It's a Trick!

The joke we make around these parts is whenever anyone does a cool move which makes the picture better "Oh, so movies are all tricks. I get it."
It's all about the tricks.

Irene NYC from Buffalo Picture House on Vimeo.
So I'm watching this nice little video about hurricane Irene. It's in black and white. It's very beautiful. The depth of field is very limited and there's all this nice bokeh and...
There's no grain.
It's no secret that video deals with shadow detail better than film. And film handles highlights like it's nobody's business.
But those inky blacks that we've always been searching for in film are now totally achievable in video. And... and I don't know whether I like it all that much.

So I'm playing with some color correction on Android Insurrection. We have this one scene which is getting hit with a mighty thwafth of color correction because it's in an office and... well just look at it -- we're shooting with overhead lights. How can this be a horror movie? (Note that this is the only scene in the picture being whumped this way).
So we're really kittywhumpusing this one scene. Still, the darks are inky black.

1101 Android Insurrection Juanita Arias, dead guy, and Tom Rowen.

 So I'm experimenting with adding a bit of film grain to the image.

Same shot with film grain added.

I don't know if this is just something that bugs me, or if it just bugs me because I know enough to look for film grain in an image, or what.
We have 26 minutes and 31 seconds of Android Insurrection edited. Maybe if I get my butt in gear we can be up to 30 minutes by the end of the week.

Bein' Small

I keep saying that Pandora Machine is the smallest of the micro-studios in New York. So I kind of have to demonstrate there are other, larger, studios. Right?

Glass Eye Pix

Rebecca Kush in Alien Uprising

This is where we go

to complain about the Mac operating system.
1. The "open" window in an application doesn't work just like the Finder, letting you copy/paste/delete files when you're scooching around.

2. The default action for moving one folder to the same location of a same-named folder elsewhere is to replace rather than to merge the two folders. What? To do that you need to buy an application like MoveAddict for OSX. Right. I know.

Make Blockbuster for Spare Change

Label-mate Neil Johnson is teaching a course on making sci-fi blockbusters for spare change.
He and I have had pictures out on Halcyon for a number of years now. A while back Neil came down to visit the Pandora Machine in New York. He and I shared our prejudice in favor of Australian actors.

via Bill Martell

Advice and Joseph

 "Disaster films work pretty much anywhere," Bales says, "But creature films only work in a few territories. In most of Europe, a big giant fish means nothing to them."

Actually, this is a pretty good interview with the Asylum guys. It's impossible to get anyone to write anything sophisticated and un-snarky about the Asylum. But as far as the steps to go to in order to make a mockbuster, it's pretty good.

Here is Joseph Beuerlein being his every-day sexy self. He's an editor on Earthkiller and on Android Insurrection. I was very surreptitious in the taking of this picture.

Apparently we sold out at Amazon.com. But also my distributor tells me they only order like 5 units at a time, but they did make a re-order last week.

Pulling a Bozo

I royally derped it up today. I sent a small version of Earthkiller up to my distributor today but I hadn't checked the audio for it yet.

That's sexy Maduka in the Quicktime window. See how I've labeled everything? 

Turns out I'd accidentally assigned track 18 (the left side of the commentary track) to the full English stereo mix. Which meant that I made a stereo version of the movie with us yapping all over the picture. And uploaded it to our sales rep's server.
Smoove moove there Drew.
Ugh. I'm cursed by lousy QC.
And I'm working on the page for deliverables on the wiki.

Interplanetary Alternates

Remember kids, tomorrow Battle New York: Day II comes out.

In the meantime, groove to these alternate VHS and Criterion Collection images of an Interplanetary that would be (by David Cornelius).

I'm Glad I'm not Chance Shirley

Because if I'd made the movie Interplanetary my head would never fit through another door. I'd be all in a hot tub with gold chains around my neck smoking stogies while giggly skinny models bounced and played around me all day. Why? Because I deserve those things! That's why!
In other words, I'd become a class-A jerkbucket. Why?
Because I made Interplanetary. Class dismissed.

I will fight any man who dares a slanderous word about my buddy Chance's movie Interplanetary.
This movie is perfect. Not just because I'm drunk, no! Because it is BRILLIANT!
It's just marvelous. Heady. If you aren't digging this movie you just haven's ascended to the right plane, man!
Say then thou nothing wrong with this great work of cinema.

Unsex Me Now

Today I get an emergency email from our rep regarding seeing too much of our android in Earthkiller. So I'm scrambling to do things.

Android walks away.

You can just barely make out see the time code beneath the image. Have I ever mentioned that I really wish Final Cut Pro had an "adjustment" layer? No? Pity.

Android hears a sound. Irony? I like this framing better than the wide. 

The timecode needed to be manually "advanced" to make sure it reads properly through the whole movie.

This was what I in my innocent stupidity thought was a perfectly acceptable wide.  It's now been zoomed in.

This is the furthest that the camera (handheld) "dipped down" in this shot. It only goes this low for a couple frames.

Burning android "zoomed in" and re-framed.

Burning android original. Note that we "Barbie dolled" her in post. Not the first time I've had to do that, but this time 'twas to no avail.

1102 Dragon Girl

So here's a screenplay. With dragons. And a girl with a crossbow. That opens as a .pdf link. There are right now still some issues with the script -- she's only supposed to have one dragon, we need to clean up the father's speech, we may need some more exposition. The number is 1102 and the title is "Dragon Girl". Unless, of course, you have something better.

It's a script. And we can lock it.

Amazon Studios

Libby Csulik lies dead on the floor (with a leather jacket draped conveniently over her) while Maduka Steady sweeps the room.

So. Amazon Studios. They want an 18-month exclusive window if you upload a screenplay to them. This dragon movie I've got needs to get produced in the next few months. Doesn't someone want to give us a chunk of money in order to make this picture?
It is, I think, the most commercial screenplay we've had. Dragon Girl. (That's a .pdf link to the screenplay). It needs a couple passes of cleanup but it's in pretty good shape.

19 minutes and 57 seconds

Helen (Robin Kurtz) blows Mina (Katie Hannigan) out of the airlock in Earthkiller.

Joe Beuerleine, Rebecca Kush, and Tom Rowen have edited 19 minutes and 57 seconds of Android Insurrection. That's almost a quarter of the picture.

400 Hours

Keri Geddes in Earthkiller

Y'know, the IA is basically encouraging its members to work more dangerous overtime with the 400 hours-till-healthcare rule they're implementing.

Crumple Pop seems to think that magically everything will be OK with Final Cut Pro X.

"It’s tempting to speculate about the heated internet reaction to FCP X and the psychology behind it."

Right. What's not tempting, however, is to actually look at why FCP X isn't in any professional environments right now. Maybe I'm just getting tired of being told I have a psychological problem with FCPX rather than a logistical one.

What am I really doing? I'm avoiding writing a screenplay. I'm on page 42 of the rewrite. If this screenplay doesn't get finished this weekend I'm going to have a conniption.

Out the door!

Robin Kurtz with a laser.

This is the most nerve wracking time. We delivered Earthkiller to the lab. I hope there aren't any errors I haven't seen.
That being said, I'm very happy with the way the picture came out. Every new picture is the best movie we've ever made. And yup, Earthkiller is the best so far.