September 30 Mondo Beacho report!

I keep coming across little rogue ends of film here and there. The photo on the left shows a little strip on my car floor, caught below a cheeseburger wrapper from Dick's. ...

So! Where's Mondo Beacho this week? Glad you asked.  It was a mixed bag this week.

Edit prep.

I spent a lot of time going through the footage, separating it out into shots.  Lots of good stuff, and I'm feeling very, very optimistic about the film in general.

Bookkeeping.

I sent the cast and crew their honorariums, glad to have those out. The honorariums were just a small token of appreciation, rather than something that inadequately represents the enormous contribution they have made to the film through their art and labor. With these done, I was also able to complete most of the final budget tally.

Beyond that, I don't talk about the budget of films anymore. It cheapens the medium as an art. No one asks painters or sculptors or theater producers how much their work costs, and when they do it underlines the crassness of the product, like in the Julie Taymor/U2 Spiderman play on Broadway.

Anyway, I'm an artist, not a banker.

Music.

Ahren and I are going to start rehearsing soon as prep for the clean recordings we'll need of the Clanking Chains songs.  I also just contacted the rest of the folks about recording clean versions of the bonfire songs, which I think we'll do "live" in one marathon session. We'll go into an actual studio later to record Ahren and Kenna's singing and Steven's voice-over (the DJ on the radio) after that.

I've also been playing around with instrumental music. It's mostly just ideas at this point, but it's good to be back in that space, as there is a lot of material still TBD for the radio. And it's nice break from editing prep.

In other news

I attended the Annual Members Meeting at the Northwest Film Forum last week and it was announced that in addition to programmer Adam Sekular leaving the organization, production guy Dave Hannigan is also leaving! He's going to Portland to do the same good work he did for us, but there.  The Portland people are great - Thomas Phillipson programmed my film Time of the Robots last year for the NW Film Festival -- but it'll be weird to have Dave gone. He was really the last of the old guard, with Jaime Hook and Michael Seiwerath, back when they were in that weird building on the edge of a cliff on the bitter end of capitol hill, when they were Wiggly World, they still ran the Grand Illusion. I think that building is now a dentist office or something.  Anyway, Dave and Adam are great guys and the NWFF won't be the same without them.

Also ran into Ahren and Kenna, in the lobby at Seattle Public Theater, going to see another play.

It was good to see them again. Ahren grew his beard back.

Mondo Beacho update, Sept 23



photo by David Thomas

Last week was difficult on the personal end, but nevertheless I got some good work done on Mondo Beacho.

Costume department - wrapped. Barbara came by and picked up all the costumes, most of we've donated to the mighty Seattle Public Theater. Our kids take classes there and they would move out and live there if they could. The SPT community also brought us Barbara, Steven, Ahren, Kenna, Alyssa, Amanda, Emily, Zach, our set dresser Jennifer, and a bunch of extras.

Music. I finally recorded a guide track for the vocals for our opening song. The current version is a rough track that we used to shoot, with the understanding that we'd go back and get it right later. I still need to record some more guide tracks for the bonfire scenes and get all those tracks to the actors, and schedule some recording time.  I also still need to record the DJ's radio-voice tracks with Steven.  I will try to wrap my head around this in the coming week.

I was debating for a while whether to use some of the live versions of the bonfire songs that we recorded on set, but I'm pretty sure we can't use all the songs, so the problem is that post-recorded songs would probably not mesh gracefully with live songs. I don't want it to sound like it used to on "Happy Days", when Joanie and Chachi would sing, and Erin Moran would sing the first line naturally but when Scott Baio came in for the second line, they processed his voice through about sixty pounds of anti-stink filter, and it sounded like he was being beamed down from a space ship.
That sort of thing might be fine for Chachi, but not on my watch, brother.

Pre-Editing organization continues. I'm in the early end of the long process of organizing all the footage that we shot and then scanned in telecine. This organization involves taking very large files that are several reels of film combined, and cutting those files into a zillion small files, each named for a scene/shot number to make standalone sub-clips, one for each take and/or angle of a shot. Many of these files are only 20 seconds long. Most are not more than a minute. After I've worked for a while, I back up these new files onto a second drive. Using my old computer, this is all a slow process.

A big part of it is disentangling the relationship between the shot names and numbers that we planned on in pre-production, versus what we ended up and slated during production, versus what makes sense in organizing the footage for editing in post production. Ultimately, I have to defer to the production slate for the purposes of audio sync later, but again, as scenes were added/moved/altered in production, some slates were not consistent. So I make notes on the script and try to name the final file in a way that makes sense across the board.

I am not fastidious by nature, and have had to go back and rename files a couple times even in this beginning phase -- I'm an artist, not a bookkeeper -- so I have to keep reminding myself that this kind of fastidiousness pays off later. Or rather, the lack of fastidiousness will burn me later. Slow and steady...

However! The process of slowly, slowly going through all the footage, and not even doing it in order, is good for my brain as an editor, and already I've thought of some things that wouldn't have occurred to me if the process were more linear. And that is exactly in line with my usual, comfortable process...

In other news...

It's been raining a lot this month, and every morning without fail, I look out the window and am grateful that we had such a warm and sunny summer. Often September/October are warm and summery, but not this time, and we really lucked out. It's nice to see a daily reminder of this when other things we weren't as lucky with.

Alpha Cine is processing their last batch of film this week. Strange to have our own lab going the way of telecine-only, but not surprising, with Vancouver having swept away the production boom of the 90's, then the rise of digital, and finally the fall of projected film prints. I am not looking forward to mailing out my film for processing, but on the upside, I worked with Spectra Film & Video down in Hollywood when we did The Last City in the East, and they did a great job.

Mondo Beacho -- Weekly update Sept 16

photo by David Thomas

*addendum: I just heard for certain that Alpha Cine is no longer processing film, they will be doing telecine only. A sad day for Seattle film. I guess we just made it under the wire...*


With post production beginning its slow-but steady-pace, I will try to provide some kind of update on this site each week, along with other relevant news.

Damn, did we ever have good luck with the weather on this beach movie! Last week's foggy mornings dissolving to sun pretty much stopped but by Friday, and now the clouds have really rolled in, and it feels like autumn.

Anyway, here's what's going on with Mondo Beacho:

In addition to various prop and costume returns (in progress) and normalizing the house for regular non-production use (mostly done!), I started organizing the telecine'd video files so I can start editing the film.  I realized yesterday that the main external hard drive I am using is overloaded with data. There's the Mondo Beacho files, but also everything from my last two films plus all kinds of other detritus. So I dipped into the (non-existent, cough...) post-production funds and purchased another 2TB drive.  And I've been transferring files to that drive for the last day and a half.  Zzzz... what?  ... oh yeah... Exciting!

I've also started fiddling around with music again. I need to write handful of tunes for use on the omnipresent radio, and I have to create clearer demo versions of the songs for the Clanking Chains and the bonfire folks to sing, so I can get those folks to record the real versions of the songs. We shot the film using temp tracks.

This is not really a big deal and was a known issue going into production, now it simply needs to be done and the recording time scheduled. Where this will be done is still TBD.

In other news

Sarah Winsor is in a play this week at the Fringe Fest - Anna and I will try to attend.

Mondo Beach post production begins.

Last day at telecine. All footage looks good.

Returned Aaton, Bolex Rex4, and accessories to NWFF.

Came home with a big box of developed negative reels and a little metal hard drive.

 Post production officially begins today.

 Seems kinda quiet around here...

Final pickups II, and pickups from pickups (wrap Mondo Beacho)

Below is complied from Facebook posts. I have to learn to do this stuff in a consistent sequence...

Sunday (9/8)
Today was final day with actors, with help from Kat "Bolex truck" Brede.

Out on the bikes again, then by Little Coney, then out on the pier where we saw a seal, and finally back at the Grand Illusion Cinema (thank you Spencer Sundell!!)

Offically wrapped Will Poole, Ahren Buhmann, and Sarah Winsor. Gee, I'll miss these guys...

Plugged in the Aaton battery for the last time, for the handful of pickups I missed yesterday, which I'm getting tomorrow with Iain Dalton... It'll be nice to have some company.

Monday
I wasn't able to get a bunch of shots on Saturday, so today (Monday) I completed final shots for Mondo Beacho. This was with huge help and patience from Iain Dalton, my comrade-in-gear for the shoot and all around great guy.

Sun was slow to come out but holy cow, what a beautiful, quiet day.

We took our time, went all around the city -- even back to the beach one last time -- and got everything that we set out to get.

Man, this city is a hundred kinds of beautiful. If it weren't for the rain, they would've run us all out of here a long time ago.
Final night-drop made at Alpha Cine. Final telecine soon to come.

Pentultimate telecine, Final pickups weekend part I

A long and interesting telecine session on Thursday. Second to last one.

The bonfire scene, shot by the light of the bonfire ONLY, came out good. For a chaotic shoot and scene, there were definitely parts when it was quite charming, even without sound.  That's Acting at work, folks. Lots of other good stuff as well.

I also ran a little experiment with the faulty Bolex (mine) and discovered that it does indeed work "okay". Ray, the telecine guy, said that he's never seen a project shot on Bolex that hasn't had at least one bad roll, so it must be inherent to the process. Anyway, in that Bolex test, I got a few very usable (for MB) shots.

Also in that test, I tried out this idea I have for using the Bolex as a still camera.

It totally works great. Fast lenses, interesting film stock, and 4000 -- that's right, 4000 -- frames per roll.

Interesting....

All in all, telecine was a success and we definitely have a movie here. Except for the stuff we're picking up this weekend.

I started final pickups today (Saturday). The sun didn't come out until around 1pm, which killed the morning I was hoping for. The bike shop guys nicely said I could come back whenever, so I did. Got some good ambient bike shop stuff around, then reshot some poster scenes (the date on the poster was for September. Why did I not see this?) lugging around the Aaton for the latter shots because I need to conserve Bolex loads for the movie-bikes stuff  tomorrow.

Then I got a very nice but highly labor-intensive shot for the opening credits. The labor-intensive component pretty much gobbled up my afternoon, so after doing some household errands (and eating dinner) I met up with David Thomas having not gotten much of today's shots.

Anna pointed out that Monday it's supposed to be very sunny and my day job will be slow this week, and Iain is available on that day.

I called Iain and he's in, so the new plan is to pick up today's un-picked up pickups on Monday. That will be good.

Anyway -- around 730 tonight, David and I went down to the beach, a very beautiful and mellow Saturday night.

He juggled flaming batons (is that the word?) and it looked really cool. Good footage.

I also got some more pickup footage of the beach at dusk.

After that, we only had about 30 feet left on the roll (shooting Aaton short-ends) so we went to Fisherman's terminal and shot the boats at night. Its hard to tell if those shots will be usable, the angles weren't anything I had planned or could see an easy cut-in for, but a lot of the time random stuff like that comes in handy.

And it was good hanging out with David - he's a friend from outside the production and it's always nice to be able to decompress after dealing with hectic PR-type stuff.

Tomorrow is the final, final day with the actors: Sarah, Will, and Ahren.

Kat is coming along to drive the camera truck and help out.

A variety of shots, ending with back in the Grand Illusion to get the INT. screening room scene that was not usable the previous time.

Looking forward to the whole thing.

Mondo Beacho Pickups

I've been shooting pickups for the last week, a little here, a little there, as time and weather have permitted.

It's peaceful going out with the Bolex and shooting various things. Moving POV shots. XCU shots of stuff like the steel edged curb on the street with some yellow grass growing through the crack. A POV shot of the mighty Ballard Hardware building, and a POV shot of some railroad tracks which come out of the pavement and then, a few feet later, disappear back into it.

Also took the Aaton out to shoot out some short ends. I have a finite number of 100' Bolex loads so my plan is to use short ends for remaining ambient shots unless they HAVE to be done on the Bolex (such as moving shots, and shots in "sensitive" locations, like chez Shilshole Marina).

It's nice to do this stuff.  However, during production I had a feeling of mission: we needed to get X shots done on X day, and now I have a feeling of peacefulness tempered with a slight terror of drifting off-mission. And I say "slight" only to make light of nightly nightmares I've been having in which I have forgotten a crucial scene that I don't quite remember and didn't write down but it needs to happen now or it'll be a total disaster...

Music.

Also did a bit of work on music yesterday and today. Yesterday I wrote a very bad song but that's a necessary part of the process when I'm starting up again. Today I thought of a way to approach some of the songs that I think might be useful, and now I'm thinking I need next to get a better handle on my eight track recorder. I need to be nimble enough on it that I can use it as a notebook, like I used to do with the old 4-track cassette machine back in 'the day'.

Ran into David Thomas (location sound) today and it was nice to chat with him about the shoot and some ideas for post. David's a musician and also did the mix on the Farrah and the Fairies song in the film.

Also sending out Honorariums soon. The "honorarium" is a small amount that is not in any way representative of the value of the person, but it's something. ... It's more like getting a chocolate bar from someone that you work on a project with, more than a payment by an employer.

We'll be going into the studio to overdub vocals on the Clanking Chains songs sometime soon, plus we need to record the bonfire songs from scratch. To help facilitate accuracy and understanding, I am recording new, borderline a cappella demos that are just me doing the song plus guitar playing root notes-only. The previous demos had the vox buried under 50 layers of fuzz guitar and racket, to give the feeling of the final product. These are designed for actual singers to actually know how to sing them.

I'm also contacting Greg Wharmby, my go-to guy for recording info, about how to get my 8-track set properly so it does what I want it to do rather than not doing what I want it to do.

Yes to the former, no to the latter. That's the plan.