That syncing feelng

Thank the stars for the internet.

I haven't merged clips in so long I'd forgotten how to do it.

Found this link and of course I slapped my forehead and announced "Duh!"

I receive the sound files tomorrow and then its the best part of a day to sync all the shots. It will probably take longer due to the young fella, but I'll get it done before the weekend. (hopefully)

I captured all the rushes yesterday and spent a good few hours tweaking.

I've sadly found out (again thanks to the web) that there is an anomaly with the HV30's LCD screen. And of course I find this out AFTER we shot. The LCD screen displays the image a lot BRIGHTER than what is actually going to tape. So everything that looked well lit is now super dark after capture.

Absolutely gutted. But I've been playing with settings and plug ins and adjusting the curves and creating composite layers to try and artificially brighten the footage. Some look acceptable, some look downright ugly. Its another case of limitations dictating the style. Who knows, it may end up looking great, the style complimented when its all down to an accident.

As you know trying to lighten a dark image is very troublesome, it adds a lot of noise and grain. The stuff is starting to look like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which would be fine if the film were a horror, but its a balls out comedy with merely a nod to horror.

Then again, Clerks looked like shit but it didn't detract from the humor.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I'll delete this post if the short gets complimented for its visual style in the future.

aaaaaaaaand, thats a wrap!

That was a loooong long three days.

Broken up with a night shoot made it drag, but today we had it wrapped in a few hours.

Seventy eight slates in pretty much two and a half long days.

Not bad for a zero budget indie film production.

I'd like to take this opportunity to publicly thank each and every person involved in the realization of this script into a film for their commitment, expertise and above all, hard graft!

I am humbled and blown away simultaneously buy your generosity and team spirit and belief in the project.

From the actors for making my creations a reality to the tenants of the house we were shooting in, I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

Here are some Polaroid's from the shoot, its all I have right now till I get the productions stills.

Man, we had fun!

There's Tom O'Leary who plays Marty, if you watch Fair City you probably know him as the doctor, but I think its about time the world saw his comic acting abilities. I've seen him on stage a few times and I think he's a great comic actor. Tom is also co-producer on this short. (We also made Shut The Fuck Up Together). Thanks dude, best of luck in New York!

Steve Wilson who plays Marty's brother Lou also came on as co-producer at the last minute and really rattled our cages. We only had a short window of opportunity between Tom finishing up in Fair City and him emigration to the U.S. and A. Inviting Steve on board was the shot in the arm we needed to get this baby shot. And it just so happens that Steve is an excellent comic actor to boot. Talk about striking gold. Thanks Steve!

I saw Ross co-star with Steve in Mike Poblete's New York Monologues the week before last. He is a very talented young actor and was invited on board to play essentially a cameo role. The part was so small that I didn't think it was even worth casting, it was a nothing role, I was even thinking of doing it myself for the craic. I am so glad we went with Ross, even though it was such a small part, he owned it and he was absolutely brilliant. I'll never think a small part is not worth investing in ever again! Thanks Ross!

Sorry for (no) photo of Fiona, line-producer for our shoot. A consummate professional and somehow managed to make sense of my rambling notes and extensive and unrealistic shot list and drew up an achievable shooting schedule and made sure we got the job done in the three days allowed and was never afraid to run around getting stuff done. Thank you very much Fiona!

Sarah who did make up and hair did a fantastic job keeping everything consistent and looking good and even traveled all the way from Kerry to do the gig. Now thats pretty awesome. Also big thanks to Gwen for designing the make-up! Thanks Gwen and Sarah!

Neil. Quiet, methodical, always scribbling notes. Total pro. Thats the look of fear in my face knowing how much notes I will have at my disposal. Brilliant stuff. Cheers duder!

I couldn't have done this without such an amazing crew, but my hats off to Eva for having an eye for the tiniest details in the script and on set, I would have been lost had she not been there. She had my back and thats exactly what a director needs. A true superwoman! Thanks Eva!

Arthur was always my first choice to shoot this picture, even back in the days when the original version of this script was almost funded and to be shot on film. How lucky I was when he not only was available to shoot at such short notice that he was willing to do it to without even seeing the new script. He's a patient, patient man with a great eye for lighting, a good listener and a great collaborative filmmaker. Arthur, you rule. Thanks man!

Me... Me, I'm just a prick with a penchant for toilet humor who misses his wife and kid.

Now to sleep, perchance to dream.

Day two, done!

We finished up last night at I think around three in the morning, maybe four, can't really remember...

It was a slower day.

A lot less slates, a lot less dialogue, but seemed like more set ups.

Our only exterior shots too were done and man did they look sweet.

Moral rose higher after we shot them as they looked so impressive. We did of course have to wait for the sun to go way down before we could shoot, but it was worth it.

Things ground to a halt soon after that though, as sadly there were people asleep upstairs at the location causing the actors to be very restrained in there delivery.

We've only a couple of shots to pick up today. Its a half day really, so if we get right into it, even though we're all very tired we could be wrapped in a few hours.

I forgot to turn off my alarm that was set for seven am when I hit the hay at four am. I didn't get back to sleep properly after that, constantly replaying scenes in my head, seeing Tom's face for the last couple of days while awake and in my dreams and again this morning while fixing breakfast and texting Tom at the same time switching on the telly only to see Tom's face yet again on Fair City looking back at me! Aaaaargh!

But.... We're nearly finished!

Day one, done!

Its now almost 2 in the am, and I'm about to hit the hay after a long 13 or so hour day on set.

We managed to assemble the best crew possible at the last minute. Man they were great!

The planets were aligned when this small group of people assembled early this morning at our location in Dartry. Many meeting for the first time on set. Myself included.

After a looong start, such is par for the course on any first day, we finally hit our stride just before lunch, eating up page after page of script before eating copious amounts of el cheapo Lidl food (hey, this is a zero budget production!)

Pretty soon after the shoot began, I threw away my copious shot list notes and we started mixing thing up and changing things on the fly and thats the point we really hit our stride. Shot list, shmot list, who needs them, we're making a fucking movie here!

I of course couldn't have behaved like this if I didn't have such a brilliant script / continuity girl on my back. It was marvelously liberating. Coming from a background in animation and in turn commercials, I've always rigorously adhered to the storyboard, but today I was finally freed from those shackles and it felt like we we're in the zone, so to speak. Highly creative and hugely enjoyable.

My fingers, toes, arms, legs are all crossed that the footage cuts together and we have made a pretty funny comedy.

I was almost kicked off my own set today due to my suppressed snort laughing provoked by the excellent performances of my cast, Tom and Steve, both great comic actors on stage and now finally on film. (Well HDV anyway, but it will look like film when Im finished with it).

I'm going to sign off now, we've a nice late start tomorrow, but its a night shoot, so probably this time tomorrow night I'll be on set.

The glamorous life, I think not.

Night all.

Eve of shoot 2.0

I am knackered.

My head is in a spin.

Shot list, scheduling, food runs, crew bookings, set dressing, rehearsals, meetings, meetings. meetings...

I want to sleep for a million years, but tomorrow is the first day of shooting and no doubt I'll be awake all night like christmas bloody eve...

Unbelievable turn of events today. After having so much trouble finding crew, particularly a sound person, we ended up, today, on the eve of the shoot, not one but two sound people willing to do the shoot.

Horrible having to turn someone away that you begged to do the job in the first place! Particularly an industry professional who was prepared to work for free.

I'm glad the script is getting such positive attention and feedback, here's hoping I can do my best over the next three days translating what I have written and putting it on the screen.

Nervous? Yes. Excited? Yes. Tired? Unbelievably so.

I've one more meeting tonight, meeting my cinematographer at nine to have a quick chat and then I'm going to bed bed bed.

I'll leave you with one final thought; if you are ever in a position where you have written and intend to direct a film, let someone else produce, spend time with your actors and rehearse.

My biggest fear on this is that I have spent too much time as a producer and not enough time as director preparing for this shoot.

Script

Just emailed the final draft of the re-written script to my actors and production team.

Fingers crossed!

This post is so short it should be considered a Tweet.

More Props

Props for the props go to Anthony Mackey for designing the Video Box sleeve.

They look awesome.

The free membership always cracks me up.

Pre-Production continues at a fevered pace

"Took a meeting" with our new Line Producer / AD for the shoot, Ms Fiona Conlon-McKenna.

Fiona has done production for features like P.S. I Love You and TV work on the likes of The Tudors, lord knows what she's letting herself in for with my juvenile toilet humor and slasher movie nods!

The costumes for my two main leads also arrived today. Being a zero-budget production I went for the cheapest option available to me. The surface area where the print is on the t-shirt is a little shiny. It IS a matt transfer, but its still a little shiny. Couuuld be problematic under lights. I'm just going to have to keep my fingers crossed. Watch this space.

Front

Back

As for the script, its shaping up but the ending is a little controversial among my cast/crew... I knew I shouldn't have revealed it until the final polish, but we are in a hurry, so I had no choice. I really need to put this script "to bed" by tomorrow. The guys are going to have very very little time to get "off book" and really requiring the need for a script supervisor on set. I'm game to that. I'm up for a bit of improvisation on set, but not too much. I think the written word is the blueprint that should be adhered to and only when its visibly not working than we can tear it to shreds and have fun with it. But as Steve Martin once said back when he was funny: Comedy is not pretty.

Its a good feeling seeing something being realized so quickly.

Also, I've been asked to keep a detailed production diary on the making of this short for the Wanaka Film Trust to hand out to their members. I am flattered to do so. These blog posts will be the genesis of that project.

Graphic design

Nothing screams "production value" more than an excellently executed piece of graphic design.

I sent my good buddy Anthony Mackey a quick sketch of a logo I need for the next project and the next day I get an amazing logo in my inbox.

I'm so impressed I had to share it with my NOAF readers.

A little extra effort on the "small" things on a project can add so much.

As the old saying goes: "If you put shit in front of a camera, you get shit on the screen"

Wise words.

Wanaka Film Trust

An old friend of mine and fellow filmmaker has started the Wanaka Film Trust in his new home of New Zealand.

He's the grandson of the great Seth Holt, something he is obviously very proud of as he is featured on the poster. Seth made some amazing films in his day, most notably The Nanny and Blood From The Mummies Tomb, both for Hammer Films.

Looks like they've been busy over there on the other side of the world.

Show them your support by dropping by.

Archive Photos from Holiday Blues shoot

Back in november last year I shot footage for a music video for my friend Edwin Cummins, otherwise known as Edwin james aka Corrugated Tunnel. I've designed album covers and single covers and one of the very first music video's I made was for one of his tunes.

The post production of this project was interrupted by the birth of my son only a week or two after this shoot. He came early and I thought I had plenty of time to finish the video before his arrival.

It was the first shoot for some new gear of mine and to be honest the shoot really revealed the limitations of the gear. I was disappointed with a lot of the footage we shot, which is probably a contributing factor to the video remaining unfinished.

I'm sure I'll get back to this eventually.

Thats Liam Dunne in the photo's with me who ended up contributing to the score of Shut The Fuck Up. Eddie is not featured in any of the pics as he took them.

It was a really nice morning on sandymount strand, and I might add, used well before U2 decided to shot on the same strip for their latest album. No Line On The Horizon.

Pre-Production goes ahead

Shut The Fuck Up is barely put to bed and pre production on the next short is already underway.

A small window of opportunity before one of my leads emigrates for good, so we've really got to hit the ground running.

The short is called: The Other Marty and has been a pet project of mine for a long time. Its done the rounds when it comes to attempts at financing, production companies expressed interest etc... but no-one signed on the dotted line. We thought it was going ahead when Film Base and RTE shortlisted it for funding, but we loused up the meeting. RTE objected outright that the writer/director could not in turn also be the editor. Obviously they have never heard of The Coen Brothers or Robert Rodriguez and that was the end of that.

Long story short, I went and got married, started a new job, had a kid, lived life a bit and this project was put on the back burner, but it never went away.

The project originally called for a boy girl team but now I'm re-writing it as a buddy two guy team. BIG difference. I've only just start the re-write and we are scheduled to shoot the week after next!!!!!

What am I doing blogging? Gotta go write!

Mixing mixing mixing mmmmmmmmmixing

My good friends at Intermission Studio donated a days mixing in their Pro Tools HD studio today. It was great spending the day in there working on this project, and on one of the final steps of the process to boot.

Due to my time spent in the pre-mix stage things started to go swimmingly from the get go. One of the first things on the agenda was to remove some of my temp sound effects and replace them with something more worthwhile. Mine were nice to give the idea, but just weren't cutting it.

My original intention was to go in by myself and feel the whole thing out, but then I though, I need a pro's ears if I want this to work, so I gave my old buddy and former colleague Jonah Shinbach a call, and to my great relief he agreed to do it!

With Jonah to bounce ideas off and his unending pool of talent I think we have achieved a very cinematic mix for this short.

I was also quite relieved when Jonah didn't poo poo any of my home recorded elements. To be honest, I was quite trepadacious as to what Jonah was going to say about them and how they were recorded, particularly the location stuff, but no.

Having the advantage of a HD studio and an emmy award winning sound mixer at my disposal, we took care of a lot of nuanced, subtle elements of sound that would only be heard if you were listening out for them, but keep geeks like Jonah and myself very happy.

In my opinion, I think a lot of independent short films fall a little flat due to poor sound quality whereas I feel the audio is probably more important than what's going on onscreen in some respects. So I'm relieved that this one does not and I am extremely grateful for Intermission's and Jonah's support on this.

An excellent day.

Thats two thumbs up from Jonah!

Give Me Direction

I've just signed up for the Give Me Direction screenwriting conference that will be held as part of the Jameson Dublin Film Festival next month.

The mail-out from IPSG states:

Bord Scannán na hÉireann/the Irish Film Board (IFB) in partnership with the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival (JDIFF) have announced a new screenwriting conference entitled Give Me Direction.

Attended by a mix of Irish and international guests, Give Me Direction will be an opportunity to champion great and original writing for the screen and to deepen the IFB's engagement in addressing industry concerns. The conference will follow an informal, mixed format of sessions and interviews: plus a rehearsed read-through and a preview screening.

Confirmed Guests:

• Shane Black (Lethal Weapon)
• Shane Meadows and Paul Fraser (A Room for Romeo Brass, SomersTown)
• Eran Kolirin (The Band's Visit)
• Conor McPherson (The Eclipse)

More guests and further details on the sessions will be announced shortly

Its on 4th and 5th of June at the Lighthouse Cinema and the Chester Beatty Library.

Fingers crossed there will be more guests of note announced, but looking forward to this.

Oh, and it 40 bats...

For the record

A couple of weeks back I was working on the titles for the short.

I had decided to grade the film as Black and White as I felt it added to the tone of the film nicely. Because there is a but of a thriller/horror/slasher element to the short I decided to add a splash of colour to the end titles by punctuating each credit with a splash of blood coupled with a gory sound effect for extra impact.

It works great and has a nice tongue in cheek humor to it.

Today I saw the new trailer for Quentin Tarantino's new war epic Inglorious Basterds.

The trailer is riddled with the same title/splash of blood effect.

I know its nothing new having blood splashes in credits sequences. Hell, there are B movies a-plenty that share this technique.

But I just want to put the record straight, as both films will be going public roughly around the same time, that I did not rip off the Tarantino trailer, although thats what I'll be accused of.

End of rant.

PS I'm really looking forward to seeing the new film. I, ahem, "found" a copy of the shooting script online but have refrained from reading it as I don't want to ruin the film for myself, it looks long (its a PDF). I want to see what takes 10 years to write.

Score!

A few hours was spent this bank holiday monday with the very talented electronic whizz kid Liam Dunne.

I had last week put together a minimal electronic score for the film, its only 45 seconds to spot, but its a very long 45 seconds if you know what I mean.

In other words by the time my 45 seconds had elapsed it had became boring and ceased to have the effect a good score should.

Liam was about on saturday, we were just hangin' (man) and he had a go of my Casio CZ-5000 after about 10mins of him messin about on the synth I invited him to come work on the score as I had some ideas but not the technical prowess in order to achieve them.

Liam jumped at the oppertunity to score a film.

A lot of time was spent adding the specific elements that I wanted included and Liam was very patient and delivered what I needed brilliantly. I wanted to keep things as "old school" as possible and insisted that Liam perform everything Live as opposed to doing everything via midi as I wanted it to have a very natural human sound to the performance.

We did a few takes of each track and nailed it. Some happy accidents happened along the way that would never have happened it we took the midi route. I love when shit like that happens.

When it came to the last track of the day Liam came up with some amazing chords using a french horn sample. I took great pleasure in "conducting the orchestra" for this part and we recorded directly to the playback on screen. In three takes we had it.

A lot of work goes into those 45 seconds of screen time for a score that hopefully no one will hear but certainly feel.

ReelClever.com

I've just joined up with ReelClever.com

Its an online filmmakers showreel network.

My profile is here

There's nothing up at the moment as I've just joined.

The site is also in its Beta testing phase so its a little slow right now.

We'll see how this pans out, but it looks like it could be quite a cool thing.

Tom O'Leary

My leading man & co-producer Tom O'Leary, affectionately known as Tom Waits, due to his unending patience with this project has finally seen a cut of the film in its current state just moments ago.

I am chuffed to see him leave having seen the short in good spirits and keen to move onto the next project.

Long story short; he loved it.

Excellent.

Also in other news, my friend Liam Dunne, musician and electronic whizz kid has agreed to help me out with the score for this picture. Its a bank holiday here in Ireland so we have earmarked Monday as a day to finish the score.

I'm happy to say that due to this collaboration I have decided that we should record it live as they did back in the day with this type of all synthetic score straight to tape (well, disc). Therefore my Casio CZ-5000 will be dusted off as will Liam's own Micro-Korg.

Really looking forward to the final mix stage in the studio on Friday.