Awesome: I Shot That

I just finished editing one of the pivotal scenes in the film and I'm pretty sure it's going on my college demo reel. The scene was shot in my room (which was made even nerdier than it already was) and was directed by me (which ruled). Mike Allen is hilarious and a recent addition of sound effects has somehow made Jon and Morgan seem even more awkward than they already did.

The finished product of the film they're making in the movie is a lot better than I expected (or at least it is at this point). We all went out to finish shooting an earlier scene in the movie and, lucky for us, it starts raining torrentially. We took the opportunity and had Phil and I randomly beat on each other in the rain with very little choreography. It didn't flow together very well, but with the addition of Mike Allen's improv'd coaching from the other side of a computer screen (it makes sense when you watch it) everything just seems to fall into place.

Gonna go rough cut this fother muck,
dk

ps: if you ever get the chance to fight in torrential rain in bad ass costumes while someone films it, DO IT. adrenaline rush ftw.

ps2: a bare-bones version of our website (essentially, the layout) can be viewed by clicking the poster to the right of this blog. it's pretty sweet.

The Roughest Cut: why a 30-minute movies takes forever to edit

I've got a long 10 days ahead of me. Unfortunately, they're not nearly long enough.

A few days ago Mike informed me that he's too bogged down with his current film projects to edit the Rough Cut in time to record everyone's lines over winter break, which would push back completion of the film by several months. Luckily, I've already got rough cuts of several scenes of the film. Unluckily, it's not nearly enough. Why not? Check this out.

Donny's To-Do List

1. Finish school
2. Apply to college
3. Fix shower/get new bed/finish getting Christmas presents before girlfriend arrives
4. Train for 2nd degree black belt testing
5. Edit the Rough Cut

With applying to college and my girlfriend heading down and the holidays coming up, the next few weeks of my life are going to be ridiculously busy without me editing the scenes. I'm happy to do it, I mean, editing is what started me on film making and anything to get the film done faster is fine with me, but I'm worried about editing scenes while my girlfriend is here, because it's insanely boring to watch and I'm already cutting our time together a day short by going to Sundance. Editing while she's here would just be dick.

Hoping someone makes a sweet movie about my stress-induced self decapitation,
dk

Roughcutstudios.com

The website should be live shortly. I just went through all of our production stills to pick out the best ones for the website's gallery, and I narrowed it down to 102. Damn. So I narrowed it down to 67. Which then became 35. Which, hopefully, Mike will turn to 20. I'm thinking we could easily come out with a book of production stills once we do a legit feature. If we did one thing right on this movie, it's definitely that. Epic win on production stills.

Will update when the site is live,

dk

Website, Post-Production, Craig's List?

The Rough Cut is slowly movin' along. Mike's been doing some edits up at school and I've been working on t-shirts and the website layout and all that. It's not going quite as quickly as I'd like, but these things take time, so it's totally understandable. This is the first movie I've made where there are, like, y'know, plots, so I can understand while teen dramedies take more time than people fighting over magic trench coats or adaptations of men in cyborg suits who bob their heads a bunch and love the word 'fuck'.

Also, we might have a new movie to film in December? Aside from finishing the Rough Cut and (hopefully) filming with Josh Gad, our December slate looked pretty bare. There's a zombie project that we've been stirring around the idea pot for a while, but that's a handicam movie, so it wouldn't really use any of these nifty new tricks we learned over Rough Cut, which was my only real problem with it. Luckily, Jon (that Jewish kid on all the Rough Cut posters) can write apparently, and came up with a pretty sweet screenplay about finding what you want to do in life that just happens to have super powers in it. It's not ABOUT super powers, they're just in it. It's a thing. You'll see. Probably.

This might be the first movie that we legitimately 'cast' cast. Mike recently held auditions for his short film that were arranged via Craig's List, which, hilarious though it may sound, proved very effective. There are way too many good actors and not nearly enough parts, and actors will totally do stuff for fun, practice, or just something to put on their reel. Should we have done this for Rough Cut? Maybe. Have we learned our lesson? Hell yes. Working with a lead we don't know personally, using everything we learned over the summer, and having Jon direct will prove to be a very interesting experience.

Will this movie have a legitimate production blog? Mayhap. An extra person who is obligated to help with production should make things considerably easier. My one major regret with the Rough Cut was not loading the prop camera with tape and a battery to make a really kickass production diary. There just wasn't enough time to think about it. I've been considering assigning someone else entirely to do the production diary/making of. That'd take a lot of pressure off me AND get more people involved in the project AND be a sweet compilation book, once we make enough movies. Good idea, me. Good idea.

-dk

Website

5 am is like, website building time, right? Officially? Pretty sure I read that somewhere not made up. Regardless, the last two 5 am's I've lived through have been completely dedicated to building the official Rough Cut website. 

Mike gave me very specific instructions as to what he wanted the site to look like, and I whipped something up in Photoshop, that will then be translated into HTML via Dreamweaver and then slapped onto the internet at http://roughcutstudios.com. 

We're hoping that the website will eventually evolve into the website for the production studios (cause, let's face it, The Rough Cut doesn't really need it's own website. It's like, what, 40 minutes long and shot in DV? Come on.

Er, uh, I mean, it is styled in the DV format, and supplemented with HD footage, to... uh... hour and a half...

Donateplzkcool.

-dk

ps: how 'bout that Presidency?

Mike Cuts the Cut

Last night, before 5 am Halo 3, Mike showed me his cuts of the first few minutes of the movie, and they look fantastic. The sound design, the effects, everything. Be looking forward to this movie, people.

We also finally have a URL. I was holding off on picking one, because some random European techno musician who's signed in twice and has Tom as his only friend stole 'The Rough Cut'. Maybe we can steal it back when we're famous? Ali said they do stuff like that for celebrities sometimes. Fingers crossed. 

Be sure to send all your friends over to http://www.myspace.com/theroughcutmovie, once we have more stuff up to show off.

- Donny

Amazon?

So I was looking up distribution options, and I saw that Amazon has a pretty solid DVD distribution/sales service, which would allow The Rough Cut to be sold on Amazon, and, apparently, be eligible for IMDB. If the Rough Cut is on IMDB, that means anyone in this movie is on IMDB, which means you could totally look us up at college parties and impress your peers with your name in the credits of a movie. Cool.

- Donny

The Beginning is the End is the Beginning

Alright! So, I retroactively added all of our Production Diary posts from the other websites into Blogger. It's only kind of cheating so it's totally fine. Next movie, crazy Production Diary with all kinds of updates and someone else to do it.

Livin' the dream.

dk

Race against TIME!

It's a race against time! FUCKIN' TIME! We shot almost all of Phil and Sandy's shots for the film yesterday, and the first stuff with Michael's dad and Eric Jackowitz (who has a kick ass voice). Mike's dad blew us all out of the water, and even bought cigars and dildos to prepare for the role. Bad ass. Phil and I also finally finished our fight scene, so no more 200 degree leather clad fight scenes for me! Until we shoot Six Shot Samurai, anyway.

- Donny

Mike's Update

Um... yesterday's date. /08.
Best day ever. We got to film crazy torture scenes, a party scene, and Mrs. Finkelstein's scene. And it was all on-schedule and under-budget. Plus Sarah Moore started filming -- and she ROCKED her line. Donny should be posting some of those photos soon. Because seriously, the production value of this movie just shot through the roof. Also props to Jenel for kickass production stills.

- Mike

AD = Gone. Tech = Awesome.

Tragically, we lost our Assistant Director to goinghometoCT today. Ali Stackpole, you will be sorely missed. In other news, Michael's tech screens look fucking awesome, and I uploaded a screenshot of an early version so you all could see. We also got Jon's pictures for the poster, so expect some blue screen Jon action soon. This is our last week to film Phil Allen, so if you were wanting to hang out with any member of the cast this weekend, good luck. We got filmings to do. On a related note, anyone over 18 who is willing to be nude in the film on a porn set should definitely message me ASAP. We need some of thems. 

- dk

Masks

Ali and Mike created three masks for the first fight scene in the movie. One for close ups, one for stunts, and one broken, for when the mask is removed. Also, Mike got the pick up dolly shot of Phil in his TV room, and made some kick ass tech effects in Motion for his scene as the dorky dude. Jon got back from wherevertheweiss, so production of the main movie should resume shortly.

-dk