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!