Starving Dogs 2007 Movie Journal

Well, the last journal got a little too much and I thought I would start a fresh one for the new year.

I have a lot of news concerning the Stephen King flick, and three other shorts we have shot since then.

But I will get to that later. First is this question concerning our current project.

The scene involves a zombie walking up behind a ninja and grabbing the ninja by the neck. The ninja quickly drives his sword through the head of the zombie and then pulls it back out as the zombie falls dead.

I need a funny one-liner for the ninja to say after killing the zombie.

ideas?

We should have the sound and new score finished for the Stephen King dollar baby, "I Know What You Need." A local composer named Jesse Harlin is working on it as I write this. It will be just in time for a couple of things:

1. On September 22, it will be shown in the Netherlands for the second time. It will be the films fourth showing (It showed in the Netherlands last year, in Argentina at the Mar del Plata Film Festival and in Bangor, Maine). It will be the first showing with the sound remastered and the new score, so we are excited about that.

2. The lead actress from the movie is now in L.A. and works for Paramount. Her bosses want to see the movie. They will see it at it's best now.

That's pretty exciting, but right now we are working on re-shoots for our film "It Catches Up With You." The original shoot of the movie went great but the ending is boring and does not work well on film. I rewrote the entire thing (it was based on a short story I aquired the rights to) and I am really excited about it. I think it might be the most exciting stuff we have shot as of yet.

That leaves the zombie movie on hold, but I am really, really excited about the reshoots and the fact that the King flick is really picking up steam.

I'll post some pics from the re-shoots when we do them in the next couple of weeks.

This is pretty cool. On Saturday and Sunday, June 09 and 10, I will be shooting a big drag boat racing event. Saturday I will be shooting the first round and that night putting together a highlights real that will show during the final rounds on Sunday. Then I will be putting together a DVD that they will sell.

It pays well too.

I don't know much about drag boat racing (I have been researcing it online and watching videos of other races to get a feel) but I am excited to actually be doing something for money.

If you ever want to make money shooting an outdoor even in the summer, make it worth it money wise. I am burnt to a crisp and almost suffered a freaking heat stroke standing in the sun shooting freaking boats racing 1000 feet for 7 straight hours.

Jesus, that was hell.

And tomorrow we go back and shoot the actual competition.

Sure, they are paying me $750 but when you break down 14 hours of shooting, 2 camera people and at least 4 hours of editing work, it still comes down to only $40 an hour, and only $25 an hour average for my part (editing and half of the shooting). It sounds like a lot of money, but God I am miserable right now.

Oh well, it's how I want to make a living right now (video work, not necesarily outdoor boat races though) so I can't complain too much. Although, for a while today I wished I was at my regular job and that is never good.

I Keep it in the fridge.

Today was much better. For one, I wore wind pants and a long sleeve shirt and for a second thing there was a lot of clouds. It made it harder to shoot since i had to keep tweeking the F-Stop and shutter speeds, but I didn't care since I could actually breath.

That and we got the first 2/3 of the payment today, so I am happy.

Well, things are moving forward.

I KNOW WHAT YOU NEED
Finished. No more work, no more nothing on it. The sound was mastered and a new score was added by local composer Jesse Harlin. I put it on DVD and added a commentary track and deleted scenes and sent it out to Lilja'a Library to be reviewed and back to the Netherlands for it's second showing there (scheduled for September). Glad to have it done.

THIS IS HELL
It is now completely edited and is being sent to Jesse Harlin to add the dialogue (the first movie in which we recorded it seperately) and a score. Hopefully it will be done by middle of August.

LES CHANSONS
This movie was not accepted at Sundance last year, so now we are going full speed ahead to smaller festivals.

THE WORLD'S WORST FISHERMAN
This was a spur of the moment short filmed while I was on vacation in the Ozarks. It was co-produced with D-Rock Productions (out of Texas) and I have completely edited it and will be sending it to D-Rock to get a music score added to it.

WWZJD
We are now beginning production on our Zombie movie. We are in the casting process now. Pre-production will also include heavily choreographed fight scenes (there is a scene in the middle where there is an all-out zombies vs ninjas fight. This is looking to be our most abitious film yet, and we are excited about the process leading up to it.

Things are starting to move faster now, as we are procrastinating less and less lately. Hopefully, things really start to rock as we head into the last half of 2007.

If you want to keep track of what we are doing in WWZJD, you can check out the web site (starvingdogs.biz), which will have a running journal. You can also join the movie's MySpace page (MySpace) where there will be LOTS of pictures and you can view video podcast episodes as we move forward.

Tough Day:

First, Les Chansons was rejected from it's second festival. Got the notification today.

Second, I Know What You Need was reviewed and well - http://www.liljas-library.com/showreview.php?id=151

I guess I am getting a crash course in rejection today.

I know. I just wanted that particular movie to be good since it has Stephen King's name attached to it, and everything he said is true, and I have known it since I finished the movie. It kind of hit me hard since it was supposed to be my big one. He e-mailed me after reviewing it and said he hoped I did think he was too hard. It just hit me the most because he was right on about at least 3 of the actors.

Six days away from the start of our new Zombie movie. I'm taking a little harder edged approach on this one. The acting on the previous movies has been a little below average and this time, I'm hoping for a better final result

First day of shooting the new zombie movie was yesterday. Things went well, I think. We had no zombie's in yesterdays scenes and thet is good since I just wanted to get out there shooting again to get comfortable before I had to worry about effects.

I got a great makeup effects guy named Eric Bryson to come aboard and do this for us and he has a great portfolio and comes highly recommended by fellow filmmakers.

We had some trouble with the sun moving around and messing with the lighting, but I think we got it all done pretty good. I'll edit what we did over the next couple of days and know for sure then.

Overall, it was a very fun, relaxed day shooting and everyone did a really good job. I hope this will be a fresh start for us in the post-Stephen King days. Nowhere to go but up from here.

DAMN IT!

Here is some advice someone gave me once that I forget about 70% of the time I am shooting. Take your DV Tape and fast forward to the end and then rewind it back to the beginning. The reason is that many of the tapes you buy are not tightly wound and if your camera is at all jarred, it can loosen and mess up.

I learned the lesson the hard way AGAIN. The first ten minutes of the tape from Sunday's shoot is worthless. The tape screwed up and an actor will have to come back and reshoot his lines from an entire scene. It could have been worse and more than one actor would have had his scenes destroyed, but the problem is that this actor was only needed for the one day.

Now I have to get him to return and redo everything he did.

Lesson to remember for anyone shooting on DV.

A fellow Chewer named Brian Little (Far Out Fan) just finished work on the poster for my movie. I was pretty impressed and here it is:

Day 2 of shooting is done and here are a couple of pics of our first zombie

Day 3 is done, and here are four more pictures of zombies from today. Just like the last pictures, these are still photos taken either before or during the shoot, and not from an actual shot itself. Things are moving at a nice, steady pace and we are almost half way done now. Pretty happy with what I have so far, but we'll see how it goes during editing.

lookie, more zombies!
And just a pic that I thought was cool

Well, time came Sunday to shoot more scenes and our main actor no-called/no-showed. This was also just not any actor, it was the guy I have been making movies with for seven years, the star of my first short and my production partner for every movie we have shot. We had five zombies and the make-up guy that I am paying. We had the other three main actors and extras. Everyone waiting for him to show up.

He never did.

We shot as much as we could without him, including all the zombie scenes, since those are what costs me money. I had to rewrite the script on the spot, replacing his lines with another actor, and changing the character arc of two major actors in the process (swapping them out).

Now it is 2 days later and there is still no sign of him. His family has contacted me and he has been missing since last Thursday.

I'm pretty torn here. First, he is my best friend and he is missing and no one knows if he has just suddenly flaked out on life or something bad has happened. We have called jails, hospitals and all his friends. No one knows anything.

However, I have a film to finish. If we were just shooting this with our friends, no big deal. I am paying people here. I have real actors who have donated their time to making this movie. I have to finish this movie, with or without him. If I don't hear anything soon, I will have to write his character out of the script by reorganizing the scenes and giving his lines to other characters.

I hate to do it since we have been together since the beginning and something really bad might have happened to him, but I am doing a job and owe it to everyone else to finish this job. It's not just making a movie for fun, its making a movie as a job.

This is the hardest thing I have maybe ever had to do.