I Ran Against Us [COMPLETED]

[ntbullock]

We left "wrap partying" around 3:30 AM and woke up at 5:00 AM to get some more shots and then woke back up a few hours later and drove two hours home and then I did some office tidying while Jared had Montezuma's Revenge and then I took a small nap and now I'm working on client commercials and...

[ntbullock]

About to go to sleep now. When I wake I'm going to spend most of the day finishing up some client work. Jared's going to a football game tomorrow [Saturday], so when he gets back maybe we'll start going through the footage and choosing our picks. From there Eric is coming over and he'll be replacing the stereo 16-bit audio with the higher quality 24-bit multi-channel audio from the Deva recordings as we choose shots. It's a large-scale re-syncing job.

We ordered our new Mac G5s and they should get here right about the time a hurricane hits. Wonderful. Let's see how this goes.

I started getting music and score submissions today to go ahead and get that going.

This whole past week has been about getting the office up and running, organizing our lives again, tidying up the shoot, research, the wrap party, and working out our upcoming workflow. It's been a long week, but we're slowly getting to a point where we can actually start putting scenes together - maybe late next week.

Once we replace some uncleared footage in the teaser trailer we'll release it on iranagainstus.com.

[ntbullock]

Almost done with my client work. We're waiting on quite a few things to really get started - not to mention the looming storm that should hit pretty soon now. Our G5s, which we paid for overnight shipping, of course won't get here until after the storm. Oh well. We both ordered the same system:

* Processor Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
* Memory 4GB
* Graphics Card 2xATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB
* Hard Drive Bay 500GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb
* Optical Drive 16x SuperDrive
* APPLE WIRELESS MIGHTY MOUSE & KEYBOARD

He also ordered some Cinema Displays. I already had mine. This office is about to get pretty humid if it's not blown away into smithereens. We're still waiting on some royalty free footage to release the teaser trailer we had for the wrap party.

I also finally purchased the upgrade so I can run ProTools on OS X Leopard.

[ntbullock]

Hurricane passed. We're fine. Not a big deal here.

We started going through footage and choosing our shots. We recorded on P2 cards, and each card holds about 40 minutes of footage. We went through the whole first day, which was on 3 cards. Tomorrow we hope to get day 2 and 3 gone through. Then maybe we can get some of the footage re-synced with the 24-bit audio.

I added a "cast" page to the irau website.

Our G5s were supposed to be here tomorrow. No shipping info though. Here's hoping...

[ntbullock]

The almighty internet speaks to us that our new G5s shall present themselves tomorrow. Time will tell.

We went through another day's footage. It's a strange reliving of such a hurried time. I'm reminded of all those things we didn't have time to do and also how fortunate we were to be getting what we got.

After our new computers get set up and settled we'll ramp up going through footage. This part of the process isn't creative and therefore tedious and laborious.

We also ordered some of our first stock footage that we need for the film.

[ntbullock]

Got our new Macs yesterday and spent most of it setting them up while I dealt with a ridiculous, hair pulling internet issue all afternoon. We didn't get through any footage yesterday, but will tonight. It seems like the loose ends to tie up are coming to a close and an indicator of that is the fact that we're releasing the teaser trailer:

http://www.iranagainstus.com/video.html

[ntbullock]

[ntbullock]

We went through day three in the wee hours of the morning. We've got to start getting through this footage. I'm sure we'll have a marathon one day soon where we won't be constantly interrupted with random tasks.

I believe we have a composer who is willing to do it for next to nothing. He's from Australia, but living in New York I think. Talented guy. He just got done reading the script and he's excited about it. We'll see how it goes. Next we need to find an animator to create the opening title sequence...

[ntbullock]

Went through day 4 and 5. Going to bed at 5 in the morning. Man, our days and nights are screwed. China time.

We've gotten a lot of good responses from people today regarding the trailer. It was humorous because quite a few said the "loved it." It's like everyone got together somehow just to lie to us so we didn't cry ourselves to sleep over this milk we've spilled.

The composer is excited about the project. I don't know where I got New York from, but he called today and I found out he's from New Zealand and living in Hawaii currently.

... must sleep...

[ntbullock]

We went through day 6 yesterday. It's now 6 in the am and we just got done with day 7 and 8... uh, today. We started at midnight or so. Our days are totally flipped now.

We gotta go get another fan for the room because with all our computers on it turns into a sauna pretty quick-like.

Tomorrow Eric should be coming over to start the process of resyncing our video picks with the 24-bit Deva files. We had a 12 day shoot with 5 days of second unit shooting. The second unit shooting were mostly lighter days. Hopefully we can get the rest of the shots picked in about 4 days.

I've also been working on a new Sequential Pictures logo to put at the head of the movie and I'm mostly finished with that.

[ntbullock]

Did day nine. Eric started resync. Next we finish going through principle days.

[ntbullock]

Just finished going through principle photography. Wow, 12 days took forever. We got 5 days of second unit to go through now. Only two of those days did we have separate sound to sync. Those days were much lighter except one. We should finish those in the next day.

Eric left tonight. He got almost two full days synced. If we can't find someone to help we'll have to split it and finish the other 13 days. Ug. We REALLY just want to start putting it together. We're already a little burned out because of these two added steps. We are preparing to prepare to actually edit. Originally we were just going to edit with the stereo channels we got on the camera, but three days before we started principle we got Dan Izen to do sound. Now we got all this higher-quality sound to sync up, but it'll be worth it in the end.

Next movie we have money to pay someone to do this step. Lesson learned.

[ntbullock]

We started syncing footage last night. We worked for many hours trying to get a rhythm. We found a rhythm and then found out that QuickTime was a little deceptive about multiple audio tracks. Now we're backtracking.

[ntbullock]

I got a couple smaller days synced and Jared was having to backtrack through the work Eric had done. I'm glad Jared caught this early. I already backtracked through my footage. It seems like we're moving forward. There are a total of 14 days to sync. It's definitely a time intensive process. The good news is that the 24-bit audio DOES sound cleaner than the 16-bit tracks. There's a noticeable difference.

[ntbullock]

I got day 9 and 10 done and Jared finished 2 and 3. We're closing in. We should be done in a couple days more worth of work. I've got a commercial Monday and another Tuesday. Maybe we'll get it done before then, but it might push it back a little.

BUT around Wednesday at the latest we might actually start throwing some scenes together. We're going to try and get some rough scenes together to get to Harry, our composer.

I'm still trying to get us an animator for the opening.

[ntbullock]

I got day 8 done and Jared finished day 4. My commercial for today was rescheduled this morning, so we work on sync today.

[ntbullock]

I just finished my half and I'm copying all the footage to our ReSync hard drive. He's almost finished with his half of day 6.

Wow. What a process THAT was. Now we can actually start putting it together. It's taken forever to get our lives settled, the office set up, our new equipment in, shots chosen, and 24-bit audio synced. We really thought originally that we'd have some really rough draft done from the time we finished principle photography. Second unit was bigger that we thought. We also know there's a couple small things we'll still need to get, but for the most part we're good.

We are going to try and go to bed at a decent time because Jared's going with me on a commercial shoot tomorrow [actually today]. He's also thinking about going to Chicago for a couple days while I work on that. It'll be a good little break. More than likely I'll finished the commercial and start putting some scenes together to send to Harry, our composer.

Also, using this better audio will extend the sound mix stage as well. Where as before we would only have one stereo channel now we have a lot of 3, 4, and 5 channel audio.

Our hard drives are also about maxed. We have three Seagate terabyte drives that are within a hundred gigs of full. Our fourth drive named ReSync is 750 gigs and dedicated to this process and it is over half full.

[ntbullock]

We actually started editing late last night and didn't go to sleep until around six this morning. Jared flew to Chicago for a couple days. I'm catching up on commercial work. We're both working on separate scenes in our free time over these two days.

He started working on the opening of our movie, and I jumped to a scene I know our composer is going to have to score.

We also ran into another audio issue. Apparently when we pasted the 24-bit audio files into the QuickTime movie file we simply saved the file and it didn't create an independent clip like we thought. Now every time we load Final Cut it has to re-associate all the audio files for every clip - meaning you go make half a sandwich when you load the program. We only learned this after all the work was done. Another lesson learned. The long, hard work is done though. We're moving ahead, but I've been trying to look into ways to automate a process to flatten all the QT files. No luck so far.

[ntbullock]

I think Jared gets back tomorrow. Today I spit out two commercials and looked into software for a couple things. I did find a program called Lillipot that flattens multiple QT files and saves to a different directory. I think it's working. It seems to. I've converted day one, two, and twelve on both our G5s. I don't want to do ALL of them in case it's doing something that I don't want it to that I'm not recognizing. We've got our originals backed up twice, so not the end of the world if so. Seems to take about 30-40 minutes to convert a day.

Put my SONY Z1U up on ebay, blah blah blah - just did a lot of office work today not really related to the movie. I'm about to start editing a little once this last conversion is done...

[ntbullock]

Sold my camera. Jared got back days ago. We've been editing. Tomorrow we'll probably have a rough cut of the first 37 scenes. The script had around 220 scenes total. We sent Harry, our composer, scenes 18 through 29 and he seemed excited. Always good to hear that your composer is excited.

[ntbullock]

We're probably going to ditch the opening animated sequence we've always talked about. We feel like it's a good choice for many reasons. Today we looked at more royalty free footage of world leaders. News footage can get expensive and we're trying to work within our means here.

It's funny how flipped our schedules are from the ordinary. Most people wake up early, go to work, come home and lounge then sleep. We wake up between one and three in the afternoon, get some lounging done, get our email and office work out of the way, then start editing around ten o'clock until six or seven in the morning. Totally opposite.

Hopefully our next editing session, starting in a minute, will see scenes 001-037 ready to send to Harry [the composer].

Uh, on a side note we've been looking for a high quality clip of Osama bin Laden on the internet for use in the movie. It's more difficult than you'd think. We've looked at some pretty shady sites and files we feel. Certainly we are on some government watch list now. If I stop signing this journal then

[ntbullock]

We got some finish up work done day before last and found some royalty free footage we need. We've still got more to search out though. Last night we combined scenes 001 through 038 and sent it to Harry. Other than that we didn't get much done. We did, however, watch another movie shot with the HVX and a 35mm adapter last night for comparison - so we'll call that research. ;]

We converted footage this evening while we watched the presidential debate. We've assigned our next set of scenes. I jump ahead and we work until he catches up and closes the gap.

The first 30 some odd pages whittled down to roughly 22 minutes.

We're still getting compliments about the project and that is good to hear...

[ntbullock]

We got a good bit done last night/early this morning. We went to sleep around 7am. I've been working from scene 053, and I'm on 071 now. Tomorrow we're heading to New Orleans. Jared has some odds and ends to tie up and then we're going to see a friend of mine who's a road manager for a band playing at HOB. We'll get back early Tuesday morning and it's back to work.

There's so much more work to complete. Right now we're basically at the stage where we've knocked off huge chunks of stone and we're starting to see one side of our sculpture. How entertaining will this visage be we ask. Ponder, ponder, ponder.

We hope to have an unmixed rough cut by the middle of October.

[ntbullock]

I'm good through scene 072 and Jared has closed the gap. So, now we've got a rough about 36 minutes or so in length? This part of the movie we just edited had the most amount of "dirty" looking footage because our Brevis35 system malfunctioned one day. It wasn't vibrating the ground glass and you can see some dirt. We shot around as much of it as we could, but it pains us to see. Oh well, story is king anyway and we're through it.

Going to New Orleans tomorrow.

[ntbullock]

We didn't get too much productive done the past couple of days for various reasons. We've been working tonight. We divvied up a section and I'm closing the gap this time.

Harry sent us a scene with some music. He's very talented and so far easy to work with.

[ntbullock]

Got a good little bit done last night and today my goal is to close the gap and reach scene 096 where he started. I've been doing some back office stuff this afternoon while Jared's out. We really want to have a rough cut by the middle of this month. It's doable. We've got some pickups to do eventually, but nothing major so far.

[ntbullock]

We've been working most of the day so far - starting this afternoon... we didn't go to sleep until six or seven as usual. I should be done filling the gap tonight we'll be into the 130s. I think there were around 220 scenes, but there's also quite a few OMITS in the script so I know we're over half way through. That's good because we don't want a long movie. We're shooting for about an 80-90 minute movie. I've been meaning to post some stills off the line...

[ntbullock]

[ntbullock]

We've hit a trouble scene and already cut an another scene. We didn't get much done Saturday and it's been slow Sunday.

[ntbullock]

We've seen some progress the past few days. We're in the last stretch of the story. There are a lot more scene cuts so we'll start jumping up in scene numbers. We're on about scene 170 now. We're still on schedule to have a rough cut by the middle of the month. I have a commercial to shoot tomorrow afternoon and our lead, Griff, is coming through and staying a night.

We've strung a lot of these scenes together and some of them already have a good feel. That's good for our first pass. Others definitely need work. Harry should be sending us some refined music today for the opening scenes.