Thursday, February 4th, 2010
OK. Edits are officially locked on “The Dead Can’t Dance.”
That doesn’t mean the film is finished, it just means that editing is complete (a HUGE feat nonetheless). Now I make a Quicktime file of the film and send that to our brilliant sound designer Sergio Snmiguel, who will edit and mix the final audio.
While he’s doing that, I will continue to do color correction and image manipulation with Red Giant’s Look filters, which are amazing. I’m giving the movie a very aged, B-movie look, with film scratches and a color reversal-film appearance. It’s going to be cool. I just can’t move anything around on the timeline in Final Cut Pro while doing this, or Sergio’s final audio file won’t sync up (hence the term “picture locked”).
I’m ecstatic to be at this point, absolutely. We’re thisclose to being done. Simply amazing.
On other fronts, I’ve started redesigning the Harmy site, and will update that frequently. And now I’ll turn more energy to the promotion phase, and finalize our screening here. Should have details on that within the next week, hopefully.
So keep an eye out. Things are going to move fast now. And I can’t wait.
-r.
Tags: The Dead Can't Dance, zombies
Posted in Inspiration, Picture editing, The Dead Can't Dance, postproduction | 1 Comment »
Monday, January 11th, 2010
I had a nice holiday and New Year’s, and spent some much, much needed time away from “The Dead Can’t Dance.”
It just completely consumed me, and that wasn’t healthy. I needed to get the first cut out, and I set an ambitious deadline for myself. I just can’t explain it. I had to get it out, the festival deadline was really just secondary. Wade mentioned that I needed to just take my time, that there are other festivals. I know that, and while it created insane stress, it had to be that deadline to make it real. Sure, thousands of others are vying to get into the festival. But you can’t get in unless you try.
And I think the deadline was also like closure, in a weird way. I had been working on the film non-stop throughout the whole year. And I think I needed to feel like it was worth it, to have something to show for it. Sure I could just edit every now and then, but It’s kind of like writing, if you don’t have an ending in mind, you’ll just keep writing and writing, and go on and on.
So I spent a few weeks just letting the film sit, and I didn’t look at one frame. And since I didn’t have much time throughout the year as I normally do to see movies, I tried to catch up on films I missed before compiling my top 10 list of 2009 for my film column.
It was really inspiring to see lots of beautiful work, and made me anxious to get back to my film, which is good. But I still made myself wait a bit.
Until this past weekend, and I must say it felt fantastic to dig back in again. It was kind of like visiting old friends. And going back in with fresh eyes was amazingly helpful. I was able to tighten up some sections that were bothering me, and I’ve shaved 4 minutes from the first act, which it desperately needed (that doesn’t sound like it much, but believe me, that’s a lot). Also doing a little prelim sound work before I turn it over to our sound designer, but I”ll let him handle the artistry of it.
Still no festival news, but that’s a good thing. No news is good news. Otherwise, we have our next few months pretty much planned out with festivals we want to submit to, and it kicks off with a bang in February, then we’ll start sending this baby out and see who bites. Hopefully someone.
But I feel really good about “The Dead Can’t Dance,” again. Especially after the break and working on it more. It’s leaner. It’s fun. I hope it’s original. And I hope it connects with audiences on different levels. We’ll just have to wait and see.
But much more work in store for now. As soon as I get picture locked with final color treatment and correction, I have to turn to PR duties. I need to redesign the Web site, recut a new trailer, post pictures and upload a press kit to the festival submission service (which, by the way, whoever invented Withoutabox.com, the Web site that specializes in festival submissions, is a genius. You will get to know it well when you submit your film to festivals).
I think it’s going to be a good year.
Here’s to the new journey — whatever it holds in store,
-r.
Posted in Inspiration, Picture editing, The Dead Can't Dance, postproduction, zombies | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
OK, so the festival deadline was Friday, and I did get a DVD shipped out, but I don’t think it was an actual working DVD. I couldn’t decide whether or not to submit, then did, then panicked and had to send something, so I threw that in the mail.
I was having massive technical problems, and it turns out I just needed to use a different setting in DVD Studio Pro to get the file compressed enough to fit on a DVD (I thought I had the setting correct but didn’t — ah, live and learn). It was a real headache, hectic and very, very frustrating.
I ended up trying to burn the DVD on double-layered discs for more memory space, but none of those DVDs worked. Sort of. I tried one, and it worked, then froze. Then when I re-played it, it didn’t work.
So I resent the Final Cut Pro file through Compressor again yesterday (which took all night to write), then when I tried to burn the DVD this morning, my disc drive wasn’t working. It won’t read anything now, I don’t know what happened. Frustration on top of frustration!
So I went to work and thought I would burn it on a Mac there, but that disc drive was damaged, as well. Grrrr. But I just came from Wade’s house, and he let me use his computer to burn the DVDs. And we watched it on his really nice, big-screen TV to make sure it works. And it did — beautifully.
And this is the first time I really got to sit and watch the whole thing all the way through. It really looks fantastic, and when I finish applying all the filters and color correction, it will look even cooler.
And hopefully Sergio will be able to do sound design, if I can get things to him in early January.
So, things are going better. I can take a deep breath now, then head back in for more work.
It’s so nice to have things work like they should. Hallelujah!
-r.
Posted in Picture editing, The Dead Can't Dance, postproduction | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009
I honestly can’t believe it’s November!! Oh, wait. DECEMBER??!!!
I mean, really, where has the time gone? “The Dead Can’t Dance” has literally consumed a year of my life at this point, actually more (if you count writing the script, which I do). I knew production would make the time go by fast, but this is ridiculous!
I’m still chipping away at the rough cut. I got all the radio announcer parts laid in last night, and I love it! We did some callbacks casting before we finally settled on our friend Michael “Archie” Archibold, and it was a perfect choice. He has a great radio voice and great snarkiness to his delivery. They are really some very funny parts.
I need to get a couple of voiceovers from TJ, but that might have to wait until early next week, as he just had surgery today to remove a hernia (thank goodness - I mean to provide him some relief). And I need to do some foley work to fix some audio gaps on a zombie attack.
And one big hurdle left is finding some powwow music I can use. We thought we had something all set up, but now that fell through. I may just have to use something temporarily then add in something else later to make our deadline next week.
Other than that, it’s all pretty much there. Tightened up some stuff, and even with adding the radio bits, we’re still clocking in at about 1:45. Not bad. I do want to tighten it up just a bit more, though, and once we get the powwow music sequences in, that will add probably another 3 or 4 minutes, plus end credits.
Now I’m rethinking the title sequence just a little. I want to try a radically different approach than what I have now just to try it. I don’t think I’ll like it, but I just want to try it.
But we’re getting closer, peeps. Something else I can’t believe!
Have a great December,
-r.
Posted in Picture editing, The Dead Can't Dance, postproduction, title sequence, zombies | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
OK, so something had to give, and it was my body. I could feel a cold or something just trying to gnaw its way in, and I kept fighting it off with vitamins, herbs and supplements, but some general nastiness is settling in now. It’s not as bad it could be, ’cause I’m still popping pills and potions like crazy, but it has slowed me down considerably. At least my throat isn’t sore anymore.
We didn’t get to get the radio announcer stuff over the weekend as I had hoped, due to some conflicts, but we’ll hopefully reschedule for this weekend, perhaps.
I did, though, get some “blood splatters” done on Saturday (basically me just throwing red paint around) and that was a blast. I want to use this stuff in the main title design, which I have spent a lot of time on in the past couple of days, when I am lucid enough to sit at my computer and not be bleary-eyed (which seems like the case all the time lately, anyway).
The title design is going well, and I had been looking forward to doing it. But I’m not quite happy with it, so I tore it up last night to rework it, did, then hated what I reworked. So I tore it up again, which means I’ve pretty much backed up a couple of steps. But I’m a perfectionist and I want it to be cool. I time and again visit the Art of the Title Sequence blog for inspiration. Cool stuff.
What’s really great about working on the title sequence for “The Dead Can’t Dance” is the duality with my motion type design program, LiveType, which works pretty hand-in-hand with Final Cut Pro. If you make a change in LiveType, you save it there and the change pops up over in FCP. But the downside is FCP has to render any changes you make each time, and while FCP’s rendering time is light years ahead of what it used to be, working with type and effects takes rendering time — about 3-4 minutes with every change in LiveType, not to mention if you move anything just a smidgen on the FCP timeline. But I’m finding that I’m still liking working on the cross platform rather than wholly in LiveType, which is possible, but a little clunky, especially since you can import video but no audio — crucial for timing.
Sorry to get so technical, but it has its frustrating parts and that’s what’s actually eating into a lot of the time spent. But, like I said, I’m really enjoying this part, and I’ll get it to where I’m happy (enough) with it soon, and move on. I can’t afford to spend too much more time on it right now.
I have a looming feeling that we’re not going to make our Dec. 3 festival submission deadline since THAT IS NEXT WEEK!! Whew! But, so what? It would be great to play this festival, but us and thousands of others submit each year, so the odds are pretty slim that we’d get in.
Still, if I can swing it and get a rough cut I’m happy enough to send in, this festival also has a “last-minute deadline,” but the submission fee jumps to $100. Ouch. (The late Dec. 3 submission fee itself is $60, so it seems kind of silly to just be throwing this money away. But I’ve been through all this before — oy.)
OK, I’ll quit writing around it, the festival is SXSW in Austin. Not that it’s a big deal to keep it hush-hush, because like I said, we probably won’t get in, anyway, but something new at the festival this year is a title design competition that I also (or, at least) want to enter. That deadline is also Dec. 11 (only $10 — hey!). But if it looks like we’re just not going to finish a rough cut in time to submit, I will turn some energy back to the title design, because just that, like I said, could eat up a lot of time, and I would want it to be worthy of submission.
Otherwise, still waiting on the powwow music, which I should get this week hopefully very, very soon, to edit those sequences.
And I need to sit down and watch the film as I have it now (even with the gaps) from start to finish, which I haven’t done yet, just to get an initial idea of flow and pacing. Maybe I’ll do that tonight before picking a sequence to fine-tune.
And then comes audio. Argh. Really not looking forward to it. Anyone know a good film sound designer who works for cheap? As in really cheap?
But have a great holiday week everyone!
-r.
Posted in Picture editing, The Dead Can't Dance, postproduction, title sequence | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
Getting into the tedious part of the editing process now. Going back through and fine-tuning, tightening up the scenes and movements. Also laying down songs on key parts.
I’ll still need more music, hopefully to be written for us, but that may have to come after out first initial festival deadline. We’ll still be cutting it close as is, and the sound will still be rough, but I think we’ll make in time.
It would be great to get into this festival, a major one. The odds, of course, are astronomical, though. But we’ll certainly try.
Ad while I am looking forward to finishing the film, which is still a ways until we have a final, locked print, I’m not looking forward to the distribution phase, the sending off to festivals and the inevitable rejection after rejection after rejection. That part really, really sucks. But it’s part of the nature of the beast, and hopefully we’ll really luck out and have a nice festival run.
But that’s all getting way ahead of ourselves. Now, I need to focus on the cut at hand. It’s getting tightened up nicely, but I know I’ll still want it to move faster in the first act.
But I have been working very hard, almost too hard, and I can feel my body rebelling. It’s not reacting kindly to spending too much time in front of a computer nor does it like the lack of adequate rest.
But this weekend, we’ll still shoot some footage of blood splattering that I will design into the title sequence and on Sunday, we’ll get the radio announcer voice work done and shot. I’ll also get the powwow music we’re using early next week, then lay all that stuff in, then have the rough cut mastered to DVD and shipped off by Dec. 3.
I hope, anyway. Here’s getting back at it,
-r.
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