journal page 8

march 22, 2000
sorta late
hair's too long
yet another long few days of mixing sound. good news is the film is getting better than ever. bad news is we're cutting a scene. or maybe that's good news. have a scene in the middle that's a momentum speed bump that's just gotta go. it's always painful to do, but you gotta kill what isn't working. so the running time will drop to about 8 or 9 minutes and things ought to zoom along from there. whew. it will turn up in the special DVD versions, i swear. you know what movies never have anymore these days? dance-offs. in the climax where the good guy and the bad guy face each other all passionate and angry and somebody turns on some beats and they just have a big dance-off, taking turns trying to one up each other with sassy dance moves. what ever happened to dance-offs?

march 11, 2000
1:15 am
come and go
candy coated
sorry i haven't had time to update this thing in a little while, but between this and that and the what now, i have been pretty swamped. you can all lavish your sympathies on me now. mmmmm, yes. so yet more sound mixing on "rejected" tonight, plus rob stopped in to do yet further vocal recording. we are almost sort of half way there but not really. THIS FILM WILL NEVER BE COMPLETED. ha ha ha ha. woooo. yes things are taking FOREVER, but eventually maybe it will see the light of day. just trying to avoid burn-out right now, though we are beyond the 'is this funny anymore?' point and heading towards the 'gee, the lines sound sorta better when we just play them all backwards' stage. the general consensus seems to be, 'is don ok?' what a fascinating document this film is going to be. between that and the launch of this comic thing next week and redesigning this site and writing other things and etc, well, there it is. exhausted. be good

don

february 22, 2000
copper sneeze my hands are cold
rob did a bang-up job on the 13th, and his vocal tracks to "rejected" are finished. further sound work was halted last week when tim our trusty studio engineer came down with some sort of military virus. but he is all well again and i return to the sound mix tonight and throughout this week putting together the soundtrack. also been working more on this upcoming comic strip doing all sorts of additional design things. it should be pretty good. i think i may have a title for it finally but not sure. our little special friend roberto is happy to report that he got his buttocks pierced. all the kids are doing it now. he's got this giant brass ring sort of like a big door knocker hanging out of it now. tiny people knock on his butt and he turns around and says, "yes?" and they say "is roberto home?" and then they eat donuts. how about that. more soon..

february 9, 2000
sucking blood out of hole in my mouth
more quick production updates - i got back from LA last night from more editing with becca, took more notes today, and will return tomorrow for what should hopefully be the last editing attack. running time teetered towards over ten and a half minutes and we managed to chop it back down to just under ten. things are looking great, so barring the film bursting into flames, we should be in good shape to have a locked picture thursday night. i start studio sound work on friday whilst a video is prepared for studio work on sunday with rob's vocals. that is where the magic happens. or where rob wrecks the entire film. ha. that was a joke he will do super. then it's lots and lots of sound nights until we're done. i've been taking pictures of all this, so check the gallery in less than a week for brand new shots of what's been going on. once the film is more or less finished, i should have about a week before production on the *next* film begins in march with some extensive vocal performances

january 29, 2000
your envelopes do not taste good
there is plenty of paste for your monkey
a film festival wanted me to write some witty tidbit or piece of personal information for their program, and i couldn't think of anything snappy and off the cuff so i just wrote, "all film festival judges are dirty whores." i hope that doesn't hurt my chances. by now you've read the news of the comic strip so i don't feel the need to write any more on that other than it is going to be special and much of the material coming out of it so far is super fire good. so you all have something to look forward to now. no wonder you were all so unhappy. meanwhile, editing continues on "rejected", which is only getting better each go-round. we're working on the big ending now, having locked up much of the film itself, and i've been watching the video transfer endlessly trying to figure out a better shot order, etc. sleepy. i don't think i've ever gone through this much heavy editing before.

the people downstairs are giggling. i hear thumpy noises. a friend just had a baby and she e-mailed me a picture of it. problem is, the picture is over 500k which means it's not so much high quality as it is just super BIG. so big in fact that the entire photo cannot fit in my computer screen. i opened the picture file and i get this GIANT BABY EYE. and i scroll down and there's this big baby nose. and i scroll down further and there's the giant gaping baby mouth. it was a little startling to say the least. for a moment i thought, oh no! my friend had a giant baby!

january 22, 2000
2:34 pm
they don't get it
hiss
it's officially a good movie, as of last night's midnight edit. it's always amazing how many changes a rough cut can go through. but i'm finally happy that all will turn out just fine and quite good. it looks like our final running time will be at right around 10 minutes, give or take a bit. there's still plenty of editing to work on, but only on the ending which has always been no worries, and more minor tweaking...

january 17, 2000
6:36
all the time
------> raining
no tang
as rebecca continues the editing, rob and i spent the weekend with a DAT deck doing sound work, which is now largely completed and ready to go in-studio. the highlights included building the world's greatest crash box and making a whole bunch of noise. i even managed to create the most horrible sound i have ever heard come out of my guitar amp. this is going to be a nutty film. and the most sound-intensive one yet. rob is currently locked in his basement conjuring up voices for it. we're not sure what he's working on exactly, but we hear lots of screaming and howling. sometimes thunder and lightning goes off outside and then he emerges and asks for some pears. i think we're in store for something special. in the meantime, will take more major editorial whacks at the beast this week. will also watch what should be the very very last roll of extra footage i shot for the ending. i think we're around or just under 10 minutes now.

the new hyundai commercial features the car driving out onto the stage at a rock concert. it then accelerates into the moshing crowds and crowd surfs on top of them. a little disclaimer at the bottom of the screen reads, "drive only on roads. do not drive on people."

january 9, 2000
7:something
editing continues, and i am now confident that the film will not be a complete disaster. ha ha <--- director humor. there is still a whole lot of trimming and complete rearranging to do, but i am finally beginning to feel the thing out and get a sense of what needs to do what. it's sort of like the old joke of the artist who sculpts wonderful dinosaurs. he's asked, how do you make them look so realistic? and he says, i just chisel off any part of the rock that doesn't look like a dinosaur. so right now we're cutting everything out that doesn't look like a movie.

i think i'm going to take a photograph of an abandoned xmas tree next to a dumpster and title it 'january.'