September Roundup, Part II

If you made it through Part I, congratulations! This part will deal with the non-writing stuff I’m doing right now.

I have started work on a few video projects in the last month or so. Andrew Currie delivered the first cut of Can last month through the magic of a portable hard drive. I have AC’s project file as well as all the clips as he had logged and captured them—I haven’t had to go near my camcorder on this project!

AC’s cut was a first cut, so a lot of the clips are not trimmed completely so it plays really, really slow. In the second edit, I’ll trim everything up to pick up the pacing. I’m not changing any of the shots AC chose or the order he placed them, so the only differences will be the trims and any slow-mo and, er, fast-mo shots. There’s also a bit of CGI in it, a gag that AC came up with that wasn’t in the original shooting script. I’m using Motion to create it, and I’ll probably end up doing 10 different variations. I’ve tried 3 different ways so far, without coming up with what I want, but that’s how I’ve always worked with pixel-pushing software like Motion or After Effects: hack away at it until you get something.

After the CGI is done, I’ll start the audio work and get some sound effects in there, adjust the dialogue tracks, and prep it for whoever ends up scoring it. I will likely put in a temp score courtesy of my iTunes library to give us and our future composer an idea of what the music should do in different places. A couple of shots will need “stunt music,” specific genres to help set up or payoff a gag.

So that’s where Can stands this month. Next, the other short we worked on this summer, Bags.

Mullet has to come over and watch the rushes from the 3 shoots we did. We still need to shoot the exteriors for it, but all the interiors are done. Once we watch the footage from the 3 shooting days, I’ll start putting the takes we liked into a first cut.

We’ve always watched “the rushes” together after a shoot, just to pick out what works and what doesn’t work. Of course, sometimes in the editing you can’t use the best take because it either doesn’t match the preceding or following clip, or the best take is way too long/short and kills the pacing, or it steps outside of the story for too long or at the wrong time in the story. Most of the time, though, the best take ends up in the final edit. Sometimes, watching the rushes reveals that the takes we liked on the day aren’t the best takes on tape. We judge the takes by feel as much as by story logic, visual and aural clarity, etc., so it’s all about listening to your gut. The best takes tend to make you laugh out loud, even if you are watching a few hours after doing whatever it is that is making you laugh.

I make my notes, noting takes and timecode (we don’t usually keep continuity records while we’re shooting—we’ve evolved into a looser system where I number the takes on the clapper and don’t bother making notes about no-goods and goods until we watch the rushes.

Afterwards, I rewind the tapes, fire up the Mac, and start logging everything to batch capture. I capture all takes, even the false starts, because you never know when you’ll need something unexpected, and you can quite often find good stuff in bad takes, between takes, etc., especially with closeups. Most of it, of course, will never see the light of day, but during editing it’s invaluable to have all your crap handy, just in case.

Also on the go is a blast from the past, Babysitters. This was our first project, a 74-minute epic that took nearly 2 years to write, shoot, and edit. More about it in a later post….

Finally, I’ve been working on a teaser to post on our website and elsewhere to promote the DVD. I’ve done a couple of versions of one that I think we’ll likely put up when Mullet revamps the website in the New Year. I’ll have to come up with followup videos, of course, so that’ll be an ongoing process until we head to San Diego next July.

And, of course, we need opening credits for the shorts.

I did some quick ‘n’ dirty credits last July to loop on DVD at our table at the 2006 San Diego con, but it was basically Miller & Mullet running around. Someone recently gave us advice about the comic book, suggesting that their lack of knowledge of the characters made the story harder to understand, and I think this applies to the DVD as well.

We’ve been performing the act for 7 years, and it’s sometimes hard to remember that the rest of the world doesn’t know who we are.

So, our opening credits will likely be a Gilligan’s Island type with the lyrics carrying exposition as to what’s going on. Another, more recent model is the House of Cosbys from Channel 101. An animated series of shorts, House of Cosbys has a great, funny theme song that, with animation over it, explains the backstory to the series so that you know instantly what’s going on. We need the same thing, so as I work on these other things on my Mac, I’ll earmark footage that we can use. Of course, we’ll have to come up with a theme song, or at least lyrics that someone can compose a song for, but that’s an entry for another day….