So there's this dude,

Maksim Mrvica, who, while growing up in Croatia was too poor to have enough vowels in his last name, but still learned to play piano.



He's got this whole goth/punk shtick but you know what? It works on him. And he can actually play the piano. I'm kind of digging his control of dynamics. If you feel like following along, here is the Hungarian Rhapsody number 2 in .pdf form.



If Tyrannosaurus Mouse played the Hungarian Rhapsody it would be while missing a LOT of grace notes. Which, come to think of it, might very well be the Tyrannosaurus Mouse Sound. "No grace notes."

Zombie Q&A

What's the most important thing?
Safety. Absolutely the most important thing is that we all be safe. If you feel unsafe at any time, put your hands up and yell "stop!" and we'll stop and you'll be safe. I'd rather takes got ruined by you yelling "stop!" than even one skinned knee. Seriously.

OK, what should I wear?
Make sure it's seasonable and layerable firstly. We're going to be outside for three hours, so whatever you're wearing should be good for that.
Wear comfortable shoes. If you've been asked to wear some sort of specific shoes, then please also bring some comfy sneaker-y shoes.

I really don't want this sweater to get dirty or get holes in it.
Please don't wear it then. Only wear clothes you wouldn't mind getting theatrical blood on. We're getting the non-toxic blood because we feel it's more important that you not get detergent in your mouth or eyes than have it just rinse out. But the blood we use should be machine-washable-out.

What colors should I wear?
We're looking for blacks, browns, greys, and other muted neutral colors.
Specifically don't wear RED. We actually have a bit of a color fetish thing going on here and only one character wears red.

What about patterns?
It would be better to stay away from herringbone or other tight patterns in your clothes. Big, solid, muted colors are best.

Can I wear my funny T-shirt?
We can't have corporate logos, and it would be better to not have any English-language things as after all, we're going to try to sell this movie overseas. Other than that a funny T-shirt might be fine except that it's likely that nobody will actually be able to read it on screen.

So what's up with this? What kind of zombie am I?
The "zombies" are actually people who were left alive by the first wave of the invasion (nanobots, if you must know) who had serious mental health issues. They were left alive only to be caught by giant alien robots to have their brains operated on and turned into automotons.

Dude, that sucks!
Tell me about it. This story is autobiographical.

What important things should I remember?
Safety. That is the most important thing. I can't stress it enough. And you have to make sure you're safe. I can't always see what's going on when I have my eye pressed to the eyepiece. Please stay sharp. Look out for traffic. Look out for your fellow actors. Heck, look out for me if you see me doing anything stupid.

What sort of makeup effects will we have?
The "drones" (what you're playing) bleed from the eyes and nose. Some might bleed a bit from the ears. The robots are not very good brain surgeons. Your Master Brain Surgeon today with be Laura. She will be running around with a large bottle of blood and Q-tips. She is the Queen of Mars.

Will there be a lot of blood?
You can choose how much blood you want. I think that a single drip of blood from an eye will look really nice. If you want a bit more, that's fine too. We'll have nappy wipes on set but we don't have running water on set. More about that later.

Will there be lots of blood when I'm shot?
That blood will be added in post-production, so for you (the actor) the answer is "no". There will not be lots of blood.

What's my motivation? I'm not kidding, that's a real question.
You have little control over what you do anymore. In your head a loud voice says "kill them" (the humans) and that's what you must do. You hate doing this. You hate the voice in your head. You hate the people you have to kill. You hate yourself and long for the sweet release of death. But in the meantime you're going to kill these people.

Are we fast zombies or slow zombies?
You are right between Romero and 28 Days Later. You can run, but it's a bit pained. You're more furious than accurate.

Will this movie be distributed?
Our last 5 movies have been distributed at least somewhere. We will certainly hope to do so again.

What kinds of things are important while we're on set?
Safety. Look out for traffic. Be aware of what's going on. If you feel even the slightest bit uncomfortable please tell David Ian Lee, Laura (the producer), or me (Drew). Nobody wants anyone to even almost get hurt.

What kind of rating will this movie get?
Contractually we're obligated to get no greater a restriction than an "R" rating. With the amount that Tom curses in this picture, we're almost guaranteed to get an R.

What kind of budget is this movie?
This is what's called a "no-budget" picture. Think eight thousand dollars. And a lot of sweat. Somewhere in there.

Uh, oh. I have a bad feeling about craft services on this one.
You should. We're going to have bottled water, breakfast bars, some other sorts of snacks, and maybe fruit on set. But there's no "craft services" other than the open trunk of my stepmom's car.

What's up with the bathroom?
It's six blocks away. Sorry 'bout that. I would never deny anyone the right to use the bathroom. If you gotta go, you gotta go. We'll just shoot something else while you're gone.

So that's where the running water is?
Yes, six blocks away. We'll peel someone off to take you there. It's Laura's apartment.

What sort of contract or release do I sign?
It's right here. If we make more than $50,000 on this movie, you'll make 1/10th of a percent on our revenue. We've never made that much on a movie. Hopefully we will on this one. Have you heard about the movie business lately? It's not doing so great.

You'll have a copy of this for me?
Yes. You only need to fill out your name, the name you want to be credited under, and sign the bottom with your email and address and such.

I'd rather not use my name, can I be uncredited?
Yes. But you'll miss out being in the curtain call we put at the end of our movies. Just write "DO NOT CREDIT" or some such in the credit block of the contract.

Can I use another name for my IMDB credit and/or the credit in the movie?
Yes, there's space for that -- just write it in the contract.

So when will I be on IMDB?
Every year IMDB makes it harder on us to get our listing up. So we make no guarantees. Right now they're making us show them a distribution date to be considered eligible for listing. Sheesh!

Will I get a copy of the movie if/when it comes out?
I'd love to say "yes" but the fact is that we end up having to buy copies used and such off eBay and Amazon. So no, we can't give you a copy of the retail version of the movie.

But I want a copy for my reel.
That we can do. Do you see the inordinately handsome guy over there in the fancy hat? His name is Maduka. He will have the raw footage of what we've shot in the next two days. If you can wait a few months, we'll have your footage edited together. If you wait six months we should even have final color correction and a sound mix done. Bring a hard drive and we can roll a copy of the movie off for you (or just your parts).

Are you producing under a SAG contract?
No.

But I'm SAG. I want to do the movie anyway. Do you care?
My interpretation of federal law is that it would be illegal of me to discriminate against you based on you belonging to a labor organization. So no, I don't care. In fact, I'm not paying attention. "La la la la la!" I'm not listening!

What do you suggest I do?
You have a number of options. This, of course, does not constitute legal advice. But as an exploitative, sleazy, amoral, producer I would suggest you go "core status" with your labor union.

Isn't "eploitative", "sleazy", and "amoral", just redundant when describing a producer?
Yes.

What have other people done when they're members of SAG but want to work on your movies?
As far as I know, other people have just ignored SAG and just worked on a movie, some have used a different name for our movies than their "official" SAG name. Some have been "core status". But officially I don't know and I don't care and your union status has no relation to whether you've been hired or how much I love you.

Does not being a SAG producer affect your distribution?
Yes, it makes our distributors not instantly pissed off at us for signing a SAG contract.

Can I bring home made cookies?
Yes, we'll give you an extra closeup if you do.

I have a whole lot of cash lying around and have always wanted to produce genre pictures.
Talk to me. Bring a checkbook.

OK, so what's the deal about lunch?
We're shooting a bunch of other stuff after the fight scenes and then we're going out for Chinese food. You're welcome to join us for fabulous lunch specials or just take off because you're wrapped. It's your choice.

Can I see the script?
It's right here.

I want David to name his baby after me.
Prove that you're the mother of his child and he just might.

Is that really the camera we're using? It looks like a still camera.
Yup. And you're right. But it also shoots HD. We're early adopters but in the next two years all the low-budget kids will be doing this.

You're going to put my zombie picture up on your blog, aren't you?
Hells yeah.

Sounds awesome! I'm in!
We're privileged to have you aboard.

Is there anything you've forgotten?
Be safe. Be warm. Get enough liquids. Be aware of traffic. Be aware of your acting partners. Be safe and have fun.

We Are the Winners

That's right, with IMDB's

Shortest Titles With Location Matching "Manhattan New York City New York USA"

In 20th place is "Salome".

No, I don't get it either.

Cukisag has your lounging cat today.

Check out this nebula maker in Particular:

nebula from versa on Vimeo.

Bill Cunningham's Brother Blood, available now.

I'm thinking two things with Day 2. One is that we've gone slightly overboard with handheld, we're going to have to do some things on sticks; and Two is that we will want to shoot at a high shutter speed when we do the fight scenes. But the higher shutter speed might do nothing to help the jello-cam effect. It will, however, reduce the depth-of-field.

I have this little fantasy that we'll freeze frame on people getting hit but have slow-motion blood spill toward camera. That's my fantasy.

How to make fake food. Via Tim Shrum.

Guitar Friday III

From eBay I got myself this guitar cabinet.

This is an open back custom cabinet with a very unusual configuration; it's made for two speakers: one 12" and one 10".

Now, I already own a 12" Celestion Alnico Blue. And I wanted to get a Weber 12a100 to have another "flavor" of speaker (I think like a recording engineer in that I figure I'll put a mic on one speaker -- the one that sounds the best for whatever sound we're going for or whatever.)

But then Ethan remarked that he felt that 10" speakers sounded better with Gibson guitars and 12" sounded better with Fenders guitars.

Boy that seems odd to me but Ethan tends to have interesting insight into such things so I'm thinking why not get a 10" Weber 10a100 and put it in the same cabinet as my Celestion?

Of course I'll probably end up really wanting a 12" Weber and a 10" Celestion but... meh. What I really need is an amplifier.

Ethan says:
"The circuit topology has WAY more effect on the tone than the choice of tubes, and WAAAAY more than the choice of components. Buy all the special, magic capacitors you want but you still won't get ham from a cow."

And that's where we are today, in the land of Guitar Friday.

Lessons Learnt on Day 2

The key concepts on this shoot are patience and MOS.

We just have to wait -- even if it's 5 minutes -- for the traffic to go away and then we'll get 15 to 30 seconds of New York City empty.

(But it'll never sound empty. For that we do all ADR.)

I have this notion that this picture is going to be edited in a kind of jump-cut-y style. I'm very happy with the image we're getting. I suspect that a jump cut style of editing will help with our non-sync sound in our exteriors. ;-)

We have been doing a crappity job with catering. Now partly that's because our first two days were fairly short. For most of the cast on the first day we had something like a 2-hour call. And for the two cast/crew who were on set for 5 hours we did get some Chinese food (the best Chinese food in Bed Stuy -- that's not saying much.)

And although we did wrap one actor today in less than 3 hours, we really did go six hours today without a proper sit-down lunch (although there were lots of Dunkin' Munchkins, fruit, and instant oatmeal.) I just don't want to abuse Tina too much by making her run around without eating.

Maybe we'll make up for it on Wednesday when we will have upwards of 15 in the cast. Egads! Time for Chinese lunch specials. I honestly don't know how we're going to schedule all that. This will be one of those days I wished we had a motorhome.

I think what we're going to end up doing is having a big family - style meal at 12:30pm at the local (good) Chinese restaurant and just have a little party of it in the middle of the day. Yeah, that'll work for us.
*****
Via Chance Shirley, the Noktor f 0.95 lens. That's right, faster than all the way open. Good times. I could put it on my GH1, but I'm still getting used to the autofocus.
*****
Any similarities between the painting above and the image below are purely coincidental and not a result of anyone obsessed with trying to make movies that look like paintings. As far as you know.

Who killed Little Red Riding Hood?

Poor Tina Tanzer lies in a pool of broken desires knocked out by the nanobot onslaught.

Today we shot Tina and Kathleen Kwan, ("Athena" in Solar Vengeance). I don't have any stills of Kathleen though, we'll get some up tomorrow.

Costumes, and consequently our color scheme, are by Virginia Monte. I had this fantasy that "Laura" would be in a red coat and Virginia actually found one -- cheap too! Tina pops out nicely in our otherwise monochrome bluish palate.

It was so freakin' cold out there on the pier. Holy cats. It felt a lot colder because of the wind. But we got some nice shots of Kathleen and Tina looking out at the Statue of Liberty -- which will in turn be on the receiving end of a nanobot invasion.

Am I really going to shoot this whole thing hand held? I might. If you're wondering what a "riding hood" is, Yahoo has all the answers.

(That is just her hair "pooling" near Tina's head.)

Our Enemy

Ian Hubert came up with this model for the mechs in Day 2. These things are going to be 50 or 60 feet in diameter.

I suspect if we saw these in real life we wouldn't call them "robots" or even "mechs". I think we'd just tall them "those things". We may want to modify some dialog to reflect that.

Hopefully the reflectance properties of the material will be minimal because we don't want to be ray tracing for a million years. I don't know what the color scheme will be or how well we'll be able to "see through" the center or the wheel itself.

The textures will be high res so we can get relatively close to the thing. Perhaps, as far as blinns and other specularity methods go we should make the thing partially metal, partially plastic, partially ceramic?

A Conversation That Didn't Happen

As far as you know.

Drew, why is the schedule so weird?

Do you mean why are we shooting in bits and pieces for the first two days?

Yes, the schedule seems pretty sparse for a 12 - day shoot.

You noticed that we don't really have a crew, haven't you?

Isn't that what Tom Rowen is for?

Well yeah, but I ended up casting him in the movie instead.

That means he's going to pull down his pants in front of me, doesn't it?

He's already done it once on this shoot. Almost blinded a civilian.

So what exactly are we shooting? How many takes are we doing? Where is Maduka?

We're shooting the whole movie with good, clean, coverage. We're doing 42 takes. Maduka is helping his cousin produce another feature so he's going to be going back-and-forth.

42 takes? You never shoot more than 3 takes. What are you doing?

The 42 takes are all closeups of you.

That's ridicul... why 42 takes of me? OMG. What's wrong with me that you need to shoot so many takes of me?

It's because you're very, very beautiful. I never want to take the lens off of you.

You know that flattery is just empty. You're never getting anywhere with it.

That's how beautiful you are.

Really? Oh. My... well then... WAIT.
Are you talking to me, or to that Nat Cassidy again?

You aren't Nat?

No!!!!

Well, Nat is very pretty.

Yeah. Sigh. I guess you're right.

Bunny via.

QOTD

But firstly, for those of you playing along at home, Nude Snow Woman in Rahway, NJ. Ahh, Rahway. Known for housing a state prison and now this. Thanks!

Via Janet Reid:

She’s a touch thick, not quite shed of her winter fat, but she wears her flesh with oblivious self-assurance. I have no doubt a man with a flatter belly could pay her bar tab and bed her the same night, with no idea of the problems she’ll cause over breakfast

.*****

From my buddy Chance, who tweetered about this, the Canon Rebel T2i vs the 7D? Pretty much the similarly. And these cameras will do two more "stops" of ISO speed than my lil' Panasonic GH1 (they'll party down at 6400 ISO where my little camera can do 1600 ISO).

And yeah, then there's this:

The Cast and Crew of Day 2 Are In Open Revolt

at my insistence that we learn "How Do You Do" by Mouth and MacNeil. Mostly the resistance campaign is a passive one -- they just ignore my missives on the subject. And believe me, I can't for the life of me understand why. But I got one solution left. We're gonna start anew.

Here is a mini-rockumentary in some language (either Dutch or German):




OK so it's probably Dutch. What's the other strange thing? Both of them look in the 90's (when I presume this video was made) almost exactly the same as they did in the early 70's.

Day 1 of Day 2

Today was the first day of shooting on Day 2. Today was the first day I've ever produced and had TCD on set. We needed TCD (Traffic Control Division of the New York City Police Department) because we have assault weapons.

The police came, they checked our weapons. They were impressed -- the guns are non-firing plastic toy guns but our man Brian, who can seemingly do anything painted them and souped them up so they look weathered and real.

We had one officer on the ground and another on the roof. But that wasn't till we got to Bed Stuy. Firstly:

Tom Rowen and Dani Quisenberry on a fabulous roof in Bushwick. They're watching the robots. The robots are coming. It is not, nor can it come, to good.




What did I learn? I learned that the Panasonic GH1

• seemingly the "2" white balance in still mode equals the "1" white balance in movie mode. I am sure I have done something weird but that seems to be the way things are.
• is awesome because you just flip a switch and you go from shooting the movie to taking the stills for the movie. That saves a bunch of time
• gives me a stop or maybe 2? more than I'm used to in the highlights. I'm seeing natural skin tones (exposure-wise, not color-wise since we're going for this very cold look) without blowing out.

This is my new rock band. From left to right that Nat Cassidy, David Ian Lee, Tom Rowen, and Tina Tanzer.

Nat, Tom, David, Tina, and officer Rob (officer Bill was downstairs)! Note that only one of the four guns in this picture is real.


Hooray! An easy day and a nice way to wrap up the first day of shooting. More the day after tomorrow.

Apparently the job of the director involves reading the script at some point

and although it's 9pm on the night before our first day, I haven't actually read through the scenes and marked up my script yet.

But I did pick up the guns from Brian. They look nice, boy. And we'll have TCD (police) for tomorrow's shoot. And we have, for the first time on a Pandora Machine shoot, an actual company move. Unfortunately, I'm the transportation captain on that move. But that's how it is.
*****
OK, now I've read the scenes. Boy, I would love love love to get this one sequence at magic hour. Magic hour typically lasts about 15 minutes. It doesn't exist at all if there's heavy cloud cover. We kind of need it to be nighttime out but we don't really want it to be night. You know? It's that thing. If we can get exposure on faces without the sky blowing out I'll be happy. If I had any way of metering whether the sky will blow out I'll be happy.

*****
Waterhouse is all up in this blog. I try to keep a Waterhouse as the background on each computer I have. I don't know what Maduka thinks about that.
*****
More guitar amp thingies:

STF kits.
Ampwares has your Fender amp field guide.
Swanson makes custom cabinets.
Triode makes vibro champ kits.
I pointed out before that Doberman makes kits based on the AX84 project.
How to fire up a tube amplifier for the first time.
US Speaker sells Jensen and suchly.
(I'm just going to end up selling a camera and getting a JTM45.)

Wireless Microphones

Do you use wireless mics? On occasion I do. The good folks at Professional Sound sent out this note from the FCC clarifying the legal aspects of wireless mics. Thankfully the FCC is seeming reasonable about the whole thing. What's up with the government being reasonable all of a sudden?

CONSUMER ALERT

Below you will find a "Consumer Alert" recently sent out by the FCC. The FCC is now requiring all sellers of Wireless products to post this alert. We here at Professional Sound Services believe that the consumer should have all the information that is available. We have added two NOTES on the bottom of the alert so our customers will be more informed. If you have any questions at all about any of the FCC's recent rulings regarding wireless, please contact our technical staff at (212) 586-1033. We will be happy to answer any of your questions.

CONSUMER ALERT

Most users do not need a license to operate a wireless microphone system. Nevertheless, operating a microphone system without a license is subject to certain restrictions: the system may not cause harmful interference; it must operate at a low power level (not in excess of 50 milliwatts); and it has no protection from interference received from any other device. Purchasers should also be aware that the FCC is currently evaluating use of wireless microphone systems, and these rules are subject to change. For more information, call the FCC at 1-888- CALL-FCC (TTY: 1-888-TELL-FCC) or visit the FCC’s wireless microphone website at www.fcc.gov/cgb/wirelessmicrophones.

To operate wireless microphone systems at power greater than 50mW, you must qualify as a Part 74 user and be licensed.

NOTE – This has not changed at all and has been in effect for over 20 years. If you qualify and wish to apply for a license go to: http://www.fcc.gov/Forms/Form601/601.html

Please note that this has no bearing on Part 74 users - Television and motion picture production, all licensed AM, FM, TV or broadcast stations, networks, and broadcast entities are not affected by this alert. They have always been eligible for Part 74 licensing (for decades now). We have included the information they will need for licensing should they decide to do so (thus allowing higher power levels).

(Sophia Coppola from, I think, The World's Best Ever or some such.)

Tomorrow we begin

Tomorrow is the first day of Day 2. And today I'm delivering Clonehunter to the lab. Again. So we're rolling these puppies out one right after another.

There's always a bunch of running around that's done just before we shoot and surprisingly, it actually calms down after the first day. Firstly, if you have a whole mess of people (actors) on set the first day (we shoot 5 of the 7 characters with speaking roles) we have to have them in costume. Also, there are things like signed contracts and the like which have to be kept organized and suchly.

I suppose on a bigger budget production we'd have someone from the production office make sure that contracts were taken care of and fittings were already done and there'd be a wardrobe person on set and etc. But we don't. So we don't. ;-)

This is Tom Rowen's shirt for the role of Eric. The brilliant and radiant Virginia Monte is our costume designer. I love the whole Firefly-ness of this shirt. Two years of high school Chinese have effectively failed me. "Underneath" something. Anybody read Chinese?*

Tomorrow's forecast is a 40% chance of rain/snow (I actually wrote "snot" at first and I think a 40% chance of snot is pretty funny) and a high of 42 degrees.

*I spent the entire time trying to convince Mr. Callanan to tell us about how he parachuted into Burma with the OSS in WWII but he never took the bait. Students from older classes allowed that you could get him to reminisce about it but he never did with our class. My Chinese accent is simply terrible.