August 28, 2010
August 27, 2010
Back to the Coffee Shop
Too bad I missed this by two years (SGT, we need to go back to Milwaukee!).
The 1980 retro coffee shop.
August 14, 2010
August 2, 2010
July 28, 2010
Paradise Recovered
Congrats to my cast and crew friends on Paradise Recovered as they see it in the world premiere on the big screen! Wish I could be there!
July 20, 2010
July 18, 2010
Did I Mention it’s a Nude Scene?
XtraNormal is a website that lets people do cheap animated “films” by just typing in a script. It’s really basic and the results are far, far from professional.
Still, sometimes you happen across something golden in spite of the primitive tools.
Witness Sound Mixer Hell. This little gem was put together by a professional sound mixer and features all of the tired reasons we hear when we’re pitched a film. If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of this sort of thing you’ll get why it’s so funny.
(Note: This kind of thing is the rule, but there are exceptions. About a year ago I worked on a low budget movie using the Red and just me as the sound dept. In this case, though, the producers did everything in their power to make sure that the technical crew- those of us with an investment in equipment and consumables- were paid. And they listened to what we needed in order to do our jobs and took advice. It ended up being a good experience. Ask me about the other times when I’ve been asked to volunteer my time and equipment on a set where everyone else had been paid, simply because the producer had “run out of money”. When told that I had bills to pay, the response was “well… can we borrow your gear?”. This came from a complete stranger.)
July 12, 2010
June 30, 2010
June 28, 2010
June 24, 2010
The Other Half
I just discovered SoundWorks- a cool website from the production teams behind the sound of many Summer blockbusters. Some really neat stuff there from the unsung half of the movies.
June 13, 2010
Surfing the Arctic
A 9 minute mini documentary about crazy surfers to who ply their hobby in the arctic circle in sub-freezing temps.
While I was watching this, listening to these yo-dudes bemoan getting splashed in the face with wave spray while they burn calories and get a cardio workout on their boards, I kept thinking cry me a river, pretty boy. How about your freaking camera man who is FLOATING IN THE ARCTIC WATER just to get a shot of your bad self flying by on your sponsored board? How about a little love for them?
Spend some time behind the scenes as a crew person to learn about real hardship, you world-traveling, camera mugging, Taj Burrow wanna-be pansy.
Okay, now that I’m finished watching it I’m even more annoyed (I know, I know…). Listen up, surferdude: we know you’ve been sponsored to sell us products. We know the company names that got airplay in the doc ponied up the bucks to put you on a jet to the arctic and outfit you with lots of hi-definition gear-and the talent to run it in harsh conditions, as well as do a great job in post putting together a beautiful piece. We know you’re using exposure from this film to further your lucrative career. It’s okay to do that, but don’t try to convince us that you’re in tune with the rhythm of the lava-lamp Cosmos because you can balance a board in the water. It’s a neat trick, but forming a life philosophy around that kind of skill seems pretty… ahem…. shallow.
The whole more-introspective-than-the-Dali-Lama surfer ethos is so completely played out that it’s become a giggle-worthy parody. The stereotype image of the surfer as wise and in touch with nature got instantly uncool when Keanu grabbed a board in 1991. Where ya been?
And get off my lawn.
May 27, 2010
May 26, 2010
Paradise Achieved
I just finished watching the final color corrected and audio mixed version of Paradise Recovered. We became the first two people to see the “final” film. It looked and sounded (ahem) great! Celebrated with a few fingers of 15 year old Glenn.
Congratulations to Storme on a job well done.
For the first time in over a month I have nothing to do. Ahhhhhh….
May 25, 2010
May 18, 2010
May 11, 2010
Production Brain
I’ve been mixing the movie for a couple weeks now, and have a few more to go. One of the interesting things I’m noticing is that the more I get into super picky mode on the scenes I’m working on, the easier it is for me to catch production mistakes when I watch a TV show.
Tonight I caught a radio hit on an actresses RF mic on Castle, then Erin and I decided to watch Firefly (what can I say? Nathan Fillion overdose) and I caught something I’d never expected. There’s a scene in the pilot episode where Wash drives a 4 wheel off road buggy off of the ship. He stops on the ramp to talk to a character, then after they’re done he slowly putts off screen. They would have had to have had the buggy turned off because the engine noise would have overwhelmed the dialog, but how did the buggy go when called for? If you look really carefully in the bottom right hand corner of the screen you can very clearly see a hand in a black glove come in and grab the front bumper of the 4 wheeler and PULL. Yup, it was grip powered. Hey! This didn’t take place in space at all!
Erin has now forbade me from pointing out any other problems I see (I always catch boom shadows, camera reflections, ADR mismatches). Argh! The perils of Production Brain.
If anything, it makes me feel better about my editing. I’m going for perfection, but it’s nice to know that the average audience member isn’t as picky as I am. Erin told me today that audio editing is NOT the best thing for a perfectionist. It just reinforces our bad tendencies.