UPrinting

I really like using these guys for printing.  All the Imposter posters, SFilms brochures, business cards and more.  They do a solid job and all online.  They just posted a nice article about us, and I appreciate the call out.

For the article, click this link.  
Also in the news for our world-- we just finished shooting a nice corporate series of videos on Stage B at Studios121 for a new client.  Looking forward to editing them in the next few weeks.

On the home front, tearing off old wallpaper to prepare for texture painting, only to find some sheetrock damage.  Got a feeling I'm about to learn a new skillset.

Upcoming Engagements

I've been asked to speak at several events coming up.  The one I'll focus on today is a faith-based arts conference where I'll teach several filmmaking classes.  Held at CFNI in south Dallas, "Releasing the Light" is August 4-7.  I'll be teaching on Thursday and Friday.

I'll teach from 10:30am to 3pm, with a break for lunch.  I'm going to cover filmmaking, from pre-production to post-production.  If you plan on being there, give me a shout-- would love to hear from you.

Secondly, I'll be speaking as part of a panel on Keith Randal Duncan's "Kamp Hollywood" on August 1, also in Dallas.

And lastly, I'm thinking about scheduling another seminar third week of August.  If you have a request for which seminar or subject matter, please let me know.  For those outside the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, if you have enough people interested, I'd love to set up a seminar in another part of the country.

First day on "The Imposter"

It was a warmish January day.  First shot on "Imposter" was on the side of the Interstate.  A shot of a car passing by.  By this, the fourth movie, I had learned to ease into the shooting-- try not to kill yourself first up.  So we were south of Burleson, Texas, on the side of I-35W, waiting for our hero car to pass by.

We did about three takes.  Ron Gonzalez and I noticed a weird vignetting taking place.  This was my first non-film movie shoot.  We were using HVX200's with lens adapter and PL mounts.  But the PL mount was doing something pretty bizarre.  We eventually went back to our Nikon mount and had no more trouble.

After the car on the highway, we need to shoot the preceding scene, where Kevin' Max's character hitches a ride.  So we did that right there on the frontage road.  Everything went pretty smooth.

We moved to a nearby railroad crossing on a rural road for another shot of KMax traveling.   I remember looking out at the farm nearby and pointing out the cows to Stewart Young, our AD.  Stewart looked at them, then looked at me and said they were horses.  Oops.  Shortly after, I started wearing some prescription glasses.  Oh the joy of growing older.

The day ended at a house nearby, where I had to break the rule and shoot probably the most dramatic scene in the whole movie.  It took a long time to set up and the lighting wasn't great.  Then KMax was still getting settled into acting and overall it just didn't work.  Later, after watching the footage, I decided to reshoot this if we had the chance and two weeks later we did, and it was wonderful-- the lighting, the performance.

Mental State

2 Corinthians 10:5 is that famous verse-- taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.  Sure, this means a sudden sinful thought hits your mind and you pray.  But I'm dealing with something a little different-- not a wild thought, but a mindset... a mental state.

Having grown up in dysfunction (as you have too), I have fallen into mindsets.  Maybe it's a victim mindset as we discussed the other week.  Maybe is a vindictive mindset.  These mindset's are deeply rooted, and I have trouble seeing them.  They're often blindspots for me.  So it's a little more difficult to take the thought captive when I don't even realize I'm thinking vindictively. 

So when someone points out that I'm a miserable vindictive SOB, I can rejoice-- it is a GOOD thing to know.  Something to work on.  A thought process that definitely needs to be help captive to the obedience of Christ.

One of the sad things about the modern evangelical zeal, is that you come to Jesus, you end your struggling.  But Paul discusses in same book, chapter 5, that we in this present tabernacle do groan, being burdened.  To choose to become a Disciple of Jesus is to choose to work.  And though it's incredibly hard sometimes to find out that I have failed and been failing in a certain area of my life, it's GOOD to see it so that I can WORK on taking those thoughts captive.

Also in chapter 5: Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.  If I'm the same person I was before I came to be in Christ, then this verse is a lie.  Or I am.  Or you are.  If you are in Christ, your old things are passed away, and all things are become new.

Truth in Advertising

Almost a year ago, it was time in my household to revisit the tv situation.  Having been a DirectTV loyal customer for ten years, I could get a much better deal either going with DishTV or by quitting and rejoining DirectTV.  I tried to get the rate with DirectTV, but they wouldn't do it.  So I quit and signed a two year deal with Dish.  Then I got the exit call from DirectTV.  They had a rate (the rate I begged for).  But now it would cost me much money to bust the deal with Dish.  And BTW, Dish has been great.

The research (not shown here, you'll just have to take my word for it) shows that it's much less expensive to keep an existing customer than to go get a new one.  So why in this age are the consumer industries ignoring this?

Now it's time to review home/auto insurance.  I think the profit-at-all-costs executives look at the numbers-- most consumers just blindly keep renewing and don't check the industry.  So let's jack up the price a little bit more.  The numbers say that the minuscule percentage of customers that ship and leave are critical-- they get more money by taking advantage of their loyal customers.

You might have read the news stories in 2000, when Amazon was accused of charging some existing customers more because of their shopping habits (in other words they knew they could more likely get away with it).  Amazon denied the accusations, then gave refunds to slighted customers.

For you consumers-- I suggest looking at the advertising.  These large companies know they're screwing consumers-- so they mount publicity and PR campaigns to convince you the opposite.  We have a Capital One credit card.  They ran one commercial with actor Tony Hale in which he tries to get a real person on the phone with his other credit card.  CapOne's campaign of "no hassle" meant you get right through.  I've never gotten right through to CapOne.  They're more hassle than all of my other credit cards.  They've been the first to pillage me if I'm a day late or any other problem.

Allstate's "good hands" campaign.  Complete with Dennis Haysbert, who you definitely want protecting you and your family.  The American Association for Justice places Allstate at the top of the "Greed, Fraud, Claim Denial, Deceptive Practices" list.  If I were the executive at Allstate and didn't want to change my company's practices, I'd launch a preemptive strike-- with all the feel good advertising, when you hear something like the AAJ's report, how in the world can that be true?  Haysbert says I can trust them!

Methinks the lady doth protest too much.  If a company is really trying HARD to create an image in your mind, chances are it's because they're the opposite.  A twist on truth in advertising.

First Day on First Movie

I hardly slept the night before.  I was so excited.  My wife had bought me a new pair of nice shorts and a golf shirt to match (and they were too nice of clothes to be used on a movie set!).  But it was a good thing to have shorts, because Day 1 of "The Keyman" was September 5, 2000, and it was 106 degrees.  As I write this, it's 99 right now and pretty unbearable.  I think my excitement got me through the heat.  During that time, we were also in one of the longest periods without any rain. 

I showed up at a recently closed hospital on the east side of Dallas.  It was a perfect location for what we had to shoot.  Lead actress Ellen Locy was first up, then second half of the day was Adam Baldwin, who had arrived two days before from Los Angeles.  The interesting thing about this story was that the lead actor and the lead actress had only one scene together and that wasn't scheduled until the third week.

I remember parking and seeing all the trailers.  Wow, when did they park these things?  Little dressing rooms... bathrooms.  How cool is this!

First shot was pretty easy.  Exterior, Ellen in vehicle pulls into "morgue" parking lot.  I had read somewhere that a Directing/Producing team made a tradition out of the producer clapping the first and last shot of a movie's shooting.  So I had our Producer Susan Kirr on hand to clap the first take.  (She did it again on the second movie "A Promise Kept.")  Doug Bruce, the 1st AD, had everyone ready to go.

After a couple of takes, it was time for the next shot.  Exterior car, dolly as Ellen sits in the car having just returned from the morgue.  She's upset and starts crying.  Now, I had read a lot about Spielberg as a director-- he's not an actor.  He "directs" his actors by who he selects in the audition-- in other words, very little directing of the actors.

So action is called and Ellen, sitting in the driver's seat, breaks down and cries.  We finish the take and she asks me "was that enough?"  "Too much?"  A voice inside my head said "how would I know?"  But I quashed that thought.  But the reality was the same... I really didn't know.  So being the brilliant director, I told her I thought it was fine, then said, try one with less.  Then after that take, try one with more.  Directing by bracketing.  Not so brilliant.  Later in the edit, for the sake of time, I cut this scene anyway.

Then we (thankfully) moved inside, out of the 106 degree heat.  We shot some more morgue scenes with Ellen.  Then we shot a big scene with Adam.  What was really cool here was that I was using my three year old son as a featured extra.  (Also later cut-- so yes I can tell people I cut my own son out of the movie).  My wife was on set of course, almost 9 months pregnant with my soon to be daughter.  What I learned then hasn't changed to this day-- she is not impressed by a movie set and would rather be home.  What is magic to many, is mundane to her.  So she doesn't visit my movie sets much.

Last scene of the day was Ellen, after getting beat up, talks from her hospital bed to another actress.  Everything seemed to go okay and we wrapped.  Two days later, dailies came back, and the DP had opened the iris all the way for that last scene to get focus, then forgot to dial it back.  So it was majorly blown out.  That scene got added to a "re-shoot" list and fortunately, we did get back to it.

The first day of "The Keyman."

(BTW, "The Keyman" get your DVD for only $10 at the SFilms store!  Free shipping right now.)

Starting a Movie

So now is the season of starting-- I've got a script (that will always be in the process of fine-tuning) for "72".  I've got to do an official breakdown and budget for it and will do that in the next week or so.  But as we're still in the stage I call "Development", the biggest chore is the one that's the second hardest thing to do in indie filmmaking: Fundraising.

I've raised a little bit right now-- to get started.  But in order to get going, I have to hit a certain mark in funds raised or I will have to push back the shoot date.  How do I figure this math?  Well, it's actually pretty easy if you follow this formula.  How long is the shoot?  For me, it can be 18 days, done by 6 day weeks for three weeks.

So how long do I need for Pre-Production?  My formula is 1.5x where x=weeks of shooting.  So basically 4 and a half or round up to five weeks for prep.  So if I got a check for the budget today, the earliest we could be shooting would be late August.

Now I know that one of the name actors I'm talking to has October free, which suits me just fine.  So I back up five weeks and late August is the time to start prep.  And prep can't begin unless the money is solidly raised, contract with investor signed, and funds in the bank.  So I give myself until mid-August to get to that point.  That's one month away.  Four weeks.

::big breath::  So now I saddle up the ponies and get busy.  I've done this ride successfully four other times (and a couple not successful).  If I don't have the funds raised by mid August, then I push the schedule back to November.  I don't want to... but whatever happens, happens.

As a Disciple, I want to make sure I'm in His will-- this means His purpose.  What if I'm wrong about chasing this movie?  Well, God's purpose can't really be thwarted by me.  I'm pretty sure at some point I'll get that message through my thick skull.  And if it is His purpose, then nothing will stop Him from getting His movie made.  Not even me.

BTW-- if you want to make your own movie and find this kind of info helpful, I do have a 3plus hour DVD on all this and more called "Greenlight Yourself" and you can order it for $99 at http://www.s-films.com/store.htm .