The Calm after the storm

First round of auditions are over.
It was an great experiance. Trent and I arrived at 1:15pm we set up camp, a table 3 chairs one for Matt, Myself and Anna. I brought out the packets filled with folders one folder for each role. On binder of roles for anna matt and myself. See I created review sheets for each actor and then put each actor in a folder based off the role they were auditioning for. Then took all of the roles put them in binders and gave them to my casting crew. Which incidently turned out to be just Anna and me or I or Mi'self. Anna and Trent were invaluable to the audition process. Matt couldnt make it which is a bummer, his oppinion would have been great. But things come up.
INVENTORY
waterbottles for actors check
actor review sheets (nicely sorted check
Chairs for the actors to sit on in the
hallway while waiting check
Sign up mailing list for actors in
hallway check
pens for checking review sheets check
Camera check
Tripod check
extension cords(we needed them
you will too) check
Masking tape(placing marks) check
Audition schedule check
Conflict schedule forgot dammit
List of inventory needed for auditions you guessed didnt make one.

I scheduled the auditions tightly and ran through them fairly well. If I had filled all of the time slots I may very well still be doing auditions right now. We made it through about 23 or so actors.
I enjoyed giving the actors sides and not giving them the whole script this really helped me see how well they could improvise and take direction. I would advise to do the same. however your auditions will run longer then 3 to 5 minutes a person. Give yourself 10 minutes per person and only schedule auditions for 2 hours the first time you do them. 2 hours was enough for me. It was actually 3 and half. One hour to set up 2 hours to auditions 30 minutes to tear down. After the audition dont plan anything but going home and soaking in a hot bath for a while this will help calm my.... I mean your nerves. This is advise for those of you who are thinking of doing this and never have. If you are a vetern film maker please feel free to continue reading my journal and donate free gear.
So now I am at home I have sent my email out to the actors thanking them for coming

"Hello to all who auditioned today,I first would like to thank everyone who came out and gave tremendous performances. It was a pleasure for us to get to know all of you and hear the story of Merlot come to life. We are still reviewing the audition tapes and will send out callback requests tomorrow night by 5pm. For those who do no receive a call back request, I would just like to thank you again for sharing your talent and time with us. " I think that is a nice way of letting people know that if they do not get a call back you still appreciate thier craft and desire to act. I think that everyones art should be treasured and respected. You may think someone is not good or bad, that is not how I like to look at things. Everyone has worth and thier art does as well. So now I go to continue reviewing the artist to see whos work will best bring to life the short story of Merlot.

The absence of peace

So the world is moving fast. Auditions are today, Yesterday was a runthrough of the shoot. There is much that I could share. Really the only thing I can share is I have no business typing in this blog out as Iam extremely busy right now.
Storyboards - I think are more key then ever. After running through a couple of pages of script I noticed something. Where the storyboards ended things became confusing and extremely time consuming. I will do my best to report on all of the happenings over the next week and not miss to many details however it is like bailing torents of information out of a tiny ship. Quickly it will be to overwhelming to get everything into this journal. So I will leave with this key piece of knowledge I knew and now have experianced. Get all of your storyboards done Right now. Do not pass go do not do anything else until they are complete.

Mount and Audition Review + a tip

Ok so tonight I have been working on the mount. I have no power tools. I dont want power tools. I will hand drill my holes and tack the foam and leather on the board and so on and so forth and build my mount the old fashion way, how the cavemen did it. It should be done tomorrow.
Here is a copy of an audition review sheet I made.

1st Audition
Time: 3:03 Name:
Charecter: Robert

Reading
Ineffective Effective
___ One Dimensional ___ Natural Delivery ___ Thoughts between lines
___Over Acted ___ Honest Emotions ___ Spontaneity
___Laid Back unemotional ___ Reaction from Reading

Appearance
___ Perfect ____ Not at all
___ Almost ____ Unexpected but could work
____ Workable
Personality
____ Able to take Direction ___ Chip on shoulder
____ Genuine


Overall
____ Perfect ___ Would not work
____ OK ___ Unexpected, Could work.


That is what you should have for every actor auditioning. Just check things off as you go. Personally I would rather have a so so actor that is easy to work with, then a chip on the shoulder actor that is a pain.

Ok and a tip, first dont stay up an extra 15 minutes to write your blog when your dead tired. You wont make any since, except to yourself and your cat. So what was my tip. Oh yes.
At the audition when the actors show up have a mailing list they can sign you know name email etc. On the list ask would you be interested in crew positions. or something like that. This is a great way to get Actors who may work out great as Production assistants just to get credit.

All right Iam off to bed. Tomorrow I pick equipment and begin messing with it and I also have 1 audition at Lunch.

Film, Productions, Studio media incorporated

Last night I did not have to chase a hamster around. He was caught by my none lethal trap at 3AM and put back in solitary confinement. I had lunch yesterday with Mr.David Lynch lightman guy. He had some incredible advise about what to do and not to do. There were some shots I wanted to attempt and he advised against some of the harder shots. His advise was the story was good on its own and with just a well thought out tripod shoot with a few dolly shots it should be fine. Better to have a clean look the a distracting look. This doesnt mean I still wont try some intersting techniques however I will wait until I have got a good base done. Tell the story simply and well, Then if there is time start messing with harder shots. We talked about light and how you should point your lights at walls or white boards to bounce the light on your subject also recording the rooms sound when nobody is in the room. you pick up the drips humms ticks just the sound of the room this comes in later when editing. When you have your boom on your actors and they are not talking it picks up the room sound as soon as they talk you dont hear the room sound just them talking. So if you have recorded your room sound you lay a track down of nothing but ambient rooom noise so that it does not cut out the moment the actors start talking. Great advise.

Oh so about my title.
I have put a website out there for people interested in projects that my friends or I will be working on. Either to collaborate or watch in dismay. Eitherway I wanted to have a nice name for the site but I did not want to send the wrong message. The first site was hamsterfactory.com and well nobody got it and wanted to know what the hell the name meant. It is based off of a 12 monkeys documentary. Anyway I decided to change the name. If you put productions on the end of anything that means you produce something and other people may want you to produce what they are working on well that is not me. Studio would mean you have a studio people can come and shoot there movies in, not me again, Media sounds like your renting media equipment, finally I went with films. I am even hesitant to use this because I have yet to make a film let alone films. So hopefully this title will be a self fullfilling prophecy. may I should have called it lottery winner. It seems like everyone and thier pet monkey is trying to make a production studio business of some kind or another. They are all going to be big, they are all going to rock hollywood, they are all going to get awards. I just want to tell stories and hope to make them good enough that someone would want to listen and talk about it over coffee and pie. If I do that I win. So the website is www.frontstreetfilms.com if the site updates and upates and then one day there are not updates it could mean I went the way of the dodo bird or is it doedoe or doughdough.

Lights,Wine Audition or something like that

I started today off thinking I would have nothing to report. Boy was I wrong.
My day started off with an email from Blackswan winery. This was in response to an email I sent them asking to use thier wine in our short. Oh and can you send us 15 bottles so we can all sign them and keep them as tokens from the shoot. They responded saying sure but first can you send it an writting and tell us a bit more about you so we know your not a clever boozer. Well they were more eloquent but you get the idea.
Later that day. . . I found out a guy two cubes down from me did lights for The hunt for red october and Twin Peaks: Firewalk with me. Unbelievable. I talked with him for about a while. Talk about knowing lights. He is really busy but I think if I buy some nice lunches and have my light guy and videographer there we might be able to get some good tips. He has already saved me some testing. Always use stage lights as a base. Never just go with natural lighting. Ok. Will do. I hope. I need to take better notes because I was trying to follow but it quickly went over my head with fractals and bouncing and well pretty much terminology beyone, you flip the switch on and things in the room get brighter.
Ok so that was some serious luck and I am super Jazzed.
Even Later that day I went to Wiggly World and checked out equipment. I was going to list everything I am getting on here tonight. But do to a hamster running loose around the house I'am to pre-occupied. All I can say if you are going to shoot a movie rent your equipment way way ahead of time and shop around dont go to the first place that will talk to you and has a camera.

I have also been doing a plethora pleathora Pleiathorieay Hey if your going to mispell aim for the fences. I have been doing a lot of audition work. I will try to post my method for setting up and running auditions in the next day or two. So I guess the only thing I can part as a learning experiance to anyone reading this, is hope for luck and that an A list lighting guy sits two cubes down and may be willing to tolorate giving you advise here and there.

Building the Steadicam and other oddball inventions

The steadicam, but first I should mention I have no intention of editing. I read my post from last night and at first was aware and the gross amount of spell and grammer errors I made. Friends, countrymen I apologize but it has to be this way. Hopefully, you will get the gist of my journey without me focusing to much time on grammer check. So on with the steadi cam.

For those of you who don't know what a steadicam shot is. It is when a person wants a shot of someone walking down the hallway and they follow and the camera floats either by thier feet or head or moves from the feet to the head. There are many other reasons to use a steadicam; getting a POV(point of view) shot of someone running but you dont want the jumpy documentary look. Essentially it helps steadi your cam. You can buy one online for 1600 bucks or if you are cheap and broke like me you can go online and figure out how to build a dumbed down version that works pretty darn close to the 1600 dollar ones. How do I know. I dont I read articles from several people who have tried it.
In my searching I came across this site http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/steadycam/ that gives you a basic steadicam set up for just under 15$ this was the beginning of a model I am working on. Mine costs a bit more but is better fit for bigger cameras and is easier to put together but is essentially the same thing.
Supplies
2 1/2" galvanized Floor Flanges
1 1/2" Malleable Coupling *for outside extension
1 1/2" Tee
2 1/2" Black end caps
2 1/2" x 18" pipe
1 1/2" by 10" black pipe *for outside extension
My friend is working on building a mount for the camera but really all it will be is a piece of wood with cork on each side and with the correct thread count mounting bolt screwed thru the bottom. The wood will then be secured by four bolts onto one of the Flanges that attatches to the Pipe. This cost, oh and a 3lb and 5lb wieght donated by a friend. The cost at Lowes came to 17$ with out the wood or the corkboard but really it cant be much more.
So anyway it went together with ease and that is saying something coming from me I have a panic attack when I have to change the oil and involves more then paying someone 20$ to do it for me. I will test it out this weekend and report back.

Other tricks I will be messing with will be the Wheelchair Dolly. That should be fun. Oh another friend of mine did donate the use of a wheelchair he has access to for my cause.

Day 1

Day 1 was many years ago so I will start with Today.

This is my second attempt at a short film. The first one was a great experiance that ended in just being a great experiance. I learned a lot about pre-production and nothing about production. After the unraveling of actors getting paying gigs, losing the location and then securing top of line equipment. In case something was missed, I had everything but the equipment and the day I secured the equipment that is all I had equipment. The very same day. So hear I am almost a year later with a new script hoping to make a short film. I have been reviewing other peoples short films on IFC and Sundance. I have been watching atom films and Ifilms and local films. I have been wondering will mine look good or will it look like a glorified home video.
I have taken some precautions to hopefully make it look beautiful. With little experaince in bieng a videographer or in producing films I have been studying and gathering resources. I have found two friends who have had some experaince in the past with short movies or at least have a very strong understanding of how to shoot a film.
Books I am currently devouring are;
The complete book of Script writing J Michael Straczynski
Directors Eye Ahart
Digital Filmmaking 101 Dale Newton and John Gaspard
Practical Theatre Trevor Griffeths
Setting the Scene Robert Sennett
The beginning Filmakers Guide to a successful first film Renee Harmon and Jim Lawrence
and
Edna St. Vincent Millay Early Poems (this is for a little sanity)
I am also reading
Filmmaker the Magazine of Independent Film
And Scr(i)pt magazine.
along with countless web forums I am quickly feeling confident and overwhelmed at the same time. This ofcourse leads to lack of sleep that I will need so desperatly as the shooting date approaches.

If you are still reading and interested in this journey I am taking. I should warn you it could end before it begins. However, in 7 days I will be holding auditions with 35 of the northwests bravest actors. I have taken many measures to make sure they have a good time.

I found rental space at a theatre group for 8$ an hour. I decided to rent the space for 4 hours.
One hour to set up 2 hours for auditions and 1 hour to clean up. I recruited to friends with great taste in Film and theatre to help me run the auditions and I also recruited a friend to grab close ups of the actors as I know they will look dramatically different on video then from ten feet away. I am still looking for someone to handle the traffic of actors coming in and out. This all ofcourse is a simplified version of the orginizational challenges I have overcome to avoid a Cattle Call and treat everyone as professionals. I would advice anyone, first to not listen to my advise as I'm inexperianced but needless to say avoid the blanket audition. Meaning you list the time and the place and you then have 300 people show up and 2 hours to get through everyone.

Before I pass out and get up again in 6 hours for my day job it should be recorded that a major breakthrough has happened. Over the last month I have been hoping to aquire the permission to use music from Ireson's Ride. I received my wish today and it is a good day.

Tomorrow I will attempt to build a steadicam wish me luck.