Weekly Mondo Beacho update: October 14

L-R: Kat Brede, the Camera Canoe, Erik Hammen
Photo by Mel Café

That's Kat Brede (2nd AC) with me in the photo on the left. We're hauling the Camera Canoe from Surf Ballard out to its secret launch spot, which seems like it was just across the street but actually was about a block and a half away.

Not every production is lucky enough to even have a Camera Canoe. I'm pretty sure we were the only one in Seattle this year.

Thanks much to awesome AD Mel Café for the two gigantic files of production stills that he gave me over the weekend!

Also over the weekend, I completed the organization of all film footage. The digitized reels of film are now subdivided up into clips, files, and folders, all carefully named by scene, shot, take, retake, and whatever else that needed noting. Time-consuming, but necessary. And highly educational.

Next, I'll be doing the same sort of cataloging for all the audio tracks. We got tons of ambient sound during production (thanks David Thomas!) and it'll be interesting to hear what we have.

Once editing starts, I also know for sure that we'll need more. We didn't record audio on any of the Bolex days for one thing, and there's always going to be things I couldn't have anticipated that will help make the edit work.

For example, I came across a really cool "lucky accident" shot the other day and I think I know how to work it into the film, but it'll need a very specific new sound that will be a hassle to get. The footage is kind of awesome, though. And it was so incidental that I bet no one in production will remember we shot it until they see the final film.

Work also starts this week on the final music performance tracks. I meet with Ahren Buhmann on Thursday, and the whole bonfire group the week after.

In general, music creation/acquisition will be an ongoing process, probably right up until the film is finished.

In other news, my 2012 feature Time of the Robots is screening at the TriCities International Fantastic Film Festival this coming weekend. If you're in Richland, WA on Oct. 20, be sure to check it out and remember to applaud at the end.

Mondo Beacho post production update Oct 7

Ahren Buhmann and Sarah Winsor in Mondo Beacho

Screen shot

This frame grab is from a scene that we shot down at the Georgetown Trailer Park Mall, a sort of vintage flea market here in Seattle, on a busy Saturday night. 

Just after sunset, actors Sarah Winsor and Ahren Buhmann and I walked among the crowd. They looked at the booths and went in and out of the trailers in-character, while I hung around nearby, filming them in little 24-second segments with the Bolex wind-up camera.

The summer-night atmosphere comes across very naturally.

We used Kodak Vision3 500T film for low-light scenes like this. The stuff really should be rated something more like 3200T, because it pretty much captures exactly what you need to see in the dark. The romance of the moment is expressed beautifully.

I do love shooting this way with the Bolex. Setting aside the times when it didn't hold the loop, or when I couldn't see though the viewfinder and when the wind ran out at a crucial moment -- this was really my favorite way to do things.


Cataloging

Meanwhile, back in the present, I've been doing lots and lots of trimming and Saving-as.

The screenplay for Mondo Beacho called for a plenty of short takes and ambience, and the physical results are cumbersome to sort through.

But in this process of looking at every single iota of footage, I'm really starting to see how the final film is going to come together, and how all that ambient footage will enable me to control the timbre of the story.


Post audio recording

I also met up with Steven Sterne (The DJ) this weekend and we finally recorded all his lines that we hear coming from the radio.

I'd always assumed we'd have time to do this during production, but of course that was ridiculous. Anyway, it was fun work, and great to see Steven as always.

Also, it looks like we'll be recording the clean tracks for the bonfire scene sometime near the end of the month. Scheduling is in progress.

Same goes for recording final vocals for the Clanking Chains songs with Ahren.

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.