Do You Have Your Tickets?

To the Theatresource production of InGenious? There's a lot of great stuff, including our own James Becton and Greg Oliver Bodine wearing sexxxxy flip-flops. The beautiful and glamorous Robin Kurtz plays in a play writ by the Queen of Mars. Alaina Hammond (Earthkiller) is a writer, so is Vincent Marano (Clonehunter). Michael Bordwell (Earthkiller) is a director
Why must needs to get your tickets early? Because there are (give or take) about a thousand members of the cast and their friends and family will be coming and the show only runs for 9 performances!

No, I WON'T Be Singing This Better

So I'm all like "collaboration and blah blah blah" but then when I actually go to sing the songs I'm like "forget it, this is as good as I'm going to do."
Ethan suggested that I support better -- especially on lower notes. As it turns out, I can't do that. As in can't do that. So I didn't. In fact, I did the opposite -- I dropped support on the lower notes. Because at least that sounded like something, not just "Oh, Drew's running out of breath."
So yeah, "collaboration" means "do the inverse thing". Meh.
Look. I tried. But this... this is what we've got in the way of a singer.
I mean, does it make any difference? At least our drummer is good.
Here is "Mercury" by Tyrannosaurus Mouse. Other ridiculous trivia about this song? It was "written" because I was trying to distract Ethan from playing "Another Wasted Afternoon" at a rehearsal and then I thought we should record it. The band had exactly zero idea which way the song should go when we played it the one time through (when we recorded it in, er, one take). So you can hear me shouting things as we go from section to section in the beginning. But you can always hear me shouting things in the background, it's the cattle we bring with us.
So yeah, the arrangement was actually improvised by the band. The stop? Totally made up on the fly. The come back in? Also, totally on-the-fly. The arrangement of the song was created mostly by us looking at one another and hoping that everyone else was going to do the same thing.
I added the guitar leads and the vocals in my studio. And that's what we've got.
If you want something different in the vocals please tell me. If you want it better, though, I have some bad news for you...


;-)

You Will Enjoy It

Jury Fraud Schemes are just another reason to never pick up the telephone.

I can't get Boost Mobile to get back to me when I submit via their special submission form. I suspect I have no way of not paying for the phone every day.
UPDATE: they did get back to me, but by talking to my voicemail. Which for most people represents more personal service (I just inherently hate the telephone, so I prefer email). In any case, indeed, the phone costs $2 every day whether I use it or not. Poopity. So that was a hundred-dollar mistake (the cost of the telephone). That actually makes the phone as expensive as AT&T. Plus, of course, I spent a hundred bucks on the phone. I think this means I'll be moving over to Virgin Mobile's $25/month plan.
Oh wait, no, unless I go with their "pay as you go" plan. The rates on it are... weird. And complicated. We'll see how that works. The lady on the phone should have told me about that.
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This is an image from something called the Internet. There are many cute animals (and naked people) on this "Internet". For that reason alone you will enjoy it.

Millennium Information

I'm surprised that people actually read this blog. But Fred Greene did and he answered the question about whether After Dark still releases theatrically. And the answer is "yes".

Sometimes I like to post this, the Japanese version of Millennium Crisis,
because it's so awesome.

To which we say "You go!" Rah rah rah!*
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‘Robot dinosaurs from the future battle the Marine Corps on Mars!’
Actually, that sounds like a great idea for a picture. I'm going to get right on that.
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So we're getting this error message when trying to render in Final Cut Pro. Apparently it's an issue unique to working in ProRes 422 but I'm not sure:

"The effect 'Looks' failed to render. Your hardware cannot render at the requested size and depth."

The answer, here, is to disconnect the second monitor and re-boot the computer. That worked for me at least. But it is somewhat irritating.

*Seriously. Anybody able to make money in distribution? I'm their biggest cheerleader.

Amalgamated

Amalgamated Bank, America's Labor Bank, still has free checking. That makes it different from a bunch of other banks. Amalgamated has free checking for both business and personal accounts.

LOL

Zambri is playing at Brooklyn's The Rock Shop on Saturday the 8th. Oops. That was two days ago.

As it turns out:

"The different Scandinavian "languages" are more similar to one another than the different Chinese "dialects" are."

Boost

So I bought a Boost mobile phone with their $2/day plan and I don't know if they don't charge me $2 for any day I don't make any incoming or outgoing calls or texts or anything. And I just discovered that I don't know this late last night.
Which surprises me, because I would have thought I'd have caught that.
And it means that I may have just blown a hundred bucks on buying the Sanyo phone from them if I end up having to go over to Virgin's $25/month service anyway.
Meerph.

Distributing the Machine

So, maybe we've been very lucky, or maybe we've been unlucky. I can't really tell. But we've never had a foreign sales agent (which means someone who sells to non-North American markets) take out expenses from any sales we've made. Contractually there have never been "recoup-erable" expenses in any of our agreements.

Now, we pay a rate that is much higher than rates you usually hear of. Think twice as high. But our rep's only expense that he charges against us is the cost of making the actual DigiBeta deliverable tape for the customer (and yes, that cost comes directly out of our money from the distributor).

An oldie but a goodie.

Distro411 is a new blog about, well, distribution. Again, their experience doesn't reflect our own experience with overseas sales. We have, for instance, always had approval power over any deals the sales rep signs for us. Considering that a tape costs about $250, any deal over about a thousand dollars is a net positive gain. Not that we want to be signing any thousand-dollar deals, I'm just sayin' that we would actually see positive cash from such a deal.
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Joe Bob Briggs is looking for screenplays. If he's seriously considering making features budgeted at anything close to $100K a piece then we still win the "smallest micro-studio in New York City" award.

I brushed my teeth this morning

Both to make more friends and to give me something to talk about today.

I Don't Understand

Why The Electric Heartbreaker isn't the biggest pop duo in the world. Turbo Dancing is the future of the Birmingham scene:

Apparently all the coolest stuff ever is in some way related directly to Chance Shirley.

Toward African American Film

There's an article in the Times today about a plan to:

...put black-theme movies in commercial theaters, initially from the independent film program recently begun by the AMC theater chain, for a two-week run supported by social networks, mailing lists and other buzz-building services at the disposal of allied ethnic film festivals.

Hmm... seems like we've heard this kind of distribution scheme before. It would be awesome if it worked. But I'm afeared it just won't.

I do think a mistake is being made in assuming that "black-theme" movies are a genre. There was a market a while back for movies aimed at an African American audience. What was that, about 10 years ago? You could actually make a little bit of money in direct-to-DVD pictures in all sorts of genres (rom-coms, thrillers, action pictures) with "black-themes" (and yes, I'm refusing to not put that in quotes) back in the good old days.

But gay-themed pictures as well as black-themed pictures (there, no quotes) have fallen by the wayside. And I suspect that even if they've only fallen proportionally about as far as everything else has in this business, it's pretty danged far.

Heck, the horror genre, which has the most dedicated fans, has taken a mighty tumble.

So I don't know if very many pictures specifically marketed toward African Americans will do well anymore. You're taking a gamble that members of a particular ethnic group feel so starved to see their own ethnic group represented in whatever sort of story you want to tell that enough of them will pay to see your picture. It seems to me that the heyday for "black-themed" movies came and went*.

So:

The films will not be part of normal festival programs, but will screen in all cities simultaneously with promotional backing from the festival organizations, which will share in revenue.

Hmm... so the distributor is taking an cut and the film festivals are taking a cut? That so doesn't sound to me like the producer gets to take a cut at all. This model of distribution has been tried both with horror pictures (are the "8 Films to Die For" even in theaters anymore or do they just do straight to DVD now?) and art-house films (the entire IFC model, which makes some money for IFC but I ain't heard of a success which paid for the cost of making the picture out of proceeds from IFC distribution.)

And it seems to me that a separate "African American" cinema might also be having a problem with its audience. Yes, the Tyler Perry pictures do well. But the wall between "white-themed" cinema and "black-themed" cinema is not as high as it was in the 1950's (say), and in some ways arguably the barrier effectively doesn't exist (for black male actors at least, if not directors and writers). But more than that it may be that there is enough cinema to satisfy an audience which wants "black-themed" pictures (after all, there's almost a hundred years of black-themed pictures to watch.) This seems to have happened to everyone else (gay film, Latino film, etc.) so I wouldn't be surprised to find that there is a degree of saturation which has occurred with black-themed films.

Because after all, saturation even (finally) happened to horror films.

Billy Dee Williams was originally screen tested for the role of Han Solo. 

Still, I sure hope that "Blackdance" is phenomenally successful. But hope and faith are two different things.

*Actually, that day came way back when movies were first invented and that day stayed right up through the early 2000's. There has almost always been a "black film industry" in America which produced pictures by and for African Americans. What I'm suggesting here is that the economics of the entire industry affect "black-themed" pictures as well as what we might call "white-themed" pictures.

Comment

A picture of us recording the commentary track.

So today we did the commentary track. We had David Ian Lee, David Frey, the Queen of Mars, and Nat Cassidy on hand to talk about the movie. Although we were expecting her, Danielle Quisenberry didn't come, so the commentary track ended up being rather boy-heavy. Maduka was away shooting something else.
I don't actually remember doing the commentary track that much. We had spiced rum and mango juice, and David Lee brought Bourbon and vermouth for Manhattans. So right now I'm surprised to be sitting in front of a computer. Actually, I'm surprised to be coherent enough to write at all.
Here's a new rule I learned. If you don't show up to the commentary track we will talk smack about you. And that goes for you too, Mr. Steven Spielberg.
I used the Chance Shirley commentary recording methodology. That is using the same recorder we use on set -- a Sound Devices 702 in this case -- to record the commentary (which is then edited into Final Cut Pro). We divided ourselves into a gang of three (David and David and the QOM), and a gang of two (Nat and me). The 3-gang got an Oktava (which is the same mic we use on set) on a table stand while Nat and I shared a large-diaphragm Rode. At a fundamental level you might not care about that, but I care deeply because it was a good-sounding way to record the commentary which we'll have to use again.

Mix Master Drew Blaster

Leda mixes her swan in 6.0

I have a couple questions. Like, why do I even bother doing surround mixes? Nobody, and I mean nobody cares. By and large distributors don't want them because it makes DVD authoring harder. Plus, c'mon, what are you really putting in those rear channel speakers?
I'd argue that the potentially highest-end environment any movie could ever play will be in someone's high-end home theater. There are a few people out there who actually watch movies in tuned rooms with THX certified sound systems. The key word here is "few".
Everyone else, even those who have surround systems, likely have their sound system unoptimised at best, or live in a nightmare world of complete out-of-calibration sound where they have their subwoofer hooked up to the center channel and the right and left reversed with the surrounds and a fish tank over the amplifier.
And because all surround systems will decode stereo 2.0 audio streams, why do I bother actually mixing to 5.1?
I have no idea.
If it were up to me I'd mix the whole darn thing in mono. That way the sound effects will sit better with the dialog anyway.
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I'm continuing to do the QC check on Day 2. As the movie goes on I have fewer and fewer notes. That's good. Did I just get better as I was mixing later in the movie, or does the movie just pick up after the first couple reels?
We'll find out tomorrow when we do the commentary track (v1.0). We'll be missing a few people like Maduka and Tina and Tom, so we may have to do two versions of the commentary...
David Ian Lee better bring a lot of top-shelf Bourbon, that's all I can say.

The Hipsters are Winning

Actually, I'd give you a link here to the BMI page of the news article which reports that vinyl sales are rising. But I can't because they don't offer a permalink option and the "share" button is spectacularly frustrating to get to actually work. So yay for my performance rights organization making things harder for me!

I've been wondering lately how long it takes to warm up.
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But that's not what's important right now. I got some great notes back from Ethan on the vocal performance in Ice Maiden and I was able to step back and really listen to the song to hear what he's talking about. But I spent all morning trying to make the vocal in the verses stronger and... well it's just not going to happen*. I'm not strong enough a singer to fix it. But hey, at least I know what I'm supposed to do!

*That's not quite true, I was able to clean up the most egregious of the lines.