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?
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.
