Marculations

I wanted to enter the MoviesAskew.com online film festival. That’s what made this train leave the station.

Back when it was first announced, I thought, this is it. I wanted to make a short film, and I wanted to enter it into this contest. So, I started writing, and I started spending money. I started getting a crew together. Ask this person to star in it, ask this other person to hold the camera. I need to buy a microphone? Crap. Ask someone to hold the microphone.

The name of the script was Addict. It was picked from a list of 6 log lines I wrote one night, after I’d asked my then-girlfriend to get on board and be the producer. I picked two of the log lines and wrote treatments, and the treatment that turned out the best was Addict. I should go back a little further with that, though — a year prior, I’d written an outline for a “sketch” called “MMO Man,” which followed the same basic plot.

I wrote the script. It was a long, arduous process, during which I learned how to screenwrite. I had never written a script before, or even held a real script in my hands. But I was writing one, you betcha. Hacking it out in Microsoft Word, using Screenwriting.info as my guide for margins, pagination, and all that.

It didn’t ever get shot.

The first draft of the script was outright garbage. I had never written a script before, and it showed. The actors backed out. I revised it four times. The revisions failed to draw anybody back to the project. I rewrote it completely with the same basic premise, and called it revision five. Nothing.

I decided to move on to other things.

Fast forward to today.

I’m staring at Final Cut Pro. Selling The Faith is about three-quarters of the way completed. The sequences we have shot are edited, filtered and they’ve been rendered. They’re looking pretty good, continuity errors aside. Everybody on the crew has been doing a really great job. I’m registered to enter the Amazon.com/Tribeca Film Festival with it.

We aren’t going to meet our deadline to enter. There just isn’t enough time. We need another week or so.

Which brings me back to the MoviesAskew.com online film festival. If we don’t make deadline for the Amazon contest, we can just enter it into that one instead.

It’s all coming full circle.

Oh and, I think this is just a beautiful shot. Mullet is a frkking mastermind.

Jennifer: why do guys get so pissy about girls being smarter than them
Jennifer: or better at something than them
Marc: You’re the psychologist
Marc: You tell me.
Marc: Go.
Jennifer: guys are dumb
Marc: K.
Marc: This expert opinion has been brought to you by Jen
Jennifer: guys don’t like me

Very little of the audio from yesterday’s shoot is usable. Most of it is just static-filled garbage.

And that’s how I learned to wear headphones to check audio during recording.

Production resumed on Selling The Faith.

I’m a happy little clam. Thingie.

Everybody showed up last night, and I thought, man, this couldn’t get any better. And then, I couldn’t remember my lines. Any of them. Ever. I think we must’ve shot 15 takes or more of the same two page scene, and I never made it through all the way once. I’m desperately hoping that we got enough usable footage to make it work. I’m too afraid to watch.

Short update; I need to edit. So I will close with this picture.

<3

I threw my phone pretty hard into the wall from across the room.

It shattered into more pieces than it is designed to break down into.

I finally gathered them all up and reassembled them into what appears to be a working phone.

So, this phone gets to stay. For now.

Hard at work on a storyboard.

We’re not going to finish the short film.

You heard it here first.

I’m home sick again today. For real this time, though — my phone didn’t ring at eleven.

I was in bed feeling like I was going to throw up until around noon or one, but eventually I got up and about and I’m feeling SLIGHTLY better. Still all crudded up though.

I’ve taken this time to go back and watch the short a bazillion more times. It’s now lost all meaning to me, and I hate it. I did find a few jump cuts that I was able to fix by finding other angles and splicing them in. I think it’s almost completely free of editing mistakes now. So, good on me.

I even went back into the closing credits and removed the derogatory comments towards my ex-girlfriend. That was a shining moment for me. Taking the moral high ground isn’t something I do very often!

I really want to finish this short.

I actually felt happy tonight. I win. I’m going to again tomorrow, too. At six.

(That’s six eastern)

That doesn’t overcome the fact that I feel sick as a dog. Blech.

We’re going to finish the short film this weekend. We’re going to finish it come hell or high water. I swear with everything in me that we’re going to finish the damn short film. If we don’t finish the short film, I’m liable to kill everybody.

Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration. But still. It’s important to me.

We’re mailing off a tape full of the best of our skits to some television station in San Diego that requested them. In exchange, we get a tape back from them of the show that they aired in. So, our stuff is going to be on television in California. That’s pretty “boss.” I’m not sure what skits are being sent in; I don’t know if I even had anything to do with the production of any of them. Even if I didn’t, though, I’m still excited. Exposure for the site is always a Good Thing.

I’m starting to look into casting another short film. This one is 40 pages long. (The current one is 10.) I have a total of one person who is sortof on board to be in it. Abandon all hope. I thought I was trying to quit, but it’s always just one more, just one more for the road. The new script is actually old, but I still want to make it. Let’s see here. It’ll take three young guys (18-20), one older guy (30-40), one young girl (18-20), a bunch of extras, various locations that will be impossible to get, and about two months of work. Oh, let’s not forget a camera person, a microphone person, someone to help with lighting, etc.

I’m predicting problems.

I guess it’s not supposed to be easy.

Apparently, I’ve been getting lead on for a little while.

I don’t really like that.

I’m pretty selective with who I’ll open up to about certain things, who I’ll feel comfortable around, who I’ll give up a lot of my time and thoughts to. I’m like that because I’ve been screwed with before, and I’d like to avoid it happening again.

Well, apparently I let my guard down. I feel stupid for doing that.

I guess I just got “swept up” in the situation. Maybe I was just lonely and didn’t care if everybody’s intentions weren’t the same. Maybe I’m just a sucker for being used. It doesn’t really matter.

All that matters is that I see now what’s really going on. And it makes me sad.

Oh well.