Repo Men

So I'm a very very bad science fiction movie director. You'd think I'd watch every sci-fi movie as soon as it comes out. But I don't. In fact, I hadn't seen Repo Men 'till today. I'll tell you one thing. Repo Man was much better. A repo man spends his life getting into tense situations. This wasn't the best sequel.
Actually, Repo Men had a lot of potential. The theatrical version clocks in at 1:53 or some ridiculous time like that. You're asking yourself "did the movie have to be that long?" And no, the movie could have been 45 minutes shorter.
There were two "B" stories. You really gotta pick one and go with it. Me? I would have axed the wife and child subplot. They actually have zero impact on the story. Yes, I watched the movie 'till the very end. There was no need for them.

OK. So you got a guy who repossesses human organs for a living. So he's a "repo man" for hearts, lungs, what-have-you. What should be happening on page 20? We all know what happens on page 20. He becomes a runner. Oops. Sorry, I thought we were in Logan's Run for a moment there. What I meant was he gets an artificial heart which he can't make the payments on.
OK -- but we're like 40 minutes into the damn movie by the time that happens. And I'm not even listing that plot point as a "spoiler" because honestly, if you can't figure out that's what was going to happen in the movie you have to go back to movie watching school. Plus, it's on the DVD box.
But the plot went off in a lot of different, and unresolved, directions. There was even a moment where the big, bad, evil, boss suggested that the two main Repo Men go... freelance? Or something. So that they're hunting down the underground of people who have "past due" organs in their bodies and are trying to escape to somewhere their organs can't be repossessed. No no no no no. Do not have spurious dialog in your movie. Just don't. And keep the movie on track. That concept went nowhere. Maybe it was from an earlier draft of the screenplay. But the shooting screenplay needed about 50 pages ripped out of it.
Somebody needs Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet calculator. And I'd say the writers, the director, the editor, and most of all the damn producers of this movie are the ones who need it.
Don't get me started on the music choices.
Furthermore, why does he get into a knife fight with a dozen dudes when he has two perfectly serviceable sidearms sitting on the floor that he has to step over to get into the knife fight?

Things Three

1. Don't think I'm not adding tape and tube amp hiss under the entire album. Because I am.
2. Bandcamp is awesome.
3. I made some changes to make One Last Drink better. Unfortunately I played the Hammond solo in it. That must be cured by Arie playing the Hammond solo.
4. (Yeah, I added this later) I'm not that happy with the first guitar solo (the one after the first verse). And yeah, those guitars are noisy. It's a tad annoying to hear the noise come in before the first note of a section.
The first guitar is too loud and compressed in this mix. By "first guitar" I mean the first one I recorded with the rhythm tracks. Don't worry, I know which one I'm talking about. I did fix one bit of overplayed sloppiness in the guitar solo before the keyboard solo and I feel much better about that.*
5. Samplitude has simply amazing effects in it. Built-in there are the nicest tape-like compressors, 1176-type compressors, and big ol' fat Fairchild-esque compressors as well as tube channel strips. I'll admit a liking for those Waves SSL buss compressors, but the effects in Samplitude are nice.
6. In the Mouseverture in the top 16 bars there's a bit where Ethan and Lou do fills at the same time and then the next phrase neither of them fills. I say move Ethan's fill to the hole in Lou's fill and everything will sound deliberate and nobody will even know unless they read this blog.**
7. Also, I'm still under the impression that the 2nd Em-G guitar solo should simply be excised as a section. I certainly don't play anything interesting in it, that's for sure.***


*This has been fixed.
**This has been fixed in version 2.01
***This was fixed violently in version 2.02. I actually chopped out a Em-G part and the first chromatic thing (the chromatic part before the keyboard triplets). It's kind of a big change but I think it makes the song betterized.

Latest versions of things

If you've got 14 minutes and 46 seconds of your life you never want back*, here's the latest version of the Mouseverture.
I think that the thing we need to do to really make this song pop out is to change the size of the apparent room -- tighten up to a very small room in some sections and then go to an enormous stage at other times. That's what I think.
Ice Maiden is only seven minutes and twenty-nine seconds. I think I have to make the vocal line "your pale blue eyes" better. I'm sure I've done it a bunch of times. I'll just keep doing it... er... different. Somehow.**

Note that you can't see the Bandcamp widgets in an RSS reader. So click through and listen to some music.

If you want to spend a whole bunch of money on a smoking cap, Antique Arts has a beautiful one. We're talking almost five bills, though.

*Lookit that, we're down to 13:07
**As I go through things I discover what sort of things I've already changed. And apparently I took that note already. I think. Anyway, that line doesn't bother me as much anymore.

Haronk

My computer took this picture of me.

Synergy is a cross-platform software KVM - switch. It'll run across Windows, Linux, OSX. I've read some reviews and it seems pretty cool. It's certainly something we could use in the Pandora Machine.

The Second Street Bakery in Jersey City is a place my evil landlord told me about. Apparently there are sticky buns to be had.

Tyrannosaurus To Do

So we have three, independent, yet somehow related, avenues of activity for the Mouse:

A. Make a record
1. finish recording little things which need to be recorded
2. find some money somewhere and go back to Trax East for two or three days and mix the album
2a. note the term "find some money somewhere". The "somewhere" is at present an unknown
3. release the album on Bandcamp. Maybe even CDBaby and iTunes. Win accolades and adoration of our fans
4. actually make a CD. That is, find money from "somewhere" and have CD's made.

B. Take pictures of ourselves
1. Rent and borrow groovy 19th-Century jackets
2. Take pictures of us looking very, very groovy

C. Play live
Here, shockingly, is going to be the most contentious part of the whole Tyrannosaurus Mouse Experience. I think that's because nobody believes me. But what I want to do is a big "show". I want:
1. A dancer who does the dance of the Seven Veils, or perhaps a fan dance like at the end of The Right Stuff, performed to our Arabesque
2. Groovy front projections on the band during all songs
3. Spotlights on soloists
4. An enormous Jabberwock puppet with glowing red eyes who appears and attacks the bass player during the keyboard solo. Bass player slays the Jabberwock with his vorpal sword.
4a. I'm not exactly sure what's going to happen when Ethan drops out to slay the Jabberwock. The song might suffer musically then. So perhaps the Jabberwock is slain by the bass itself. Or possibly a video of the bass player slaying the Jabberwock with his vorpal sword will do. Otherwise, we may need to find another way to actually slay the Jabberwock
5. A staff for Drew. Drew needs at least one person to hand him tuned guitars and make changes in the settings on amplifiers. That person might double as a puppeteer for the Jabberwock.
6. Really groovy clothes for the musicians in Tyrannosaurus Mouse. That means you, you, you, and you. See section B above.

OK, so I suspect you're saying to yourself:

• That's not even going to happen once
• Drew clearly knows nothing about theater. We're going to be in tech for three 12-hour days on that Jabberwock alone
• Can't we just play in a bar?
• Remember how we don't even have money to mix the album? How are we getting money for a Jabberwock?
  

These are wise thoughts you have. But remember that we can actually do this. Or, remember that Drew is tenacious enough to do this. Either way. And yes, some questions I can't answer -- like who is going to build and operate our Jabberwock.
Can we play in a few bars first? Yes! Absolutely! We have to have the appropriate clothes, of course (see point B), but we could just play in some bars.

Apparently, I have Terrible Taste

So, I'm kind of done going to Book Court. You know, I figure I should go to local independent bookstores. I'm so wrong.
I asked about a couple books, neither of which they had. One was The Wind-Up Girl. They were out and they didn't bother to pick up the paperback version of it.
The other book was the new Cherie Priest novel which I knew had been published because I read an interview about it.

When the guy at the counter finally found the book he said. "Oh yeah, I remember this book. I think we passed on it. That's... not any reflection on your taste. We're just more of a literary book store."
So yeah, I'll be going to the non-literary book stores from now on.
Although maybe they passed on the book because the heroine has such clearly bad trigger discipline.

Questions

My question is whether Nat and Dave are going to put a hit out on me for what I've done to their script, or whether they're going to want the satisfaction of doing the work themselves.

Mitch Gross on shooting in Log format. He says that the Arri Alexa can handle 14 stops at 800 ISO. Holy cats. Really? I thought the best negative color film could handle was only 12 stops or thereabouts.

Who is left alive in this robot war script?
Foxwell

Rathbone

Hammermill

Cage

Tango (killed on page 25)

Ponce (killed on page 32 which is, right now, the center point of the movie).

Normally Tango has the scanner. Hammermill doesn't pick it up until after Tango is killed by the blue-class marauder robot.

Skybucket Records

Here's an independent record label with a number of cool acts on it. Specifically it has the upcoming record by the Delicate Cutters, my buddy Chance Shirley's band.

Back in the day it was possible to make you some money with an indy label. That day was 1979. June 22nd, as I recall.
Actually, there have been some working labels up through the 2000's. Mostly niche-stuff like deathmetal et al. And the insider information I have from what we might call a "significant" indy ("indy" meaning it's not associated with any of the major labels at all -- it's not a "brand" of, say, CBS) is that they won't even bother with a band that can't sell 150K units. That's one hundred fifty thousand CD's nowadays. You know, what with iTunes and the Interwebs and whatever.
Tyrannosaurus Mouse, of course, can sell scads of records because we'll have a complete burlesque show at all our concerts. I wonder if I've adequately explained this to the band yet? I think I did, but they thought I was joking.

Pitching

The Asylum on how to pitch movies to them:

So, how can you write for The Asylum? Well, if you’ve got an interesting take on a mockbuster for a studio movie that is coming out in six to twelve months, that isn’t a remake, sequel, or based on an old television series (good luck); we might read that. Or if you happen to know the buyers at Netflix or Redbox or Comcast and can ask them what types of movies they need, we’ll listen to that pitch.

Honestly I can't figure how Netflix buyers can justify a production to the Asylum, but if it can then more power to the Asylum.

I'm just going to keep linking to *600V's awesome art.

Script Notes Which Make No Sense to You

I think Tango should have the scanner. Hammermill seems more like a heavy-weapons kind of guy. Of course, the fact that I killed off Mooney in the first scene doesn't help matters.
What I do know is that there will be vestiges of an early screenplay in the shooting screenplay and we'll end up working those out on set.
I've got some scenes here where the characters are all together in a corridor and then suddenly they're separated and fighting different monsters. That, uh, needs to be cleared up.

This dude makes some beautiful images.

Today in the Machine

So I'm busy destroying David and Nat's screenplay. So that we can shoot it. Very soon.

And because I'm a horrible person.

Here's who's alive on page 21:

Foxwell

Rathbone

Hammermill

Cage

Tango

Ponce

We have to make sure we're making a bigger deal about going into AI territory on the mission.

I may have inadvertently cut the explanation about the workers losing contact with the military. Or maybe I was asleep when I was editing it.

Go to the Film School Thesis Generator. Then type in "Clonehunter". C'mon. You know you want to do it.

I was a big fan of Pride and Prejudice. And you know I'm a big fan of assassin androids. Or cyborgs. Or whatever. <a href="http://video.latam.msn.com/?mkt=es-xl&amp;from=sp&amp;vid=0b59f191-5161-4abe-852a-ff0c7f4f3503&amp;from=es-xl&amp;fg=dest" target="_new" title="Hanna">Video: Hanna</a>

Things to Buy

How to be Passive Aggressive on Your Blog

And make your friends hate you.

Cage is now a woman.
Mooney got killed in the first scene.

Mooney's description now is more like Cage's used to be.

CAGE, weapons and ordinance specialist - a frightening tank of a man, a 240 pound killer - flexes his muscles; his left arm is a tangle of wires and hydraulics.

MOONEY - soulful - checks his weapon. MOONEY and CAGE exchange a grin, and MOONEY slugs CAGE's arm with all his might. Adding to the punch: MOONEY has two BIONIC HANDS. 

Tango is the radio guy. Doc Ponce is still the medic.

Although actually I'm not being passive aggressive on my blog, I use my blog to take notes. So there. 

BS2

The new Blake Snyder Beat Sheet Calculator.

Because I keep forgetting where it is on the Internet.