Color correction complete

Uncorrected still photo by E. Hammen

Ahren Buhmann and I recently finished a several-day stint of color correction for Beach Town (a rock and roll beach movie of the mind). Ahren doing the correcting, me saying "yeah, that looks a million times better" over and over.

What is color correction? (or, "What would possibly need "correcting" about all those beautiful images?")

Color Correction is the process of balancing slight discrepancies in the hue, brightness, or whatever, of each shot -- and at the same time making sure the individual shots look good side by side with all the other shots in a scene, which may have been taken in different light, on different days, with different filmstock, and so on.

The result is that the film as whole flows well visually. It's movie magic. The illusion!

Anyway, Ahren did an awesome job and color correction is officially finished 

Next up: the final sound mix -- so that the audio flows nicely.

Then we're done.

Social hour: I ran into Kenna Kettrick and Amanda Keogh at the theater and talked to them for a bit. Great to see them both!  Also worked a bit more with David Thomas to tweak some music.

Beach Town labor day update

(photo by E. Hammen, and not Beach-Town related)

If you want to find all sorts of little, tiny changes that need to be made in a film, a good way is to watch it "one last time". But boy oh boy, did I get a ton of work done this week.

This penultimate pass, which I'll be finishing tonight, addresses all the post-test changes that I already made -- makes them nice n' graceful -- and addresses how those changes affected the scenes around them, and the film as a whole.

For example,  I added a little bit of music to a scene that previously had none. The scene before it had music, differently motivated, so the transition between scenes needed to be timed differently (music dictates the beats rather than the ebb and flow of ambient sound in this case) . Then the cut to the next scene needed to be re-timed for the same reason, and also accounting for the change of feeling that the music gave the previous scene. And the ambient sound below the next scene changed a bit because it didn't have to compete as much with the ambient from the previous scene anymore.

It might sound boring and more of the same, but since I'm so far along in the process is pretty groovy and all about unearthing interesting new things and perfecting existing things.  Affirmation and proclamation. The one-hair brush instead of the big flat wall-painting brush. And the drum of spackle has been officially retired.

I've still gotta look at it as a whole again, but it's really gelling!

I also worked with David Thomas last week for some more mixes, both to new music and for a few tweaks to some existing tracks. David finished those over the weekend (!) and those'll be going into this cut as well.

Man, the music and thank-you credits on this movie are gonna be extensive. I don't want to mention any names, but perhaps, on this crazy little DIY film... perhaps a certain someone was collaborating? 

Oh yes he was!

Lastly, but not leastly -- Happy trails, Riley!

When is a lock not a lock? When a door's ajar. Beach Town movie update

I'm getting closer to picture lock. Not quite there yet, but close!

Here's where we're actually at: 

Completed -- audio levels pass. Also made a few more cuts in the process.

Completed -- spotting for possible new music bits. Also made a few more cuts in the process.

Completed -- ambient sound. I think! But just in case, here's a little joke: Q: How much ambient sound does one picture need? A: more.

Added -- a few new music bits. One of the songs I was able to pull from my massive outtakes file. And, by beautiful chance, I also got the new record from the mighty rock n' roll band Horns of Ormus via USPS, and a couple of their tracks happen to work very well in the other spots! (Thank you HOO! Uh...we'll talk!)

But I still might need one more music cue...

Might is the key word here.

There's this one scene... People have said as much...

But I'll tell ya, so far I've hated what music cues do to this scene, and to the rest of the sequence around it! I've been going back n' forth on this one ever since the test screenings, and I spent most of the day yesterday just addressing this one issue. Man, I tried a hundred things. I couldn't even find temporary, unattainable music that'd work. Rolling Stones, you will not be getting a call from me. And I went to bed having not figured it out.

However, it's been said that your subconscious works on problems while you sleep, and when I woke up at 3 am to listen to a big rattly train going by outside the window, I think I may have come upon the solution.

Social hour
Besides working tirelessly to finish the film, I've been out and about, and over the weekend I caught the riotous 14/48 festival, which featured a short play by Beach Town set dresser Jennifer Dice and a performance (in a different play in the fest) by Steven Stern. They're also doing another original play at SPT this weekend "The Spear Carriers". Check it out.
I also saw Sarah Winsor while I was downtown waiting for my car to get fixed. It was great to catch up; she has a big show coming up this fall at the Annex Theater that sounds exciting.

Here's that good old Beach Town trailer again.


Beach Town trailer from Erik Hammen on Vimeo.

Beach Town official trailer

Happy August everyone! If you're just tuning in, I'm still working on getting the film ship-shape after our test-reviews, but in the meantime --

A public trailer is ready!  I hope you dig it -- please share with anyone and everyone.


Beach Town trailer from Erik Hammen on Vimeo.

Beach Town!

Beach Town

I changed the name of the film -- the old title seemed to imply that our Rock and Roll Beach Movie of the Mind was one of those "mondo" films.
This new page redirects from the old site, please adjust your Favorites to point to this page.
More to come very soon!

Update... of the mind

1922 color film test, with Mae Murray

While I let the film's new title marinate, I've been working hard to finish a pass at a new cut that addresses the test audience comments. I'm going to try to squeeze in some more work on the trailer as well.

It's worth spending time to properly process test audience comments. What happens is you hear from person A, person B, and person C. And while A and B love everything except for one little bit that really bothered them, person C thinks that one bit is the best part of the film.

All very smart people, just different aesthetics. How does this film fit into that? And what's person D going to say that's going to affect what A,B, and C said?

That said, person Z, who I talked to last week in real life, had just one major comment and a suggestion, and that suggestion actually addressed a major element across the film that I'd been stumped on. Digging into the film now, the changes I've made based on this new suggestion have been coming out great.

I watched a few other films over the week, specifically to see how they used their score music. I haven't done that in a while, it's always very interesting.

I'm also thinking a lot about color in this go-round, hence today's picture, which is not from our film, but of lovely Mae Murray, in an early color film test (1922!).  A long time ago I thought it might be cool to shoot a beach movie in black n' white, but calmer heads prevailed and instead we have glorious Kodak color. Everyone knows that B&W is great -- hell I've made as many film that way as in color -- but sometimes you wanna use charcoal, and other times you need oil paint. Whatever's best for the project. Right? Right!

Sightings: Anna and I saw Kenna Kettrick at the theater over the weekend, and just a few hours ago I ran into Riley Neldam out on the street, working on commercial shoot. It was great to see them both!

Test audience results (mostly), title change, trailer

I am coming out of my cave to report!

A big huge thank-you (once again) to Gordon Modin, of Gordon Modin Video Production for his help in finalizing the test audience preview DVD and review-only streaming content.

Gordon is a great guy who knows everything and has helped me with my last three films.

That leads to a second huge thank-you to my anonymous test audience for their candid, thoughtful, and thought-provoking comments!

Not much of which I can talk about right now (though I am very, very happy with the overall reactions) but one of the things that came from this was....

Trailer
I am putting together a trailer for the film, and as soon as it's done (and the new title is finalized) I'll post it on YouTube and Vimeo for all to see and share. It's gonna be awesome.

there's no audience like a test audience

Hey look, there's Gidget, the original Surfer Girl.

I read this book years and years ago. I've never seen the movie or the TV series.

The book was not as much fun as I thought it should've been. Maybe because it's so dated, or maybe because it was never much to begin with, and just happens to have been made into an iconic Sandra Dee/Sally Field vehicle that seems sort of quaint 50 + years later.

But what a great cover on this paperback edition, yeah?

Anyway, I finished the pre-test version of  Beach Town last night. I'll be sending preview DVDs out to my Test Audience this week. This gang of mysterious, unnamed suspects are a few reliably unbiased and thoughtful people who each have a specific perspective that always comes in handy.

They've been hand-picked by me for exactly that reason. Whether or not they like the film can even be beside the point.

In Hollywood, they have a company that handles test audiences.

The way I hear it, (taken with a grain of salt), a randomly-chosen audience has to fill out long questionnaires about a film before they can leave a stuffy, Tuesday afternoon screening. The questions tend to reinforce the insecurities of the moneymen... such as "Did you find the running scenes boring?" for a movie like Chariots of Fire.

With these data in hand, a war of the wills begins between the studio -- whose job is to understand and mitigate risk involved in making money by financing and distributing a variety of disparate films -- and the filmmaker -- whose job can be any number of things but ultimately whose professional reputation is on the line for the artistic decisions that lead to the critical and financial success of this one film. 

Show + business = show business.

Here's a true story I heard recently, (though I've fudged the numbers) about an independent filmmaker whose finished film was picked up by a big distribution company.

Under a big distribution company, a film can be shown nationally, even internationally, on the big screen in front of real theater audiences, and there will probably be some kind of payday for the filmmaker to come from this. 

So that's all very cool.  

"We'll open the movie at 1100 screens nationwide," the distributors said. 

"But first, we'd like your permission to run it past a test audience."

"Or," they said, "if you'd won't use our test audience, we can open on 11 screens."

What would you do? Take a chance that the test audience will love your film and that the distributor won't ask for even more concessions, such as cuts or even reshoots, to try for a better test? (Multiple re-testings are not uncommon). Or do set your jaw and choose the "option" of the handful of theatrical screenings, hoping that word-of-mouth and great reviews will inspire the distributor (whose test screenings you rejected) to take another chance with a "difficult" filmmaker and open the movie across the nation? 

What if you make a few recommended cuts, add a T&A scene, and the film tests well, and then it opens to an average of 45 on Rotten Tomatoes and is gone from 1000 of those 1100 screens after the first week? What if you don't make any cuts, the film gets good reviews, but no one can find it at the local mall and it closes in a week from the 11 arthouse screens to make room for the new Wes Anderson film.

Anyway, I haven't heard how this dilemma turned out for the filmmaker in question. 

But I'd be willing to bet that the distributor would not go for the idea of modeling the movie poster after a scribbly-looking children's book cover.

June update #2

L-R: Ahren Buhmann, Iain Dalton,
Kat Brede on set on Beach Town.
(photo by David Thomas)

Well, I got a ton of work done on Beach Town this week. I'm getting very very close now to a preview version.

And the sun just came out after a dark couple of days.

There's a nice little study in profiles here in today's photo, taken outside Cairo on our one, long day there.

There are two groups: Iain and Kat are setting up the tripod (up up up), while Ahren stands talking to Kenna Kettrick and I, both OC.

Now then. Which of these two groups is the yin and which is the yang?

Or, is it actually that both groups together are yin, while the sunny area around is yang?

Or, is Cairo, with its illustrative t-shirt in the window, actually itself the yin, while nearby Top Pot Donuts is the yang?  Perhaps... Yet Top Pot Donuts was clearly on the shady side of the street!

Either way, I promise more info on the film next week.

Memorial Day post, Beach Town

Yessir, it's time for another random-seeming Beach Town update.

But the posts reflect the process, which at this point is not smooth or predictable, it's organic.

It's a living thing, man!

I keep retooling the opening of the film. It's very, very important to start your film out right. Enough cannot be said about this.

In fact…  the opening is so important…

(how important is it?)

I'll tell ya!  The opening is so important -- it's unbelievable.

(That one goes out to Steve O'Neil)

Anyway, I'll be working on that opening scene right up to the last minute.

When is the last minute, by the way?

I don't know yet.

It'll be done when it's done.

That's what they say in painting.

Right now, I'm typing this foolishness instead of working on the "band practice" scene, which is about a quarter of the way through the film.

Just before I broke for dinner, I realized that scene needed to be put together differently.

It actually looked quite good as it was --  but that was in the context of itself.

After I watched the whole film before it up to that point, all of a sudden it was clear the approach needed to be different.

The film informs the scenes.

The screenshot above is from a different scene, the "gig scene". We shot that at Heartland, a DIY club that actually had its final show last night. They're closing up due to losing too much money. Heartland made a good run of it. Beach Town got two bands from them due to me going to see shows there: Punishment and Thee Samedi.

Good bye, Heartland!

I saw a good movie at the Seattle International Film Festival today. "My Year with the Nuns". That Matt Smith is some storyteller.

And, the movie was playing at the Egyptian Theater, which closed down earlier this year and was possibly going to go away altogether, but SIFF has decided to take it over and rehabilitate it.

That's the second single-screen theater they've rescued this to. They bought the Uptown a few years ago. It'd probably be knocked down for condos by now, if not for them.

That, my friends, is how a film society should operate. Hell, if that's all they did, I'd be a supporter.

In other news, my short film The Last City in the East is opening for Modern Times (that's right!) in Minneapolis this week. Are you in Minneapolis on Tuesday, May 27 at 8:30? Check it out!

Final cut begins!

Old Rocky Point amusement park dining hall.
Home of the Shore Dinner (Best in the World).

This week I sent David the last few music tracks to mix, and started on the final cut of the film.

It's worth noting that the rough cut is not actually rough -- the idea is to get as close as you can to perfect.

Then, you take a break (for music, in our case) and when you come back for the Final, you can concentrate on the performances without having to worry about structural issues inherent in the process of assembling a film from a million different parts.

It's all about going from good to great. 

So it's pretty fun, and exciting to see things working out so well.

Working all the way through the bike scenes over the weekend, I have to say that I am feeling a lot of love for the actors.

I also spent a lot of time on the ever-important opening title sequence. Moved a few things around , and laid in the newly-mixed opening song, which sounds great (thanks David!!).

I also badgered my (Emmy Award-winning) friend Eric S. Anderson with questions about font choice, size, opacity, kerning, leading, etc. My own know-how in that area is limited to what occurs to me randomly, but nuance and subtlety are the order of the day.

Eric is a trained professional and a cool cat, and ... he offered to do the work on them. What? Yes! Thank you Eric!

Also over the weekend, I walked downtown and grabbed a half-dozen more ambient audio tracks, and spent some time organizing and cleaning up my files, including removing some remaining AfterEffects artifacts, and adding that AE stuff to my list of things to do with Ahren Buhmann when the cut is finalized (in addition to color correction-- thank you Ahren!)  I don't want to spend time farting around with AE and failing at it when Buhmann can figure it out in a few minutes.

In other news:

Time of the Robots, one of my previous films, got a few screenings in Chicago. There's still some life in that old, strange warhorse!

Jennifer Dice and Steven Stern have another play over at Seattle Public Theater next Saturday (May 3) at 12:00 noon. It's called "Maria Morova", and has got something to do with BabaYaga.  It's going to be great -- I'll be there.

This week's photo comes from the (now gone) awesomely hand-built Rocky Point amusement park that my family used to go to when I was a kid. Apparently there's a place now that serves the old timey Rocky Point food. I wonder if it's any good?

April 14 update - Beach Town

Ahren Buhmann on set for Mondo Beacho
(photo by Mel Cafe)

I think the photo on the left was taken on set while we were actually rolling camera. It's just that the light is totally different than in the final film.

It's a great shot, though. I like the whites that Mel gets from that DSLR of his.

Anyway. April may be the cruelest month, but so far we are doing great in the music department!*

To wit-- last week, I was turned on to a new band, the mighty Wet City Rockers. Their work is absolutely perfect for a bunch of stuff we need, so I contacted them immediately. They are very cool.

And -- they are willing to contribute four songs to the film! That's a lot of songs. (Thank you Wet City Rockers!!)

I've also been composing a lot on the 8-track, and I've been listening to a whole ton of great stuff from other folks--nothing else has quite clicked yet but sometimes it takes a while.

To wit again, I completed a song last night that I'd had in mind and then dismissed for one part of the film, only to realize that it might work great in another part.

Then I woke up in the middle of the night and wondered if that song is right after all and if so, maybe it could be a lot better.

The middle of the night is not the best time for objectivity, so I'll have to look at it again and reevaluate.

On that note, if anyone knows of any traditional disco bands out there that are not shackled to Sony or Warner Bros, please let me know.


*Actually I think part of the cruelty of April is the illusion of joy early on, a set up for you to be absolutely crushed by the end of the month...

Rough cut getting close

L-R:   Riley Neldam, Kenna Kettrick,
Ahren Buhmann, Sarah Winsor, and John the extra
(photo by Jennifer Dice)

Summer in the northwest -- it's later than it looks.

We're on the beach -- Golden Gardens -- for the bonfire scene. Shooting with a permit, in front of a slightly unpermitted fire-pit constructed of an old Smokey Joe with its legs yanked off, buried in the sand.

We had a fire captain -- Jennifer Dice-- whose job was to make the fire bigger.

Foom! Up it went.

Do people sing around bonfires anymore? They do where I come from. Last time I was back east visiting my brother Bret and his family, we had a bonfire in his backyard. My niece Freya lent me her plastic cowgirl guitar, and we were able to squeeze a few tunes out of it.

Group singing is good for the brain.

The world-famous St. Olaf Choir holds hands when they sing, the whole lot of them. It helps them function as a single unit. The vibrations and empathy are transmitted directly. They don't have to worry about holding a guitar, though.

Or a beer can.

In the editing room, the bonfire scene had some unusual challenges. Honestly, I was stumped for a couple of days over the best way to cut it. But I cracked the code yesterday afternoon.

Now that I've got a grip on the whole thing, I hope to finish the rough cut this coming week, and then start on the remaining music tracks immediately after.

I'm pretty excited to get going on the music.

Beach Town report for the first Monday in March, 2014

Emily Purington, on set of Beach Town
(photo by Mel Cafe)

It's been another busy week for Beach Town!

'Getting toward the home stretch now, at least for the rough cut.

This week's photo comes from the makeup test, I think, for one of the scenes I was cutting this week. Emily Purington is dressed for the Georgetown confab by Barbara Blunt, makeup by Juel Bergholm.

Beyond that Georgetown bit, I also put together the rest of the water scenes and another Shilshole Ave sequence, and ended up on the roof of Surf Ballard, a place where the cast and crew spent more time than we ever thought we would...

... Actually that's true about Shilshole Avenue as well.

... The great thing about working with talented actors, in this case Sarah Winsor and Maya Briller, is that they are able to reproduce their performances again and again, each time as if they were brand new. Despite (or "in spite of" -- is there a difference?) some unexpected technical challenges.

Hooray for acting --  wotta fine profession!

Here's something funny: I got derailed about halfway through editing the Shilshole Avenue bit when I realized that I'd forgotten we had music for that scene that was baked into the script. See, I'd already edited the whole thing to a temp track instead. Hilarious!

I think I've just had this particular tune in mind for so long that I took it for granted.

Upon recutting, it was amazing once again how powerful all that stuff is...  Music.... Editing.

Anyway, special thanks to the patient Thomas Wold for the use of his lovely, summery hippy folkadelic tune.  Recorded on machines so old they don't even exist anymore, from what I'm told....

Speaking of music, once the rough cut is done, the plan is to set the picture aside to cool off, and re-commence work on acquiring and/or composing the remaining music for the film. Because for expediency's sake, a handful of scenes are currently scored with temporary tracks, which have copyrights owned by giant, reeking corporations, the kind that charge licensing fees that exceed  the entire budget of the film x2 for each tiny, forgotten song.

(What percentage of that fee goes to the artist? My guess = 0)

After the music is finalized, I can go back to the rough cut, put in the final tracks, cut to the new music and tighten the whole thing up for public consumption. (note the metaphor follow-through here....)

In other news:

Sarah was in another play this weekend which I missed, but will also be in Macha Monkey's Lollyville, playing at Hugo House in May!

Steven Sterne seems to be working non-stop -- beyond his directing duties at SPT he's now working with the Young Playwrights on a read-through series...

Alyssa Kay is in Charlotte's Web, opening March 21 at the Second Story Rep.

Beach Town update Feb 24, lots of progress to report!

Lots of progress on the Beach Town edit this week!

First off, many thanks to Eric S. Anderson for nifty little editing tip that helped get me out of the record store scene where I'd been stuck for a lot longer than seemed reasonable. It was at the point where I was basically "in a quagmire"...

Also thanks to Anna Forse, for a suggestion for the title scene, which I thought I'd gotten past on this initial cut but it'll be worth checking out for sure...Yes!

L-R: Riley Neldam, William Poole, Erik Hammen,
and Sarah Winsor at Dutch Bike, Ballard
(photo by Mel Cafe)

Yes... Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah: lots of ground covered last week.

Back on the bikes, for the lovely little scene that we shot up north by a manicured strip mall in Shoreline, WA. ( ... a strip mall?  In a beach movie of the mind?  .. Yes! ... Intentional! )

That done, it was back to Georgetown again, at Lect's Soup Stop. It was roundly agreed that the soup at Lect's is awesome.

Ease-of-location? Not so much. We pulled that one out of the fire just barely at the time.

But at the end of the day (aka last week) it cut together pretty well.

After that, I worked on a nice long scene that combines the first scene we shot on the film -- down by the rocks on the beach -- with one of the very last things we shot over in Ballard proper.

Also good stuff, but I'll definitely need some more ambient sound for that one.  And it'll need to be quiet ambient sound.

Especially after those Georgetown scenes.

Quiet ambient sound!  It's harder to get than you'd think. The thing is, your brain edits out a lot of sound around you, so something that you think is pretty mellow is actually picked up by the recorder as a big screeching, rumbling hunk 'o racket.

There's also a little touch of music in one part of the Ballard scene, though, and many thanks to Greg Wharmby of the band Horns of Ormus for the music tracks he sent! One of them is looking very good for that bit.

Finally, it was out on the water for some more canoe-camera shots, which I believe will comprise the second surf yoga scene but...

But the truth is these second shots came out really, really good.  So good, that I'm doing some serious considering behind the scenes what I want to do with them for sure.  Because there are several options.

(And, by "behind the scenes", I guess I really mean I'm just going to think about it and no one will know either way. And, is it really behind the scenes if I'm blabbing about it on this blog...?  Considering my likely readership, I'd say yes. )

Last week, I also picked up some more ambient sound, and like I mentioned earlier, I have come to realize that I still need a lot more. I can't go out in the rain, it won't sound right, but my to-do list now has a stack of outdoor jaunts on it. When the weather's right, I'll start carrying the recorder everywhere. Successful ambient sound recording seems to be a combination of luck and perseverance.

This week's still photo is from the bike shop, which is where we began the shoot day that eventually took us up to Shoreline. I don't know what Riley and I are saying in this shot but you can tell it was a laugh riot. (Will seems to be tuned-out, but he's probably just in character)

Beach Town update Feb 17, post-valentine's day update

Not enough time to post properly this week so let's look at a few pictures!

L-R: David Thomas, Riley Neldam, Maya Briller, production morning.
(photo by Mel Cafe)

L-R: Erik Hammen, Maya Briller, Ahren Buhmann, Sarah Winsor on set.
(photo by Mel Cafe)

L-R: Ahren Buhmann, Iain Dalton on set, Georgetown Records.
(photo by Mel Cafe)

Brian Wolbert on set, Cairo.
(photo by Mel Cafe)