Hurry up and wait, Beach Town

photo by Erik Hammen

I definitely got some good work done on the film, but last week was a very hectic. I'll have more specifics to post soon.

I did see a lot of relatives this week. Quite a few of them are crazy artists just like me. That's always nice to remember.

Also good to remember is that I need to come up with a better pitch for the film. How to explain it to the uninitiated. "Beach Town is a beach movie of the mind. ... " what else?  Umm.... I don't know, but do you wanna hear about this awesome edit I made by removing two frames from a clip and adding three from a totally different scene that matches?

The least qualified person to describe art is usually the artist. The smart ones don't say anything. I fall into the other category. If anyone's got a good way to describe my film, please let me know. ( but "not yet done" is already taken)

Update May 11, in brief

Erik Hammen, Riley Neldam, Ahren Buhmann on set
(photo by David Thomas)

I made good progress on the cut despite a very difficult week and more of the same to come.

I'm about 2/3 of the way through the final cut, working on the scenes like the one in downtown Ballard, out on the water, and outside Surf Ballard with Maya and Sarah.

Digging up buried treasure everywhere. Who buried it? Me.

Today's photo is from the scene we shot at Lect's Soup Stop. (Lect's is actually not featured in this photo. )

Our window of time to work at that location was very small, and it started shrinking the minute we started to shoot. If I recall correctly, I had to "drive solutions with proactive detail-oriented problem-solving." Put that phrase on your resume, it'll double your take home pay. Just kidding.

Anyway, I love that scene now. I worked it last week, and it came out great.

In other news, I had lunch with Steven Sterne on Friday, it was great to catch up. He's been very busy acting these days.

Last summer, my kids were extras in a non-beach movie, called "My Year of the Nuns", and it's playing at the Seattle Int'l Film Fest this month.  I'm pretty sure this is not a "Nunsploitation" flick, but the director is Bret Fetzer, who also wrote the play "Lollyville" that Sarah is currently in, and the writer is this guy Matt Smith, who I saw acting in another movie once, and he was pretty funny. So I've got high hopes for it.

May 5 update

Sarah Winsor makeup test
(photo by Mel Cafe)

Last week was a bit random, but here's where we're at:

David Thomas and I finished mixing the rest of the internally-created music. I'm putting the finished tracks in place as I go, and suddenly everything looks 20% better. Good sound = good picture. This is solid math.

I also go up through the coda of the post-theater scene in the edit. I'd thought that coda was pretty much set in stone -- three nice shots, then out we go -- but true to the nature of this cut, it was now very clear that one of those shots had to go. In its place, I'm using two other clips, which were previously discarded from their original places in the film.

So maybe I'll end up using this newly discarded clip for something else as well.

I hope so. In an ideal world, the shot/Use ratio is ideally 1:1 -- that's good math.

In other news...  hey look, there's Sarah Winsor in today's photo. I think it's a makeup test photo from the set. Anyway, Sarah is starring in a stage play right now over at Hugo House called Lollyville, which I saw over the weekend and highly recommend! The show runs through May 24th.

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 21 update, music music music

Fence in downtown Coupeville, WA
(photo by Erik Hammen)

More great news on the music front -- we scored two tracks from 2i to be featured in Beach Town!

2i were a fantastic band out of Minneapolis that were known for their totally unique sound and awesome live shows. The two songs we're using are actually from one of their live recordings.

Thank you Sharon Kaniess and 2i!!

I also sent three more new songs to David Thomas, all footage-tested and ready to mix.

So... as of this writing I have one more song to finalize (tonight) and one more to either find, or more likely, to write -- but I've got a pretty good idea of how it's going to go.

In other words, we are inches-in-time away from starting the final cut with music!

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...

Update Monday, April 7. Beach Town

Silent-era stars Dorothy Sebastian and Joan Crawford
on the beach

Yesssir, that's the life. Young and stylish and carefree. Lunching on the beach with a pal. Say, you brought your "uke" -- Let's have a song!

This picture reminds me of post-production music work in many ways. I too eat sandwiches!

Last week, I completed two new songs and sent them to David Thomas to begin mixing.

David and I also completed the mix-down of all the performance songs (ie: the bands). Now they sound great and are ready to go in the picture. I should mention that when I say "David and I" what I mean is David had already done the actual mixing and the brains part, and I came in and sat around and said stuff like "can we have a little more of that whatchacallit... that one."

I also roughed in three other songs, and I'm hoping to complete at least a couple of them during the next week. I tried out some alternate guitar tunings on one of them. (But not the Curtis Mayfield tuning... yet).

Beyond that, I also spent a lot of time trawling around and listening to local bands via various online resources to find like-minded individuals who might want to Collaborate with me.

There are a lot of good bands out there.  And of course, I want to Collaborate if at all possible.

But it never fails to amaze me how a song can seem like it'd work perfectly for a scene, but then when you actually go into the picture and put it over the scene, it's no good for reasons that aren't clear until you see it.

Nuance is the key thing.

Nuance is a nuisance.

But it's also the difference between good and "okay".

Roasted and burned.

Bleu cheese and rotten.