Not enough time in the day

Yesterday I got home, and immediately started getting ready for a night out at the Baltimore Symphony. They were holding a free preview of their new season, and since it was general admission, the earlier we got there, the better seats we'd get.

We've been to the Baltimore Symphony once before to see Hilary Hahn's performance of Prokofiev's "Violin Concerto #1 in D Major" (a piece that I'm obsessed with). They'd also played Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" and a few other pieces that I can't remember at the moment.

Unfortunately, as those of you who have been to the symphony are well aware, tickets are rather expensive. The cheap seats for the Prokofiev concert were $80 for both Tracey and I, and that didn't include parking or refreshments.

So, we were both thrilled at the prospect of getting to see the symphony in the luxury of the Grand Tier, since this was probably the only time in the near future that we'd be able to afford such great seats. Luckily, we got there just as they were letting people in, and rushed all the way to the lowest (and thus closest to the orchestra) Grand Tier Left box. It was a spectacular view, a great concert, and we felt like rich people for a night.

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The reason I bring this up (yes, there is some relevance to the movie here) is that it is a perfect illustration of one of the big reasons why this movie is taking so long to finish: I have a life. Or, at least I try to have a life.

I work from 8:30AM-5:30PM (including the commute). When I get home, I eat dinner, do random chores, try to spend some quality time with my family, and then go to bed at about 11:45PM. Somewhere in that time, I try to work on the movie. Some days (like yesterday), I only get about 15 minutes to work on it. Some days (like Fridays and weekends) I get a lot more time.

At times, I feel as if "Livelihood" is taking up too much of my free time. I start to feel guilty because I'm not spending enough time with my friends and family. I get angry because I haven't had time to see the new movie that I've been looking forward to seeing for the past 6 months. I get mad because I haven't had time to practice my guitar in over a month. I get grumpy. I get irritable. I get annoying.

But then I think of how many people have put tons of their time and effort into making this film. So, I go to the fridge, grab a beer, sit down at the computer, and start to work.

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There have been other major distractions along the way, some of which I'm okay with and proud of, and some which I regret.

We did the CAmm Slamm last year, and won 1st place. We've helped out Better Hollywood Productions with a few of their short films, all of which have won awards. We planned and presented Hondance, a film and arts festival. Those were distractions that I'm proud of, and that were well worth delaying "Livelihood" for.

However, there have been other distractions that have not been as worthwhile. I won't name names, but we helped out on a 20 minute short where the production ended up dragging on forever, under fairly miserable shooting conditions. I was able to get out of that, but only after dedicating about two months of my life to it. There have also been some projects we've done for other local filmmakers that seemed like good ideas at the time, but just turned out to be more time-consuming than anticipated, and not as rewarding either financially or emotionally as expected.

I've recently made a firm commitment to myself not to get involved in any other major projects. Once or twice a month, I play drums for The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad. I really enjoy that, and it's a welcome distraction. I don't mind helping out with someone's film one weekend out of a month, or spending a few hours meeting to plan an event, or other such minor commitments. But I just can't get involved in anything big right now, no matter how fun or rewarding it sounds. I need to finish this movie!

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So, what did I get done last night?

--Re-edited a scene in Rock Zombie. When we shot it, we forgot to bring reflectors to shine the bright daylight onto the actors, which makes their faces as bright as the background. As a result of not bringing the reflectors, in the closeups of the zombie, Billy Jump, the background is totally blown out. Completely white. His face is properly exposed, but it just looks like he's standing in front of a white sheet or something. So, I re-edited the scene to take out all but one of these closeups. I should be able to mask out the background on the remaining closeup, which will be a tedious but necessary job.

--Worked on a 2-minute steadicam shot from Corporate Zombie. It's a nice tracking shot through a party, but it just goes on for too long. So, I've been experimenting with some methods of speeding it up, and have finally found one that looks decent (i.e., it doesn't look like some fast-motion Benny Hill-type shot). The solution involves steadying the shot even more with a motion tracker plugin, and then applying Twixtor to the shot, which actually dumps frames and then creates new "in-between" frames that are properly blurred to simulate faster motion. The shot will now last about 1.5 minutes. I started that render last night at about 1OPM. When I woke up, it had been going for 9.5 hours, and still had another 8.5 hours to go. 18 hours of rendering time for a 2 minute shot. That's just nuts.

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Just so you know, I'm writing this during my down time at work. So, no, this blog is not taking away any of my "working-on-Livelihood" time.

Ryan

Welcome to the Livelihood Blog

Welcome to the Livelihood blog!

This blog exists because there are a lot of people out there who keep asking me, "How's the movie coming along?" Instead of answering that question over and over, now people can just come here to get daily updates on the status of the movie.

As many of you know, the release date of the film has been pushed back a few times. The reasons for this are numerous, and will probably become a lot clearer after reading this blog each day. But, mostly, the reason it isn't done yet is because it turns out that it takes a really long time for one person to do post-production on a feature-length film.

Let me explain the process of making a movie, for those who don't know:

1. Pre-production: This is everything that happens before you actually start filming the movie. It includes the writing of the script, revising of the script, casting, auditions, rehearsals, location scouting, equipment tests, costume and set design, storyboards, and securing necessary funding. The more time spent planning in pre-production, the easier the production process will be. I estimate that we probably spent about 6 months total in pre-production. Of course, we also filmed this movie in three segments, as three separate films, and had time between each segment to plan for the next one, which was nice. It also made our shooting schedule much longer than those of most independent films.

2. Production: This is where you actually shoot the movie. We started shooting in March of 2004, and finished shooting everything about a month ago (May). So it took over a year to shoot this film. In that time, we shot three segments: Rock Zombie, Corporate Zombie, and Mother In-Law Zombie. We also shot a bunch of zombie commercials that will be interspersed thoughout the film.

Towards the end of our final segment, Mother In-Law Zombie, our Sony VX1000 camera fell on the floor and split into two pieces. So that held us up for over a month as we secured a new camera and rescheduled the rest of the shoot. That sucked.

3. Post-Production: This is where we're at now. It involves a few key things: editing, color correcting, special fx, dialogue editing, sound fx, and scoring. The first edit of the film is complete. The dialogue editing is also complete. For the most part, the special fx are complete. What I'm currently working on is the color correcting. The sound fx are partially done, and most of the Rock Zombie music is done.

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So, what's taking so long, you ask?

Well, color correcting is a tedious process. It involves going through each shot in the movie, and making sure that the brightness, contrast, and hue in that shot match up with all of the other shots in the scene. On average, a typical 3 minute scene in this movie will probably have over 100 edits. That means that I have to go through 100 shots, and tweak each one so that when one shot goes to the next, there is no visual differences between the two shots aside from the angle. If this sounds tough, it is.

My color correction process also involves "film-looking", which makes video look like film. It does this by changing around the contrast and colors, and also by changing the motion of the footage to match the frame rate of film. While this is a fairly easy process to setup, it takes forever for the computer to process these changes. Rendering out 1 minute of video-to-film takes about 1 hour. So, usually I'll work on a scene when I get home from, stop at about 11PM, and then render out what I've done that evening. The render usually takes all night and most of the next day, which is fine, since I'm sleeping and working during that time.

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After the color correcting is done, I'm going to have to re-edit the film.

We screened the first cut of the movie (with rough color correction and hardly any music or sound fx) at the end of April, and it turned out to be 2.5 hours long. Which is too long. Way too long. We need it to be about 1:45. So I have to cut out 45 minutes of some really great stuff.

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After the re-edit, I'll be adding sound fx, and then composing and recording all of the music. I'm hoping to get someone to help out with the music composition, because if I have to do it all myself, this movie won't be out for another 6 months.

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So, that's where "Livelihood" stands now. When is the premiere going to be? I don't know. Hopefully at the end of August. I do know that we'll be renting out the big theater at The Charles, so you'll all get to see it in style on a big screen. We're also supposed to screen it at The Creative Alliance in early October, so it has to be done by then.

Regardless, it is getting done, and part of the reason I've created this blog is so that people can see that I really am working very hard on finishing this film. I'm going to try to give daily updates of exactly what I'm doing to the film, no matter how tedious.

This will also be the place to go for updates about upcoming screenings or events related to the movie. Eventually, it'll turn into a real website with pictures and links and all of that good stuff.

Finally, if you're not already aware of this, the trailer for the film can be found at http://www.37point5.com

So, that's that. Nachos.

Ryan Graham