05-20-2009: One of the composite assignments came back. Done! Huzzah! (this one had been through five people, all of whom eventually bailed on it). More work on the helicopter model. Looks as if I'll need to shove two batteries into the thing -- one to run all the lights, and another to run the main rotor motor. Oh, and the motor for the rotor's gotta fit in there, too. Going to be a tight squeeze. I think the glue will make me a little loopy, so I'll be sure to do all the gluing and clamping well before I have to operate any heavy machinery. I think that's wise.
I am amazed at how much of the effects work is almost done. There are maybe six different effects jobs to do and then all the effects are done. These are non-trivial tasks, such as working out how Zombie-Motion™ will look, but man, it is sooooo good to see the end of the tunnel.
Sean came in a while back and rejiggered one of the earlier scenes. Much better now. He has a couple pages of notes of things he wants to change, and all of that should come together nicely, once he's got time. I can almost smell the end of this segment of the journey...!
05-15-2009: Finished the artificial roof mentioned in the earlier entry. Had to buy new motor and lights for the helicopter model, and decided to just rip out all the interior and light the heck out of it. Main rotor will be motorized. Can't figure out an easier way around it. Major effects shot (big composite) seems to have once again done in a batch of effects folks, so it looks as if I'm going to have to simply do it myself with a miniature set. Oh well.
02-25-2009: Behind on updates. Sorry. Finished a really-really-really tedious regeneration effect. Looks like it might work out well. The helicopter model is experiencing some troubles with the electrical circuitry. I think instead of trying to make the interior so accurate, we'll target instead something that kicks out a lot of light and is easier to shoot. The main rotor, actually, has been giving us some serious grief. How to set up that armature! Sound work is coming in nicely and I'm pretty happy with it. That's been a relief. My current project is an interesting effect where I'm compositing a roof where there isn't a roof. Mischief is indeed afoot!
11-18-2008: The helicopter's coming together better. I'll have to post another picture. Lisa made a great suggestion about the regeneration effect I'm trying and also offered to lend me her old computer CPU, which is faster than my existing one. Her buddy Brian came over and swapped out the CPUs and did a little overclocking magic and it looks as if we'll see a significant time savings on AE work. Which is nice. And the workflow suggestion is working like gangbusters -- I can cut a mask in about two or three minutes where it was previously taking 15 or 20.
11-15-2008: Sean came by again and we walked through every note he made from his previous visit. He's right -- every item he called out has to be changed. For the most part, we're even in agreement on how to change, but there are a few items we'll have to fiddle with. Still cutting friggin' masks for a severed arm. This will be a Major Lesson for future shots like this, to get some kind of green- or blue-screen involved for certain shots -- just in case.
11-02-2008: Been working on a new effect, a regeneration effect. It's kinda like stir-fry. The preparation is going to take forever. Basically, I have five seconds of a hand, and I have to cut a precise mask over the entire hand. It's moving fast and twitching, which means I have to do every frame. 150 frames. Ugh, this is going to take a while...
11-01-2008: Had Sean come by and review the entire timeline, just to cast his eyes on it and see how tihngs feel, now that he's had a little time to digest it. He's made lots of notes. I've reviewed them briefly -- looks fine.
10-31-2008: Been working on various effects -- nothing of particular note.
09-21-2008: Started building the lighting circuitry for the helicopter model. The way the model's supposed to be assembled means that we have to have a working lighting circuit right away. Almost got it nailed down. I'm not convinced the LEDs are going to be strong enough, so I'm switching to bulbs, which are brighter, but have a lot more bleed, so I'll be wrapping those suckers up with tape to help prevent that. Ran out of some key parts, and it was too late to get to the hobby shop. Sketched out another idea for the zombie motion effect. Can't wait to get back to the computer and try it out.
09-16-2008: Started experimenting with our zombie motion effects. Some color work, and a few trials of motion effects. Nothing ringing "11" yet, but we're still plugging away.
09-15-2008: Finally finished all the muzzle flashes. Maaaaaaan, what a pain. The last one was a long scene -- the second most complicated muzzle flash scene in the movie. Started in on some of the weather effects. Fortunately, shooting in Oregon means that you often DO have wet weather, which is perfect for us!
08-12-2008: Managed to successfully replace a dummy's head (which was unfortunately bright pink) with an actor's head. Very smoothly done. No one will ever know. Unless they read the Production Diary. So don't you go spillin' the beans.
Our model builder started in on the model this evening, too. We went over the plans carefully, marked out where we had to modify them to accommodate the lights and motors. Ah, the motor's too large to fit in the model, so we need a different motor. Bummer. But (shrug) I guess I'll use that motor for some other nefarious purpose. Sorry about the crappy picture -- my fantastic digital camera with the fantastic macro lens finally -- after nearly nine years -- bit the dust. So, the best I can do is from my camera phone until I replace the real camera. Well, I could use 35mm film, but that's just crazy talk.
08-08-2008: Lost our Sound Designer.
08-07-2008: Finally -- I get the motion tracking to work right! This is great. Between color correction and motion tracking, we've been able to salvage a shot that had a real... challenging practical effect. Now we can not only make it longer, we can linger on it for several seconds. Way happy with that!
07-08-2008: Went out to Media FX tonight with a toy helicopter (not our actual model) to experiment with greenscreening it. Nontrivial. However, near the end, we started getting better results. Most of this was simply a matter of getting even illumination behind the 'copter, and getting the key settings right. With the funky diopter on the camera, we managed to get something that actually looked like a helicopter. So, I'm looking forward to dropping that into an After Effects composition and see how it looks once I get the clouds and rain and smoke all around it. I think what we're going to have to do is bring the greenscreen to our basement and backlight the greenscreen to get a clean background. I'll try to get some pictures of that up in the gallery, because that'll be pretty neat.
07-01-2008: More effects. Who knew? We're just about done adding the muzzle flashes. One last scene. Most of the effects people are gone. I send out help calls, but no response. So.
We have fiddled and fiddled and fiddled with a digital helicopter model, but it continues to look like crap, so I have ordered a scale model of the helicopter we used. I'll build a model of the thing and we'll use that.
We had significant hardware issues in the past couple of months. The Production Computer basically cracked, and had to be replaced by a brand new computer. The big storage server cracked and had to have drives replaced (again, more data loss -- this time with a mirrored drive system, no less). The crappy email computer died. Even Katrina's old laptop, which has been slow-but-steady, apparently has died. No functioning computers anywhere in the house, except for the cell phone (but the case is cracking, so I guess that's something). After a month or two, we have slowly managed to get things replaced, repaired, or sent off to better homes. Crazy!
01-18-2008: Still plugging away at this. Sorry there hasn't been an update in a while. People write if I don't post. Okay, fair enough. I'll post more regularly. Got into a bit of a tailspin for a month or so there. Ugh. So, on with the show!
Here's what's happening so far in our grand adventure.
Our new Sound Designer Lev Koszegi, is having a great time creating our sound bed. These are all the background sounds, the special sound effects, and other unusual sounds. He and I worked closely together on The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath for recording, but this is a much bigger challenge for him. We work well together and I'm very happy with what's going on so far.
Our new Sound Engineer, Eric Neilsen, has worked with us on a few projects. Most recently finished was a Lovecraftian short called Come to Us. Eric's also been our Sound Engineer for Innsmouth Legacy and Memory. He's been gobbling away at the vocal tracks of Flesh of my Flesh for a little while (and even with a new baby in the house -- congrats, Eric!) and the reports back are sounding very promising. If he does for Flesh of my Flesh what he did for Come to Us, then we will be singing and dancing like little pickles.
Our composer, Cyoakha Grace O'Manion, also continues working up tracks and themes and layers for us. What she's sent so far is fantastic. If you liked her music for The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, wait until you hear this stuff! Very different, very, very perfect.
Effects work is proceeding, although it's tedious. Everyone's busting hump on those pieces. Matte paintings have come in, animated sequences have come in, complicated effects have come in, completely invisible effects (meaning, effects that saved our bacon) have come in. Our most complex effects shot is being chewed on piece-by-piece by a talented group of animators in Australia. And I continue adding muzzle flashes and blood splatters and headshots. Muzzle flash after muzzle flash after muzzle flash. I'm gonna get this bastard done, don't get me wrong, but when I compare the amount of time to add eighty-five bajillion muzzles flashes to the possible risk of handing an actual firearm to an actor, well... I'm thinking about it... I think the next feature should be a remake of Swimming to Cambodia or My Dinner with Andre. Something without gunfire and blood. Ha-ha, just kidding. Don't worry. I've not gone completely mad yet. Um, at least I don't think I have. That was also a bit of why I haven't been updating the PD in a while -- it just seemed weird to put in an entry like "Oh, more gunfire, and cutting and moving video masks all day. Gee, another exciting and (yawn) action-packed day here in post production." But I'll do better. 8)
Progress, progress, progress. Don't be worried, we'll get this baby done and it'll look terrific!
12-03-2007: Been mostly doing effects. Just recently, finished a neat effect where a severed head was rolling along the ground and the head had to be color-shifted to match the actor's head. That was fun -- making a moving matte. A lot of work, though, keying the mask for every frame. Blech. But the result looks good.
12-02-2007: Another meeting with Lev, going over sound effects and part of the basic sound design process. So far, transferring data on a jump drive seems to be working well.
10-11-2007: Added a lot more gun effects. If I do another movie with guns, I think I shall simply use real guns, because I'm getting very, very tired of adding muzzle flashes and other effects. Ah, it's tempting. 8) More, more, more! I gotta get these effects all done.
09-27-2007: Started dropping in effects that have shown up while I was working on ADR. Reviewed a lot of effects assignments. I'm dismayed to see that more than three-quarters of the people who have contacted me simply never wrote back, or never actually completed even one assignment. Man, that's too bad. Ah well.
09-21-2007: Met with our new sound engineer about the audio files.
09-18-2007: Finished the ADR. Freakin' finally!
08-31-2007: Sixty minutes and counting. Finished a fight scene, which was easier than I expected it to be.
08-30-2007: Fifty minutes and counting. I'm a little tired of hearing so much screaming, but it's probably exacerbated by the fact that I'm sick as a dog today. And yesterday. And probably tomorrow. Bleah.
08-27-2007: Dropped and synced more ADR. Had to make a few things up from set recordings, such as Gil's last seconds, but that turned out quite better than I expected! Forty minutes and counting...!
08-26-2007: Matthew comes by and we head a ways out of town to record a few last lines for ADR. Cars are our bane.
08-21-2007: More ADR. Approximate time 20:00.
08-15-2007: Started placing the ADR in. Approximate time 10:00. More effects coming in, slowly but surely.
07-22-2007: Still digging through the ADR recordings. Mostly what I expected, covering a lot of bases in the movie. There are a few bits, though, that are absolutely genius, and I look forward to getting it all laid into the main timeline.
06-12-2007: Too long of a break! Started cracking into the ADR recordings today. Already found one line missed, but I might be able to recreate it from other live audio sources. Maybe.
05-08-2007: Completed a couple more effects, including a tricky little "puff" scene. No muzzle flashes today. Finished our last ADR session today. Another milestone! Huzzah!
05-07-2007: Completed Tara's ADR, and some additional ADR by Sean for one of our actors that seems to have disappeared. Reviewed the new effects with Sean.
05-06-2007: Completed many smaller effects, such as muzzle flashes, exploding guts, etc.
05-05-2007: Recorded Michael Friedrich's ADR and Rex Irae's ADR today. Michael's also voicing several generic voices including a radio voice, some megaphone announcements, and random "Army guy" voices. Completed a couple of muzzle flash effects today.
05-03-2007: Tried installing the latest version of After Effects today. Had to update the OS in order to do that. I've been hesitant to update the OS because I've heard that there are often troubles between Win2k Service pack 2 and Adobe Premiere. However, after about six hours of various updating cycles, I discovered that I'm probably okay. Probably. Had to update the video drivers, too. Everything seems to work just fine and the transition to After Effects 7 has been pretty seamless.
05-02-2007: Recorded more ADR today. Some wild "Army guys" lines by a variety of people, plus Drew Barrios, Matthew Martin, Shannon Wills, Bill Kelley, Richard Mann, and Michael Harbour. The system seems to work pretty well, and people are giving us some very good reads of the lines. Almost makes me want to do another animated feature next. Almost.
05-01-2007: Recorded Anne Carr's ADR, and started recording our group of "random soldier" voices. This is a neat trick I learned for The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, to record everyone who comes in doing various voice clips, so that we can jumble it all together eventually and make a great babble. This laundry-room makeshift recording studio seems to be working very well, too.
Later this evening, I finally finished the CG for the firefight scene. I've been annoyed that it's taking so long, but once I placed it, I frame-by-framed through it and counted seventy-two visible firings. These are either muzzle flashes or lights-cast-from-muzzle-flashes-where-we-can't-see-the-muzzle-flash. Plus, for every visible muzzle flash (there are a lot), there is also an additional light placed to cast a flash back onto the video. Holy smokes! But the scene plays very, very nicely. Once we link audio up to the video, it's going to be really spectacular!
Before I hit the hay for the night, I review the remaining CG work and finalize a few ADR sessions. I can definitely see the light at the end of this tunnel, and that light looks like a damn fun movie, with lots of great stuff.
04-30-2007: Recorded Heather Rose's ADR. Probably would have taken less time if we hadn't watched more of the rough cut than necessary. But it was fun!. The makeshift "recording studio" we set up downstairs seems to work very nicely.
04-29-2007: Recorded Ron's ADR. He came down from Seattle, so I knew he was going to be late.
04-28-2007: Planned to record much ADR today, but everyone except for one person bailed. Gr... So I cancelled the session. Glad I wasn't paying for a freakin' studio. Invited some friends over to help eat all the food.
04-26-2007: I've been teased by a lot of people about slacking off in the Production Diary. I swear we're still progressing, it's just that entries would all read the same, kinda': "received another 10-frame effect today. Dropped it in." In the past three weeks, I can say that I've fired several surface-to-air missiles, blown up a few people, shot many, many people, and blew the hell out of a building. The scene I'm working on now is what we've called the "South Gate" shoot, and it's chock full-o-gunfire. So, it's taking me a couple of days to get all the muzzle flashes, and adding the lighting effects and so on. But everything's progressing very nicely. One neat thing that's happened in the past few weeks was that four different distributors have all written asking for a screener copy, even if it's a rough cut. Feels good to be wanted.
04-19-2007: Going back and forth with Kevin on our Zombie Lair Ambience. I think this is working out very nicely. Very creepy.
03-18-2007: Still dropping in more effects as they trickle in. Today I placed one of the first totally-3D effects. That was kinda' fun because now that I'm getting better at After Effects, I'm able to do all sorts of little enhancements and tricks. I'm still a bit worried about the really complicated composite shot at the end, but I'm hoping I'll find someone who will dig it like crazy.
03-10-2007: Sean comes by and we work out some issues on one small scene -- the Armory. It's been a bit of a contentious scene for a while, but we're determined to find a way that it'll work for both of us. More effects coming in, thank goodness! I've picked up a software package that supposedly will allow us to add muzzle flashes and so forth, but finding the time to sit down and screw with it is troublesome. I've already done a couple of effects -- nothing big -- but the other projects have to be done as well, and no one else can do those.
03-04-2007: Our DSL has been down for two days, so I am somewhat crippled as far as transferring files and assignments. Some are coming in and I'm able to find phone numbers for some people, so calling is working out. Still, very annoying. It seems that Verizon has installed phone lines in Portland, Oregon without making sure that the phone lines are, technically, waterproof. Dingbats. So, I transfer assignments to my jump drive and go in search of a computer and hookup I can use somewhere else...
02-28-2007: More effects coming in. Very nice stuff! These folks are patient like nuts! Some of the rotoscoping is just great stuff. This is covering up glitches, so these sorts of effects are going to be "invisible" in the final movie, but all of the effects shots that are coming in look fantastic. Lots of great stuff! Spent a while on the phone with our sound guys, and they sent me a few samples. All is well and they're excited and thrilled and responsive. I told them about our makeshift sound effects and they laughed. They LOVE that the sound design script is so detailed. I'm just grateful they're able to follow it!
02-25-2007: Finished the final touch-ups of edits. The effects shots start coming in. Several are approved and placed into the timeline officially. They all look really great, too! Need more all the time! The biggest bitch is simply being able to get files to and from animators. My server bandwidth has been close lately (mostly because of freakin' bandwidth thieves), but so far, the system that seems to work best is for me to upload them and have people download them from the http URL. Trouble is, I have to babysit the FTP transfer. Gr... Oh well, a filmmaker's gotta do what a filmmaker's gotta do!
02-11-2007: I receive the first completed assignment back today. Fantastic! I love it! Of course, I'm a sucker for exploding heads, but still, I'm one happy fella looking at all of this.
02-10-2007: Sean came by, reviewed the whole movie. A couple pages of notes, but nothing that won't be easy to handle, I think. I start sending out CGI assignments tonight. What a learning curve! For Dream-Quest I was able to send out stills, but uncompressed video, well, that's a whole different creature! By 1am, with all the various faults and flaws in my system, I manage to get out about half a dozen assignments. Whew!
02-06-2007: Started collating and reviewing all the CG work done so far. Sent the ADR script to Leopoldo and dropped notes to Travis and Cyoakha. Very, very glad this stage is done.
02-05-2007: Current time: 90 minutes almost on the button. The video cut -- pending Sean's review -- is finished. Ran through the final two scenes, added a (currently blank) 5-minute end credit sequence, and even included our little sting at the end of the movie (which happens to answer a mystery presented earlier in the movie). I'm one happy fella!
02-04-2007: Current time: 01;21;34;14. Managed to get a lot done tonight. I was hoping to finish the video cut this evening, in fact, but the animatics took more time to work out than I thought. Moved through several scenes, just tightening here and there. Final escapes, final confrontations. For the final strike, it was getting very complicated, so I sketched out several frames and make quickie animatics, just so I could better imagine the action in my head and get it all timed right. Turned out surprisingly well, actually. So close to the end. Soooo close...
01-30-2007: Current time: 01;18;44;13. Moved through a very powerful scene, lots of screaming and confrontation. In the first cut, we had to lose a line because the video wasn't working, but this time through, I reviewed all the footage and with Katrina's help, found out how to make it work, and it does. It really does. It's a chilling scene. Moving along...
01-28-2007: Finished the Humvee scene. Funny how tricky it was to do all that timing. Current position: 01;16;08;00. Hooray!
01-24-2007: Finally finished the scripts. All caught up with the new timing. Back into the timeline. Neat! Current time: 01;13;29;27
01-23-2007: Still...
01-22-2007: Still going over those scripts. Crap, this is annoying.
01-21-2007: Sean comes by to review my work on the new scene. He likes it. Makes a few suggestions, all of which make perfectly good sense. We try out a few of them and he eventually concludes that I did the best I could with our footage, which is still all good. There are, however, a few things to tweak, and I manage to get those tweaked. The annoyance of my evening (and alas, this task isn't over) is readjusting the times in all the sub-scripts. It involves adding some small number of seconds and frames to every scene past this in the ADR. Music, sound, and CG scripts. Very annoying because of course, everything has to be added correctly and there are seconds, which are base-sixty and frames, which are base thirty. This is just stoooopid work, but it's keeping me busy all night. Gr...
01-17-2007: I hate going out of town. It throws me off my tasks. Eventually was able to get back into this scene, but it took me practically forever. I just couldn't figure out how to cut that last bit and then tried a series of deliberate jump cuts. Although it looks a little strange in the raw video, with sound effects and music as I call out, I think it'll be real nice. I'll have to drop in a bit of temp sound effects for Francis' memory sequence, though. I've got a real solid idea about how I think it'll play best. And if it works, I'll have to take a look earlier in the timeline at Jeff's memory sequence, but I'm sure it'll all come out. I originally "budgeted" forty-five seconds for this whole scene, but it came out to about eighty-three or so. That's fine -- we have a lot going on.
I showed it to Katrina, who nodded at the right points and recoiled at the right points, so I'm okay with it. Have to get Sean over here, but that's no problem. Right, now I have to adjust the timing on the timeline notes, and then I'm jumping later in the timeline where I let off while doing this.
01-08-2007: Trying to go from the memory sequence, to a sort of climax, and then to the afterglow. I finally found what I hope will be the perfect glue shot. I hope. Sean still has to see how I put all this together, but so far, so good. I hope Amber picked up the audio that hit the set after I called cut on that last shot. People were freaking out with that last bit. I loved it, of course, but there's a great bit of dialogue that might be forever lost, where Amber asks if that seemed pornographic to anyone else and Ryan replied that it was pornographic. I love my crew. I really do!
01-07-2007: Hm, an interesting memory sequence. I like this one, and I think I'll have to drop in some temporary sound effects, because I think the sound effect is going to really push this situation. I like it and I like that the whole thing kinda' slams into him. The trick now, I think, is to see if I can continue with our fantastically overt sexual metaphor and slide gently into the afterglow scene. Just to make sure this scene has as obscene a ribbon as possible on it.
01-06-2007: Uploaded a little teaser image for our faithful readers. I think I might have done a halfway decent job at putting this memory sequence together. Tying a lot of different takes and a lot of different angles, but I think it might not suck.
01-03-2007: Crawled a little further in the new scene, matching up some split action shots. Moving along steadily. I can tell we basically have what we needed because I don't find myself thinking "Oh crap, if only we had grabbed that angle!" I'm thinking more about how video effects, sound, and music will make this scene even creepier than I expected. That'll be nice. Even without, though, it's pretty freaky. Hooray!
01-01-2007: Started rebuilding the new scene 126. So many different angles, but I think we have a really excellent master shot and every camera caught at least one "charming" highlight of action. Very graphic stuff, very icky. Deeeeeelightful! One thing impressed the hell out of me and I'm going to have to remember this: Although setting up a multiple camera shot is a bitch, synchronizing the video is a snap because of the audio waveforms. And all actions match! Another thing I realized again (because I knew, but I'd forgotten) was how really, really effective multiple layers of sound can be in creating and filling a space. For part of the editing, I was mis-sync'ed (deliberately) and was amazed to hear just how much the sound filled the space, with only "three" Bruces panting. Of course, now I remember this from Dream-Quest, where the final battle had a sixteen-layer background rumble, and then another fifteen layers or so of foreground battling. A lot can be done once one can mix many layers of sound. Neat!
12-30-2006: Did some scanning. A lot, actually. I want Francis' memory sequence to be as accurate as possible. I wish I could find more radio protocols in my notebooks and old schoolbooks, but although I found some, mostly I found old robotics and automation and computer hardware stuff, timing diagrams and such. Still, it ought to look just fine if it plays the way I think it's going to play. I think it will.
I'm bummed I've only been able to get back to the project today. Between being hellaciously sick and the holidays (a form of sickness, I suppose), I've just had to not work at all. Bleah.
12-10-2006: A nice social interaction with some other local filmmaker buddies of mine. Among many other things, we chatted out bits of Flesh of my Flesh. It's good to get out and talk with the other folks once in a while. Several people told me that they follow the Production Diary, which I find very flattering! I figure by this time, it's pretty much me alone out here.
12-09-2006: What a day! We've known for many months we would have to shoot this scene, but we've been hesitant and balking and wobbling around, but today we did it. Call time 9am and people assembled and we reviewed the footage so far, and built a pretty good repeat of that set in my garage. Then, we build an entire corpse, including bones and ribcage and all sorts of bits. That took a little over an hour, but the technique was absolutely neat! By neat, I mean "messy", of course. Amber suggested building armatures using coathanger wire, covering that with tinfoil, and then covering the tinfoil with blood-soaked large coffee filters. On the surface, it seemed like a strange idea and in practice, it worked tremendously well! (power phrase from that moment: "Is it wrong that this feels so good?")
We had a unique prop in this, a museum quality replica skull. It's a thick bastard, and Michelle busted hump to open it up and make it something that could be filled with a brain. Mmmm, sweet, sweet brains. I won't reveal Vital Guerrilla Productions Secrets here, but suffice to say that if we're expecting actors to eat props (such as brains or blood or gore) then by golly we'll make it fun to eat! Michelle had also gone to extraordinary lengths to add musculature and skin and hair to the skull. Now, I've known people who have basically said "Well, for a movie, it doesn't have to be super-realistic", but I for one found the treated skull to be astonishingly realistic, just sitting right there in my hand! So, when we shot it, we shot close as well as far. One camera had basically zoomed so close you could even see the optic nerve grooves in the eye socket. Wow!
Because we were destroying a singular prop during this, we actually set up two XL-1 cameras, and Sean's camera (I forgot the model number), which were three high quality cameras. Ryan also set up his handicam, just for an additional angle, which made four cameras. And Amber was running Sean's hi-8 camera on the situation, which made for five cameras total. This was the greatest number of cameras we'd ever used for anything in the movie. I have to say it felt really, really strange to hear all the prep: "Camera 1?" "Camera 1 speed." "Camera 2?" "Camera 2 speed" "Camera 3?" "Camera 3 speed", and so on. But the results... Oh, the results are stunning. I haven't yet reviewed all the tapes, but one of the master tapes I've reviewed, and this is some of the most disturbing footage I've ever seen! Beautiful, sensual, and profane! I love it!
12-05-2006: Current time: 01;12;41;15. Flaming rope is cool. Flaming rope in slow motion is even cooler. I don't think I can get enough of that. Finished also the stuff at the South Gate. Ugh. Came up with a brilliant solution for the end of the Bruce/Iron John fight, which I will not suggest, as it would just add more time and effort and we are doing just great the way we are. Besides, I'll remember it for the next movie. Heh.
12-04-2006: Current time: 01;09;39;13. Finished an outdoor scene. This is from the ass-crackingly cold and windy shoot. Everything has to be redone in post (except the video): sound, ambience, sound effects, ADR, everything. What a pain this scene was!
12-03-2006: Current time: 01;06;18;10. Finished the Bruce/Iron John fight. Nice.
12-02-2006: Current time: 01;03;52;27.
12-01-2006: Current time: 01;00;38;20. Took a week off for vacation. Back in business. I was hoping to finish this stage before vacation, but sucks to be me.
11-15-2006: Current time: 00;56;23;26. Sean comes by, checks out how it looks so far. He's happy, but mentions a couple of small tweaks, which are easy-peasy to make. Made it through the wall-smashing sequence and am hovering right on top of the zombie war. But I'm falling asleep on my keyboard, so it's time to hang up the towel for the night.
11-14-2006: Current time: 00;55;29;27. Still pushing along. Several shots that had to have the final edits done to them, which slowed things down. I expect it's going to get pretty messy from her on out, though. We're entering the lots-of-gunshots zone.
11-13-2006: Current time: 00;51;27;25. A little lagged today, but there was a complicated scene with lots of details that had to be tracked. I'm amazed that we got all the guns to fire in the right sequence and the door to break down and everything. Looks really neat!
11-12-2006: Current time: 00;44;01;06. Halfway there!
11-11-2006: Current time: 00;33;13;08. So far, so good.
11-10-2006: Current time: 00;30;04;21. So far, so good, plus I took care of a crap edit that was bugging Sean and I.
11-08-2006: Current time: 00;25;03;00. Slightly slower going today. Still, some really complicated action sequences, including a big fight, the arm scene, and a revised version of the memory recollection. Nice. I'm still lovin' it.
11-07-2006: Current time: 00;21;53;17. Got to bring in one of the new exterior shots. Very nice. Much better than the low building we had originally shot. More stuff in the zombie lairs. Several scenes that are going to be ADR heavy here, alas.
11-06-2006: Current time: 00;14;47;07. Still way happy with everything up to here.
11-01-2006: Current time: 00;09;33;00.
10-29-2006: Met with Leopoldo to discuss shooting of final glue scenes.
10-27-2006: More of the I'm-happy-with-it work. Current time: 00;08;43;00.
10-24-2006: This is it -- the last pass through the timeline. This is where I pass through the timeline, fixing everything. I also make complete cue notes and comments for ADR, sound design, music design, and CG work. Inching along, but at least when I complete the timeline, it will all be handed off to various people. Current time: 00;05;45;18.
10-11-2006: Ah, found another glitch. Fixed it. Happy about it. Moving through, moving through, moving through. Tuning sounds here and there. I know these aren't the sounds we'll actually be using, but a little tweaking here and there to bring their volume levels to a place that seems appropriate will help our sound designer do his tricks better, I expect. There are still places where when I try rendering the timeline, I get Total Premiere Failure, but usually, I can render those sections a little bit at a time and it works. Maybe I'll have to completely re-install Premiere. Ack! Not until after this project! My system keeps bitching that the OS needs updating badly, but still -- not in the middle of a project! Man, that would just suck to blow it this close to the end. Of course, I maintain backups of everything on the Linux storage server, but still, if the OS update turns out to be incompatible with the software, there will be much pain and suffering.
10-10-2006: Moving my way through the timeline. Calculating the zombie motion effect is a huge trouble for some reason. I have no idea why. Premiere hits it and then just stops. Terminates. Window closes. Weird. I'll put all this stuff back in eventually, of course, but for now it causes too much trouble. Fixed an opening scene with a nurse at the Comfort Care Ward. Better cutting, but I think it needs one more tweak. I'll check at the next editing session.
10-03-2006: I have my list of scenes that still need a bit of fiddling. Tonight, I fiddle a little with a later fight scene. A running kick, a surprise on the part of both actors, and a beautiful finish. Funny thing about this particular scene is that although we shot several takes, the one we ended up using was after I called "cut" and the running actor hadn't heard it, so the reaction and recoil was genuine. It looks great! Also tonight I spend a bit of time going over the schedule for Guerrilla Productions the next couple of months, as well as reviewing Leopoldo's notes on CG work. I really like the method he was choosing to describe projects, so I expect I'll use the same method. It's not too unlike what I did for Dream-Quest, actually.
10-01-2006: Sean comes by and we watch the entire movie, start to finish. Only a couple pause-moments to discuss things, but we make it through. Overall, things look good. He has a couple of good suggestions, and that’s that. We are ready to do the ADR. I can write the ADR script fast, and then while that’s being organized, fix the last few niblets of the timeline. Hooray!
09-30-2006: Pull a late-nighter -- editing until around 1:30am or so, trying to get ready for tomorrow’s meeting. I make it through most of the timeline, fixing and patching and fiddling with things here and there. It’s coming along quite well. When I eliminate the items that will be completed by ADR, by special effects, or by music, we’re pretty much at the end of things I can do. I start exploring some footage Sean brought in of an external factory. Nice stuff and I think I have a good idea where to use it.
09-26-2006: Finished the fight scene! Okay! Also finished the regeneration sequence (except there are a few items that have to be fiddled with digitally). Did a quick runthrough and I think I’ve hit all the "Problem child" scenes. This is good! Set the timeline ready to watch and first thing I do tomorrow after I get back home is watch the movie all the way through, see where I still need to work on it. Smells... close... to... done! Well, that would be done with the video cut, of course. Still lots to do, but thankfully, lots that other people do. Very, very nice. I was hoping to finish by October 1 to clear my plate for new projects and it looks as if it might actually happen!
09-25-2006: Continued with the same fight scene. Tumbling toward the end. Got through the regeneration sequence, which I was afraid would end up trickier than it was. But, there are three 15-frame chunks that are going to require a little CG work and that series of shots should be about as perfect as we can make it! Fixed up a little wall damage, and then got as far as a righteous beheading. There are a few bits that are bothersome. The standard "stunt head" we’ve been using is no actual human color, except for perhaps some sort of Scandinavian mutation. So, as little time spent on that is a good thing. Of course, how to show a beheading without a severed head? Ooooh, tricky. Fortunately, I think once we switch this all over to "zombie vision" a lot of little errors will be forgiven. I temporarily switch the fight to "zombie vision" just to check it out (it's very computation intensive) and it just looked freakin' surreal. I love it! I think this is going to look very nice when it's done. Hard to think, though, all this work for one fight scene. I'm not even tracking how many cuts in this scene. I'm just not. Seems silly by this stage. But it's nearly done. If I weren't so tired, I'd wrap it tonight.
09-20-2006: I met briefly this evening with Cyoakha, talking over soundtracks in general and the soundtrack for the project. She's at the level where she's doing basic atmospherics for each major scene, and starting in on character themes. We had a long talk about different themes and styles and how each character has their own "character" of music. Very good.
09-13-2006: More on the fight scene. Creeping through it, but it's a fight scene and there are a lot of cuts. As I rolled through, I found that we had only one single take of a very interesting high angle shot. I can understand this -- we were really rushed that evening, but only one take? Weird. The trouble with it is that in order to match the action to the scenes on either end, I have to use a take where there is a falling mat barely visible. I think I can either matte it out with something, Photoshop it clear, or do a tiny image pan. I think a little airbrushing will do the trick, though. Sean and I go back and forth on this bit, but I think he'll reserve judgment until he sees the whole scene in one clip.
09-06-2006: Worked more on that opening scene. I like the pieces and I’m pretty happy with where they are, but the audio is going to be the real interesting bit. We’ve got external audio for the hospital establishing shot, then internal audio for the nurse’s station, then internal audio in the room. We used to be bringing the room audio in over the exterior, but now we have a couple of different short scenes before we ever get into the room. So, I think I might have to get this just exactly perfect. Now to find some Muzak type background.
Hit the fight scene some more. Found a couple of little things to tweak, but basically, what I did was great. Moved further into the scene, past a couple more punches, a flying leap, and a hard chest punch. There was one shot that was annoying as hell. Somehow, we have the actor doing a sort of double-punch, which is almost forgivable, but the real crime is the downtime between those double punches – with nothing I can cut out. So, in the middle of this supposedly high energy fight scene, I’ve got a dead half-second I can’t kill. Well, I can’t kill it yet. We’ll see. Maybe I can bring another shot in there, or maybe once we ladle a bunch of sound in there, no one will notice. It’s not critical, just... annoying. Overall, the scene is coming along much better. I’m a happy fella!
09-05-2006: Sean came by this evening. Brought some footage of exteriors that look very nice. Lots of good rich options. We took another look at the second shot, the hospital sign, and realized that it was just too tight, too obviously a cutaway. Sean started thinking of putting a coat on Katrina’s arm and having her look like she’s a nurse, and, well, one thing kinda’ led to another and we were on the road again, this time to find a serviceable nurse’s station. Found one we did and what would have otherwise been an uneventful second-shot became a neat collection of shots that introduce a tragic moment in someone’s life. Did a rough cut of it. I think the first thought, of fading from one shot to another, might need some work. I’ll review a commercial example in the next couple of days. See how they solved it.
08-29-2006: Fight scene! I have to admit I've not been looking forward to cutting this scene. It just seemed too heinous from the outset. However, I reviewed it a couple of times, just trying to see what was going on. Then it started coming to me. There were gaps. There were places where the action just simply dropped out. And it didn't take much -- four to six frames were enough to show things slowing down. Started looking at alternate angles, tricks for flipping the camera back and forth. I was a little concerned we didn't quite have the footage we needed, but after starting the scene, I found a lot of places where we shot our safety, but the fact is, we simply didn't need it. Drop five frames here, six frames there. Drop in a quarter-second alternate camera angle, match the action on this elbow swing, or that punch. All of a sudden, I realized I'd done the first part of the fight scene. Brought in some cheesy temp punch sounds, and another breaking sound for the wall shattering and hey presto it's looking damn tasty! I was hoping to finish the whole fight scene tonight, but I suppose that would just be too much to ask.
08-23-2006: I cut into two different scenes. The second helicopter crash. Stretched a couple of shots out -- even though we don't have those shots quite nailed down yet. The timing feels better. Hit the wall scene again. Took out a lot of extra stuff I put in there. I'll have to look at it again later, after some sleep.
08-15-2006: I meet with our Propmaster to work up a special effect. The hard part will be making realistic brains.
08-01-2006: Sean comes over and we review a few scenes. He does a few pieces of patching, covering the earlier scenes. The red effect of the zombie lairs is giving us trouble. I think for now I'm just going to deactivate it. We can always bring it in later when we do a final render.
07-31-2006: Had some kind of memory glitch. Not sure, but whenever it tries to render a part of one of the zombie lairs, the whole project just stops and Premiere closes. Weird. Took me a couple of hours and narrowed it down to one specific clip, which reported an "out of memory" error. I took out the sound of that clip and then it rendered fine. Weirdness.
07-29-2006: Re-edited the hospital room sequence. Very annoying to have to do, but at least it wasn't a huge chore.
07-27-2006: Found the original tape with the original footage of the lost scene. Got that digitized. My camera is on loan, so digitizing requires borrowing a camera. Bleah.
07-10-2006: Sean reviews my work. I was hoping he would like it, and expected a few tweaks maybe (which is infinitely better than "I don't know what the hell we're gonna' do with this!") Happily, that's his basic response. A tweak in timing here or there, but overall, he enjoys it. I think I might re-record a new audio clip to address what he was looking for, or perhaps I'll just cobble something together from what I have. Then, I'll re-sync the video to the revised audio, and we can put a damn bow on that scene. One more problem child down!
07-09-2006: Finally! I think I finally nailed this scene down. Creepy and scary and fast and horrifying. I like it!
07-08-2006: Nice! Building the final scene with this new scheme is coming out very well. Every time I preview it, I'm thinking it's cooler and cooler.
07-05-2006: Trimmed up a couple of shots just a bit near the end. I've got an audio bit that I really like. It'll allow me to show off some of this great stuff in the final shots without being (I hope) too obnoxious.
07-03-2006: Well, it couldn't have been perfect. Noooo. Lost some files in the restructure. Specifically, I lost five video files. But they are five video files I can pull back from tape, plus they only cover about 8 seconds of the timeline, so it's not too critical. I put that sequence together myself, so I ought to be able to recreate it no problem. A bummer, but hardly death. What annoys me about it is that the FIRST time I opened the timeline, I was queried on all the file locations and everything seemed hunky dory. Yet this time I open it and it suddenly realizes that it can't find five video files. Why didn't it notice this last time? Bleah.
06-11-2006: Doing a massive backup across the network of the revised file structure. Set that process running in the early afternoon and the next morning (tomorrow -- I'm writing this entry a day later), it was only a fraction done. Interesting. Thought I had the audio nailed on that last scene, but it's not quite perfect. I'll run with it as it is, though, and see if Sam can get me better stuff. I like the way it bookends the beginning of the movie now.
06-07-2006: Got the new drive installed and running. Sure enough, took most of an evening to fix the file structure and bring files back to the new drive.
06-06-2006: Picked up a new hard drive. Between having all the raw video on the computer and the other projects that have slid by my radar, the Production drives were getting full. After the reshoot, we only had 77 Mb remaining on the video drive and because we are planning on adding a few more pieces of video, we will need the room. So, I pulled a 200G drive and replaced it with a 500G drive. Had to make sure everything was carefully backed up, first, and make sure that the backups on the network storage machine match EXACTLY what I have on the production machine. That verification revealed a few holes. Fixing it all took most of the night. When I transfer all the files back onto the new drive tomorrow, I'm going to reorganize the video. I tried one way for Dream-Quest and that was very effective, and then I tried a different way for FOMF, but that was pretty inefficient. The downside is that the first time I open the project file after the transfer, I am going to spend a couple of hours manually locating every single file. Ah well...
06-05-2006: Past few days I've spent going over every bit of footage from our "shocking finale". I like it, but my head is spinning with these images! I think I've finally figured out how to do this, but the audio is going to carry it. I've got an atmosphere I want to try for.
05-22-2006: Got some nice images back from the last shot of the movie. This is very promising stuff! Our first annoying technical problem is popping its head up, though -- supposedly this single shot will take something on the order of two weeks to render in final form! Yikes! Fortunately, this is the most complex effects shot in the movie. This is the one that's got to be perfect, but based on what I'm seeing, it's very, very promising.
05-21-2006: Mark goes out to try to film a local demolition job. There might be a place we can insert that in the final scenes of the movie.
05-08-2006: I've been reviewing a variety of effects shots. Mark has a few folks working out various scenes. Some great-looking helicopter work and I'm very excited about what's evolving into our last shot of the movie. Talk about exceeding expectations!
04-29-2006: At the Zompire Film Festival, we show the latest teaser-trailer. I like this one very much because it's a scene from the movie, but told from the point-of-view of one of the characters. Plus, it's nice and spooky. Cyoakha gave us great music for it and Sean managed to find a shot that would otherwise have completely gone to waste. Response at the film festival to the trailer was small, but I think people wanted to see more of a traditional trailer, with lots of scenes from the movie, but the only one we've cut just reveals all kinds of secrets right off the bat, so I just couldn't post that one. I might change my mind later, but it's hard to say -- we have some great secrets in here that I'd really rather not reveal until the movie. Oddly, the first few seconds of the teaser were cut off, which included a sound effect and a question that sets the teaser up, so it was a bit confusing. Nothing to be done about it. Funniest bit was after the teaser when Ryan leaned over and said "I don't remember shooting that!"
03-05-2006: I start working on a more complicated part of the wall climb. I can't believe that I spend an hour making a sidewalk, but I do. And it looks pretty good. The mask comes together, too, so as long as all this junk works well together, I might have a winner on my hands. For this shot, anyway. Alllllmost done with this problem child.
03-04-2006: Leopoldo comes over and we review the special effects assignments and his way of organizing things. It doesn't take long to understand, but I can tell this is going to be a very time-intensive process. I can't really devote my full attention to it until after the video cut is done anyway. Man, I wish we had a Special Effects Supervisor to do this. I really do.
03-03-2006: Mark sends me a four-second video clip of a 3D pass through a cavern. Wow, every time I see what people can do with 3D software, it just blows me away. For a variety of reasons, this sort of design won't quite work for our needs, but I can TOTALLY see how my best efforts to build this scene would be outclassed by even the most rudimentary 3D artist. Now to just get someone else working on this...
03-02-2006: I work on the "wall climbing" scene today. This has been a problem child for a while because there were several different shots and several different angles. The "money shot" of this scene is the big killer. We have a few extreme closeup shots, but not enough, so I had to fabricate a few by taking existing ones and tweaking the images a bit, usually by zooming. But that part seems to work -- as long as the "money shot" pays off by showing us the great big wide version of what's happening. I think it'll work. I put together a split screen effect. Wasn't too happy with it, but then Katrina took a look and we conferred on a few things. Her suggestion got me thinking in a different direction and I took another look at the footage and then I saw how to do it. I saw continuity where there had been no continuity before, and I saw where a bit of split screening combined with a bit of creative compositing will actually make (in theory) a very cool "money shot". It's going to take another evening to put this together, but still, I'm excited by the possibility. I have a good feeling about this little "problem child".
I chat briefly this evening with another filmmaker who knows a bit about compositing. I tell him a little about the last shot of the movie and how I'm thinking of doing it. He's shocked to hear how much compositing is involved, but he's pretty sure I can do the whole thing with After Effects, as long as I'm patient. Sure, it'll take half a day to render each frame by the time we're all done with it, but if it comes together the way we hoped, this last show will blow people away.
03-29-2006: The final scene of the movie is going to be a huge composite. I have a feeling that I will be doing this huge composite totally by myself. Oh dear! I understand a few things about After Effects, and I think this is possible using only After Effects, but still, this is way more advanced than I currently know what to do. I'm asking for help from my After Effects acquaintances and we'll see if they help out, or if they abandon me as hopelessly optimistic. The whole 3D thing just has my brain in disarray right now, mostly because I also have to focus on so many other aspects of the production.
03-26-2006: Ah, that was fun. Maybe I'll try and get other people to do guest entries in the Production Diary.
As Sean wrote, there are a few scenes that are really giving us headaches. These are definitely our "problem children" and I think once we fix these buggers, we'll pretty much have a video cut that's throat-punching delicious. I spent most of yesterday working through a scene that we're calling "FarmBoy's rant". It was tricky because we were shooting this supposedly high energy scene, but everyone was really tired. I figured the best way to tease the energy out was to pretty much give up on a straight narrative and steal a gag I've seen on several different movies, ignoring temporal order in favor of some other organizing force. So, the scene becomes progressively more chaotic, but the energy keeps growing and I was able to find some neat counterpoints in the monologue. After I finished, I showed it to Sean. He tweaked a few shots here and there and we shook hands on the scene.
03-25-2006: Alright chaps and Charlies (as in Kelly McGillis in Top Gun), you're in BIG trouble now. Edward let me (Sean the editor) hop on the diary train, and I'll drive this baby like a Dune Worm with adrenaline flaming up its butt.
So, apparently we have some readers out there. Cast, crew, or anticipating zombie movie fan, thanks from me for your continued interest, and I apologize for the gaps in entries. Here's the deal -- the lock down, no-more-wire-hangers video edit for Flesh of My Flesh is... yeah, just about there. There are four sequences that are giving us Excedrin 3000 headaches. I did me best (promise), but I realized it was time to hang up the cutting cleats for a few and let the director spit and grease these final four into the whirlwind frenzy created of the other 167 scenes.
I assure you it is worth the wait. Every scene has been combed over with everything from 'fro picks to tooth picks to make the best movie possible. (I know you're wondering; the answer is about 90 minutes.)
For those out there anxious for some instant gratification, new news -- the first Flesh of My Flesh trailer is cut and being scored at this very moment, at least I hope so. Our genius redheaded goddess of score, Cyoakha Grace O'Manion, is on the case and we'll get the trailer up on the site ASAP.
Speaking of, I understand a few of you out there are nonplussed or not pleased with Teaser #2 (aka Halloween teaser.) True, it seems a bit silly and ambiguous, but have you ever tried an Andy Warhol filmathon? Let me let you in on a little secret... it's a prequel. It won't make sense until after you've seen Flesh of My Flesh the movie. A few times.
So, what happens now? I plan to ride the Red Bull until this little bastard is a beautiful bleeding canister of tight horror narrative. I'm feeding Edward apple fritters and intravenous espresso. Then we call our oh-so-patient actors and schedule ADR (automated dialogue replacement.) Won't that be fun: Uh, Heather Rose, remember how you delivered this line fifteen months ago? Try doing that faster and more intensity.
Then come CGI, sound effects, score, color correction, and final mix. I think we'll be ready by next weekend. Come on, Edward (whipping sound), we've got work to do.
02-11-2006: Today, Sean said "Ryan's right about looking through the footage after you're done!" I have to tease him a bit about this. Editing still continues. We're at a big fight scene near the end of the movie. The funny thing about talking edits in the Production Diary is that each entry starts to look kind of the same: "Made some cuts. It wasn't working. Screwed with it some more. Found some footage we didn't expect to find. Works better now." The really amazing thing, though, is watching this movie form and come to life. Sean's kicking ass at it and every once in a while I dip into the pool and fiddle with things. Sometimes he likes it, sometimes he doesn't. He's over here so often that I might as well give him a key. But this is good. For the first time ever, I have someone else editing my projects (which is probably a good thing). He's made scenes come alive that had previously been dunky. He's found cuts and made them work. He's great!
01-28-2006: Current time: 54:21. We've made it through a number of rough spots. I've been a slacker on the Production Diary lately. Sean has been very adept at pulling shots not only out of everything we shot for the movie, but lots of stuff that was shot between takes as well. This is particularly cool, because we have shots of actors watching, listening, being tired and cranky, damn near every emotion. There are a few magical seconds in this movie that were completely unintentional. In fact, while I was going through some of Mark's behind-the-scenes footage, I ran across a few good shots of the South Gate scene that we just simply didn't have. Some good gritty close-up stuff. I'm hoping this might be useful. Today's scenes in particular are tricky because they combine several different narratives that have been developed throughout the story. We've got to time it right and make everything make sense at the same time. It seems as if there's one additional shot we've got to try and get. No other shot will replace it, unfortunately, because it's a very specific pile of clothes and a very specific collection of gore and a very specific skull. However, we might be able to completely bullshit the shot in our garage. That would be quite cool, if possible. In fact, we might be able to completely bullshit the shot using different cameras (which would save lots of time and energy, seeing as how our cameras are back with their owner in Seattle)
01-07-2006: Current time: 38:00. Further, further, further. I like how it's coming along so far. Sean and I are going to have to change schedule, but we should still be able to get three days a week of editing in.
01-03-2006: Current time: 34:40. A few too many gaps in a conversation at the lab monitors. Wove some scenes from another take in and tightened the whole thing up a bit. We took two really grotty cuts and fixed 'em up. One's still a little bit dodgy, but we did a nice match-on-action and I think it looks great.
12-11-2005: Current time: 31:00. Past the first major lair scenes, we cruise through some relatively easy and good lab scenes. Although at first, we thought there wasn't a lot we could do more with them, it was neat to discover just how much new things could be discovered. We start in on the doors. The doors were pretty good, but we're finding that there's a certain rhythm to it and that makes it work much better. It's interesting to see we're a third of the way through the movie. Yay!
12-08-2005: Current time: 25:00. We start building up the major reshoot scene -- Scene #36. Tricky. Lots of things to juggle. We have a good first-cut at it.
11-29-2005: Current time: 21:00. Sean over again. We tried a couple of motion-based effects on the zombie lairs, but it really wasn't satisfactory (although we did learn that a turtle's heart can keep beating even after you slice most of it away). Looks like we found something good, though. Our next challenge is the memory sequences. Fiddled with those for a while. Was up until past 1 trying a couple of new ideas, but each one sucked even more than the last. At this rate, I will soon create an idea that sucks so much, not even light can escape from it. Clearly, I am going about this the wrong way. Maybe it would help if I stole the dream-image harp music from an episode of Gilligan's Island... Gr.
11-28-2005: Current time: 19:29. Worked more on Iron John's lair tonight. This is the introduction to it, so I'm concerned about how it comes in. Some of the video was overly lit. Not egregiously so, I could adjust the contrast and color levels a little and bring it in line. It wasn't due to any sort of technical error -- we actually shot this scene one-half on one day and one-half on the other, if I remember correctly. So, for part of it, we used one sort of lighting and for the other part, we used slightly different lighting. It turned out nicely, though. This introduction makes the lair seem much longer than it really is and that's a good thing. Many wishes, of course. Wish we had more zombies (the ice storm kept a lot of folks home), wish we had more set dressing, more time for set dressing, etc. But I remind myself as I go through this that every piece we did, we did the best we could for the time we did it, plus a lot of this we simply learned on-the-spot. Given all of those conditions, I'm actually very happy with the result. Still am!
11-27-2004: Reviewed the opening scene again. Didn't do a full render and I really ought to. I like it. I remember how it was before, in the rough cut and I watch it now and I really like it much better. The temporary music I dropped in for the title sequence still sticks in my head. Ahaha, won't it be hilarious if that's what we end up using? I think so. Still, I bet Cyoakha comes up with something brain-splittingly marvelous that leaves this in the dust. It'll still stick in my brain, though. It's that kind of tune.
11-20-2005: The new logo by Jodi Altendorf looks great on the poster. I've uploaded the image to a new "Flesh of my Flesh" CafePress website. Nice stuff. I'm glad to see they offer black t-shirts now. Perhaps I shall have to make a logo t-shirt.
11-19-2005: Sean and I edit our way through the catwalk scene. Finally we make it into something that's actually rather cool and neat, instead of what it was before (none of the above). We sped through a couple more scenes, fixing some really heinous transitions and finding a surprising number of places where we could patch in even more footage from the original take and it looked just great. Lots of fun!
11-15-2005: Sean over editing again today. He did a nice job working through a catwalk scene, but left a zombie attack to me. I've been trying different things with the technique I've been using and it's produced some interesting results. Ryan and I were talking about this effect and he mentioned that the theory behind it is the same kind of theory that helped some of the effects in The Six Million Dollar Man work out as well as it did. Basically, we establish a particular metaphor to describe movement and as long as we use it consistently, it should work.
I swear, I'm never gonna use Image Pan on real-size video again. Compared to Photoshop's method of interpolating pixels, Premiere is biting the Big Daddy pretty bad. It takes time, but exporting frames, resizing them in PS and then re-importing them is producing superlative results!
On the downside today, Leopoldo and I talked and he had to bow out of being the CG Supervisor. Kind of a bummer, 'cause that's another thing I'll have to coordinate, but then, I coordinated all of that for Dream-Quest, too, so at least I have a mechanism for doing it. He's still in, of course, but just not for that part.
11-13-2005: Sean came over. More editing. I think we have a motion technique we're pretty happy with. We also discovered something else cool today. Photoshop is much better at interpolating pixels than Premiere. So, if I want to zoom in on a piece of footage in Premiere, it actually makes more sense to export the frames as bitmaps, resize the bitmaps in Photoshop, and then re-import the folder-of-frames and then do an image pan to the "new" 720 x 480 frame. We manage to create a few closeups out of seemingly thin air that turned out looking really good. I think if we tried going too far, it would still look crappy, but being able to save a few scraps here and there has been quite nice. Time consuming, though worth the final effort. We make it through the opening scenes, the first helicopter scenes, the rooftop fight, the exodus run (a small continuity problem solved by mirror-reversing a single shot), and the introduction to the lab and the characters in the lab. Next -- the catwalk!
11-09-2005: Tried a different technique this evening. It's similar to last night's technique, but the results look a lot different. They seem more fluidic and smoother. I also try speeding the video up a bit and doing an on-the-fly color shift. Hey, that actually looks kinda' cool. I finish too late to go out and enjoy a celebratory hot dog.
11-08-2005: Ah, finally some hard limits. In an attempt to pull more footage in from other takes (this is all trying to get a cool attack-technique figured out), I discover that I am Out Of Hard Drive Space on the big video drive. This isn't the RAID, this is just the Drive Which Contains All Footage. 250G should have been enough, but, obviously not. I'm able to stash the video elsewhere, but still, I'd rather it all be on one drive. After a bit of space-fiddling, I figure out a couple of slightly different techniques, all of which seem somewhat interesting. Still, not quite happy with them.
10-23-2005: Finished the opening scene. This is very nice. Moved past the title sequence. Sean has a love/hate relationship with the title sequence. I think I will record it and make the audio a downloadable file so that hundreds of people are surprised when we end up using Fur Elise instead. No, there's no way we can use Fur Elise. Just not the right sound for this movie. Too quiet, too simple. We also finish a groovy helicopter scene and the rooftop scene. When we started in on the rooftop scene, we figured with the new editing technique (still untried because we're very scared of our own powers, like teenage superheroes), we might be able to draw that scene out further, to do more exploring of the occasional speedilicious and hungry flesheater, but as we walked carefully through the raw footage (everything is digitized, including the goofs and blunders), we realized that we had pretty much done the best we could do. Still, we pulled out everything that could even be remotely used and Sean, working diligently and with great adroitness, found a way to incorporate even more footage than we had previously thought possible. All we need is a couple of spooky zombie screams and we should be good. Zombies scream, don't they? I know, they ought not too. A good hunter doesn't warn their prey. I was happy to figure out a very clever edit that allowed us to use a little more footage in an earlier scene, the Caddy scene. It was just one of the most remarkable and weird ideas I've ever had, but I'll be dipped in salad oil if it didn't look great after we noodled it together. Mmmm, salad oil on noodles...
10-22-2005: Travis reports that about 3/4 of the sound effects and foley have been arranged. Of course, we're still at rough cut stage, so this is going to throw the soundtrack off a bit, but it'll all get finally synced before it's done.
10-21-2005: CG Report from Leopoldo: There are 41 effects scenes in all, 20 of them have been assigned to effects volunteers (hear that people -- we need more effects folks -- want a feature film credit? Looks great on a resume!). Six of them are completed. Leopoldo also adds "Albin Klein has done the majority of work, building us a working CGI helicopter model and flying it over a city he made. The shot is beautiful with CGI smoke the helicopter flies though. He should get some mention on the log for good work. Richard Mann and his daughter have also done a good amount of rotoscoping work as has Tom Luth." So, from the GP crew, thank you Albin, Richard, Richard's daughter, and Tom!
10-20-2005: Worked on the opening scene. Establishing shots, character intros. All very nice now. Used some footage from the reshoot. Avoided eating liver during this stage of production. Don't know why -- feels weird. Somehow disrespectful to the other organs.
10-18-2005: Digitized all the footage from the reshoot. Looks pretty good! On a few takes, the sound was pretty crappy, but we have (luckily) many takes of the same scene with good sound and because it's kind of a crazy scene, it ought to be fine. Just based on what I've seen so far, I'm very excited about the upcoming stuff. This should work out to be a pretty cool collection of scenes. And holy smokes, did we shoot a LOT in less than 24 hours. I had no idea we had covered so much ground!
10-09-2005: Dinner and a serious chat with Sean over some editing tricks. We still have some footage that isn't quite the way we want and reshooting is just out of the question at this point. I proposed an idea that not only might save the scenes we need to put together, but will let us possibly resurrect (ha-ha) scenes that we had previously ditched as unsalvageable. Sean thought about it for a few seconds and then nodded his head and said "Yeah, that'll work, as long as we're careful how we do it." We discussed a few more details, started working out what scenes needed this kind of work (or more importantly what scenes could benefit from that kind of work) and things suddenly, amazingly, felt unstuck. It was great! We both agreed as well that cutting the previous reshoot was going to just be amazingly simple, compared to a lot of other issues that had come up. That was the only scene we had completely previsualized before shooting and the results just looked spectacular.
09-17-2005: The last reshoot. At least, this should be the last reshoot that requires people. Ryan and I pick up a couple of simple shots before heading out to the location.
What we're doing is reshooting a scene, but it's not simple reshoot. The scene has been rewritten from scratch, taking advantage of the fact that we have two actors who both have martial arts training, and who are both very physical. Previously, exposition had been interspersed with action, but the final result was that the exposition simply slowed the action down too much. We've moved the exposition to a different part of the scene, earlier, and kept it all together, but interspersed it with completely new footage that revealed more character details about one of our lead characters, as well as offering us a glimpse into a wholly different group of flesh-eaters. The new scene contained a lot more actual practical special effects, too, with walls being smashed and torn open and sections of rebar being whipped around and spun like industrial katanas. To make our night even more interesting, we shot a few other pickups that we had been looking for, including a hand-punch-through-a-wall and a grotesquely delightful spine-wrapping scene. There was still one tiny scene that we didn't catch up, but I think we can actually work with the footage we have (more on that later), what with the potentially new editing trick.
The shooting proceeds quickly enough and we burn through tape quickly, but it's a lot of shooting, no two ways about it. As the evening wore on, difficulties grew and multiplied, and we tried to adjust as best we could and continue. We did keep shooting, and we did get amazing footage, but people were really, really tired by the end. Our host, I'm fairly certain, is about done with us, although we are very grateful to him for opening his space up to us for shooting. I'm hoping we didn't completely alienate the poor guy, because he's been very nice. We tried to be as civil and courteous as possible, but, well, it was an all-nighter, and there's only so far we can socially smooth things. Still, we did it, it's done, it's gorgeous footage, and we're grateful.
One of the things I enjoyed doing during this shoot (and have done a couple of times before) has been to signal Ryan to start shooting while people are still practicing a move. The footage from someone practicing is sometimes even better than the footage we might pick up after calling "action!" because the actors are more relaxed and things are in general less tense on set. Maybe it's not entirely fair of me, I don't know, and maybe it's not exactly kosher in a professional setting, but we're not a huge production with lots of complex setup time allowed. If the shot of the practice looks good and we happen to have it, then -- unless the actor wants to do it "officially" -- we should just move on to the next shot. We ended up with some really nice shots of people flying through the air and all sorts of fun. And then, after the practice, after the three or four "takes" in the monitor that would have required another thirty or forty minutes to do "officially", we were able to say "Well, we got the shot and it looks great, so let's move on." Most folks seemed quite happy to hear that, so maybe we're doing something right, I dunno.
It was a very aggressive schedule, probably the second most aggressive shooting schedule we've had in this entire project. The shooting itself was also very ambitious -- I've forgotten how many practical special effects we shot that night, and usually, I'd prefer we do one or two practicals in an evening and call it a night. But we did it. Once again, we managed to shoot everything we planned to shoot, to put those crazy-ass images into the camera, and to make this whole thing happen. Wow. These are just the best people ever!
09-13-2005: Last Production Meeting before the reshoot. Some things are good and seem well taken care of. Some things leave me... nervous. Leopoldo and I set up a detailed shot list. I can already tell this is going to be very handy!
08-22-2005: We cut the test shoot together tonight. Even our sloppy-ass method of shooting resulted in a pretty cool sequence (we decided to pick up two quickie scenes in the garage, but better realizing we needed those now than realizing we'll need them later!). This scene is going to be a lot different, but a lot more dynamic than the first-shot scene. I still have to MPEG it and get it to the art department and shooting crew. Not sure I'll share it with the actors just yet -- I'm afraid they'll see that as a way to act. I think it'll be better just working off the script with them. Must be sure to plan the other smaller reshoots during this process, too.
08-21-2005: After editing the rough cut, we realized that probably the weakest scene was Scene #36. I had tried an earlier cut of it and it had just confounded me. Then later, Sean and I hit it together and we were equally confounded. There just wasn’t the kind of shots we needed in that. As we edited the movie, we realized that there were a few key pieces of data that were missing, such as tribal differentiation and a few other things. Gradually, we realized that a lot of these loose ends could be wrapped up in a single scene – Scene #36. So, we started at the beginning and rewrote that scene from scratch.
Tonight we did a test shoot of this scene. Greg, Leopoldo, Sean, Roslyn and I converge on the location. We go through every shot, every angle. We work out the actions, and figure out before we shoot how it’ll edit together. We figure it’ll take two hours and it takes us about half an hour to get started because we have trouble locating lights, plugs, and a few other things. But eventually, we get rolling and we get rolling fast. We manage in two-and-a-half hours to work out every camera angle and every shot. We discover a variety of glitches and things that we can now identify clearly and solve. Based solely on what I’ve seen of the test footage, this is going to look absolutely great!
07-11-2005: Second night of extracting video.
07-07-2005: Leopoldo comes over to extract video for the SFX crew. It takes longer than we expect. He's going to have to come back for the second half.
07-05-2005: We decide we're going to reshoot a scene. It was exhibiting problems anyway, but this time, we know just what we're going to do to fix it. Sean and I watch fight scenes from several movies (he's never seen "They Live"!) and run through the choreography for a new confrontation between Bruce and the Farmboy. This one is much cooler. It'll take longer to do, but it'll look very, very nice. We'll need to make a map of the whole thing, though. It's complicated. At least we don't have to keep track of a sword, a shield, and a spear.
07-02-2005: We have the senior staff over this evening for a rough cut viewing. Ryan drives down from Seattle. We start at 5pm by watching the movie from start to finish. After that, we rewatch it, going through scene-by-scene tearing it apart and analyzing everything. Nine hours and ten pages of notes later, we knock off for the night.
07-01-2005: Added lots of sound effects. Not the final effects, just key sounds for the sound effects crew, to know where we were thinking of putting stuff. Added some temp music and a few mocked-up special effects shots, again, so that the crew working on it has a better idea of what we're talking about.
06-30-2005: Hunted down and filtered a few sound effects, but it was a short night.
06-28-2005: More jiggering with the sound levels, a few video levels. Started collecting a few temp pieces of sound, plus a few temp music tracks.
06-27-2005: Went through the sound levels this evening, adjusting and fiddling. I know from experience that they will all be a little jiggered when we export to the DVD, but this is better than the raw values. It's funny the things that were really quiet versus the things that were really loud. Sent out lots of queries for help with the SFX to my various lists and stuff. I guess about a dozen or two people have written back. That's cool. I think with enough folks working on it, the effects of this movie will be quite spiff, despite their size and complexity.
06-26-2005: Whew! Okay, we nailed the last scene in. It took a couple of tries to get it the way we wanted to, with cuts and all sorts of bad craziness going on. Yay! Okay, enough celebrating, time to get back to work. We have dinner and then start in on adjusting the video and color levels. For a lot of the darker scenes, we artificially pushed the color levels so we could see what we were working on. Now we get to knock all those levels back down. Probably should have done that at the time, but, well, we were just still plugging at the timeline. Cyoakha sends the first bit of music for the second teaser trailer. We also start scanning for temp tracks using various commercial soundtracks and other musical sources. I've never done that before, so it's kinda weird. I've usually just operated on the music in my head.
06-25-2005: 84:00. We're almost done. We're up to the very last shot. Haven't quite figured out how to tackle the farm yet, but we'll hit that in the morning.
06-24-2005: 79:20.
06-23-2005: 74:00. Good progress. We're rolling towards the end of the movie. Still a lot missing, of course.
06-21-2005: 71:59. We lost a day yesterday because I was getting sick. I was sick as a dog all day and only by being heavily drugged was I able to do anything today. I hate being sick. Made it through the Bruce/Iron John fight. A few tweaks, but good enough for the rough cut.
06-19-2005: 65:40. The Zombie War was problematic, but Sean's done a great job turning the footage we had into a massive war. It's really great! After the war (well, at least this part of it), we moved on to the Display Room (the location of which was a huge pain to locate), Herbert and Erick's big scene, and then to a fun sequence of Erick fighting zombies.
06-14-2005: 59:29. Slow today, but we had to edit a war. These take time.
We discuss again, briefly, the idea of reshooting a particular scene. Although we're chatting about various aspects of it, we're not going to officially decide until after the rough cut is finished and we've gone over it a few times, looking for any other holes that need fillin'. It's not an unusual thing to do, but I want to make sure if we do it, we plan the hell out of it and make it worth every possible second. I also want to, if we do it, make sure that we try grabbing any other piece of random footage that might help, cutaways, second-unit type stuff, everything. We will be greedy and grab everything we can in one fell swoop.
06-13-2005: 57:49. We're through the Main Refinery Lab. Those scenes were fun because there was always a bit of tension. The most interesting piece of outtake footage was after we finished a long shoot and Ryan holds his wristwatch to the camera: 5:45 am. We had started the day before at (I think) 9am. So, that was a l-o-n-g shooting day. A long, cold, dark shooting day. We passed through one of the biggest practical special effects in the movie, concluded by a mass chase down a hallway. At this stage, the energy is pretty damn high. Unfortunately, we hit the next section and our zombies have suddenly become slow, stumbling things, lurching about. What were we thinking?! Oh well! Sean manages an extraordinarily surgical bit of cutting and the energy is maintained. We jumped back to a scene from yesterday and added enough so that our test audience (Katrina) could better understand what was happening. She does, now, so this is good. I know that the scenes coming up maintain a fairly high energy level, so I'm less worried about those, but this one, well, it would have been nice to see a little more of a battle.
I've been digging through costumes. Most of the character costumes I've managed to find and wash and set aside, but a few pieces are missing. I don't think we'll need them, but still, missing clothes is bothersome. At least the three bins with commando-costumes are all still filled (mental note: use bins on next production and enforce with draconian measures that they be maintained separately). Losing any of that would have been a pain, as it was all rather pricey. Most of the zombies clothes were thrown out long ago because they were stored wet and mildewey, but I run across a few bags that were dry. The shredded ones I just pitched, but the non-shredded ones I washed. I wonder if these would be fun to put on ebay, ha-ha!
While doing this, I find more pieces to the assault rifle. How annoying. There are lots of little pieces, as if someone really smashed the shit out of this thing. I continue collecting them anyway. Maybe I'm just too damn stubborn to toss out an expensive prop, despite the fact that it's completely fucking destroyed, because I want to at least get some use out of it (it never once appeared in the movie because it kept breaking itself). Okay, the laser pointer still works. That's about it. Everything else is -- at best -- good for a TV commercial warning you to not dip your assault rifle in liquid nitrogen and then drop it on the floor. Hm...
06-12-2005: 55:45. Not going as fast as I would like, but we're making good stuff. Probably just had a slow start today after yesterday's blowout and kept that momentum. Did the wall climbing scene today, but I think I want to try redoing it. By this time we should be kicking the tempo up in every scene.
06-11-2005: 49:03 by the end of the evening. What a day! Holy smokes was that a lot of work for a day! The vast majority of this was dramatic stuff in the lab, tensions running high, interpersonal conflict, and all the things that make life grand. Although there are a few issues with continuity here and there, most of it cuts well together.
06-09-2005: 38:15 by the end of the evening. Not bad -- six minutes in an evening. Sean did a bit of calculating and believes we can finish the rough cut by July 4th, which would be very nice. No rest for the wicked, of course, but it'll be good to get the rough cut out of our hair. We're helped in this evening's work by the fact that the scenes are lots of dialogue. Good dialogue and interesting stuff, but easier to edit than the action stuff. We're about halfway through the script and although I'm a tad wondering if the total time will come in a bit shorter than I expected, Sean assures me that later action scenes that are only described in a paragraph are going to take quite a few seconds to get through. Not as if a 90-minute action movie is a bad thing, mind you. Still, it's quite definitely booking along.
06-07-2005: We finished the doors scene today. It looks pretty cool! I think this is definitely one of those kinds of scenes that's going to stick in the viewer's brains long after they've watched the movie. 32 minutes so far...
06-06-2005: Cyoakha came by and we went through the two teasers and the rough cut so far, discussing music, sound effects, and how it'll all fit together. Between that and a late start, we only managed to kick the timeline up to 29 minutes, but the next few minutes is going to be a real time-cruncher anyway. We're cutting around a conversation that's happening across three different locations, and which includes a lot of action.
06-05-2005: Sean came over and we blasted away at more editing. Made it to 28 minutes this evening. One of the scenes, though -- a lair scene -- very problematic. I had an enormous amount of trouble putting together a show-off rough cut of that scene for some dailies a few months ago and once we started digging through this footage, we realized that this was, in fact, going to be a pain. It’s not that we don’t have lots of footage -- it’s just that we don’t have footage of certain crucial seconds. After several hours on the scene, and trying different angles, we did the best we could. Certainly good enough for the rough cut. We discussed the possibilities of reshooting that one scene. It would be a bit of trouble, but if we did a careful breakdown in advance of exactly every shot we would need, we both believe that we would get exactly the kind of video we would need for this scene. On the plus side, if we reshoot, we have an opportunity to modify the scene in such a way as to reveal a key element about our creatures and that is a tempting idea as well. Much to ponder...
05-31-2005: Crashing on the Dream-Quest DVD, so had to put off editing for a bit. However, I was able to upload a couple of teaser-trailers to the Downloads page.
05-30-2005: More editing. Now at 23 minutes -- Six minutes done today. Surprisingly enough, we made it through the introduction to Iron John's lair fairly easily. There are more scenes to come, of incredible and delicious violence, but so far, it's moving along. One scene in particular, passage through two different welded doors, came out especially well. It's interesting working with two brains. Sometimes Sean and I think of the same thing. Other times, we think of very different things. Sometimes he thinks of something before I would have. Other times, I think of it before he does. At least that's how it seems to me. Perhaps to the untrained eye, it seems as if we're constantly fussing at each other. But the results are good -- if this is the process that works, I ain't gonna knock it! Late at night, I started in on the next scene, but had to bail 'cause it was past midnight and I was tired. Goodness!
05-28-2005: Seventeen minutes so far. I would have been disappointed, but I realized that we hadn't done the first 15 minutes yet -- only the first 13. So, 5 minutes in a day. Not bad. Introduction to the lab, and a catwalk battle. We had a lot to edit around in the catwalk battle. I guess it was getting pretty late by the time we hit certain scenes and it was just poopin' out time for everyone. My favorite blooper out of this evening was in the middle of a heated battle in the middle of an abandoned industrial area, suddenly in the distance are the twinkling taillights of a car leaving, as some of the crew went home. Lots of fun!
05-25-2005: We need to get started on foley and soundscapes immediately. One person needs to be responsible for making sure we have all these pieces. In the past, it's been me, but I'm trying to edit the darn thing. I think more about closeups in the lab. Missed some really tasty closeups. But two of them have stuck in my head and I just figured out why. A chess set and a pile of puzzle pieces. I like that symbolism.
05-23-2005: Sean and I spend most of the evening reviewing the previous work, reviewing lots of video, and hunting for a collection of closeup cutaways in the lab. There’s something about extreme close-ups of stuff that seems to be tricky to shoot because we just don’t have many at all. We have lots and lots of lingering wide angle shots, usually on the same wall, but the kind of close-ups we’re looking for, the slow introductory Ridley Scott sorta’ close-ups, we seem to be lacking. We find a couple and fake it with a couple of stills. Not the ideal solution, but perhaps in all the stills of the laboratory, I can find something else I can modify. We do manage to do a good job of introducing Katherine, and that makes us both happy.
05-22-2005: Finally. All footage has been transferred to the hard drives of the Production machine and sorted by scene. This will make the next steps so much easier. Also, finished the final tally on all receipts. We came in about $100 under budget. Woo-hoo!
05-20-2005: The RAID is full. Bummer.
05-16-2005: I ask Leopoldo to supervise the SFX, just as a contact point and as a person who knows what "good enough" means for this project. He's hesitant, but I think he'll do a great job.
05-08-2005: Most of the past week has been a combination of being incredibly sick with strep throat and trying to get various solutions for digitizing video from the MiniDV tapes. I didn't have a functioning solution until day before yesterday. This is too annoying to keep pestering me, and Doug probably wants his camera back, so I am digitizing like mad. The goal is to get all the footage onto the Production Computer. In theory, I have a bit under 450G to play with across the two drives, so this might work out okay. Maybe. We'll see.
05-01-2005: Returned the cameras back to Seattle. Long ride and now I'm sick as a dog. Bleah.
04-30-2005: More editing. 15 minutes into the timeline for the rough cut. That is, after a 12-hour editing session. I think I'm good for about 10 and then I have to do something else. As I go over last night's work, I can see a bunch of little nudges that I plan to do. I figure these are a result of getting punchy after so much editing, but the result overall is looking really nice. And once the foley's added and the visual effects, it's going to really fill in a lot of strange quiet places. Updated the "Wanna Help?" page to reflect post-production needs.
04-28-2005: More editing. Found a blur glitch in the title sequence and fixed that. 9:22 so far.
04-25-2005: More editing. Tuned up the opening scenes, and started putting together the helicopter scenes. This is our first back-and-forth jump cut scene. Oh goodness, it seemed so easy when I wrote it!
04-24-2005: Did a rough of the title sequence. That turned out pretty cool. Noodled a bit on the opening sequence some more. I'm happier now. Currently at 7:00. I'm still estimating this'll be around 100 minutes. Gotta get cracking!
04-23-2005: Pretty much finished the opening scene. I like this. There were a couple of shots that I think I would have preferred getting if I'd thought of them, but I think I can work around them.
04-15-2005: Logged more footage today, through tape #7. I found all the footage I was looking for, and I've digitized the first seven scenes of the movie. Goodness, some of these takes are l-o-n-g! It's fascinating to remember these scenes being filmed, because they were one of the first scenes we filmed, when everybody was new and trying to figure out how they fit in. Not a lot of that is on the tape because Ryan is so conservative about videotape, but maybe it's just seeing the setups reminds me of the starting days. One thing I had forgotten was that the day we shot the first scenes of the movie, it was atrociously windy. Not quite as cold as the South Gate scenes, which we shot later, but windy, windy, windy. I recall vaguely some sort of personal drama on set, but it just basically flew right under my radar, which is a good thing. Another peculiar thing -- this footage seems years old, as if it happened in a wholly different life. Ages ago.
As I'm seeing how much hard drive space this is taking up, I realize I am going to need a bigger boat. At the very least, I'm going to need a heckuva lot more storage on the RAID, more than a terabyte, unless I can come up with a very clever way of offloading half a terabyte of data relatively safely. Know anyone with a half dozen spare 250G drives lying around?
04-14-2005: I'm trying to digitize footage today, but I can't find the written notes and I'm missing the very first scene. How bothersome! I spend three hours carefully going through the first four tapes, relogging everything.
04-10-2005: 'Cause we're all done shooting, we don't head back out to Gaston this morning, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, we forget to tell James, who does head out to Gaston. Oh dear. My bad. This morning's chore is emptying out the trailer. When we arrived home late last night, the cages and such were over eight feet tall, so we couldn't just pull it into the garage. So, we left it outside overnight. Now me, I don't think this is a bad thing, but when I look out there this morning, I see that all the "best" parts -- and by "best", I mean most damnably gore-covered and accusatory -- are sticking out in the open. So, any of our neighbors who just happened to be snoopy, or jog by enjoyed seeing a trailer full of cages and dissection tables, all gore-splattered. At least the church-goin' folks will finally leave me alone! Ryan helps and we get the trailer emptied out in short order and reloaded with all the trash from the weekend's shoot. We also load it with the remaining zombie clothes. As much as I might like to go through them and find neat clothes to wear, it seems as if they were all put away soaking wet and now the bags reek of mildew and the clothes are even nastier than I could imagine zombies wearing. Maybe. And, as an added bonus, underneath the piles of clothes, we find garbage bags from past shoots, filled with steamy rich delicious garbage. Weeks old garbage! The trailer is filled and ready to take to the dump because I really doubt all of this trash will hang out in the garage while I add one-bag at a time to our outgoing trash. Getting rid of all this would take weeks.
This evening is the wrap party. It's a good time had by all. Karyn and Amber and Nicole and Doug all pitch in and make the main dish, a couple different varieties of spaghetti. Lots of people bring bonus stuff and we have a tremendously tasty spread. Everybody is much more relaxed and having a good time and talking and catching up on their social lives. It's very cool to see people from earlier shoots come by, people I haven't seen in months. The party goes on until late, with the last dregs watching the new episode of Doctor Who and Ryan's movie "Kill Roy" before all splitting for parts unknown.
04-09-2005: Our second day shooting the final scene of the movie. I told an acquaintance that we were planning to take three days to shoot the final twenty seconds and he just laughed and said "Kubrick would be proud". Hm, assuming we ever make it on his radar, I guess we’ll just have to see about that after we shuffle from this mortal coil.
Once again, we end up with about seven people, instead of the nearly-twenty we were expecting. This is just something I’ve never really understood, but I guess it just is what it is. I know there are hundreds of people who are interested in the movie, and dozens who actually contact us and schedule to show up at shoots. But when it gets right down to it, most never show up. I mean, is Internet porn really that good?! I guess so. Most folks are very enthusiastic and creative and some of the performances were absolutely inspired! I was just really impressed with how many different ways a person can act under such... restrained... circumstances. It was remarkable!
However, we did have someone show up with a baby and the baby was an excellent actor, so we did get at least one really good baby shot (thank you, Aurora!). The baby was actually in our initial auditions, so it was quite an interesting sort of bookend.
When we started out this morning, Ryan and I discussed the possibility of shooting the rest of the shots for this scene by the end of the evening, just kinda’ going for broke and shooting until we were done. He figured that it was entirely possible that we would run out of things to shoot by late afternoon or thereabouts. I figured we would probably run until late, but could quite possibly shoot everything else today and then stay a little longer, do all the cleany-clean sort of thing, and then sleep in Sunday morning. I guess we were a little grumpy about having to get up at 7:30am after shooting until midnight with an hour’s drive away to the location. That’ll make anyone grumpy.
We continue with our initial plan of shooting close-ups and long shots, although today, we really try to get through long shots, especially. I’m still not sure how many long shots we did. It felt like about a hundred, but was probably closer to five thousand. It just felt like a lot.
As dusk falls, we realize that we’ve only got five actors remaining, so we decide to sort out the shots by number-of-actors-required. In doing so, I realize that, actually, we only have four or five single shots left. To the whole movie! We wrap up the long shots, which is a very fast-paced cycling of actors in the same scenarios. Then we really start hauling ass and getting the last batch of odd shots, including a crisp “hosing off” scene that takes place in the middle of the night in the open air (very cold!) and a scene of people digging through sharp rocks with their hands. As our actors all get cleaned up, we shoot the final three scenes of the movie, which are also three of the grossest, nastiest scenes we can imagine. This is not the first time we were grateful that we laid down a layer of plastic on the floor instead of just trusting to our ability to mop afterwards. On the down-side, however, a gore-covered plastic floor is more slippery than a damn politician, and a few people take a tumble. Fortunately, they all seem to land safely enough, although certainly in undignified positions.
But I digress...
At approximately 9:20 or thereabouts, we shoot the final scene of the movie, a wickedly gross push broom scene. Many people wanted to know if this was, in fact, the final shot. Evidently, plans were afoot, because the instant it was verified that we had, in fact, shot the martini of the production, I was assaulted by multiple cans of silly string. I still haven’t cleaned my glasses off. This is how much I love my crew.
Now I begin editing...
04-08-2005: Our first day shooting Flesh of my Flesh’s terrifying final scene. One of the first things we do is decide to cover the entire floor of the 36’ x 36’ workshop with plastic. This is going to be the messiest, nastiest, most horrible clean-up part of the movie. This turns out to be an excellent idea.
Although the initial plan calls for a few close-ups of each scenario, followed by one long shot to add to the final composite, Ryan convinces me (using logic and experience and persuasive argument skills) that we have to shoot the long shots from multiple angles, to account for the sweep of the digital camera. This, of course, totally makes sense and totally complicates things. Well, not exactly complicates, but makes it so we have to shoot a lot more than we planned.
We expected twenty actors to show up this evening, but there was a glitch in our directions and one of the main turnoffs from the road wasn’t labeled the way we needed it to be (darn cities) and so more than a few people got lost, turned around, and had to ask directions from locals before they could make it. I doubt anyone got that close and then just turned back. However, we had seven folks show up. Well, not exactly what we had hoped for, but we made do. It allowed us to be much more creative with how we posed people, how we turned them into multiples of themselves.
One scenario in particular just struck me this evening. Had I not been recently sat down and pushed into the Katholic Kwaziness of "The Exorcist", it just probably wouldn’t have occurred to me. So, we had a sit-down, circle-prayer scene. Very, very effective. Also, it’s kinda scary knowing how many people are that familiar with the Lord’s Prayer. Sean thinks it's just wrong that I added this scene, what with me thinking rather poorly of organized religion (to say the least), as if I had to subscribe to the religion to use its effects against people. That's silly -- I don't have to understand music to enjoy Al Yankovic or to at least intellectually accept that there was at least a few people who appreciated KC and the Sunshine Band.
04-07-2005: I meet with Greg and Carmen. Eventually, we get all the set pieces loaded into one load of the trailer. Looks like all those years of playing Tetris really paid off! It's about an hours drive out there and the location is really very nice. A big workshop, all emptied out, and ready to use. Electricity, lights, the works. We start setting the set pieces up and work on that for a while before heading back home. It's a bit of a jaunt, but worth it. The fella who's lending us his shop has been on three previous shoots as a zombie, so at least we know he's not going to be shocked that we're making a zombie movie.
04-06-2005: Ack! We lose the new location. Annoying as all get out, but oh well. At the same time, someone else e-mails me about a potential location. I arrange to go see it tomorrow, but, because time is running out, I'll go and see it and happen to have in tow our set pieces.
04-05-2005: Production Meeting. Prepping for the last weekend. Greg goes over some of the most interesting set pieces. Right before the meeting, I head up north to visit a potential location. It looks really cool. Should serve our needs well!
04-04-2005: Looks like we may have lost our location for this. Bummer
03-19-2005: Early in the morning, we truck out to Tillamook to shoot the scenes for the next teaser/trailer. We have a bit of a slow start. Some kind of trouble with costumes or something. We eventually get everybody in costume. It looks quite cool. Even Travis gets into the spirit of things by shaving off his moustache to look more like Bruce Campbell.
It's raining today and that makes everything a little trickier. With everything wet and visible puddles on the ground, there's no way we can convince people this is a dry warm day. Also, because everything's wet, that means everything is slippery and shiny. Annoying. It's also annoying because our crew and actors have to all stand out in the rain while we're shooting this. But we are a stalwart gang!
We get all sorts of shooting of our various heroes, and then the final shot is the trickiest one -- a shot from on the roof. The roof is corrugated metal and tilted downward. It's also about four stories up. So, of course, three of us end up there. We are brought up and then taken back down by a local cherry-picker. Too bad we didn't have one of these for some earlier shots!
After arriving home, Sean and I immediately fall to editing and banging out a trailer from our footage. What a fascinating process! Although there are frequent moments where we each seem to be stopping and questioning the other, we do proceed surprisingly well for a couple of highly-opinionated guys working on the same project. By ten pm, we have something we can show the remaining vestiges of crew hanging around. They seem to like it. Then we spend the rest of the night (as it were) watching scary movies.
03-18-2005: One of the first fine things to happen this morning is that our storage computer, a RAID box, just stops taking data or responding to anything. Ugh -- out of hard drive space again?! We have 200G of duplicated space on that. So, I trundle off the buy a pair of 250G drives, with the hopes that this will tide us over for at least a few months until I get more work. What I would like to do is replace the four 100G drives in there with 250G or larger drives, and then add another pair of 250G drives, bringing the total storage size of the volume to one terabyte. One terabyte ought to be enough for us. Alas, without work, I have insufficient income to just go and blow a few hundred on replacement drives.
This evening, we shoot a wall-climbing scene. Michelle and Jaybird's spent the past week painting a helluva cool matte painting on a wall and floor and this just looks really good. So, we load up some zombies, make 'em look cool, and start shooting like crazy. During the evening, we keep shooting what we plan, but we also see things that just look too good to pass up. We shoot them, too. We don't let any of them survive. In fact, we even end up shooting a very goofy bit of video of Leopoldo and I climbing a wall. Our last shot of the evening requires that Ryan dangle over a rooftop while we run zombies back and forth underneath. Lots of fun and we secretly have a camera ready to catch him in case he falls, but the scene shoots relatively uneventful.
Actually, I'm kidding -- we didn't have a camera ready. So, if he had fallen, we would have missed the shot. Which, overall, is somewhat trivial when compared to losing a member of my crew. So, people held him up there.
One damper on the evening was discovering that someone had taken Amber's purse outside, gone through the contents, and taken some things. This is the second time Amber's been ripped off on set and it's very disheartening. Crap -- it's not as if we can afford to lose stuff! It's just so wrong!
I guess another potential damper on the evening was that a cop car came by. Evidently, the neighbors complained of screaming and some sort of party going on. I guess we have a lot of lights set up, but I don't really see shivering out in the cold air covered in blood and gore as a party, per se. As far as screaming, we have no idea what that was all about -- while were shooting, we were underground and it was very quiet (quite spooky, in fact). So, maybe they just wanted to raise a bit of a ruckus or something.
The footage, of course, is wonderful. I know exactly how I'm going to cut this scene!
03-17-2005: Back shooting second unit stuff after a bit of a hiatus. Tonight, we shoot a bunch of folks driving a Hummer. It's a pretty fun shoot, but we do end up renting a generator. It's a shame, 'cause we thought for sure we would be able to avoid renting a generator for this night, but as it turns out we need power and we just can't seem to find enough people willing to pedal bicycles like mad. Our zombies really get into the spirit of the shoot tonight, which is really good. They're hootin' and hollerin' and having a grand time and, frankly, we can't help but be infected by the same high spirits. We finish our shooting and then spend the next half hour cleaning blood and gore from the hummer. You can tell where we've been because it's cleaner than when we left. I suppose it would have been most consistent to simply wash the entire vehicle, but it's fairly late and really, we'd all rather get home.
Ah, actually, there was one fly in the ointment this evening. Seems one of our creatures was a little more, ah, rambunctious than we would have liked and the result was a cracked windshield. Now, I've never really cracked a windshield before, although once on a date, the gal I was taking out did, in fact, crack the windshield. But this is a Hummer, fer cryin' out loud. A military vehicle! Why is it that a thin wispy girl can manage to crack (and presumably shatter) the windshield just by banging on it? Is this the kind of protective gear all our soldiers are getting, or just the ones that are hunting zombies? It's really amazing! I feel like writing a letter to the Army: "I think it's important that you realize our troops are screwed if they're ever attacked by zombie chicks!" We are, of course, terribly embarrassed. We'll make it right with the owner. But the manufacturer, they'll still be receiving heaps of scorn from us.
03-14-2005: I go out to Dammasch to review the matte painting so far. It looks really good! Some of the normal inconsistencies in the wall, and discontinuities, have been changed into roads and other things that make sense in the painting. Sorta' like hiding it in plain sight. We shoot a few minutes of video and it all looks really good. It would look much better if I'd had the dolly and a helper, but it still looks pretty damn cool. On the way back, I stop off and buy a 250G hard drive -- we're running out of space on the Production machine.
03-13-2005: We have a "motion audition" today for the wall-climbing scene. We need people who can look as if they're climbing a wall. Lots of people show up, which is a good thing. Most everybody figures out the best way to do it pretty quickly, and I get it all on tape, so I can go over it in my leisure.
03-12-2005: Production meeting today. Not our normal time for a production meeting, but it seems to work out okay. I just wanted to walk through the upcoming shots in case we were missing anything. A few holes, but nothing that isn't fairly easy to take care of.
03-11-2005: Drew the storyboards for the Teaser #2 and uploaded those to the Development site. Mapping out where everybody will be walking helped a lot. I'm still not entirely sure we're going to be able to find the lookalikes we need, but I guess we'll just work with what we can work with. Some of the angles, I think, are going to be a bit of a problem, because the fairgrounds are not entirely free of promotional junk. And the folks walking point are gonna always drive me nuts -- how they bite it..
03-09-2005: Drew the storyboards for the wall-climbing scene and uploaded those to the development site. Lots of discussion been going on about how to shoot this, but once I drew it all out, the things we needed to do looked a lot simpler than when I was just trying to describe it with my hands waving around. Actually, it looks pretty cool.
03-08-2005: We discuss meathooks. I love this production.
02-28-2005: Today, I receive e-mail from several distributors all wanting to watch a screener of Flesh of my Flesh when it's done. How neat! We receive a nice writeup on Fangoria's website, too, as well as Unfilmable.com.
It's long overdue, but I finally start sifting through stills and prepare a Picture Gallery for the website. The pictures look pretty good!
I receive e-mail from my buddy in Tillamook. It turns out that the exact weekend we're shooting, our potential location is hosting a big shin-dig of some sorts. Ah well. On the plus side, this is not going to be some impossible kind of location to find, so I have confidence we'll do okay.
02-27-2005: I go to Tillamook to check out a possible location for the redneck killer kaddy scene. Looks great! Late this evening, I send out a press release about wrapping Principal Photography. That felt great. I'm kinda' bummed that I haven't sent out a press release for the two zombies that became engaged during one of our shoots. Next press release, 'cause that's just too cool.
02-23-2005: Leopoldo and I meet for a few hours this evening to go over future scheduling of second-unit stuff. The shoots are going to be a little more leisurely, thank goodness.
02-22-2005: Sean and I head back out to Dammasch for a final cleaning. We pull half a dozen large garbage bags of stuff, as well as a few loose things left behind.
02-21-2005: I sleep in, as do many members of our crew, I expect.
02-20-2005: Our last day of principal photography. We didn't know about the change in call time until late last night (early this morning), so only about half our extras (I guess) came in around noon and the other half came in earlier, around 9. For the very first time, our extras were ready to shoot before we were ready to shoot them! Ryan shot a lot of pickups while we were waiting for the rest of our team to assemble, and by this time, manipulating the video bank has become a lot easier (although the remotes still interfere with each other). We shoot a few pickup scenes while the art department continues scoring the wallboard. Finally, things are ready.
We gore up zombies and stick 'em behind the wall. We doublecheck everything -- we won't be able to do this again. There are three cameras set up to catch the action, one mounted high, seeing the whole laboratory, another mounted in a high corner, and another handheld by Ryan, following close to the actors, with the wide-angle lens, so we don't miss anything in the background.
We make extra sure of the cues -- there will be an "action" and then there will be a "wall" command. We definitely don't want our wall gag happening while the actors are still doing their thing. We run through the scene a couple of times, carefully, and then, once we think we have it, it's go-time. Actors enter the room, exchange a few whispered words of dialogue, and then the wall command is sent.
It's absolutely gorgeous. If I didn't know any better, I would have completely freaked at the attack. In fact, I completely freak at the attack already, even though I know it's coming. Our zombies are excellent and our cast perfect and the mad scramble goes like clockwork.
The next scene is also tricky, and the last scene of principal photography. Our heroes rush into a hallway and run past the camera, and all the doors in the hallway disgorge zombies, obviously filling the hall with a horde of screaming mad flesh-eaters. Now, ordinarily, Ryan's been performing serious miracles on this production by lighting with basically, three lights, but in this case, we need a light shooting out of every door in the hallway (six), plus a light on the dolly, because this is a dolly shot. Complicating our lives further, the monitor bank is visible from the hallway shot during the dolly, so we can't use the power from that. So, basically, this is the most power-hungry shot of the movie. We have to use all three generators, and we have to disconnect power from Craft Services (I always hate doing that). Still, it's not quite enough. We kick on all the lights to check, they stay on for a minute or so, and then two of the generators flip a breaker. The third one doesn't, which is good. The third one is a small one that we're using to power the video bank. That thing is such a pain in the ass to set up that we felt it needed its own power supply.
We try again, and again, once we kick on the lights on the dolly, we get about two minutes and then the breakers flip.
Fine, we'll shoot it in two minutes.
We get our loads of zombies set up behind each door. We arrange running cues for them. We set up our actors. Lights! Action! Our actors run out of the room, just as the zombies start pouring into the back hall. The dolly jerks backwards a little too quickly and the restraints (read "duct tape") holding the lights and other gear on the dolly give way. Furthermore, Ryan loses his balance, too. Everything tumbles forward, nearly off the dolly. Our actors manage to pick past the debris, but now we have a horde of screaming zombies running at us. And our gear. Just hanging there in space. There is much screaming and gesticulating and we manage to stop them from trampling the gear.
Then the breakers flip and we are plunged into darkness.
Reset!
We get everybody back into position. The gear is strapped down more securely, Ryan's been bolted to the dolly, and Sean's been given a sedative so that he won't pull the dolly so quick. Everybody ready? We hit the lights and call out action. Our actors leap into the hall, just as zombies start filling the distant hallway. The screaming grows louder... Heather Rose suddenly stumbles and falls. Zombies are now filling the hall, screaming and getting closer. We try to stop them, but they can't see us with that DP light shining into their faces and they can't hear us over the crowd roar. Suddenly, one of the lead zombies, played by Andrew Migliore, dashes out of the final room ahead of everybody else, scoops up Heather Rose, and pulls her out of the rough and tumble of screaming zombies. Finally, people start hearing our screams of "Cut! Stop! Cut!" and they slow down, but by this time, we've already had a dozen or so people run by. Wow -- that was close!
Then the breakers flip and we are plunged into darkness.
Reset!
Same as before, but we instruct the floor to keep a better grip on Heather Rose's shoes. Darn floor. We kick the lights and call Action! Actors tumble into the hallway. Zombies flood in, actors take off and zombies flood after them. It looks good! They all go by, finally followed by the tail group -- our own crew, who were just filling up the way-way back. No makeup on these guys -- they were just meant to be bodies, silhouettes.
The breakers flip and the only light is from my little handheld monitor.
As people start walking back up the hall, we review the footage right there (thank goodness for digital video!). It does look great, except we suddenly notice how many people are smiling and laughing and grinning as they run. Brett and Sean both spot it even before I do. For a brief second, I wonder if this ought to be just fine, if we ought to run with it, and then Sean mentions "We won't be able to recreate this shot, you know.". He's right, of course.
Reset!
Ron and I go to each doorway, alternating, telling people that we need to see hungry snarls, mean looks, grimaces, and all sorts of nastiness. This time it'll work. This time it'll be perfect.
This time it is.
And the generator breakers still flip, plunging us into darkness. After we get the shot. At 9:20pm.
It takes us nearly two hours to clear out of there. Lots and lots of loading stuff, breaking things down, pulling cables and wires, but we do it all, basically, in one load. Then the remaining crew and cast, about thirteen people, all gather for a late dinner at a nearby Denny's.
02-19-2005: I arrive home after the Friday shoot and immediately start burning DVDs. I transfer about half the DVD data to my home computer from my production computer, so I can be burning double-barreled. For the next six hours, I burn DVDs, only dozing fitfully between burns, as well as prestriping all the remaining video tape. At 8am, Ryan comes in to find me doing this. "All done?" he asks. "Nope -- two more DVDs to burn," I reply. Another hour or two delay. He heads out to start prepping to shoot. The last burn (darn it -- why is it always the last burns?) fails, killing another hour. Finally, I have video for all twelve of our monitor banks.
On my way to the set, I stop and buy two more TVs. Seems our monitor bank is short two units. Fortunately, we have sufficient DVD players, so after a quick stop at the store, I deliver a couple more TVs to the set and check things out. Holy smackaroo! The main refinery lab looks completely and 100% awesome. Every angle is an angle we can shoot, including the ceiling and the floors (where we don't see cables). The set is dressed, stuff's on tables and chairs and shelves and there are instruments and glassware and all sorts of marvelous and wonderful things. Katherine's computer is ready to use, and is fully functional. Other computers in the room, too. And the monitor bank? Oh, the monitor bank is a thing of beauty. Our art department eventually decided that the shelves there were woefully inadequate, and they scavenged out some heavy-duty metal shelving from the facility that was exactly the right color. It took me a second to realize this -- it was that good a match. The bank is a thing of beauty. Behind the wall is a support structure of labeled DVD players and remotes, everything organized like a crazy-ass clockwork monstrosity that works very nearly perfectly (one confounding factor -- remote controls controlling other units). I wander the lab in awe.
After a bit more testing and fiddling with things, we start shooting around noon. We shoot and we shoot and we shoot. We have to basically cover eighteen pages of script in one day, so we knew going in that this would be late. Really late. Really, really late.
Around 4:30 am, our generators stop working. That takes about 45 minutes to troubleshoot, and then we literally spring back into life and continue shooting. Our actors are all getting rummy and they look absolutely beat, but for each scene, they jump right back in and we keep shooting as fast as we can burn video. Most of our crew is asleep, exhausted, in various rooms nearby. Somehow, calling out "Quiet on the set, please!" seems redundant -- plus I don't want to wake people up!
At 6am, we shoot the last scene of the day. The only thing remaining to shoot that requires our actors is the massively destructive scene tomorrow. We all race like bunnies to our respective cubbys to get some well-deserved rest. I'm just really glad I'm not coming home tonight to face another project that must be completed before we start shooting the next day!
02-18-2005: Today, we shot Herbert's lab. This room was small and inoffensive when we got there. We brought in an old altar from the basement, brought in shelves, brought in books, brought in glassware and posters and cloth and all sorts of dressing and now. Now. Wow, it's a creepy-ass room. And it's one of the few rooms nearby that is still fully lockable. Herbert West needs a laboratory, a room in which he can be himself, and that room requires a lock. The reason he requires a lock is because of certain... experiments.
Our art department never ceases to amaze me. There's a character in this scene, Fred, and once we started planning on making this movie ourselves, I was convinced Fred would be the most difficult effect in the movie (blowing up a helicopter, apparently, is no problem). Ryan, on the other hand, believed this would be one of the most simple effects in the movie. This is where twenty years of experience definitely helps! It takes us three or four hours to get Fred all situated, to get the effect set up perfectly, to run the strings and the mirrors and position the framework and all the rest of the things in the room. As we near the end of setup, people start peeking in. From nearly every angle of the room, the effect looks hokey as hell and most folks just sort of nod and look puzzled. Then comes the best part -- we tell them "No, no, no -- look through the monitor!" and the moment they do, each and every person gets a look. I know that look by now. That look is "I see this with my own eyes, I know how you're doing this and yet, I am still completely freaked by what I am seeing on the screen. Oh. My. God." I have grown to enjoy that look. Ryan has made a huge believer of me in practical special effects.
Our actors are all excellent, of course, and they sell the living hell out of this scene. We shoot until a bit late, another 3am run, but it's complicated because of the effect -- we can't just shoot Norwescon-style, in order.
After shooting, I rush home, because I am still not done making videos for the monitor bank...
02-17-2005: I think it's hilarious that we seem to be shooting death scenes before any of the rest of the scenes. It's as if we're determined to do everything backwards. Actually, everything makes sense, when you keep in mind that a lot of our schedule is shot based on "Well, that's when we finally found a location." This was one of those situations.
Herbert's death scene required a very specific sort of setup and we've been looking around for such a place for a while. I spotted a very good candidate alley one evening after a meeting at Sam's. Sean checked it out and figured it was too wide, but I went back anyway to look. Yes, it was a bit wide and it was a bit muddy and there was some debris, but there were, in fact, some doors along one side and, well, it might actually work!
Sean talked with the folks who owned the doors and actually got us in there. They had some specific requirements, though. The doors, it turned out, were connected to a security system that kicked on at 8:30pm. So, although we had to have a zombie spring out of that door, we had to shoot all of that before 8:30. Okee-dokee.
Our first minor glitch of the evening is directional. One of our actors went out to Dammasch instead of at this location in Milwaukie. So, once we found out where he was, it was another forty-five minutes before he was present and in costume.
Ron chastises me for not cleaning the alley well enough. He told me earlier to sweep it, and I did, but I had misunderstood him, and had swept using a broom, instead of what he meant. It would have been funnier, but we were really pressed for time. At about 7:00pm or so, we start shooting. There are long shots of our characters running past rail cars and we have to get those first because once we hit the door, Herbert will be really severely messed up. We shoot like lightning.
At basically 7:29pm, we shoot the last open-door shot. Everybody suddenly relaxes. The Mission-Impossible part of the evening is over.
The rest of the evening goes fairly straightforward, with lots of shots and lots of zombies doing their thing.
The second minor glitch was Ron seeing where I was planning on having our zombies drop and fall. He points out (quite rightly) that there's all kinds of glass and sharp shit there, so we all spend a few minutes scouring the ground and throwing the glass into the corners. We plan a sequence of events that will have zombies fall into a prespecified landing zone, then be moved to a different "hang-out" zone, so that new zombies can drop safely. It works! The funniest part was that I lost track while we were shooting of how many zombies we shot, and so I called a couple of times for the next batch after we had already shot the last batch. Well, what can I say -- it's fun to shoot zombies!
Our third minor glitch this evening was one of the managers discovering us there and starting some static. It turns out that he was one of the middle guys between the three fellows we already talked to, but because he'd been out of town, he hadn't gotten the message about the shoot. So he shows up and we've basically set up a tent city in his parking lot. It took a while, but eventually, Leopoldo got everything all smoothed over. According to one of our contacts, he was joking about it the next day, so I guess that was all slick.
Our fourth minor glitch was the rail car. They had dropped a railcar in exactly the right spot -- blocking the view of passing traffic -- but it was a railcar with a compressor onboard, running something. So, it was very noisy. We basically decided at that point that sound was just going to be trouble anyway. At least we were far enough away from the rail car that we might have cleanish dialogue. Still, a constantly thorny problem.
Once again, our props department came through like gangbusters with Herbert's insides, and our zombies behaved in an appallingly good zombie fashion. Very nice! Our "feeding" scene was very different than the one at Bruce's Lair. This one was much more rough and violent. I liked it! We wrapped by midnight, cleaned up neat as a pin, and headed home!
Once I arrived home, I started building the first of our monitor feed DVDs. Ugh. At least now all the mpeg feeds are done. I'm concerned that some of the DVDs will have to be split into multiple discs. That would be funny! Well, funny in a pain-in-the-ass sort of way.
02-16-2005: Our shoot this evening is one of the best shoots yet. In this scene, a bunch of zombies chase our heroes into a long-abandoned meeting room. However, the meeting room we use is, in fact, a formal corporate board room. We must flood this room with zombies, and yet still leave it cleaner than when we arrived!
We arrive spot on time and start getting ready. The room in which we were planning to stage is occupied by a class and we're missing a few set dressing pieces, so we're a little behind, but Leopoldo uses this time to brief our zombies on how they'll do what they'll do. I dash out and pick up a few set dressing pieces and some black cloth. When I come back, the class is still doing its thing and we start prepping the room.
Eventually, the class leaves and we start prepping our zombies. We still don't have all our principal actors here, but we had planned on doing them afterwards, anyway. The zombies are ready lickety-split (wow!) and we shoot a bunch of rushing-in scenes and a bunch of face-against-the-glass scenes and the final "fishbowl sequence". Then everybody hustles off to get cleaned up just as we have all our actors.
After a quick yet thorough cleanup job, the room is ready again and we shoot our actor scenes in it. As earlier, it all goes very efficiently and quick. Once we start shooting those scenes, I instruct craft services and our support crew to start pulling out of the back room. I would like to spend as little time as possible keeping our host up. We're all nervous as heck because this is such a fancy place.
Shooting is done in two shakes of a lamb's tail. We catch an exterior shot, a glue scene, and then we are done. We even take away our garbage. We've cleaned surfaces in that room (and the staging room) that hadn't been cleaned in a long time. It really is cleaner than when we left it.
The funny thing about this location is that we originally had a different location for this shot, but we lost it. It turned into one of our most difficult locations to nail down, too, because (I think) most movie-making ventures are known for thrashing the places where they shoot and leaving a mess and a shambles. So, when we told people this is what we wanted to do, I think most folks just thought "Oh, that's gonna be really disruptive and really a mess." and they wouldn't give us the time of day. But the location we ended up using turned out to be better than the previous location, and even better than I had originally hoped for. It was just really, really good.
And after a brief burger break at Dots, I go home and continue editing video for those monitor feeds until 4:40 am.
02-15-2005: We get a call at the last minute and in ten minutes we are at a potential location for scene #124. It's pretty darn good. We decide to go ahead and film the scene there, but plan to add quite a few caveats. It's a very nice conference room, perfect for the scene, but we must make absolutely certain to keep it as neat and clean as possible. We should have no trouble doing that, of course.
Our first shoot after the hiatus and the first step of the last six days of principal photography. Woo-hoo! I bring the generators by earlier in the day so that folks can get them placed and running, get lines drawn out, et cetera. It seems to be pretty effective. Ryan and I show up before sunset -- he wants to film a sunset against the "refinery". While he's doing that, I run out and get the crew some kibble, and then we get started on the morgue shot. The morgue shot is actually a very small scene -- only a few seconds long -- that'll happen right at the tail end of the title sequence. The thing I realize just about at the last minute is that typical corpse-wear is, well, a toe tag. So, we have to find someone who is willing to climb into a morgue drawer in very little clothing, and leap out and grab a morgue attendant. In the 9th inning, we get a volunteer, who scorns us for our "west coast body modesty crap", and climbs into that drawer. Sure enough, she makes a great zombie, lunging out and grabbing our actor in a delightfully convincing way. The funniest part of the scene was, after a nearly perfect take, the DP says "Whoops -- we see her pants. Right there. See?". So, then we do the scene again without pants.
We have to cool our jets for an hour or so because we don't have the remaining actors until 10pm. So, we prep the shot, get the fog machine ready to go (it's fun!), eat some warm soup and sandwiches, and just generally relax a bit. But once our actors arrive, it's back in business! We throw 'em in costume and hustle down to the location in the sub-basement. Turns out we don't have quite enough debris to satisfy that darn director, but with a bit of ingenuity, we manage to locate several large boxes full of concrete rubble. So, we bury our actors in concrete rubble, dirty 'em up, streak bits of blood and stuff on 'em, and start shooting. It's a very creepy scene and as we progress, I realize that the less said, the better (everybody learns in this project -- especially the darn writer!), so we slash most of the lines from that scene and they improv some decent stuff that hits all the basic requirements of the scene. Yay! The results are great.
02-14-2005: Happy Valentine's Day. Romance and movie making seem incompatible, somehow. I spend the day building more MPEG streams and getting ready for the shoot tomorrow. We still don't have a location for scene #124 (the "fishbowl" scene). This is getting ugly. I draw up a Secret Plan C, which means that we just film our actors kicking open a door and running away into the night. Who would have thought these things could have such easy solutions?)
02-13-2005: Finished digitizing all the footage for the security camera feeds. A couple of sequences require some editing, so I have to go in and add gunshots. Tedious, but after a couple of hours, I think I finally got the hang of it. At least I think I do. I start building MPEG streams for the DVDs and start collecting TVs and DVD players. Oh, this is not going to be a pretty job...
02-12-2005: Still digitizing video. Most of it is pulled and digitized.
02-11-2005: After a short break, we have a Production Meeting. This is the last Production Meeting before the big push of Principal Photography. We go over every single scene. Do we have everything we need, do we have all the cast and crew lined up, schedules clean and clear? It's intense and complicated, but it looks like we have everything we need to do this. Except for the location of scene #124. Conference rooms just seem to keep not happening on us. And Fred's gag is going to be tricky.
02-10-2005: Started digitizing video, looking for security camera feeds.
02-09-2005: Ah, the Fred puppet's not going to work... There is a significant number of us that aren't happy about this right now, for a variety of reasons.
02-01-2005: A short shoot this evening. We're trying to grab a scene of our commandoes running from a building. Then another scene of them running down the street, followed by a dolly-in on Matthew's face (we tried grabbing that a few shoots back, but it was raining so much you could just see water spattering off his face and head). We do okay on the first bit, and are just about to set up the next one when someone comes by to bug us. Seems that the fella who said we could shoot there didn't really have the power to do so. Leopoldo smoothes over the fellow's ruffled feathers, but we shoot like speed-demons, anticipating the cops showing up any minute.
One moment of weird panic -- we take a shot of our commandoes running at full tilt carrying their weapons, and just as they stop and hunker down at the end of the run, two cop cars go by. I think it would have been very awkward had our local costabulatory spotted these black paramilitary types running with what appeared to be assault rifles, shotguns, etc. Oh dear.
01-31-2005: Well, it was supposed to be a short shoot. We do the catwalk scene today. On the plus side, we find a great catwalk, with two good bends and a long, straight run. So, storywise, this can work. However, it presents a number of technical difficulties. First of all, we can only enter through one side, so all gear must be brought in from one side. That side, alas, is on the other end of the complex, so all gear must be removed and brought to a higher parking lot. For the camera and lighting gear, that works out okay because it's not super-far, but craft services is really far away and that means when we need extras, they have a hike.
We end up with about 25 extras, which is good, and we start shooting. After the first pass of scenes, as we're getting ready for the next one, we realize that the night's getting cold fast and we re-organize our shooting schedule to let us take advantage of our extras while they're still willing to be around. This also helps us move through a bunch of actors quickly, although three of them, Shannon, Bill, and Matthew, are willing to stay through to the grueling end. The re-org means that our setups are crazier and we end up dancing the camera all over the courtyard. But, at the end of the evening, we have some kick-ass footage. We have TWO 100-foot dolly shots that look smooth as silk, as well as long shots showing this huge catwalk and our commandoes up there, shooting at zombies. Way cool!
01-30-2005: Yesterday, we shot one of the "doors". Today we shoot the other two. A lot of the same basic shots, and it goes by pretty quickly. We finish filming around 8:30pm, which is just astonishing for this project! The dialogue in one of the scenes, however, is truly diabolical because we're in the bottom of a stairwell and everything echoes. It's terrifying! Sound effects -- wow! Voices -- crap! Well, they might come out okay, or I might have to loop 'em.
We were greeted this morning by the cops, who are just making sure there's no repeat of last night's "festivities". Everyone's cool, though.
We're running into some scheduling conflicts. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be so bad, but we're really trying to get our footage shot here while the location still exists and it's proving... difficult. One of the complicating factors, of course, is yesterday's revelation that the facility is so insecure! We just can't afford to leave anything of value there at all. This is going to make the refinery lab scenes really tricky. Although we've found a good location, our lives would be tremendously easier if we could keep the set dressed and locked up. Alas.
01-29-2005: We shoot back in the hospital. This is a series of connecting scenes. During a pivotal moment in the film, we switch among three different doors as different characters encounter different difficulties at the same time. Today was the hardest one. We had a door gag, plus a choreographed battle, plus a lot of dialogue, plus a wondrous neck-stump appliance that Terry made that squirted blood as high as the ceiling, plus a slashed neck appliance, plus some damn fine acting by everyone and a crew that is clicking like gangbusters. The shoot goes really late, though. We had a 9am call time and I think we finished up shooting about 11:30pm. Sheesh! And did I mention hordes of zombies running around? Nope, but there was a horde.
A peculiar thing happened this evening. Apparently sometime during the night, a group of about thirty high school kids broke in and started running amok. I guess they ran across a few of our zombies, though, and got a bit freaked out (hey, ragged, torn clothing on a heavily scarred and gore-splattered face never looked so good!) and called the cops. The best part was that we were there legally and they weren't. So, we had a nice chat with the cops, who collected the rest of the wayward beasts, and sent them all to a home to New Brunswick, where they were worked to death making White Castle hamburgers. At least, that's my fantasy and I'm sticking to it!
01-28-2005: Another outdoor shoot this evening. Fortunately, it's short because the rain starts coming down like weeping monkeys, I tell ya! We pick up an outside establishing shot, and then we pick up a rebar gag that we just couldn't nab the first time in.
After the shoot, Ryan and I go and check out another location for a quick shot of our commandoes running away from a building. Looks like we'll hardly have to light it!
01-27-2005: We have a short shoot this evening, just shooting a couple of pickup scenes in our garage of Bruce crawling through an air duct. It works pretty well!
This morning, we explored more thoroughly the location we've been using. After an hour or two wandering around and discussing plot points, we found several locations that we can use, provided they are sufficiently cleaned up and such things as false walls are built in. But these are key locations: a catwalk for an attack, a main lab for most of the talky-talk scenes, Herbert West's laboratory. All key things!
01-26-2005: Production Meeting this evening. Very productive, as a matter of fact. We go over the next few days of shooting. The biggest hurdle still is the lack of locations. Ryan and Sean and I plan to hit our Barbie Dream-Location tomorrow, with the intent of locking down each and every missing location. Keep yer fingers crossed! We also walked through a couple of the physical effects, as the door gags this weekend will be rife with special practical effects. Oh dear, yes...
01-25-2005: We shoot Scene #30, which is the first scene in which our CDC people encounter our Special Forces crew. Fascinating! The scene is five pages long, all dialogue while our characters are welding a door and rushing to another door and going through it and welding it as well. The funny part is that we locate a good pair of doors and a neat connecting hallways and a really cool industrial-looking secondary room in just a matter of minutes once we arrive. The real bitch was getting all of this lit. Well, not really that much of a bitch on the lighting. Sure, it had some issues. But we had complications. One of the props was a functioning arc welder, which actually draws 20 amps while working. Whoops -- can't be sharing the lights on that line. Another complication was that we had another crew working on some other doors for a later gag, and they were also drawing some serious current to do so. That was a problem, too, as we were kinda' running out of generators for some things.
The scene itself actually ran really quickly. We shot five pages (including resetting the lighting) in about two and a half hours. Like lightning! It was fast and we moved with the crowd. We shot our masters and then shot our pickups, as well as a couple of two-shot reaction sequences. Really, really fast.
01-24-2005: We're very naughty. We do another guerrilla shoot this evening, lost in the dark and mysterious depths of an Undisclosed Location. You would think the sound of a loud generator would be, like, a problem, but nope. In fact, the only thing we thought might be an issue is that a neighbor seems to occasionally use that space to park their own vehicles (which of course, is as much trespassing as what we're doing), so we figured that at the very least, it would be a balance of terror. It turns out, however, that upon arriving, no one is around. Not a single car passed by our location all evening.
We plot out a fairly complicated dolly shot that includes two different cars and lots of action. The dolly jiggles a bit on the rough asphalt, but really, once we toss two bodies on it, plus the gear, everything weighs just about right. One of the wheels seems to be a recalcitrant little bugger, and Travis magically produces an air pump. We get our action shots and they look beautiful. We do another trick after this is done -- shooting distant zombies rushing up after our heroes, using shadow tricks on a high wall and a reverse angle with legs passing in front of the camera. Really effective (in a small dose) and really creepy!
01-23-2005: We shot at two different locations this evening. Very fast. Some of the setups were new and it took a while for all the makeup to finish up, but after that we moved fairly quickly. Ah, fight scenes. Always fun! After that, we all bundled up and headed south to our new "Barbie Dream-Location", and shot some more interior shots, and an exterior shot. The generators are working nicely and we seem to be pretty good at setting it up by now and running lines throughout the facility to not only power locations, but also act as guides. Guides are nice. Ryan did a really neat job setting up dawn-light coming through a window and in a matter of fifteen minutes and about a third of a roll of paper towels, we had that window as clean-as-new. The effect really was quite beautiful.
01-22-2005: Second shoot at the new location. Yep, it's ass-crackin' cold here. Giant zombie-war fight scenes. Well, as giant 23 extras can be in this massive place. We do a lot of clever camera tricks. Maybe it'll work. The rushes look terrific and we can probably keep this sequence hurtling along right sprightly with the proper editing. Scootching the generators around is interesting -- no matter where we're shooting, we can hear the blat of the engine. Ah well. Two people have some trouble with the cold, as they're sitting and lying on the ground for a while. That's not so good and we try to get them warmed up as much as possible. Right before we start shooting, Sam and Terry show up and we walk through the next several location sections of this facility, so that they know how to dress it. They sure seem to like it, thinking it's a cool beans sorta' place.
01-21-2005: A really long bit of shooting this evening. But we got lots done. We're almost certainly past the half-way mark in page count. One of the scenes we shot this evening was particularly creepy. Normally, kids aren't that creepy, but our actress here...? Creepy! Our first shooting day at the new location. Wow -- this place is neat! And wow -- this place is physically challenging! All concrete and metal, deep beneath the earth. Nothing in here that is warm or soft, alas, which is going to make for very uncomfortable cast and crew unless we can think of something.
01-20-2005: Nabbed the movie's first scene. Looks nice. Did a little more scouting, looked for monitors at a local shop, and then came back home. Car's still in the shop, but this is a good thing because we're renting a big van. We dropped into a new location to check it out, and now we have the keys and everything. Very cool. This opens up a lot of new situations for us. Later this evening, Ryan and Terry and Brett grab a 2nd unit shot while Leopoldo and I work out some scheduling glitches.
01-19-2005: Production meeting this evening. Very interesting. Tension had been running a bit higher than I would have liked, so lots of stuff was brought out. I guess we'll be trying for more production meetings in the future to keep things in the open. Too annoying to try and play catch-up with rumor anyway.
01-18-2005: Did another really great shoot this evening. Some scenes from very near the end of the movie, the armory scene, and the scenes right before and right after it. Everything went really well and we got lots of footage, plus Ryan ran around and shot lots of other stuff, including video feed footage. Neat!
01-17-2005: Scouted a location for our opening scene. Looks nice! It'll be a bit of a technical trick, but we ought to be okay with it. Scouted a few industrial locations in the NW area of Portland, too. After that, we jet back to yesterday's location to clean the living hell out of it. I spend most of the night scrubbing stains out of carpet (mental note: from now on, only bring in folks with opposable thumbs) and then helped load the car and mop bits of the floor that hadn't quite gotten cleaned. That whole damn stage and throne fit into the rental truck! Yay! Then a short dinner break (all you can eat tacos!) and we headed for home, whereupon we unloaded everything into the garage. Hm, I wonder how long I can keep this surprisingly handy vehicle...? I've rented a 15-person passenger van to replace our vehicle while it's in the shop getting its something somethinged. We don't know yet. All we know is that like Green Kryptonite, Subaru Legacy Wagons evidently have an Achilles' Heel when you bump the front wheel against a curb. Yikes!
01-16-2005: We shoot the second half of Iron John's Lair this evening. It was really interesting -- a lot more extras came by and were ready to shoot and things went much more flawlessly. As soon as we had a handful of zombies, we started shooting pickups of Jeff's entering-the-lair scene from yesterday. At the very first shot, I realized that this was becoming much darker. Although there are comedic moments (especially the kids-playing-with-a-gun scene, which should earn at least an "R" rating, if not "X" for violence), this is unrolling into a much more violent and darker bit of scene than yesterday. I like it.
One of the first things we did this morning is plan to shoot the entire batch of remaining scenes in sequence. However, we found out that Heather Rose had previous plans (which is fine -- we hadn't originally scheduled her for today anyway, so her appearance was already a gift), so we did a bit of re-organizing. Our host, who was incredibly gracious, still had an early time limit on our presence there, although he was willing to let us clear up everything except Iron John's throne (which is quite huge). So suddenly we had not only a slightly altered schedule, but a much tighter one. Ryan's estimates of how long these things would take to shoot were pretty good, plus we saved a huge amount of time during one scene when our actors just acted their way right through it to the end. Might have been about 45 minutes, but we flashed through it in about 9 minutes. Yay! At the end of the day, we had run about an hour over our time limit, but not only did we catch up on everything we missed the day before, but we also shot everything we planned to shoot that day, plus we shot some extra stuff in the air ducts. Wow!
On a final note, I happened to say "What we need is someone who is really crafty and clever and fast. Someone who spends more time at Home Depot than Winco." right next to the right group of guys. These guys take a minimal description from me of what we're looking for. I tell them we need the head in, like, forty-five minutes. They hustle out and I swear, forty-five minutes on the dot later, they show up with these flesh-colored wide wax cups, each filled with our prepared goop in the consistency of brains. I check over a few test-fragments and they look like they shatter quite nicely, including leaving non-sharp remnants. Also, we discover that the head we used in Bruce's lair, when its hair is removed, happens to be vaguely shaped like Iron John's head. Both objects are about the right color. We decide to-hell-with-it and shoot like mad. When it comes time to whip the head down, Bruce does all of this perfectly, and the wax cup shatters in an absolutely beautiful display of bone-like fragments, and thick splattery goo. Later in the evening, our set EMT comes up and looks over our mess (we hadn't quite gotten around to cleaning that up yet). He nods and tells us "The funny thing is, it really does look like that. On one hand, lucky us to get so realistic! On the other hand, yikes to imagine how well by now he would know what it really looks like when someone's kersplat on concrete.
01-15-2005: Today. Oh dear. Evidently, someone ordered an ice storm without informing us. So, a huge percentage of our zombies are iced in. A huge percentage of our crew is iced in. Yikes! Then, once most of us arrive and are not quite in the building yet, I decide to go out and pick up our makeup chief at a Max station. Alas, only blocks away, I slide on a patch of ice and damage my car such that it will not run! I walk down to pick up the makeup folks, then trudge back to my car to discover that, yeah, it's disabled. Our car requires a flatbed to tow, so it looks like a four-plus hour wait. A group of folks volunteer to come out and pick us up, leaving a Hearty Volunteer to hang out by the car and wait until it's towed, but just as they arrive, the tow truck arrives. So five of us bundle into the car, drive into SE Portland to pick up buckets of gore and bottles of blood, then head to the set.
We are, however, due to these and other factors, hours behind, plus instead of the 70 zombies we were hoping for, we ended up with just about 30. We do the best we can, we shoot like crazy, and we get only about half of what we wanted to get that day. Two of our principles who did brave the ice storm to be there, ended up not filming after all, because around 8pm or so, we heard that the roads were closing down again because of the freezing rain. We manage to hitch a ride home. Ugh.
Our lives are further complicated. It turns out that our head models for the splattering are hosed. Currently, we have nothing, and this is a problem, because that's a huge chunk of our plot. Double ugh.
01-14-2005: I spend most of my day editing video. I want to put together a sample reel for the folks this Saturday, showing off some of the things we've been doing. This takes way longer than I expected and I'm up until, oh, about 4:30am before I have a DVD I can play.
01-13-2005: We do a short shoot, our Break Room scene. It's nice to have a non-grueling shoot, although the energy tonight seemed a little slow. I guess sometimes that happens.
01-12-2005: Oh, we do a guerrilla shoot tonight. It's not completely illegal, but still... This evening's shoot, despite the potential for severe problems, goes flawlessly. We managed to get every shot we were looking for, plus a few pickups, plus a few other things. We're in, we shoot (four different setups, plus a complicated practical effect), and we're gone. It was really remarkable.
01-11-2005: Errand day! I'm out getting costumes for Jeff and Iron John, and then we all converge on my house this evening because of a makeup glitch on Bruce. Seems there was some kind of allergic reaction. Not sure what it is, as none of our tests are conclusive, but we decide to keep a keen eye on him in the future. After that, we do a face-cast of Iron John for the exploding head gag. That goes on longer than anyone would have liked. I think by the time Erik took off, it was about 3am. I take a lot of pictures of this.
01-09-2005: Spent much of the day cleaning up the garage after shooting last night's scenes. It's very relaxing. Only a little stressful when I find a costume balled up in a corner. Oh, we need someone to babysit clothes, yes we do...
01-08-2005: Electronics Workshop shoot tonight. We convert our garage into an electronics workshop through the creative use of shelving, burlap, and drywall. Surprisingly, although it looks hokey to the eye, the camera reads it very nicely. While we're doing that, our art department is building a vertical ventilator-grill-on-a-wall set in the other corner of the garage. So, after we finish the Electronics Workshop, we break for dinner while the Art Department builds another totally new wall in the garage to film the grill scene. This is our first two-camera shoot. We hike an infrared camera high on the jib while we shoot low with an XL-1. Everything looks really, really cool.
01-07-2005: Shooting more interior scenes this evening. Katherine's quarters, Lindsey's quarters, and a hallway shot with Tom and Lindsey. It all turns out really good. Many cases of the giggles, which is to be expected. The shots are all looking really nice, though, and I'm happy with our cast and our crew. But still, next time, I think I want to do a comedy. 8)
01-06-2005: This evening, we shoot Bruce's lair. Wow. Our host is a somewhat-hidden-away dance club who has made movies before, and the location is actually very nicely organized -- there's a warm place for all our extras to hang out in and for craft services to set up in, and a transition hall for gear, and then the hall nearest the exit where we're shooting. Sweet! Our zombie makeup in general goes on quickly. Our main closeup zombies take longer (always learning on this "scheduling" thing...), so we pick up a few scenes we've previously missed. This is pretty good and they're pretty funny scenes, too. Our zombies and the crew all function like gangbusters and we get all kinds of shots that we were looking for, plus a lot of really good, dramatic shots that we hadn't planned on getting, but are lent by the location. Looks great! And we actually had a brief Magical Moment. While shooting a brief exterior scene, everybody suddenly stopped and said "Hey! It's snowing!" There was a light dusting of snow coming down. We kept shooting, of course. By the way, teaching a zombie tribe how to fall without hurting themselves is fun! The best part was hearing one guy do it, giggle, and then say "Geez, I could do this all DAY!"
01-05-2005: An exterior shoot. Much nicer, though. The temperatures aren't so cold and there's very little wind (which is fortuitous). Our host allowed us to set up craft services inside, which was really good. We debut "The Cadillac". Wow. When James finished it, he said "Don't stand too close to it or you will get hurt." He was not joking. We had to simulate wind blowing a newspaper this evening and although one would think actual wind would have worked better, one would be wrong (as I was). It worked much better to use black thread to make the paper dance and cavort. We also did our first shoot of the rocket launcher. After a first somewhat abortive firing and lots of laughter, we got an excellent firing. Very tasty! We have a few electrical issues -- circuit breakers keep flipping, until we discover that the feeders had been plugged into different outlets, but outlets on the same breaker. Once we bounce one feeder to a different breaker, we're in like Flynn and the rest of the shoot goes flawlessly. We do a lot of dolly shots this evening, including a particularly tricky shot of follow-the-newspaper, and the dolly and jib combination once again prove to be an unbeatable combination! Thank you, Mad Martian! Thank you Mark Vetanen!
01-04-2005: No shooting today. Ryan and Jonathan and I scout a few locations and prepare for the next batch of shooting. We also pick up some different hardware for the dolly. Although the stuff we originally used works out, it turns out to be a pain in the tuckus to assemble in adverse conditions. Now, we're just using ordinary hex nuts and washers and wingnuts, which makes the whole job go a lot faster.
01-03-2005: No tent -- must go buy yards and yards of canvas... Our fourth shoot. This is the radio tent scene, which goes over pretty damn well. Our set dressers are not screwing around -- this looks really damn good! We get a 2+ hour later start than I would have liked, however, so it looks like we still have scheduling bugs to work out. The lateness compounds slightly with the fact that we shift locations halfway through. Our overall zombie population is way low, too. So, by the time we arrive, we realize that we can't shoot in the order we had planned (which would get our zombies home soon). Instead, they have to wait while we get all the soldier scenes out of the way. However, the temperature dropped like a lead zeppelin and by the time we had those shots out of the way, we were down to, like, six zombies. Way below critical mass. So, we wrap it and send the rest home. We can catch those remaining scenes another time -- the important thing here was getting the barbed wire fence, the gate, etc. shot. And I must say that this was probably one of the most brutally cold shoots we've done so far. Cold, dry, and windy. And there was no place we could hang out that wasn't exposed to the air. I felt horrible about it, and even though I can see how the various scheduling glitches all combined to make this roll out the crazy way it rolled out, I just feel terrible for everybody there. The cast, the crew, and especially the zombies. The things we managed to do worked, but still, holy smokes, I hope we never have to do a cold shoot like that again!
01-02-2005: Drawing storyboards like a madman for tomorrow's shoot. The schedule has the temperature dropping that night. Grr.... I think we're going to shoot the tent scene in our garage. Our location for Monday seems to keep wavering in a state of indeterminacy.
01-01-2005: Happy New Year!
12-31-2004: Mark and I spend the evening building a passable camera dolly. It seems to work surprisingly smooth.
12-29-2004: I stop in at a nearby place and find out that they have really nice flatbed carts. Not quite wide enough, but I think we can fudge it by adding "wings" of heavy plywood, bolted down. I spend all morning and part of the afternoon trying to find a damn cart and there's been one basically next door all this time. While I'm there, I ask them about filming a scene in their yard, which has a great fence and barbed wire and a tower, plus lots of pallets. They seem okay with it, as long as someone from there is around. Yay!
12-28-2004: Katrina shops for much food for Craft Services. Costco is nice. I pick up two volunteer TVs for the security array. A local nursery offered to lend us a garden cart, but they only had the 24" carts.
12-23-2004: I manage to put together the actor contracts and send most of those out today. Gadzooks, that was a bear! I also finish draft contracts for all the crew, but I want to pass these by my lawyer first. You would think this stuff would be easy, huh? Yeesh! We receive formal confirmation of our location for Iron John's Lair. Yay!
12-22-2004: At this evening's Production Meeting, we go through every day of the upcoming shoot, discuss how to make some of the effects go more quickly and just in general solve a lot of problems. Still, it's gonna be a helluva interesting month...
12-21-2004: Second late night meeting to make the schedule. We finally break off around 11:15pm, but it's done. By golly, we have every scene scheduled for shooting and most if not all of the dependencies accounted for. This feels really, really good. It's a dense schedule. We could probably shoot this whole thing in about 20 days if it weren't for the fact that most folks work full-time jobs and we can only shoot nights and weekends. Well, we learn with each project...
12-20-2004: Leopoldo, Travis and I meet until late, working out a schedule. One of the biggest and most annoying issues is the video bank that is constantly running in the background during the Refinery Lab scenes. We have to shoot a shitload of video to keep this thing fed!
12-19-2004: Much of the day is devoted to a meeting of minds over the makeup process. How are we going to portray our zombies from a distance and how are we going to portray them closeup? By the end of the day, we have some good designs, including one effect that I would have been fooled by even standing right up next to him. If I hadn't actually seen Shashonna put this on, I would have sworn it was real.
12-13-2004: Visited another warehouse. This is a strong candidate for one of the lairs. A nice big open area. Going to visit it again tomorrow and measure it out, then stop by the art department meeting and discuss the possibilities for creating a lair in the space.
12-12-2004: Shoot #3. We have a scheduling glitch first off the bat and have to shift scenes around to avoid losing time. Although time is not normally our friend in this production, its effects are particularly pernicious here because Ryan, our DP, has to catch an afternoon train to Seattle. Well, that should light a fire under our ass!
Things are moving more quickly now, as we learn each other and learn how to work well with each other and trust each other better. Looks like there are a few social bumps, but by and large, people are handling themselves and each other very gracefully, for which I am glad. I mean, we're gonna be hip-deep in gore on occasions, so I want us to be doing so with a grin on our faces.
We actually do four different setups and shoots this morning, which I think is pretty ambitious. So far, we're shooting everything we plan to shoot when we hit the location and considering we're all a little green, this is a good thing indeed!
Our Art Department blew us away with some amazing practical effects, including our first official zombie victim of the movie. We also shot the first scene of the movie (you know those movies that take a long time getting to the gloop? Not us, baby!), and it was an amazing scene. Darn squeaky wheelchair, though. I think it might be about time to pony up for a real dolly. Yikes! We tried a very interesting trick by faking broken glass and I think it turned out really well.
I'm sure this is not the first time we'll hear "Can we get more gore?"
12-11-2004: Our second shoot. We arrive on time and start setting up. Unfortunately, our lights and one of our actors is AWOL for a little less than an hour, which sets us back. But we get back into the swing of things pretty quickly once everyone is present. We deliberately implement the safety-talk before the shoot, which turns out to be a good thing. Lots of expensive toys around these parts!
We first shoot one of Katherine's last scenes, where she's in a helicopter, dropping down onto a roof. We pretty much go through the entire scene, shooting it from three or four different angles, including one angle that would be impossible in a running helicopter because it would be directly in the path of the blades. After we shoot that, we break for dinner, then head out onto the ramp to shoot in the big helicopter.
The S61 is big -- no two ways about it. We fit our cast and a good-sized crew into that thing and were very happy with that, although once in a while people had to shift. We shot our scenes carefully, making sure that those damned animations were visible. That meant we had to shoot it in three different sequences. This wasn't too bad. Then we shifted outside the helicopter and shot the entire scene from a couple of really good angles. A final scene of them running from the helicopter and we were sweet and good for the evening. I think it took us about 45 minutes to clean up, repack all the cars, and make sure that we had left no trace.
When we made it back home, Travis called from the Art Department. They were up all night making corpses for tomorrow's shoot and were stumped at the Blood-Ox monitor. Although we had hoped to borrow such a device, it looked as if they ran around $5000 each and no one was willing to let us borrow one for a shoot (what, and a multimillion dollar helicopter is easier?!). So, once again, we're going to get the maximum mileage out of this borrowed DVD player. I start making an animated readout for a Blood Oximeter. How fascinating! Maybe I even have a talent for this, who knows?
12-10-2004: Built animations. Our stalwart commandoes must observe and respond to animations that they see in the helicopter. So, I decide these must be shown on a DVD. This would have been a short job, except that at 2pm, I get a call that we need all sorts of parts and debris, so I drive all over town in several directions, acquire lots of stuff, and then I'm not able to deliver any of it. Urgh. I finally get home damn near midnight exactly, and continue animating. About 3:30, I'm done. The results are nice, but geez...
12-09-2004: Visited another former mental institution, this time in Wilsonville. Much closer than the helicopter location will be. This place has lots of promise. Many levels and rooms of all sorts of quality, from totally-thrashed to barely-touched. This has lots of potential!
12-08-2004: First production meeting after the shoot. Travis and I duck out early to go check out another location, and old mental institution. It shows a lot of promise. Lots of small rooms that can be modified and look quite trashed, as well as hallways, kitchens, and other debris. Interesting. At the meeting, we go over many issues that came up at the shoot and try to figure out how to do better next time.
12-07-2004: Another site visit to the helicopter location. Took many pictures of the angles I'd like to see.
12-06-2004: Our first shoot... Our first shoot this evening. Our first location turned out to be a huge challenge. Up on a roof was fine, but instead of relative darkness, we were surrounded by light. Light everywhere -- cars and trucks and roads and other buildings. The only way we could get away with this was to shoot either from very high, pointing down, or very low pointing up.
So we did lots of both.
Sound was a huge challenge, too, because there's just so much sound up there. The nearby MAX spur was very convenient for travel, but not for the sound.
Our roof entrance was a much smaller and more dangerous roof exit than I had originally thought of. This one was a bit rickety and had just a ladder. So, rather than having actors carefully pick their way down and then back up, we just cheated the hell out of the camera and had them ducking behind the unit, as if they were going through the open door.
It was cold that night and the rain came and went, but mostly came. Somehow, being high on a roof at night in the wind and the rain makes it cold. I've never understood this one.
Those shots took most of the night.
Then we dropped into the building below and shot there. This was a lot more comfortable! We had people dropping into the room, fighting off zombies, and all sorts of things. Did a trick on a zombie's arm with duct tape that led me to thinking about our creatures. They're not the usual zombie, that's for sure. The more I thought about it, the more I think they're really very different. Which is a good thing.
Shot more interior scenes as the night wore on, with the last scene of our commandoes running out of the building. A swell night and for a first shoot, not bad at all!
12-05-2004: Spent a good part of this morning going over and working up a rudimentary shooting schedule for the next three shoots. Aggressive, but it's just going to have to be that way. Time is our friend only when we're immortal. Otherwise, time is more like a rubber band that's stretched way tight by a person you don't trust very well, while you're holding the other end in your teeth. Spent the evening doing two full-cast script reads. That went well. There were several places in the script where people seemed to consistently stumble, and I think I can probably fix that before we hit those scenes. We dressed and paraded our commandoes up, and showed off the teaser trailer and then read through the script. It's funny -- when you read through the script, there's lots of scenes where there's just no dialogue -- and all kinds of things are happening. That reads quickly! Afterwards, we reviewed some footage that Sean brought by of another potential location. Damn spooky, this place, but it looks awfully tempting...
12-04-2004: Scheduling nightmares! Ack! Ah, here's the difference between us and a big-budget movie: we can't compete with paid gigs. Went on a shopping trip today and kitted our three commandoes. Got nearly every piece of clothing for them except a few pieces for one, who we couldn't size. Later this evening, formalized the schedule and plan for Monday's shoot. Uploaded that to the crew site. Included rewriting a couple scenes to work better with the location, but the effect is going to be nice and the dialogue is better for the folks involved.
12-03-2004: More auditions today. By the end of the day, I had been auditioning non-stop for nearly 24 hours, it seemed, with a break for sleeping. However, I've got us a cast. This is really good news! Bruce Ayala, our antihero, will be played by Rex Irae, who bears a stunning resemblance to Heather (our Katherine), has a palpable charisma, and was one of the few auditions who actually freaked me out reading for Bruce.
Herbert West will be played by Ron Richardson, who bears the singular distinction of being the only person who auditioned for Herbert who -- without direction -- read the lines exactly as I heard them in my head. He has an amazing energy about him!
Erick Vaas will be played by Matthew Martin. Matthew exhibited the combination of strength and frailty that I think makes an excellent Erick -- even when he was playing against me as Katherine (I'm no Heather Rose!). Matthew's a local filmmaker and his professionalism at the audition made him a real standout.
I should mention that this pass at auditions was especially tough -- everyone who showed up was really quite skilled and good at what they did. It was exhaustive, but fun. Plus, I now know a lot of Katherine's parts really well.
The Universe is smiling on this production so far -- our cast is simply excellent!
Planning the Monday shoot. Gear is so problematic in this short a time window.
12-02-2004: Looked at a really nice warehouse location this morning. If we can get it sufficiently cleaned up, I'll bet it would make one helluva lair for Iron John! Also spent the rest of the day auditioning people for the three missing roles. Everyone who came by was pretty good, so it's going to be a tough choice, but Between these folks and the folks we see tomorrow, I'll bet we'll have this all snapped up in no time. Which is good because we need to start shooting!
12-01-2004: One of the locations we were hoping to shoot in Monday is probably not going to be ready by Monday. Creativity will be required. Trying to schedule auditions for Erick, Herbert, and Bruce. Tricky business. Looks like I'm going to be busy all day tomorrow with auditions. Finished the database this evening. Finally! Started planning shoots. Still missing key locations, but I think we're going to be able to find something to make that happen. Our Production Meeting this evening was very successful. Showed everybody the teaser trailer (everybody seemed to love it and find it very spooky and scary!) and went through the various locations. Lots of stuff that is almost-in-our-grasp. Still haven't got the Main Lab and that's gonna be a bitch. But we keep begging the Universe...
11-30-2004: A busy day. Secured a location for the zombie fishbowl scene. They have two rooms, each with a key component to the scene. So, we're going to dress each room identically and shoot part of the scene in one room and part of the scene in the other room. After that, a dash to the post office to send the teaser trailer and some other video out to a couple of film festivals (and the soon-to-be-born Horror Channel, so keep your fingers crossed!). After that, a brief meeting with Travis, Leopoldo, and Katrina to go over some basic issues and ferret out the details for Monday's shoot. After that, we sniffed around a local basement. The overall basement wasn't good for our plan (and it looks like someone else is shooting something there, too), but there was a little side room that was actually quite tasty. Left a note for the owner, as he wasn't in this evening. From there, we went and checked out another location, this one a sort of multiple-band practice area. The upper area was pretty interesting as well, and a rooftop ladder led to the roof (which, alas, is now locked). Travis chatted with the owner and we'll get that unlocked and head up there for an eyeful. While there, Travis also had a brainstorm and may have secured a couple of other potential locations. All promising stuff!
11-29-2004: Visited Roslyn and Jason, looked over a couple potential locations. One for the electronics lab and another for the rooftop scene. Some elements of the script would change if we used this rooftop, but it could still work.
11-28-2004: Stopped briefly by the art meeting, dropped off a bunch of terrific toy guns. Man, these look pretty good. I can't wait to see them painted and finished! Scheduled our first shoot for Monday (a week from tomorrow).
11-27-2004: Met with Ryan, going over every scene. A lot of work ahead of us. Tried some camera shots in the dark. While these are supposed to be pretty good at shooting in the dark, we're still having trouble. For the night scenes in particular, we have to figure out a way of lighting-without-lighting. Tricky. Might require more lights than we have.
11-26-2004: Finished the initial teaser-trailer. Nice!
11-22-2004: A production meeting this evening. Went very well. Shashonna worked up our first official zombie makeup and it looked so good that we threw a few lights up and shot a very brief "rushing" scene, to insert into the new teaser. Some really tasty footage! Also, some useful things to learn as we go, such as excited actors don't always hit their marks exactly, nor can they get their heads back in the exact same position. But, then again, our "mark" was a pile of cushions. Sean was our volunteer zombie and he insisted on going out for a night on the town still wearing his makeup. I've asked him to write a brief chronicle of his adventures this evening so I can post them here.
11-23-2004: Went out to look at another possible location, a converted workplace. Alas, the spots in it weren't quite useful enough. Plus, evidently, the owner decided that filmmakers were too dodgy a batch of folks to be tramping around his place. Ah well... More auditions this evening. Herbert is proving to be a most recalcitrant character to cast.
11-22-2004: Out to look at a possible location. Several rooms and a long hallway show promise! Bought a lot of makeup supplies, and 8 "Peacekeeper" 9mm handgun toys. What is this world coming to when a fella can't get a bulk discount on handguns at the toy store?!
11-21-2004: Out to look at a possible location. A fun little rave kinda' place. Might work well as one of the lairs, but there's a lot of equipment we would have to protect. Contacted a few more people to help fill out our cast.
11-20-2004: Ryan agrees to be our Director of Photography. Lucky us!
11-18-2004: I've found two possible Herberts and one possible Erick. It would be nice to arrange to have them all in the same place at the same time. Started a database for Master Scene Breakdown. Woo -- very damn handy!
11-17-2004: Production meeting this evening. More pieces coming together, but more still undone. We're definitely champing at the bit to start shooting something. Mostly cast, and that's a good thing. We're going to try and shoot another test soon, a jump-test. This won't be wirework, but just a very agile person. Also received a call on a couple of potential lab locations, so I've scheduled to go out early Monday morning and look at those. It'll be before most of the world is awake. I can already see if we end up shooting there that the hours will be strange indeed. But this is a good thing.
11-16-2004: Trying to locate insurance. How annoying -- when people call me up and want to give me money, I'm normally able to accommodate them immediately. So what's the problem with insurance agents? Well, maybe they're just really, really busy.
11-15-2004: More auditions today, these for the opening scene of the movie. Everybody's schedule got pooched because there was a major traffic snarl. Sometimes it really annoys me living this far out of town. Also, looks like our potential hospital location is a bust. Ah well.
11-14-2004: Longer auditions today. We cleared out Katrina's office and had people come by and do longer scenes. It seemed to work out pretty well, although I can think of a few tweaks we'll do in the future of the same process. Lots of great talent in this town!
11-10-2004: Had a meeting at a nursing home. A few days back, I sent out a few letters to various medical facilities in the area, asking if they would be interested in us shooting a one-day scene there, and I received a lovely note back from one of the administrators.
11-09-2004: Met with an animator at lunch. One of the trickier scenes in the movie is a falling catwalk scene and I think he's a good candidate for that one brief scene.
11-07-2004: Picked up the cameras today from our wonderful benefactor. Received a pocket lesson in operating them, the microphones, the tripods, and the rest of the deal. I have to admit I'm nervous carrying this much hardware around, but it's just got to be done. Came back and handled a variety of movie-related things in e-mail. Discussed the various possibilities for making money with this strange venture, compared to the risks involved. And then it was really late and I had to crash because driving is surprisingly tiring.
11-06-2004: Auditions! What can I say about this day? Actually, quite a lot. I was a little concerned that it would be a madhouse and that we would be rushing people through to the point of stepping on feelings, but really, things seemed to go smoothly and all our folks operated more-or-less seamlessly. A few people wrote afterwards and said that they felt the auditions were very professionally done, considering we're on such a short budget. This is good -- we might not be able to afford cash, but we sure can dole out some courtesy, darn it! According to our rough estimates, a little more than a hundred people went by in just under two hours (later we found out it was about seventy, but it felt like a hundred!). Wow! Afterwards, the crew hit some pizza, and then Travis, Leopoldo, Eliza and I snuck off to go over all the auditions on tape and consider who to call back for a more detailed audition. It was a fascinating thing because we had to consider not only people who had given us a good read, but who acted and who basically, seemed like they were very natural at what they were doing. After another two or three hours, we were all wiped out and split our separate ways. Katrina and I headed up to a friend's birthday party in Seattle and bumped into Leopoldo while we were there. So, naturally, he and I ducked away from the party and went over the signup sheets and spreadsheet entries. We are such geeks!
11-05-2004: I spent many fun hours talking with Steve from the local paper. He's interested in following the Production. Presumably to see how we pull this hat trick off, but perhaps also to document our fiery downfall, should such occur. However, seeing as how we are going to make this movie, I'm not overly worried about the whole "downfall" thing.
After the meeting, I spend about half an hour looking over various fire escapes to see how they're mounted to the walls. Did I remember to bring along a digital camera to shoot the mounting brackets and such? No, I plumb forgot.
I hop a Max out to Hillsboro to chat with Shashonna, go over some more of her makeup samples, and talk about the look we want for our creatures. We want something unique, something terrifying and predatory, but possessing of the key elements of the hungry dead. I hope she brings sketches or samples to the next production meeting.
11-04-2004: Justin and I go over many prop guns, weapons, hand grenades, and gear at a local surplus store. That's just too fun, but for the costuming, we'll need to get the actors in there, unless this gear is more versatile size-wise than it looks. After this, we went to a local Home Depot to buy parts so Justin can build our SAM launchers. Mental note: when buying parts in a hardware store to build something unusual, such as a missile launcher, always ask for advice from the most hip-looking/decorated employee. These folks can be really creative. We still need two matching toy guns so we can strip off the handles.
11-03-2004: A medium-sized production meeting this evening. We discuss a lot of things about the movie, and it felt a lot like a good solid meet-and-greet of the crew. A few folks couldn't make it, which is okay. Good people, all of whom are of the opinion that we are going to have a fun time making a cool movie, which of course, is true. I showed 'em a few of our recent short movies and a couple of sample CG/compositing tests I'd recently done. Sat with Justin afterwards and went through more details on the props we'll need. We're meeting tomorrow at a local surplus store to take a look at the various options for weaponry.
10-30-2004: A small group of us tour a local industrial plant, seeking out locations and such. Lots of promising spots. Leopoldo and I spend a few hours doing a readthrough of the script, marking it at 96 minutes. Give or take.
10-28-2004: At 8:40 in the morning, I receive a call from a local helicopter manufacturer. I drive down and take a tour. I am shown helicopters. I am elated. This is awesome. They are happy to help our motley crew on its weird voyage! I return home around 5 after a long tour of a nearby flight museum. Still giddy. Set up some databases to cover the wide variety of locations. Answer a lot of questions via e-mail regarding the auditions. Whew! Tired. Must keep working -- unseeable fingerlings from another dimension are eating my brain.
10-27-2004: Oh yay -- we have just officially been loaned two XL1 cameras for our shoot (on the caveat that they might be requested back if needed). Oh, this is just splendid news! I have the bestest friends!
10-26-2004: Another production meeting with Travis and Justin, working out effects details and how we're going to shoot what we want to shoot. Most of the things here are do-able. The last scene, however, we've all agreed is going to be a major bitch.
10-25-2004: Yay! We're mentioned on Fangoria's website!
10-23-2004: Finished a sufficient poster to put up for the audition. Talked over some more details with Travis, such as contractual stuff, etc.
10-21-2004: Met with Travis and Eliza today to go over the upcoming audition plan and to look at a few possible options for the main set, which is a factory/refinery of some kind. Prepared the official sides and posted them to the site, as well as sending everyone notification that they were posted. Yay!
10-20-2004: I finished a couple of CGI sequences, just to get a handle on the mechanism. In the first, a Blackhawk helicopter dives down into a darkened city. In the second, Travis and Justin run into a parking garage and duck behind a dumpster in time to avoid a huge explosion just outside. The former was a series of compositions all nested into one After Effects project. My helicopter video sample was just junky, but I don't care -- I just focused on the motion and getting everything composited together. On the latter, I figured out how to use a specific custom mask file to keep Travis and Justin shaded while the rest of the garage lit up from the explosion outside. That worked out really well!
10-19-2004: Drew up the sides for the auditions, and worked up a preliminary poster. The idea was good, but there's something really crappy about my execution. More like execution-style. Gotta think about this one...
10-17-2004: Met with Travis and Justin to go over some more of the effects shots and how we're going to do them.
10-17-2004: Finished the storyboards for the trailer today. Very exciting!
10-11-2004: Met with Will and Leopoldo for lunch today -- very impromptu. Heard back from Aaron on the status of a helicopter. So far, no cigar, but we're not down for the count yet. Evidently, new security measures prohibit filmmakers "at our level". Now, I find that fascinating, but I'm too busy looking for options to give a rat's ass what "level" we have to be on to do this. But it does make me grumpy. A bit.
10-10-2004: Went downtown to do a couple of FX test shots. Leopoldo, Travis, Eliza, Justin, and I. We staged a couple of running-away-from-explosion shots, staged a couple of shooting shots, and a couple of zombie-running-getting-shot shots. The goal here is to see if I can some kind of passable SFX added in post to the video, because there's no way we can afford pyrotechnics on this project. Afterwards, we had an impromptu Production Meeting, talking about effects, duties, some more details. On a humorous note: "Die, you zombie motherfucker!" is a really complicated line to shout out during a gun-laden adrenalin-crazed rush in a parking garage. Happily, I don't actually have that line in the movie, but it helped people loosen up a bit. Besides, maybe the patrons of the restaurant heard it dimly through the walls and it added just the tiniest bit of surreal experience to their meal. Later this evening, worked up the first pass at a preliminary budget that was under our limit (which is almost certainly full of holes) and a preliminary pay layout for cast and crew (which is almost entirely percentages of net).
10-08-2004: We're setting up auditions for November 6. The only thing we're unsure of is the location. Travis is trying to get us a central location, but we can always fall back to doing it at our house. We're having trouble tacking down a DP. I know of at least one DP I'd like to use, but he's out of town and if we only shoot evenings and weekends, then that would be very awkward. But I don't know too many DPs in town at all. What I need is someone with an action sensibility, who is comfortable doing this guerrilla style. Received an interesting call from an agent about this script. We talked for a while and he said he'd call me back. I am intrigued.
10-05-2004: Met with Leopoldo and Travis to go over a few more details. Specifically, we've been talking about ways to stretch that incredibly miniscule amount of money we have such that we can get this done. Talked about makeup effects, fight scenes, and of course pyrotechnics. Pyrotechnics dominated the conversation, next to setting up auditions. How are we going to get all that gunplay down? How are we going to do the several key explosions we're asking for? We decide that Sunday we're going to get together and do a test shoot of a little gunplay, so that I can try to make it look real in After Effects. Let's just hope the neighbors don't see it and call the cops, because that would be difficult to explain.
10-03-2004: The Lovecraft Film Festival! How much fun can one person have in one weekend? I talked to lots of people here about what to do for this crazy project. I talked to a CGI fella, one of my fight coordinators, a fella who wants to do makeup, a fella who wants to help me do some of the more difficult effects, and a guy who says he'll get me into a helicopter for the cherry shots. Oh, and of course LOTS of people who want to be zombies! Oh, this is so much fun!
10-01-2004: Okay, I've spent a little more time making Products for our Merchandise section than I would have liked, but darn it, I like the products we have!
9-28-2004: Finished the latest draft of the screenplay. Fixed a few continuity problems and explored in more detail (more creepy detail!) the mythos behind the story.
9-27-2004: Got some more products posted to our Merchandise section. How fun!
9-25-2004: It's been a busy day. The DNS propagation went through and we're now sitting pretty at the proper domain. We have been contacted by actors, actresses, martial art instructors, modelers, and some CGI people who want to work on Flesh of my Flesh. This is way cool. A couple of people have told me that they might be able to get me in touch with a helicopter pilot or two. That would be sweet! Also, a couple of composers have written in.
9-21-2004: Updated the website extensively to reflect the move into Preproduction of Flesh of my Flesh. Acquired a new storage computer (picking it up today). This movie currently has a budget of $10,000. On the surface, this seems like a lot, but in reality, it's very little. For an action movie, it's even smaller! However, we're going to take a lot of advice from Rick Schmidt's book Feature Filmmaking at Used-Car Prices: How to Write, Produce, Direct, Film, Edit, and Promote a Feature-Length Film for Less Than $10,000.
9-19-2004: Investigated some gunshot effects.
8-09-2004: Finished the rewrites on the script. I like it much better now, targeting more of the cross-cultural zombie myths, placing the story in a greater historical context.
8-08-2004: Oh, we came up with the most marvelous idea for a website for this project, should we end up shooting it ourselves (and why the hell not?)
8-06-2004: Pitched the hell out of this script at a Writer's Conference. Got one nibble, and one good bite -- fella wants the script sent asap.
8-01-2004: Finished the script.
7-22-2004: Sixty-six pages in. I was really getting into the story, and listening to the soundtrack to In the Mouth of Madness and Katrina came home, but I didn't hear her come in, I just suddenly heard oddly non-catlike sounds in the hallway. I looked and there was a human silhouette there, coming toward me. Freaked me out!
7-20-2004: Forty-one pages in. This is some nasty, violent stuff. Yay!
7-17-2004: First scene finished. Ooooh, nuttier than I imagined!
7-15-2004: Finished the scene cards. This will be a nice mix of weirdness.
