Mondo Beacho report for the first Monday in March, 2014

Emily Purington, on set of Mondo Beacho
(photo by Mel Cafe)

It's been another busy week for Mondo Beacho!

'Getting toward the home stretch now, at least for the rough cut.

This week's photo comes from the makeup test, I think, for one of the scenes I was cutting this week. Emily Purington is dressed for the Georgetown confab by Barbara Blunt, makeup by Juel Bergholm.

Beyond that Georgetown bit, I also put together the rest of the water scenes and another Shilshole Ave sequence, and ended up on the roof of Surf Ballard, a place where the cast and crew spent more time than we ever thought we would...

... Actually that's true about Shilshole Avenue as well.

... The great thing about working with talented actors, in this case Sarah Winsor and Maya Briller, is that they are able to reproduce their performances again and again, each time as if they were brand new. Despite (or "in spite of" -- is there a difference?) some unexpected technical challenges.

Hooray for acting --  wotta fine profession!

Here's something funny: I got derailed about halfway through editing the Shilshole Avenue bit when I realized that I'd forgotten we had music for that scene that was baked into the script. See, I'd already edited the whole thing to a temp track instead. Hilarious!

I think I've just had this particular tune in mind for so long that I took it for granted.

Upon recutting, it was amazing once again how powerful all that stuff is...  Music.... Editing.

Anyway, special thanks to the patient Thomas Wold for the use of his lovely, summery hippy folkadelic tune.  Recorded on machines so old they don't even exist anymore, from what I'm told....

Speaking of music, once the rough cut is done, the plan is to set the picture aside to cool off, and re-commence work on acquiring and/or composing the remaining music for the film. Because for expediency's sake, a handful of scenes are currently scored with temporary tracks, which have copyrights owned by giant, reeking corporations, the kind that charge licensing fees that exceed  the entire budget of the film x2 for each tiny, forgotten song.

(What percentage of that fee goes to the artist? My guess = 0)

After the music is finalized, I can go back to the rough cut, put in the final tracks, cut to the new music and tighten the whole thing up for public consumption. (note the metaphor follow-through here....)

In other news:

Sarah was in another play this weekend which I missed, but will also be in Macha Monkey's Lollyville, playing at Hugo House in May!

Steven Sterne seems to be working non-stop -- beyond his directing duties at SPT he's now working with the Young Playwrights on a read-through series...

Alyssa Kay is in Charlotte's Web, opening March 21 at the Second Story Rep.

Mondo Beacho update Feb 24, lots of progress to report!

Lots of progress on the Mondo Beacho edit this week!

First off, many thanks to Eric S. Anderson for nifty little editing tip that helped get me out of the record store scene where I'd been stuck for a lot longer than seemed reasonable. It was at the point where I was basically "in a quagmire"...

Also thanks to Anna Forse, for a suggestion for the title scene, which I thought I'd gotten past on this initial cut but it'll be worth checking out for sure...Yes!

L-R: Riley Neldam, William Poole, Erik Hammen,
and Sarah Winsor at Dutch Bike, Ballard
(photo by Mel Cafe)

Yes... Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah: lots of ground covered last week.

Back on the bikes, for the lovely little scene that we shot up north by a manicured strip mall in Shoreline, WA. ( ... a strip mall?  In a beach movie of the mind?  .. Yes! ... Intentional! )

That done, it was back to Georgetown again, at Lect's Soup Stop. It was roundly agreed that the soup at Lect's is awesome.

Ease-of-location? Not so much. We pulled that one out of the fire just barely at the time.

But at the end of the day (aka last week) it cut together pretty well.

After that, I worked on a nice long scene that combines the first scene we shot on the film -- down by the rocks on the beach -- with one of the very last things we shot over in Ballard proper.

Also good stuff, but I'll definitely need some more ambient sound for that one.  And it'll need to be quiet ambient sound.

Especially after those Georgetown scenes.

Quiet ambient sound!  It's harder to get than you'd think. The thing is, your brain edits out a lot of sound around you, so something that you think is pretty mellow is actually picked up by the recorder as a big screeching, rumbling hunk 'o racket.

There's also a little touch of music in one part of the Ballard scene, though, and many thanks to Greg Wharmby of the band Horns of Ormus for the music tracks he sent! One of them is looking very good for that bit.

Finally, it was out on the water for some more canoe-camera shots, which I believe will comprise the second surf yoga scene but...

But the truth is these second shots came out really, really good.  So good, that I'm doing some serious considering behind the scenes what I want to do with them for sure.  Because there are several options.

(And, by "behind the scenes", I guess I really mean I'm just going to think about it and no one will know either way. And, is it really behind the scenes if I'm blabbing about it on this blog...?  Considering my likely readership, I'd say yes. )

Last week, I also picked up some more ambient sound, and like I mentioned earlier, I have come to realize that I still need a lot more. I can't go out in the rain, it won't sound right, but my to-do list now has a stack of outdoor jaunts on it. When the weather's right, I'll start carrying the recorder everywhere. Successful ambient sound recording seems to be a combination of luck and perseverance.

This week's still photo is from the bike shop, which is where we began the shoot day that eventually took us up to Shoreline. I don't know what Riley and I are saying in this shot but you can tell it was a laugh riot. (Will seems to be tuned-out, but he's probably just in character)

Mondo Beacho update Feb 17, post-valentine's day update

Not enough time to post properly this week so let's look at a few pictures!

L-R: David Thomas, Riley Neldam, Maya Briller, production morning.
(photo by Mel Cafe)

L-R: Erik Hammen, Maya Briller, Ahren Buhmann, Sarah Winsor on set.
(photo by Mel Cafe)

L-R: Ahren Buhmann, Iain Dalton on set, Georgetown Records.
(photo by Mel Cafe)

Brian Wolbert on set, Cairo.
(photo by Mel Cafe)

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