MUSN’T GRUMBLE

Jury Duty is done at last and I can finally get back to the movie for a few hours…before I fly out of town to shoot a job.

Everything I have seen over the past days puts the impatience I feel at getting this movie completed in perspective. Suffice to say it was a murder trial and the pictures of the victim and the descriptions of the injuries involved will keep me in nightmares for many moons.

Back to work.
(P.S. The trailer is complete and Lennie should be posting it soon).

IN JURY

20th January
This week has seen yet more technical problems. Long story short: 44 of the music cues for the movie were loaded into the Avid using iTunes. I’ve now discovered that if you do this it speeds up the music by about 1 second every 90 seconds! It took me from Monday to Thursday night to discover how to speed up the music so, as I cut the audio for each reel, I can re-lay it.

When I finally arrived at a solution on Thursday night I thought: “At last! Now I can get some serious work done.” Two hours later I got the call and now I’m doing Jury Duty.

There is no moral to this story but I can pass on some handy advice for future low-budge film-makers: don’t use iTunes and MP3’s to upload your music. Use AIF files.

PRO TOOLS AT LAST

16th January
The whole movie, with quick-times and everything, has now changed rooms and computers and is now awaiting for me to check, tweak and approve every sound cut and music cue. Last night I did my first piece of foley work.

You could care less, I know, but I want to at least create an impression that work is taking place every day. It will be done soon. Honest.

THE KING IN TWO STEPS

15th October
You’re right – this is taking a lot longer than I anticipated. I got a gig and flew to London, I came back, I went on holiday for ten days, came home, got sick, did another gig and voila – two moths down the spout.

We’ve found someone who will mix the movie – even better someone who WANTS to mix the movie. The pressure to lock picture is enormous but…it’s just not finished yet. There’s lot of little things that need tweaking. Is this me being a control freak or am I just being a good director or a patient producer? You decide.

Friday the 13th was a good day. I made the aquaintance of a chap called Gary Herbig who came over to play flute on Funky Jones – one of my pieces for the movie. The man’s played with Elvis – what more do you need to know?

Holy cow how did I get so lucky? I’m making a movie soundtrack with guys who’ve played with Dylan and The King.

UP REZ

I could bore you with details about how I broke some kind of record at the dental surgeon’s last week when he removed one of my wisdom teeth (longest extraction of the year apparently) and the endless pain I’ve been in ever since and the grinding lack of sleep I’ve had as a result, but you could give a toss, and who needs the pity? Right?

So, in other, more appropriate news: We finally have a movie filled with completely original music. I’ve written and recorded what amounts to a double album in the last six months and that only covers about 27 of the 64 music cues which have come from a variety of other sources. Last night we completed the mixes on the first 4 of the specially composed for Callback tunes.

All the new footage is in and works fabulously and gives us a much stronger ending. We have a new scene in too and the movie’s still only 92 minutes long. I think we’re closing in on locking picture and today I started up-rezzing the movie; I was tired of seeing all those little pixels dancing around in front of K-Far’s face and had forgotten how great some of the footage looks. That D.P. Quickly was a pain in the arse to work with but it seems that he actually did quite a decent job.

I’m now sending out dubs to try and find someone enthusiastic enough to mix our baby for the paltry sum I have left in the Callback kitty. Please make another wish to the movie Gods and hope they send us someone who will be kind, eager, able and excited.

And now it’s time for another painkiller…

SICK

When I woke on Friday morning I knew I had a busy day in front of me. With the crucial re-shoots just 24 hours ahead of me I got my act together and raced off to Birns & Sawyer in the Valley to pick up lights.

By lunch-time I’d bought myself two new C-stands and some sand bags, purchased the rubber gloves for the new chase scene, found some shades for the Woodhard double and stocked the fridge with sodas for the crew. After a quick bite I swung by DNA for the keys to our free location on Saturday and then back off to Apache in the Valley for the walkies. By late afternoon I was back home once more and pulling out all the props we’d need over the next 48 hours.

That was when Kevin rang me to tell me he was sick and couldn’t make it this weekend. As I put the phone down, somewhat stunned and speechless, the doorbell rang and there was Katie with the wardrobe for the two lady cops that I would now have to pay for and send back without them ever being used: it was 5 o’clock and all the rental houses were closing.

I’d just finished the last of the calls cancelling all the actors and most of the crew and was looking on the bright side: “I’ve got Sunday off!” I thought. At which point the e-mail clicked – there was a track from Roadrunner in New York with a desperate plea attached. They wanted a treatment for 9am Monday morning.

Holy crap. Whose toes did I step on?

PICK UPS

Since we last talked I’ve been to Wales and back, stayed in the same hotel where Gene Pitney had just died, cycled on two continents on three different bicycles and shot Il Divo and Toni Braxton. What I’m really trying to say is I’ve been avoiding planning the pick-up shots and scenes we need to finish the movie.

Today I got down to it. I opened up the file from last summer and started planning. As I came across the 50 page booklet I made last year with all the prop requirements I had a huge anxiety attack caused simply by looking at the list. I was suddenly transported back to last June and I realised how stressful making the movie must have been.

I think I’m over it now. Tonight I had another go at the final scene between Moe, Vivian and Kremenz, my earlier re-write was not working, but I think I’ve had a break-through. It’s been quite a day.

STEEL HOOVES

It was my birthday Tuesday and apart from some excellent monogrammed handkerchiefs and the Queen / Paul Rodgers album from Ms. K. and a box of chocolate biscuits from Dec I also received a CD from film composer Jeff Cardoni with a bunch of cues for Callback.

Jeff writes great music, has dimples and jet-black hair and, most importantly, played very, very loud guitar on Flying Hooves Of Steel the super brilliant track I wrote for 2gether. About 12 months ago Jeff sent me his reel hoping that we would pick him to compose music for the movie. Instead of replying, like any polite person would, I borrowed one of the tracks from his demo and used it prodigously throughout our early cuts. Now I’ve actually spoken with him and it’s official – he’s our composer. You can see more about him here.

Last week’s rant about Pro-Tools can be ignored – the Firewire ports on my second-hand G4 crapped out.

SMELL

It might seem as if nothing’s been happening…

I spent 10 soggy days North of the border Nickelbacking in January and now I’m in post on a video for Sheryl Crow and Sting. You’d be correct in concluding that this has nothing at all to do with finishing the film but it’s putting money in the bank to pay for the re-shoots. In other news I’ve taken the Pro-Tools crash-course and have input the 12 recent cues I’ve written from ADAT and last week Jordan and his pal Tommy taught me how to bring a Quick-Time of a scene from the movie into the Pro-Tools so I can actually write stuff to picture rather than trying to work it out on paper or in my head – groovy.

The blagging still continues. Is it prompting fate to secretly let on that I’m hoping Ian Wallace (who’s played drums for Dylan and a thousand others) will be bashing on the soundtrack? And I’ve also got a famous ex-Stiff singing star to promise that she’ll sing on 2 songs too – I’m just hoping she doesn’t back out when she hears the F-word in there!

Brian has laid down the law and given me the Film Festival Survival Guide to injest. He thinks it’s good for me to read 470 pages of info on how to take Callback to the masses knowing that every page smells of his infernal cigars which, frankly, is not making the task any easier.

REFLECTION

Give or take a few days it is a year since I decided somehow that Callback would get made and, as I reflect back upon that simple decision that has somehow become a film, I find myself humbled that so many people decided to help, give, volunteer and sacrifice something so that my dream could become reality.

We had a third screening last week and after screening #2 which was gutting for me I made a point of cooking the food myself (instead of ordering out) and gave everyone a glass of wine. I know that if & when Callback gets released I won’t be there to oil the wheels for all our prospective viewers but I wanted to make sure there were no spoilers in the room and get a relaxed and open reaction. I’m glad to say it worked in our favour and there were more laughs than ever.

After three screenings it is obvious there are two scenes which need work but, assuming you get the sensibility of the film, there are no big issues to sort out. Everyone has a peeve or three, granted, but they’re all different and relatively small – this, experience tells me, means that while everyone’s getting the story and enjoying the journey they’d simply adjust things a little differently if they had the chance.

And so, now the latest set of changes are done (thank-you Declan) and the Christmas cards are going out, I wanted to say thank-you to you all for helping Callback become a reality. There were many times when I felt it was just too much but it seemed everyone had faith in me getting it done and for this faith and commitment I am truly grateful. If you worked on Callback in any capacity thank-you. If you didn’t thanks for reading and whoever you are Happy Christmas!

Now all we have to do is reshoot those two scenes, finish the movie and sell it…

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