Quick update on Beach Town; color correction in progress!

linkage photo by E. Hammen

It's been a busy week here in beach town. So I'll keep this brief.

Color correction is in progress! It is lots of fun to work with Ahren Buhmann and frankly, an exciting process.

Picture lock is one thing, but when you balance all the little pictures that you've locked against each other, it gains cohesion. The result is greater than the sum of the parts; it's something new.  And that something is the final film.

Coming up: I'm meeting with David Thomas for a bit of updating to a particular music track, and I'm making plans on getting the final audio mix worked out.

Exciting!

Picture lock is nigh

photo by E. Hammen

Picture lock is nigh. 

Last night I was working on the film and thinking, "Well, I'm not touching the opening credits anymore, they're ready for Eric Anderson to work on font and layout."

And then, I looked at the credits this morning... and I thought the same thing!

Picture lock is nigh. 

This morning I also looked at a pretty major (actually very minor) last-minute shakeup I did to a little scene, and lo and behold it looked spot-on.

I'm meeting with multi-talented and very patient Ahren Buhmann the week after this to start color correction.

Picture lock is nigh!

"Nigh" is a funny word. It seems like it has to be connected to "night" but the etymology references I've seen imply this is only a coincidence.

Today's photo is also not related to Beach Town, but it might as well be. Long n' low is the angle here.

I love sidewalks and I love grass in sidewalk cracks. Is anyone up for making a feature film entirely about this? It'd be called "Grass in the Sidewalks". Or maybe "Flaming Grass", just to spice things up a bit. Or maybe "Grass -- and I Don't Mean the Kind You Roll up and Smoke, I Mean the Kind that Grows between the Cracks of your Sidewalk!" I'm sure Kickstarter revenues would be boffo.

Social hour: 
I saw costumer Barbara Blunt in the coffee shop last week! Great to see her out of the theater and walking around in the daytime.  Also heard from Iain Dalton, who has been working on music videos recently -- very cool!

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.

Trailer tomorrow!

I'm still working on the film, but tomorrow I'll put up the official public trailer for Beach Town.

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.
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More to come very soon!