Even as we plunge headlong (like Don Quixote tilting at windmills, err, giants!) towards the start of Principal Photography on Z, I received most excellent news regarding my first independent feature, a silly mockumentary called THE PERFECT MAN CONTEST.
SRS Cinema, a distribution company specializing largely in horror and cult movies, as well as proprietors of b-movies.com has picked up my low-budget comedy for distribution throughout the United Snakes and beyond. They'll be exploiting the picture on all formats currently known to humankind--DVD sales to video chains and retailers, Internet sales, in-room hotel programming and, let’s not forget the obligatory street corner sales of Gray Market copies by street urchins who’ve outgrown their usefulness at the local Nike factory!
So the Great Goddess of Creativity continues to smile upon our little artistic offerings, bringing closure to a previous project right as the next one's about to roll!
On a related note, several independent video stores in Austin are now stocking THE PERFECT MAN CONTEST, since both I Luv Video and Vulcan Video--local purveyors of foreign, independent and hard-to-find movies--bought copies for their multiple locations.
Lemme tell ya, only one feeling surpasses waltzing into a video store and seeing your movie--the product of the blood, sweat and tears of a small army of creative people who bought into your vision--sitting on the shelf...and that's seeing it OFF the shelf because some entertainment-starved customer rented it!
HEMI-DEMI-SEMI-QUAVERS…
Meanwhile, the music for Z continues to come together. To recap: all of the song lyrics were penned simultaneously with the script, and then our erstwhile Music Coordinator, Dan Eggleston, arranged for various wildly talented Austin composers to create original music for them.
That done, we're now in the thick of arranging for various musicians and bands to take the music as originally composed, run it through their own artistic filters, and bring it out the other end in the form of melodious tuneage that can finally be recorded in a sound studio and blasted at full volume on set when we shoot the picture to the great delight of the cast and crew and the great annoyance of anyone within 3 nautical miles of our location!
Because we don't have the budget to bring all these composers and musicians back together months down the road, much less book additional studio time, we're also trying to anticipate the music cues and transitions and carryovers into and out of each song, and record these right at the start--anticipating the final cut of the picture well in advance. This will later require us to tailor the shooting of the song/dance numbers to the music, rather than the usual way 'round. However, this should actually streamline the production a bit, since we won't be able to go off any wild, Milos Forman-esque tangents during the songs. (That crazy Czech dude exposed more feet of film for EACH song/dance number in HAIR than most busy directors expose in their entire careers!)
Now, even though we're devoting much effort to tweaking the dozen songs in Z until they're just right, the final results will still be a little raw compared to, say, a long-running Broadway show that's been dragged in front of the cameras many years after every note and musical phrase has already been tempered and honed through hundreds or even thousands of performances. But, you know, this isn't such a bad thing, this rawness I’m speaking of.
ROUGH AROUND THE EDGES…
Sure, we all attempt to polish our movies to the utmost of their talents and resources, but the results--even at the very pinnacle of the independent food chain--are perforce somewhat ungainly and rough around the edges, which I contend is no small part of its charm to audiences.
By contrast, your typical Hollywood picture is polished to such a bright sheen that the gloss blinds its own creators--and sometimes audiences, if only for the opening weekend--to the inherent faults just beneath the surface. Hollywood scripts are generally given the once-over again and again and again by sometimes genuinely talented scribblers who make a handy living as Script Doctors--hey, where else can you make a $1 million for a week or two of effort and still keep your knickers on?!--until the virtues of the original story are all but lost and what remains shines like the Hope Diamond.
Okay, well maybe not like the Hope Diamond...since despite its spectacular size and centuries-old legacy, the Hope Diamond also has a legendary Curse surrounding it and I’m now thinking it's best to leave the accursed gem out of the story altogether. (Incidentally, the last private owner of the Hope Diamond was a certain Mrs. Evalyn McLEAN--no relation that I’m aware of, although the Curse of the Hope Diamond COULD explain why I never even got to first base with lanky, red-haired Kim Bindewald in college!) Let's pretend instead that I said Hollywood pictures shine like, ohhh, an airbrushed, pneumatic automaton in a Playboy centerfold--so aesthetically perfect on the surface as to seem unreal, unattainable and, ultimately, unsatisfying.
In the end, and despite our best efforts, the musical numbers in Z will likely remain a little rough around the edges, but honestly that won't compromise the integrity of the picture in the least.
YE OLDE WEBBE-SITE…
These days you pretty much can't make a movie without a web-site to promote and support it, and Web Designer is yet another cap that contemporary filmmakers find themselves wearing whether they like it or not.
Since the middle of last year I've had the full-featured, professional web design program, Go Live, a little piece of software from Adobe that set me back almost the equivalent of a full-month’s rent. In such time as I could wrest away from writing the screenplay and the million other tasks of prepping a movie, I'd pull out one of the How To books I'd picked up on Go Live and plow through the opening chapters and try to make sense of how to create a web-site from scratch.
But the damn program just kept kicking my ass! There are so many little buttons and folders where you gotta store files and complicated ways to link shit together that after just a few days of bulling through it I'd find some other task--any other task!--on the picture that suddenly needed my undivided attention.
One of the places where modern-day, independent filmmakers can legitimately be STOPPED is the bewildering arsenal of digital tools that make modern-day, independent filmmaking even possible.
Being merely a writer and director is no longer enough--if, indeed, it ever was. Nowadays you gotta exercise both right AND left sides of the brain in order to get anything done. And that means learning complex software packages inside and out.
Programs like Word and Final Draft for the scripting process are the very least of your worries. PhotoShop alone can take serious chunks of time to master, as does Final Cut Pro, or whatever your choice in non-linear editing software.
But, wait...there's more! Call now and you'll also get to learn After Effects to add gloss to your project and DVD Studio Pro to record it to a format viewable by potential buyers/film festival committees. And, as I say, you need Go Live or the like to build the attendant web-site.
This is far from an all-inclusive list…and most of these programs are SERIOUSLY deep. (Shit, if you decide to toss an audio or music program into the mix you can find your brain short-circuiting in record time!) Many of these software packages require weeks of ramping-up time just to become even basically proficient.
So my advice to any aspiring filmmaker is to get hold of any or all of these programs "by any means necessary" and use your Down-Time to advantage. Don't yet have a budget, a camera, a script, a leading lady or whatever to make your project?! You can still be doing SOMETHING with your time, viz., learning software. And the more you know, the better.
Sure, you take yourself out of circulation while trudging up the Learning Curve. Sure, it often doesn't really feel like you're DOING anything. But knowledge is power and as an independent filmmaker you have much more power than you realize, if you simply tap into it. And it’s better to get ahead of the curve sooner rather than later, so that when you actually NEED the program it’s not a desperate, Kafka-esque struggle to figure it out.
JUST ADD CONTENT…
Lord-a-mercy, I kept coming back to Go Live and coming back to it. More than once I started over from the very beginning in one of my manuals and attempted to make sense of the process all over again. Until finally, quite recently, I simply "got" it--a veritable Eliza Dolittle suddenly losing the Cockney accent. Everything sorta clicked and Go Live suddenly seemed like child's play. (I mean, OF COURSE you can't put a horizontal line directly on a layout grid--it’s gotta be placed inside a Text Box....EVERYBODY knows that!)
From one day to the next, I found myself no longer hindered by the How...now it’s coming down to the What. In an ongoing frenzy, not unlike Dante scribbling away on the DIVINE COMEDY by candle-light--here's something most people don't know…the otherwise sober Dante frittered away a good deal of his writing time by trying to teach his cat to hold a candle in its paws to illuminate his late-night writing sessions--I’ve been adding Content to the site one page at a time until I have something I can actually publish.
The site, azombiemusical.com should be up and running by this weekend…so check it out if you like, and feel free to drop me a note with any advice or feedback, since I'm pretty sure I can now figure out how to make changes!
RULES of ENGAGEMENT…
Finally, and most importantly, something else of some import occurred during the past fortnight.
Art is not created in a vacuum and none of us are impervious to the temptations of the outside world. Making an independent motion picture can easily occupy a full year of your life, but then it’s over and you move on to the next Shiny Object. Whereas other decisions you make can have an even more profound and lasting impact on your quotidian existence.
Indulge me briefly here, while I sing the praises of my brilliant, beautiful and no doubt twisted girlfriend, Shawn O'Connell, who deserves a Nobel Prize in Relationships simply for putting up with my frenzied, surreal lifestyle as an independent filmmaker.
Here's the usual progression of a filmmaker's relationships with women (and the same paradigm probably still holds true if you switch the genders and art forms): You meet someone who's enchanted by your art. They see your stuff and like it and tell all their friends what a cool, creative person they're dating. Then some time passes and you're still doing your stuff, while they begin to grow increasingly perturbed by your absences, by the too interesting/too attractive people you're hanging out with, by the lack of "quality time" you're spending with them. And then it can all go straight down-hill from there.
I have several friends who’ve postponed their art for months or years or even given it up forever, rather than battle their significant other about pursuing their dreams.
So when I chanced upon this paragon of womanhood who not only tolerated my art, but actively has added her own substantial creativity to the mix...well, I had to do something about it! Last week, on the eve of her 33rd birthday, I decided to add her to the crew full-time, if you will, and propose to her!
I could not, of course, do it the old-fashioned way, on bended knee at an elegant Italian restaurant. (Not least since Shawn's the one with a genuine, full-time job around here and she’d end up footing the bill at the end of the evening!) Being a filmmaker I naturally…made a film, a little short which I put up on the Internet as a QuickTime movie. I then rang her at the private club in downtown Austin that she all but runs, calling at the rather ungainly hour of 1:30 am on a Saturday while Shawn & her minions were still cleaning up after a big wedding reception. I asked her to check out this "thing I made", being deliberately vague, and said to call me back after she'd seen it.
I later learned that she kicks one of her employees off the computer at the club and watches this little flick of me proposing, while I'm at home thinking what a clever fellow I am. Before long, Shawn's co-workers have gathered around to watch this short over her shoulder and they're all congratulating her and high-fiving her and, it turns out, she's not particularly amused to have been put on the spot so unexpectedly and publicly, and she's still getting hugs and fending off questions about whether or not we've set a date yet--and she's thinking, "I haven't even said YES yet, so fuck NO we haven't set a date!"--and she's trying to gauge the impact all of this will have on, well, the rest of her life, because she thinks in these terms (since the girl mostly lives in the Real World, a place I hardly ever even visit) and so she delays her arrival home by an hour, then two hours, then more, while I'm sitting on the edge of my seat the entire time, wondering WHAT she's gonna say, WHY she didn't call, and suddenly I don't think I'm so clever after all…I’m thinking I shoulda proposed the old-fashioned way, on bended knee at an elegant Italian restaurant, like a normal person--why can't I ever do anything NORMALLY?!--and then finally, in the wee hours of the morning, Shawn arrives home at long last...and even THEN she proceeds to make small talk and recount her evening at work for a good half hour, slowly and deliberately twisting the knife in my heart even more, just to make sure I get the point, until finally she looks at me and says--
But first, here's the little movie I made to ask Shawn O’Connell to marry me:
--yes! She says yes!
So the story has a Happy Ending! (Well, for me, at least! I can't speak for Shawn, other than to suggest that for every year Shawn’s with me should equate to a full century of Time Off in Purgatory; even though she doesn't believe in Purgatory, and even though the Catholic Church doesn't really pimp for Purgatory anymore, not since Vatican II). Hell, I guess this means she loves me…even though I’m a little Rough Around the Edges! But, then, aren’t we all?!
Oh, and just for the record: NO, we haven't set a fucking DATE yet, so stop asking!
NEXT: things heat up as Music, Casting, Location Scouting, Props, Costumes and Scheduling all come together like Higgs' Scalar Bosons in a super-colossal, super-conducting, super-collider!
