Getting Better

Well, the cold seems to be dissipating, which is nice. I think it was the combo of allergy medicine and two beers last night at the Adrian Belew concert that finally knocked it out of my system. Stupid germs are no match for booze and modern medicine!

Anyway, on Wednesday I managed to finish up scenes 10, 11, and 12 from Mother In-Law Zombie. Also fixed some shots in scene 9 and started up on scene 13. Hopefully I'll be able to finish the color correction on MILZ over the weekend.

I also dug up some production stills and e-mailed them to Kristen for the upcoming Creative Alliance newsletter/schedule. "Livelihood" is showing there sometime in October, so she needed some pictures to go along with the description I sent her a few weeks back. I'm going to try to get some still shots from the actual movie, too, although the quality/resolution of those might not be high enough. We'll see.

Tonight and Sunday night I'll be rehearsing with The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad for our July 28th gig at the Mojo Room. I'm really looking forward to that one, and I think I might even be playing one of my original instrumentals at some point during the set, which is cool. On the other hand, I got out of having to play my own set at Hondance, which is nice because now I have more time to prepare for the "Livelihood" teaser screening.

Ryan

Still Sick

I'm still sick. I felt worse yesterday, and didn't feel like writing a whole entry, which I'm sure really bugged a whole ton of people... or not.

Anyway, the past few nights I've spent tweaking scenes 6, 7, and 8 of Mother In-Law Zombie. I also finished up scene 9. So there's still progress, even though I'd really just rather sleep and veg out than work on the movie in my present condition.

Tomorrow night will be completely unproductive, as Tracey and I are going to see Adrian Belew in Annapolis. That should be cool, since he rarely does solo tours. The only time I've seen him live was in Nashville, and I was able to interview him for the TV station. That was cool, but it was an acoustic solo show, and since he's primarily known for his crazy electric guitar work, it really wasn't a full "Adrian Belew Experience".

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I still haven't figured out what to show at Hondance. Now I'm thinking of maybe showing all of the commercials and then a scene or two from each section of the film.

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And, without further adieu, here is the newest color correction comparision. This is a frame from the opening shot in the film, and shows "The Billy Jump" band taking a bow after a concert. Pictured are Steve Thomas (as Billy Jump - center), Bradley Burgess (as Stevie Sierra - far left), Kelly Clendenon (as Zack Low - second to left), Ryan Stachurski (as The Drummer - far right), and Mike Bennett (as Beat Ovin - second to right).

Before

After

The original shot isn't too bad in this one. What I've done to it is to increase the highlights to make it brighter. But I also decreased the shadows to get rid of most of the gray and make the blacks blacker. I've added diffusion, increased the saturation, shifted the whole shot upwards, and then letterboxed it. For the color correction in this section of the film, I'm going for a late 80's music video look; very vibrant, bright, and colorful, but with nice deep blacks.

Ryan

Getting Sick

I started feeling sick on Saturday morning. Woke up with a sore throat, which is usually indicative of an upcoming cold. Started taking Sudafed cold medicine and ibuprofen with the hopes of stopping it before it turned into a full-blown cold. This usually works, but not this time. As I sit here typing this I'm suffering through a minor, but annoying cold.

Anyway, I finished up scenes 6, 7, and 8 of Mother In-Law Zombie this weekend. I found out halfway through scene 6 that my video monitor's calibration had gone out of whack at some point, so I had to recalibrate it and then go back through all of the scenes I'd done recently to make sure they weren't screwed up. Some minor tweaking was necessary, but nothing major.

We also screened the trailer and a few of the commercials (Pitt Waxx, Free Money, and "Leave the US to the Livin'") at Grasshopper's Urban 2 Suburban festival last night. It all got a good reception, and the trailer went over especially well as it always seems to do. This was a nice screening, because there were a lot of people in the audience that probably wouldn't have otherwise seen our trailer.

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Tracey wasn't fond of my idea of showing the first act of the movie at Hondance. She says that a) we'll be showing too many "good parts", and b) if people don't like what they see, then that'll be less people that show up for the premiere. My response has been that a) the whole movie is "good parts", and b) we just have to have faith that it's a great movie and that people will want to see the rest of it after seeing the "teaser" at Hondance. So, unless Tracey comes up with a better idea, I think we'll still be showing the first act. Unfortunately, the festival is drawing near, and a decision will need to be made soon. Anyone else have an opinion on this?

Ryan