Re: EXTREMELY Off Topic Post: Long Weekend Story

Shit Corey - you KNOW I'm less than a mile from the Riverview, but I've got a rehearsal that night.

Gggrrr!

Make sure that Steve Schultz knows about it...

KO

coreybenson wrote:

First off, let me apologize for the following post. I expect it'll be
a long one, so be warned...

Ever heard of the 48 Hour Film Project? Quick synopsis for those who
haven't - On Friday, at 7 PM, we received a genre, a character, a
line to use in the movie, and a prop requirement. By 7:30 Sunday
evening, we had to turn in a 4-7 minute short film. I was asked to
join the team as the Sound Designer, Sound Engineer and to provide
music from my recording studio archives if possible. We used one song,
with permission of the band.

We had 4 writers write 3 scripts, then picked the best of the bunch at
10:30 PM. Storyboarding began immediately, along with two rewrites of
the script, and picking of locations. We had 10 total locations
approved for use, and ended up using 7 of them.

I left our Home Base at 1:45 AM, and was in bed for a bit of rest until
the excruciating time of 4:15 AM. Sadly, I had probably gotten more
sleep than almost anyone on the crew. Loaded up my Scion XB with
microphones, stands, cables, a laptop, a couple mixers and some other
tricks and gadgets, and met the rest of the crew at Home Base at 5 AM
with my boom operator (who doubles as my studio intern) in tow.

No coffee to be found. No gas stations open to get it from. A bad
start to the day, I thought... almost criminal.

Head to first location. Begin setup at 6 AM, shortly after we arrive.
Shots are incredible, the audio is fantastic, and everyone is blown
away by the Audio Technica PZM's I'm using instead of only
traditional boom mics... the boom mic works great, but the PZM's are
awesome. After shooting completes, we spend about 30 minutes recording
mechanic ambience (we were in a body shop, standing next to $50k
Corvettes and such... wild!).

Hey! We're two hours early!

Head to second location. Begin setup at 10 AM. Producer does his job,
and provides coffee. The man's a god in my book. Location owner
shows up later with the best sugar cookies I've had in over a
decade... they positively melted in your mouth!

More shooting, actresses doing really well, wirelesses are complete
junk. Frantically attempt to repair/diagnose issue, go wired instead.
Complete shooting and get more FX audio. Later find out most of it is
useless, but I'll get to that in a bit.

Shooting completes one hour earlier than expected... please notice
we've now "lost" an hour.

Third location: On the way, stop at Culvers to get Butter Burgers.
Food is a wonderful thing when your blood sugar is dropping... it's
about 2 PM. We're still technically early, but beginning to get
concerned... there are still 5 locations to shoot.

Arrive at third location, and begin setup. Filming is awesome,
actors/actresses are doing great, sleep deprivation is only mildly
irritating. Third location is also the fourth location, so as dusk
settles we head out to the garage for the exterior shots. The overcast
skies help the shooting, but impending rain has us all a bit jumpy...
nerves are beginning to get frayed and the stress is mounting. More FX
audio recorded (crashing cans! What fun! Gotta love the Shure Beta 58
microphone...).

Crew and boom operator head to the 5th location, a local park. Sound
from this set of shots is TOTALLY useless, as no one bothered to
actually monitor the sound being recorded. Find out later, and have to
build footstep sounds by hand, plus add in ambience sounds from stock
libraries. Icky, time consuming... ugh.

6th & 7th locations are again in the same place. However, unbeknownst
to me, the artwork I originally scouted has now been removed in
preparation for another show, and our "Museum" shot now needs to
become a "Library" shot... this is NOT good, but at 10 PM on a
Saturday night, what do you do?

While my intern sets up the audio equipment, I set up my wife's DJ
lights, a fogger and a small PA... total of 90 minutes to set up and
tear down everything so we can get 2 seconds of footage, not including
the 20 minutes of actual shooting.

Leave the final location at 2:45 AM. Amazingly, as tight as the
schedule got, we're only 45 minutes behind. Back at Home Base, the
editor has completed rough editing the first half of the movie with the
footage we left behind. I head home at about 3:15 AM, thinking I'll
be back in just over 4 hours, after I've done my audio editing and
caught a couple minutes of sleep.

Pull up to my garage, and my neighbor decides to introduce me to her
brother, who is extremely inebriated. 45 minutes later, they let me go
in the house finally... someday I'll learn how to say, in a loud
enough voice that even a drunk guy can hear, "I really need to go to
bed!"

Sit down on the couch to pet the dog for a minute before I head into
the basement with the captured audio. 3 hours later, I wake up with a
terrible crick in my neck, and race to the studio in a panic. Who
needs coffee when you have adrenaline to start the day?

Um... I do.

While it's importing, I head up stairs and make coffee. Coffee good.

Complete the mixing and head over to Home Base, where I'm the 3rd
person to arrive, but I'm over two hours late. Secretive nail biting
ensues.

Sure! I'd LOVE to go out for breakfast! No, nothing else going on
in my life right now. Why not?

Breakfast was great. There was coffee. Country fried steak will
probably kill me, but I'll have a smile on my face.

Editing begins again at 11:30. Eight hours to turn-in time... and
I'm pretty sure we have at least 30 hours of editing left to do.
Huh... gonna hafta use that NEW math, I think.

Get the editor setup with instructions to move fast, but do great work,
or there'll be death involved. He thinks we're kidding and laughs.
Silly boy.

Director and I head to my studio to take a listen to our library of
music. Select a song for the end credits and spend 45 minutes remixing
the song to better fit the feel of the movie, especially the ending.
When it's done, it's mostly recognizable, he's ecstatic, and we
have three mixes ready to go.

Back to Home Base. It's about 12:45, and sphincter tightening has
begun. Everywhere I look, faces are strained. Editor is working
alone, but now I need to spend time sitting next to him getting
everything to sound "right".

It's about this time that I realize I'm probably far too much of a
perfectionist to do this kind of guerilla film making, as I was close
to killing the editor for most of the day yesterday.

"No, that's NOT right! There's no footstep sound when her foot
is down, but there is one when it's UP! C'Mon! It looks/sounds
like crap!"

"Yes, I KNOW the music is too long for that scene, but just do a fade
out, not a clunking STOP."

"Um, the ambient noise is gone again. Where did it go? No I DIDN'T
say delete it... I said fade it in with the dissolve from the previous
scene."

"Please turn off the Guns-N-Roses while I'm trying to set the
ambience level in the shop. Yes, I could use some energizing too,
but..."

At 7:12 PM, we began exporting the movie to digital tape, their (the
contest runners) preferred media. This goes real time, and that means
we're 8 minutes away from having a tape to turn in. The Director and
Producer pile into their car to head to the bar where everyone's
supposed to turn everything in. Home Base is 15 minutes away from the
bar.

Unless you own a Harley Davidson Fatboy and aren't afraid to use it.

59 teams signed up, 48 teams turned in before the 7:30 deadline.

We were number 48. Three more teams showed up after us and were not
allowed to turn theirs in for competition because they were 1 minute or
more late.

And then there was beer.

Wednesday, 9 PM, at the Riverview Theatre in Minneapolis, I'll see work
I helped create on a movie screen. I'm excited and frightened at the
same time. Should be fun!

Corey Benson
http://www.curbsideproductions.com/

.

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