Cinequest - Day 2 - Pulling a Bogdanovich

I woke up to a phone call this Friday morning from Dan Brune, my father's first cousin, who lives 'over the hill' near Santa Cruz with his wife Christy. There has long been a war between the East Coast Brunes and the West Coast Brunes, much like the oft-cited rivalry between hip-hop/rap artists from the opposing geographic coasts. What our feud has lacked in attention from the mainstream media outlets, it has made up for in violence. Dan and I have brokered a cease-fire and we will be setting up two-party talks after the BLOOD CAR WORLD PREMIERE TONIGHT AT 1030PM. The West Coast and the East Coast will hopefully reunite. I am looking forward to the talks.

Day 2 - Our first stop today was a filmmaker's luncheon treated by the festival director, Mike, and a group of other filmmakers with films in the festival. There were more people in our posse than other filmmakers combined, but I chalk that up to the other filmmakers not having arrived yet or excessive partying. We dined on raw oysters, shrimp, cheese bread, bruschetta, and those were just appetizers. And Cinequest treated. Now I doubt this will be a regular thing, but it was quite flattering be wined and dined...really just dined. Just imagine if you were someone like Martin Scorsese. I bet he hasn't paid for a meal in twenty years.

The second Blood Car wave arrived today, including Adam P., Hugh B., Jon and Amanda S., Chris A. Apparently, Chris Campbell arrived sometime late that night, but I have yet to see him in person. I know he didn't make it to the hot tub party later that night. The person wearing pants in the hot tub in the foreground is Chris A. the film's gaffer and co-producer.

But hours before clothes started coming off and the jacuzzi jets fired up, a group of us traveled up to San Francisco for an appearance on a pirate radio station called Pirate Cat Radio, 87.9. In the studio were Alex O., Jon S., Adam P., Katie R. and myself, mediated by none other than DJ Blurt, who looked a little ruddy from a recent sunburn, except for pale sunglasses-shaped area around his eyes. The radio station was above a warehouse in a two story non-descript building with one door and no name to speak of. The picture sort of embodies the clandestine feel of the place. This woman asked us for a password and we had agreed on the drive up if the question were ever posed, to say, "Submarine." The real password was 'nuclear submarine', but she cut us a break.

We walked right upstairs and met the host and sat down in the studio and started chatting before we went on air, when she asked us about our record. A chorus of 'uhs' followed and we were promptly ushered out of the radio station because we were not a New Orleans brass/guitar band dressed like a Commedia dell'Arte troupe.

Next door at a taqueria we waited for our guy. We had arrived a little too early. We ate some super tacos that could only be consumed with silverware. Call me old-fashioned, but I like tacos you can hold and, more importantly, control. DJ Blurt arrived and we went back upstairs to the radio station. They welcomed us in true flower child fashion. You can hear the podcast here. It's about an hour or so and pretty entertaining. I speak in a British accent for the first twenty minutes or so of the interview so don't be alarmed. Well, you can be alarmed about how bad the accent sounds. It didn't sound so bad at the time. Thanks to Tova, who set the interview up, and to DJ Blurt and his cohorts for giving us airtime.

Back in San Jose that evening, we split off into promotion teams armed with postcards, posters, and Blood Car keys. We spray painted a bunch of keys yellow and then splattered them with fake blood and tied key rings to them with our screening times. We tell people that one of the keys opens the Blood Car, which is languishing in inertness back in Atlanta, and if they come to the Atlanta Film Festival and bring their key and it opens the car, they win the Blood Car.

Adam and I went to see a film called Swedish Auto starring Lukas Haas and January Jones. It's about a Swedish car mechanic and his voyeuristic love of music. The director was present and answered questions after the film. There was a good My Morning Jacket song over the end credits and I liked Lukas Haas and the scenes with the violin player.

While we sat in the movie theater, Alex O. met Jerry Rice of the San Francisco 49ers and Peter Bogdanovich of the garage that Orson Welles lived in for a few years. Unfortunately, Alex did not have a video camera or we would have taped Peter B. saying "Hello, I'm Peter Bogdanovich and I might have gone to see Blood Car if I wasn't leaving town tomorrow."

The after party was strangely a deja-vu of the one the night before, with a couple of notable exceptions: Free drink tickets, and about six of us sporting Blood Car t-shirts. People continue to tell us that they've heard of the film and that there is buzz about it. Tonight is the big night. Let's wait and see.

'Pulling a Bogdanovich' -- a film phrase in which a filmmaker who is riding a wave of critical and commercial success splits with his wife, (in the Bogdanovich case, Polly Platt, who went on to produce Bottle Rocket), and takes up with another woman (in his case, Cybill Shepherd). His career soon after takes a nose dive while the wife's conversely takes off.

Cinequest - Day 1 - The First Picture Show

If every day in San Jose is like yesterday, I think I'll arrive home in a body bag. We landed in San Francisco and then hopped on a train for San Jose, which is about an hour's drive south. During the ride, Katie showed me a stack of pages that looked like schoolwork, but turned out to the be Blood Car translated into French. We're required to subtitle the film for the European Independent Film Festival. The grandmother of an old boyfriend of Katie's is French and did 95% of the translation, including some of the obscenities. As with any translation, some phrases don't work in another language, e.g. Denise's line "I'm all the f**k out."
I know a little French and my accent hasn't suffered too much since my last French class, with Mon. Eric Le Calvez. I practiced a Watkin's monologue and one of Archie's freakouts in French. We videotaped it, so hopefully you'll see it soon.

Believe it or not, the wireless in our hotel, IN SILICON VALLEY, is sub-par. It's also a little bit of hike to the venues, but we'll make do. Alex and I checked in at the Cinequest HQ at the Montgomery Hotel and received our Filmmaker Passes, which entitled us to all-access privileges to screenings, parties, forums, etc. They fine folks at Cinequest also gave us a goodie bag. Check out the schwag. And yes, in the top right corner are two small wheels of brie with a knife and crackers thoughtfully included.


OUR WORLD PREMIERE WILL BE AT THIS THEATER! OUR WORLD PREMIERE WILL BE AT THIS THEATER! OUR WORLD PREMIERE WILL BE AT THIS THEATER! We snuck in to take a look at the place. That's Mr. Orr on stage doing his impression of a director of an indy film that has just premiered at Cinequest 17. Looking at this picture on the right, I can almost here the applause. And I'm not being vain. There is a little buzz about Blood Car in San Jose. Our capsule review from the Metro(a creative loafing style rag)is in print with a STAR next to it. If there's any doubt about this being the right place for our film, take a look at this advertisement on the side of the light rail car.

But there is something darkly ironic about this town that I must address. As Alex and I walked around, we noticed two or three old movie houses, complete with marquees and old timey box offices that no longer showed the films we hold so dear. Instead, they play the bump and grind music we hold so dear and have names like glo as opposed to The California, the only old time movie house that still seems to show movies. It's like our Fox Theater only smaller. But it has an organist. It saddened me a bit.

But once we strolled into The California that night for the opening night of Cinequest 17, that all faded away. TV crews were everywhere. Sold out show. Beautiful theater. Unfortunately, the opening night film, The Namesake, had some rather serious sound issues during projection which marred an otherwise magical experience. We don't know if it was something with the print or the sound system, but it riled up the crowd a few times. However, at the after party, no one seemed to dwell on it too much, but instead looked ahead to the unveiling of so many eclectic films. If I were to pick a favorite part of the day I would have to say it was the following. As we waited for the opening night film to begin, Cinequest organizers showed a couple of trailers for sponsors and the festival itself. In the latter trailer, which featured the festival director talking about the Cinequest mission, clips from no more than four or five films were shown. One of those films was Blood Car. Sold out house, captive audience, clips of Blood Car. Tony, Julie, Alex, Katie and myself could hardly contain ourselves. Katie said I was blushing. Maybe, but it could have been the lighting.

'Twas the night before Cinequest...

...and all through the studio, not a creature was stirring, not even Hal Ashby.
The lenses were all packed up with care, with hopes that a filmmaker would soon be there.
The film was all nestled all snug in their cans, while visions of an f/16 danced in their heads.
And I in my kerchief and my Uniball in its cap, had just settled down for a long writer's nap.
When out in the parking lot, there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like the Flash, tore open the shutters and threw up the sash
The moon on the breast of the new fallen fake snow, gave the luster of a shooting day to the objects below.
When what to my voyeuristic eyes should aflicker, but a miniature grip truck and eight tiny filmmakers.
With a smart looking driver, so lively and trustworthy, I knew in a moment it must be Halfdan Hussey.
More rapid than a shutter, his coursers they came, and he whistled and shouted and called them by name.
Now Dreyer! ,now Bergman! ,now Chaplin and Godard!
On Truffaut! On Siegel! On Kurosawa and Fellini!
TO BE CONTINUED...

--We leave for Cinequest in the morning. I'll be blogging every night, or morning, depending on how late the nights become. Look for videos, pics and blog entries from all the FWW Films gang on www.bloodcar.com and www.fakewoodwallpaper.com. I promise a picture each day as well, as they really spice up the blog.

A little festival update: The Mendoza Line approaches. .278. Put us back on top Cleveland and NY Underground.

The Mendoza Line?

As you may or may not know, Blood Car was recently accepted to the Atlanta Film Festival. As stated on our website, it's our third non-consecutive appearance at the film festival but our first with a feature film. This one is special because Atlanta is the home of Blood Car. It's where the film lives, no matter where it shows. Had we not been invited, it would have been like being turned away at your own party. I'm looking forward to that parade this April.

But as the road to Atlanta was once paved with bodies and destruction, BC's road to Atlanta is no different. We've left a lot of film festival bodies in our wake, or conversely, they've left us in their wake. Our list of rejections is a who's who in the film festival yearbook. Berlin, Rotterdam, Sundance, Slamdance, SXSW, and more.

On the up side, our current average is .307, which in baseball is fabulous. Our goal is to remain above the Mendoza line(.200), the legacy of shortstop Mario Mendoza of the Pittsburgh Pirates, amongst other teams. Therein lies the boundary between extremely poor and merely below average. Mendoza's career batting average is .215, his nadir coming in his last year in the majors with Texas when he hit .118. However, his personal worst must unarguably be the 1979 season with Seattle when he played over 140 games and still hit .198. Strangely enough, in his 1977 season with the Pirates, he actually pitched for two innings. Judging from the stats, he walked the first two batters he faced and the third homered. I can only assume his hanging breaking ball cost the Pirates the game. Career ERA: 13.50

This being FWW's rookie season in the festival circuit, we hope to remain above .300 like so many great MLB rookies of yesteryear. Boggs, DiMaggio, Williams, etc. I'll update you as necessary.

We're waiting to hear back from quite a few festivals with March dates including Florida, Ann Arbor, Cleveland, New York Underground and more. Procrastinators.

As I was spellchecking this post, we heard from Florida. New average: .286. Well, Pete Rose and Mantle didn't hit over .300 their inaugural seasons.

Stop Making Sense!

The Blood Car World Premiere at Cinequest 17 draws ever closer. We've booked our plane tickets. All told, 12 of us will be heading westward for the opening weekend of the festival, with a handful of us hanging around for the duration of the 12 day movie extravaganza. Special guests Anna C. and my brothers, Greg and Chris, will be joining us as well.

Recently, I was able to spend some quality time with Blood Car at Lab 601 in Atlanta, GA, where we were outputting our film from a RAID(sic) drive to HDCAM tape. This tape will be used to make all the screening dubs which will screen at the various festivals we've been accepted to thus far. Here is Alex with the computer and the drive which housed 4 terabytes of uncompressed HD video.

Now, Lab 601 is primarily an AVID facility and since we cut BC on Final Cut, we encountered a few hiccups during the outputting process. The reason I was there was quality control, which I trained in when I used to work in a soap factory in Daytona Beach. I had to watch BC during the output to ensure that it went to tape according to the filmmaker's vision. No problem. Being a post house, they're pretty hip and a woman baked chocolate chip cookies while I was there. I drank Mr. Pibb from some strange, 80s era fountain machine. Walking up stairs to the machine room, they had all sorts of action figures and toys along the walls, but some fine soul slipped amongst those childish diversions an old edition of recent MacArthur Genius Grant winner George Saunders's book Civilwarland in Bad Decline, a book of short stories.

In other news, one of cinema's household names watched Blood Car and enjoyed it. He furnished us with a quote, which you can find on www.bloodcar.com. His name is Jonathan Demme and Alex, Katie and I had the privilege of working alongside him on a recent doc. He's a kind man and as far as filmmakers go, he's the real thing.

I know I mentioned this in my last post, but our BC cast and crew screening was shown in the exact same theater where Hugh B. and I saw Stop Making Sense! on 35mm.

I'm also concocting a rather detailed travel itinerary for us for the festival. Details later.

Cast and Crew Unite and Take Over

Well, this past Monday we held our cast and crew screening here at the Plaza Theater on Ponce de Leon Ave. Notice The Fountain is playing here. In the sitcom Seinfeld, George Costanza cried when he saw Ponce de Leon, a fictitious film that chronicled the hopeless tragedy of the title character's search for eternal life.

Adam P. used evite.com to send out invitations for this private screening. Our final evite tally reads: Yes-78, Maybe-7, No-6, Not Yet replied-23.

It was an uplifting showing with plenty of laughs and applause at the end. I hugged a lot of people. I only had to ask two people who I had met before for their names. Everyone looked good, some better than they had a year ago when I last saw them, some the same(I certainly did anyway.). I wasn't nervous before the screening because I had two poorly mixed rum n' cokes, but as soon as the credits rolled, the caterpillars in my stomach became butterflies and they didn't settle down until the after-party at Manuel's Tavern on North Ave. I'm serious. My stomach is a habitat for caterpillars. I'm serious.

I stood up in the back for the entire movie, and I only had to shift my weight twice, once from my left leg to my right and then from my right leg back to my left. I have a couple vivid memories that really stood out that night. The first is visual; the second, aural. Before the screening started, I went up into the projection booth where Jon S. and Alex O. were calibrating the digital projector. The movie was frozen on the title card, which is superimposed over a shot of a manhole cover(I think.). I peered through the little windows of the projection booth and saw the red letters of Blood Car on a movie screen for the first time. A movie screen. The same exact movie screen where I saw Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense years earlier and watched the dozen or so people in the theater stand up and start dancing like it was a Talking Heads concert. Unforgettable. Hugh B. was there. The exact same movie house and movie screen.

The next memory was the sound of laughing of a few certain people who will remain nameless, but whose laughs I could pick out of a lineup, detective. Their laughs make me laugh, though there was one laugh that was not present that I believe all the makers of Blood Car know was sorely missed. That laugh was in a different state.

I received two gifts at the Blood Car screening. Here is one. This is my family. There are no superlatives bright enough to describe them.


Chris B., second from right, is wearing a shirt that references this very blog, though the first letter is not quite discernible. It reads 'blutauto'.

The second was a CD of photos taken by Blake M., one of Blood Car's FX leaders and Capt. of the Blood Team. There was one particular photo that stood out.

It looks like it was taken in the mid-80s from an old 16mm camera with film that was just sitting in a box in someone's attic.

On a side note, I have not shaved since the morning of the screening.

Absorbed and Honored!

< Thank you very much for your submission of BLOOD CAR for the 2007 Cinequest Film Festival. We were absolutely absorbed by the film and know it would make a great addition to the festival?s exciting Maverick program of films. We are honored to invite BLOOD CAR to participate in the 17^th Annual Cinequest Film Festival, as part of the New Visions section, where the film will be eligible for the New Vision Award in filmmaking. Cinequest will occur February 28 ? March 11, 2007 in San Jose, California?the heart of Silicon Valley. >>

Acceptance. Mr. Orr received this email approximately one day after the double-rejection from the Park City dances. He called me to tell me the good news. Adam P. called me a few hours later to make sure I'd heard. I rarely receive "Did you hear the news?" calls, but boy how sweet they are when the news is triumphant. I think one of my new year's resolutions will be to make more of those kinds of calls. Imagine receiving a call from me proclaiming, "Did you hear the news?" "No, what?" "Diamonds can be manufactured in a factory that are virtually identical to the real thing." I just learned this.

I think the last time I contacted someone with a 'dyhtn' call was when I heard that filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville never won an award for anything, nor was he ever nominated for anything(at least according to IMDB). And it wasn't a call, but an email, though in retrospect, I wish I had called everyone of my friends about it. I think I wanted to call everyone, but I just wasn't that kind of person then. At any rate, WHAT A CRIME!

Well, Cinequest, if you read this, know that we will all be venturing out your way the 28th of February, 2007 or perhaps before. We wouldn't miss it for the world. The Blood Car World Premiere. I myself can't wait to be arm-in-arm with Silicon Valley and a stone's throw from the Salinas Valley and perhaps rehabilitate my currently infirm convenent with God in St. Joseph's Cathedral Basilica. It looks to be a suitable place.

Blood for the Holidays

Our cast and crew screening for Blood Car will be this Monday, December 11th. I'm quite excited. If you were on the cast and/or crew, you should have received an Evite with details. If not, feel free to comment on this blog and we'll draw up an invitation for you.

Lamentationdance

Recent News.

Blood Car was not accepted to either the Sundance Film Festival or the Slamdance Film Festival, so will we officially not be going to Park City, Utah this January. Well, I submitted a short film of mine to Slamdance and I have yet to be notified about its fate. But the big news is...two festivals-two rejections. 0-2.

I didn't expect acceptance to Sundance. Based on what I know about Sundance and the synopses I read for this year's festival, it's not really a Blood Car type of festival in that genre/grindhouse/comedy-horror films aren't really Sundance material. I have said to many a person that if we didn't get into Slamdance, it would be a serious blow to the hopes of a strong festival year. I still believe that, but not being admitted to Sundance prepared me for the rejection. Odd as it may sound, not getting into a festival I didn't think we had much of a shot at created a rejection callus for a festival I thought we had a shot at. It numbed my nerves a little.

Alex called Slamdance today and asked about our film's status, and from what Adam P. told me, the woman on the line in Park City said, "I'm sorry. It was very close." Something to that effect, at least.

Having a conversation with producer/co-writer/DP(a superlative mix to be sure) Adam P. brought me down to Earth. It's our first film and we made it so we could sell it, probably straight to DVD if we were to be frank and earnest with ourselves. Nevertheless, we hoped, or at least I did, that the film would rise above itself and take the festival circuit by storm.

I don't mean to sound fatalistic or hopeless because, hey, what are two festivals in the scheme of over 40 that Blood Car has been submitted to thusfar? The possibilities remain bountiful for 2007. I'm confidant we'll play some great festivals. Perhaps we won't kick off the year with Park City, but I know for a fact a film festival in Glasgow wants to play our film and all they've seen is the trailer. Our niche will rise to the top.

We put down a rather sizeable deposit on a weekly rental for a small condo in Park City in hopes we'd be attending the festival. Condo parties will have to be postponed, but the deposit money we will now get back couldn't come at a more opportune season.

Medium shot - close up

The Two Jokes and No Spoilers!

Last Wednesday, we shot what the makers of Blood Car are calling the final, end-all be-all pickup shots for the film. To date, it was our most expensive day of shooting. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you anything about what was shot. Generalities will have to suffice. If I revealed anything, I would have to preface it with this... SPOILERSPOILERSPOILER!!, and I'm not prepared to do that.

Our schedule consisted of two camera setups, one shot each, one joke each, one laugh each(We hope.)...at least in conception. Wrong. The first shot I'm not qualified to discuss as I wasn't present during the filming, but for the second I was there and now that I think about it, there are a solid two jokes in that one shot. And I'm not trying to create any sort of buzz around these two shots, but I just feel like I'd be telling you the ending if I said anything.

And believe it or not, I think what was done last Wednesday helped bring the story of Archie Andrews to a satisfying close. Sitting here, nearly two weeks later, I can feel closure for Archie. I really think he needed this. So, to the makers of Blood Car, Archie thanks you.

In a blood related note, the American Red Cross has informed me that I am one pint away from reaching the 4 gallon donation mark for whole blood.

And if you're wondering, Blood Car has officially been submitted to the Sundance Film Festival.

Pillow Talk

Our most recent ADR session involved myself and Katie R., who plays Denise in the film, interacting after copulation. This photograph is actually staged, but I do about the same thing while we're actually recording. Though this pillow talk was planned all along, it was never actually scripted until today. Alex wrote two pages in about twenty minutes with some input from Katie and I and Adam P. the DP, who was working on iconic designs for the Blood Car poster.

Some ideas that were tabled included a silhouette of a gun shooting a car out of the barrel, with blood spewing from the chamber; the blood car sinking into the ocean(think the Exxon Valdez photo), with blood spreading out into the sea. There were others, too.

This room used to be a closet, but Jon S. converted it into an sound booth by essentially adding insulation to the room, then building another set of walls inside of the original walls and then adding the corrugated foam you see here. It has one bare light bulb in the ceiling. But it's air conditioned and not at all claustrophobic.

Alex O. has brought in a number of actors from the film over the past week to record additional screaming. These people include several agents, Marla M., and Mr. Malt.

Today was my turn for screaming, only these screams were intending for a scene in which I murder someone, all the while delivering a guttural killscream. It's one of Archie's most harrowing moments. I have a little video of this which I will attempt to post on my myspace page because, let's face it, what else is it good for?

the space

The marketing machine has officially begun with none other than myspace.com, which at the time of this writing is experiencing a power outage at their data center. On a normal day, when the power is humming, I believe you can access it by just adding /bloodcar to the homepage URL. If that doesn't work, just do a search for blood car and you'll find it eventually.

Its most attractive and effective feature is the NEW trailer. There was an old trailer that was good, but this one is a 100x better. It really makes you want to see the film, sets up the characters and the story in a concise way, and on top of all that, is genuinely funny. Our friend James H., who is a board certified projectionist and a GSU alum, cut the trailer. I don't know how much he editing he currently does, but he certainly has a gift and/or knack for it.

The song from the trailer is none other than UK 'extreme power metal' band DragonForce. I'm not sure which album the song hails from, or even the name of the song for that matter. However, their biography is quite impressive(www.dragonforce.com). They are currently on their most recent 'tour of duty' in which they leave devastated cities in their wake. Devastated by rock that is. Rock that UK metal mag UK Metal Hammer claims is "as metal as f**k." They play the Masquerade on August 11th. Get out of Atlanta while you still can.

Something else on the bloodcar myspace page also must be addressed: the cast photos section just below the tv. I can't speak for any of the other photos, but the one of me is from a little film I did a few years ago called Oreganoise. It was a student film made by a friend of mine Dean S. at UGA. It was a musical and though I did no singing in the film, I played a gay auto mechanic. The film was about a cook who's car breaks down on the way to his restaurant's opening night.

Blutautoupdates

Here are a few tidbits re: blut auto - german for Blood Car.

Picture is locked.
The Sound Mix is in progress. So is color correction; the difference is astonishing.
An eccentric composer is working on the score as I write this.
Adam P. and Alex have been arguing. A lot.
A deadline was set for July 15 for the Telluride Film Festival, which was shortly thereafter switched to August 15, 2006 for Slamdance.

This is the best story though so listen up.

Chris C., the lighting designer for Blood Car, was working on a big-budget film here in Atlanta with a famous actor who plays a doctor on TV. He gave a copy of the the Blut Auto rough cut to one of the producers on this film and that producer like the film quite a bit, laughed even. That producer liked it so much that he/she? pledged a significant dollar amount to the post production process. I won't say how much, but if you're reading left to right like you are right now, then it has four numbers before you reach the first decimal point. Nice work, Chris C.

For the first time in many months, Blood Car feels like it has as much momentum as it had during preproduction. More even. More.

Spell it. A - D - R

Remember that house with the basement with the editing suite near the concrete factory. Well, it's newest amenity is a semi-sound proof booth, complete with two styles of baffling, echo-killing insulation. It's still relatively new, so it is missing way to communicate with the person, or persons, doing the recording. Alex, the director, solved this problem by yelling instructions from the next room; hence, the 'semi' a few sentences back. Jon S. is planning on installing an intercom system.

ADR, if you don't know, stands for additional dialogue recording. You need this when the sound you originally recorded isn't 'fat'. Thin sound is bad, fat sound is good. But not too fat. If it's too fat, it will explode like Thunder from Big Trouble in Little China into a million pieces. Which brings us to our first scene of ADR, where Archie tinkers with his wheatgrass engine, which putters, but fails to really hum. No dialogue here, really, just interjections and exclamations. I'll try to get ahold of them so you can listen, but until then you'll just have to read about them. First was a 'ha-HA'. Now, this wasn't a laugh, but a discovery. It's a variation on 'A-ha', which is quite common in the inventor's argot. Then was "What the?", "Fa"(a truncated obscenity), then a couple moans, sighs and exhales.

I thought this process would be rather complicated, but it doesn't seem to be, at least not for me. I found it quite fun, but then Alex reminded me that we could be doing it completely wrong and have to throw out all of the sound. We're waiting to hear back from the post sound mixer on that one.

Later on we recorded some laughing for a scene in which the car starts on the mixture of human blood and wheatgrass juice for the first time and Archie is ecstatic. Now that I think about it, it was a lot like the 'ha-HA', only turned up to maybe a nine or ten. It was a little strange how I was able to perfectly replicate the 'ha-HA'ing from the previous, unusable audio. And believe it or not, this new stuff is much better. Before, I was a little luke-warm about this particular scene, but since we are having to ADR the entire scene, it's improved tremendously.

I also heard some striking words from director Alex today regarding a rather infamous drawing that is featured in the film. The drawing depicts an act of love in a...well, grisly manner. He said, "I don't know if that's going to stay in the movie." I'll admit it's raunchy, but Blood Car should have teeth and that drawing is one of the canines.

If you're wondering if we've changed any, we haven't. Alex still looks the same and so do I, except I have new eyeglasses.

The Rough Cut

Today, I saw the official "Rough Cut" of Blood Car. Running time - one hour and thirty nine minutes. If movie running times were graphically represented by a bell curve, we'd be in the meaty part of the bell, maybe even near the clapper. I enjoyed every second of it. Our editors, Adam P., Alex O., Jon S. and Chris C. have logged countless hours working on the film, both at their homes and at what I'll deem edit central, the house of Jon S., which overlooks an Atlanta cement factory, to put it romantically. The story of Archie and his blood car have carried over from script to screen. No matter what happens henceforth, they have succeeded.
Now, since we lack a composer for the film's music(Comment below if you're interested.), our editors substituted some classics for certain scenes just to liven up the experience. It's also a helpful editing tool. Here goes...Stones' Paint it Black, the Lollilpop song, an orchestral rendition of Eleanor Rigby, Iggy Pop's The Passenger, and last but not least is some music from the denouement of Scarface, which was used in the denouement of our film. Now, when this film is released on video, I task you to, in Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon Wizard of Oz fashion, pop in the soundtrack to Scarface and play that piece over the final moments.

Now, just because I enjoyed every second of the rough cut doesn't mean that every second is necessarily good or should be in the final film. A film morphs through each stage. For instance, in one scene, while we were shooting it, I thought it would be quite funny and really hum, but watching it I noticed the chemistry was really lacking between the two characters save a few nice bits of banter. In another instance with a completely different scene, the opposite happened. One of the most fascinating things about editing is something Adam P. and I discussed briefly following the screening is that sometimes you have to leave mediocre scenes in your film because they serve the story. In editing, they often tell you have to or may be forced to cut your 'babies' or favorite scenes. Well, just as often, you may be compelled to keep the babies you'd rather give up for adoption.

I will say this about Blood Car. Notwithstanding some corny moments or aborted FX, it has a good ending. Such a thing can never be undervalued. Never.

Oh! Check out www.bloodcar.com.

Here's a contest regarding the above photo. Guess where I took it. I want the exact intersection.

Fire, Detours, a shotgun blast and I didn't eat Chinese food today.

Our last day of principal photography. Our location: the Briarwood soundstage next to the REI on Northeast Expressway. Our mission: almost 9 pages of script including the final scene and shot of the film.

Day 12 - Except for day 1, I don't think I was ever on time. I averaged about 15 minutes late everyday. Today it was thirty due to some heavy road construction and a road closure on Briarwood Rd., so I had plenty of company in tardiness. Our script supervisor never showed up at all and Glenda, if you're reading this, we missed you, but how could you desert us for what many postulate was a B-O-Y? Our G & E crew somehow plummeted from about 8 or nine on the first day to 2 on the last, so the PAs pitched in performing light gags.

Our DP Adam just mentioned this a few minutes ago and I think there is a lot of truth in his observation. Shooting the last shot of the film on the last day of filming is special. More than that, it feels right, natural. I'm a big believer in having the first shot of a film and the last shot be exceptional or memorable in some way. When you see a film that has really thought through these two shots, then give them a little extra respect. It's the first impression you give an audience of your film. How could you not make it extraordinary?

Our shooting was of the final scene was delayed for several hours today because of a fire about a mile south of our soundstage. It attracted five local news helicopters and since the Briarwood soundstage is not soundproof AT ALL, we could not complete the scene until dark. The actor playing Watkins, on seeing the location of the plumes of smoke, commented, "Isn't the Pink Pony right around there?" It turned out to be an apartment fire. Since I am bloodied for the final scene, I had to unbloody myself so we could continue shooting, which isn't as annoying as you might believe. Our make-up artist Gretchen is fortunately very good at consistently making the bloody face look exactly the same each time. Local filmmaker Jacob Gentry had a cameo today as an agent with a shotgun. He had a very thin mustache and he looked Asian somehow, even though he's as American as apple pie.

Most of the fun had by me today was the front projection Fear and Loathing inspired montage. We drove the Blood Car onto the soundstage and filmed Archie and Denise driving around acting crazy, drinking, running people over. For a good portion of it, Alex directed me with "Tell us some jokes." Since I don't know any real jokes, I came up with some rather stellar non sequitur jokes. These may not appear funny on the page, but when delivered, they're hilarious. At least to me. I think the reason I wouldn't make a good stand-up comedian is that I laugh at my own jokes. But that's the only way I can convince people to laugh at my jokes, because they laugh at me laughing at my own jokes. Or they just look at me like I'm an idiot. Nevertheless, a few examples:

What do you get when you cross a Vegan with a gold coin? A bank.
What did the Vegan say to the vampire? I need to refinance my car loan.
A rabbi, a butcher, a priest, two Satans, God, the entire Swedish basketball community, and five vegans walk into a bar and the bartender says, "We don't have room for anyone else."
What do you call a vegan at a protest? Unemployed.

Some actors use the method technique to submerge themselves into their character for scenes like this. I use a candy called airheads.

The front projection was shot and edited by our 2nd Unit DP Hugh and local filmmaker Jon Swindall. It looked fabulously weird and luckily no one suffered a seizure. I could have sworn I saw an image of Nosferatu in one of the plates. They shot plates for all sides of the car.

Today felt like an all day party and we just happened to be making a film. There was more laughing on set today than usual and more laptops, too.

Blood Car has changed me. I think I am more sentimental than was when we began. Just like Dr. Seuss's The Grinch story, my heart has grown three sizes. Maybe not that much, but it feels bigger. The FWW guys and I have always talked and jammed about making a feature. From the days when we were still in film school to the summers after graduation we've wished in myriad ways for this. We've envied other local filmmakers for mustering the money and skills to put their scripts onto the screen. Now we can stand amongst them. Don't throw up but this is a dream realized for many of us. More than that, it's encouragement to continue making films and pursuing the most complicated way to make art that there is.

This will be my last post for a while on the topic of Blood Car, but I'll update things as I see fit. I finally found a really good reason to succumb to the blogging trend and it was fruitful and enjoyable and cathartic. Now if I can only find a really good excuse to start a myspace account.


thanks for reading.
mike brune

The ball was left in Stockbridge.

Today was a day of learning. We faltered forward. The movie is almost over and I am sad for that.

Day 11 - Last night, the actress playing Mrs. Butterfield, Archie's sedentary octogenarian neighbor, canceled for some reason unknown to myself. That left us in a pinch during the morning hours while people scrambled to find a substitute. Luckily, our UPM Becky C., masterfully located one of her sister's former co-workers(something like that anyway) and convinced her to join the production of Blood Car. While we waited for her to show up, we were also waiting for the picture car to arrive, which was left at our location in Stockbridge last night.

The set today was the exterior of Archie's apartment. I don't want to presume the expectations of others, but I, along with others, went in today thinking we didn't have as much to shoot as days before. In fact, it was much more. It seemed like too much was scheduled. I fear the scene of Archie building the blood car suffered due to our rushing. Only editing will confirm/deny that. I could be wrong.

We had a couple new faces on set today that deserve special mention. They are Shawn G. and Day(sic?). The former is actually a former GSU classmate of mine and Hugh. Currently, he is a props assistant in Atlanta and his wealth of on-set experience was invaluable. Day, who I didn't have a chance to get to know very well, seemed equally old hat with the filmmaking business. She also wore a 21 grams knit cap for the first half of the day.

At sundown, we moved to Mi Barrio on Memorial drive to shoot scenes at a Mexican restaurant, which also was dressed for restaurant scenes in a BBQ joint. For the BBQ scene, I had to devour slab after slab of ribs. Because of the season and my laziness in using moisturizer, the sauces stung my hands. This was the most difficult scene in the film for me to play. It did not start that way, but it became that way.

Am I like Archie? Yes, and no. Yes, we have similar dreams. No, I would never kill anyone(Though Katherine who plays Danny, when I told her that comparison, said, "You never know." I guess, technically she's right.) I'd like to be a teacher. I like to ride my bike and and I am mildly obsessive about recycling. Archie is more solitary than I am, at least I think he is. Some might disagree with me there. In summation, I could easily be Archie, without the killing people to fuel a blood-powered automobile of course. That's crazy.

Damn, I f***ed up.

Day 10 - Our first day in the double digits was a spectacular one. We began at the Starlight Drive-In theater on Moreland Ave. For an establishing shot of the drive-in a world without cars, we lined up couples in the various parking spaces in front of a screen with the blood car smack dab in the middle. I didn't know how many extras we were supposed to have, but when I pulled into the parking lot of the drive-in I noticed dozens of cars and racks of clothing just inside the gate. I thought to myself, "Oh my god, we must have 40 extras and a full costume department. As I drove closer, I noticed that it wasn't for Blood Car, but for Starlight's weekly flea market. Alex bought a knee-length jacket once worn by the East German border patrol. Whoever wore it before him must not have been too much bigger.

While we were setting up for a blood gag in which one of the agents has his brains blown onto the window of the blood car, something spiritual happened to me. I sat just outside the concession building in the middle of an empty, wavy parking lot watching the setup down near screen three. I was listening to sad music and suddenly our 2nd Unit DP Hugh started throwing a bouncy ball to our DP Adam. They were at least 50 yards apart. It was so quiet and the air so temperate and calm that I wished I could freeze time and stay in that moment forever. We were making a film on a sunny day in an empty drive-in theater. It felt like a good bible story.

There were an inordinate number of ladybugs flying around and crawling on us at the drive-in. I'm not sure why, but I'm going to uncover the secret. Some man also showed up to throw away garbage at a nearby dumpster. His pit bull was with him and someone said he said it was a fighting dog. If that's true, I hope he goes to jail.

We then moved to a gas station in Stockbridge, which was nostalgic for some of us on the crew because we worked on Stomp!Shout!Scream! there last October. This scene featured the carjacker played by Mister Malt, who I've mentioned earlier. He is part of a burgeoning hip-hop group named The Scavengers. Never before have I met someone so humble and dedicated to a craft he knows nothing about. It was his first time and the jitters were evident, but he treated the scene like he must approach his music, with unfazed concentration, artistry and a critical eye. The heading for this post is a quote from Mister Malt, which he said almost every time he forgot a line. Despite his claims of nervousness, he nailed the scene with flying colors.

Earlier in the day, while our G&E crew was setting up a 20K on some scaffolding with the help of a small condor(a hydraulic lift on wheels), a representative of OSHA stopped by. He scolded us for having two people in the bucket of the lift without safety harnesses. He did not issue us a citation. I'm not sure if he was just driving by and was bored or if he was an asylum escapee in masquerade. A badge was flashed, however.

My quote of the day is from one of our extras: You got blood on my banana.

Archie's it is. Part Two - The classroom

One of the great mysteries of directing and directors, at least for me, is what they say to their actors before a scene or after a scene. What kinds of directions does a director give? Here are few things that have been uttered by our director, Alex.
Wig out.
Beam.
Go crazy.
The way to play this is with no expression whatsoever. Don't do anything.

You'd be surprised how well some of these directions work.

Day 9 - A close second in the contest for best set in the film is the classroom. Yesterday, in response to a question about the differences between a short and feature for FWW, Alex answered, "Well, we're not used to having production design. So that's different." In this case, different means good, very, very good. Ample props(in joke for the crew!) goes out to Katie, who plays Denise is the film, and who procured numerous dressings for the classroom and really helped bring it to life. She is a teacher herself.

You can tell the shoot is nearing a close, because only a few crew members are left who have not been featured yet.

About 7-8 kids showed up today to play the students in Archie's classroom. I must confess it is a complete joy to play opposite the kids, even during scenes when Archie is just reading to them and they are quiet and attentive. I was sorry to see them go. Of all the parts of the classroom, the centerpiece was the blackboard, which is actually green not black; and each continuity day presented the art crew and myself with a tabula rosa in which to let our imaginations run wild.

Our lunch conversation today raised some prickling questions about what makes a man a man and a half-man a half-man. According to Katherine, who plays Danny, only if you have kids are you a man. If not, you guessed it, you're a half-man. But for some reason, if you're a woman, you don't have to have kids to in fact be a woman. She may have been speaking extemporaneously, but I sensed a strong conviction. Unfortunately, it's a double standard. I do not want to digress too much, so I'll end things here.

Besides, I'm about to fall asleep.

Arbitrary note: I was told my Stephanie, our costumer, and Gretchen, our key hair/make-up, that I would make a good drag queen.