The typical snowball incident |8:04 AM|
If I already told you the microphone story you can just skip this one, nothing new to add. It's just an edited version of the email.
Typically, when faced with a, hmmm, not the right way to start it. When attempting to solve a particular issue, very often my solutions carry certain risks or have the possibility of creating their own complications. This incident this past evening [note: this happened several days ago] is a perfect example. ?
I own that snowball mic, and it comes in very handy for several folks, (The film folks, a friend of mine recording However, there is only one. This past week, there have been 2 very time dependent projects, a movie, and a friend of mine's singing audition. The movie folks needed the snowball, and so did the wanna-be front [wo]man. I did try to figure out a proper schedule with the movie crew, but no dice. Fine, I thought. I'll go use some of the bonus money, buy another Snowball, return it in 6 days, tell no one, and none of people involved will be the wiser. To assuage my guilt at essentially renting the mic, I decided to grab something that will be useful to me, a mic stand, as well.
While I'm standing there, and being sold the $140 mic for $100, I happen to notice the return policy, a 15% restocking fee for open items. "Okay, not so bad. " But under the non-returnable items, like software and music, I notice "Recording hardware, tapes, microphones...etc" *
Shit.
I put the mic stand back, and contemplate the situation. "Hell I'll just Craigslist it. I paid $100 for the $150 mic, I can probably turn it around for $100, maybe $80, not so bad."
While working on the blood effects for the movie, Scott and I learned the hard way DO NOT pull on the gaffe tape once it has been applied. If you mess up the taping job, just put down another bit of tape, DO NOT READJUST IT.
Last night this one crew member, a source of drama on the set, begins screwing around with one of the squibs. I tell her to put it down, it'll go off. (By go off I mean less "Explode" then "Pop the condom") She says "I didn't hear 'please'." I was tempted to just let it go off at that point, but we've got a limited number. "Pretty please, put it down." She complies.
A minute or so later, (So far as I can tell) she picks up another one, and starts to fucks around with it. I turn around a bit after that to see her getting up, covered in fake blood.
I chuckle, and ask a friend "Is this a 'Told you so' situation?". She does a piss poor job cleaning it up, so I'm touching up a few areas of the floor, still chuckling. I'm cleaning up her mess, because if Joe's wife comes home and finds spilled fake blood, we're going to have a "situation". That's when I find that the blood has, to a certain extent, splattered the box of the snowball box, staining it. It does not wipe off. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. There goes the return option.
And that is the typical flow of events for when something goes wrong on my troubleshooting workflow. I think I can still pull this off, shouldn't be too tough, if I can find the original snowball's box.
*I realized when I opened the mic that it had been previously opened, so I don't think I'd actually have much problem returning it.
We made another movie: Part 1, the Light Bar |5:49 PM|
(I promise this story picks up near the end) We had finished the first day of filming, and I was sitting in my apartment mulling over the sound work I'd done that day. Oh alright, I was playing "Soldiers: Heroes of World War 2". But still, I mulled. That's when I was called by the crew, they needed someone to decode and activate a light bar, like, the type on cop cars. They were out of ideas, and there was even someone lamenting in the background of the call, "Help us [Cecil]! HELP US!" After some research, and some digging around in my house, I called back. "This may seem like a crazy question, but I am serious. Ask around and see if anyone knows CPR." As it turned out, one of our crew, the lighting guy, was a damned EMT. On being electrocuted, he said "You get shocked once, we'll shock you twice. The other EMT's might be pissed if my CPR cracks your ribcage, though. " Great! Safety concerns resolved, I headed out to Joe's with tools, goggles, and some power supplies in hand. And this is what I found. A decent lightbar (10 years old), and from the packaging it was acquired one way or another from the set of "Walker: Texas Ranger". The wiring harness had been simply cut, probably off of the wiring header, without regard for its next install. There was some jury rigged wiring, but there was no indication of function. I had one red wire, one black wire, and a third, much larger, black wire. The big grey cable you see in the photos was a bundle of (I believe) 12 wires. With some clever research online, I found a wiring diagram, and work began. Work at Joe's house yielded no results. I knew basically what had to happen, I just didn't have enough juice/power/mojo. Elliot then referred me to a friend of his, who had experience with electronics and car modifications. At his house we dissected the light bar. This guy was damned intelligent, probably a genius, and his advice was key to getting enough power into the bar, which made this whole goddamn project work. Once he told me the principles of getting it to run without exploding, I was damned sure I could make it work. With wiring supplies in hand, I started work at 6:30AM on the second day of shooting. Christ I look like a doofus, and I'm wearing a silly hat, and I'm using laundry cord for a belt, so I kept showing plumber's crack that morning. Refer to the next post about why. During testing, I kind of forgot which wire was the ground, and which was the negative terminal one. Whoops. Experiment time. I explained to Brian what to do. Upon reflection, having the EMT helping with the wires wasn't an effective use of resources. In any case, though you can't see it in the following photo, I was wearing safety goggles and a face mask whenever I dealt with the battery.
I touched the wires to the battery terminals...and....they INSTANTLY turn red hot, BRIGHT glowing red, like, coils in a toaster red hot. I yell to pull the other wire as I yanked my own. Why the facemask? Because of stuff like this. Oops. As I was pulling the melted chunks of insulating plastic off of my gloves is when the driver of the car walks up. "Everything is fine!" A quick wire switch, and VICTORY
The next part is when I really earned my keep, assembling/designing the harness fuse block and switch. But it's boring, just a of jumping around, curling things, merging wires, screwdrivers and allen wrenches. Let's leave it, that I earned, my, keep, and sadly no one could help, just watch. (complete with in-car safety key)
This is when shit started to go wrong again. With it wired up, I tried to start the car. CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK Said the starter. FUCK said the Cecil. CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK Said the starter. "Fuck, okay, let's jumpstart it!" With the car running to charge the battery, I left to help load shit. That's when I was told the car had died again, just sputtered and died. Fuck. I tried starting, and it would click a bit, start to turn over, and die. "Oh goddammit, I blew the alternator somehow! It ran off of battery and then poof!" While panicing I projected an air of confidence, especially in front of the car owner, which was handy back in tech support. I then noticed the gas light. "Josh! Were you low on gas?" Josh: "Uhhh, not that low. Low, but we should be okay." Me: "Goddammit, I'm sending a PA to go get gas!" The only gas can we had was equipped with a big fucking hole. Standing against Josh's car with my hand over a hole that was not for venting, I got enough gas into the car to get us through, but also enough gas spilled to cover my arms, his tire, and a large part of the immediate area. "This is now a NO SMOKING zone!" Victory in hand, alligator clips connected, and crew impressed, I walked away to lead the sound department.
Good news for people who sell red food coloring |2:46 PM|
I got a voicemail forwarded from the director on my movie crew, a voicemail that was from a major film company expressing that they wanted to pick up one of our short films for an upcoming DVD compilation.
While I'm not sure of the confidentiality details of the company, or the movie, be assured that you've heard of this company.
In other words, hot fuckin' damn.
I wish I had more to say than that. This doesn't mean a lot of dough, I'm sure. But what it does mean is plenty of exposure.
SXSW |4:42 AM|
I just got back from the post-screening festivities. An official selection of the South By Southwest film festival, no less.
Of course, the movie was about a disease. A disease causing poultry to tear its way out of people's asses. High art indeed.
Laughter is welcome, but it is still an "Official Selection". We get to use the seal and everything. My director submitted a bunch of films to Reel Women, among them a cheesy romance, an experimental horror movie, some other film, and chicken ass. The woman in charge of Reel Women was up in Dallas showing her sick mother the selections on a DVD player, and when they reached our film they "keeled over laughing". I assume when they described the keeling over, it was not actually lethal. The mother insisted that the movie be in the festival, and the family has apparently been talking about it all day.
Bitchin'.
The movie also got into "Horror Dance" down in Houston, so I might travel down there for gripping and grinning, glad-handing, networking, power-lunching, all that manner of grabass-ery.
This is another fine production you've gotten me into |10:50 PM|
It wouldn't be a Gravity Well/DamienMalice/LucidVision production without someone we were forced to trust bailing RIGHT before a criticaal deadline, along with catastrophic hardware failure.
Earlier this evening I had been called by Captain Fantastic to help with some technical issues with video capture. I thought to myself "Alright, so it should take about half an hour. So it's going to take 3 hours." As it turns out, I should have sextupled the 3 hour estimate.
Sextupled, is that even a goddamn word? We're currently at the G.Well/DM/LV/DnIC HQ, No Mor studios. Of course, No Mor is a small former bedroom in a residential area, but it is dedicated. So that makes us cooler than 90% of the beret wearing, coffee drinking film goofs in this town that never make it out of pre-production. Because, if I may toot our collective horns, we may go through re-fucking-diculous problems and operate on a budget where the shoestring is stolen, but we always finish the movie.
Hell, we're finishing "Chicken Ass". I have much greater confidence in Chicken Ass after some comments PortalStar made upon seeing the chicken prop. Specifically: "Cecil! What is this?" then "This thing, this chicken thing on the coffee table" followed by "It's horrid. Do you have a cover for it or something? It's hard to look at"
Wish I was in New York |12:33 AM|
Well, the last time I tried to post something, something terrible went wrong and I lost several pages of update. I'll just have to retype them later. At this time, my fellow crew member Joe W. is somewhere in New York. His flight up there was the culmination of several months of on/off filming, as well as a hellish week of no sleep and a lot of work on a movie in post production.
I'm not in New York. I did the "responsible" thing and realized Joe going to NY was more important to my fellow crew members than it was to me. It certainly didn't help at the time that we were all fucking tired. Eh, I didn't need to skip work on friday, especially since I was sick as a fucking dog earlier this week. Not to mention, my girlfriend would have pulled a variety of important organs out of my abdominal cavity, had I decided to skip our date friday night in favor of spending 36 hours in New York.
While being able to say "Yeah, this morning at 2AM I had to get my director on a plane and throw it at New York to make the deadline" has a certain magic to it, the lost adventure of a sudden depature 2000 miles away has a bit of a sting. If only because it was my dough.
Instead of lamenting this too much, I started picking up my phone when people call me, even though I hate the fucking phone. While this may not seem like much, to some people it came as a suprise. It may also not seem to be related to why I didn't go, but just trust me on it.
The real important part of all this is that our entry into the film contest made it to the P.O. Box on time. That's the only thing that mattered, in the end. A shot at national distribution and exposure, a completed project, that's all worth the bank roll hit, the ruffled feathers, and a longing to be someplace that I could not.
Terrible Ideas, evolution of a solution. |12:22 AM|
Proper Growing Conditions:
It was getting very late at our foley booth, which conisited of a bath tub I'd lined with blankets. I was trying to make convincing moans and groans for a person who had just been very badly burnt. Unfortunately, for every proper sound noise I managed to weeze out, I also made noises like an obscene phone call.
I debated with my crew about trying to think of the worst "hit" I'd taken, or something along those lines.
Genesis of the bad idea: "Hmmm... I need to somehow make the same breathless weezes I only make when I'm in pain, but I can't use memories to do it. If only I could some how simulate intense pain. I suppose I could somehow hurt myself, in a minor way...nah that'd be dumb. "
The bad idea evolved a bit, and as I became more tired, impulse control started to fade. That's about when I punched the tile wall with a bit of force.
FUCK.
After the intial burst of curse words, I was able to produce pain noises that the director called "Well, chilling."
So though I spent most of the rest of the night with an ice pack on my fist, it worked. And it was a nearly free solution.
As an update, due to damage to the tape containing these sounds, I had to get back into that tub, and do it again. Instead of punching the wall, though, I requested matches. Over the headphones, Captain Fantastic could hear the woosh of a match, the hiss as I put it out in my hand, the gasp, and the pain noises we needed.
Him: "Are you doing what I think you're doing?" Me: "Shut up and tape this shit!"
Also, when trying to record the sound of a whoosh of a pack of matches being lit, Captain Fantastic managed to set the microphone on fire. Good work.
Stupid stuff that doesn't qualify for indvidual entries |6:37 PM|
I figured out a "Google Trick". You can specify to search results from just one site on Google by using site:www.IamWebsite.com. If you go to the image search feature on Google, and use the site: command, and nothing else, you get every image on that site that Google has ever seen. It's handy, trust me. Try it. As a side note, that brings images that even I, the owner of the site have/had totally forgotten.
This past weekend I was out filming scenes for the upcoming short movie "Inspirational". If you'd like to see a gallery of images that lack context, feel free to take a gander. On Bamboozeling: Saturday night, I was coming back from filming when I found myself desperately craving root beer. It was past 2AM, so the only places open to me used bulletproof glass in place of customer service. I pulled up to the local Tetco, which I know is open 24 hours AND after midnight locks the doors BUT will sell you food products through the night payment drawer. The woman working was about 40, saw me, and ducked into the employee only area. After a few minutes, she walked out into the main part of the store and walked towards the counter. She looked in every direction except towards the side of the building with the customer service window, through which I was plainly visible. It was some impressive head movement, considering the size of the window. When she entered the counter area (had there not been plexiglass in the way, I could have tapped her on the shoulder) she made a show of checking her watch, fiddling under the counter, and going back to the storage area. I was perplexed at her apparent desperation not to sell me my rootbeer. 5 minutes passed. 5 minutes is quite a while to be doing nothing while waiting in a line consisting of you, and possibly an army of angry, invisible spirits. I recalled a scene in a Tom Wolfe novel, in which a character scares the inhabitants of a crackhouse by doing nothing beyond talking into a cell phone determinedly while looking at the house. They were convinced he was a cop, and fled. I also realized I was on video surveillance, and the lazy bitch was likely watching a monitor. Clearly, this woman was trying to wait me out, but I used to work in tech support.
Uncomfortable silences and hour-long hold times are drinking buddies of mine. But, I was thirsty and was not being paid by the hour. I pulled out my cell phone, made a show of staring at the Tetco sign (as if it contained whole volumes of text beyond "Tetco") and began dialing (information, if you're curious). After a few seconds, the woman burst from the back room with a look of terror on her face, at which point I hung up, and she sold me my goddamn rootbeer. I would not have been so convinced she was reacting to my cell phone charade if not for the fear in her eyes. But who the hell did she think I was going to call at 3am? Her boss? The gas station police? Rootbeer man?
Here's a quick entry to keep people reading |2:40 PM|
The other night, we were filming our movie, specifically the scene in which we shoot a cop. The setup was impressive, it looked like a cop car was pulling over a truck, even though the cop car consisted of a couple C-stands, a cheap set of cop lights, and a pair of bright halogen work lamps. Looking into towards the lights, it was convincing. We were doing this on a back country lot, but it could be sort-of seen from the street. A car was driving by, and slowed down to rubberneck. They stopped when we "shot" the cop (The white spots are rain droplets). I imagine the dialog in the car was something like "Oooh, someone got busted. OH SHIT THEY SHOT THE COP THEY SHOT THE COP" We had to show them that the cop was A-okay. I'm suprised they didn't shoot first, seeing as this is texas. Sissies.
Another Pandora's box |10:34 AM|
I sought out Vid's help in devising horrible and brutal ways to murder people for the upcoming horror film I'm producing, with mostly the same core crew as the bloodshot's movie.
I knew I was going to get plenty of excellent material, but I also knew it would be disturbing as hell. When I shared some of the ideas that Vid had come up with, my director replied "Oh holy shit I just got chills". (For Vid, that was the golf ball one). I shouldn't talk too much about the movie though, so it'll be more of a suprise.
On a more amusing turn, Chris C, the new printer tech here at my job, had some suggestions. He hadn't heard the rule set for the killings, so he was just looking for a spectacular way to kill a person in a forest who has been attracted to the noise of a crying baby. His suggestion for the murder weapon was "a bear". I think it was Vid that suggested it be a "bear with a chainsaw". The next suggestion was that the killer wasn't using a bear with a chainsaw, the killer WAS the bear, and that it wasn't using a recording of a baby, it was using a real baby. "Because," Chris said, "That raises some great questions, like, where'd the bear get the baby?"
Where'd the bear get the chainsaw is my question. I suppose that's the sort of thing a bear could just ask a lumberjack for without much negotiation.
Anyhow Chris, if you want a "handle" in place of your first name, let me know.
The movie situation |11:25 AM|
I've spent the last couple of days trying to Video Capture this damn movie. Unfortunately, despite several hours of wrangling, I can't get the movie to look good for less than 130 megs of disk space. I can get it to 30-60, but it looks like ass. Since it's not Oscar award winning, would you, the readers, like to see this movie sooner rather than later at the cost of quality, or do you want to wait until I learn a bit more about video compression and get something reasonable?
Edit:
I just spoke to Vid, and he pointed out that most Divx movies, and all DVD movies have about half the resolution of the movie I'm trying to convert. That'd explain just about every issue I've been having thus far. Hell, I could get that movie fixed and uploaded by 6pm, if I hurry.
Gravity Well Productions Regrets to inform you that your sons are dead because they were stupid. |11:24 AM|
I'm currently experiencing the symptoms of a variety of insect and spider bites, nausea, cramps, dizziness, headaches, and so many parts of me itch. As I don't have access to ways of capping the movie right now, I think this is a good time to list my regrets about the movie. I know I'm going to spend pages going on and on about the stories and joys, so I'll get this out of the way.
The actors and actresses we auditioned but didn't use, they need some thank you cards. Especially Portal's friend of a friend. We jerked him around all weekend.
I regret not finding a good place to involve Vid. I had some concerns with the number of highly...aggressive? Independent? I'm not sure of the term, but we had several guys with a Vision, and getting them to combine and realize that vision was sometimes very difficult. Adding another would have been terrible, especially someone as strong-willed as Vid. It was a rough time wrangling them sometimes.
Speaking of Vision conflict, Christ, we screwed Tom right in the ass. He spent 2 weeks making a fantastic soundtrack, and we couldn't find a place for it in our final genre. Without a chase scene, without a creepy conversation scene, and there may have been some crossed lines with some of the team. We then used him for what was supposed to be a "quick" scene, that turned into 4 scenes, involving knocking him onto steel plates, him falling down stairs, and then we stuffed him into a tiny room and covered him with fake blood. The next morning we found out: "Oh yeah, guys, I'm REALLY claustrophobic." Fuck. We're dropping a good $200 on his "thank you" gift.
Dammit, the left arm bite is blistering. That is now classified as "Aggressive House Spider" or if it goes necrotic/yellow in the next 6-12 hours "Possible Brown Recluse" Depends on my blood flow, I suppose. What's really great is the hardening of blood vessels on spider bite on my leg.
I didn't get to work on my robot or my HL2 mod during this past 2 weeks. I've got some guilt there. (If we got "swarm" or "animals attack" as our sub-genre the robot was actually going to be part of the movie as a camera mount to go where we could not. Luckily, that didn't happen)
The common prop to all the movies was "Ice Cubes". That sucked. We put it in, along with the needed dialog line "I gave blood, on monday" but our implementations that made it into the film were weak. Better ones were on the cutting room floor. So was a lot of excellent dialog and acting, but such is life.
The blood cannon |1:32 PM|
The damn food coloring, it's rather tenacious in its grip on my skin. Who'd have thought a dye would be so good at changing the color of something?! Anyhow, among all the other duties and tasks last night, I perfected the compressor tank/hose/valve system to launch blood sprays for the movies. I won't bore you with the technical details, but I'll mention the Jell-O. I made cherry Jell-O, and squeezed into a...well paste doesn't work. Mush? I "smooshed" it until it had a lower viscousity. That solved some of the spray and splatter issues. The big problems were directing the spray, and getting enough volume of gunk out during a shot. We'd been using a funnel as the resevoir for the blood, which I replaced with surgical tubing. This also functioned as a barrel. Now, all of the blood material was acted on by the air pressure. Instead of 80PSI, we could get an incredible shot with just 20PSI in the tank. Awesome. The difference was staggering. Instead of a short range glop, we had a torrent of blood rocket out and hit with a great deal of force. In fact, we can't safely point this thing at people's faces. I call it the blood cannon.
I wish I had some video to post, but that will have to wait until later tonight.
Blood and Auditions |9:41 AM|
We're getting down to the wire for various movie related deadlines. Filming can't start (by contest rules) until 7pm Friday, but we still have preparations to do.
We had some auditions/screentests the past two nights, and we have some folks that show promise. We're still hauling a couple more people in front of the camera tonight (with any luck).
Location scouting is pretty much complete, we've got some extremely interesting places to film. We've got creepy houses, an enclosed boiler room, unusual forest areas, and this frightening basement with stone walls, and a hole that goes...somewhere. (A side note, a basement in central Texas would have required such incredible labor, dynamite most likely, they're quite rare due to the granite/clay makeup of the earth around here)
Right about now I'm working on script outlines based on the crew's ideas. I'm miserable at dialog, but I can give a skeleton to the stories and we can flesh them out when we know our sub-genre. After auditions we were going to kick some ideas around, but I missed out on that meeting. I should be getting the notes later today. I wanted to stay last night a little later, but obligations (work, etc) took priority. Some crazed film maker I am.
Today is final testing of the blood sprayer I've designed/built/purchased. This consists of a 10 gallon air tank pumped to 80 PSI with a lead in hose coming off of the valve. A pushbutton valve at the other end is the control, and from there a funnel or length of surgical tubing is the resevoir for blood/gore. Later this afternoon I'm going to try adding diced jellow to the mix, to see if it can give some much needed density in the tube, without clogging or making overly visible "chunks". So far I've been proud of that bit of technical work. If I can video capture blasting Joe with it for the first time, I'll share it with you blog readers.
Mission: Improbable |3:03 PM|
I'm a bit of a horror movie dork. I'm not the Fangoria reading, doesn't talk to people much, wears all black, works at the movie store and smells funny type of horror dork. I did see "Jason X" and "Freddy Vs. Jason" at the premieres, and my fondness for zombie movies is already well known.
Enter the Alamo Drafthouse (Glorious Alamo!) and BloodShots. To summarize, one of ten teams in Austin is given a subgenre of horror and 48 hours to complete a movie. To keep people from preparing footage ahead of time the movie must include a prop, a character name, and a line that are given to you at the same time as your genre. This happens on 7pm, Friday the 22nd.
I plan to be awake and working the entire 48 hours. I managed to register a team shortly before registration closed. I called poker-host Joe, who has a little bit more experience in movie making than I do, seeing as he's worked on a variety of feature films, has produced some short films of his own, and his wife Tara is chef to the stars. He and I have assembled a crack team of amature film makers, musicians, goof-balls, whack-jobs and film geeks for this operation.
This should be DAMNED exciting, even if both Joe and I go utterly insane from sleep deprivation, and attempt to film things underwater, then end up drowning. Updates as they become available/interesting.
American Zombie |8:27 PM|
Portal had a great idea for a slasher movie. "Carne Diem" Seize the Dead.
It'd have to be a very philosophical movie, Exploring such questions as "Why do we fight the zombies?" and "Are we not doomed to be just as dead and walking as they are?"
Between intense gunfights and such.
The other ideas I hashed out are in ICQ log form right now, I'm going to edit it up in a bit, so someone reading this doesn't have to deal with a damn chat log.
Open Screen Night |3:32 PM|
Vorpal, Rockstar Casey, Dante, PortalStar and I all went to the Alamo Drafthouse's "Open Screen Night" this past saturday. Wow, that was a lot of internet handles. It was a fine lesson in how to get people's attention in under 2 minutes, and hold it for 8. The way it works, the drafthouse will show anything you bring, no questions asked. At the 2 minute mark, the audience can decide to "Gong" it, (play an actual Gong) for it to be stopped. Otherwise, it plays out for 8 minutes. As the crowd became drunker, it became meaner. It's clear if Vorpal and I had entered our contribution (which hadn't finished rendering) it might very well have been gonged. This is despite a high swearing content, and a helluva payoff, as it was our "Ghost Car" movie from San Antonio (re-edited and burned to DVD).
A particular group had shown up with a bunch of friends, and flooded the contribution box with clips of their fledgling "sketch comedy" show called Free Beer. Christ, it was HIDEOUS. Poorly written, overly egotistical, and "wackiness" failing on a grand scale. It was painful to watch, and they were all gonged. The group had clearly planned ahead, and their contributions were all about 2 minutes along with several commercials for their show at the end. Sheesh. The main guy was apparently in the audience, trying in vain to defend his work with an occasional shout, such as "There was just one more line!" after his "horse strike" sketch was gonged. The following paragraph is designed to be brought up by search engines when someone looks for information about Free Beer.
This post is all about the Free Beer Television Show in Austin Texas. Christ, that "sketch comedy show" was worthless. The people responsible should throw themselves in front of farm equipment, so that their mulched bodies would serve some purpose on this world. There, that should get Google's attention, in case anyone looks for it.
