CELL

On hold until further notice

2010-07-29T14:58:00.000-07:00

Update - Still hammering at the markets

2009-07-04T09:37:00.000-07:00

Update - I'm still hammering away speculating in the stock market, and am managing to claw back the money it took from me.

With any luck at all, I'll be able to resume production later this Summer.

In the meantime, here's my market and finance blog: http://thetaildoesnotwagthedog.blogspot.com/

Rough cut done... We watched it... And...

2008-02-12T15:06:00.000-08:00

It actually DOESN'T SUCK!

Ah...

I was a bit nervous before watching the rough cut with our director Bill Mitrus, our editor Caleb Kerlin, Bill's friend Jeff (who has a pretty broad depth of movie experience). After all, the possibility was that it would, em... Suck, and the only thing we could do to fix it was to start from scratch. But it doesn't. It's actually pretty good. Overall the quality is good, and there were some especially sweet moments, acting, camera and lighting-wise.

We knew ahead of time that a movie consisting of two people who don't get along trying to escape a cell or face certain death (or worse) ran the risk of being agonizingly boring (at least visually), and that we would need certain devices to get the audience out of the cell periodically. While we had planned some of these in advance, we realized there were many other good opportunities to do this, so we will of course take advantage of them.

So... On to phase two: Plan out those other scenes and the reshoots... A few of our scenes were 'blown out', most likely past the point of salvaging (and we'll need a little ADR)... So we'll get out the green screen, shoot them, edit them together, and then it's off to post.

So far so good!

WarIsBoring.com offers to give us some footage!

2007-12-29T18:08:00.000-08:00

Hey All,

Good news, independent war correspondent David Axe (check out his excellent blog War Is Boring ) has offered to give us some real Third World hellhole war footage and stills for our opening montage.

I can't believe how lucky we are he's going to do this for us, I hope he gets home safe and we can make him a tidy sum.

-Dave

Production photos uploaded!

2007-11-25T16:58:00.003-08:00

Here's a sample below, or browse the whole lot of them (there's a few hundred!) here.

Any photos with (Isaiah) in the filename were taken by our Intel Officer (Isaiah Tannenbaum), all others were taken by Kevin Pittinaro. Thanks Kevin!

Update - Rough cut done (sorta)

2007-11-15T15:31:00.000-08:00

I'm going to try and update this more frequently so that everybody who helped make this movie can stay... Um... Updated.

Caleb is finished with the rough cut and is going back to make another pass at it. There's some clips he had trouble finding that somehow didn't make it onto the external hard disks I gave him. Not to worry, I have two other copies here.

Sometime after Thanksgiving we should have the VO work he needs for the "dream sequence", I'll probably shoot some more of the kids during that period.

With any luck, we'll have the President and Rebel Leader shot by the end of December. I hope to have comittments for the CG SFX, sound design and music composition by then.

So far we're on track to be at the festivals by Spring.

So far so good!

Best always to all of you,

Dave

PS Once we have a full rough cut we're havin' a parrrrty wooo! : )p

Finally going back to see my wife...

2007-09-26T09:46:00.001-07:00

...After TWO MONTHS away from home. Which in hindsight, isn't all that much time considering how much we got done.

I think I misunderestimated how much fourteen days of very high levels of mental effort combined with a fair amount of emotional strain coupled with the physical requirements of 14-16 hours of work take out of you. For the last six weeks I feel like I've been operating at 50%.

BUT... In addition to getting most of the secondary photography done, I also managed to flip 23 hours of high-def footage, get it into a suitable editing computer, and get it to our editor Caleb (who's last editing project looks like it's goin' to Sundance(!), whoo hoo!)

Oh yeah... Did I mention that using a 35mm adapter makes your recorded image come out upside down, and then will require you to flip it in post?

I was aware of that going in, but one thing I hadn't counted on is that it would take 34 hours of processing time on a fast* computer to flip that much material... And Premiere will CRASH if you try and flip much more than 50gb at a time (we had just over a terrabyte), so I'd have to set the computer to flip clips for 1 1/2 hours, set a timer, then come back and do it again... And again.

Next time I'm using multiple computers. Actually, next time I'll have enough clams to use a 4k camera and will have a ginormous raid storage device, and will probably have a whole other set of post-production hurdles to vault.

Anyhow, the footage is now going through it's rough cut stage. Yeaaahh..!

-Dave

*Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.40GHz (quad core, 8MB Cache 1066MHz FSB), Intel 975XBX2KR socket 775 Motherboard, 4 gigs of PC6400 DDR2 800MHz Memory, ATI Radeon X1650 Pro 512MB GDDR2 PCI Express Video Card, RAID 0 w/4 Seagate 320GB 7200RPM 16MB cache SATA-300 drives. Fast.

Wow...

2007-09-18T19:00:00.000-07:00

...We GOT IT DONE!!!

Well, almost. We got primary photography done. We still have to shoot a couple actors that appear as "talking heads", but I'll be doing that at my apartment in NYC - And I want to get a few more shots of the kids, but I'll do that in a couple weeks (I have enough, but it would be nice to have a little more to play with).

Needless to say it was quite an experience - Mostly good (but that's because I absolutely love making pictures). We caught quite a bit of said experience on B-roll for DVD extras.

I'll provide more details later, but here's some important points.

First point:

If you've never shot a movie before, whatever time you think you need to shoot it? Double it. And I mean, double it.

However, if you're a very organized and person who is obsessively compulsive about details, schedules, having everything just so, etc; and you're completely sure you've taken all the variables into account - Then triple it.

Seriously. You have no idea what you're in for. If you're the type of person who doesn't deal well with the controlled chaos of a fast-paced movie production (imagine the confusion and violence of a truckload of dynamite going off in a tornado stretched out over two weeks, punctuated by the inevitable blowing of stacks by various production personnel), you'll have a nervous breakdown in the middle of the shoot and won't get your picture finished.

Dana Offenbach gave me this advice (in not so many words) on hearing my proposed shooting schedule (she actually told me I was being wildly unrealistic and would lose all my money). So I doubled the amount of time I figured it would take.

Dana, you saved my picture.

...Which was merely the first of about a dozen bullets dodged during the course of production, all of which had "Cell killer #XX" engraved on the metal jacket. I may get into those later.

Second point:

If you're an actor, and you've given yourself a big part in in your picture - Make sure that your character is subjected to an absolutely ungodly amount of stress during the course of the story. This way you won't have to act much at all, and you won't need "stress makeup" after a few days.

Gotta go - I'm building a computer for our editor to cut this puppy on, and I'd like to make it home before the snow flies.

-Dave

Shooting starts TOMORROW...

2007-08-16T10:32:00.000-07:00

...And I'm not freaking out. Not even close.

I guess it's because I planned so much for this and didn't leave any problems to solve for the last minute. Amazingly, everything is going according to plan.

Last night I even got a FULL EIGHT HOURS OF SLEEP... Felt like I went on vacation. This will be the first day in a week I won't need a nap.

The director/DP Bill Mitrus will be here later this afternoon, we're going to go over some details, then watch Dark City, and if we get a chance, Blade Runner.

Long live Sci-Fi Noir!

-Dave

Camera switch!

2007-07-26T13:00:00.000-07:00

We're not going with the HPX500 camcorder.

Instead, I bought two other ones! The HVR-VU1 and the HV20 , with which as I mentioned before we'll be using the Blackmagic Design HDMI input card mated to a kick ass computer with an 8 drive 7200rpm 16MB buffer SATAII raid 0 array (which will double as our editing deck/CGSFX machine).

Why? Well, for one thing: Money. $16k is a lot of jack. Also, we had to buy a muscular computer for editing HD anyway.

And also because of a fortuitous new development which I just recently found out about: We'll be using Cinevate's Brevis35 - A 35mm adapter that lets you use 35mm SLR (yep, you read it right) lenses on your HDV camcorder. I saw 720p footage from the HV20 shot with the Brevis35, and it was stunning.

With the setup we'll be using, we should be able to go one or maybe two better... Shooting and capturing uncompressed 1080i. however, depending on how easy it is to edit, we might opt for BMD's jpg codec, it sounds like it's pretty darn good.

So now it's just a question of whether the picture quality will be merely awesome, or absolutely amazing.

Gotta go, I have a shot list to draft!

-Dave

Vbloging to commence soon...

2007-07-16T14:51:00.000-07:00

Location Manager Mark Lickona has insisted we start a Vblog. Something about my face needing to be all over the place. Who am I to argue.

Things are shaping up nicely with various people helping out, but we still need to lock down a costumer, makeup and some featured extras. Other than that though, things are going swimmingly.

It looks like we're going to go with the HPX500 camcorder. This will preclude any underwater shots, as even though I was willing to risk a $2500.00 camera to shoot under water, I'm not risking a $16,000.00 camera. Mainly because we'll need it for other things, including producing commercials and renting out.

However, if we have the jack available, I might just spring for the HVR-VU1 or the HDR-FX7 using the Blackmagic Design HDMI input card. A few months ago I was toying with the idea of using that setup to shoot the whole thing, but reason prevailed. We've got one shot at this thing, so we're going for it.

EDIT -- Vblogging is gonna have to wait until we get enough principal photography in the disk so we aren't concerned about getting it all done!

Don't have $$$$.$$ for an underwater camera enclosure? Make your own!

2007-07-08T15:27:00.000-07:00

Some people will doubtless think it crazy to forgo buying a commercial underwater enclosure and instead build your own... And risk "bricking" a brand-spankin' new full blown HD camera.

However, unless you've got an extra $1500 or so, and really, really *need* something designed for full service production, this page shows how to make one for ~$50.00!

Since Cell is only going to need a very short underwater sequence, this made a hell of a lot more sense to me. Everyone into the pool!

My book picks for independent film

2007-06-30T11:59:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm busier than a one-armed paper hanger with pre-production and script polish (I imagine we'll be "polishing" right up until principal photography is finished) in order to meet the August 18th shoot date, but here are my favorite independent film books:

The Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide - Chris Gore

I Wake Up Screening: What to Do Once You've Made That Movie - John Anderson and Laura Kim

From Reel to Deal - Dov S-S Simens

What They Don't Teach You at Film School - Camille Landau and Tiare White

43 Ways to Finance Your Feature Film - John W. Cones

The Complete Independent Movie marketing Handbook - Mark Steven Bosko

Rebel Without a Crew - Robert Rodriguez

Make Your Own Damn Movie! - Lloyd Kaufman

There may be a couple others I left out, I may include these later - But these were the pick of the litter IMO.

I want to ask everyone who reads this a favor - If you could , leave me a comment, even if it's really short!

-Dave

CELL - The movie. 6.13.2007

2007-06-08T10:26:00.000-07:00

Thanks for checking out my Blog for CELL!

Here I plan to give weekly updates as to my experience in producing a low-budget, future fiction, psychological-thriller full-length movie.

Why use the term "movie" instead of "film"? Well, IMO there's a big difference between the two.

A film is determined by quality of entertainment and experience, something which lives up to my definition of art - That which educates while it... A work of love that strives for more than mere crass commercialism.

A movie can also have all those qualities, but (again IMO) it's distinguished from a film by the fact that people actually pay to watch it.

Therefore, I'm making a *movie*: Which means that in addition to the tremendous amount of work that goes into producing something good enough so that people are willing to pay to watch it, I also get to do all the work that is involved in producing a marketing strategy to insure distribution.

And yes, just like the hot Cylon babes from Battlestar Galactica, I too, have a plan.

In fact, I have a plan A, B and C.

But more on that later - Right now I have to start roughing out a production schedule and a to-do/needs list.

More to come! Next entry will have my picks from the 4000+ pages of independent film production and distribution books I've read in the past few months.

Kick Ass Take Names,

Dave Narby