Mondo Beacho Update Feb 10, 2014

L-R: Erik Hammen and Steven Sterne,
on set for Mondo Beacho.
(photo by Mel Cafe)

It snowed last night in Seattle, so who's thinking about Mondo Beacho, a rock n' roll beach movie of the mind?

Hint: me

On Sunday, I finished up the gig scene and the post-gig codas, including a bit of cloudy day, and then started on to the next record store scene. (Over on the right is Steven Sterne, spinning the wax and that's a fact. )

It was a very busy half day of shooting at the record store. We were up before dawn and had to be out before 11:00 AM. In putting together the clips for this scene, I realized that we missed a shot. 

I went into the vault and reviewed all the footage from that day, and we got a lot done. The footage goes and goes and goes.

Not a lot of takes, though, and as time got tighter toward the end, we started consolidating shots. Instead of a master and two singles, it'd be a master only. But we definitely missed one shot all together. Welcome to the glamorous world of independent film.

However! I think I know how to solve the problem.

Maybe it'll even be better than the original idea.

That's why editing is fun.

L-R: Ahren Buhmann, Emily Purington,
Riley Neldam during production.
(photo by Mel Cafe)

Back to the gig scenes -- I gotta say those came out as good as I could've imagined. They're fun and entertaining, but seem "real" as well.

It was quite a puzzle though, getting it all to work together like it needed to. I mean, you'd think I'd have learned something from the other band scene, which I put together not that long ago.

But not really, no.

All I did was relearn my weekly mantra --  the hard way.

Speaking as the resident expert, in a Rock n' Roll Beach Movie of the Mind you gotta keep the "mind" part very present. So intellectual exercises, or "doing things the hard way" are an important part of the process.

Today's second photo was taken at the production house, during that vague period between Makeup and Shooting on the day of the gig shoot. Riley and Emily are waiting.

Waiting, waiting, waiting.

Mondo Beacho Feb 3 update

Mondo Beacho set
(photo by Jennifer Dice)

A bit of an unplanned lull in editing last week, will get more done this week.

Working on the rock show scene. Great performances and great footage, particularly the excellent B-cam material shot on the fly by 1st AC Iain Dalton.

Here's a photo of that set that that Set Decorator Jennifer Dice sent me a few weeks ago.

Stop by the Heartland punk club some time and compare/contrast what it really looks like to our cool authentico set.

In other news, I'm on Instagram now.

Mondo Beacho Jan 27 update

I worked on the beach sequences over the weekend.

Fairly straightforward, but there are a few details that will probably not be worked out until I watch them in the completed rough cut, rather than as scenes by themselves.

The forest and the trees, is the issue. Nice stuff, though.

I just posted a couple photos this week because I don't have time to write much.

The photo above is from the first day. It's around 9:30 (?) on Saturday morning and the lovely Seattle beach is pretty quiet.

The photo below is from the scene at little coney. Malts for all. Ask Ahren about the Green River malt. (It's a killer). I also talked to David Thomas today, he's got a final mix of one of the Fairies' songs ready for me to check out, very exciting!

Mondo Beacho update Monday Jan 20

Ahren Buhmann and Sarah Winsor on set
photo by Mel Cafe

I'm working on the movie theater scene and accompanying bookends, hoping to finish them up tonight.

We originally shot a different version of the theater scene inside the mighty Grand Illusion, but unfortunately that didn't work out. We reshot one scene another day back in the theater, but ended up doing the rest outside further down the Ave.

At the time, I was wondering if we'd run into trouble with the the Rat and Raven, whose establishment abutted the creepy stairwell we were commandeering for the shoot. I'd done a drive-by of the location a day earlier and it looked like they were painting outside. We were working fairly early in the day, but the local reprobates were already queuing up outside the bar across the street. A few potential problems here, and kinda/sorta no backup plan, nor desire to figure out how to do it the official way at this point.  But,  bon chance!  It turned out the painters had been painting over the signage; the Rat n' Raven had gone belly-up. (The actual rats and ravens, however, remained on site.)

Drunk on good luck, we also tried running across the street to ask the vegan restaurant next to the bar if we maybe set up our camera on their their roof, to get a production-values-friendly aerial shot. But they were in the middle of brunch and didn't want to talk to us. We ended up parking Kat's truck in the middle of the street and shooting from the back. Worked just as well.

I also spent a lot of time last week editing the band practice scene.

That was a complicated one, because the scene needs to do several things at once: show the relationships between a bunch of new characters, be cool as a band practice, and also fit in with the look/feel of the rest of the film.

For most of the previous scenes, (including the movie theater scenes) I've just been eyeballing all the footage at once and assembling it intuitively. But the band practice scene just had too much going on for that to work.

(L-R) Kenna Kettrick, Amanda Keogh, Alyssa Kay,
Zach Sanders,and Brian Wolbert on set.
photo by Mel Cafe

I ended up going back to look at how I'd diagrammed it in the screenplay for the actual shoot (go figure), and pretty much started over, but it went well after that.

It was sorta like when you're trying to figure out a technical problem and you finally decide to look at the manual.

And continuing my practice of doing everything the hard way.

But -- with the accumulated knowledge from doing it the hard way!

"Hard: my calling card"

     -- Chuck D

Monday Mondo Beacho update: Jan 13, 2014

L-R: Iain Dalton, Erik Hammen, Anna Forse.
Photo by David Thomas

I'm currently working on the Farrah and the Fairies band practice scene, cutting it using the temp music track that we recorded live on set.

David Thomas has begun mixing the new vocal tracks we recorded last month with the existing instrumental tracks, and it'll be nice to have a "real" version.  Kenna Kettrick actually sounds great in the on-set version, but the instruments are muddy.

Yesterday, I finished up the scene before that, where the boys eat and walk to that band practice. There are two eat/walk scenes, both shot in Georgetown in rackety, unstable locations and using a conceptual cutting plan rather than your standard moving/master/singles whatever. But so far, the first one came together as planned !

Um... Whew. -- but I love those eating/walking scenes! Writing, shooting, and putting them together has all been very satisfying.

This week's photo was taken during the production of the first eat/walk scene.  Iain Dalton, Anna Forse, and I are walking the same line that Ahren and Riley will walk in the movie. That's called Method Production.

Weekly Mondo Beacho update -- Happy New Year edition

L-R, Sarah Winsor, Mel Café on location for Mondo Beacho
photo by Anna Forse

Editing has progressed to the bike shop/riding scenes.

The bike shop location (Dutch Bike, Ballard) was awesome but a bit tight, and I shot a lot of weird angles that day.

That scene also has three performances to balance: Sarah Winsor and Will Poole doing one thing in the shop while Steven Stern's VO from the radio is talking about something else entirely.  

It's actually super fun, but also the first really complicated scene in the film, and it was a bit daunting at first. (By comparison the scene before it was just Sarah walking. Which, if you know the scene, is nuanced in its own way...)

To help move things forward, I've also decided that I'm done learning AfterEffects for the time being. AE is a useful tool, but dang -- everything I touch with it seems to need rendering (time consuming) and then needs to be re-rendered whenever I want to move the clip or change its length, i.e.: edit it. I'll revisit AE later, when I've got time to pretty things up.
 
The need for music is becoming very apparent now, so I went to a rock show a few days ago to check out the bands. The show was over at heartland, where we filmed in August.

There were four bands. Twice, during the break between bands, a random kid wandered over and introduced himself to me, for no apparent reason other than possibly he were curious about the big old fool standing in back. One of the kids turned out to be a former student of my friend Retz. The other guy I couldn't figure out at all.

But nice kids! Apparently the feather-haired denim-jacketed thugs who used to come attached to shows like a hair to the top of a wart have moved on to other projects.

Anyway, the headliner that night was Thee Samedi, a band whose vibe seemed exactly right for the radio or maybe as record store music in Mondo Beacho. The guys put on a great show, and I introduced myself to Alex the bass player afterwards. We exchanged a few emails the next day, and they are now on board for the film and psyched!

Yes! It ain't easy finding the right music.

In other news

Steven Sterne is the playwriting/performing marathon 14/48 this weekend. Be there or be square.

Monday night update, better than football. And shorter.

I'm skipping the update this week because I decided to stop for a moment and figure out some of the image control features in AfterEffects. These are utility features, not special effects, and my thinking is that I'll take the time to learn them the right way, rather than just muscle my way in until I've knit myself into a straight jacket, like I usually do.

It is a bit weird, though, digging into AfterEffects...

Because where is the line, I ask you! 

Where is the line between invisibly digitally stabilizing a slightly jerky panning shot, and turing the whole damn movie into a whooshing, zooming, "squalid shoot-'em-up for the moron trade*"?

Good question!

Generally, my feeling is that if you have to ask, I can't explain it to you ... check please!

Ha ha ha. Kidding!

Anyway, it's been a long holiday season but I'm definitely up to speed with the basics of Premiere Pro now, and even though I've been away from the machine a bit, the editing feels like it's cranking along nicely.

So more on that next week.

In other news: Amanda Keogh is directing the COMPLEAT WKS OF WLM SHKSPR (ABRIDGED) tomorrow night at Seattle Public so that's what we'll be doing over New Year's Eve. Laff riots are promised!



*that quote, from film critic Joseph Morgenstern, actually describes a great movie, "Bonnie and Clyde", but it's such a hilariously withering line that it almost justifies his total wrongheadedness about the film (he published a retraction the next week!) and that it has nothing to do whatsoever with Mondo Beacho. Photo on the left is Serge Gainsbourg, who has a cool song about Bonnie and Clyde.