How Far We've Come

Tomorrow is the last day of the month before the movie is due to Sundance, the first of the fests I'm submitting to.

That means I have roughly three weeks to get it as good as I can.

The good news is, the current cut is pretty solid. I'll do some more fine-tuning for sure, but I've cut 20 minutes out already and I don't see myself going much further than that. I've solved just about all the problems I needed to with editing.

The big things on the to-do list:
FX Shots - Some inserts of the ship igniting, sparks, etc. Imaginary shots of the ship taking off and crash landing on the moon. These will all be done practically with models. Should be fun. Master of construction/pyrotechnics will be assisting.

Sound - This is a multi-parter. I've got to go through and finish a full run of audio clean-up, then based on what needs it, get ADR from Kemer and Cyndee. I did it already with Steven and could go ahead and do it with everyone, but I don't actually know 100% what I need and don't yet. I'm just ballparking it. I've also got to record/mix foley for the whole movie. This should take a couple days of solid work. I've got to work with Ben to lock in the music and work on a final mix of everything together.

Credits/Titles - This seems easy enough, except I really want to go all out with it. Especially the end credits. I'm also considering doing these practically. Actually drawing out all the names or something, I haven't really figured out the specifics. And honestly this isn't crucial for the screener that's due at the end of the month.But being that this is the first title/credit sequence I've really done since both schooling/working in design, I feel like it's a great opportunity to do something ambitious.

Color Correcting - This is both big and small. On one hand we shot everything really well. For the most part the image I shot is what I wanted, but there are a handful of places that need real "correction," everything else will just be matching shots for consistency sake, and making sure everything feels right. I'm of the school that digital color correction is way abused/overused these days. For something that didn't used to be such a big part of the production process, it's really become overblown, and largely results in people ruining footage and making cheap choices and marketing choices in the use of color. This is an era of everyone having the tools to change their footage and people are doing it in order to give this impression of professionalism. But real professionalism is knowing what you want in advance and shooting it on set.

This leads me onto a tangent: Imperfection. (and before I get into it, that is pretty much all that's left to do in three weeks)

Increasingly, I believe that imperfection is what makes good art good. It's largely a side effect of risk-taking which often goes hand-in-hand with innovation which is often what defines defining works of art.

When you're doing something for the first time, you're never going to get it perfect. But you're going to get something unique. I think that uniqueness stems directly from that imperfection. Because if you believe practice makes perfect, then it also stands to reason that perfection is stale. You can do something enough times that you get it perfect, but I think the first time you do something is probably a lot more human and interesting than when you do it after doing it a bunch of times. The attempt at perfection is ultimately more compelling than perfection itself. Although you could argue that perfection doesn't actually exist and everything is an attempt.

But my point is, that I think it's the artist (in this case filmmakers) that aren't afraid to make a mess of things that make the most interesting things. You can see it in concrete examples like Apocalypse Now, Star Wars, Edward Scissorhands, Reservoir Dogs, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. These are all imperfect films. But they're charmingly imperfect. It's what makes them. I would argue that most directors' early works are their most interesting. It's what defines them and inspires people to support them. Heck, the Criterion Collection has basically made a business out of rereleasing early works.

This isn't to say that director's can't continue to make good films after they've made a name for themselves. I think in some cases they lose a passion that drives their early work because there's a desperation about it. Good directors continue to innovate though. And continue to take risks. Christopher Nolan is a solid example of this. Or Danny Boyle. Each of his films is something entirely different from the last. Tim Burton would be an example of someone who has stopped innovating and just keeps repeating...now without the low-budget charm of his initial innovation.

Wes Anderson, probably my favorite director, is seen by a lot of people as someone who keeps repeating himself. Then again he just made a stop motion kids movie, so I don't think anybody really saw that coming. I may be biased because I'm a sucker for his material, but I'm also most fond of largest critical failure, The Life Aquatic. It's a movie that you can see uncertainty and imperfection in, but that's part of why I think I'm drawn to it. It's kind of a failed attempt (though I use that term lightly as it's my all-time favorite movie), but in falls in line with the themes of the movie. That's why Apocalypse Now works so well. It's as fucked up as the situations and characters within it.

All of this is just to say, I think the idea of having perfect picture or color correction or sound is an overrated side effect of the digital age. The Beatles are probably the greatest band ever, and their music was all recorded mono. Most people today would insist on a stereo mix, but is that really so crucial to quality music? I think you can't be afraid of those things. If I was I don't think I could have made this movie. I'm okay without a Skywalker Sound audio mix. I don't think it's what makes or breaks this film. In fact, I don't think most people will notice.

Now the real kicker, is I'm a huge blu-ray fanatic. I love collecting HD restorations of old films. Who knows where that comes from......well, one could argue that it's knowing you're seeing something as pristine as it'll ever be (or need to be) and it's still not perfect. The blu-ray of Wizard of Oz doesn't hold a match to Avatar, but that doesn't really change the fact that Avatar is a very bad movie.

Trailer Time

So first things first. The new trailer is live:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc2b7J-zH2A

Spread the word, link it, like it, share it, tweet it. We want to get as many early views as possible to increase the snowball effect on youtube.


Also, this past weekend I finished the second cut of the film. It's down to an hour and 45 minutes without end credits.

I've got an ADR session with Kemer this weekend and will soon start heavy folley and mixing work. And shooting some practical special fx shots for the launch sequence.

Things are good right now.

Back from Mars

I don't know what that title's supposed to mean, but here's my first new post in about 7 weeks.

The trailer is probably the big news. It's almost ready. I wish I could give a hard date since the original "end of July" date is here. It's mostly done. I've seen several drafts. We hit some bumps in terms of Hunter's and my conflicting opinions on the overall approach and direction of the trailer, but we've settled on something worthy. I can't wait to see people's reactions.

I'm also cracking away at my second cut of the film. Which so far is already 10. I'd really like to chop off another 10 minutes to make it super digestible. It's a weird experience to really "edit" a film and not just put it together. Especially after writing it and going through some 30 or so drafts of the script. By then you feel like you have it perfect. Like all the extraneous stuff is gone. But then you shoot it and some things end up weak, and then you assemble it and some parts are slow. And then you really start to see what's important for the total experience. It's not just making the story work. It's make the whole experience work and making it flow. Making the important parts stand out. I have a lot of thick scenes of dialogue, which is largely irrelevant to the plot. That was intentional when writing, but I'm finding in the final film it really drags, and I'm trying to cut things down to get to the point and get out as smoothly as possible. I just didn't imagine ever cutting so much or looking at things the way I do now, but it really makes a difference.

It'll be cool to have real deleted scenes though. I actually have an entire scene cut out now. I remember writing the scene in because I thought it was important. Shows what I knew a year ago.

I had my first ADR session with Steven two weeks ago. So he's fully wrapped now. It turns out as I've been playing around in Soundbooth (the software), a lot of the noisier audio is actually pretty salvageable so ADR isn't going to be as extensive as I initially expected. The frustrating thing is that it just takes me so long to get anything done. I only work on weekends. I have friday afternoons off at work, but I'm not sure it's enough. We're just under two months from the Sundance submission deadline. I'm gonna have to find some more time. I still have to do all the FX shots.

I'm still working with Ben on the music too. It's coming along smashingly, but I need to get him the new cut so he can see where things go and start working on scoring it. Right now we've just been focusing on finding the right sound and coming up with themes.

Also, expect a revamp of the official site sometime this fall. I'm not sure why that needed to be said yet.

(I typed some of this on Wendesday, but right now it's 2 AM on Sunday...so excuse the date)

Finding the Time

It's been a whole month since I finished the rough cut. Today was the first time I touched it since.

I have somewhat good reasons. I got a puppy...or found a puppy sleeping on a country road in the middle of the night and decided to keep it. I've also had two of the most stressful weeks at work thus far, which caused me to get a cyst on my tailbone called "jeep seat," from military personnel who road on bumpy roads in crappy seats. I didn't have a crappy seat a work...not great, but I think it was a mix of the time spent in it and high levels of stress...anyway...talking to a surgeon tomorrow about getting the pouch it was formed in removed.

But still, a month is a long time when you consider I've been in post for 5.5 months and I only have 2.5 months left to finish it.

Sure I can classify what I have left as "fine tuning," but there's a lot of nitty gritty technical stuff that frankly takes a lot of time. I probably clocked in 6 hours of work on it today and only got through a 5 minute scene with color correcting and audio editing...also now it's a 2.5 minute scene. But I haven't put in sound effects or finished the audio mix...and that's just one scene from a feature film. I only have some many weekends left to push through this and it's starting to make me worry a little bit.

I need like a month off to just sit at my computer and grind through it.

So I guess the good news is that at least I have one scene almost 100%, but it was a relatively easy scene. No music. Only about 6 shots. No action or heavy foley.

But maybe this pressure is what I need to motivate me. I always work better under pressure...Unfortunately, I have a lot of other things pressuring me right now so editing time and recovery time end up being the same time.


Also, I've upgraded to CS5 since I finished the rough cut which means native DSLR support in premiere...Now I can finally actually edit at full resolution...That's the price of the cutting edge.

Maybe it's not just me

Cyndil and Hunter have both seen the rough cut and their responses have both been overhwelmingly positive. They're the two most honest and critical people I know so I value their opinions highly. They wouldn't be afraid to tell me if it sucked.

I'm kind of on edge, keeping myself from getting too excited (or too cocky) because I just feel like there's going to be some catch somewhere. I've built up a lot of defenses over the years against being too optimisitic or too proud because I nearly always end up humbled by reality somewhere down the road...but I'm getting somewhere with this one. For one, it's 5 months since we shot, and I'm happier with the results now than I think I was when shooting. Usually by now I've moved on and learned my lessons. And now, I'm getting early feedback that suggests most of the film is pretty awesome and works and is everything it's supposed to be. And that's the rough cut. I haven't even had to make any excuses yet.

I really really want and need this to be what it's supposed to be so that I can take my bigger and better next step, whatever that ends up being. But it's like I know better...but based on my current evidence I have no reason to believe myself.

Roughed Up

The rough cut is...cut.

I'm exporting the files for Ben and Hunter right now, which by the way feels really official because I'm uploading them to the server at Aspect Ratio (the pro trailer house that Hunter works at) with a client login and everything.

So I'm really excited to see a new trailer from Hunter and to start hearing some awesome Ben-music. It's already pretty good without music, so I really can't wait to see it (hear it) with it.

But yeah, the rough cut is good. I watched it with Cyndil last night and we both liked it...and while biased, we're both pretty critical people too so I think that speaks well for it. I never really know though. I'm always pretty skeptical, and try and be realistic with my expectations (sometimes brutally so), which I think keeps me going and never settling for something less. I mean I can very confidently say we did the best with what we had. It feels like a real movie. It's certainly not a secret that it's a low budget movie, but I think it definitely shows we maximized our potential and that if quality scales with money then by any professional standards, as a group I think moviesauce looks like it has enormous potential.

...which is really what I was out to prove with this project. None of us had ever tried a feature, even though it's kind of what we're all after. In a way it's almost been sort of an elephant in the room. We all think we can make features and want to make features, but this is the first time we've really tried it, and maybe naively so, but I feel like it was a really important step to take. Now we know. We know we can do it. It wasn't some huge disaster that doesn't approach anything like feature filmmaking. It's actually an impressive, creative, and ambitious project that among those things is also a very watchable film. I really feel like I made a movie that I would want to see. It's really hard to detach yourself from something you put so much work into, but I really feel like if I saw a trailer for this I would really want to see it and if I saw it I would like.

Like if we got it as a submission to the Moviesauce Film Festival, this would be my top pick. I know it seems sort of pointless for me to talk about why I like my own movie. I mean I'm supposed to. It should be obvious. But there's something different about this one. I don't feel like I like it just because I made. I feel like I really actually like it and that other people will too. Most of our other projects, while interesting, I think lean towards being inside jokes. They may show creative potential, but they lack that certain something in the execution that actually makes it a movie in the sense that most people know movies...and maybe it is just because it's normal length...in contrast I feel the majority of other aspiring filmmakers make films that are just too normal...just trying really hard to look like a movie, to show they can do what everyone else does, which is an accomplisment to a certain degree, but then it's also like, "well, what does that really prove outside of impressing your friends/family."

I guess I just wasn't prepared for a feature film to be such a different animal than a short. It really is more than just a scaled short film...and I'm glad I know that now. I feel like shorts and features are almost different mediums now. Shorts are more about displaying a concept, and displaying a skill set...they rarely actually exist on their own...and that's probably mainly because of their context and history of being "practice" and school projects. And I guess I never realized it, but shorts really are restricting. You can't tell very much story in them, and that can be a relief to some, but I realized it's been sort of a burden for me because I've wanted to achieve the effect of a feature with a short....whether that's through mimicking styles or certain types of scenes from certain films or whatever....but something that's a lot more clear to me now is that shorts are only ever really aspiring to be films. Even good shorts. They're just something entertaining and promising, but not fulfilling in the same way a full film is. A good example would be Pixar shorts. They're often really really good...but Pixar movies are better...and what you remember.

And so now that I've made a full length film I feel like I've opened up the door to something that I always felt I was trying to do, but was unable or maybe even scared to try. But I really do feel like I've succeeded too. Most projects I do are learning experiences, but probably none of them have felt as complete as this one does. The GOS short was probably the most movie-like thing I had done before this, but I obviously felt like it needed more afterwards.

So I guess I'm saying I like being a feature filmmaker. I'm not really interested in making shorts anymore (unless just for an exercise as that's all I feel they amount to now). And since I don't feel like feature films are unattainable, I'm really excited about making more. It feels right.

And that's something I really had to prove to myself with this movie too. I've always said I wanted to be a filmmaker, but it's a hard claim to make if you haven't made a film. Part of me was worried that I'd fail or end up too overwhelmed and somehow uninterested in fighting to make this into a career. That'd I'd realize the reality of filmmaking might not be worth it...but I ended up proving it's exactly what I want to do and I'm confident in moving forward and I guess confident that I have a place in making films too...I feel like a lot of people aspire to be filmmakers, but don't really justify the effort and resources to make their films...people that just want to be filmmakers, not really make films that contribute to the medium. Part of me was afraid that maybe that was me...maybe I didn't really have anything to offer the world. Maybe it would turn out that I'm just knocking off Wes Anderson because I really like his movies. But I'm confident now that I have something unique to offer, and that film is a worthy pursuit.

I feel like I have the means to pursue it too. Because on top of all of that, I've made a hell of a cheap film...and half of my budget was spent on equipment. So in theory I could make the same movie again for half the cost. But I could even very reasonably quadruple my budget and be at relative low risk in terms of the rest of the industry. When I imagine quadrupling my resources, I get really excited about the quality of films I could put out. And I think all in all that makes for some good investment potential.



But yeah....I'm really proud to consider "Getting Outer Space" my first film...and hopefully it'll be something I can look back on as the start to a film career.


Now let's fast forward a few months and see how much everybody hates it...

Something to prove

Just did a tally after a good 3 hour editing session.

I'm at least 100 minutes in. Maybe 105ish.

And there's a good 20 minutes worth of script left to cut. Which means the rough cut will be 2 hours. Which is crazy. I never thought it would be that long. I felt like I worked really hard just to get the script to 90 pages because I just remember having a 75 page script for "Making Of" that ended up being 65 minutes long. But now I've got a 110 page script that's 120 minutes long.

But it is a rough cut. So chances are I'll end up shaving about 10 minutes or so rounding it out to close to what the script was.

It's really weird to have that much movie though. I'm really eager to push through these last few scenes so I can have it and watch it. I keep going through waves of excitement and disappointment. I'm dying to know what the end product makes me feel like. My hope is that through experience I've just set myself to expect the worse and set my expectations pretty low. I've built up this defense mechanism against failure, which is a good thing to have, but it can make you overly cautious and skeptical sometimes. When I'm not editing and not in the mood to edit, it's almost like I can forget about the project as something I've done. Like giving up on it, assuming it won't be more than it already is. But then somehow I get myself to work on it and more often then not working on it gets me really pumped about it and I'll edit a sequence I'm really proud of or I'll discover some really nice shots I had forgotten about.

Maybe I'm just scared to let myself get too excited about it because I don't want to be let down if it sucks...but maybe...and hopefully, it'll actually be what it's supposed to be...which is something good. And then I can rest easy knowing that I am in fact a good filmmaker and I can safely move forward with proof in hand.

I've always felt with past projects that I've been on track to be a good filmmaker, but never actually was able to prove how good I wanted to be or thought I was or thought I could be. I may have been aware of that, and have been able to channel that to get me to keep making things, but I've always wanted that piece of evidence. I really hope this is it.