Film Festivals and Reviews

Since Coyote is finished, I’ve been working in two directions.  One is to reach out to independent reviewers to help reach new audiences.  From the responses I’ve gotten, I have to say, most of these guys and girls are genuine.  They aren’t trying to make a buck off of artists who live and die by their work.  Here‘s the beginning of what will hopefully become a lengthy list of reviews for Coyote.

In my experience, film festivals have been of a different nature.  Withoutabox makes it so easy for people to screen a couple of films in their basement, yet charge 50+ dollars for submission fees.  The economy of all this seems corrupt.  I’ve been told by festival directors that submission fees are the only thing that can pay for the overhead of the festival.  This is a terrible argument unless your film festival is free to the public.  It’s basically saying, “we can’t sell our tickets. No one’s going to show up for the films except the festival coordinators and the filmmakers. Give us money.”  If they can’t bring in a crowd, what’s the point in submitting your film at all?  Many festivals expect the filmmaker to do the grassroots promotion they need to bring an audience, but that takes longer than a day to achieve.  That festival isn’t going to pay for your travel or lodging either.

That’s even if they accept your film.  In my earlier days, I flushed a good deal of money submitting to fests with a mission statement that seemed to appeal to me.  Please, if you ever plan on submitting to any film festival ever, get in touch with the festival director before you ever touch a form (certainly before you cut a check).

That said, in my recent quests for suitable festivals for Coyote, I’ve found some really great ones that have responded to my emails and questions, and seem to have a passion about showing films that they love.  I’m clinging to the hope that I’ll stumble into some weird arena where festivals will be mostly legitimate.  Horror and foreign festivals have had a 50% (ish) success rate in correspondence, and that seems like a magnificent shift from my genre-less USA only search in prior years.

Here’s my suggestion to you wannabe filmmakers out there… When you do your research on festivals, skepticism is your friend.  If there’s a large submission fee ($50 bucks is way too much…If your job was to sit around and judge movies… not even judge them with forethought and reason; just good or bad… How much would you expect to be paid for your services?), and admission to the festival costs 10 dollars or more, something is wrong.  If no one returns your emails, that’s a big fucking red flag.

Please learn from my mistakes, and don’t contribute to a corrupt economy of scammers.  Find the festivals that are real people and support those guys, and in turn, they’ll support you.

If you find yourself completely disenfranchised by festivals, seek out those bloggers and inject a little optimism into your life.

VOD and Midnight Screening

Film’s done.  What’s next?

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around putting Coyote on some kind of on-demand service.  Vimeo wants 200 dollars to let you ask for money?  That’s a little steep considering they’re also taking 10% of whatever you charge.  Not much fun looking elsewhere either.  Aggregators like distribber charge a hefty fee for getting your film on netflix and itunes.  It seems like as an emerging distribution channel opens, companies try to take advantage of artists when they could use the incredible ease that online distribution provides to at least cut an honest deal with the filmmaker.

Any of you who claimed a pre-screener on indiegogo will probably get a private link from youtube of all places.

We’re mixed in 5.1 now.  It sounds great, but I’m just dreading authoring this to dvd and bluray though.

Oh, my, I do like that projection…

April 26th, we premiere.  I’ve got everything in order with the projector and sound.  My last two screenings came off of a dvd, and sounded like garbage.  I’m really happy to have a quality screening.  Speaking of that.  The show is free and strategically located in St. Louis, Missouri to deny my blog readers from attending.  In the unlikely event that any of you can attend, here’s the flyer for the thing:

Epic Timeline pt. 2

If all goes as planned, Coyote will be complete (sans Oberst and Mullen ADR and the score) by tomorrow evening.  My job will be nearly finished, except for that whole promotion and exhibition part.  In 2 hours or so, I’ll have all available elements placed, synched, mixed, and edited.  It is EXHAUSTING trying to perform the work of an entire post production house as one person.  I think I’ve spent at least 10 hours a day since December 27 on this thing.

Tomorrow, I’ll take one final pass at foley since I seem to miss elements on every viewing.  There’s also one more rotoscope I need to do.  It’s at about 50% right now.  There’s some processing and color grading to do on a couple of shots still, but that’s all really, really close to completion.

Mike Schiralli  came over a couple of days ago and embarrassed me with my lack of knowledge of adobe premiere’s audio plugins.  I’ve been experimenting a little the last couple of days, and I think I’m a stronger editor for it now.  Thanks, Mike.

Short blog post!  I’m going to run to my basement to film a dangling lady’s foot, and a corpse before it gets deep into the AM.

 

I’ve got a second…

So I’m transcoding another rough cut to bluray (I’ve been having a ton of issues with encore burning bad blurays), and I’ve got a second to talk.

Almost all of that list on the epic timeline post is complete.  There’s still the car stalking shot, but snow is preventing me from shooting that without a really weird continuity error.  Since I’m using those as a tool of sorts, I can’t have them without any sort of meaning to the film.  Where’s that heat wave when you need it?

Chris Bruemmer and I shot a couple of things yesterday including the credits shot.  It’s a pretty cool skull I made most of.  Chris finished it quite nicely with some mortician’s putty.  Did you know that crickets eat waxworms?  I thought that was really weird.  I probably should have gotten some diopter footage of that, but just take my word for it.

Tomorrow, Mike and I begin mixing audio for this thing.  I stress the word BEGIN.  This is probably going to be a long and tedious process.  There are still a lot of sound effects and foley to lay in.  ADR for Bill wont come until the end of the month, so this is very preliminary.

Another boring post.  I’ll give you a photo next time.

Music oft hath such a charm To make bad good, and good provoke to harm. (William Shakespeare – Measure for Measure, 4.1.14)

November 19th, 2011:  

     Getting ready for bed, I put my laptop on my makeshift nightstand next to my bed, so I could commence my nightly ritual of falling asleep to the Simpsons.

THE NEXT MORNING: November 20th, 2011,

     Trevor sent me the script for his newest work “Coyote”, a project he had asked me to compose the score for (If I was interested of course).  Before I left the bed, I started reading.  45 min later, after I had finished, I switched rooms to my dining room workstation, and read it again.  That may not seem like a big deal, but let me assure you, as someone with ADD, this is a BIG DEAL.  His script got my attention in such a way that I had no choice but to get enveloped by the nightmarish vision Trevor put before me.  It was such a vivid experience, making my imagination run wild.  It was dark, mysterious, and appealed to my sensibilities.  

Needless to say, I really hoped this film got made. 

     Then things got better.  How’s that you ask?  Well Bill Oberst Jr. signed on as our lead.  Bill is the most underrated actor in Hollywood today.  Period.  A true talent, and class act.

Cut to July, 2012:

     Filming begins during the hottest summer in St. Louis history, but Bill and Victoria Mullen went through hell for the sake of art, and their performances were fantastic, despite the sweltering heat.  

     In the next months, Trevor starts editing the footage.  In October, he invites me over for a viewing of the rough cut of the film.  Despite all the flaws of it being a rough cut, I was amazed, and extremely intimidated.  All I could think to myself was “How the HELL can I make my music live up to what I just saw?”  Not only that, the longest film I have scored before this was 6 minutes…  A far cry from the 1 hour 20 min (approx) of Coyote.  

INTIMIDATED.  

December, 2012:

     Trevor gives me a slightly more polished version of the rough cut to work with.  Having that in my possession allowed me to finally start my composing in earnest.  Being able to look at the footage immediately inspired me.  The 1st few pieces I composed practically FLEW out me.  Trevor immediately placed them in the film and they fit perfectly.  It was one of those amazing moments when we all felt that “YES – this is really coming together beautifully.”  

     Things are moving along now.  Here’s a snippet of a scene for you to listen to:

To all that are reading this, take care of yourselves!

 

Holy Shit: Epic Timeline part 1

For the last three days I’ve been sorting through my seemingly endless .wav onset  recordings.  In the chaos of shooting 16 hour days, I unfortunately made a delirious bad call, and decided to not sort through them in the moment.  The result was six folders labeled “bigmessyaudio_,” of which sorting through (especially when your slate guy (usually me) forgets scene numbers) becomes particularly tedious.

I’m finished! 5am last night, I didn’t have the mental wherewithal to make this blog post, but you can’t possibly begin to understand the relief I’m starting to feel about getting my audio all synced.  I still feel like I’ve missed something.

Syncing audio doesn’t seem so difficult.  I work on 2 hour + edits all of the time.  Look at all of those fucking cuts though.  This is the most staccato project I’ve ever edited.  It’s some intense shit.

I’ve started to get rough versions of Mike Schiralli’s score, which sound like totally completed versions.  It’s a desperately needed layer to the film.  The tracks bring life and cohesion to scenes otherwise confusing.  Well, they still might confuse, but you can at least tackle sequences in sections, rather than think “big picture” the whole time.  I so wish I could post a sample of the score.  I’m sure Mike will do that eventually, and I’ll repost it here when the time comes.  Beautiful and funny stuff.  I love it… very 80s and contemporary at the same time.

Anyway,  I’m taking a 24 hour break from audio to focus on visual elements.  Hopefully I’ll get some things shot.  I have the following left to do:

• Burning sun shot.
• Scalp rip over alien head
• 1/3 of stabbing montage
• End credits shot (requires completion of FX skull)
• Car Stalking
• ECU of script title.
• ECU of antiseptic mouth wash
• Bug stuff

Wish me luck!

I’m not dead… I swear!

So it’s been over a month since I last posted.  I feel like you (whoever you are that actually reads this) deserve an update.

I’m in the middle of recording a foley track.  I’ve taken a break to let my cats eat since it would destroy my audio to hear them chomping on dry food in the background.

I’ve put off shooting these 3 or 4 car chase shots for what seems like forever now.  We’ve gotten screwed by the weather every time I plan to head down.  Once it was Nick’s license plate falling off.  We seem doomed to not get those shots.

I’ve been working on some rotoscoping.  I’ve been pretty happy with the results, but it eats up my time and sanity like none other.

I’ve finally started to excise some of my shots.  That’s one of the hardest things for me to do in my editing.  If it’s a really nice shot, I want it to stay, but if it doesn’t work in the context of the rest of the film it’s got to go.  I keep tweaking my edit.  Hopefully, I’ll find peace with it soon.

There’s still a ton of work to do on the audio.  Mike Schiralli is stuck at home without the internet.  He assures me this will keep him focused on the score.  I’ve got three tracks from him so far.  They sound pretty excellent.  I’m excited to hear the next one.

I’ve been telling everyone February will be when it’s completed.  That’s totally arbitrary since I set my own deadlines, but if I don’t make it by then, there’s going to be considerable delay afterward.  Don’t worry, I’ll make it.

When is festival season?  I need to know, so I can get denied by all of them.

Trailer Time!

Stop your crying!  Here’s the new trailer for Coyote.

DIY KINO

The state of contemporary mainstream filmmaking is a farce. Bloated budgets, excessive commercialization, and pandering to the general audience has driven the mindful viewer to other media for intellectual stimulation. We live in an era that, as we’ve been told, would bring about a democratization of film, yet the same mindless drivel is defecated from major studios, and the amateur filmmaker tries his damnedest to shape his own feces into something representative of that. Enough shit! Enough with the hackneyed garbage scripts about cops and robbers, a man and woman falling in love, and flatulence to appeal to the 3 year old in the audience.
Let’s not rebuild the industry. It’s too far gone. Instead, let us embrace the past and build a new future: one that treats the medium of film as an art, not a business; one that empowers the filmmaker over his lofty financers and frees him to create whatever, however he chooses. For an audience that is finally media literate, we must create content to accommodate this literacy, and cease the cultivation of values considered proper by social norms.

We must disregard regulation of our art. The re-editing of a film for an American television audience is revolting. Never should the message be altered to shelter the viewer from art, or worse yet, to inject commercial advertisements. Television and multiplexes should not be the preferred avenue of distribution for filmmakers. They reinforce the flawed regulation and censorship that has plagued the independent filmmaker by influencing the social arena of filmmaking.

Let us then define ourselves as something outside the studio’s influence. “Independent” was stolen from us before many even had access to a camera. We are true independents, with zero connection to any major studio, and starting now, we will no longer behave in a manner that perpetuates the studio’s agenda.

We encourage you to join us. Wake up from the nightmare of viewers judging you for creating art that doesn’t resemble a “regular movie.” Forget the ridiculous idea that you can’t make something worthwhile without a budget. Dust off your dirty old camcorder, and capture moving images that stimulate you, and piece them together in a way that stimulates you further. Revolt against the studios and false independents, and inspire others to join the revolution.

I hereby pledge my allegiance to the DIY Kino Manifesto.

Art-house structuralists?  Yeah, basically.  Carlsson, Larsen, and I (also a plethora of yet unnamed filmmakers) have been making films in really similar ways for years now.  Our films are sometimes radically different in terms of content and style, but we all agreed on a few basic principles in guiding our present and near future methods of production.  I think it’s strongest concept is empowering the artist.  You must write, direct, and edit your films.  It’s that kind of personal touch in every nuance of a film that creates a unique experience for the viewer.  It may not necessarily be “good,” but certainly unique.  Isn’t that what film fans have been clamoring for?

WWW.DIYKINO.ORG

Back to Work!

I’ve had several distractions lately from Coyote, but I think it’s put me in a good place to get some major work done over the next week.  I sat down with composer, Michel Schiralli, yesterday to watch the current cut of the film.  I seem to have forgotten that I’ve color graded almost all of the footage already.  It looks pretty nice, but sounds really awful.  There’s a LOT of audio work still, including ADR with Bill Finkbiner that he probably doesn’t even know about yet.  Sorry Bill.  He hates ADR.

In my absence, Mr. Oberst has done some nice PR for us.  He pushed a rough scene from the film at a horror convention somewhere in Middle America.  According to him, it caught people’s attention, but I can’t help but think he’s a little biased about the project.

So off we go on a trailer!  I have a teeny-tiny idea of how to go about editing this, but hopefully a lightening bolt of inspiration strikes my brain soon.  Mike JUST sent me a rough version of some music for said trailer.  This is going to be great.

Speaking of brains, a pickup FX shot of a human brain should be done soon.  I just picked up the mold to put it all together.  Originally the idea was to use an animal brain, but there are more issues trying to pull that off than I care to list.

Here’s a photo for Mr. Finkbiner to keep him from killing me during our future ADR session.  This is one of those f/.75 campfire shots that Nick developed.  The only existent light source is a fire.  Flickerbox? Don’t be a noob.