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Aural Fixation

I tried to take this week off of my new project in a way. I’m a little burned out, at least creatively, so I wanted to take a break before delving into the sound mix, plus I needed a score and finding the right composer was eluding me.

Part of the problem for me is that this is the first project I have ever made that I did not already know what kind of music I wanted. I was completely and totally without a clue as to what I wanted for music.

I am a former musician. From the time I was 5 years old and began tinkering with the piano, and later saxophone, guitars, keyboards, drums, and virtually ever instrument on the planet (sans the harmonica that ultimately defeated me as the one instrument I could not even begin to get a real note out of), I only wanted to write film scores. The first 45RPM I owned was STAR WARS MAIN TITLE and a B-Side of CANTINA BAND. Until my late 20’s, this was the singular goal of my entire life to write music for movies. I gave it up when I started writing and directing and I do NOT miss it, not even a little.



Every movie I’ve ever made, I had some idea or notion as to what I wanted musically. Even if I gave up my preference for that of the composers, I at least had a starting point that could always fall back on. Now, this movie stumped me. The tone of the film is odd enough, but I was without even a single direction to go with. I tried several temp tracks, and nothing worked. I even screened the current cut at Indie Club Columbus this past Monday with temp music. That made it evident that I needed just the right music more than anything.

Since last week I started talking to Bill Wandel (www.billwandel.com) the composer who did the action music for HORRORS OF WAR. He’s a pro and does this as his sole income, so I generally don’t pester him for my low to no pay shorts, but this is the introduction to a new feature film. I need to pull out the stops and make this as good as I can. The music needs to match Greg Sabo’s cinematography and all the actors’ performances, all of which are top notch.



Bill got the chance to see the cut, placed ever so secretly online sans any temp music; don’t want to influence any compositions with outside music, plus I wasn’t 100% sold on the temp music (hence the term “temp”). That’s not to say the quality of the temp music isn’t good, but it wasn’t written to match the mood of MY movie.

I wrote out my spotting session in an email. That means I wrote down the time codes of where I felt the music should start and stop, and also places where I thought if Bill wanted to try something musically, to go ahead and try it. He said he only had 2 days to get this done, but he’d try.

Yesterday morning I got the email with a link to music files and that was a mere 16 hours later. What I wasn’t prepared for was the perfect score. The style was modern and familiar, and yet I never would have thought of it. The moods and melodies are perfect. Basically, he says with the music what I wanted to convey to the audience about how to feel about the movie I have. Because of how complex and strange my story is, Bill Wandel’s score set the tone right from the start and it will be hard for the audience NOT to be in the right frame of mind that I intended.

My aforementioned aspirations to be a composer aside; sometimes music still knocks me on my ass. If ever I needed proof that I never need pick up an instrument ever again, Bill Wandel’s music is my proof. We share a love of several film score cats, and his talents equal any one of them.



Sound is 50% of the experience of any movie. Music is 25-49% of that (variables on the scene, dialogue, and other sounds of any given moment of a movie). This is how important music is to a movie. This music has me so freakin’ jazzed; there will be no time off. I foresee some late nights and weekend hours working on audio mix and finishing this sucker off ASAP. Also, I have found many film festival submission deadlines that I intend to make this month.

It’s amazing to me how much this reinvigorates. The music has generated a lot of creative juices and now I have to change my underwear.

Too bad I also booked a shoot Friday for two new podcasts, one a general helpful film tip version, and another set of short film specific video podcasts featuring my shorts past and present. I have cast My Sexy Girlfriend Veronica ™ because let’s face it; people would rather look at her than me. I have to put my ego in check and think of the greater good.

Has anyone else noticed that I’m getting really good at using the semicolon in my blog?

- Peter John Ross

Quashing the Polemic Words

I’ve been reading a lot lately. Books that is. My normal modus operandi has been alternating between a film book, and then a fiction novel. The last three books have been great reads, so I wanted to share some thoughts on them. I prefer non-spoiler reviews, so have no fear of anything important being ruined by me.



I’ve been an unabashed fan of Nicholas Meyer for years, and as I get older, I appreciate his film work even more. Ever since seeing TIME AFTER TIME, then STAR TREK II THE WRATH OF KHAN and into the oft-overlooked movie VOLUNTEERS with Tom Hanks and John Candy, I have been a big fan.

As self diagnosed obsessive-compulsive, I look up a lot of the works of artist I like and try to do some homework. Nicholas Meyer wrote a Sherlock Holmes novel called THE SEVEN PERCENT SOLUTION, a reference to the liquid form of cocaine the fictional character was addicted to. It was an amazing book to read, as I love Sherlock Holmes stories. The novel maintains the spirit and tone of the original novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and yet delved deeper into the characters psyche, quite literally since Sigmund Freud is a character in the story. I look forward to getting Nicholas Meyers 2nd Holmed novel soon.



I quickly tore through the pages of an autobiographical account of substance abuse and humor by the ever witty and amazingly insightful Carrie Fisher. Too many people know her solely as Princess Leia, but the reality is that she is the daughter of Hollywood royalty and her wit is unparalleled.

Carrie Fisher has written, especially uncredited many screenplays as a script doctor for Hollywood, and is a writer for the Academy Awards for over 10 years. Her life and her point of view have no equal, as the tenacity and self deprecation create a hilarious narrative and retains every ounce of femininity. I read this book in only 2-3 sessions because I couldn’t put it down. My sole example is describing how her father and mother were good friends with Elizabeth Taylor, and when one of her first husbands died, her father consoled her with his penis.



Because I couldn’t get enough, I had bought brand new, an incredible rarity for me, the Nicholas Meyer autobiography VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE. Sadly, as his own forward mentions, the focus (and book cover) put an emphasis on his involvement in STAR TREK, but he has done so much more and has so many other facets, all that are equally (if not more) interesting. The book starts with his struggles to be a screenwriter and a director, something most filmmakers can relate to.

I’m not done with this book, but I don’t suspect it will take me long since I’m turning pages a lot with this one too.

Next up is a book on loan, another Sherlock Holmes adventure, this time by THE ALIENIST author Caleb Carr, whose other books I liked. I had no idea he wrote a Holmes story, so we’ll see how this one turns out.

The Virescence of an Art Room

Color correction is done, so the picture is pretty much locked on my newest movie. This introduces the next full length movie, as it’s just a 5 minute piece (down from 6 minutes a week ago). Greg Sabo came up and worked some magic on the RED footage. He likes some more extreme color palettes than I do. Also, in a 3.5” window on a computer screen, what looks radical ends up looking perfectly fine on a 32” HD monitor. I’m very happy with the tone and colors. Some shots differentiate, and that’s not poor cinematography, that’s a fact of life on most professional shoots. Some shots need tweaked to fit into the overall color scheme. The whole feel of the piece is coming together.



I learned another more efficient way to achieve the goal I was doing. I was making duplicate folders of the 1080 raw footage and the 720 footage. This was a waste of time. Now that we’ve color corrected the R3D 4K files in Premiere, I can export the edited piece to 720 and 1080. Duh. I still have to synch the unmixed audio, but now I can narrow it down to only the exact clips we’re using, which will save a ton of time on shots and takes we don’t use. All I have to do is then replace the audio on those shots only and I’ll have the correct audio to work with.

Now comes the music. I have a composer in mind, so we’ll see if we can work this out. Sound mixing is the end of the road for post production…then?

ARTICLE
The article I wrote for MOVIEMAKER is out on newsstands now. It’s in the 2010 GUIDE TO MAKING MOVIES issue, which is pricey. It has already caused two separate controversies in that John Whitney is mad because they lopped off his credit as co-director of HORRORS OF WAR in the side-bar where I talk about the screening at Two Boots Pioneer Theater in New York. It was in the submission word doc (I checked), and they still have his picture with a caption on the 3rd page of the article. Not good enough. Not much I can do about it.

The 2nd controversy comes from some guy named Justin Lewis, aka Frighty McGee aka J. Lew. This is a guy who has convinced himself that I am his nemesis, or some kind of Lex Luthor to his Spider-Man (analogy specifically done wrong to make a point). Okay, let me clarify a few things. The article was a culmination of SEVERAL bad screenings I have attended in the last 11 years of independent movies, not just a singular one. From some of the bigger named film festivals in Indiana, Ohio, and beyond, to local screenings of individual’s features, the article was written in a general sense and address a wide range of issues. Sorry Justin, it ain’t about you.




My new book is now on AMAZON.COM. I put together a collection of several of my screenplays of shorts and I’m doing something a little different with this. By buying the book, you are buying the royalty free right to re-produce the included scripts. I don’t know if anyone has ever done this before, but I have some of these scripts remain unproduced by me that someone could make as an exercise of making something written by someone else, or just director’s who aren’t writers looking for something to produce. Didn’t cost me anything to make it. Why not try something different?

Another weird side note on AMAZON.COM, there are people selling allegedly “collectible editions” of my books for $39.95…. What? Who is doing this and why? What makes them collectible? I surely hope no one anywhere pays for those. September was the best month ever for sales on AMAZON.COM for me. Adding the new products have helped, but IN THE TRENCHES is selling the most, with the new MOVIEMAKING TECHNIQUES DVD coming in 2nd. The book IN THE TRENCHES has always been a good steady seller for me.

Sentience Eschewed in Sound

I’m getting closer to the end of the creation of another piece. I love this part. The edit feels good to me. The tail end of the making of a movie tends to take the longest amount of time because you either rush it and it’s not as good as it could be and you re-do it, or you take your time and do it right the first time, but it takes a long time to nit-pick to truly make it better than good.

The sound is coming together nicely. I’ve done the basic sound editing too now. I haven’t gotten back to the DA master files, but editing is separate from mixing, so that’s okay for now. We recorded the audio with the BOOM mic separate from the wireless LAV miv on each actor favored in the scene. We had both tracks mixed on the left and right side for the RED footage. That gives me a very basic idea of the sound I’m using, so I can edit with that. Editing requires some times using different audio than appears on screen, especially with L-cuts, etc.



Some times to use a take, you create a space or moment that didn’t occur on set where you have the actor reacting to a line that is either removed or said at a different time. Also, you get total audio gaps in a take, either because of a line of dialogue being said off screen or a pop sound (which we had none of on this soundtrack thanks to Chauncey and Rusty). You still have to fill in the hole of sound because the ambience of the room tone just drops off, and sometimes it takes more than that.

Micah and I recorded a single foley track yesterday. I needed the sound of someone kicking a something specific, so that required something not really found in most sound effects libraries. Scott showed up and ceremoniously kicked the object. We set up and recorded straight to the editing computer’s hard drive from the mixer I have on my desk from the boom mic in the garage here at the studio.



Tomorrow is color correction day. Spending an hour or two to balance out the color and brightness will finalize the basic look of the movie. Two out of five FX shots are more or less done. Andrew Kramer of Video CoPilot.net saved the day with his site, tutorials, and products. A new lesson learned working not only with RED 4K footage, but seriously shallow depth of field: LENS BLUR is my friend for making any kind of effects work in context. Sometimes an actor’s face is in focus, but their ears are already blurred, so anything you’re doing to them digitally has to match that focus plane. I’m used to digital video EVERYTHING IS IN FOCUS style work.

Up next, SCORING. Finding the right composer, the right music, and “spotting” the movie, which is picking where music does and does not belong, is all on deck. This will slow the process down. I’m hoping to work with a composer I have never worked with before.
After that, the final sound mix and this piece will be ready to screen. In many ways, this movie represents a return “home” for me. Working in a dark comedy, something with teeth, and a darker skewed view of Americana, are staples of my earlier film work. It feels like the right fit for me.



I just got notified that RELATIONSHIP CARD just won “BEST MINI FILM” at the INDEPENDENT’S FILM FESTIVAL 2009 in Florida. I forgot that I submitted it to over a dozen festivals a few months ago. No one told me it got accepted, so that’s 2 festivals in a row I got in and didn’t know.

The weird part is that I feel like this movie is my past, even though it’s less than a year old. The new movie represents the direction I’ve been headed in for 3 years and it’s the first thing that LOOKS like it. I love RELATIONSHIP CARD very much, but it isn’t very cinematic. It has no depth of field, no significant camera movement, or anything that makes it stand out as a DIRECTOR. I knew that with the volume of visual FX work it would be a problematic to say the least if I did use any of those tools, but that doesn’t compensate for it. I love the performances and I even like the writing, which is rare for something I wrote. There was so much basic human truth in RELATIONSHIP CARD that I feel like anyone who has ever been in a long term relationship “gets it”.

At the same time, I’m immersed in this new project that I see my future in. What I’m doing now represents what will be my next feature film and the next 2-3 years of my life and I’m happily running towards that future. Why does it also feel like I’m running away from my past works too?

I bid you adieu,
Peter John Ross

A Ghastly Notion of Persistence

So Brant Jones edited my newest movie. Then we stitched together fragments of my edit into his cut and we made a “best of” edit. The cinematography is astounding, both due to the RED ONE camera, and mostly due to its operator/cinematographer, Greg Sabo. I am very happy with the results. There is still much to do. Color correction, sound mix, scoring, and various other technical details, but I can now watch a movie and foresee what it shall be.



Bryan Michael Block came up to the studio last night and looked at the cut with me and we made some minor tweaks here and there. I also realized I had not done a test on how to go from my 1280x720P proxy edit back to the 4K RED files. So I tested out the procedure of making an EDL from Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 and then editing that file in NOTEPAD and changing the file names from *.AVI to *.R3D, then re-opening the EDL in Premiere. So far that is the single procedure and technical aspect that has worked without any kind of hitch.



I’ll screen this cut as is to a select few people to gather some opinions. It’s too fresh and I’m too close to it to arrogantly decide this is all the editing that needs to be. I want feedback from key personnel, as well as other people whose opinion I value.

Started some of the minor visual FX work on this today. More RED issues reveal themselves. Exporting to RED is not as easy. There are no settings for it. So exporting files with edits to an FX artist ain’t gonna be easy. So we’ll do it old school and send the whole clip and tell them the time code. Or export as an uncompressed file. I have options, but each one has potential downsides with color, etc.

Once finished, the next step is to use this to raise the rest of the budget to shoot an entire feature. I have a few ideas on what to do, some things I’ve never tried before. I view this as my last real attempt to make something out of what I’ve been doing for 10 years now. After this, might consign myself to a life of day job editing and working for other people in other capacities, but I don’t know if I could ever overcome the urge to make movies of my own. I have something to say and I like communicating it to people via moving pictures and sound.



In other news, I won some awards at the BEST OF UNDERNEATH CINCINNATI FILM FESTIVAL screening last weekend. I won BEST CONCEPT for Relationship Card, plus I got an HONORABLE MENTION for BEST SOUND (take that Tim Dutton with your professionalism and surround sound!). Relationship Card also got a half an award for BEST ACTOR with Amanda Howell, sharing with John Whitney’s Measured Sacrifice performance with her. We joked because the screen said John’s movie, but the award had a picture from my movie. The official statements credit it to both movies now. It’s like 2.5 awards for Relationship Card.



Speaking of Relationship Card, that and How to Deal With Telemarketers were official selections to the TROMADANCE FILM FESTIVAL, run from Lloyd Kaufman and Troma Studios. I wish someone had let me know. I got the rare experience of finding out my movies were playing from someone unrelated to the festival who was going. Weird. I could have gone too.



Now Sonnyboo productions has 5 movies in the TIME WARNER ON DEMAND FILM FESTIVAL/VIEWERS CHOICE competition thingy on channel 1111 or 411 (depending on where you are at with Time Warner). The most views win s $500. I hope someone else wins this. I don’t need the $$$ that bad right now. Although, 2 out of the 5 Sonnyboo movies were not directed by me, so GRUDGE MATCH (The Derek) and REFRACTORY (Joanne Fromes) could win and I wouldn’t mind helping out the others. I even got mentioned in the COLUMBUS ALIVE for this.



I’m also working on another book thingy as a quickie. Royalty free screenplays if you buy the book, then you have the legal write to make a movie based on the scripts therein. They are all short screenplays, some that I’ve made and some that are unproduced at this time.

That’s all I got for now. Peace out and Respect,
Peter John Ross