Hey Folks, not much to say this week, but I did get a call from Jennifer Bronstein (Mayli) who’s friend is the lead actress in Paranormal Activity which is in theaters now. According to this article it is the most profitable movie of all time, raking in a rediculous 434,000 percent return on investment!

Now that movie has a few things going for it that OCGU doesn’t: 1. it’s scary, and people dig that these days for some reason, 2. it’s a pretty simple story and it’s easily conveyed (OCGU is kinda…complicated. sorry, that’s just what came out)

The made the movie for $15,000 around the same time as we were shooting Overcoming Going Under, they promoted the hell out of it online, got it into the Slamdance Film Festival, which is in Park City Utah at the same time as Sundance, and sold it for $7 million. Then it became the number one movie in America and made $65 Million so far.

I’m not saying OCGU is going to do that, but I think it has a shot at at least getting in a festival, getting sold, and having a theatrical run – which would be huge for everyone involved. So if you know anyone who might be interested in investing in a film now would be a great time for them to get on board with this production and help us get it finished. Also if you have any ideas or would like to help with the promotional effort, or ideas about how to go about it please get in touch. I’ve got a team of a few folks helping plan things out, but the more help we can get the better. Thanks!

Related articles by Zemanta

• ‘Paranormal Activity’ Sweeps America (news.sky.com)

So I’m working on the final touches of the edit and I’m entering the stage that I was trying to raise money for – the technical end of post production which includes color correction and audio mixing and design. These are things that I know little about and will have to learn a lot about. Thank goodness for lynda.com, is all I have to say.

I didn’t know what I was doing in the other stages either, and had to learn, but the last stage (editing) took so long it has been a while since I didn’t know what the next step was. I was hoping to raise some money so I could get the help of some pros to really do the next steps right (sound and color mainly) but it looks like I’m going to need to ask those folks if they’ll stick with the indie no budget thing we’ve had going here and do the work for free.

I’ve put together a little team to help me with some of the tasks that are coming up like planning the festival submissions and…ahem…raising money (no, not giving up on that one) so hopefully we’ll be able to scratch together some money so we can get through the post process in less time than it has taken so far. I really want to see this movie! Don’t you? You can help – just donate what you can in the sidebar there. or you can tell your friends about it and maybe someone you know would be interested in investing in the film. We’ve got a whole plan laid out for that and we can go over that with you at any time. Just shoot me an email!

So the rough cut is done, and I’ve been going through it making notes about how to improve it and fix things. There are a lot of things that still need to be done – illustrations for animated sequences, the score, etc etc – but it is way closer and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel…but I just made a disturbing realization; a lot of the voice over doesn’t work.

The main character, January, hears a voice in his head. That is a BIG plot point. It could be argued that is what the movie is about. I would make that argument in fact. Once again though I have found something I didn’t do right during production and it’s biting me on the backend. That whole “we’ll fix it in post” thing is a load of crap. It’s way better to get it right during production and not have to worry about fixing problems in post. Each phase should be free to be creative and not have to catch up the slack of the previous stage, I think…but I couldn’t know what I didn’t know. So I have learned a lot of lessons in this process by making mistakes that I will do my best not to repeat on future projects.

This lesson I actually learned months ago. I learned it during production but it was too late really…and I didn’t forsee this particular problem. The lesson is “Always have a script supervisor.” It is really important to have someone who’s job it is to keep their ears open but their eyes on the script. The Director is getting pulled in so many directions and has so many things to constantly be keeping in mind it is really hard to give the script as much attention as it needs. You want to see that your actors are giving good performances and that the story is being told. Knowing I was editing the film as well I was also thinking about how I’d edit it, but I learned a lot of lessons when I actually got to that stage and saw what I had done…but that is a lesson for another post on another day.

The problem here was because the Voice in January’s head was going to be recorded later and added in post no one was taking into adequate consideration that part of the story and where it would fall in the story. The actors where paying attention to their part and doing their best for the scene, but no one was there to remind them about the invisible and inaudible (at that point) Voice that was going to be interacting with them in the final scene.

Also what worked well on the page didn’t really turn out to work so well with what we actually shot. So what I think I’m going to do is go through the film as it is now and rewrite the Voice in January’s head and record it right to the film. This way it will get across that part of the story as concisely as possible and it will fit way better than what I’ve got now…which most of you will never see (thank goodness)

Whoa.

What a hurdle that turned out to be! This editing stuff is hard – especially when you didn’t know what you were doing when you shot the footage. And by “you” I mean “ME.”

Originally I thought I’d have a rough cut in about 3 or 4 months, even with my full time school schedule. It took that long just to log the clips! Here it is just over two years from the wrap of production and I’ve got a rough cut. Of course there is a ton of stuff left to do, and the rough cut is really rough for sure, but the moment I finished the last scene I had this very strange feeling – it was the first moment that I really had a “movie.” Up until then it was all just plans and potential. I could have dropped the ball and decided that it was all too hard or time consuming, and Overcoming Going Under would have become, well, nothing. But now that the rough cut is done I’ve actually got a movie. It’s real and it’s here and it can be watched. It’s not very good right now, because it needs a lot of work on the sound and tightening the cut before it will be watchable, but at least it “is.”

So now it’s time to start cleaning it up and taking it that last 10%. Of course that always proves to be the toughest part of the journey, but I think it’ll be easier than the last two years…at least I hope.

Again it’s time to embark into the unknown and learn some new skills – sound editing, color correction, the festival process etc. etc. This is the part of the process I was hoping to raise some money for so I could elicit the help of some pros, so feel free to donate if you’d like to help, or if you’re a pro and you want to help in a hands on way let me know. I can use all the help I can get.

Wish me luck!

Check out my new blog No Money Movie – here I’m focusing on the process of making Overcoming Going Under, but over at No Money Movie I’ll be exploring indie film making on a shoe string budget and film making in general. I’m new to this whole thing and I’m learning along the way, so I thought it might be cool to start that blog to talk about how I’m doing it and also hopefully we can build a little community to talk about the process and I can learn some new stuff as well. Lord knows I don’t know what the heck I’m doing – I’m just doing it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I do with my time and how to better reach my goals because I have a lot of projects I’m working on (too many really) and it’s been stressful – wanting so much to reach my goals and get things done that I’ve set out to do. I can be pretty hard on myself and I don’t really allow myself to fall short of accomplishing what I’ve set out to do but sometimes it takes a really long time.

I’ve reached some pretty high goals in the last couple years (finishing my degree at Otis which was the end of a path that took me 16 years since my first day of college at SMC – and no, I’m not retarded) but this last summer has been pretty focused and it’s allowed me to think hard about what I want to do with my time.

So I’ve got all these projects and goals – been working on this movie for 7 years, working on 4 guitars for 2 years, writing music, drawings, writing projects, design projects, starting a business, and on, and on…) But I have to enjoy the process or my life is just filled with stress and irritation.

I’ve learned a few things about what I like and what I don’t like about all my endeavors, and I guess the point I’m getting at with this post is I really like the process of making a movie. Every step along the way has been really fun, challenging and rewarding. I didn’t know what I was doing all along the way before I set out to do it, so I had to stop and learn how with each step. I didn’t know how to write a script when I first had the idea, so I researched and read about how to do it, then I dug in and started doing it. I didn’t know how to do pre-production in order to get ready to shoot. I didn’t know how to direct. I didn’t know how to shoot the film. All of it. Each step has required me to learn a new skill or set of skills. It’s been really amazing.

Editing has been one of the best revelations – I love editing! and I think I might enjoy it no matter what the subject matter. I think I might even enjoy editing infomercials…but hopefully I can leave that hypothesis untested.

There are a few more hurdles to jump, things to learn, along the way before this is done, but I can certainly see a light at the end of the tunnel. I’m starting to really get excited about the next set of steps, partly because the editing process has taken so long, but partly because it’s all really coming together. There were a lot of nay-sayers at the outset, and just like I told them, it’s happening whether they think it can happen or not.

In the film when January remembers something from his childhood it is going to be an animated scene. As I mentioned before each scene is going to be done by a different artist and the idea behind that idea is that January’s point of view is unreliable and the further back it goes the less reliable it becomes. Pretty much everything in this movie is contradicted by something else that happens. It’s the nature of the film – everything is based on the idea of Janus words, which mean one thing and it’s opposite depending on the context. That is the key to the poetry in the film (if anyone can decipher what the hell I’m talking about regarding this let me know. I’d love to know if that comes through to anyone when the film is out) and to a lot of the circumstances of the story. Even January’s name comes from the greek mythological god Janus.

So I just finished editing the scene in which January recounts a tale from elementary school which John Brosio illustrated with chalk on a chalkboard and I photographed. I think it is a great scene, and it is one of the only comic relief moments in the entire film I think. I’m considering posting the sequence on youtube – let me know if you’d like to see it ahead of the movie being done and if I get enough interest I’ll post it.

It’s been a long road, and I’ve learned a lot, but I’m getting a big rush of feeling each time I think about it – I’m reaching the end of the rough cut! There will be lots more to do (including another pass at the edit to clean it up and tighten it a bit, a lot of work on audio, color and annimation sequences) but that’ll mean that I’ll actually have a movie!

I’m finished with about 50 of the 64 scenes, and it is turning out really close in minutes to the page count of the script which is a really good thing. I was worried for a while that I’d end up with an excessively long rough cut that I would have to go through and ruthlessly hack away at in order to get to a reasonable length.

There have been a lot of really funny lessons along the way about what not to do (and I’ve been knocking around the idea of a special features bit called “Things I would have learned if I had gone to film school”) but over all I’m really happy with it. I have felt too close to the project to be able to look at it objectively and determine what is really working and what is not, but I’ve been able to show parts to people that I trust along the way and I think it will be pretty darn good.

So anyway, I’m going to post here more often now and sort of document the rest of the post production process. I was a little bit disheartened for a while because the fund raising effort went so poorly (although it was a fun party) but hey, this movie is getting made one way or another!

I met with Aaron Needham last week about having him do some illustrations and animation for a few scenes in the film. He is a really good artist and I’m excited to see what he does. I was the TA for his motion graphics class at Otis, taught by Lynda Kahn of Twinart, and he did some great work in the class so I’m sure he’ll do a great job.

I am also going to be doing a little animation collaboration with John Brosio (who already did a bunch of oil paintings for another scene) where he will be illustrating a scene from the movie with chalk on a chalk board and I will be photographing it as he does it to animate into the movie. I’m pretty excited about that one!

Okay, that’s it for now. I will be getting better at posting here regularly. I’ve been destracted by other projects which turned out to be a waste of time. It’s a long story. If you want to hear it ask me to tell you about it in person (I won’t be writing about it here)

Technorati Profile