Bummer.

AND -- the actors were all REALLY COMMITTED, and this shows up in their work.  The performances that I have been able to pull out through editing are deep and moving, and I am grateful that everyone worked so hard to make this possible.  Thanks, guys.

And now I will move on to the "hospital" interiors -- the last two pages of the script!

Rounding the Corner into the Homestretch

Okay, well, here we are.

I predicted that I would finish the rough cut by the end of 2012 (a few posts ago), but I guess I jinxed myself.  Right?  That's why I didn't finish?  In truth it was a combination of things that I hadn't predicted:  low spirits from not getting a job I really, really wanted - right at Christmastime, which isn't my happiest time, anyway - and Scene 50 was much harder to do than I expected.  I did, however, poke at it a little every day, so the Showdown was done by the end of the year.

I've been visiting my mother in Chester, PA, for the last week, so I have not been editing like a fiend; however I have worked for an hour or more on several days, so...

The Suicide Scene is now DONE!!

Yayyyy!!!!


We really didn't get as much coverage on the stairs as would have been ideal, but considering that it was pushing past midnight on a workday eve and Rachel A-O (and possibly everyone else present, as well) was really mad at me about this, we got some good stuff. 

The blood looks o-kay.  It's not great, but as cut together in context, it's not as bad as it could be.  I am a little relieved.  The one thing I can say about it is that we were too sparing -- there should be MORE BLOOD.  Too bad, too, because I actually have the remains of the bottle still in a box of S & B stuff under my bed.  Why was there some left??  Partly because we were trying not to get any on my mother's carpet is my guess.  I am hoping that someone who knows After Effects or one of those programs will be able to A) add a little more to the puddles, widen them out a bit, and B) darken the red -- especially on his T-shirt, and especially later in the scene as hte blood has dried.  We shall see.

In any case, we got some great panic from Rachel A-O and some fantastically painful work from R.J.  Thanks, guys!

The bottle breaking on the floor looks pretty cool, too.

NOW I have

Only the Hospital Sequence Left to Do!!!!!!! 

It will be a few days before I can work on it again, but OMG I can smell the barn!