It’s been a year now of nearly solid editing on FToM - the year before was spent 90% finalizing the story / script and and the other 10% editing down footage and seeing which pieces I had to work with - and during the entire post-production process I’ve always edited around temp narration tracks done by myself; I suppose I mainly did this because I was still working on the story and words I felt comfortable using, and also because… well, I am very slow to let people look at the film itself; hell, Erica and I have been together for four years now, and she only just the film for the first time about two months ago.
After screening the current edit with Ayz, one of his key bits of feedback was it’s time to find someone capable of recording a new temp narration track for me to edit around… and I agree completely. I do okay’ish for the first 40 minutes of the film, but then I just don’t have the control over my voice to a) keep people’s attention on every word, and b) to evoke certain necessary emotions from the viewer. As Ayz kindly put it, my voice “flatlines”.
I did a lot of thinking and stalling and re-thinking and talking myself in circles about who to approach, who to trust, who would do a beautiful job. I knew that I wasn’t 100% settled yet on what kind of voice would best-fit the finished film, so that complicated the decision process, but after stepping back from the film while my family was in town recently, I decided it was time I moved forward. A few days I go I asked someone that I trust very, very much - someone I knew would bring a lot to the narration that I never could… and really: I am so excited to hear this person narrate the film. I really am. We don’t have a date locked down yet, but they’ve said yes! This is a huge step in the post-production process… it’s one of the very last stretches.
via mikeambs:
2) Going over 64 Days parts 5 - 8 with Amanda. … 4) Watching the wave-tank at the Long Beach Aquarium. …
The above video is my most recent 7x7, I only shared it here because I wanted to write about a really great meeting Amanda and I had on the next-and-last four parts of 64 Days - the shot is only of a yellow draft page on the table while Amanda is talking, but still, it’s semi-related to what I’ll be talking about.
I mentioned in a November post that my focus this month and over the next few months ahead would be writing for our 64 Days series, I have been doing just that, while also finishing up some freelance editing work for a school in Michigan. Before Amanda and I sat down to go over the draft-scripts though, I was stuck… very stuck. Being stuck for a day is a bad-day, being stuck for a week keeps you up half the night tossing and turning, being stuck beyond that - well. When Amanda and I started reading what I had been working on, the areas of the script that were wrong quickly became obvious and I walked away with about 5 pages worth of notes.
I admit, I do miss the early stages of writing - the FToM script is 99.9% complete, only a word or two here and there that we keep coming back to, and it’s nothing that we are waiting to move on, the film is moving forward as it’s written, but in the meantime, each time I re-read a page I find myself making a minor adjustment. But, working on 64 Days again, after so much time has passed, is very exciting. It’s difficult for Amanda and I to visit some of those days on the road - many of them were wonderful and productive, but a few were some of the most difficult days we’ve ever gone through as friends. Talking about them again and finding ways to approach them narratively was a great exercise and I’m anxious to revise my drafts based off the notes that we took.
Source: vimeo.com
the 1st official FToM meeting since arriving back in LA
Last Saturday Amanda and I met with Vu to eat Wurstkuche sausages and, more important, discuss FToM. The last two months have been a mess for me, at least on a personal level, I’ve moved 3 times between the states of Michigan, Kentucky and California… I watched Erica have to say goodbye to her Grandmother… and some other things that *are* personal, so perhaps they belong in another post on another blog. But!, our meeting felt really great to have - it was exciting to have someone that has a different perspective on the project, someone who has been looking at it from the outside for as long as the film has existed.
Some of you might remember that a late-night phone-call with Vu, back in July, prompted this video-update and also inspired the planing of a new Kickstarter campaign. In mid-September I spent 10 days here in LA living out of a suitcase and working for Blip.tv - during that time Vu and I were supposed to sit down and talk about FToM, but I unexpectedly rushed back to Kentucky for a funeral before that meeting happened. It took another two weeks in which my Dad was re-married, and Erica and I unloaded and then re-reloaded all our belonging into a uHaul trailer for a 2,000 drive west. If anything, this meeting was long, long overdue.
We talked about the three areas of the project where I feel most focused: the film, outreach, and funding - I mentioned these three areas in a recent post where I opted for opening up the film’s roadmap publicly; which would allow anyone to not only review and discuss our goals and focus, but actually make edits to the roadmap - which for those of you who showed interest in that, we will be opening that up for everyone to see very shortly.
In the meantime, I wanted to go over what we decided during our meeting - the approach we are taking is to finish writing the following 3 (out of 4) remaining parts to our behind-the-scenes series, 64 Days, by the end of this year. None of these 3 parts will be released though until near March, sometime just before SXSW. We are doing this to release the parts alongside a re-thought-out and re-launched Kickstarter campaign. This approach is going to be a real challenge for us - for myself especially, this month I am currently working three different editing jobs to make ends meet, moving across the country has a tendency to put a hurt on savings-accounts - and following that will be December, which is going to require a lot of bah!-humbug on my part. This is a large shift in the film’s approach from last Sept - I’ve been so anxious and determined and stubborn about continuing to make progress on FToM, that the project as a whole hasn’t been able to move forward. That’s going to change.
The other morning I rode my bicycle across town to meet with Amanda’s Mom, Laurie, to go over the script notes she provided - Amanda joined us on iChat.
We are so excited to be at this stage of writing - I can’t even explain how happy and rewarding it feels to hold the finished script in my hands.
From here on during post-production, things are about to pick up pace very quickly. I’m doing my best to prepare myself for the next several months… they are going to be our hardest yet… but I know all of it will be worth it.
Note: I realized, only after recording this, that if you use the front-facing camera on the iPhone that it is *not* 720p HD… so this is a little low-light and crazy looking.
The last week of work for Pedal has been a big multi-tasking challenge. It always seems like the holidays come with a traffic-jam of task and catching-up. I’ve been keeping myself overworked with re-writing / storyboarding / scanning those storyboards and editing them into theFToM timeline. I’ve been recording new temporary voice-over tracks for pacing. Finishing our 64 Days production journal. Packaging up all the t-shirts, stickers, and (now) little owls that people have been buying from ournew store. I feel like I’ve had great momentum this month and I hope I can find creative ways of keeping that momentum in the next four months! Which brings me to a question I wanted to ask: Do any of you reading have ideas about how we can be more open in what Amanda and I are working on from now until May (when we film in Northern California)? Are you interested in seeing a list of weekly task? Are you interested in simply seeing more Production Vlog Updates? I suppose my thinking is, the next few months are going to require a tremendous amount of focus and energy… and I’m a believer in the idea that people’s interaction and involvement, even oversight, is extremely motivating and sparks creativity. Moving on. I wish I could go into details right now – but it’s not time for a full announcement just yet, but I’m far too excited to keep it all to myself: Amanda and I are very close to working with two very talented people who’s work we think is amazing. One will be (hopefully) involved with areas of filming, and the other will be (hopefully) involved with areas of design and illustration. More on that as soon as possible – we don’t like to keep secrets from everyone. One more small note before I go – we’ve been migrating all our hosting and registration to Dreamhost, and over the weekend I accidentally deleted the .css file for our main site. So I ended up re-writing it from scratch. Then I stayed up until 2:30 in the morning re-writing 64 Daysfrom scratch. Let us know if you spot any weirdness of certain browsers. Thank you.
Source: blog.projectpedal.com
I spent all day yesterday and most of this morning editing episode 9. As I’m writing this, it’s about 99% done, there’s one shot I still need to take after I shower, but the rest is pretty locked down. Amanda will be coming over later today to watch and re-watch it, taking notes, tightening things up. Short of some disaster, I should be hitting export around 10 o’clock. If you’re not subscribed already, you can subscribe to our RSS feed here, and be notified immediately when we post the new episode. There’s a lot of work still left to do this weekend: I need to write up a newsletter, prepare the PDF of episode nine’s script (I decided it would be fun to include that, show people how we work), and it’s always tough uploading such a large HD file to several sites… this time we’ll be doing it twice (with a newly edited 8, along with 9). This was a difficult episode to write – it introduces the crew members – Olivier, Olan, and Jef – and we tried to really share what their personalities were like, and how being on the road with them shaped the film and Amanda and I. I’m sure we fell short of doing them justice, but I hope we made it clear that they are three amazing, talented, complex, and engaging individuals. Okay. I have a lot of work to do. Thanks for all the support, everyone.
