one down

CLOUD SYMPHONY played last night at LIT. This was the culmination of 3 or 4 of the most exhausting, frustrating days of my life.

Shogo and i worked until 5 in the morning on Tuesday night, i slept for about two hours and then worked at getting it out to some kind of format that we could actually display.It was a very frustrating day. Seemingly everything was going wrong at the end. I guess it's some kind of field dominance problem. But there was a ghostly quality to some of the shots. but everyone we've talked to say that is is a fairly easy fix. I'm really pleased with the finished project, but we really had to work hard to get it done in time for the screening.

The sound also needs to be mixed, etc. but really my part of it is finished. It's satisfying.

Now I can concentrate most of my attention on SEX MACHINE. But I've suddenly got a lot of client work as well. That's how it always seems to go.

So right now i am doing a bunch of maintenance and organization on the sex machine files. I'm trying to get a rough cut of every scene we have shot so far. Then I can see what we need to grab this weekend. I'm thinking about losing a couple of scenes. But I need to think long and hard about it before I make a decision.

At the end of 2004 we should have a nice rought cut finished. Then it will spend a few months being mixed and scored. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The Arm

From a flashback sequence. The Arm gets what's coming to him.

Thanks to everybody who has emailed their kind words about this project. I will try to post more details. Right now we are in the middle of a short break to plan our "final" two weekends of shooting. We will start rolling again on October 1st.

Cloud Symphony

I realize the updates have been a little slow, especially compared to when production first started up. But that's just the way things go I guess. I am concentrating for the next few days on getting the CLOUD SYMPHONY edit polished up for its preview screening next Wednesday. If you are in the OKC area, you should come to LIT and check it out.

Wednesday, September 29
DeadCenter SpotLIT night
CLOUD SYMPHONY

LIT
208 East Sheridan, OKC
www.lit-okc.com

bowling alley

Okay, so principal photography isn't finished after all. I guess I was being overly optimistic, but we DID get a lot done this weekend -- including the re-shoot of a very important scene that just wasn't working. We are taking off for 2 weeks in order to regroup, secure a troublesome location and get some sleep. Current plan is to shoot two additional weekends at the beginning of October.

screen shots - september 7

once again, these haven't been color corrected or any of that yet. these are from different parts of the shoot, but they just happen to be things i've been editing recently.

One of my favorite shots. Frank enjoys a little afterglow...

frame from the sequence that introduces the goons... type will change...

Frank feels embarrassed after kidnapping his girlfriend and punching out her roommate...

claire and zoe discover hidden treasure...

home stretch

We are about to shut down principal photography. I'm exhausted and I'm sure everybody else is as well. But before we hit this temporary finish line, we have an all-nighter planned for Thursday night. We'll be shooting at the bowling alley and basically we have to get a ton of scenes. It's do-or-die time.

After that and some sleep, we will hopefully bang out all the driving sequences on Saturday and Sunday as well as picking up anything we're missing with Claire. My goal is to wrap up all her scenes this weekend. Other than looping a few lines, shooting an insert and reshooting a couple of lines, Jessica will be done.

Here's a quick recap of last week:

Saturday:
Shot Frank vs. the Goons in an alley downtown. I actually got permission from the city and the building owner, so I felt like the shoot was pretty legit. but we didn't have power so we had to rely on Shogo to make it work. I'm very happy with the results. Leah supplied cardboard boxes to cushion the guys when they fell. The alley was very seedy and filled with broken glass, cockroaches and piles of pitch-black human feces.

The nook we filled in was definitely a popular spot among okc's homeless population, because there was quite a bit of curious foot traffic including a lady who dropped a crack pipe right in front of me. The funniest was when i turned the corner to see a skeletal crack-head enjoying a sandwich and mountain dew from our craft services cooler.

John, Tyler and Joshua beat the crap out of each other and John really clocked both of them hard in the head -- accidentally.

The scene took us about 8 hours but it was well worth it. A few of us went to Margaritas and ate out on the patio. Then we came back and shot a scene between Frank and Claire in Claire's bedroom.

Sunday
We met at John's house at 5 a.m. to grab a sunrise shot between Frank and Claire. Sound conditions were terrible - laughably terrible - but the footage looks beautiful. We kind of had to steal the shots for various reasons I shouldn't go into here. After that we headed to my house to shoot the end stuff between Frank and Claire. The sad stuff.

Then we grabbed some Owen shots over at John's apartment.

Really, we should have gotten more stuff on Sunday. We didn't really get a lot of pages this weekend, but the stuff we got is really good. Now we have to pick up the pace and finish this thing off.