735 – Filmmaking, music, and other paths to an early grave

The grime is thick like elephant hide. Having to scrub with mineral spirits.

I finally joined the sheep, er, people for the liberation of relative spatial data liberation, or LRSDL. I’m going to be trying out posting to WP from my iPhone, having that update Twitter, which in turn drops in on Facebook. So, apologies in advance for the noise that is to come. I’m really curious about how it will handle photos.

Something I’ve been toying with for a few years mentally is the idea of a mobile production office. On top of this mental toying, was my idea that I may have to go around the country to promote my movie Crashing Down if I don’t get a good enough offer to pick up. While the shooting has been slo(add several ohs here)w, it will be finished eventually, and I’ll have to sell it. I don’t want to settle on a crappy, one-sided deal just to get it sold. I know others have gone around and 4walled etc to get their films to be worth more over-all, and I think that may be necessary, especially now that so many indie outlets have closed. A bus made up for living/working could facilitate such a project.

So anyway, I bought an old flatnose Bluebird All-American school bus to convert. It was an awesome deal that I couldn’t pass up even if the timing was in the middle of production instead of afterward.

Eventually, it should end up looking something like the bus that Jake VonSlatt converted, except with office space. This bus is HUGE, so office space will not be a problem.

Did I mention this bus is huge?

Driving it back from Arkansas was a hell-of-a-thing. I’ve driven the big rigs before (people that know me will be saying “dude, is there any job you haven’t done?” it was only a brief training job), and this bus, though not as big, was just as hard to get around corners. The first corner I took put me in everyone else’s lane. I could see their little faces with “0″ shaped mouths and upraised hands. But after a couple of corners, I got the hang of it and couldn’t continue to have multi-lane fun with an excuse.

It’s parked and ready for… something. I guess I’ve gotta get out there and pull the seats. Good thing others have already done this so I can see the ‘right’ way to do it.

Spent a few hours last week with the wife and some animated chips. We managed to get it all in the 30 second limit, which is a challenge for someone who doesn’t normally work under those constraints like a ‘real’ commercial producer. But, I have to say, it ain’t so bad (especially after looking at some of the others, a few are good, the rest?)

Check it out and show some comment love. NOTE: Their Flash player is only 4×3, so my 16×9 file will look kinda squished. I swear it’s not originally like that. Also, when you click the link, there’s a skip intro button on the lower right… very useful.

DON’T LET ‘EM GET AWAY

UPDATE: The 16×9 squeeze to 4×3 was killing me, so I uploaded a 4×3 center cut version. Same thing, just looks a little better.

Just read the health care bill. Section 401 says if you don’t have what the government considers adequate insurance, then you must pay a fine in the form of an extra tax at the end of the year. Great, yet another way for them to force the American People to do something whether they agree or not. What isn’t clear in what I read is whether you’ll get some coverage if you pay the tax. Also, if you make over a certain amount, you will have to pay a tax in addition to keeping in line with what they deem acceptable coverage. I understand this last part probably wont be too financially painful for those in that bracket, but that’s not the point. The problem is freedom of choice. There are only 2 ways for one individual/group to get another individual/group to do something they are opposed to, reason or force. When they come knocking on your door and telling you to pay up, which will it be for you? Reason, or force?

Yeah, not really about filmmaking, but the erosion of freedom affects everything.

@full

I’ve never been happy with the soundtrack on the Bank Scene. The music was cool, but sounded too out of place — didn’t work. I wasn’t going to mess with it again until we had everything in the can, but since I had some time on my hands, I decided to try something else. It is at the very least, more ’soundtracky.’ This isn’t final either, but hopefully it’s going in the right direction. What do you think?

Spent the weekend location scouting in absolutely beautiful central Texas weather. I didn’t find the ‘magic’ locations that I so hoped to find, but I did snap a few cool photos. Hey, ya gotta do something to make the time worth the effort right? It doesn’t hurt that I like taking pictures of old stuff — good for maintaining perspective.

If you know what a Canon 50mm 1.4 is, then you know the images it renders are beautiful. But damn, Canon had to skimp somewhere didn’t they?! This thing has a plastic inner barrel that the whole thing moves in and out on for focus. This is a known issue with this lens. Any little bump will make the focus rough due to bent plastic, and the auto-focus will get iffy because of those rough spots.

I took that sucker apart and fixed it.

But I didn’t stop there. You see, it’s a full-time-manual lens with one of those micro-motors. Since I’m mostly making movies, and don’t really use auto much, I decided to regear this thing to just be a manual lens. What!! Yep, I disabled the auto-focus. It will just spin and spin if you don’t. Makes it somewhat inaccurate if you’re trying to pull with a follow focus. Especially this lens, because if it has a rough spot due to the aforementioned problem, it will skip, and your focus marks will be off.

Not anymore baby! It rolls from one side to the other stopping on each side like a ‘real’ lens. Of course, I can still use the beep that tells me when I have focus, so all is not lost functionally. I didn’t bother taking the motor out, I just took out the little gear between the motor and the focus gear, dropped some JB Wield on the shaft of the main focus gear where the plastic gear sits on top (it only spins without the motor gear) and boom! we’re manual only.

I took some pix to make sure it was all good. I’d say we’re in business.

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We decided to put up 2 scenes from the movie Crashing Down just as teasers (and to help in the financing hunt of course). I tell ya man, even though it’s only 2 scenes, it was a LOT of work. These aren’t what they’ll look like in the final movie, but they’re close enough for show-n-tell. Being that this film is based on Dante’s Inferno, there’s always some correlation to something from the poem. In these 2, the first one is the main character passing through the gates of hell, the second is some scenes later when he’s made it into the first circle.

Enjoy, and please, let us know what you think!

I could tweak on this for another month, but sometimes, you just gotta say enough and move on to the next thing. The voice over does need to be redone though as I’m not a V.O. person (does that have to be pointed out? LOL). V.O. redone by Jim Braton! I still have to upload the two scenes, but damn they’re big files!

Crashing Down Trailer from The Sandman on Vimeo.