sound

In OKC working on sound at Rockhouse Studios. Taking a break for the weekend then we are back at it on Monday. The cut is under two hours now, and my goal is to have it between 90 - 105 minutes by Monday morning. Everybody who has been in for ADR so far has been absolutely outstanding, but the gold star has to go to Joseph for the grunts, groans and man-child squeals.

another scene bites the dust

I really liked this little scene between Claire and Owen outside of a motel. We grabbed it at dusk the last day we had access to Sheridan's van. It looked really good thanks to Shogo and it was a nice character beat. Alas, i just cut it from the movie.

At the same time, it's another smoking scene, which I am glad to get rid of. I wasn't really aware of how much smoking is in this movie, so I have tried to cut it down during the editing process. Not that I have anything against it, but I don't want it to look like I'm on the payroll for Phillip Morris.

Even with this scene cut, running time is at 2:18. Yes, this is longer than a few days ago. Yes, I am screwed.

blood thirsty alley cat visits the set

Here's a little clip of an alley cat who was lured out of hiding by the scent of sweet smelling fake blood. It turns out this cute little kitten while starving for fake blood was more interested in a little affection from Erika. Click on the movie to see John trying to tempt her into licking his blood stained fingers.



John ended up adopting the cat and naming her Blue (since we were in the alley behind Blue 7. She also makes a cameo in the movie.

light at the end

I am editing ALMOST around the clock right now in order to have everything ready for next weeks sound meetings and ADR recording. The more time I spend with the movie, the better it gets. You hear it a lot in filmmaking documentaries, but in a lot of ways, this movie is being rewritten during the editing process.

We had a shooting script that I felt really good about. Due to time and budget constraints, we were only able to shoot about 85% of the script. We scrapped a few scenes that were part of nonessential plot threads and consolidated a few crucial scenes. Well, even shooting only 85% of the 113 pages, we ended up with a rough cut that was way over 3 hours long. People involved in the movie know that I was shooting for a 90 minute running time, and definitely nothing over 100 minutes. So this final stretch has been very tough. But it has forced me to get down to the essence of this story and figure out who and what is really important.

When I started my night shift yesterday the running time was at 2:24 and right now it is at 2:16. I'm whittling it down.

The editing process will change the way I write FOREVER. This project has been the ultimate learning experience for me and fortunately, it is a learning experience that has resulted in a movie that should be pretty fun to watch.

I am actually forgoing the premiere, after party and after-after party for THE BAD NEWS BEARS in order to wrap this up by the end of the week. Just in case you thought this was taking so long because i was lazy or goofing off.

2.5 days & counting

I managed to recover a bunch of the photos that have been missing from this blog for the last few months. There are still a few missing, but the bulk of the behind the scenes production photos are back online. Also, the archive pages should actually work now. The blog has kind of been in disarray since the server switch so it feels good to start getting things back on track.

I'm leaving for the San Diego comicon in 2.5 days. So there is a ton of stuff I need to get taken care of before then including lots of cutting and getting Cinema Eye ready for live-blogging. More soon...

flat

Kicking around OKC like a ghost. Drinking lots of water and trying not to think about it.