The No One's Home Productions Editing Bay

A few months ago (around October) I purchased a Mac Pro tower to edit on. This machine is FAST. It starts up in literally 8 seconds. It has two 2.8 Ghz quad-core processors, for a total of 8 cores, and 32 GB worth of memory for lightning fast rendering and exporting, a killer graphics card for perfect real-time video playback, and I now have approximately 8 Terrabytes of total hard drive space on 5 separate drives so I can back up the entire project 5 times. Rule #1: always back up your footage!

But not long after the purchase, I had to take a short hiatus from working on Low Shoulders to concentrate on some personal life stuff. But now, it’s a new year, and I have refocused my energies on completing what is, at this point, a one and a half year long project.

Cutting together the last couple of scenes of Low Shoulders.

The good news is that, with my full attention now on this project, everything should proceed exponentially. In fact, I’m very happy to announce that I currently have fully completed a 45 minute rough cut of the entire film. It’s looking great. There are some really beautiful scenes and some powerful lines in the film. The ending is particularly engaging.

I’m working alone on the editing with literally hundreds of hours of footage, so it’s been a lot of work and a lot of time to get where I am, and I am extremely happy to have gotten this far.

On the other hand, that doesn’t mean we’ll be ready to show next week. There’s a lot of work left to do. We’ve got to compile a soundtrack, record all the ADR (post-dub work) that we need, film a few pick-up shots, fine tune the edit, clean up the soundtrack, record any foley (sound effects), and color correct. Then we print. Then we show.

So you can see there’s a lot to it. But we do have a game plan. Over Christmas, I met with the musician who will be working on the score for the film, David Stern of The Sanctuaries, and shared some rough edits with him. We discussed some ideas and strategies around the sound design, and it seems like he’ll have a lot of great stuff to add to the process.

I also met with our sound designer/editor, Daniel Humphrey, and started to get some initial feedback on the work we’ll have to do on the sound. This film is a particular challenge, considering how much of it takes place and was recorded either outside or in a car, where the environment is pretty hard to control. We’re looking at a decent chunk of ADR work, but that’s no big thing—Hollywood relies heavily on ADR, more than you probably think.

That’s about it. I hope you all had a happy new year, and are looking forward to a fantastic 2012!

-Elijah

-Evan

Disappointment, And The Pleasures of Preparation

Dear Friends,

Well, I feel like I’ve finally joined the ranks of real, working actors. Last week I auditioned for a great part, got a callback, and then was not cast. Got a nice note from the director, however.

Although I haven’t auditioned many times in the last year or so, it seems as if I was cast for everything that I read. It was a good run, but the experience of not getting this part is as valuable a learning experience as anything.

Certainly, one of the secrets to a satisfying actor’s life — I’m told — is the ability to remain unattached to particular parts and opportunities. Go in, do your best, and then the rest is out of your hands. [...]

This audition was for a stage production of the play PROOF, which is a recent Pulitzer Prize winner. One result of my detailed preparation was that I found myself loving the character, Robert, and the emotional process I was experiencing being him. I was reading the main character’s father: so I was a brilliant mathematician who loses my mind. I found that being both mathematical and mentally disjointed intrigued me, drew me in. I began seeing things in a skewed but poetic manner.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to the lines where my disjointedness became apparent, so I missed out on playing that aspect, even though I could feel it building up in me in the earlier segments.

My (character) daughter is apparently mathematically gifted also — a fact I say that I discovered when she was a toddler. That triggered some interesting questions in me, including: how does a parent discover that their toddler is a mathematical genius? I had never thought about that question before, and had to figure it out to be this character. Thanks to the internet I was able to find some pertinent and comprehensible stories to use for my personal history.

The details of personal history, though they may be referenced slightly in a script, are usually not spelled out. Still, one of the most interesting tasks an actor faces is to determine, for him or herself, exactly what the history has been. How did I get to be this person, in this relationship? How precisely did I discover — as I said I knew — that my daughter understood prime numbers before she could read? Answering these questions is part of the fun of an actor’s work.

So, it was a hardworking several days for me, and I’m satisfied that I did what I could. Someday I may still work with this theater. They’re called Expressions, and the play will be in March, I believe, here in San Francisco. I hope to see it.

Meanwhile, thanks to my work at letting go, many minutes a day now pass during which I don’t think about the part and what could have been. That’s progress for me. I’m learning to be a working actor.

Take care as the holidays descend.

Con Affetto,

Gino

(Gene Thomas-Solimando)

Low Shoulders is in post-production. In the meantime, I’ve compressed this Denis Johnson novel, Nobody Move, into its constituent notable elements. Like Low Shoulders, Nobody Move has narratives of pursuit and escape. And crime. And pulp. Here goes:

In the middle of fancy new churches, all glass and swooping curves, you’d see oil rigs with their heads going up and down. Gambol suddenly tosses his white hat, then seems to lose consciousness. A man in the movie theater grins and jerks as he follows the action. I know a vet in Madrona. Ruthless neon on the wet streets like busted candy. The Guess What Motel. He’d assumed all logs were fake. Luntz gambles 80 bucks and makes back 65. Anita says, I can do anything I want. The Time Out Lounge. Wind thudded into the car. Capra sits in a flat-back chair. “You want to sit down?” You are what we call a hefty blonde. Luntz’s hands shake when he tries to touch Anita’s bare shoulders with his fingers. You’re cute enough, but you got a sissy body. Luntz dries the sweat between Anita’s breasts with the corner of the bedsheet. He comes upstairs with burgers, fries, soft drinks and vodka. Gambol tells Mary he’s going to come in her face. Using his cane, Gambol breaks the reverse light of a parked Wonder Bread truck. Gambol blacks out the reflectors of his jogging shoes with Magic Marker. Gambol puts bandaids on each of his ten fingers. Ford with novelty death’s heads for locks. Dead wasps litter the threshold. Gambol drinks milk from the refrigerator. Luntz hits Sally with a spade. Anita thinks she sees fireflies coming from the shower head. The chalk person has no legs below the knees. Gambol uses Luntz’s shirt to wrap the shotgun. Anita breaks the judge’s colostomy bag on the judge.

-Evan

I don’t think we could have found a better way to do it. At about 5:30 AM, right in space where night has ended but the morning hasn’t begun – about 10 minutes before the sky first starts to brighten and dawn begins – Evan pulled up to my apartment. We loaded the gear into his car, and drove out to SF to pick up Dan Williams, who was going to help out on the shoot.

With Dan in the backseat, we headed towards the outer Mission, stopping for coffee along the way. The sun started to rise just as we left Starbucks (probably the 20th time we’ve been inside a Starbucks during filming of Low Shoulders) and when we pulled up to the Precita Market & Deli in San Francisco, it was just past 6:30. The sun was up, and the nearby sounds of Cesar Chavez and the freeway were starting to pick up.

And there was our host, Sang, the owner of the market, waiting for us outside with a friendly smile. He ushered us in and helped us set up our lights and gear.  We had a full on Tota light kit borrowed from Adolph Gasser at the last minute, providing us with nice warm lights to make the scene really glow.

Sang and his family at the Precita Market & Deli

Then Sang’s family arrived bearing donuts and more coffee – de facto craft services for the day. Sean showed up to help us finish up our set-up. Smooth sailing. As we relaxed with our coffee and donuts, Gene and Austin arrived, and we began filming.

I thought it was one of our best shoots of the film, with everyone firing on all cylinders. The excitement of nearing the end was palpable, and the graciousness of our hosts made everything all the easier. We had great input from everyone. Danny even arrived to help finish up the last shots – he had driven up all the way from LA, hauling up California from midnight to daybreak, just to shoot these scenes.

We finished up around 9:30 and I got to say “well boys, that’s a wrap.”

Our shotgun mic (left) and the receipt that resulted from using the cash register as a prop (right).

Thanks to the entire cast and crew for bearing with me on this leg of the journey, and I can’t wait to share the fruits borne of the process.

Warren and Faye

Bonnie and Clyde

From Wikipedia: “By 1967′s Summer of Love, [director Arthur] Penn’s film gave the outlaws a new image for a new generation who had no personal recollection of the historical couple’s bloody exploits some 33 years earlier.”

After the jump, documentary footage from the Motion Picture Division of the U.S. National Archives. In 1934, an amateur filmmaker took 16mm footage at the scene of the final moments of Bonnie and Clyde. Narrator: “After having killed 14 people, most of whom were officers of the law, and having come safely through so many gun battles, it did not seem advisable to fire just one bullet.”

-Evan

Here it is:

To make this project happen, my friend is attempting to raise money on Kickstarter. To donate and to purchase a copy of the book, visit http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/58820094/panacea

From Wikipedia:

The panacea ( /pænəˈsiːə/), named after the Greek goddess of healing, Panacea, also known as panchrest, was supposed to be a remedy that would cure all diseases and prolong life indefinitely. It was sought by the alchemists as a connection to the elixir of life and the philosopher’s stone, a mythical substance which would enable the transmutation of common metals into gold.

The Cahuilla Indian people of the Colorado Desert region of California, according to legend, used the red sap of the Elephant Tree as a panacea medicine.

A panacea is also a literary term to represent any solution to solve all problems related to a particular issue.

Not that I blame them – voiceovers seem, at first glance, to be the ultimate copout, a way to smooth out narrative inconsistencies, bridge missing gaps, and simply lazy writing. I can think of plenty of examples: Dune, Vicky Christina Barcelona, Little Children, The Shawshank Redemption, and the non-Director’s cut of Blade Runner are a few that immediately come to mind.

Charlie Kaufman sums up the attitude towards voiceover that these types of film engender in his script for 2002′s Adaptation:

God help you! It’s flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character. You must present the internal conflicts of your character in image, in symbol. Film is a medium of movement and image.

But there are plenty of films where voiceover not only does not jar, but is essential to the storytelling and aesthetic of the films, and helps these films become transcendant.

I’m thinking of work like The Thin Red Line, George Washington, No Country for Old Men, or even a more pulpy film like Fight Club – all of these have lovingly written, beautifully performed, and truly essential voiceover work.

The voiceovers in these films do not undercut the ability or necessity of the image and movement in the storytelling. Instead, they perform alternative roles, explaining not the motivations of the characters within the story, but the reasons the characters need to exist at all.

Chris of Hyper Raje Sound-checking Liz

To this end, yesterday, we went into the Hyper Raje recording studio down in the basement of 965 Mission Street in the heart of SF to record (with Chris Mayrena, sound engineer) the voiceovers for Low Shoulders.

Austin Recording Some Lines

To sum up my goal for the voice over work: the story of Low Shoulders is told, simultaneously, in three versions:

1. the visual and linear narrative of the events
2. Billy’s version of the events
3. Annie’s version of the events

They weave together, in and out, creating a tapestry of story-telling that points to how experience is only that and nothing more (but that this is more than enough) and that the past is always revised in the telling, and it is the telling that makes the past interesting.

Maybe these should be some lyrics? [to a surf rock beat]: “Dodge Dart Swinger – It’s mustard yellow! / If it were a person it’d be a real swell fellow!”…

…”Oh Dodge Dart Swinger – It’s sportin’ the rag top! / Drag racin’ down the street, yeah we’re diggin’ up black top!”

Yeah!

As you can see, Austin and Liz drove around, and we strung the car with lights. It seems that quite the light bulb/lens flare motif has developed over the course of shooting Low Shoulders. What else can I say about the Dodge Dart Swinger except that the pegs you press down to lock the doors are chrome skulls.

-Evan

We went to a Payless Shoe store in Oakland, having called in advance and gotten permission to shoot there. However, once we got there, they promptly turned us away — they had to get approval from corporate, and that involved a series of impossible tasks which no one ought ever dare attempt.

What followed convinced me of the value of supporting locally owned business.

It was time to get on the horn. We made phone calls to just about every shoe store in the East Bay. Time was of the essence, as our cast and crew were waiting patiently to shoot their second scene of the day. Eventually, I talked with the proprietor at See Jane Run, a women’s shoe store in Rockridge. It was incredible: they’d let us shoot, and we could come right in.

And then they were completely helpful and great. And they didn’t have to get approval from corporate! My god, they could help out artists working in their community!

You know who else helped us out that morning: Berkeley Bowl west. Prior to the shoe store scene, we’d shot our grocery store scene that morning. I have no doubt that a mega-grocery store would have required some kind of arcane approval process. It would not have worked. But Berkeley Bowl west had a manager who was willing to say: Hey, your project sounds intriguing. We’d love to help.

Thanks Berkeley Bowl, and thanks See Jane Run. We appreciate that you took a chance with us, and that you were willing to step outside the bounds of what a business-zoned building is for to help our project.

By the way (I learned this from their web site), See Jane Run is a woman-owned and operated company. Very cool!

-Evan