My New Baby!

Alright, I'm going to miss Gerald a little bit. There, I said it.

THE ALCHEMIST MAKES GOLD - POST PRODUCTION in stages...

Jared has officially begun sound design on The Alchemist Makes Gold!

"Rub your clitoris against the mountain!...Give yourself to the world!"

And then this happened...

Went to my parents house this weekend. My dad and I didn't talk much about the Helen script, mostly I just relaxed. I read a book, watched movies, took a bath, hung out with my dog and went out in the woods. I had an all around relaxing time.

In my last post, I mentioned that I would relay something further about IFP. IFP is Independent Feature Project and they host Independent Film Week. It's a week long event where filmmakers are introduced to agents, managers, distributors, producers, etc. to talk about a current project(for which the filmmaker submitted at an earlier date). My dad and I submitted to IFP film week back in...April, I think it was. They accepted 25 scripts in development for the Emerging Narrative section of the film week, and the script my dad and I have been working on was accepted! I submitted as writer/director, my dad as co-writer--though he wont be attending the film week. We are listed on indie wire here: http://www.indiewire.com/article/150_New_Films_IFP_Project_Forum/P0/

We're on the 2nd page, 8th project down.

I've been handling a few deadlines and prepping for the week event. I had my script consultation and I'm going to update the script soon. Most recently, I've been preparing "The Alchemist Makes Gold" and "The Astral Woman" to be burned to DVD so that I can share some 'past work' with any reps that might be interested in the projects I'm working on or have been working on.

The Alchemist isn't very far along. Well, I mean, it's edited--has been stitched together, but it doesn't have any sound design done and none of the graphics work or color correction. The DVD media is due by August 31! I've been doing some basic stuff and I gave all the sound over to some folks who said they'd be willing to help out, but as of yet we haven't been able to touch base about everything. It's a little nerve wracking to have all of this stuff going on and to be working a full time job, but I really feel like things are going well--or at least sometimes I feel that way. Today I feel that way.

Tonight I'm going to a meeting for an art project called "INTERSECTION" (project website: http://projectintersection.org/ ). I only joined forces recently and haven't really done a whole lot with them, but they seem like a neat group of people and the project is interesting. It's good to have some project distractions that aren't your personal burden. Plus, it's fun to spend some time with interesting folks.

Anyway...yep.

THE ALCHEMIST MAKES GOLD - POST PRODUCTION in stages...

The Alchemist is now in it's first official HD rough cut. I did a once over tonight, checking my cuts and tightening edits. Pretty soon we'll be starting on graphics and sound design. The goal is to complete at least one full, strong scene before August 30 so that I can submit a DVD for IFP. I'll discuss IFP another time.

Yay!

The Astral Woman - complete!

I found out about a festival Vimeo announced with David Lynch as one of the judges for the experimental category. As 'Astral Woman' is an experimental short and because I really respect David Lynch, I wanted to finish my short in time to submit it to the festival.

The short, mostly live action, involves a very short animated sequence that I planned to use After Effects to complete, but I really didn't know how to use After Effects. The short also was shot MOS, so it required an entirely fabricated sound scape. It took weeks for me to complete the animation as I stumbled over the large learning curve of After Effects and progressively decided how I wanted aspects of the image to look.

After completing the animation, I had one week to do all of the sound design. The short only came out to about 3mins, but I couldn't decide what I wanted it to sound like and I've been working a full time job and my work day ends about 6 or 7pm every week day. I'm also a morning person, my creativity happens mostly between 8am and 3pm. Basically, I didn't have much time and felt a lot of pressure to complete the film.

I started on the sound design and then called my friend Peter Schafer who lives in Rochester, NY and asked for his assistance with the project. From 7pm to 12am each evening, we sent files across the internet and updated the sound and image properties. Peter added sound to the sound I had in place and then I added sound to that, then I did the final mix, adjusting levels and adding filters. Peter created a quick animation for the opening title and I added the title itself. I completed the end credits, exported the video and finalized the upload to Vimeo at around 11:15pm on the day it was due(by 11:59pm). I paid the submission fee and officially submitted by 11:22pm. Then I biked over to Williamsburg and met up with a friend for drinks.

Whew.