SEQUENTIAL Pictures

[ntbullock]

Finished principle photography. Now on to second unit material which won't involve as many people. These past two weeks have been trying but I've learned a good deal and met some great people.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

[ntbullock]

Today we really start organizing what we have left to shoot. It's more than we'd like but the shooting schedule we had was quite daunting to say the least - something had to give.

What we did get looks great, we feel, and we're excited about cutting it. There's a ton left to do. We bought three Seagate terabyte hard drives for triple redundancy and they are half full. So, we have about 500 gigs of footage. We shot in 24pn and that saved some space.

We'll probably head back to Hattiesburg early next week. I've got a bit of client work to get out of the way once I return, but then we'll go full steam ahead.


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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

[ntbullock]

Today we started the shooting schedule for second unit. We shot a lot of slow motion running shots in the streets with our two principle actors. Our lead actor, "Griff" Hood, is leaving us tomorrow, and our lead actress is going out of town for the weekend. I hope we have what we need. I think we do.

Strange stuff to shoot tomorrow. It's not everyday you have a porta-potty delivered to your house so you can shoot something in it... uh,... never mind. Hopefully we'll be done Monday.

Oh, and my backpack with all my personals fell out of the production van and disappeared into the Orleans night before our quick return. It could have been worse though. Much worse.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

[ntbullock]

Second day of second unit shooting. We shot out the rest of one of our side characters, Brad, today - played by Matt Madden. We only had two pages to shoot, but there were a few company moves. Hot as hell today.

Jared and I still haven't decompressed at all from the shoot. Almost there. Here's a snag from one of the P2 cards. No correction or balancing - just right off the card...


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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

[ntbullock]

Oh my God. Kill me. My sleeping schedule has been brutalized. Four days of night shoots. A few days of random shooting and then we just got back from a shoot that started at 1:30 am and ended at 10:00 am. We have to wake up around lunch [in two hours] to move furniture out of our main location we shot last week. Then we shoot tomorrow morning. My eating is off too. My body doesn't know what the hell is going on, and quite honestly I don't even know what to tell it anymore. There's no more lying. I've taken it on a trip that it wasn't prepared for.

That being said... we got some good footy this morning, and we are getting close to being done. It's looking like we'll be shooting Tuesday too, though.

We've also been trying to cut together a teaser trailer in between all this because we know we won't have much time once we start the real edit.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

[ntbullock]

Today was our last long day of second unit. We shot two new actors and some green screen. We started around eleven and got done around nine tonight. The day would've gone quicker with a full crew, but we're only staffed with essentials and those who could manage.

Monday night, today technically, we shoot some rooftop sniper business, but it's not too much. I may come home afterwards or Wednesday morning. I've got a commercial that's been waiting for me to edit since I left and two commercials to shoot Thursday possibly.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

[ntbullock]

We shot our last scheduled bit tonight. I am getting the hard drives backed up and packing to go home. I've got some commercial business to get out of the way for when Jared and I start post sometime Sunday. He's going to get some city shots before he comes up to Hattiesburg.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

[ntbullock]

I've been back home for a few days trying to get everything settled. Paying bills, washing clothes, cleaning up, getting up with my clients, catching up, and getting things out of the way as much as possible. Jared is coming up tomorrow [Sat.] and we have to put some timetable / game plan together.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

[ntbullock]

Jared got here last night. We are getting things settled. We'll order our new Mac G5s this week and we'll be picking our shots to start with. We might try and have the wrap party this week in New Orleans, too.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

[ntbullock]

We've been swamped with trying to get everything organized and to a point where we can really bite into this thing. I've gotten a lot of client work out of the way and Jared has been tidying up loose ends as well. I've cut 4 or 5 commercials since I've been back, so there's been no shortage of shit to do. We set up Jared's half of the office. It's ridiculous. He went out and bought the exact desk and shelves as I have, so it looks like we're twinkies. Gayest thing ever... in a good way - the good way, right?

We're headed back to New Orleans tomorrow [today actually] for the wrap party and are headed back early Friday morning after we get another sunrise shot for the movie.

We are about to order our new Mac G5s in a minute. I still haven't sold my current G5. Money seems to be falling out our damn pockets. We'll have to start stripping again I guess. Those were the good days anyway.

We've almost got the two minute teaser trailer finished.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

[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...
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

[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.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

[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.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

[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...
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

[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.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

[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
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

[ntbullock]

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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

[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...
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

[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...
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

[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.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

[ntbullock]

Did day nine. Eric started resync. Next we finish going through principle days.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

[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.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

[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.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

[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.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]

[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.
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[ “I'm late to this idea, but apparently timing IS everything.” - ntb ]