Well, we’re trying out a new website design — probably just a stopgap measure until we get our ideal site up, but since we’ve been tweaking that “ideal” for more than a year now, I think it’s way past time we put up something that seemed at least reasonably respectable. So check it out, run it around the block, and let us know if anything else needs fixing.
In other news, I just received the official word that “Machinations” was received and is considered eligible for awards. Now it’s all a matter of waiting.
Monday, October 30, 2006
Sunday, October 29, 2006
“Machinations” Is Now Online!
Just wanted to drop everyone a quick note to let you know that our latest short film, “Machinations,” is now available for online viewing (at least in its “Large” and “Medium” incarnations — still working on the version for those with slower ’net connections).
We (that is, I) also did some minor tweaking of the site — mostly behind-the-scenes stuff, but I did try to more prominently feature our shorts toward the top. If anyone wants to take a moment to check it out — kick the tires, so to speak — I’d appreciate it. (In fact, if anyone wants to redo the site a bit, make it look less like something that was slapped together by a rank neophyte, I wouldn’t turn that down either.)
In other news, after its successful run at the DC Shorts festival, we are submitting “Quite Contrary” to the Cleveland International Film Festival, as well as the Georgetown/Adams Morgan Festival. And given the positive reception of “Machinations” so far, I think it’ll be hitting the festival circuit as well.
That’s all for now — hope everyone’s having a nice weekend (don’t forget to set your clocks back).
We (that is, I) also did some minor tweaking of the site — mostly behind-the-scenes stuff, but I did try to more prominently feature our shorts toward the top. If anyone wants to take a moment to check it out — kick the tires, so to speak — I’d appreciate it. (In fact, if anyone wants to redo the site a bit, make it look less like something that was slapped together by a rank neophyte, I wouldn’t turn that down either.)
In other news, after its successful run at the DC Shorts festival, we are submitting “Quite Contrary” to the Cleveland International Film Festival, as well as the Georgetown/Adams Morgan Festival. And given the positive reception of “Machinations” so far, I think it’ll be hitting the festival circuit as well.
That’s all for now — hope everyone’s having a nice weekend (don’t forget to set your clocks back).
Monday, October 23, 2006
The Tapes Are On Their Way
Oh, I forgot to mention the final, definitive title of our little film: “Machinations.”
And by the way, thanks to some technical glitches, I did not make the 6:30 dropoff at the nearby FedEx place. Still (after an interminable stream of profanity far more explicit than anything in “Quite Contrary”), I was able to work those out, and had plenty of time to dump a couple of copies out to tape and get them to the central FedEx facility by its 8:00 closing time. Or so I thought. I’ll spare you all the details, but after seemingly innumerable delays, I ended up in the door just before 8:00 (and, in fact, someone coming up a couple of minutes later was denied entry).
As a little capper, the attendant’s receipt printer wasn’t working, so she said she’d just have to give me the handwritten receipt. Hey, I’m sympathetic, but as this is a competition entry, I’m going to need an officially printed and dated receipt. They had to run the thing three times before it’d work (and change paper rolls twice), but work it did.
Time-stamped 8:02 p.m., but the time’s not the critical thing — it’s the date: October 23, 2006.
Our work is officially done.
Thanks again, everyone. Now I’m going to grab something to eat, have a drink and go to bed.
And despite all that, I can’t wait to do it again. But next time I’ll try not to cut it so close.
Good night, all.
And by the way, thanks to some technical glitches, I did not make the 6:30 dropoff at the nearby FedEx place. Still (after an interminable stream of profanity far more explicit than anything in “Quite Contrary”), I was able to work those out, and had plenty of time to dump a couple of copies out to tape and get them to the central FedEx facility by its 8:00 closing time. Or so I thought. I’ll spare you all the details, but after seemingly innumerable delays, I ended up in the door just before 8:00 (and, in fact, someone coming up a couple of minutes later was denied entry).
As a little capper, the attendant’s receipt printer wasn’t working, so she said she’d just have to give me the handwritten receipt. Hey, I’m sympathetic, but as this is a competition entry, I’m going to need an officially printed and dated receipt. They had to run the thing three times before it’d work (and change paper rolls twice), but work it did.
Time-stamped 8:02 p.m., but the time’s not the critical thing — it’s the date: October 23, 2006.
Our work is officially done.
Thanks again, everyone. Now I’m going to grab something to eat, have a drink and go to bed.
And despite all that, I can’t wait to do it again. But next time I’ll try not to cut it so close.
Good night, all.
The Home Stretch...
Well, we’re not exactly done yet, but we’re getting closer.
Yesterday’s editing session went really well, and it was great to know that (even though we had today to make adjustments) we had a good, solid piece to work with. Which is a good thing, ’cause even though I thought today was going to be just an exercise in perfectionism, I’ve been working just as hard as yesterday to get this picture in shape to ship it out this evening. And believe me, this picture is worth the effort; I’m really not exaggerating when I say this may be one of the best pieces we’ve ever done. Great performances, amazing technical quality, tight editing, and some graphics that are absolutely astonishing. I do want to give a special shout-out to those who weren’t as visible on the shoot — Larry Contratti, our writer and editor, Mike Gower, graphics genius extraordinaire, and Brian Wilbur Grundstrom, who has been working with me all through yesterday and today to polish up the music (which will be the most tightly-integrated bit of scoring we’ve had to date).
I’ll spare you the gory details — the postproduction process isn’t the most dramatic of undertakings (which is why it always got such short shrift on Project Greenlight). But suffice it to say that with every little addition or alteration, we could see the quality of this thing substantially improving. Right now, I’m doing a final rendering of the picture to disk so we can start the output process; at that point, we’ll run it out to tape and double-check the tape (lesson learned after the “Quite Contrary” experience). And at this rate, we should have plenty of time to make the 6:30 FedEx dropoff (and if not, we can travel a bit further to hit an 8:00 deadline elsewhere).
Beyond that, we’ll work on getting the film ready for posting online, but we’re hoping to put together a real-world cast and crew screening first. We’re thinking Friday evening — which would give us the opportunity to go out for a celebratory drink (or two) afterward. I’m checking into using my office’s common room (which has a widescreen TV and DVD player), but if anyone has any other suggestions, please pass them along (and soon). If all goes well, we’ll have the online version up and viewable soon after.
I’ve got to get back to work, but if anyone has any additional suggestions or comments, please pass ’em along. In the meantime, I just want to offer my sincerest thanks to everyone for an outstanding effort, and I look forward to being able to show off the fruits of that labor soon!
Yesterday’s editing session went really well, and it was great to know that (even though we had today to make adjustments) we had a good, solid piece to work with. Which is a good thing, ’cause even though I thought today was going to be just an exercise in perfectionism, I’ve been working just as hard as yesterday to get this picture in shape to ship it out this evening. And believe me, this picture is worth the effort; I’m really not exaggerating when I say this may be one of the best pieces we’ve ever done. Great performances, amazing technical quality, tight editing, and some graphics that are absolutely astonishing. I do want to give a special shout-out to those who weren’t as visible on the shoot — Larry Contratti, our writer and editor, Mike Gower, graphics genius extraordinaire, and Brian Wilbur Grundstrom, who has been working with me all through yesterday and today to polish up the music (which will be the most tightly-integrated bit of scoring we’ve had to date).
I’ll spare you the gory details — the postproduction process isn’t the most dramatic of undertakings (which is why it always got such short shrift on Project Greenlight). But suffice it to say that with every little addition or alteration, we could see the quality of this thing substantially improving. Right now, I’m doing a final rendering of the picture to disk so we can start the output process; at that point, we’ll run it out to tape and double-check the tape (lesson learned after the “Quite Contrary” experience). And at this rate, we should have plenty of time to make the 6:30 FedEx dropoff (and if not, we can travel a bit further to hit an 8:00 deadline elsewhere).
Beyond that, we’ll work on getting the film ready for posting online, but we’re hoping to put together a real-world cast and crew screening first. We’re thinking Friday evening — which would give us the opportunity to go out for a celebratory drink (or two) afterward. I’m checking into using my office’s common room (which has a widescreen TV and DVD player), but if anyone has any other suggestions, please pass them along (and soon). If all goes well, we’ll have the online version up and viewable soon after.
I’ve got to get back to work, but if anyone has any additional suggestions or comments, please pass ’em along. In the meantime, I just want to offer my sincerest thanks to everyone for an outstanding effort, and I look forward to being able to show off the fruits of that labor soon!
Sunday, October 22, 2006
They’ll Love It At Sundance
The first time you produce a short film, you’re so stoked. Afterwards, it’s all old hat.
Okay, not really.
This weekend, Tohubohu Productions participated in the National Film Challenge. Actually, I should say is participating, since we (we meaning my husband) will be tweaking the movie all day tomorrow. While the 48 Hour Film Project gives you, well, 48 hours, the National Film Challenge gives you one extra day. Imagine the luxury of writing, filming, editing, and scoring a movie in three days. I don’t know why we didn’t get two films done.
We got our genre and the group’s character/prop/line on Friday at 7:00. In the National Film Challenge, the required character/prop/line is divided by area (at least I assume that is still the case). Our genre was Science Fiction. The required elements for the East Coast were Bobbie Soxer (Candidate)/oil/“If it doesn’t work, give it a shake.”
Bill and I worked with the other producer and our writer to brainstorm the plot. When we felt like we had a good start with Act 1, our writer worked it up while we took care of other movie-making business. Then we talked about the changes we wanted, and he wrote out the next parts. More changes, finishing up at 3:30 in the morning. Bill added the scene headings and some other notes to the script at home and went to bed after 4:00.
Alarm goes off at 7:00. That was a lovely three hours of sleep we had. Or didn’t have, since we were both too worked up to sleep well. We gathered our supplies, loaded the car with equipment, and headed for the creative team’s call at 8:00. Or 8:00ish, since we, along with our camera guy, represented 3 out of 5 of the creative team — and one was at the Metro. We went over the script in general and then met the crew at 9:00 at the location.
A good friend of ours had volunteered the use of his shop for the filming. Since they design upscale kitchens, we had some great places to film to keep the background interesting. There was the showroom, with several different mock kitchens, and a warehouse with high ceilings. We also used the front, side, and back of the building. We would probably have gone under the building if we could have figured out how to do it.
The filming went great. A little rocky in the beginning, with the combination of a tough camera setup and some missing cast members. Next time we will stagger the call times and start with a simpler shot, so lesson learned in any case. But other than getting a slow start, everything went extremely well. The actors were all fantastic in the characters we had assigned them. They had a lot to contribute to the dialogue and to the charaterization. Excellent cast. Our crew was totally on the ball, getting things done quickly and accurately. I worked mostly with the Assistant Director, preparing actors for the next scene while Bill was filming the current scene. Our prep work saved a lot of time, since Bill didn’t have to rehearse the actors, but still could change things that didn’t work for him. We finished filming about 8:30 and were packed up and out by 9:00.
Today I’ve been home while Bill edits the film and adds the music and graphics (we had people working on both as we were filming). I’ve seen the rough cut, and it looks pretty good. There are some shots we could have done better if we had more time, but that’s the “challenge” part of the National Film Challenge.
I’ll let you know when it’s up on our site, in case anyone is interested. I think we did a good job with it, but most importantly — clichéd as it is — we had a great time.
By the way, if any of you writers are interested in putting together a short film script, we’d be happy to give it a look. We’ve wanted to do a non-competition film (i.e., a film not thrown together in one weekend), but don’t have any script ideas. We won’t, y’know, pay you for it, but it could hit it big in the indie market. You never know.
Okay, not really.
This weekend, Tohubohu Productions participated in the National Film Challenge. Actually, I should say is participating, since we (we meaning my husband) will be tweaking the movie all day tomorrow. While the 48 Hour Film Project gives you, well, 48 hours, the National Film Challenge gives you one extra day. Imagine the luxury of writing, filming, editing, and scoring a movie in three days. I don’t know why we didn’t get two films done.
We got our genre and the group’s character/prop/line on Friday at 7:00. In the National Film Challenge, the required character/prop/line is divided by area (at least I assume that is still the case). Our genre was Science Fiction. The required elements for the East Coast were Bobbie Soxer (Candidate)/oil/“If it doesn’t work, give it a shake.”
Bill and I worked with the other producer and our writer to brainstorm the plot. When we felt like we had a good start with Act 1, our writer worked it up while we took care of other movie-making business. Then we talked about the changes we wanted, and he wrote out the next parts. More changes, finishing up at 3:30 in the morning. Bill added the scene headings and some other notes to the script at home and went to bed after 4:00.
Alarm goes off at 7:00. That was a lovely three hours of sleep we had. Or didn’t have, since we were both too worked up to sleep well. We gathered our supplies, loaded the car with equipment, and headed for the creative team’s call at 8:00. Or 8:00ish, since we, along with our camera guy, represented 3 out of 5 of the creative team — and one was at the Metro. We went over the script in general and then met the crew at 9:00 at the location.
A good friend of ours had volunteered the use of his shop for the filming. Since they design upscale kitchens, we had some great places to film to keep the background interesting. There was the showroom, with several different mock kitchens, and a warehouse with high ceilings. We also used the front, side, and back of the building. We would probably have gone under the building if we could have figured out how to do it.
The filming went great. A little rocky in the beginning, with the combination of a tough camera setup and some missing cast members. Next time we will stagger the call times and start with a simpler shot, so lesson learned in any case. But other than getting a slow start, everything went extremely well. The actors were all fantastic in the characters we had assigned them. They had a lot to contribute to the dialogue and to the charaterization. Excellent cast. Our crew was totally on the ball, getting things done quickly and accurately. I worked mostly with the Assistant Director, preparing actors for the next scene while Bill was filming the current scene. Our prep work saved a lot of time, since Bill didn’t have to rehearse the actors, but still could change things that didn’t work for him. We finished filming about 8:30 and were packed up and out by 9:00.
Today I’ve been home while Bill edits the film and adds the music and graphics (we had people working on both as we were filming). I’ve seen the rough cut, and it looks pretty good. There are some shots we could have done better if we had more time, but that’s the “challenge” part of the National Film Challenge.
I’ll let you know when it’s up on our site, in case anyone is interested. I think we did a good job with it, but most importantly — clichéd as it is — we had a great time.
By the way, if any of you writers are interested in putting together a short film script, we’d be happy to give it a look. We’ve wanted to do a non-competition film (i.e., a film not thrown together in one weekend), but don’t have any script ideas. We won’t, y’know, pay you for it, but it could hit it big in the indie market. You never know.
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Principal Photography Has Wrapped
Just wanted to let everyone know that at about 8:00 this evening, principal photography on Tohubohu’s NFC entry for 2006 wrapped. We had a great time, and I think we really got some phenomenal material.
I’m going to try to catch a few winks before the big edit tomorrow. Good night and sincerest thanks to all!
I’m going to try to catch a few winks before the big edit tomorrow. Good night and sincerest thanks to all!
Friday, October 20, 2006
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
The National Film Challenge Is Upon Us!
Well, just a little more than a week to go, folks. Time to get serious.
Okay, so the time to “get serious” was probably a while ago now, but now we’re really getting serious. I mean it.
Tohubohu is officially entered, and we’re in the process of finalizing our team roster. And that’s where you come in.
If you haven’t gotten back to me with a definitive yea/nay, please do so as soon as possible. The big shooting day is the 21st, but we may also need production assistance on the 22nd, and postproduction help on the 22nd and 23rd. And just about everything’s up for grabs!
Feel free to check out the NFC’s official site for the contest specifics — or just drop us a line with any questions. Which I would prefer, because that means I’m hearing from you. Which is the whole point of this post.
Can’t wait to get started, and to hear back from all of you soon!
Okay, so the time to “get serious” was probably a while ago now, but now we’re really getting serious. I mean it.
Tohubohu is officially entered, and we’re in the process of finalizing our team roster. And that’s where you come in.
If you haven’t gotten back to me with a definitive yea/nay, please do so as soon as possible. The big shooting day is the 21st, but we may also need production assistance on the 22nd, and postproduction help on the 22nd and 23rd. And just about everything’s up for grabs!
Feel free to check out the NFC’s official site for the contest specifics — or just drop us a line with any questions. Which I would prefer, because that means I’m hearing from you. Which is the whole point of this post.
Can’t wait to get started, and to hear back from all of you soon!
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