Nightmare Mac

Having a nightmare with my mac. Yeah, its preeeety old by todays standards, but I've maxed out the ram and it should be running fine.

Trouble is, with a full 1080 25p HD project FCP keeps crashing.

A simple post job is turning into... well... a nightmare.

If I hadn't already lost my hair, I'd be pulling it out at the roots now.

The following is a prayer to the god of Final Cut Pro.

Please lord, let my Mac run until the end of this FUCK!!! It just crashed again!

!

Shut The Fuck Up

yeah, that's the title of the film, not being rude.

I viewed the rushes last night as I captured (in real time (HDV project)) and all I can see are problems, problems and more problems.

The biggest of which (apart from focusing issues) are the reflections of the cameraman (ie me) in the glass of the phone - box where Tom (my actor) was performing.

Looks like I've hours of painstaking AfterEffects work to try and get rid of me.

Ideally I would have shot the phone-booth with no glass, and then put the glass in, in post (like the big boys) but alas we had ZERO budget. Myself and Tom have produced this project and put up the money ourselves.

It was so bad in the last shot where Tom sat in the car to drive away, I arrived at my mark in the first take and it was like looking into a mirror. I opted to roll down the passenger window and add something in in post. Even going to the trouble of doing that, there are STILL a few frames of my idiot head in the BACK SEAT passenger window as the car drives out of shot.

Ah well, I guess these are the things that happen when you've a crew of one. Robert Rodriguez I am not.

I was hoping to get a rough assembly done this evening. Its tough finding the time when you've a three month old boy with a cold needing your undivided attention.

I'm definitely contacting the boys from The Spook of the Thirteenth Lock to ask can I use their music in this short. There is a tune on their debut album that I think will work really well for this.

Fingers crossed.

In the can

Shoot went well.

Apart from a few annoying bystanders walking into the odd take (its amazing the amount of people out on Bray seafront a 5:30am) it seemed to have went well.

I'll know pretty soon after I have captured the footage into FCP whether or not I can smile or not.

The crew consisted of me and me only, with the entire production mounted on Manfrotto's Fig Rig. I must say I'm well impressed. My first time using it, I should have taken the time to practice a bit more, but I'm sure the later takes are a bit smoother.

I'm going to put the shots through FCP's SmoothCam and RedGiant's Steady and see what works better for my needs.

The problem with the fig rig is that it is very hard to direct while on location. Its a good thing myself and Tom (my actor) spent a lot of time discussing the character before hand and went to the trouble of blocking our shots last week (that was shot with a camera phone).

So onto the next step. Capturing the footage.

After breakfast of course!

Eve of shoot

Principal photography for the short film entitled Shut The Fuck Up begins at 4am tomorrow morning.

So why am I not in bed?

I started this blog many months ago and have been busy writing a feature script that blog posts seemed an inane thing to write; "My protagonists arc has changed a lot since the inciting incident today, Aristotle would be proud."

Who is their right mind would read such waffle.

I decided to hold off till something worth writing about was in production.

Sure, sure, I know what you're thinking, I must have been in pre-production for many weeks now on this short.

Thing is... not really. Well, if you consider the intention to shoot something in the near future pre-production, then you're probably correct. But thats just not how I roll.

Unless you're actually doing something, then the rest is just masturbation.

I'll post more about gear and stuff later.

Off too bed. Eaaaaaaarly start.