Be persistent.

Yesterday it never seemed farther away... today it's so close I can taste it.

The Joy of Anime

Shogo writes a regular column for Cinema Eye called ASIAN FEVER. You gotta read todays installment. Here's a single line to tease you:

"I am kinda getting off the subject here but all I am saying is that when I am 60 years old, I want to be a tit-grabbing grandpa like the one in CUTEY HONEY."

Cinema Eye traffic has been breaking all my records. I think it's about exhausted my hosting plan, so I guess I will be in the market for a server soon. So if anybody reading his has any recommendations, send them my way. Also we've added Moviegoods.com to our shopping component. So if you are looking for movie related Christmas gifts, you can find some really cool stuff via the link on Cinema Eye.

so ghetto.

This is how we make movies ghetto-style. One Honda Civic + 1 Stickypod + 1 fearlessD.P.

Shogo prepares the camera for some hard driving highway action. What you see is the Panasonic DVX100 mounted to the roof of the car with a device called a StickyPod. Shogo is standing in the passenger seat with his upper body poking out through the sun roof. This pic was taken in the parking lot behind John (Frank's) apartment. You can see Frank's green car in the background.

Now we are actually on the highway. Shogo is hanging on for dear life, pulling focus and trying to get a cool shot. Pulling focus is pretty hard at 70 MPH but he pulled it off. This shot is taken by John (Frank) who is in the passenger seat of the car being shot.

This shoot happened on Sunday, November 7, 2004. We were chasing the sunlight.

mmmmm... karo.

Here's another fun little shoot. For me nothing beats a morning of half naked girls, razorblades and karo syrup blood.

This effect was put together quick and on-the-spot by Leah. Cumulative cost was probably around $10. Ghetto! This is for a very quick flash in the movie, but it will turn your stomach. In this photo, Erika wonders why she every got involved in this project. Leah tries to convince her it's going to be good for her career.

Freshly sliced wrists. Interestingly enough, when we were shooting her close up, Erika got very method and actually sliced into the skin on her wrists. It wasn't deep, the cuts looked like cat scratches. But it scared me a little bit nonetheless.

Yep, there was a lot of blood. This is such a brief scene in the movie. It will only last seconds. But the attention to the little details are going to make a huge difference. Erika's performance in this scene is as good as anything in the movie.

We had to put this scene together last minute when one of our props was unavailable. It worked out great. Thanks to Shogo for shooting it, Leah for FX, Erika for the great attitude and intense performance and to John for keeping the volume down on the OU game in the other room.

This scene was shot on Sunday, November 6, 2004.

flickering

A few fragments from the sequence I mentioned a few days ago. I'm really excited to do more with this technique.

In other news, I finally have pulled things together after about two weeks of constant problems. I think the number one trait you have to cultivate when you are making films is insane persistence. Anytime you try to do something outside of the ordinary, the world is against you. The ability to cope with these problems is ultimately going to determine whether you succeed or fail.

Now my editing system is back in action, we are about to build another hugely ambitious set and various things that could have been problems have become things that will ultimately benefit the project. If everything had gone as planned, SEX MACHINE would be a very different movie. But I don't know if it would actually be a BETTER movie. Once you get 30 or so people contributing or helping out, it kind of takes on a life of it's own. And that's one of the things that excites me about filmmaking.

We have pulled together an incredibly diverse group of people and the result is pretty exciting. When I think that I wouldn't know some of these people if it weren't for the movie, it makes me thankful for the whole process.

Everything has dragged out for about 2 months longer than I had originally planned. But we are really just putting on the finishing touches, adding production value and smoothing out the overall flow of the piece. I will have some cool stuff to show you very soon.

Final Cut Pro problems

So... anybody who knows me in REAL life knows that I have been bitching a lot about problems I've been having with Final Cut Pro, etc. Believe it or not... it all comes down to the latest Mac OS update.

Apparently there is a conflict between the latest update and FCP HD. If you are getting "Unexpectedly Quit" errors, you need to check out this Apple Tech document: http://docs.info.apple.com/article2.html?artnum=93984

You have to open up the Terminal and type in some computer code stuff. This is not the kind of thing Mac-users should have to do. Once you do type in the code, the Terminal does a bunch of stuff, generating lines and lines of gobbledygook. Anyway, apparently this is the fix I needed. Unfortunately, I have wasted a lot of time before getting to this point.