FULL FILM (no password)

Full film is now free to all.

Please watch, repost, share and tell yer friends.  Seriously! Please help spread the word.

DGC BEST SHORT FILM NOM!!!

We just got nominated for a DIRECTOR’S GUILD OF CANADA AWARD!!!!  

This October we are up for BEST SHORT FILM!

Read more:

http://tinyurl.com/cqmfvqt

TRAILER - YouTube link

I PREFER YOU WATCHING IN HD ON VIMEO but For those peeps that could NOT see the vimeo link.  Here is the trailer on youtube.

Please watch in 720 or at least 480.

Wait a minute, who am I kidding.   Don’t listen to me.  Fuck it!  If you wanna watch it in 240p you go right ahead.  I’m just happy you’re watching it.

POSTER.

A guy named Noah Hornstein did an awesome little poster for the film!  

It reminds me a little of a cool old comic called Optic Nerve. 

Thanks Noah!

Check out Noah’s work here: www.noahhornstein.com

IMDB Official-ness

Okay feeling official.  The trailer is released and getting some hits and the IMDB page is now live.

Feel free to post on the IMDB page if that is your thing.  That stuff really helps if you can believe it.

LINK: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2063843/

AND BIG THANKS to everybody who reblogged the trailer.  Very cool of you!  Very much appreciated!

TRAILER

Here is the trailer.  I hope you love it.  

If you do, PLEASE repost, tweet and mention it on FB.  PLEASE tell people.  I’d love it to be seen and I’d love for people to grow some interest in the film before it is released.

Okay so one thing I want to mention.

The first shot in the trailer is an aerial view of Central park in NYC.  Here’s the thing, that shot doesn’t really have any meaning.  It is not in the actual film and the film isn’t supposed to take place in NYC.  The story takes place anywhere a city park could be.  It is supposed to be non-specific.  It is supposed to be the “Every City”.

So why the NYC shot?

Honestly?  Cause I had it.  I went through all my aerial Toronto clips but they were all of the down town core.  I really wanted to start the trailer with a high vantage point of a park but couldn’t find ANYTHING.

Then I remembered that I had a small library of aerial NYC shots.  I found the one of Central Park and thought, it worked.

And I think it does.

But I also felt compelled to explain myself.  So here I am, over explaining myself.

TRAILER (coming soon)

Cutting a trailer is DIFFICULT.

Cutting a trailer for a SHORT film is next to impossible.  It just seems RIDICULOUS to cut what is essentially a short film for a short film.

YET, here I am cutting a trailer for an 8min film.

I limited myself to ONE MIN. Tell the concept in ONE MIN and get people excited to see it.

AHHHHHH»»FUCKING hard!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then I got lucky.  I found a GREAT song by an obscure Australian band that feels perfect. It has the same tone as the score but has the tempo that a Trailer needs.

I spent a LOOOONG time finding the right song and then building the bed but once that was done, the skeleton came together quick.

I’ll post here tomorrow and then on FB and Twitter on Monday.

I hope you like it but ANY feed back is welcome.

DVD

I compressed to DVD this morning.  For the record I HATE DVDs.

You work so hard to get a great look and feel and the you have to compress it to DVD and it NEVER looks the way it should.  Most people don’t notice (or care) but for us filmakers it is painful.

Anyway, I built a quickie animated menu on this one.  The image sequence should give you an idea as to how it looks.

I might build a better one later but I need to crank out a teaser today for the IMDB page.

Noise Artifacts (nerd post)

BEFORE

AFTER

***EDIT***

I just looked at this post on a small laptop screen and the pics are TOO SMALL - there is NO difference in the images - which makes this post sound insane. 

Okay now to the post that makes NO SENSE:

So I sent what I thought was locked cut to Graham (my DP) and he came back witha few suggestions.  Most of his ideas I had already tried and answered but he had one that was a fucking firecracker.  Needless to say I took the advice and tried out his idea.  Luckily for me I had some awesome GoPro footage that WORKED perfectly.  Amazing how a simple change or addition can raise the value of piece so remarkably.  (I’ll post the new version soon).

But that is not what this post is about.  As the title stated this is a nerd post.

NOISE REDUCTION!

Okay, for some reason I allowed Notch to convince me that I didn’t need any noise reduction or sharpening.  Well that is a lesson learned.  I am sure they wanted to save the render time but guess what?  I NEEDED the fucking noise reductio and sharpening. 

So these last few days I took the opportunity to develop a little recipe for removing noise while retaining sharness in the image.

I just wanted to share a quick “before and after”.  It is almost impossible to see what I am talking about in this post whick make the whole post a bit of a wank but hear me out.

Look at the dark background behind “Jill’s” hair in the image on the top, then look at how inky and smooth it looks in the bottom pic.  

Now look at how the sharpness is the same.

It may seem like a small thing, but it is a HUGE difference especially on a big screen.  Like your home TV or projected….

Trust me it is a big deal.  In the full resolution version I have removed all the blocky noise artifacts and made it look smooth without looking soft focus.  And that ain’t easy.

For those of you who have seen the cut already, well, a new cut is coming out soon - maybe tomorrow and it will look and feel better.

NEW HOME

FIRST SLATE FROM THE FIRST SHOT OF THE FIRST SCENE ON THE FIRST DAY

Speaking of firsts, I’m gunna call this the first “Official” day of the new blog.  Been slowly transferring everything from the now shut down old home and am almost up to date.

Please tell your friends to check out the site!  Or don’t.  I’m not get all demanding on you.

Good news is that the film is done.  I am doing a few final tweaks and then will start submitting to festivals.

I’ll keep you updated.

COLOR GRADE

Holy shit is Notch amazing.  The facility is a ridiculously cool giant loft at king and Peter wich happens to be a 1 min walk from my place and it is awesome.

We graded on a Pablo Neo wich is, as you can tell from the pic, a ridiculously expensive set up.  I think there are only 5 or so of these in the whole city.

Chuck Noseworthy did the grade and I was very please with him.  It took us about 8 hours to do the whole thing which may seem long but seeing as it took me 4 days to do a pass in after effects and 18 hours to render out my test grade - 6 hours felt like light speed.

It is probably hard to tell from the dark pic but the room we were in was bigger than my apartment.  It had a massive couch and a huge plasma to watch playback.  Snacks everywhere a frige with beer and soft pillows.

I think I will continue to make films just so I can go back.

And the grade looks fucking great.  All the light continuity issues are resolved and the film is looking awesome.  Fucking awesome.

A huge weight has been lifted off my chest.  I can see the finish line.

PULLING HAIR OUT RANT.

Okay fuckin fuck mother fuck fuck!

Sorry needed that out of my system...

My computer is on it’s last legs.  It’s dying.  It’s almost fucking dead.  It has been a good rig and has gotten me through two feature edits and a ton of short work but it is now buckling under the weight of the R3D files.    

It made it through the edit no problem but now as I get into color grading it is torture.   Fucking torture.

It is taking about 3 seconds for every click, there is ZERO render preview and the delay to the color monitor is absurdly long if it is there is one at all!

I have two options - upgrade to a new system so I can run Da Vinci (instead of attempting to do this in after effects) or find a post house that do my color work.

Well I can’t afford to buy a new rig so post hose it is.  Here is where it get even more insane.

Getting a post hose to even get back to me has been torture in itself.  I fill out their forms answer their questions and they simply DO NOT bother to even deliver a quote.  Seriously RED LAB DIGITAL I am looking at you, WTF is wrong with you?

Other places want to charge ridiculous amounts of cash per hour to grade on shitty outdated machines.  It is madness.

On the advice of Warren Sonada I called NOTCH (notch.ca) who do a lot of the grading for commercials in the city.  I spoke to Chuck who put me in contact with Michael who watched my film took my info and gave me a quote a few hours later.

I am now happily booked to grade the film with a professional colorist on one of the highest end grading suites in the city.

I am stoked.  But I still feel like going and punching the other post houses in the face.

AUDIO COMPLETED

All the audio is back and sounds great.  I love the score Jordan did and Richard did a great sound design and mix.  

There were quite a few obstacles with audio.  The park was insane with noise - Trains Planes and automobiles as well as crazy drunk hobos fighting with their girlfriends, kids playing soccer, dogs barking and a LOT of wind.

To be honest, I am shocked the audio turned out so well.  I haven’t mentioned Max our audio recordist yet (pic above) and he really deserves a big pat on the back.  Thanks Max, you rock!