Mattson Tomlin

2012-01-16T17:35:00.003-05:00

I haven't moved from blogspot, and will continue to use it, but for more succinct, often, and visually interesting thoughts (As well as a LOT of posts on the amazing work the creative people around me are doing) you should

Andy Archer

2011-11-10T15:21:00.001-05:00

A quick piece on Andy Archer I put together.

10.30.11

2011-10-11T22:45:00.000-04:00

Had a great meeting with our sound designer, who I can't help but refer to as Broadfoot, this afternoon. He handed over the sound design for Dream Lover, which he and I have been bouncing notes on back and fourth for a little over a week, since the task was given to him. I was surprised how fast he works. This is important, because it's the last piece. Capital D. Done.

I've just begun to export for DVD Studio Pro. It will take all night, and possibly through the morning. On October 30th, you will be able to watch Dream Lover online. This will be the case for ten days, then the film will unfortunately go offline for a few months so we can run festivals. I'm working on a venue in New York (not a theater) to screen Dream Lover on the 29th or the 30th, and there will be big shouts about that when the time is right. In any event, mark your calenders for the 30th, and get ready to watch and share a dream with me.

The Release

2011-10-06T00:13:00.002-04:00

I'll keep it brief. Tomorrow's a big day. Brian is coming in. A lot of you haven't met Brian, and may not be as familiar with him as you are the likes of Neville, Chris, Mak and Adam, the faces from the original short. But Brian's important, and you'll remember him. Sure, he plays an interesting character in the Solomon Grundy saga we'll all be seeing soon, but he's also a tremendous actor, with a ton of patience.

Brian's coming in tomorrow is a big deal. Not just because he's Brian, but because he's coming into the cave to do some ADR and additional voice work. Said differently, Brian is the first scheduled to come in and lend his voice back to production so that we can really get cracking on sound. We're not picture locked there, and there are strange editorial reasons why we're capturing Brian's voice at this stage, and not after we've locked.

The wonderful D. Yee, whose work has always been an inspiration to my own (dating all the way back to the days when I was shooting the Projectionist in 2007) brought together a wonderful poster for the film. Expect to see it everywhere.

Solomon Grundy will be out December 28, 2011. Make sure to follow us on the 'book to keep up to date on the daily happenings.

The Break Up.

2011-09-27T05:17:00.000-04:00

My computer is reading 5:01 am. I've got 16 minutes where I am barred from doing any work as I wait for the rendering to complete on some final color tweaks.

My first announcement about Dream Lover came, surprisingly (to me at least) over a year ago. On September 21, 2010, I revealed what would be both my Junior film at SUNY Purchase, and my obsession for a pretty solid 18 months of my life.

14 minutes left to render.

Tonight's the last night with Dream Lover in my hands. It's been written. It's been shot. It's been extensively cut, recut, reworked molded, and crafted from a lot of clunky raw footage that had a lot of the crew scratching their heads on set, into something that I think accomplishes what I hoped to do.

From the beginning, my hope was to capture my dreams. A real dream. Grab the fuzziness around the edges, the uncertainty of how I got here from there, or what her face really looked like. Take myself out of narrative film world, and dance on the edge of a more experimental genre to try to capture that familiar haze we all know when we wake up.

After tonight, Dream Lover will go to the last people that will touch it. Our Sound Designer will take a crack at the material and fill in the remaining sonic holes left in the wake of the film's surprisingly robust and beautiful score, compliments of Andrew Fox. The mixing will wrap up, picture now long since locked, and it will be rendered one final time, along with the special features I'm including, then pressed onto a gorgeous DVD designed by two good friends of mine at Salt+Seed. None of this will be done by me.

9 minutes to go.

I've watched Dream Lover hundreds of times now. Over a dozen today alone. Just to make sure there aren't any slip-ups. Can that sound better? The color temperature isn't quite right here. It's both mathematical and chaotic at the same time. But I'm finding, as it turns to 5:11 in the morning, that I'm dreading the sunrise, and dreading the accomplishment of no longer having Dream Lover in my hands.

It's not because I'm not excited to have it complete, and it's certainly not because I don't want to show it- I've been dying to put it out into the world since it was written. It's that familiar feeling each time a film is finished, and each time lovers part ways. It almost feels like someone's died. Finishing a film is so much like a breakup. The lover you know so well, each nuance, turn of the phrase, look, and feel that you are know so god damn well.

6 minutes.

Sure, you may see your old lover walk down the street, or go have a casual lunch with them. But a door has closed, no matter what. Watching this film on the big screen will not be unlike lunch with an old romance. It may be nice to see them, and you can learn a new thing or two- but the real fun, the real adventure of coexisting and living that experience, that is gone.

2 minutes.

So I'll watch you one more time tonight, and make the tweaks I can't live without. I'll watch the sound levels carefully, and make sure the color grading is as accurate to the projector as it is to the monitor. I'll finish my notes for filling those sonic holes. And then I'll say goodnight, Dream Lover.

Rendering Complete.

Content. Updates.

2011-09-06T21:41:00.000-04:00

So much to update, but no time to do so. A robust, all out post coming on Sunday/Monday. Dream Lover, Solomon Grundy, and a few additional things on the rise. In the meantime...

Play

2011-08-04T19:50:00.006-04:00

The past year has been another leap into adulthood. Though I'm not there yet, it becomes clearer every day that I am soon going to be the man I'm going to be. Through my teen years, being a film person had just as much to do with the image of being a director as it did with the final product. I'm breathing a sigh of relief as I get older and finding that it's unlikely I will be one of "those guys" in my career. No silly hats, no wearing suits on set, no sunglasses at night. The image is cool I guess, but you should never be cooler than your films.
I've now spent 18 months on Solomon Grundy (hard to believe that a year ago today we were gearing up for the Massachusetts shoot with a team of 11 people) and a year on Dream Lover. I rewind through that year and think about how I approached Solomon Grundy as a director at 19 year old. When I watch the cut of the either film, I still agree with many choices, and disagree with others. Is to be expected, always. However, there is a jump in how the story is told when you compare Solomon Grundy and Dream Lover. Maturity isn't the right word, as they were both conceived and have been growing side by side.

I find both films to be the two examples of my strongest work at this time. But they seem almost like the work of two different people. Perhaps because in some ways they are. Solomon Grundy I kept my grip tight on, and Dream Lover I was far more open to creative input from others. An interesting situation, as Dream Lover was a far more personal story to me than Solomon Grundy.
In the next few months, both films will be done, in your inboxes, mail boxes, ipads, computer screens, big screens, film festivals, and hopefully, your hearts as well. Forgive the smarm on that one. I think more than anything in my growth this year, I'm looking forward to sharing my films to different people. Not so I can talk about them, but instead, so I can listen to others. Showing rough cuts has been a suddenly fun experience for me. The negative, the positive, the blue sky thoughts, and the bursts of energy- my favorite new ability is the ability to listen to not just an audience, but listen to a person.

Off of the introspective for a moment- this past weekend was a photographic playground. My good friends, Derrick and Garrick Kwan (who you might recognize from here) joined me in the wild for a while, and we had a photographic retreat. Investigate more of GKwan's work here. He's responsible for the banner photo of me above, and hundreds of others through the year. Spending time with the two of them, snapping upwards of 1500 pictures in about 30 hours, it was sudden burst of creative energy that I needed. In some ways, fucking around with the Nikon's and the boys out in the middle of nowhere was exactly what I needed to remind me of how much fun it is to just play and be wild. Now Go Play.

Dream Lover Trailer

2011-06-05T17:41:00.003-04:00

Wow, double whammy. My daily routine is mostly going to my posterous which is generally a photo every few days. I'm going to get back into the swing of blogging, as I'm in total post production mode and actually have a few posts I could really elaborate on right now for the process. In the meantime, I've dropped another trailer. This one for Dream Lover.

Please watch with the sound up, the lights off, and in full screen!

Teaser Trailer 2

2011-05-09T18:55:00.004-04:00

New trailer up. Article on ItsJustMovies.com where they were kind enough to host it.

Something from Dream Lover coming soon.

Campfire Melodies

2011-05-01T20:20:00.003-04:00

Took a night off of editing Grundy + Dream Lover to relax with a few friends. I couldn't resist but to bring the EX1, so maybe that's cheating. In any event, some great shots, and pushed the camera best I could with extremely low light. I think we might have read at best a 2.8 through most of it. I recorded about 10 songs from Kevin Olken, Emma Tringali, and Jesse Doherty-Vinicor. Will be releasing a few more in the coming days, but here's the first one.

Ethereal Architecture

2011-04-14T01:15:00.000-04:00

Post-production is always the largest rollercoaster for me. There's usually enthusiasm during the writing, and always a whole lot of enthusiasm during shooting... But once editing comes in, there's a much larger back and fourth of "I love my film" and "I hate this fucking thing."

This is not an usual thing in any creative department (I think?) but it's really taught me how to use my emotions as a propeller. As I work out the Dream Lover cut, there's a constant question in my mind- "is it dream like?" this question is haunting me, because I've realized that I'm really trying to say something with this film. There's an experience I'm trying to convey. A message I want to send.

As I cut along, I start on a conventional path. Cut here for this person and then cut here when they say this. I cling to the narrative and try to make exactly the movie that plays on the script. But there's an etherial quality of dreams doesn't usually jive with straight narrative filmmaking.

This was what I found disappointing with Inception, and what I am constantly fighting. I found Inception to be a beautifully made film with some good and some clunky writing. However, it was incredibly tied into a mechanical narrative. Much like the Matrix's need to explain the technical aspects of the worlds, Inception made it architectural. Inception's logo is made in a blueprint style. It insists on certain rules, constructs, levels, that make the world tolerable and have limitations. Though one would argue that Inception shows a ton of limitless situations- it keeps itself limited with the mode of storytelling. For a character to get from one room to another, they have to walk there. Each scene has a world and we're usually kept in that world. Maybe I'm alone, but I find dreams are anything but architectural.

The Dreams I've experienced are usually entirely emotion driven, the dream goes down a positive path, it's like lazily being carried in the wind from one random place and sequence to another. Very rarely is the continuity of the surroundings, people, or situations honored in my dreams. Inception tried to honor this idea with their line, "you never remember arriving at the place you're dreaming about" but that's as far as they took it, sticking closer to honoring a narrative convention with rules you follow.

This is not a bad thing. It's just not very dream like. So here I am- my movie works about half and half on this dream level. The half that works seems to be really able to flourish in the constructs of the dream world, and therefore the narrative sometimes takes a second chair for the sake of the feeling. The half that doesn't work is made like a movie. Let the characters say their words, let the progression be very logical. Is it a bad movie? I don't think so. But it's not a dream movie.

I took everything back to square one today, and really got creative with the cutting. When I hate it, I use the emotion as a motivator to make a big mess and find the new spark in it. I put everything I had already built out of my mind, and tried to approach the material much more hands off. I believe I can get the narrative story across in this dream world, but it's gonna make me fight for it.

Rough Cut

2011-04-12T12:43:00.004-04:00

Dream Lover is just about reached a fine cut. A few more tweaks, and two more shots to be shot, it's found its form and is turning into a solid piece of work.

Four months after we completed principal photography, Solomon Grundy has finally reached rough cut stage. This is a huge step. 20 months now since we've started (wow.) and the film can finally be watched start to finish. Currently the cut hits at 100 minutes.

A rough cut can sometimes be a really disjointed piece. Scenes get moved around, cut up, cut out, and it's really a great blueprint to figure out where to go. Unlike most of my other films, the rough cuts for both Dream Lover and Solomon Grundy have been extremely strong. If there was any doubt in my mind before that the film flows and does indeed tell a story, the doubt is not gone.

I think what is most interesting is the role of the poem off which everything is liberally based. The "episode" structure of having seven shorts based on the poem that were all slightly connected only in characters was an idea that was thrown out very early on in the writing process. It became clear that if there was going to be any depth or substance, there had to be a bit more connection. What has come out is an unexpectedly narrative film.

The poem, as it stands now, comes in at the beginning of each segment in the form of titles. Each line foreshadows the tone and events about to come. Amazingly, the poem is really effecting the genre. Having slow, fading titles creates a lulling (and poetic) sense of the film, that it is gently carrying us through the story and serves simply as a transitional device. Black card with stark white titles that smash cut away from the scene gives an eerie Kubrickian effect with a much darker flavor. It's amazing what seven simple title cards can do.

Rough cut screenings coming soon. Collecting notes, refining, refining, and working towards picture lock. Fine cut should be rolling around in less than a month. I foresee the poem and the role it plays to continue to be a topic of debate. It feels great to be privileged enough to be battling with these kinds of problems now.

First Pass

2011-03-20T14:13:00.000-04:00

Dream Lover has made it through Rough Cut form. A moment for celebration-- now it's time to screen and get some audience notes!

Chopping Block

2011-03-19T14:24:00.002-04:00

Just a few hours away from a completed rough cut. Hold your breath!

Flow.

2011-03-17T04:26:00.004-04:00

Up all night tonight. 4:30 am on a Thursday. The flow tonight is strong. I've been flipping back and fourth between editing both of the films and writing. It's such a strange place to be in creatively right now- there are zero blocks on all three projects, which are equally and massively rewarding. Things are flowing with both of the cuts, and the writing is clear. Not a bad place to accidentally (and probably very luckily) crash, huh?

Writing something new. Something stemming from a whole lot of frustration over the past month. Lost someone extremely important to me last week. With that loss has come a lot of bizarre negativity that has made the week shady and grey. But an idea so clear, so important, is coming out of it, and it's coming easier and clearer than anything I've attempted to write in the past. I guess it's how you cope. Back to writing.

Day 2 + 3- Beat the Sun

2011-03-15T11:05:00.000-04:00

Day 2. We started the day at 5 am. Maria, Meg, Jason and I went to work getting ready. Today was the monster day. Maria wound up going through a staggering ten hours of makeup before the cameras started rolling, the last seven of which had to be standing.

It's hard to talk about the day eloquently. We must have wrapped around 2 am, so for some it was a 21 hour day- constant working. But, like always, the cast, the crew, everyone was completely on board. This is the first film I've done with nudity, and the nudity is pretty no holds barred. It was something the cast and I really worked on together leading up to the day. On the one hand- I didn't want to be held back. I wanted to be able to have everyone completely nude and able to shoot straight through the day- no clever positioning of arms and legs- delicate shooting I wanted to avoid, and instead of focusing on body parts, just focus on the scene. On the other hand, I don't want to be gratuitous, and there's always the risk with any kind of "love" scene of being unnecessary. But at the end of the day, you look at the dreams and the nightmares. What did I dream and why did I dream it? Is it important that it's staged this way versus that way? Long discussion with the cast. We all came to the conclusion it was worth working towards.

I would love to get the cast talking about this day- it was not at all about behind the scenes on this day- all completely about them. Maybe for the book. In any event- shooting graphic nudity and a bit of violence was an experience, to be sure. It turned out to be extremely fun (for us and the cast) and we were lucky that it was. We wrapped the day and the scene with lots of blood, sex, and that feeling that we managed to capture what was on the page, in our minds, extremely faithfully and without compromise. Lucky kids.

Day 3, from the start was a race. Waking, it was clearly our day to play "Beat the Sun." Our day ends when the sun goes down. Always exciting. The catch? A huge makeup change, making an actor go from young to old, and having to cut the scene in half, shoot the second half first, do the makeup as quickly as possible, then do the first half.

Cast, crew, and fellow filmmakers might disagree with me... The extreme cold and loss of light is a directors friend, not your enemy. The colder the better. It'll speed up the day. Suddenly, everyone is operating 4x faster to try to get out of that cold. Sun going down? 4x faster, gotta get those shots. Put the two together? You're suddenly operating at whirlwind speeds. I couldn't help thinking to myself-- why can't it always be 23° during a shoot?

Makeup goes quicker than we thought, and we're on time to do 2 pages of dialogue in about an hour and ten minutes. I've got seven shots lined up. I'm not going to have time to get to all of them, let alone multiple takes in each setup. There's a fantastic David Fincher quote that sums up the situation and the day... "You don't know what directing is until the sun is setting and you've got to get five shots, and you're only going to get two."

Suddenly, we've only got one day left. We've lost the sun, but thankfully have shot out the scene. One day to go. Jenna D'Angelo and Adam Griffith are wrapped, and have had a strong, violent taste of such a fun nightmare. One more day with Maria to shoot out Dream Lover...

Dancers in the Dark

2011-03-04T16:02:00.000-05:00

A little late on this... It's taken about eight days to get my feet back on the ground and caught up after putting life on hold for pretty much all of February. So: here we go.

Dreams are a succession of images, ideas, emotions and sensations occuring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep.

Day One: Dancers in the Dark

The day started, as all days on this film will start. With lots and lots of makeup. Thirteen people on camera today that need a heavy amount of makeup for what we're doing. The idea, like all of the ideas in this film, came from one of my dreams involving a group of masquerading dancers that interrupt the flow of the dream.

Meagan Hester and Jason Milani really ruled all of the days. Talk about the weight of the film being on your shoulders- both of them were in anywhere from 2 to 10 hours earlier than everyone else prepping for their workload, which was never light.

By 10:30 am it was time to move into our location, right across the street from the SUNY Purchase Film building, to the Performing Arts Center, where they were gracious enough to open their doors for me. All in all a little over 30 people.

By 2:30 we're in the thick of it. Finding what works and what doesn't. Moreso than ever with this project, it's trail and error on set. I did some extensive posting on my favorite Dream Films on Kickstarter- many of them were not about dreams, nor did they have anything to do with dreams. I've been living in nightmares for the past ten months, with, until recently, extremely vivid nightmares every single night. That can't-quite-put-your-finger-on-that-feeling feeling that lingers after certain dreams has been with me every day for almost a year now. The aftertaste of a dream, if you will. With this feeling so fresh in my mind and continuously being reminded- it was easy to see what, on camera, would sell as a dream, and what is too literal, in simple shot language alone. Some things don't work, it's too... Real. I look on the monitor and go "this shot isn't working." There's no reason for it- but just like that I can see what kind of imagery belongs in this dream world. We shift the angles, change the lights, and there it is. A living, breathing Dream world that really sells. Dreams brought to life.

This was a much different day for me than any other film. In a world where we are taught "oh, it's the digital age, the director can wear all of the hats!" It was... Refreshing to not be wearing all the hats I'm used to. On some productions I've done everything from camera to lighting to makeup to fight choreography and anything in between. Today was all about the control of directing. Focus on what the camera sees. Focus on the actors. For the first time ever (ever.) I was not the one shooting. The amazing Filipp Kotsishevskiy- from My Father's Jacket, my brother in arms, was my cinematographer. An extremely scary thing to take my hands off of the camera. I'm glad to say that it was a liberating experience. There's a reason the director and cinematographer are different people in the big leagues.

The amazing Risé Clemmer was on with us for the choreography. We had a few rehearsals in the weeks leading up to shooting, and the movement was all very much her brainchild. The amount of work she put in to getting everyone lined up for the shoot and on track with what they were doing was amazing, and, just like with the cinematography, there was something so freeing about putting a huge chunk of work in someone else's capable hands and letting it be collaboration instead of control. The dancers she brought in- professional and extremely happy to be there. Everyone was working hard. For a reason unknown to me, it really felt like everyone in the room wanted this movie to be as good as it possibly could be- something that can't always be said for a film shoot.

Lucas McNelly from A Year Without Rent came and visited us as well- go swing by and see what he's up to now. He's spending the year traveling from one set to another documenting the things that they do. Visit him and say hi, he's going to be visiting a lot of great film projects.

I think that's all I should say for now without being too exhaustive. The second day is coming.

Monsters

2011-02-12T10:55:00.000-05:00

She's coming alive...

It was truly a terrifying thing, going into the lab with Maria to do the tests. The original artwork has existed on the page, the script has its descriptions, but there's something very scary about making the jump from the page to three dimensional real life. Meagan Hester and Jason Milani are beyond amazing. Over about four hours I watched Selene come off the page and into the real world...

Motive

2011-02-08T16:17:00.000-05:00

In hopes of being a better blogger, I've returned within the same week (and hope to continue to do so) over the next few weeks as things with production really ramp up. This week the cast (in its entirety, for the first time ever) had the opportunity to sit down, do another table read, then go through the entire script twice and block out the scenes.

For me, this was extremely valuable in showing the final details in what works, and what doesn't. While scenes absolutely are working- often times I'll find that very specific dialogue which looks good on the page, sounds terrible in reality. Having actors there and being able to rewrite on the spot to have them try alternate lines is great to figure out what makes sense, and what works.

Because of the nature of Dreams, Dream Lover has some interesting challenges for the actors. I have found in my own dreams, that characters will often change their "motivations" midway through the dream. Someone who starts off being extremely friendly will then take a sinister turn in surreal interactions. With this, in some way, each actor is playing multiple characters at the same time.

I'm glad to be starting to show off some of the behind the scenes work. Showing what's going on with the costumes, the makeup, the dancing, the music, the cameras, the sound, and how it all meets up for those few shooting days is a pretty unbelievable thing. More to come...

Flex

2011-01-31T12:55:00.000-05:00

The days seem to be getting shorter and shorter. Not in daylight mind you. My constant vows to try to blog more often are run down with the work that fills up the day.

Earlier this week I found myself in Coney Island.

Instantly, that had me thinking back to the last time I had spent a lot of time there, three and a half years ago when I started this blog (wow.)

Fall 2007, the blog had started, and I was embarking on my feature film, The Projectionist. Going to Coney Island kind of made me flashback to that time, and realize how much ground has been covered.

So where are we? Well, first and foremost, a bit of a celebration, as my first filmmaking article has been published over at Film Courage. I decided to talk about Light and Color and how they can be used to multiply your production value. You can read it over at Film Courage

I'm about an hour and five minutes into the cut for Grundy. Things are slowing down for February on the Grundy front, as Dream Lover shoots in about three weeks.

Meagan Hester and Jason Milani have been hard at work getting together the makeup for the film. If you missed it earlier, we have the first (of many) making of videos that have just a few seconds of the prosthetics building that is going on...

Finally, I was able to take my first business trip to the West coast this past weekend.

I spent the weekend in San Diego starting to strike up a deal for another film. There was something really fantastic about being flown out to California for a meeting. It's another one of those "ah... I am turning into an adult!" moments. In any event, the deal is still a bit too early to really talk about, but it's very exciting. This isn't a studio deal we're talking about, I'm still happily swimming in the independent world, but now, things are starting to look clearer for life after Grundy and now after Dream Lover as well...

To be continued...

Where Are We Now?

2010-12-27T13:38:00.001-05:00

It's taken me nearly two weeks to write this post. It's difficult, at this stage of the game to not be rambling, and still be as informative as possible.

Solomon Grundy has wrapped. After 20 days of shooting spread over four months, the end has come. It's a weird place to be, working and working towards that goal- then suddenly finding yourself there. Chris, Makenzie and I made our way back up to Massachusetts to finish shooting the film. It was so surreal, shooting back in Mass in the winter, the final scenes. Grundy started shooting in Mass in August, and I never would have guessed, right up to the last few days, that the ending would be shot in the same general area.

Now where are we. Suddenly, 14 months of work has been wrapped up. The crew goes off, the actors continue on. Now, it's just me, and Solomon Grundy. Alone to duke it out in the cutting room. It's been three years since I've cut a feature- and this one has a little over 100 hours of raw footage. Going through and being as thorough as possible has been extremely fun so far.

I think I'd really like to try and get my blog following back up, get the comments running, and get some activity going. I'll try to do three or four posts a week as I'm in post-production (and pre-production on Dream Lover, come to think of it) so we'll see how that goes. As I run into interesting editing problems, I'll put together little blurbs on how I've worked around them, and do a "post-series."

Very exciting to be on the verge of Dream Lover. Going out of one film, and right into another. Funding came through on kickstarter, and we're getting ready to go. Very excited to bring Adam from Solomon Grundy back over into Dream Lover. Feels really right.

I can't get my mind off of color. I think next few days I'll put up a post talking about what the hell color really means here.

So here I go, back to the grindstone, working my way through Scene 15. The Lovers have met. Will they kiss? (Probably not!)

We're Almost There.

2010-12-18T03:14:00.003-05:00

39 hours to go. 164 backers and counting. $1,547 to make. Dream Lover is so close. If you can spare even $1, you will get a copy of the film. Think we'll get there?

Let's find out!

Production: Part II

2010-12-07T23:16:00.007-05:00

It's such a strange way to make a movie. Solomon Grundy is a full length feature film that will probably be just a bit over two hours long. This narrative is broken up into seven short stories, all based on the original Grundy poem. When we set out to start shooting, we decided it would enhance the production to break up the filming to shoot the first three shorts (Born on a Monday, Christened on a Tuesday, Married on a Wednesday) in late Summer, and the final four (Took Ill on a Thursday, Worsened on a Friday, Died on a Saturday, Buried on a Sunday) in the late fall. Let me tell you. This is a strange way to make a movie.

Getting a production back on its feet after such a hiatus is kind of a daunting task. Organizing the crew (reorganizing for peoples schedules, finding new crew members for people who can't make it) accommodating the cast's schedules, new locations, new sets- and the most daunting thing of all- getting fucking into it.

We were fortunate. Everyone got right back into the groove. It's been a funny situation, talking with the cast and the crew. When we mention the summer, the general reply is, "god that was like a hundred years ago." It almost feels like we're making the sequel to Solomon Grundy, back to back.

The Summer's shoot was, content wise, much... Lighter. Getting to know the characters, opening up the world, and seeing Jimmy and his imaginary friend, Solomon Grundy in their prime- there was much more room for humor and levity. Monday through Wednesday really were the first dominos- the last few scenes got those dominos tipping. Now we're in a full scale domino fuck fest, and everything in the characters world is toppling.

It's hard to believe that it's been 13 months working on this film. I think if I had known what an undertaking it would be, I might have shied away from it. Fortunately, I was completely oblivious, and charged straight ahead fearlessly. Sometimes that's just how you have to do these things. With only two weeks until we're completely wrapped now- the actual form of the entire film is finally starting to take shape. I'm seeing how the film will be realized, what people will take away from it, where the visual style is strongest. And most importantly... If it's good or not.

We go back to shooting on Friday and Saturday. Friday is a long day full of some really, really hard hitting scenes. Saturday is a funny day that I will probably do a pretty long and in-depth post on just due to some of the technical wizardry going on. Only a few days left of shooting. Watch us fly.

This is Dream Lover

2010-12-04T13:25:00.010-05:00

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is with great pleasure that I announce the concrete facts of Dream Lover.

Official Synopsis
Selene lives in the dreams of Anderson. Finding herself lost in the dreamscape, Selene has no choice but to search for Anderson and reclaim her place as his good dream. She soon finds that things are amiss in the dream world, or with herself, and the Nightmares begin to evolve.

Meet the Cast
Casting was an extremely long and thorough process. Lots of back and fourth, many callbacks, and some tough decisions. I've now, excuse the pun, got my dream cast, however, and am extremely excited to go to work.

Maria Rowene Joins us as Selene.

Jenna D'Angelo Joins us as Hera.

Adam Griffith Joins us as Anderson.

What is Dream Lover?
Dream Lover started out as a film entirely based off of my own dreams. Over the past year, my nightmares have become more vivid and connected to what is going on in my real life. With the chance to explore some of the goings-on in my mind, I started to do some research.
Being a huge fan of Greek Mythology, I very quickly saw parallels to the story I was telling to the story of Selene and Endymion. According to mythology- Selene, goddess of the moon, loved the mortal Endymion. Hoping to be with him forever, she asked Zeus to grant him eternal life. Additionally, she loved to gaze upon him when he slept. Therefore, Zeus elected to grant both of Selenes wishes, and put him into eternal sleep, so they could live together in dreams.

So is it an adaptation of Greek Mythology? Will there be robes? And Mt. Olympus?
The Greek Mythology Oddessyaspect only comes through in a loose adaptation- similarly to The Odyssey's correlation to O Brother, Where Art Thou? Don't expect Clash of the Titans from this film.

So what's the Genre? Is this Sci-Fi, Romance? Comedy? I think the best answer to the genre question is simply... Dark. It's a twisted romance, searching for lost love. It explores true love, sexuality, and abandonment. It's a psychological thriller designed to get under your skin and make you want to go to sleep to have those nightmares that put you on edge the next day.

Right now, I'm extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to make a film like this. Being young, and having the chance to really stretch myself while still in school, a film like Dream Lover can really be explored without inhibition. I'm jumping at the chance to be able to get under your skin as much as my own. This a Nightmare I can't wait to share.

I'm so pleased to have an amazing cast and mounting crew behind me. Having the chance to work with new actors is extremely exciting. Bringing Adam over from Solomon Grundy is likewise, an exciting thing to see as he plays a polar opposite character to what we've seen from him in the past. We're only two weeks down before time runs out, so NOW is the time to spread the word to your networks! Let's bring the Nightmare to Life!

Links Kickstarter: http://kck.st/aRkE6r
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wackeychan
Blog: http://mattsontomlin.blogspot.com/
Site: http://wackeychan.com/

Love,

M.

Build Ups and Count Downs

2010-11-28T17:08:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, it feels like life is all about countdowns and build ups (what's the difference?)

It's now been a year since I began work on Solomon Grundy. My blog post from December 15th seems so recent. I truly had no idea what I was in for (I don't think anyone in the cast or crew did) because suddenly I've been with these people for nearly 13 months, and we're working even harder than we were on day one.

I think back to a year ago, and how much I owe to Solomon Grundy. The original short to the wayside, the drive to tell a story with these characters has forced me to grow up at a much faster rate than I would have. My directors muscles are jacked and well taken care of, and it's all thanks to Solomon.

Summer 2010, We embarked on a 10 day shoot to capture just a little under half of the story. This past Sunday, after three months without any shooting, we jumped right back into it with all the force we possibly could. Brian Schneider, Neville Archambault and Christopher Birk were back in the sound stage at SUNY purchase to resume work.

It's strange to think that in three weeks we'll be done. Here comes the build up part I was talking about earlier. Though there will be several months of hard work with sound design, editing, music, it will be a much more isolated process than production. It's been a year of working. Writing, fundraising, shooting, and working until we're all exhausted. It's unfathomable to me that it will soon be coming to an end.

While that's the build up, the Count Down is just as exciting. Dream Lover has only 22 days left for funding. Keep spreading the word. We've pushed pretty hard, and can make it. I have the exciting news to announce that for every $50 donation or more, an anonymous backer has agreed to match it. Check out Dream Lover and help us get there! We're right around the corner from 3k!

Casting...

2010-11-07T01:10:00.000-04:00

Decisions are being made. It feels great to be looking at so much talent and have so many difficult choices. Some announcements will be made pretty soon. The casting process is always such a strange, uncertain one. People come in and jump through hoops for you on blind faith that you'll do right by them. They take time out of their day, their lunch break, the end of their day, and buzz in to perform a monologue, do an improv, tap dance through sides. It's not an easy thing. It's humbling to have people come in expressly for the chance to work with you.

One role has been nailed down. It's like running while suspended in air, unable to move forward, then suddenly hitting solid ground and bolting. The casting process is exciting. It suddenly feels like things are coming into fruition. Names on pieces of paper suddenly have faces attached to them, and it makes it all the more real.

If you haven't already, come and check out Dream Lover, consider donating. Only $1 gets you a copy of the film.

Solomon Grundy- Trailer 1

2010-11-04T02:28:00.004-04:00

Sorry for the delays in posting folks. We're heading back to shoot Grundy in less than 2 weeks. In celebration, I've cut together the first trailer (more than a teaser, less than a theatrical) for your viewing pleasure! More updates with Day 1 of Production Mark II coming to you soon!

Now go Watch That Trailer!

First Glance + Blog Award!

2010-10-08T13:00:00.000-04:00

No huge news this time, just little updates. First and foremost, Solomon Grundy has wound up in a new film festival. between now and November 1st, go check out the First Glance Film Festival, and VOTE for Grundy! You have three votes, so make them count!

Additionally, my blog got it's first award? Apparently I now have a Masters Award in Performance Arts. The website that awarded me put together a list of other performance related blogs- many film. Some of them are pretty cool, take a look at the whole list Here.

I'm off to work on Grundy and Dream Lover. We've finally crossed 1.2k, and are going strong. If you haven't yet, consider donating to Dream Lover. $1 is all it takes to reap all the rewards and push a dream forward. Just for fun, a little bit of Adam Griffith with Green Screen replacement.

Push It.

2010-10-04T23:44:00.005-04:00

There's an energy I'm feeling that is making me sleep even less, and work even harder. It's exhausting, but the hurt of pushing feels good. Every morning I wake up, and tackle the projects that sit on my desk as if it's the first day working on them. On the one hand, Solomon Grundy.

We're getting closer to November. I'm getting my act together to finish the job I've started. I switch hours between writing for the future, and editing the past. The editing goes slowly and meticulously. From my most recent post, in which I was discussing making sure my bases were covered with all of my green screen work, I'm now finally in the midst of shaping the story. If I don't like a visual- change it. If I don't like a beat- move it. If I don't like the flow- push it.

While I edit, my heart sometimes leaps into my throat. I see an image, and try to push it. Just a little bit more. Get a bit more with the color, or the light, and have it mean something else just because it's a little brighter, or a little darker.

Having read If It's Purple, Someone's Gonna Die right before we started shooting was extremely beneficial, and I'm finding that I'm gravitating towards putting as much meaning as possible into the tone of the image- something very new for me. Watching a scene all the way through with one color tone, then shifting the reds and the blacks just a bit, it's suddenly ominous, scary, even evil. And the temperature is just a few degrees off.

As all of this fun, instant gratification stuff goes on, the real work switches off. Back to writing, writing, writing. Incessant. Constant. Making sure the characters work. The situation is real. The feelings are genuine. It's SO bizarre, having half a movie in the can, only to be going back and reworking it based on what you know you already have. Since we decided to split production in half, I was able to spend a bit more time reworking the ending. I've decided to take advantage in the biggest way, and really work my themes from the first half of shooting in a way that will make the end even stronger. It's a different way to make a movie, and in some cases, even a wrong one. But in this case, it's feeling right.

Finally- I'm still on Dream Lover. After a little over a week of fundraising, we broke $1000. Seven to go. More will come out about just what the hell this project is, but I can say that as it's shaping up, working on the latter half of Grundy in writing, while in pre-production for Dream Lover has them tied for being my strongest work. If you haven't already, please consider donating to Dream Lover. Until next time.

Just a Test

2010-09-22T14:11:00.000-04:00

As I've been cutting Grundy together (I think you'll find there will now be a real back and fourth between Dream Lover and Grundy posts), I decided to start doing a bit of playing around with some color correction to make sure I'm not totally screwed. After shooting one scene outside, it became extremely clear to me that I did not want any scenes of this film taking place outside to be shot outside. So, to the green screens I went.

Green screening is always a very scary thing. It's deceptive in how easy it looks, and alluring in the idea that you can just put anything in at the end of the day. But it's really not the case. So, as I've been chipping along, I decided to just grab a temp background and make sure that I was correct in my imaginary spacial shooting. Ready? Here we go!

A screengrab from the original footage, totally untouched, uncolored, as it was on the camera. Our star is looking down an alleyway while approaching a T intersection in the alley.

Here is Christopher, with the green removed. Notice we lost the dirty shot of Neville in the right hand corner, but he's still there- just a shadow. If we popped a white background in, it would still be that edge of Grundy's shoulder. You can also see if you click on the image to enlarge it, at the top of Chris's forehead there is a speck of green coming through his hair.

We've now played with the colors. A bit of desaturation on Christopher to take out the color, popped a bit of orange over him to match the artificial light we'll be surrounding him with. The desaturation has also pretty much completely taken out that green noise that was left over in his hair from the green screening. Fortunately, I'm making a film that relies on desaturation, so using this technique means I can cut corners. A super colorful movie would have to go about it a much different way.

Here's our temporary background image. No way this is actually ending up in the film- it's just for reference. I ended up just googling "dark alley" and browsed around until I found something that looked like it was shot at an angle and level that wouldn't make it seem like Jimmy had one leg way shorter than the other. Just temp background for reference!

After some editing.... We've really darkened it down, which has actually helped take this really cumbersome and cartoony image, and made it seem a bit more gritty and real. Darkness always helps. Popped some orange in their to mimic the supposed streetlights (here's our artificial light playing in heavily for us) and desaturated the whole thing so it wouldn't pop too much! Which leads us to...

The "final" temp mix of everything. I put all of this together in about four minutes just to make sure my ass was covered, so when we get to the real cutting, hours will be spent matching saturations, brightness, and lighting in an artificial scene with moving backgrounds. However, for a temp view, I'm now feeling pretty good about my green screening, and happy with the decision to shoot on a stage for scenes like these!

A Dollar For a Dream

2010-09-21T23:28:00.000-04:00

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I have officially launched my newest Kickstarter for my next film, which I have been alluding to for the past few posts. The film is called Dream Lover. It is a combination of an adaptation of some of my own dreams and nightmares of late, and a rough retelling of the Greek myth following Endymion.

I'm handling this kickstarter a little bit differently from my last one. After a lot of consideration, I'm taking the In Rainbows approach, and opening up the field. For as little as One Dollar, you can have access to a digital download of the film. $1 for the whole kit. What I'm really hoping for is the maximum number of people possible to see this film of mine, so opening up and letting everyone else set the bar seemed like the best solution. I would hope that anyone who reads this might pass it along to a friend- it's one dollar well spent, I feel quite confident in saying. This is a terrifying thing to be doing, but my faith in this project is driving me with more force than ever before.

If you have a moment, come visit Dream Lover. I thank you for your time.

M.

Kickstarting soon.

2010-09-17T17:28:00.001-04:00

wish me luck.

Upping the Ante

2010-09-14T00:01:00.000-04:00

Progress always feels pretty great. It's been a few weeks since we wrapped the first half of production, and that entire time has been spent watching footage, logging footage, sorting footage. When you go to edit a feature film, the order you shoot in is rarely the order of the progression of scenes. If there is a scene in a film that has an exterior shot of a mansion, then the interiors of the mansion- one shot may have been shot weeks before the other. So, as an editor, I sit, watch all of your footage, once, twice, three times. Each time, I take my yellow pad, and make notes. Example:

Scene B2 Take 3 has a WAY better shoulder shrug from Andrea than SB2T2, BUT SB3T5 has a great look from her than can finish the action. Take Opening of SB2T3, shrug from SB2T2, and close with SB3T3. And all of that amounts to about three seconds.

After several weeks of watching 30 hours of footage and doing these notes, today I finally started cutting. I'm by no means near done logging, but it just felt like it was time to go dome cutting. It felt pretty fantastic if I do say so myself, and now I have a rough cut of the opening scene. It feels good to finally be moving.

This year continues to get more built up. I've gotten several offers on other people's films which I've elected to take up. Aside from finishing Solomon Grundy, and directing my own Junior Film- I am also shooting a classmate's film, and producing three others. Details will slip from all of these projects (my Junior Film will be unveiled momentarily) and I am quite excited to be working with so many other talented people this semester.

Brand New Day

2010-09-09T00:40:00.000-04:00

Ladies and Gentlemen. Welcome back.

The next eight months will be wild indeed. This blog will make a shift of sorts, and focus on the production of two films at once. The first, as many of you know, is Solomon Grundy. Half of it has been shot, the other half is awaiting November to begin photography. The second film will be my Junior Film, also known to some Solomon Grundy backers as Secret Film X.

Junior year returns to what Freshman year was like. Instead of a flurry of small projects throughout the year in rapid succession, we all work from the first day of classes up until our final review at the end of the year on one project. The script is in, casting is beginning. This year, more than any year, will be about being adept at multitasking. The idea of juggling two such large projects at once is extremely daunting and exciting all at once.

In the immedeacy, all of the announcements about Secret Film X (title, plot, and production) will be made in six days time, when my next, more modest, kickstarter launches in six days time, if all goes to plan. It's scary, it's wonderful, and so begins the new year of filmmaking.

Wish me luck. It's starting.

Mattson.

Milestones

2010-08-21T12:40:00.010-04:00

When last we left our heroes, they were at the bottom of a pool with underwater cameras. Now, there is a bit of a calm. The storm is temporarily over, and we have wrapped the film for the summer. We're not done by any means, but the first phase of production has come to an end, after a grueling 10 day shoot where there was little room left to breathe.

The second half of the shoot faced many more challenges than the first half. Among the first was our club scene, where Jimmy and Julie first meet at a bar. Instead of vying for another bar location, we decided to have a bit more control and build a bar instead. Mike, Emily and Shane were entirely in charge of this feat, and honestly, I was beyond impressed with what they came up with. "Standard Inc" and it's bar were not meant to look like a film slate, but when framing from the other side of the room, I couldn't help but tilt my head... The scene was an extremely interesting one to shoot, mostly because the extras we had arranged to show up... Didn't show up. So how do you shoot a scene in a crowded club with only a handful of crew? Make everything shadowy and switch outfits and have people walk across screen over, and over, and over again.

Production took a turn into the scary stuff from there. Green screen. It's nothing new, and nothing groundbreaking, but it's still a territory that can be extremely frightening if you don't have a handle on what you're doing. Putting your actors in a space that is simply a green lit piece of fabric, and telling them what space to imagine is difficult enough. Making sure you're framing correctly (you don't want one actor seeming way taller than another one, or way further away than another one in the cuts) and understanding the digital space you'll be creating, as well as simply lighting the green screen itself are tasks daunting enough. Add movement (in which little X tracking marks have to be put on the screen so a computer can detect motion against the green) there are a lot of things to keep in mind. It would be nice to be able to just throw someone in front of a green screen, and tell them to go, and just point and shoot, but the process is a bit more complex than that.

I was fortunate enough to not be completely new at the green screen process. I had sensed I would be getting into this technique before long, so I spent last November shooting a short adaptation of the Invisible Man for class. This process really opened my eyes to the potential of green screening (where the objective is to remove anything that is the color green) to the point that I actually painted parts of the actor green, then plastered white makeup over his face to give the illusion of floating makeup on an invisible man...

It will be an adventure, getting my heels dug into a project that is far more CG heavy than anything I've worked on before. As I slowly chip away at my own computer graphics knowledge, I've been meeting with freelance pros who will, in time, be stepping in to do the visual effects for the film.

Perhaps for me, the most exciting day was the club scene with out musical number. Andrew Fox has spent since late June writing our song, "Whispering Wicked". Through the past two months, He, Makenzie Caine and I have met up at school in the city to workshop the song and rehearse it. Two days before we shot the musical number, we got into the studio and spent about an hour and a half laying down Mak's vocals.

Then the big day came. Tuesday was extremely stressful, and really made me flex my directing muscles. About twenty people were on set, we had eight pages to shoot (we usually do about five) and only six hours in our location before we were kicked out. Nicole and I had spent a few weeks location scouting, and were fortunate enough to have happened across a fantastic Jazz and Swing club called Swing 46. It took some convincing and some tap dancing, but at the end of the day, we were able to secure the most exciting location yet. The atmosphere and the layout of the club were unreal. The perfect match. A two camera shoot, Nicole and Michael manned the second camera and we shot through eight pages of dialogue as well as a musical number, and managed to be out with time to spare.

We've now wrapped for the summer. We reached the halfway point, and now we have a bit of time to regroup before we go back into shooting in early November. It's been an odd experience, to say the least. I walked into this project thinking I was doing a student film. I'm at the halfway point, and I now realize I was severely mistaken. We've all graduated into the world of being professionals, and if anything attests to that, it's the quality of the raw footage. There were hard days through set. Real ups and downs that we all had to bounce back from. And yet, at the end of it all, the footage we've captured is of paramount importance, and gets me beyond excited when I think about what is waiting around the corner.

Though we have hit a huge milestone... I am just getting started.

Stations

2010-08-15T02:10:00.002-04:00

The days move with ridiculous swiftness. What was originally Day one is suddenly about to be Day six. I have grown in more ways than I could have imagined since last week, and it has become very clear that I've taken the first big step out of the student filmmaking world, and into the world of "real" films. I think the crew would all agree- we're leaving student territory.

There's a responsibility that comes with being a director that is often not spoken about. In a way, it's similar to being the bass or the drums in a song- it sets the pace and the tone. It has been amazing to see how in a shooting setting, my actions and body language can so dramatically effect everything. If the cast or crew are feeling a bit down or a bit sluggish, it can be turned around if I keep my own motivation pumping. At the same time, if I start to get discouraged, the cast or crew will feel that, and get weighed down by it. It's an amazing thing, and really something I've only ever seen on set. Fortunately, even in the rough times, I've felt nothing but positivity as we've moved forward on shooting.

Our first weekend in Massachusetts a week ago seems like a year ago. Day six? More like day 306. Our first day with Neville and Christopher Birk as adult Jimmy went extremely well. Terrifying is a word you will see me use a lot here. As well as it went, it was terrifying. The first two days in Massachusetts were like a dream how well they went. The images we captured and the way we went about capturing them were so wonderful and great. There was a large part of me that spent all of Tuesday morning (Day 3) worrying about if that original quality would be maintained, or if it was a fluke. Again, I'm happy to report that the pace continued, and still continues.

As I went on shooting on Tuesday, there were other parts of Grundy that continued on. I think one of the largest reasons that this film has stopped feeling like a student film is that there are several different departments running at once. Usually on student, or even low budget productions, there is a very small creative team that is in charge of everything all at once and need to function together in the same room to get it done. In a very large way, that's not quite the situation on this film, and instead, there are wonderful Grundy 'stations' where activity continues as production charges forward. My friend and fellow filmmaker Shane Sheehy agreed a few weeks ago to be in charge of the set design and construction of our summer production. Along with the help of Kevin Henthorn, Michael Oshins and Fillip Kotsishevskiy, they went about and constructed, from scratch, the character Doc's office in our sound stage at SUNY Purchase.

Carisa Kelly, who has singlehandedly clothed every member of the cast (and occasionally the crew) continues to knock my socks off (probably the wrong idiom in this case) with her work. There is a certain organization that she keeps that totally centers me- at the end of the day, Carisa knows what needs to be done for what characters costumes. Carisa was one of the first people who came onto this film without knowing me or being in class with me. This was an exciting prospect for me at least, bringing in outside eyes that specialize in something I know very little about, and the effect has been wonderful. It doesn't simply boil down to "this character needs a shirt."- it suddenly becomes "this character needs to have a v-neck t-shirt with an off-purple color and have it be a little moth eaten, and this is why-". Carisa has also (I think unbeknownst to her) gotten me thinking in terms of color. In our first conversation, when speaking about the lead female character, Carisa said "she feels very red to me." This stuck with me for a while, and I suddenly started to think about all of the characters in terms of colors to match their personality. This helped me concertize each character by knowing where they came from and where they stand.

When we were in the midst of Day 4, shooting on the soundstage, I had a brief minute (and it was literally only a minute) to take a quick walk around the soundstage and see what everyone was doing. The actors were in the corner rehearsing, Anjelica was touching up their makeup as she did. In the other corner, Alan Lapointe was working on getting the mics wired and ready to plant on the set. Emily and Shane were busy making sure that the items on Doc's desk didn't look too planted. Kevin was laying the dolly tracks. Michael was ironing the blue screen and making sure that I didn't fuck myself with my upcoming visual effects challenges- always watching my back. Everyone was singing Britney Spears (it was Shane's fault I'm convinced). I stopped at this situation, looked around, and couldn't believe how much work was being done for this film.

Perhaps the most exciting thing of late was yesterday, Day 5. Underwater photography. I've said it about thirty times in the past day, but it's the truth- I now totally understand why James Cameron stopped making narrative films for ten years to film the titanic and some fish. Making movies underwater is fucking fun. Renting the underwater housing, and learning how to use it in under an hour was hectic, but I quickly adjusted myself to shooting in wetter conditions than normal. Yesterday I was able to check off one of my big filmmaking dreams and shoot scenes underwater. Pretty much every movie that I have written has had scenes that take place underwater that always get cut by the time we shoot, just due to the sheer difficulty of making it happen. Renting housing for a camera isn't an easy task, finding a location to shoot in was just as difficult, and then operating under limited time capped it all of. Yet somehow, as I've gone through my underwater footage, it's absolutely amazing, and totally worth the difficulty of getting it. Now that I know how, expect every Mattson Tomlin movie to be entirely underwater.

There have certainly been ups. There have certainly been downs. I have worked everyone to the bone, and worked myself far beyond what I thought I was ever capable of long ago. None of this would be possible without the people around me who have already given me so much. Through the ups and downs, positive and negative feelings, I'm pushing as hard as I can, and promising everyone that it is worth it. Every night before I sleep I lay down and I watch through the footage that we've shot. Every night it reminds me why I am working those around me and myself so hard. Every night I watch, and I see the footage we've shot, and can hardly believe it came from us. It's not just good. It's amazing. I can't wait to share it with you.

The Starting Line

2010-08-08T03:36:00.005-04:00

The time has arrived, and I'm not sure if brevity or deep elaboration will serve me best. It is a terrifying thing, to work so hard towards something- a goal that is clear in purpose but vague in its execution for so long, then suddenly finding yourself in that day when it's finally time to stop theorizing, rewriting, planning and imagining and just do it. I think what makes it terrifying is the fact that the first day of shooting a film will be the litmus test that tells you: was the past eight months of working towards this film complete horseshit?

Faced with this, on August 6th, I went out into the day with nearly twenty amazing and dedicated people at my side to go and make my film, Solomon Grundy, finally come to life. As many of you may know, I elected to adapt the Grundy nursery rhyme and split the seven lines of the poem (each for a day of the week) into seven short films that tell an overarching tale of Jimmy and his semi-antagonistic imaginary friend, Grundy. The first two days led to the first "episode"- Born on a Monday- to be shot almost completely.

Over the next few days I will make posts on specific aspects of the process we are going through (I am really thinking about starting with costuming because our costumer, Carisa Kelly just continues to open my eyes up to brand new things to think about that really throws me for a loop) in the production process. Like I did with my Freshman Film, I'll also be doing a few video updates which will give a feel for what it's like on the set with the cast and the crew.

In the meantime, It's been an extremely long 72 hours- I hope you will all bare with me as I get a bit of sleep before I make a more elaborate post tomorrow and the next day. I've decided to go ahead and post a few pictures from the past two days of work, and then get far more detailed as we go. Enjoy!

Liams Last Night

2010-08-01T01:12:00.008-04:00

Tonight I write with a bit of sad news, and quickly unrelated to anything film. Liam and Me, a band which has been rocking out since 1999, has celebrated the final performance of their guitarist, a friend of mine, Dan Larkin. Tonight was an excellent show in NYC, which I was fortunate enough to be able to record their 40+ minute set. I'll be cutting it together, and giving it to the band to do with what they will. If they permit, bits of it might end up online. In any event, congratulations Dan on a fantastic show this evening- you single handedly rocked NY tonight.

Back to the movies, I now will counter the sad news with some very exciting news. Filming will begin this upcoming Friday, August sixth. T-Minus Six and counting. Very exciting, and very scary that it's now GO time. It's a funny thing; I've been working on this film non-stop every day since about November, in one form or another. First, the original proof-of-concept, then graduating to the larger project, raising money on kickstarter, and the past four and half months of writing. Now it's suddenly time to clap my hands together and say 'okay, let's really do this'- and that is really, really exciting and absolutely terrifying at the same time. You spend so much time working and honing onto a goal, that when it comes time to act, I at least realize I was never thinking in terms of actually getting there, but instead focusing on the process of getting there.

Many of my newer visitors have been saying they'd like to go more in depth into the filmmaking progress. I would like to take a step forward and oblige this desire. Throughout this week, I will be giving a breakdown of everyone in the crew, who they are, and what they do- why they are important. Some of you may roll your eyes at the explanation of the necessity of a cameraman, but even I have been learning just how different production can be when a makeup artist is just there to do makeup, a costumer is just there to focus on costumes- they are looking at the minute details to help the big picture come together.

This week I'll also be posting quite a bit on our production design- we're set dressing a couple of rooms, building a couple of sets, and creating a few environments from scratch (see below.) I'll get into the details for you all this week, if you're interested! Finally, one of my new visitors, Adam, asked me a few questions about what makes a successful blog. His blog is all about blogging, and I thought I would give him a plug with some of my blogging tips. That's available right here! Thanks for visiting, and now it's time for me to go to bed!

How Fitting

2010-07-28T21:28:00.009-04:00

Very exciting day for Solomon Grundy today. Costumer extraordinaire Carisa Kelly came over and took the measurements of all the principals for the cast. It was a whole lot of fun to have everyone in the same room again, and exciting to talk about the project in real and actual terms together.

As they individually started getting up to have their measurements taken, everyone started asking about the script, shooting off little anecdotes about their experience with the proof-of-concept film, and scheming about the adventure we're going to embark on in two weeks time. I think out of all of our pre-production days, today was the most exciting. Like I said a few posts ago, there's a certain tangibility that comes from getting a group of creative people together and planning to do something great.

Adam Griffith, who plays Frank, has been off doing work in Ecuador for the past few weeks. Schedules had prevented any of us from seeing him before he left, so having him arrive today and excited to work was extremely refreshing. His original take on Frank as a southern hick with a chip on his shoulder was fun to workshop- but Adam and I both agreed that the Frank you will see in the new version of 'Grundy' will be going in a much different, much more dynamic direction.

It feels right, to be working on this with these people. What struck me when shooting the original proof, was how easy it was to deal with this group. No matter how smooth the film has been, there has always been at least one personality that wasn't quite where the others were. What I find amazing is that all of my leads in this film very quickly grew to be like their own Grundy family. Hokey as it sounds, that's really the best term I can think of for the dynamic amongst us all.

With measurements of actors and notes from me in hand, Carisa will now head off to the workshop to do some brainstorming and assembling of the costumes. Once things are put together on paper, they go to cloth and real life. Camera tests with the costumes to make sure what looks good in real life, still looks good (or better) on camera. Expect the costume thread to continue.

Finally, I'm happy to report that my 1st AD, Nicole Favale, who worked with me on my Freshman Film and Early Retirement, has finally arrived in NY to take up her duties of yelling at me and making sure I've got my shit together. Things are moving along, and hopefully, by surrounding myself with smart people, everyone will come out unscathed and happy.

Welcome Newcomers + Contest {updated}

2010-07-27T13:16:00.010-04:00

new update. so many new people have come to visit, it's wonderful to see you all. I've always been someone who wants to share my work with the greatest amount of people possible. therefore, if you're new and if you send me an e-mail with your mailing address, I'll send you a free DVD of my work, just in hopes of entertaining you. Thank you!

Apparently, I am a blog of note today on Blogger- an interesting and noteworthy blog of note. I'm not sure quite how this happened, but thought I should welcome anyone who might be stumbling over to me due to this. I am a filmmaker. I go to SUNY Purchase, 30 minutes north of NYC. I just turned 20 years old, and have, for the past six months, been embarking on a journey to shoot my fourth feature film, an adaptation of the nursery rhyme, Solomon Grundy.

The poem is a seven line poem, that I broke down into seven "episodes" little vignettes that tell the story about a young man named Jimmy who is at first helped, and then plagued by the companionship of his loyal but sometimes violent imaginary friend, the titular character, Grundy. The past spring, in order to raise money for the film, I turned to Kickstarter and raised the bulk of my budget using a 7 minute proof-of-concept film which you can watch here.

Shooting for the feature starts in a little under two weeks, and we're extremely excited. If you're just joining the blog, you've come at the right time, as production is about to totally amp up, and we're going to be updating every two or three days or so. Newcomers, please come back!

In the meantime, this good news has given me a little burst of energy, so I'm going to stage a quick contest. (I do this as a free-film friday every so often with my readers) The first ten newcomers who comment will get a free, no strings attached, DVD of some of my more recent work in the mail. Looking forward to sharing with some of you. Now that there's been a formal introduction, back to work! Thanks for stopping by!

Update: the first five newcomers came quickly, as did the free DVDs I'm sending out to newcomers, so I changed the number from five to ten. There are five more to go!

-Mattson

Tangibility

2010-07-11T03:59:00.005-04:00

The weeks leading up have been long and tiresome, and we're finally almost at the... starting line. Suddenly, the world of Grundy seems far more tangible. Getting scripts in, working on storyboards, SET BUILDING (starting Monday), final casting, crewing, and scheduling as we race towards our start date, which looks like it's going to be in this very month of July. It's finally starting to be real. A testimony to the sudden tangibility is the work that Makenzie Caine and I did this week with the extremely talented Andrew Fox.

Andrew was put to the task (in a very short amount of time) to come up with a musical number of a 40s vibe for Mak to sing in her introduction in the film. Not sure what I was to expect, Andrew and I bounced ideas back and fourth on the phone last week, and I was stunned to see that the seeds planted then had come into fruition so quickly. I'm very pleased (and proud) to be announcing that Mak will be singing the song in the film. I'll be extremely tight lipped about it, so expect pictures, but not clips just yet.

Also, I must send out a big thank you to the folks who showed up to the film festival this week. There must have been a little over twenty people who showed up just to catch Grundy, it was great to kick off production with our first big screen showing with so many great friends. Monday we start building, so expect the tangibility to grow as we rocket to the end of the month.

Our first NYC Festival!

2010-06-06T01:23:00.003-04:00

Very, very pleased to announce that the original 8 minute proof-of-concept Solomon Grundy short film will be arriving at the NewFilmmakers New York Film Festival on Tuesday, July 6th in the Deren Theater at 32 2nd ave in Manhattan!

Check out the official website for more of the schedule. I will certainly be there, and some of the cast may be as well. I'll be pushing this a bit more once we're closer to the day, so I hope to see some of you there.

In the meantime, things are really starting to get nailed down for Solomon Grundy. The past month has been so exhausting in a constant bombardment of writing day in and day out. I've really gotten to know my story and know my characters, and I truly look forward to moving to the next stage of production! We're almost there, but the end is certainly not in sight quite yet!

Wilma Video- Leaving Promo, New Interview

2010-05-30T20:16:00.008-04:00

As noted earlier, I had the great fortune of returning to the Wilma Theater in Philly a few weeks ago and shoot a promotional video for their now running show, "Leaving"- check it out below, or head over to their website. Anyone in the area should definitely check this one out.

The side of the video gets cut off just a little bit, so to view the whole frame, follow it here.

Aside from this, good news all around. Writing continues strong, Henry Fernaine and I are meeting constantly and the crew is starting to be assembled. Two days ago I had the great fortune to be a guest on Casey Ryan's web talkshow, The Cutting Room Floor- take a listen to it if you have a few minutes, download it and throw it on your ipod!

A final stroke of good news. I'll have more to say about this once I get the go ahead, but it seems I've landed a job in mid-June as a camera operator on a colleagues feature. I had made reference to this earlier, but it's all in the bag, and mid-June I'll take a few days out of the Grundy time to go and experiment with the 7D.

Constant Progress

2010-05-19T01:03:00.005-04:00

As you may remember from a few months ago I cruised down to the Wilma Theater to shoot a promo for their last show, Language Rooms. It seems that folks at the Wilma were happy with my work from last time around, because I was invited back, this time to do the video for their upcoming production, Leaving. I have to admit, I was a bit surprised to find that I was shooting David Straithairn, who you may recognize from LA Confidential, Good Night and Good Luck, and more recently the Bourne Ultimatum. The shoot itself was, as these are, extremely quick and efficient, and I've now got some new work on my plate to get it in in time for their opening night next Wednesday. Will certainly make the video known once it's finally in the can.

Henry and I talked tonight. We started figuring out the final schedule to shooting Grundy, now that the semester has finally ended and the writing is as far along as it is. Assembling the crew and getting the locations in order. It's a pretty exciting time, hustle and bustle, moving and shaking. Finally, I just snagged a gig as a camera operator on another feature that has a ten day shoot in June. Not sure how much I can say about it right now, but there will be some updates on that to come! Very excited to do some experimentation with the 7D!

In Summary...

2010-05-12T04:07:00.012-04:00

Sophomore year has come to a close. The past few weeks, reviews have gone through, we've had our premiers, showcased our work, and made our summer plans. I write at my desk, in this particular room for the last time. Sophomore year brought on a lot of strange challenges personally and professionally. A lot of growing has taken place over the past nine months. While I have mixed feelings about the overall year and my work, one thing is for sure. The rigor that school put us through energized my style and improved my filmmaking more in the past few months than the past two years combined. We had a hell of a lot of work, that's for certain. When I think back to Popsy being the first work of the semester, it's mind boggling how far I've pushed myself.

Sophomore year had a lot of accomplishments. In summary...

I bought the rights to a Stephen King short story and adapted it. Twice.

Did a whole hell of a lot of experimentation and put my money where my mouth was in terms of DIY special effects, painted an actor green and keyed him out in an experiment with green screen technology to make the Invisible Man come to life for less than $20.

I made best friends with This Guy, fulfilled a several year dream to bring Solomon Grundy to the screen the way I wanted, then put the pedal to the metal and raised $13,000 to make Solomon Grundy a fully realized dream of mine.

Got the attention of former boss and Revolutionary Road producer Henry Fernaine to produce said project.
Hunted down artist Justin Reed, shot a short piece on him, and commissioned him to do some work for Solomon Grundy.
Was asked to prove I could shoot an action sequence. Gave it a go.

And finally, set up shop in NYC to shoot Grundy this summer, which we're now all looking forward to. I know I certainly am.

Thinking about it, there is a whole hell of a lot I was up to this year. More than I can post right now. I've slowly been amassing said work to put together another DVD to shell out to people like I did with Freshman Year, and hope, as always, to continue to deliver some really cool stuff to people who are interested enough in watching me grow. This upcoming weekend I will return to The Wilma Theater to shoot another short for their upcoming production. More on that TBA. Henry and I are sitting down this weekend to get going full time on Grundy now that school has ended. After Effects Extraordinare AJ Evans has been chipping away at special effects work for the final cut of Early Retirement, and Popsy composer Pick Bickmore continues to compose for both Early Retirement and my Justin Reed piece.

Feet don't fail me now.

Two Interviews & a Show

2010-04-28T16:14:00.008-04:00

The folks at Black Sky Radio had me back on their show again. I was on for about a half hour, so if you're sitting back and relaxing at the end of the day, come listen to it. Jenna and Mike at BSR are a whole lot of fun, and have been very supportive of what I'm up to from day one. Check it out here.

Did a quick interview with film critic Steven Boone on his site, Big Media Vandal which is short and sweet- Steve's a very fun guy, swing by, say hi, he's working on some good stuff. He asked me some pretty unexpected, very cool questions.

This has been a big writing week. Having Henry as my producer continues to have things get better and better. The start is so strong to start off, and we're both racing the project ahead to make it as strong as possible and get to shooting. It's a very exciting time. I made a lot of creative decisions this past month, some of which really scare me. I don't think I've ever actually been afraid of a project quite in this way. It's exciting to be afraid.

This Sunday, 6:30 at SUNY Purchase the Sophomore Films will be showing.

Restless nights

2010-04-24T03:21:00.003-04:00

Well into cutting Early Retirement. It's been a long night of working. Meeting with my producer, Henry Fernaine tomorrow, to talk about production on Grundy. Less than a day left on kickstarter, so it looks like our budget is coming out to being 13k. Not bad for a student film.

we did it!

2010-04-14T21:22:00.000-04:00

it's time to go make my movie.

Early Retirement/ Justin Reed

2010-04-11T23:17:00.010-04:00

First and foremost: Solomon Grundy has 12 days to make 1.5k. Down to the wire folks! Click here for Solomon Grundy!

Such a ridiculously packed weekend. I have, in the truest sense, been running and gunning. The week of classes ended on Wednesday. Thursday was spent the beginning of shooting my final project, a little short I've got called Early Retirement. I wound up getting Solomon Grundy star Christopher Birk in the fray, and really enjoyed working with him again.

The script is strange, the cast is great, and the energy is super high. Filming on campus with prop guns was actually quite a challenge, bringing the guns in, having them inspected, registered, then bringing them in again right before the shoot to make sure everything is truly ship shape with them. It's a long process, but UPD was very accommodating and at the end of the day, just wanted to make sure everyone was going to stay safe. We had several days of fight rehearsals, so by the time it was time to go, Pascal (our lead actor) and Christopher were ready to go hard.

After shooting on Campus, we moved things up to Massachusetts for a day and a half of constant shooting. I found myself thinking a lot about my freshman film, Until the Sky Falls. It was about a year and a month ago I shot it, and the experiences were similarly pleasant, and pleasantly draining. At the end of the weekend, we were all pretty excited and exhausted all at once. I'm extremely happy with this project, and feel as excited about it as I did when I shot Solomon Grundy initially. It's been a while since I've churned out a project I'm really feeling great about. As I'm ending the year, I'm glad to be able to follow the old saying, and go out with a bang.

In addition, I've got some wonderful news. Some of you may be familiar with Justin Reed. His website is here and his blog is here. Recently Justin and I started talking back and fourth, and- I'm happy to announce that he will be doing the poster for Solomon Grundy... I'm now working on a short doc project on Justin and his work which will be online at the end of the month. Look for that, some more Justin Reed updates, casting updates, and this next short film, Early Retirement all coming soon. There's only a few days left to kickstarter- we're almost there!!

Taking Notes from You...

2010-04-03T20:11:00.005-04:00

I recently found myself with a little bit of time on the road and spilled into my DVD collection. I found that the movies, though I enjoyed them, to be a little too fresh in my mind, but some of their special features were really rocking out. I don't want to mention what DVDs to get everyone off track on a certain line of thinking, but I've really got to ask- what special features do you love? What special features do you hate? If there is a commentary will you listen to it? Or only if it's from a certain director?

I ask as I begin to prep into pre-production on Solomon Grundy, I've been thinking, what kind of content should I put around the edge of the film. What wealth of information or fun would be most interesting to the general audience. Free reign ladies and gentlemen- what are your favorites, or things you wish you would see, (either in general, or specifically from me) and the special features you hate.

Putting in the Work

2010-03-24T00:41:00.008-04:00

It's been about a year since I've really gotten myself totally worked into a project. When I did Until the Sky Falls last year, I was completely in that world. I ate, drank, and slept apocalypse. So, a year has come and gone, and I suddenly find myself back in that headspace. Being totally tortured by Solomon Grundy. I wish it was as cool as it sounds- I'm sure Neville would have no problem sitting next to my desk and calling me names all day while I try to work- but it's not quite that striking. But I'm sure it feels the same way. Getting notes back from drafts, going back to square one- recycling- restart, and rework, reinterpret, revise, reestablish, reconsider, and do it again. And yet, it feels so, so, so good to be grilled and drilled and forced to work on something over and over because you want to get it right. It's been so long since it's felt that way. Good to be back.

Will be talking to some friendly folks through the week who are going to be doing some interviewing about my progress with Grundy. Will gladly post it up for you all to be able to read as soon as it's available. I continue to press ahead and feel pretty god damn excellent about what I'm doing. We're under 3k until we're finished, and have a month to do it.

In the meantime, to tide you over- I had an assignment I shot off the cuff last week. Hit a bit of a snag while prepping my next non-Grundy short, so I ended up shooting something on the fly. Michael has been shooting with a senior filmmaker this past month at this great location, so we decided to head out and do a bit of shooting one nice, sunny afternoon...

Little bit of Press Here and There...

2010-03-17T12:09:00.004-04:00

The announcement of Henry Fernaine joining Solomon Grundy sparked some interest on kickstarter. Was pretty blown away yesterday when I woke up to about 30 emails of congratulations. I wasn't sure what for, until someone sent me here.

Several film projects have had similar experiences, and we had another great example just two days ago. Mattson Tomlin is the 19-year-old filmmaker behind Solomon Grundy, a film project that has done well on the site. In a project update over the weekend, Tomlin revealed that one of the people behind the Oscar-nominated Revolutionary Road, Henry Fernaine, had come on board as producer. To have a seasoned veteran helping to steer the work of a first-time filmmaker will be a tremendous asset for Tomlin. And while we aren’t privy to all the details, certainly seeing Tomlin’s ambition and vision be publicly validated by his audience impacted the decision (Tomlin also once interned at Fernaine’s production studio). It illustrates how easily Kickstarter can help bridge new modes of funding and traditional channels — they are far from incompatible.
Nick Dager was kind enough to publish some words in the March 15th issue of DigitalCinemaReport.com about the technical aspects of the proof-of-concept, how, what and where we shot. You can read a quick one-sheet here.

In the meantime, I'm pushing Grundy hard, and it's paying off (literally).  For today only (March 17th)  if you pledge to Solomon Grundy (or if you already pledged, up your pledge- even by $1) I will send you a surprise in the mail this weekend.

New Website Launch/ Great News!

2010-03-14T22:11:00.002-04:00

Happy to be launching the Solomon Grundy website, Solomon Grundy Born on a Monday as we get into the last few weeks of our fundraising. The website as it is right now is just a teaser site, two pages where there is a synopsis and the film, complete with links to twitter, facebook, and the kickstarter itself. Once we go into production however, it will be the central hub for Solomon Grundy separate from my website.

Little tidbit of information- Neville and I got together last night, milkshakes until 3 am, (4 with daylight savings) and talked website stuff... Something cool coming to the new site the night funding ends...

Aside from that, I've also got some rather large news. Before coming to school, I was an intern at a production company producing 2008s Revolutionary Road with Kate and Leo. Since going to school, I've kept in touch with one of the films producers, Henry Fernaine. I'm extremely pleased to announce Henry has come on as producer to Solomon Grundy. Big step for our little (and now quickly growing) production. Proud to be making this project, and can't thank everyone enough for pushing it as far as it's already gone. Keep spreading the word!

Wilma Video- Language Rooms Promo

2010-03-10T21:06:00.004-05:00

As aforementioned in the post below, I shot a quick promotional video for the Wilma two weeks ago. In a half hour, I had to shoot an eight minute scene from a script I had never read with actors I've never met. This was a lot of fun! While behind the camera I really had to use my editing skills to make sure I had all of the coverage I needed. There would only be three chances to get it. If you're in the Philly area, you should definitely check out Language Rooms!

Fun stuff upcoming this weekend. As a side note, I've been watching a whole hell of a lot of Batman: The Animated Series, and can't understand why the hell the Penguin and not Two Face is the most used villain of the series.

And Grundy is on it's way to 6.5k.

In Overhaul...

2010-03-05T00:33:00.012-05:00

My once-a-month posting days are over. Reminiscing about the good ol'days, and have decided to go headfirst back into blogging much more full time. My Solomon Grundy work has been invigorating and scary. Sometimes I will go three days without a backer (despite all my efforts- and believe me, there are a lot of efforts) and then suddenly one day I'll get literally $600 put into the project. It's very spasmodic, which really keeps you on edge. The further I go into this project, the more invested I become in it. To the right, I'm sure you see the little facebook badge for Grundy. If you have a facebook, come join the page, it won't hurt you, and the cast is always hanging out there too.

This past weekend I had a great opportunity to go down to The Wilma Theater in Philly to shoot a promotional video for their most recent installation- Language Rooms. They'll be putting the video I put together (with some graphic help from Michael Oshins)

Peter Jay Fernandez in 'Language Rooms'

The video was a quick, intense shoot. I only had 30 minutes to shoot the entire thing, and the scene ran 8 minutes long. No time for planning, no time for choreography on my part. So instead, we just went right trough, bing, bang, bam. Three takes, and three opportunities I had to get all of my coverage. Really put my editing skills to work, as I had to edit in my head and make sure I had all of the angles I need in order to cut something that looked like it had been shot with... Many more angles than three. Amazingly, I did it. I can't put the video online until the Wilma does, but when I do, you'll hear about it.

Peter Jay Fernandez and Nasser Faris in 'Language Rooms'

Aside from that, I've been gearing up for my next non-Grundy short. A little thing I've written that... Has a working title of 'Early Retirement', but that will be changing. Tomorrow I have a casting call with about ten different actors, and am looking forward to push the limits again.

Christened on a Tuesday.... Storyboards

2010-02-19T04:46:00.007-05:00

I've been having a lot of fun working through the drafts and getting things tighter script-wise. My kickstarter account continues to build steam, and I'm now well over 3k, and will hopefully break 4 in a week or so. As I spread the word and build the fanbase, I've gotten more and more excited about the overall product- perhaps more excited than I've ever been about a project I've worked on. I think Until the Sky Falls and that whole experience was the most fun I've ever had, but Grundy's looking to top it.

If you haven't taken a look at my kickstarter, check it out now!

In order to contain some of my excitement, I put together some quick shots from 'Christened on a Tuesday'- very rough, and I'm not going to decode my messy handwriting for you, but when we shoot (that's if we shoot) in a few months, I'll be sure to have a shot-by-shot comparison from this post! In the meantime, spread the word, and enjoy!

R.I.P. &

2010-02-15T23:30:00.003-05:00

My fish, &, died this past weekend. I got him to serve as a writing partner for me. For the past year he's kept me company through a whole variety of projects- Popsy, Invisible Man, the first two drafts of a feature I'm working on, and of course, Solomon Grundy.

In screenwriting, multiple writers are credited in one of two ways. If the collaboration was very hands-off (say, one writer wrote a script ten years earlier, and the final shooting script riffs off of it, the credit would be written by First Writer AND Second Writer.) However, if there is a close collaboration, to writers who work at the desk, side by side and blue-sky together to get a finished piece- you credit the two writers with an ampersand in between (First Writer & Second Writer.) Hence; my fish, &. You will be missed.

My Kickstarter continues, with Solomon Grundy being the final project I had & on my desk for. We're at $2,930, and hopefully will break 3k by Wednesday. It's weird working on it without him. Yes, I'm aware he is just a betta fish. But he's &.

What did I just do? An adventure with Kickstarter.com part 1

2010-01-25T01:33:00.003-05:00

Friends. I've recently decided to go on a ridiculous mission. I am looking to raise $10,000. This is a little bit extreme, and I can't wait to see how this adventure plays out. 90 days to go. 0 dollars earned. I won't get too far into the details here, because, honestly, I'd like you to visit my kickstarter.com page and take a look at what's there. I've uploaded a pitch video I would love if you could watch, and most of all, share this with your friends. Wish me luck. Mat.

click here for kickstarter
click here for solomon grundy

or copy and paste this to send to EVERYONE. read the rewards in the kickstarter page. Thanks for everything, and I hope to hear from many of you.

Free Film Friday #3

2010-01-14T01:41:00.005-05:00

A lot to report here folks, but since none of it is quite tangible, I thought I'd do another Free Film Friday. As always, the first four to comment will get a DVD with some of my work {US only for now, folks}. If you spread my blog around to your friends and get them to comment, let me know, there's something in it for you. This DVD will include Solomon Grundy (with two scenes not available on the youtube version) and (i)- my invisible man adaptation which has not been seen by anyone as of yet. I'll pack the DVD with Until the Sky Falls, my Freshman Film, if you request me to!

Good luck, happy hunting. Be sure to e-mail me (check here for my email address) with a mailing address so I can get you what's owed.

All of that aside, I've got three new projects that are heading out for February '10 that I'm looking forward to talking lots about in a few weeks. Above is the screenshot for the 2009 Donors DVD I'm working on at the moment. I'll start raising some money for a project this March pretty soon, and am already looking forward to putting together something excellent for you.

Solomon Grundy

2009-12-15T01:49:00.012-05:00

Update: Solomon Grundy is now online. Click here to watch.

Like I said, it's been a semester of monsters. Briggs Sheridan, Popsy, The Invisible Man, and now I'm wrapping things up for the holiday's with Solomon Grundy.

I've always loved the poem that created the character. It's from the 1840s and goes, "Solomon Grundy Born on a Monday/ Christened on a Tuesday/ Married on a Wednesday/ Took Ill on a Thursday/ Worse on a Friday/ Died on a Saturday/ Buried on a Sunday/ This is the end of Solomon Grundy"- it always just popped to me. Before I shot Until the Sky Falls, Solomon Grundy was originally an integral part of my freshman film. Now, he's come to life. After working with Neville Archambault on Popsy, I started searching for something else to work on together. Solomon Grundy came to mind. Apart from Neville, my entire cast was new. Christopher Birk, Makenzie Caine, and Adam Griffith all came in through various casting sessions I held in the city with classmates, and together, they all clicked so extremely well on screen.

I've gone so back and fourth all through the semester on the kinds of projects I've worked on. Popsy was grand, with lots of locations and actors, and the Invisible Man was small and introverted. After taking a bit of time off, this kind of combines the two in what is essentially an internal think-piece brought out with some huge physicality. It was also probably the most fun I have had on a shoot this year.

Like Popsy, Solomon Grundy is a bit more geared towards sending it to a film festival or two. Showing it in class was, as always, a little bit overwhelming. After you spend a month hammering away to get out a good piece of work, you then have to put it up and see how it fares. Grundy got me the most positive feedback I've gotten in the year, and with that energy I'm now getting ready to put it into the world. The movie is in large debt to Kevin Henthorn, who lent his band Olken's song "Man on the Moon" (which served as Kevin's Freshman Film last year- which you can see in all it's greatness here). Grundy will be online soon.

explorations in green

2009-11-09T21:11:00.005-05:00

this whole semester has been comprised of monsters. pedophiles, man-bats, and invisible lunatics. the latter has been occupying my time for the past month or so. what started out as a bit of a whim with a technique experiment turning into a crash course in new technology. i had been toying with the idea of doing an invisible man piece for a little while now. doing it effectively however, was a little bit daunting. i had a notion of attack, but wasn't quite sure. using green screens for replacing backgrounds is one thing- using it to remove heads and hands and moving body parts that continue to interact with objects is another. i had a few notions of how to go about it, and decided to really attack it with a test shoot.

the original assignment was called 'the forced marriage'. all it entailed was being paired with an acting major from the senior class, who we would then have to work with. i was assigned an actor named James Ortiz. James and I got along right away, and i have nothing but great things to say about him, and our experience on the invisible man together. upon doing a test shoot, i was inspired to go about things even more off the handle than originally planned. instead of just using green screen for invisible man techniques, why not green everything, so i have as much flexibility as i could want? digitally create locations, lighting, the works. all of this is totally new territory for me, but i decided to go for it.

learning the technology was a lot of fun, and very easy to do. it did not take very much time before i had down the basic do's and don'ts and could instead just focus on technique and performance. aside from james, i came across an actor named michael strelow, who plays the invisible man's counterpart, kemp. working with two new people in a completely new environment was great, though it caused me to change some things stylistically for myself. i am very used to picking up a camera, shooting hand held, and when something catches my eye, i hone in on it. here i could not just shoot from the hip in the same way. here there was a new level of planning that i needed to conform to. if there was a certain shot i wanted, there were ususally three or four shots needed in order to compile it into one at the end.

overall, having a now near-finished product, i'm pretty pleased with my decisions to go all green, and to tackle the subject matter the way that i did. i kind of took green screen and used it as a blunt instrument, and hit everything i could with it. now that i have a large understanding of how it works, i can use it more surgically and hopefully more effectively at that. on to the next monster...

Doomsday Audience Choice Award and Queens Int'l Film Fest

2009-10-26T04:25:00.008-04:00

the above picture was on my door when i woke up this morning.

My experience at the Doomsday Film Festival was a positive one. Considering it was my first experience participating in a film festival, I did okay. Until the Sky Falls won first place for the Audience Choice Award. When being interviewed about the film on Friday, I mentioned something about it not being the kind of film that is up for any Audience Choice Awards. I guess not, unless it's at the Doomsday Film Festival. A special thanks to old friends and new friends who attended to see Until the Sky Falls. It's always humbling and gratifying to have people show up for you. Thank you. The people running it were very down to earth, organized, and impressive, considering it was their first go at a festival. I will certainly be checking back in next year, if not as a participant, as an appreciative spectator. Good job, folks.

In more festival news, and equally surprising as the ACA, Until the Sky Falls was just accepted to the 2009 Queens International Film Festival.

So. This is surprising. After five and a half months of rejection letters, there are a couple of successes, and I have to say that this encouragement from the outside world is coming at the right time. Feeling a little bit put out from the past few months of work, these little wins have given me a little bit of a reminder about how my work is still important. Even in little ways.

See Until the Sky Falls: October 25th

2009-10-17T21:50:00.004-04:00

Until the Sky Falls (which has now made its way onto imdb) will be making an appearance at its first film festival. It will be part of the closing short program of the Doomsday Film Festival, taking place from October 23rd to October 25th. There will be a filmmaker Q&A afterwards. Anyone who is in Manhattan, come down to Lafayette on the 25th to check it out.

Another quick side note- I've picked up a job directing an ad for a small clothing company. I'll be directing an ad revolving around a group of break dancers wearing Casterine Cotour's clothing. More on that to come- next Saturday I'll be in the fold shooting that one. Very interested to see how it goes.

Finally, I'll be doing some additionally photography for Popsy this upcoming week to try to capture a few more beats. It's exciting to head back into it and continue with my absolutely wonderful cast. More on all of these little side notes to come!

Popsy: Cast, Crew, and Man-Bat.

2009-10-13T20:32:00.012-04:00

Popsy has wrapped production. It's edited. In the bag. The schedule was unlike anything I've done before. Really wild stuff. September 16th I started the real casting process. Before long, I wound up with a really great cast of actors. Bob Curtis was a gentleman I met in a diner about six months ago. I thought he had an interesting look, and asked him if he would do any acting. I come to find he is a professional photographer who attended NYU for film. Six months later, Bob is running around with me for Popsy. Neville Archambault is an actor who I found via craigslist, and he was a very lucky find. He's done some stints on SVU, and we had some really interesting talks about the work he does. Kevin Gebhard, who ended up portraying the character Popsy, was someone who I had pursued earlier, and finally the energy of the project convinced him to come aboard.

Working with these very different actors from very different places in itself was a great and new experience. I've found that my acting class from last year continues to come in handy as I further appreciate what an actors job is, and some of the challenges that come from being an actor.

The creature effects, and the creation of the Popsy character was a task in itself. On my last large project, Until the Sky Falls, the production design in the graffiti was the large task that could have been a project on its own. Here, the Popsy character was a real challenge. After reaching out for makeup artists and being unsuccessful, I decided to just go and learn about prosthetics on my own. While at the costume store near Union Square, I met a man named Abe Danz. After taking some advice from him about how to create my Man-Bat, I quickly asked Abe if I could hire him. Abe, it turns out, is a SUNY Purchase alum, and was more than happy to come back into the fold and hang out with us through the process.

Before I knew it, makeup tests, wings, casting sessions, locking locations, and gathering the crew was all underway. Popsy's wings, in particular were quite a challenge. After finding a suitable frame and wing from a halloween store, I spent quite a bit of time experimenting with how to make the wings more like skin and less like black spandex costume fabric. After some failed experiments with liquid latex, I found myself using somewhere around six cans of spray paint to just null the material into being painted, caked, and firm. Once the fabric was given a real texture, I was able to go back in with brighter, more skin-like colors, and have the colors really take to this modified fabric. Though challenging, getting my bat-wings the way I wanted them was extremely rewarding...

at Filming was very grueling and demanding. My cast and crew dealt with a near 12 hour shoot and really hammered through it with me. I think on this shoot, more than any other, I learned the value of control. I really kept up an energetic pace, but unlike in shoots I've had in the past, when things started to run late (I think we wrapped around 2) I felt no need to rush through and compromise a shot just because of the daylight. Working with all of these new people, both in cast and crew, I really felt like I had a new amount of control on what it is I'm doing. This was a rewarding project to shoot, and even though it is due tomorrow, I will be revisiting the editing later this month to try and smooth out the many rough edges. We shot Monday. Tuesday was left for editing. Wednesday was a day reserved totally for sound work and the musical score. It's now 2:30 in the morning on Thursday, and I find myself with a project that went through production and post-production in just a little bit over 48 hours. My pre-production work paid off, and I sincerely can't wait to share Popsy with the rest of you.

Popsy- The One Shot

2009-09-27T17:53:00.007-04:00

To quote my current ad on craigslist.

I am looking for an actor 50s and older to be in my student film. Should be thin and wiry if possible. You will end up being a grandfatherly Man-Bat.

Over the summer, I found myself back in the world of Stephen King. I was introduced to the world of his short stories- a place I had not visited before, and was struck in particular by two short stories. One, from the anthology "Everything's Eventual", titled "The Man in the Black Suit" was amazingly chilling, but cinematically too complex for me to wrap my mind around right now. The other, from "Nightmares and Dreamscapes" is simply titled "Popsy" and right away I realized I would be adapting it. The story revolves around a child being abducted from a mall, and hoping that their Popsy will come rescue them.

Production has been interesting, and much different from my past projects. I turned to the internet and spent several weeks arranging casting calls. The project has me casting children from ages 8-10, Men over 50, and freelance special effects makeup artists. Going about the casting process via the internet has been a very new experience indeed.

As this has been an assignment, it comes in two parts. The first, and most recently completed part, was to adapt a scene and film it all in one shot. I took a brief segment from the story, the initial abduction, placed it in a park (the Mall will be fourthcoming) and shot it with my friend Bob Curtis, who I met at a diner last May. Bob is a great guy, and has been a lot of fun thusfar to work with as an actor. He and my child actress, a young girl named Cheyenne, worked with me over a few hours as we hammered out what ended up feeling more like a rehearsal scene than the actual thing. Nevertheless, the scene came out pretty great, with a few things to work on.

As the situation is now; my one shot is done. I now go around and re-work the scene (and the rest of the story) as an edited, multi-angle assignment. I am looking forward to making use of new actors from the city, special effects people, my crew from school, and a plethora of locations. I am excited about this project and what the final product will be. Fortunately, you won't have to wait too long. Deadlines are tight, and within a month, Popsy will be ready to go. Stay tuned as I hammer through it!

The Vaginacam

2009-09-17T11:01:00.007-04:00

Back in school for Sophomore year. Our projects have kicked up extremely quickly and it's like we [almost] never left. We've filmed our first two documentary projects, been hard at work on editing, and are about to take on our first big projects for our directing workshop class of the year.

For the past three days I've been undergoing my first real casting sessions. It involves posting an ad on cragislist, renting an audition room, and running auditions for a few hours. A few classmates and I decided to try this out, and unfortunately, none of my potential actors showed up; bit of a bust. Casting for my project continues through the week, and I look forward to seeing how my next short film will be coming out. Stay tuned for that one.

Mike, on the other hand, has been hard at work with me to create the "Vaginacam" his project consists of an inside view of a vagina looking out. Mike and I headed to the grocery store, and tried to figure out what exactly would make up the components of a visual vagina. Things sort of clicked for me with this, and I bolted through the grocery store, grabbing everything I thought could go in. The actual frame of the vagina is made up of a small trash bin with a hole cut in the bottom for the camera.

The vagina has to start closed, and then be pried open at the beginning. The opening had to be something that felt organic and could react to being clamped apart- it seemed obvious to me that some sort of foam or sponge material could be used...

From there, the inner walls we spray glued a black plastic bag to give some texture and spray painted it...

On the day of the shoot, we'll lube up the inner walls with a crazy pink hair gel that I found that reacts really well with the plastic bag and the sponges. This will give a cavernous, wet feel, as well as an extra glistening against the lights that will be set up.

I'll try to post the final product when we finish it up today or tomorrow. It was very fun to sit down and get creative with some raw materials again. Things just made sense and the trail and error was great. I'm excited to see how our finished product comes out, and I am pretty sure this is not the last use the Vaginacam will be getting...

Cone Skating, August 2009

2009-08-28T21:28:00.005-04:00

So it's up, just a little tooling around I did with some of the initial footage put together with a little Beck. Let's see how long youtube lets me get away with that. Very soon I head back to Purchase and start the new year. I'm ready, and looking forward to the changes it will bring. For the past 48 hours, I have been writing a new screenplay nonstop. I look forward to sharing where it goes.

A Whole New World(s)

2009-08-21T00:01:00.012-04:00

an edit. 8/23/09

i don't enjoy making super many posts at once, because i don't think i can get people to actually read this thing more than once a week as it is. that being said, there is something happening to me. it is very exciting. it happened right before the projectionist, and again before until the sky falls. it's like a bass drum heartbeat in my head, and once again, i know lightning is about to strike and i am going to jump into some serious work. i'm on the verge of writing something really fun again, and i just have to let this heartbeat get louder. when it flatlines, i'll have already started. that is all.

It's been a pretty strange few weeks. I've kept myself busy and my head above water as I feel changes all about my life. I am looking forward to school, and to all the new projects on the roster. My life has been filled with rollerblading, hot air ballooning, horse therapy, tae kwon do, sailing, skiing, and continuing to write. I think I'll start off with the most recent.

In Which Our Hero has been a serious work in progress. working with Tony Sica and the High 5 Balloon company has been great. My third draft is pretty done, and my attention is now focusing on hammering out some of the final kinks. Working on In Which Our Hero has been extremely good for me over the past month. It's kept me busy and I've put a lot of myself into it recently. Today was a day of lots of inspiration. At one point while working with Tony, I began to ask him the logistics of certain kinds of balloons, 'experimental' balloons, which are generally hand-made, not for passengers, but only for the pilot, and made out of odds and ends. Tony told me to go visit Brian Boland. Mr. Boland was one of the first ballooners in the past thirty years to really break new ground. Since beginning ballooning, he's made somewhere around 160 balloons by his count, and has the largest experimental balloon museum. I decided to pay it a visit.

It was amazing walking into this new dimension of ballooning. It's a whole new world from the festival and commercial flying aspect I've come to know and love. This barn is absolutely filled to the brim with baskets, canvas, vintage cars, ambulances, fire trucks, experimental vehicles, balloons- in this strange, scary atmosphere. A scene in In Which Our Hero takes place in a barn absolutely filled with ballooning paraphernalia, and it was very surreal to have discovered a place similar to what I've written. Mr. Boland and I are going to sit down and talk about some of the technical aspects of experimental ballooning so I can put a cap on some of the information I need to come. Needless to say, the trip, which was a two hour ride up, for forty minutes of exploring this amazing place, was beyond worth it.

I've recently gotten a new camera, the Sony PMW-EX1, which I'll be shooting most of my material on from now on. I decided to try to do some fun experimenting while testing it out. The EX1 has the ability to play around with the shutter angle. In order to really play around with the movement I wanted to, I decided to head to Central Park and meet some of the roller bladers there. In the mall just south of Bethesda Fountain, there are always skaters with cones. They weave their feet in and out of the cones at a ridiculously rapid pace. It's unlike anything I've ever seen, watching these skaters go from a normal, somewhat clunky push off their skates, to this ballet-esq movement of weaving extremely quickly through the cones.

While testing out my camera, I met two women, Sigrid (who was skating at the time I was filming, and was kind enough to let me film her) and her friend Tanya. Tanya was a skater all the way through her 30s and 40s, and recently retired. However, she's still active in this strange, skating community that is made up of young and old, and has invited me into it. After about a half hour of talking, Tanya opened my eyes to a yet another new world. These skaters skate every weekend. They range from 20 somethings like Sigrid, to 60 somethings, like a gentleman named Bob Tanya introduced me to. They do not collect money, their performance is not a performance, it's simply them skating. And they all love it. I really sense a story in some of the things Tanya has been telling me, and have begun to put energy into tracking down a story in this world.

I've been shooting some on the side work as well. An animated project for the Center Theater (a 'no smoking in the theater' ad) which I look forward to sharing in the next month or so. An ad for my Tae Kwon Do academy, and the MMA studio downstairs. My city mother, Becca, has had me doing some filming for her horses as she takes them to a specialist. She and I are starting to make plans for what to do with this footage (the nature of it is hard to describe, but extremely exciting and interesting) and I continue to make trips down to Philadelphia with her for that.

I'm preparing to start writing two new projects. Now that I am back on a working track, I've started to put my efforts into the upcoming years larger projects. New things are coming into fruition, and I just push as hard as I can to keep on top of everything. And in the mean time... I did relearn everything I forgot about sailing...

Get High

2009-07-26T17:23:00.009-04:00

I'll first mention, there is one more spot open on Friday's Free Film Friday! Snag it if you can!

I've been down in New Jersey for the past few days, catching up on my ballooning work. This experience at the Readington Balloon Festival has been invaluable, and I've learned more about this than I could have ever imagined to. If you're in Mass, NH, or ME, take a trip to Derry, NH and visit the folks over at High 5 Ballooning, you really, really will not regret it. Tell them I sent you.

We made it down to Readington after a drive that included a partner balloonist getting into a car crash on 495, backing it up for 10 miles (and losing his balloon trailer. thankfully no one was hurt), and a long detour through the Bronx (where it was learned that sometimes following a map can beat your GPS).
The pilots all got together for their pre-flight briefing. There are somewhere around 125 balloons going into the sky at this festival, and it is really something else to see that many in the sky.

Tony Sica, the pilot of the balloon, and owner of High 5 Ballooning, has been wonderful. He is a great pilot, and has taught me more than my share of this business, the mechanics, and the politics. Through him, I've started to put together what looks like the makings of a documentary. Be sure to wait for that to be coming up...
Balloons only launch a two times: when the sun is coming up and the sun is going down. Launches are at 6 am and 6 pm. The weather is less likely to do anything crazy as the sun is on it's way out. This being the case, for the past few days I've been up ar 4:15 to make it to the launch site at the airport to help crew and shoot my material.

I've done lots of talking to crew members, pilots, and spectators over the past few days. None of them can put their finger on what the hell it is that draws them to this pretty strange Adventure sport. Certainly not the money, where, though it is expensive, it is not a stable enough industry to make your entire living on. Every day you're at the mercy of the weather. If it's not sunny with winds under 7 miles an hour, you're probably not going up. Everyone puts a lot of energy into however, and they all do so with passion. I was interviewing one of the crew members, and asked them if this was their only job. "No, crewing for the balloon is one of five jobs I hold up... But this is the only one I'm happy with."

The festival certainly draws a crowd from everywhere. I've met spectators coming anywhere from the North East to the South West, and all to watch 125 balloons go into the sky and come back down. Some balloons are just a myriad of colors in a nice pattern. Others are in the shape of intergalactic war lords...

As I went back and looked at my first draft of 'In Which Our Hero', I am so thankful for having come through and learned what I have. From the people I've met, the experiences I've had, and the things I've seen in my few days in the world of Hot Air Ballooning, I can't wait to go back and make my revisions.

I've gotten my ad for High 5 Ballooning approved by Tony, and now I have to get my crew together to shoot. Hopefully in the next two weeks we'll be getting that together. I'm very excited for the ad, the documentary, and what this means for In Which Our Hero. However, I'm most excited about this entire world I've just grazed the surface of. Like most people who are crewing or piloting at the festival, they just happened into it, fell in love with it, and every chance they can they put themselves in a Ballooning environment. I think I might be one of them.

Free Film Friday #2

2009-07-24T00:01:00.001-04:00

It's here again. Free Film Friday. This week's DVD will include:
Vein Juice

A pride and joy, I just want some people to be able to have it on DVD to really appreciate it.
Going Places

My Amazon.com ad, which has yet to be released online, or anywhere else for that matter. I thought I would share it primarily to get some thoughts on it before it's out there.
An Introduction to In Which Our Hero...

I'm putting together a very candid little bit that is sort of a manifest to what I want to do with this project, and what exactly it is. I'm in the process of putting it together, and some of what I'm working on this weekend at the ballooning festival has quite a bit to do with it. I'll also include the pre-vis to my upcoming balloon ad.
Each of these features will come with a little spoken introduction which I'll try integrating into my Free Film Fridays, just to say hello. I'm in the midst of putting it all together, so give me a few days to send it off before it's yours.

As always, the first four people to comment will get a free copy of the film. Just drop me an e-mail with your mailing address! If you were one of the four winners last time around however, you are not eligible this time around- no winning twice in a row. This post is coming up on Thursday night because I'm heading to the Hot Air Balloon Festival to get some pretty awesome work done. If I have an internet connection before Monday, I'll be sure to check in! Looking forward to your comments!

Edit: never mind on the Thursday night think. I just discovered I can schedule for posts to go live at a certain time! Pretty cool!

Coming Soon...

2009-07-20T23:28:00.005-04:00

This upcoming week is pretty packed from the looks of it. Amazon.com has a contest to make an ad for Amazon ongoing right now. I didn't have time to jumpstart a whole new production, so I cut together a pretty nice Glazer-esq piece using footage I already had, and some that I got. I'm not legally allowed to post it because of Amazon's licensing agreement, but once the contest is over, I will. It's pretty eye catching, and I look forward to putting it up...

This weekend I'm heading to the Balloon Festival in New Jersey to get some material that will go into several projects that I'm working on- the ads, in which our hero, and a documentary that may or may not come together, based on this weekend. In any event, pretty exciting stuff.

I tried something completely new for the High 5 Ballooning ad. For the first time, I did an animated pre-vis, where I storyboarded, then uploaded my sketches onto the computer, and tossed a soundtrack onto it with voice, sound effects, the works. At the very least, it helped me work around some issues I was having with timing. Again, as the ad comes together (which I should be shooting later this month) I will post that as well, it's actually quite fun to watch.

On Wednesday I shoot my ad for Gould's Tae Kwon Do, my old stomping grounds (and where the name wackeychan came from, coincidentally) and will have that online in a week or so. After filming my Focus ad, I decided to start tracking down clients. Now that Amazon, Goulds TKD, High 5 Ballooning, and Grappling are all coming into focus, I'm feeling pretty jazzed about the little projects, and the big projects. Writing has been successfully continuing, Until the Sky Falls is heading to the festivals, I am shooting a bit for the Center Theatre later this month, and things just keep on kicking off. Though I will be at the Festival on Friday... Be on the look out for some free films...

...and Away!!

2009-07-11T18:47:00.006-04:00

As some of you know, i've been working on a new project called "In Which Our Hero" which is a loose adaptation on Don Quixote. The story involves quite a bit of hot air ballooning. Unfortunately, when I started writing it, I didn't know anything about hot air ballooning. I decided to change this.

I decided the best way to get my foot in the door, instead of just taking a ride or interviewing someone, was to shoot an ad for a hot air balloon company. My next ad, coming to a website near you, is for the folks at High 5 Ballooning, where they have been kind enough to give me carte blanche to their expertise as I go to work on a few things for them. I am extremely excited about this ad, and have a whole lot of plans for it. I did quite a bit of shooting yesterday, both from the ground and from the sky, and am getting ready to shoot the actual ad in a few weeks.

I've been learning a lot for 'In Which Our Hero', and can't wait to share with the world what kind of things are out there in the ballooning world. I'm just getting into it now, and there will be far more to share as the project continues. Needless to say, it's fun to be a film major.

Vein Juice, Donors DVD, and new work

2009-07-03T16:23:00.002-04:00

I'm happy to announce that my Donors DVD is finally done. It's getting ready to go into the mail for everyone who donated to me, and you'll all be pretty happy with some of the content that's on it. As a bonus, I've uploaded Vein Juice online, with music galore. Watch it, send it around, make everyone see it. It's a lot of fun. Click here.

The Donors DVD will be going out to the 35 people who donated to me, and will serve as a future Free Film Friday, but there won't be too many!

I've got a couple of new projects coming on the horizon by way of ads and short films. Hopefully I'll get myself in gear for July and August and make it happen. I'm very excited to make some announcements as they come and get back on track. I hope you all enjoy Vein Juice over the fourth of July, and look forward to hearing from you.

Free Film Friday #1

2009-06-26T16:24:00.004-04:00

This Friday: The Projectionist (2008)

For our first Free Film Friday I present to you: The Projectionist. My third feature film which has been making its way up and down the coast in some select viewings. You'll get both disks, all with special features for you to enjoy. This won't be the first time I run the Projectionist on a Free Film Friday, so if you miss out this time, there will be more chances! The first FOUR people to comment get their copies! (Sorry, only US and Canada for now, folks)- be sure to send your mailing address to my email address (which you can find by going to the 'contact' section of wackeychan.com

Good luck!

New Ads, short films, and Free Film Friday

2009-06-21T20:21:00.004-04:00

I've gotten work shooting an ad for my old Tae Kwon Do academy, Gould's Tae Kwon Do. This is pretty exciting, because I'll be going back to do a bit of a workout, and also shoot a new ad. A couple of spots of work have been coming out in the ad department, which is very exciting for me.

I've been up here doing a lot of writing on In Which Our Hero, and a few different short films (including a sequel to Vein Juice) that I'm hoping to shoot over the summer- mostly in late July. There will be news on that when they start to come through.

Now, more specifically, I'm going to be riffing off of my old classmate Ian MacLellan's blog, and start hosting 'Free Film Friday' where one Friday of each month, I'm going to make a post. The first three people to comment will get a free copy of whatever film I'm sending out that time. Sometimes there will be repeats, and sometimes there will be special DVDs with commentary recorded just for the event. US only (though I'm working on that, those of you in UK, Canada, and India who are following me)

Keep a look out, and good luck!

It's Here.

2009-06-10T12:57:00.003-04:00

I've finally got my digital transfer of "Until the Sky Falls" and have been doing some final touchups as I get ready for festival submission. Gearing up and getting ready to send it out both to festivals and to you. I'm figuring out the most cost effective way to set up a shop online that people can get the film(s) from. I'm setting up my Donor's DVD, which I'm hoping to send out late in the summer. It's super exciting to have Until the Sky Falls in my hands again, now back to work!

A 'Walden' Phase...

2009-06-01T10:08:00.004-04:00

I've been going through a Walden phase for the past few weeks. Sitting out by the lake with a notebook, letting the beard grow out, and lots of great cooking with Courtney, and going on lots and lots of woods adventures. There's been an incredible amount of progress on my most recent project, "feature number four" as it has been known as. However, I'm a bit more ready to talk about it, now that I've sat with it for several months and worked. As I come off the high of "Until the Sky Falls", I've attacked something of a much different genre. I'm about sixty pages into my outlines of "In Which Our Hero...", a modern, and extremely loose adaptation of Don Quixote.

This started a little under three months ago, when I started doing an exercise I enjoy where I take a chapter from a novel, and adapt it into screenplay format. After going through a couple of different exercises, I took a look at Don Quixote. I hadn't read it for a while, and found that a serious adaptation of something so episodic might as well just be a television series (though the lengths of the episodes in Don Quixote might serve nicely for a web-based medium.)

I then started thinking about how this story is relevant today- and started chiseling away at some of the themes that spoke to me, particularly disillusionment overtaking reality, and idleness as a propeller into action. Taking primarily these two themes, I've got a pretty wide range of options for my writing. Almost through a solid draft, the next month or so is ironing out the wrinkles, and getting myself to a place I am comfortable with.

While I would love to shoot all of it, it might not be in the cards for a while. Hopefully, shooting a few scenes, and getting a several minute teaser cut together. That's the rough plan, and we will see just how that goes. I've been angling for a few freelance advertising jobs, and may have an exciting one coming up in late June. Meanwhile, back to writing!

Getting in Touch...

2009-05-14T09:12:00.005-04:00

Things have been going very well with three very exciting writing projects I've got going. One of which is a short film that takes place in the same world that "Until the Sky Falls" takes place in. There's a wealth of material sitting in that world, and upon finishing shooting, I just decided I wasn't done. It's by no means a sequel (none of the same characters, places, events, or even time) but the world is the same. My digital transfer of Until the Sky Falls is on the way. After talking with my old boss Henry about it, I've decided to toss it into the festival circuit and see how I do. Hopefully all that will go well.

The past few weeks have really been devoted to writing. I've got a new advertising gig coming up in June (extremely exciting- can't wait to fill the world in on this one) and have been prepping to shoot a few small scenes from my larger script over the summer. At the moment, it's just a matter of plodding along...

While I was writing yesterday, I had a rapid succession of hummingbird visitors. Two within ten minutes of each other. I snapped a few pictures of them, then got them to come to my hands so I could release them. I ended up taking somewhere around two hundred pictures of them, so I'll just put up a few that I thought were kind of pleasing...

Wackeychan.com- A History

2009-05-06T17:57:00.000-04:00

Two posts today (a first) scroll down a bit for the other... If you you've recently been over to wackeychan.com you might have noticed the recent makeover I've been threatening for the past few weeks has finally taken effect. Now that I'm totally done with production, I've been going back to managing the other sectors of my life. The new version is more like an online business card and portfolio, designed to help serve me a bit better in the professional world. Hopefully it's a little bit easier to navigate than version four. Just for fun, I thought I would give a rundown of the previous version...

Version 1.0- Age 12

My first attempt at web authoring came with some very strange color choices, blocky menus, and an interface that was far larger than it needed to be. In my attempt to organize a bit more, I got very unorganized. This version was offline, but I constantly updated it. It never saw the live internet, but was my original romping grounds and learning tool.

Version 2.0- Age 14

Here I got a bit more flashy with my images and my organization. Again, it's a little bit silly, but at least I didn't make the same color mistakes. I put a little cartoon caricature of myself in the toolbar (which at the time I thought was amazing, but now get distracted by not being able to read the menu... good job, matson)- this was the first version that launched online when I bought server space when I was fourteen. We launched on November 12, 2004. Hard to believe.

Version 3.0- Age 15

Three years into my web authoring career, I discovered tables, and fell in love with them. I littered my entire site with tables- more than I had enough content for. Many tables would have little videos, images, or nonsense in them. Technically, it was an improvement, but the interface itself was not.

Version 4.0- Age 17

I designed this version in the beginning of shooting the Projectionist. There are a lot of great ideas that worked, and some that didn't have the followthrough to really execute the way I had hoped. The silhouette motif's in some pages was not a universal thing, so the inky nature of it made some of it seem disjointed. The fact that some pages would stretch down endlessly, and others would be 600px caused for lots of inconsistency. And then there was the constant complaint of grey letters over a white background. This was to date, I believe my most successful interface.

Version 5.0- Age 18

I was scared to take the jump and have a black background. Version 4 almost had a black background with white letters, but I decided to wait until I could be a little bit more organized. Here the greys and the various tones of yellow compliment each other (there are at least six subtle yellows used through each page) and everything is just knit a bit tighter. I'm getting heavier into the idea of using pages (so that we don't scroll down forever and ever) but this might change as I work out the kinks.

Hope you all enjoy Version 5. Keep checking it. New pictures and films will be coming. The blog, however, seems to be the central hub these days...

Review

2009-05-06T17:47:00.003-04:00

Review has come and gone. It was an amazing experience, and a bit frightening. I sat down with my four main film professors, and we went through everything that is "Until the Sky Falls" I got an extremely positive review from everyone, with bits of comments on how to develop myself into a more mature filmmaker, and small edits I can make to my final cut to make the film more mature. I have been invited back to the program for next year, and am looking forward to being challenged further.

I showed Until the Sky Falls for the first time on Saturday, May 2nd. After 15 other films, I closed the festival. It was enjoyable to watch everyone's films and see the hard work we had put it, but at the same time, it felt a bit anti-climactic for me. I almost wish the shows had been before the actual review- I didn't realize until that night that it was review I had been looking forward to.

During my screening, the loop on the projector got a little tight, causing the image to flicker. My professor Tim McCann came over to me and said it was my call if I wanted to stop the screening to go in and fix it or not. I let it keep going until a scene where we cut to black, then I shut things down to dart into the projection booth. For the other films, any time someone had to stop before the stopping point, they would be met with laughing and cheering and applause (all in good college fun) as whoever was up fumbled with getting their film together so everyone could hear the line that was being said mid-shut down. This time however, there was not a word. Tim McCann said loudly "Just ten seconds, folks." and that was all. No coughing. No laughing. No good-fun applause. Either everyone was asleep, or I had reached golden silence. I would like to think that my film had damn well caught their attention, and they weren't about to break their own moments. Hopefully that is the case...
I hope.

Post-Review, DVD, and May 2nd Showing

2009-04-30T20:20:00.008-04:00

For those of you at Purchase or in NYC, my film will be showing somewhere between 10pm and 11pm on Saturday, May 2nd, in the film and music building, in the Choral Hall (to the left as you enter the building from the mall)- there are two nights of shows, Friday, May 1st, and Saturday May 2nd, from 7pm-11pm on both nights. Anyone who can make it, you're in for some surprises. (NYCers, 735 Anderson Hill Rd, Purchase, NY, 10577- be there)

Review...

You first go in to the mix studio, a small room designed to seat twenty, with five teachers and you. You sit in the back and play the film you've worked on for the past few months. You sit in front of the teachers you've come to know an respect, and you talk about what this means to you.

Review was wonderful. Along with (most of) the other Freshman, we all had extremely good experiences presenting our films to the faculty and getting their notes. Iris Cahn, the head of the film department, and my Editing teacher, said that there was a maturity and depth to the film that developed nicely. The first few minutes felt very student film, but suddenly, there comes a point where the film fills its own shoes, and it becomes a real great work.

Compliments aside, there were dozens of great critiques from Iris, Soyoung (our Cinematic Expression teacher) Larry O'Neil (writing) and Tim McCann (film workshop) that really brought the years work together for me. We discussed the overall project, the work that went into it, the successes and obstacles that get in its way. I'm happy to say I was invited back to the program, and am looking forward to the upcoming year of work. It will be nice to have a new forum to push myself in. I've learned so much this year. I went in skeptical, and unsure of how much I could really learn. Upon leaving though, I feel like I've matured incalculably and learned more than my share. It has been impressing and enlightening for me to go through the changes I have gone through this year.

Now. The DVD. Those of you who donated to the fund two moths ago (you know who you are) will be getting "Until the Sky Falls" along with 'rarities and b-sides'- various shorts that haven't been released. I'm going to start doing a weekly DVD send off. I'm currently devising a way to have some sort of contest (much like old friend Ian MacLellan's Free-Print Wednesday) to send out copies of "Until the Sky Falls" with some "Sky" related special features not on the website (deleted scenes, image galleries, etc)

Any suggestions on what kind of bi-monthly contest?

Review s over and done. I'm feeling great, ready to take on the summer's projects (more on that soon) and this weekend bares the first public showing. If you can make it, be there, it will be FANTASTIC.

Review is Tomorrow

2009-04-27T20:56:00.002-04:00

Re•view
1. to look over, study, or examine again
2. to consider retrospectively; look back upon
3. to examine with an eye to criticism or correction
4. to sit in a room with the film faculty and watch the film you've spent the past six months on.

I was originally scheduled to show my film to the faculty on Thursday. It's been moved to tomorrow at 2:30. I will be showing "Until the Sky Falls" before the faculty very soon. It will also be showing at SUNY Purchase on Saturday May 2nd from 7-11. Anyone in the NY area, and especially on campus should attend.

I am off to get some sleep. I would love to get deeper into details, but tonight it's time to be a little bit zen. I'll give some updates as to how you can see Until the Sky Falls and the direction it is going in soon, but tonight I'm going to enjoy a New York City evening in the apartment on the roof and listen to the city.

Wish me luck. Tomorrow is a big day.

New Yorkers: May 1st and 2nd 7pm-11pm

2009-04-24T17:39:00.008-04:00

As you can see, we're almost there. My review in front of the film faculty for my film, "Until the Sky Falls" will be on Thursday afternoon. The Freshman Film Festival will be on Friday May 1st and Saturday May 2nd at 7 pm on both nights. My film will be closing the festival on Saturday evening. You can read more about the event by clicking here. I hope everyone on campus attends, there are some really great movies being shown through both nights. If you are in NYC, take the North White Plains up to White Plains from Grand Central, then grab either a bus or a cab (only $6 or so ride) to get to Purchase College's film building.

However, before we can breathe easily as the past six months of work are done, we have to finish said work. The past two weeks have been devoted to editing down to my fine cut and recording sound. I've got quite a few deleted scenes at this point, and my film is hovering around twenty minutes in length.

The rest of the freshman are hard at work, as we cram ourselves into the seven editing suites that we have and work all through the night and days. I worked extremely hard last week so I could have a chance to run up to Maine to go to a wedding with Courtney...

There's still ice on the lake at my lakehouse, but by the time I'm back up there in three weeks, it should be broken up enough to swim again! I'm certainly looking forward to having that view again while I'm writing.

While working on "Until the Sky Falls", my attention has started veering to other projects. I'm back in writing mode, and have about fifty pages of what looks like will be my fourth feature (following Popcorn Lifestyle, Twice as Young, and The Projectionist). This is extremely exciting for me, and I'm looking forward to entering a whole new headspace that comes with the world I've been working on. I've had my fun in the post-apocalyptic world for the first time, and it most certainly will not be my last time here, but I welcome the opportunity to work on something different at this point.

I've been hunting down some ad work. After doing my ad for the Focus on French Cinema Film Festival a few weeks ago, I've found that I have a new attraction to the shorter kind of work. A few things have come my way at school, but I'm looking for some more freelance professional work as well.

The next four days are to be spent on sound and syncing. I have my final cut. My deleted scenes are out of the way. I have all of my sound effects recorded and ready to go. Transferring to Mag tonight and tomorrow night, and getting things on the go and ready for my review and the show. Finally starting to wind down on the production of this project. It has been fantastic, beautiful, and around every corner, I've learned new things about his medium that I never knew existed. I just hope each project will be this enriching. Looking forward to seeing you all in a week!

Touch the Audience... From a Distance...

2009-04-15T01:15:00.004-04:00

In the above player is the first podcast being brought to his blog for viral. In it, you will listen to Michael Oshins and myself discuss some of the difficulties and wonders of designing a soundtrack from scratch. I ask that you give it a listen, to hear what fun we're having. Two weeks from today (yikes) I'll be having my review for my Freshman Film, which as of now, is titled "Until the Sky Falls." Between then and now, I have quite a bit of work to do in the audio department. My fine cut is finished, my picture is done. There are no more splices to be made. I do, however, have to build an entire soundtrack out of scratch. Everything from footsteps to glass breaking to wind to breathing to hands rubbing together all needs to be recorded and then synched.

The process has been quite a bit of fun, and once again has enlightened me and furthered my appreciation for the hard work that goes into this craft I thought I really understood. At the end of this process, in my hands I will have a short film shot on film, every shot, shot from my shoulders, edited on film, each splice a splice I made, and every sound coming from me. It's an alarmingly organic process, and has humbled me to the overall process.

The Projectionist this sunday is tentative. A little bit nervous I haven't gotten confirmation this late in the game. Excited at the prospect of showing it in a new theater. Writing has been going well, and it is nice to be able to take a break from sound design and head right over to writing feature number four. More on that later. I'm off to go break more things and record it.

Transitioning

2009-04-11T13:20:00.005-04:00

You know, it's a funny thing, going from pre-production to production, to post-production. In pre, you're excited. You're collaborating with all of these people, gearing up for the wonderful experience you hope to have shooting, the sky is the limit, and you really hit the ground running. Then production hits, and you get these wonderful experiences with your actors and your crew, and everything comes to life. You go a million miles an hour and you make it happen. Then all of a sudden it's done, and you're in a little box with a splicer and a split reel, and you're hammering away by yourself. It's wonderful because you've got all the hard work from pre and production right in your hands, and it's saddening because you're suddenly in this isolated mode of working in your box, just you and the steenbeck.

I've been thinking a lot about this project (obviously) while I've gone through my editing. I think it's wonderful that I've shot on film, and have had these filmic experiences I wouldn't have had, had I not gone to SUNY Purchase. However, it's sad for me, knowing that this world of splicing and dicing doesn't really exist anymore. I'm temporarily in a time capsule, that looks a lot like a little film editing room.

I've got my rough cut done. It's about 30 minutes long, which means my final cut will be able to be hacked down to about twenty or so (this is a very good thing). I screened it for Oshins and John Morgan late last night, and they were both amazed at how quickly it went by. The half hour felt more like six or seven minutes. Always a good sign. Now it's just a matter of getting my transitions right, cutting out all of my shots of graffiti, and making a flowing, cohesive film that runs like water.

On an entirely different note, The Projectionist is getting another show in Worcester, MA. Any Masser's back from home who wish to see it should go to Clark's Cinema 320 on Sunday April 19th at 8:30 pm to see my third feature play again. Afterwards there will be a Q&A with Worcester's Hank Stolz, who interviewed me two January's ago when I first released the Projectionist. You can listen to that interview here! I'm off to edit my film, write my new screenplay (some wonderful details coming soon) and prep for my Projectionist show. Hope to see some of you there!

And Away We Go...

2009-04-06T22:34:00.005-04:00

The upside to shooting digital is you shoot, switch to VTR, press rewind, and make sure everything came out okay. The downside to film is you shoot, you make damn sure you don't have light leaks, you keep your film in the dark, package it up, send it to a lab, and hope that they don't ruin it, no light got in, your pressure plate was on, your frame rate stayed true, and all in all, that you have a miracle, and everything comes out perfectly when you get it back from the labs.

Ladies and gentlemen, I got a miracle, and everything came out perfectly when I got it back from the labs.

I watched all of my footage on Friday, and it was a really, really scary thing loading up that film. You're either a little way fucked, all the way fucked, or golden. I was hoping I would not be in the former two categories. Somehow, out of the 2400 feet I shot, there were no light leaks, no scratches, no nothing. Considering I was shooting on a camera I was uncomfortable with and new to, and the amount of shooting I did, there was bound to be something going wrong. Okay, enough of the self-congratulations. What is exciting about this is that now I get to edit it.

While this is exciting for me, it is not totally exciting for my audience. I'll have a bit up on the editing process in a week or so as I start my hacking and slashing, but now it's really a matter of hoofing it until April 28th, when we have reviews. The next two weeks are going to be an intensive process working with the film and the sound. Time to put my money where my mouth is and finish this film up... And name the damn thing.

In the mean time, below I've linked part 2 (of what looks like 4) of the videos regarding production. Michael Oshins gives a lengthy guided tour of our spray painting shenanigans and there are a few behind the scenes goodies.

Perhaps the last thing I should mention... I'm gearing up for Feature #4. It's happening. It's on its way. I am super excited. After my experience on The Projectionist and the short film work I've done this year, I've really been aching to get back into that world. I'm writing. That's a whole other process we'll be getting into I'm sure. The process will be slow, and the turnaround even slower. It will not be like the Freshman Film, but something new and adventurous and painfully difficult to explore. We'll all see where it goes. Enjoy the watching.

Focus

2009-04-02T00:11:00.004-04:00

I shot this ad for the focus on french cinema film festival that's on campus at SUNY Purchase this week. It was a fun shoot, easy to go through, and easy to connect with. I've had a growing interest in shooting Ad's over the past six months ago, especially after seeing some of the Ad work of Tarsem, Jonathan Glazer and Mark Romanek. Not to mention Finch. There is just so much great advertising work done by a whole slew of wonderful directors (all of these guys are working filmmakers for features, music videos, and ads) and the idea of doing ads is just an exciting thing, creatively.

I don't think i could ever do an ad where a person stands in front of the camera and tells you how this product will change your life. That's really silly. The idea, however, that a slew of visuals and sounds can intrigue you just a little bit, even for pure entertainment sake to actually watch and think... That's a lot of fun to me. I think that there is a form of advertising that people really ignore from time to time- creative advertising. Allowing a director (like the four above) to make whatever the hell they want to for their ads instead of your everyday Mountain Dew commercial. It runs the risk of having your audience miss the message, but it's engaging enough that they might just stay focused on what they're watching instead of switching a channel, or heading into the other room for a minute.

I'm really interested in shooting more ads as I work into the professional world. Looking for suggestions. Clients. The works. Hopefully there will be a whole new slew of adventures in the ad world coming up over the next few months...

The Freshman Film is in the can, in terms of the actual filming. Friday I go and pick up 80 minutes worth of raw footage to watch through. I start cutting on Monday. Very exciting stuff. I'll be getting into the editing and the sound work very soon, so there will be a huge shift in pace. I've also started writing my next project, which I am really, really excited to start talking about. This is a chance to take a breath, before another plunge into editing. In 27 days, I'll be having my review. Wish me luck. And yes, my raccoon is now buried safe underground.

Freshman Film Shoot Part II

2009-03-29T15:38:00.016-04:00

We have wrapped up. All 2400 feet of film are in their cans. 72 minutes worth of raw footage shot to look forward to. Saturday and Sunday were the big days. We started off shooting some of the ending with Tom and Abby, but were soon off to our main exterior location. We were incredibly lucky to have that day hit us with wonderful weather and our first slew of heat. It ended up being mid 60s and sunny. This created a bit of a problem with some of the film, I was shooting with 250D film, and occasionally reading in at 32 on my light meter. My aperture only closed down to 22, so hopefully I'll still have gotten what I need.

The day was both really packed, and pretty easy to get through. It was a balance of working with people I had worked with for years (Tom, Laura and Matt Kelty) some newcomers to this work (Abby, Jamie, Karl), and my crew members from SUNY Purchase (Michael Oshins and and Nicole Favale.) In terms of the texture things really happened. All of my costume and makeup efforts proved to be worthwhile, and I believe I've ended up creating a harsh, textured world these characters live in...

There have literally been thousands of pictures taken through production, and it's extremely hard to chose which moments are the best to give at least a little bit of a sense of what it was like on set. I don't think even the final film does the experience of making it justice...

Working with the kids was too much fun. It's interesting, having known Abby and Jamie for their entire lives, to be interacting with them in this completely new way. What could have been asking for disaster turned out to be wonderful, beautiful, charming experience. I really didn't know what to expect from them, and what I got was more than I could have asked for to begin with. They brought themselves readily and happily and trusted me (after a bit of an interrogation via Jamie as to what the hell my story was really about) to guide them.

Day three of shooting was comfortable, relaxing, and easy. There was so much room for everything to go wrong. The world can go wrong (and has) on other student's Freshman Films. Real catastrophe's leaving people with very little freedom to be creative and instead ending up just shooting to survive and be able to turn something in is not uncommon. Things were just okay here though.

Our fourth and final day of shooting gave us the weather we were hoping for. We ended up with windy, overcast, and a little bit of rain to help match up with our opening shots from Thursday's rainstorm. Again, considering all that could go wrong (Weather a strong contender) things were just too damn lucky. The morning started off in the makeup chair... Our makeup artist, Lisa Payne, did some amazing things extremely quickly...

To everyone's (including my) surprise, my father lent his acting abilities to the film...

The day went by extremely fast. Shooting with Jamie, Laura, Karl, Tom, and Oshins was wonderful. We started off with some stuff on the range, finishing up Karl's scenes for the film, then shifted right along to our graffitied house...

And all of a sudden... It was all done. 2400 feet of film shot. Tom, Laura, Abby, Jamie, Oshins, Karl, Nicole, Matt Kelty, all done. Just like that. The fundraising, the stencils, the makeup, the casting, the locations, the filming, all of a sudden in the bag. Obviously, the film is not yet finished, editing, music, and sound to follow, but a whole phase of the film's life is suddenly over and done forever. It's both wonderful and terrible. It's out of the way, and I can now take it and make it what it is supposed to be, but this whole life of the film is done and over. The shoot itself was a dream. Wonderful and amazing to engage people and get them all on my wavelength. It was enthralling to be working again, and reminded me why I started this ten years ago to begin with. I simply cannot wait to see what comes next...

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a raccoon to bury...

Freshman Film Shoot Part I

2009-03-28T02:27:00.018-04:00

Day one down. Day two down. We've only just begun. After getting more props and set dressings together, we got ourselves ready to start shooting.

Tom Webber, who was one of the three main characters for my first feature film, Popcorn Lifestyle, has returned to work on this short project. Tom is a great guy, who ends up having a lot of fun with me on this. His wife, Laura is also a main player, and has worked with me on my first three features. The firsts, however, are their two kids, Jamie and Abby. It's very exciting having the entire family to work with...

In my original script, I had a scene in which The Man traps a chicken and kills it. Initially my plan was to have an on-screen kill of said chicken. After hunting down a few chicken-owners who slaughter their own chickens, I was met with a relatively negative response. Coupled with learning about some of the more severe laws regarding on the killing of animals for film, i realized there was more headache than was worth. Fortunately, the answers to my problem lay, splattered, on the interstate. The result?

We ended up adding a new cast member, "Ricky"

The first day was principally woods stuff. Atmospheric to the hunting/gathering and scavenging aspect of the Man's life. Filming in the woods was very relaxing. Warm day, a little bit drizzly, but very nice and atmospheric.

After our woods shoot, we went both to Karl's suspended barn, and the car graveyard...

Our hero shot...

Finally to the car graveyard, the final bit of the day...

All in all, for day one we shot a little bit over 400 feet of film (400 feet is roughly 12 minutes of footage) and I finished off feeling pretty good about day one of the actual shoot....

Day Two was a different pace, with different hours. We didn't start shooting until 9pm. Prior to that, the day was spent doing lots of set dressing in the new location... There was about four hours worth of spray painting done to the inside of the new house...

We then moved to our final location, the yellow abandoned house...

With our set dressing for the day done, we got back home, napped, then got ready for the night shoot. Tom, Laura, Abby and Jamie all came in and had their rounds in the makeup chair. Fittingly enough, for a post-apocalyptic film, all of the power went out at about 6 in the evening for no apparent reason. Fortunately we had a generator for our set lights, otherwise the shoot would have gone out the window. It was a very eerie thing, going off to shoot our post-apocalyptic film in a town that was suddenly void of all electricity. Very spooky.

We then moved the crew back up to the graffiti house and made use of one of the non-graffitied rooms for our scene tonight. It's one of the few quiet scenes in the film, the whole family going through their evening rituals, eating what they can, sleeping how they can, bathing how they can.

I think the great and really wonderful surprise of today's shoot was how wonderful the kids were. Deciding to integrate them so deeply into the film was sort of a scary decision. Either it was going to work, or really fail. Both of the kids are fantastic, and it's really inspiring and gratifying to be directing them and working with them.

The day has been extremely long. Extremely filled. There has been a great deal of adventure, working with the art, the makeup, the locations, the film, the people. It has been exhausting and wonderful and strangely calming to be working again. Two more, very packed days to come.

Final Countdown...

2009-03-25T00:00:00.003-04:00

We're in the eleventh hour. I've been operating under the assumption that it is still Monday. This assumption has been incorrect. It is actually extremely early in the morning of Wednesday. This means that tonight, I leave SUNY Purchase, head back to Massachusetts, and begin production tomorrow. Tomorrow. Everything has been such an incredible whirlwind from start to finish, it was only a little over a month ago that I started pre-production.

The weekend wrapped up very quickly and productively. I got out the Aari S, and did some experimentation with it. It's a much more difficult camera than the Bolex, but it was strongly suggested that I push myself and give it a go. Today I dropped down to Kodak and bought 2,400 feet of film, which is (hopefully) more than I will ever need. The tests went well, despite not having any salvageable film due to some human-not-camera errors. I did my tests on location, both at our new barn location, and at the Plain location.

Early Sunday, I met up with Lisa Payne, my makeup designer. She and I sat down and talked about the look, particularly with the kids, that we were going to go for. We're heading off to look a bit gruesome with some of the characters, so we did some exploration with scars and cuts... This one was whipped out in under three minutes!

As per usual, filming (which is taking place over Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday) will be heavily, heavily documented. At this point, I've given you all I can with my pre-production phase. It has been exhausting hard work, but far too much fun. I put together a video chronicling pre-production. It's very short, and sums up the basis of the work that has been taking place over the past few weeks. Watch it on Youtube here or on higher quality at wackeychan.com or just click the image below and it will take you there.

Enjoy folks. I'm off to shoot my film. Wish me luck.