Horror on Hiatus

So, the good news is I’m 90% likely to get a new job without any pause in compensation.  The bad news is my position has been cut.  Due to the uncertainty, I’ve put the Lily horror on indefinite hold.  It sucks, but such is life.

Assuming things work out cleanly on the job front (they do look good so far), my new arm-waving goal is to film in the August time frame.  Hopefully the cast and crew can still be available.

Before all this happened, I got feedback on my short version (20 pages) from my editor and, as usual, she was full of good suggestions.  Suggestions that actually had my fingertips itching to get at the keyboard.  Sadly, the whatever-ails-me crap robbed me of any initiative and I haven’t started to rework any of it.  The last few weeks I’ve been feeling better, even starting to exercise again (forcing me to accept my body has turned to total mush). Right now I’m attempting to corral myself to do the work on my latest billion-dollar idea to know if it has a chance or not.  Last weekend I actually did do something.  Not enough to know if it works, but enough to know I have to make tweaks to my approach, which I hope to have resolved by this weekend to take those steps.  I hope to get the rework started on the short version in the next month or two, but until the employment situation gets ironed out, there’s no real rush.

Sound in the Works

I finally managed to find someone interested in taking on the challenge of sound on Treasure Hunt who is a) willing to work for reel/credit b) follows through on his interest and c) actually does a good job (well, better than me, certainly).  He estimates 6 weeks, and I told him that was fine.

The one main thing left is colorizing.  Frankly, I don’t get it.  I agree, in principle, that changing the color tone can have an impact, but the subject doesn’t speak to me at all.  And that’s even before I struggle with the technical aspects.  Since no one has called out color as an issue, absent finding someone interested in taking the challenge for the same reel/credit (the sound editor said he’d ask his friends), I’m calling Treasure Hunt done once the sound is complete.  Then I’ll lock myself to my desk until I get the damn DVD authoring sorted out so I can finally get the crowdfunders paid back (I humbly thank them for their continued patience).

What comes next, I’m not sure.  I may try and get it on Amazon and/or advertise in Civil War related magazines/websites, perhaps trying to get some reviews by Civil War buffs.  I consider it an important part of the whole learning process, though that does mean I have to go back and track down the various locations and people I failed to get releases from and just thinking about that exhausts me.  I really wish I could find someone to be a producing partner…

A Long Time ACommin

OK, I’ve been doing a really crappy job of posting once a week.  Part of that is lack of inspiration, but a bulk is because of health issues.  I’m suffering from… got no idea, really.  Heart is find, lungs are fine, blood is fine.  Last week tested if my nerves were fine (should find out in a few days) and, if not rejected by my insurance company, I’ll find out if I have sleep apnea in a week.  Not that any of the doctors I’ve seen think any of these things have been potential problems, but because nothing they’ve tested as shown as positive.

Except for Epstein Barr Virus.  Even more fun?  My being positive to EBV is diagnostically meaningless, since 90% of the population are positive.  And, in any case, there’s not a damn thing that can be done anyway.  So I’m run down, have no energy (like going to the bathroom can wear me out and sometimes I need to take a nap from watching the TV), my thinking is often cloudy and muddled, which all serves to curtail any initiative to do, well, much of anything.

Despite this, some things have happened in the periods where I wasn’t too wiped out to do anything.  Sledgehammer has finished principle photography and the scenes John has cut together look amazing.

Inspired by a Reddit writing prompt, in January I’m going to begin principle photography for a 5-7 minute short – with exactly one actor – and a provocative title:

Title: Fuck Retirement

Logline: A retired contract killer is targeted for assassination by his young peers.

Blurb:

For retired contract killer Gator, the greatest game just turned out not to be that great. Sure, hunting humans was a lot more interesting than moose, boar or even bear – they can hunt back – but professionalism ensured his prey never really had a chance.

Ambivalent about retirement anyway, Gator’s life regains meaning when someone targets him for assassination. Dealing with a string of professional killers will make life a little more interesting. For a while, at least.

Getting old sucks, but experience counts for something. At what point will youth and enthusiasm counter old age and treachery?

At the constant nagging of John (which he is now denying), I’ve begun the process to formulate Lily’s Party into a 20-25 minute short that maybe, just maybe, can lead to interest in funding a feature-length version.  I’m leaning toward filming late May or early June, but have to get the boss to sign off on the budget first (all ‘deferred’ pay to the actors – which basically translates to no pay – so budget is mostly insurance, then food and gas money).

Based on her concept, I wrote a short (originally intended to be a horror, but morphed into a psychological thriller (at least I hope)) I expect to direct and edit as a reel builder for Ruby Garnet, an actress featured in John’s flick.

Treasure Hunt was supposedly short listed for best picture, but didn’t win.  Sadly, they’re so disorganized that even on their Facebook page it’s really difficult to find any information (I don’t FB, so got this second hand).  (Oh look, they finally updated their home page (though not any subsidiary pages).)  After some consideration and consultation, I’ve decided that adding their laurels to the flick’s IMDB page is just not worth the effort.  I did, by the way, learn how to get rid of those painfully blue skies from the day-for-night filming we did.  Still need to optimize the sound.  I finally found one piece of software that would let me make a properly formatted DVD (but not Bluray), though it’s quite crude.  I need to get the energy to muck with it long enough to find out if I can at least make it work for my intended purposes (basically, I want to put the trailer and outtakes on the disk menu – how hard should that be? (evidently really hard)), as I still owe my crowd funders disks (sorry, but I don’t think I’ll be able to get the Bluray’s to work) and posters (I have them printed, just need to mail them).

I’m still seriously considering re-imagining my dominatrix movies into a miniseries, but haven’t done much more than write the opening for the third.  I’m also seriously thinking of novelizing the series, which is absurd, in a way, since the whole concept started as a novel in the first place (but fizzled).  As if I don’t already have enough things to waste my time on, a novel editing friend and I have been discussing the notion of starting a book publishing company some time in the next few years and the whole idea behind RedDom in the first place was to have a novel easier to market than my first.

Domestique is still in the editing stage.  The editor sent me a rough cut a while ago (heck, maybe a month now) and I had some… issues with it.  We discussed them and he’s at work on a new cut.  I hope to see something before the end of the year, but it’s not like he doesn’t have a regular job and a life either, so it may be a bit.  I did finally manage to get the rough footage (all in 4K ‘log’ mode).  Had to get a new hard drive, mine doesn’t have the space, then format it to work on his Windows machine, then, of course, feel good enough to carry out the musical hard drives to get it to him then pick it up.  Haven’t loaded any into my editor yet.  Haven’t got past the activation energy to fix the log mode with the appropriate ‘lut’ (I barely understand what I just wrote) or working with the greenscreen, particularly after having seen the artifacts that the editor had in his initial rough cut.  I’m trying really hard to not think I just wasted $5K…

So, there you go.  TMI about why I’ve been DOA.  I’d like to say I can get back to less irregularly posting, but until/if the doctors find something fixable or I learn how to get by if this is the new normal, it may be just whenever I have the right combination of time and energy.

Oh and Three

Got my final rejection for my Dominatrix script.  The Virginia Film Office elected not to proceed.  Interestingly, the reader had some very supportive comments:

This is a story with great potential. The bones of it – a dominatrix that is the prime suspect in a number of murders and a detective that has an unorthodox relationship with the women that he once knew from his days working in Vice – is intriguing. There’s no doubt that it will capture interest.

However, very much like the man who did coverage for the script (second third here), they felt it had too many unnecessary scenes or scenes that should be trimmed by a great deal.  The reader ‘complained’ that I wasted too much time for a feature film that was burning through $100K per page.  That basically makes what I wrote an $11M feature, which is way more than I was expecting to spend.

When I forwarded the above to my movie making friend John, his basic response was “I told you so.”  And, somewhat repetitively, I replied with:

If I were trying to compete to write the next Hollywood blockbuster franchise, I’d probably be more inclined to listen … And, I suspect, never get anywhere, because that’s all about who you know and no one gives a damn about what you know. It’s more about you have 10 leads that, contractually, need to be on screen for X number of pages, so that ‘creativity’ is more about coming up with the least-bad story you can out of the pile of steaming contractual shit you’ve got to work with. Or, like Mission Impossible, the story that fits within the idiotic stunts they’ve already filmed.

And if I were in it simply to make money as a writer and really didn’t care about my story intent, I’d be more open minded to re-conceive the story to satisfy the generic audience. But, instead, I’m some dumbass that wants to tell a certain story (and then get paid to make it, of course), so really don’t give a damn when I get advice that goes against my intent. I can always create another story.

If I become successful (statistically a snowball’s chance in hell), then my sticktoitofness will, no doubt, be one of the reasons. But, most likely, I’ll do this for another 4 years, 7 months, never amount to anything, then content myself with holding boom for my friend John as he complains until we all go deaf and blind that if I’d only…

My idea of re-conceptualizing the trilogy of movies into a miniseries is probably just as dumb as anything else, but if I were driven by intellect instead of emotion, I’d be investing all my free time into a billion-dollar invention idea I’ve had since at least February, instead of pissing away my time on this nonsense.

Much Ado About Nothing, Or So It Seems

Nearly two weeks ago I was notified that Treasure Hunt was accepted into a festival.  In those two weeks, the festival has neither returned my emails or made any updates to their website.  As such, I have to assume it was either a scam to make money off credulous indie filmmakers or it’s being operated by total incompetents (really, is there a way to tell the difference?).  I may be surprised and they’ll suddenly emerge from the darkness, but I can’t see there being any value in getting excited even if that happens.  If the festival is so small that it can’t be competently managed, is it even worth telling anyone about?

On a only tangentially related matter, the festival notification did light a small fire under my butt to experiment with the day-for-night on the flick.  Since I know, biologically, most people see in black and white at night (rods vs cones, doanchano), I figured I’d try that and see what happened.  Well, it seems, actually getting my editor to make the footage black and white is a PITA.  However, I could reduce the saturation level to 1 (not zero, though) easily.  Then, after adjusting the brightness, I felt I was able to quickly achieve a look I could be happy with.  Those damn brilliant blue skies are gone and I feel it’s reasonable to think the scene is being illuminated by a bright full moon.

With that settled, now I have to learn how to adjust the audio levels.  There should be an equalizer plugin that I can use to ‘roll off’ the sounds that are above and below normal speech.  Then there should be a way to adjust the various audio (dialog, music and background) so they all fall in the ‘sweet spot’ where it’s easy to hear without being too loud or distorted.  Supposedly, there’s a way to do this in a semi-automatic way, so I don’t have to spend minutes on each sound clip (there are probably over a thousand), but that’ll require research and experimentation.

So, with that momentum, I aim to rework the feature as well as the trailer.  Then I’ll revisit the whole disk authoring debacle.  I think I’ll feel more motivated at that point, since I believe I’ll have a reason to think it’ll be feasible to try and find actual paying customers.  Timing, though, is probably early next year.  The day-for-night went quickly, but I expect the audio to take a lot longer (most of the movie isn’t day-for-night).

TrezDom?

After some deep thought, I’ve decided to give up on the idea of three independent movies for my Dominatrix trilogy.  The Dominatrix Wore Red, The Dominatrix Was Blue and The Dominatrix Went Dark.  Sequels always depend on the success of the first, and, given my total lack of interest (via the screenplay contests and inability to get any actresses to read it) in the first, I have to assume the chances of the second and third being made are zero.

The feedback on RedDom indicated to me that the best overall audience was women, probably 30 and older.  I’ve half joked several times that it’s probably better suited for the LifeTime channel. Well I stopped thinking of it as a joke.  What if I turned the trilogy into a 6-7 hour miniseries?  Granted, it might be at least an equal up-hill battle to get it made that way, but at least it’d be all or nothing.

The main caveat?  It seems the likelihood I’d be given directorial control over the project is very slim.  I’m still thinking about how I could try to package the product in such a way that there is a reasonable chance I could get to direct.  Part of that may boil down to filming a few scenes, which, of course, costs money.  Which, of course, has risk associated with it.

But, given my horror concept is dead in the water, I don’t really have a second project (besides my bike racing flick) to think about.  So I’m leaning toward at writing the third part, then reworking the three into a coherent whole that could be split out in one or two hour chunks.

Domestique Looked Good

When I first looked at the Domo footage from the DP, it was in ‘log’ mode and was very washed out.  Having never worked with any such footage before, it was hard (really, impossible) for me to visualize what it would look like when properly treated.  But Tony, my editor, sent me a version of the indoor (e.g., without greenscreen) scenes he cut together with the imagery adjusted and it looked really good.  Amazing, in fact, given how little ambient light there was when we were filming.  I was worried all the stuff was going to come out muddy and dark, but trusted my DP.  That trust has been rewarded.

Now for the greenscreen.  I hope to have a peek at that this coming week.  Tony only has time to work on Domo a few hours per week, so I try not to irritate him by constant requests for updates.

Horror DoA

Whelps, ‘shockingly,’ it turns out my horror concept, Lily’s Party, simply isn’t that novel (whodathought a guy who never watches horror would have a novel horror concept?).  Two of the three horror aficionados I asked for input (the third hasn’t really got back to me) essentially said there wasn’t much ‘there’ there and their suggestions for lengthening the story were going against such intent I had when I started writing.

Since shorts never make money, and I’m in this for that purpose, then, for me, it’s no longer a project worth pursuing.  If the concept was more novel, perhaps I’d enter some sort of contest where I could hope to get money to film the short, thus not risking any investor dollars.

And Then There Were None… Wait, What?

So I start to read the final announcement and assume it’s just like all the others:

Dear Keith,

First – we want to say thank you from the bottom of our hearts for submitting your film to The Clifton Film Celebration. This is our first year – a completely unknown festival [I think they recycled last year’s email here] – and we were humbled by the number of excellent submissions we received from all over the world. Thanks for taking a chance on us!

Sadly, we didn’t secure enough time in our venue to accommodate all the films we wanted to include this year. Some difficult choices had to be made, but we’re THRILLED to tell you that your film made the cut!

Attached you’ll find Official Selection laurels to use on your promotional materials.

Be on the lookout for an information packet which will include instructions on formatting your final cut for our festival, travel & lodging info for Clifton, VA, Screening Schedule, info on how to get your free pass, and discount admission codes for any of your cast & crew who would like to attend.

Please feel free to reach out via email at [email] with any questions. Be sure to like & share us on Facebook (Clifton Film Celebration) and follow us on Twitter (@filmdpoe).

The goal now is to make sure as many people see your film as possible – so do what you can to help us get the word out!

Cheers,
The Judge’s Panel – Clifton Film Celebration

This is the location per FilmFreeway:

As I get more details I’ll post here…