Egomania Is Popular Right Now...Shit

There’s been a couple of movies lately that have really pissed me off. Not because they are bad, but because their subject matter is dangerously similar to Railed Up. What I thought was a truly original idea.

In one of the screenwriting book I read, the author talked about how, because of the amount of scripts being written these days, there’d inevitably be instances where there’d be coincidences where writers would write very similar scripts. Not plagiarizing or anything, just running with a very similar idea. Like some writers would write an entire script then see a new movie come out that was so similar to their script that it would render their story unnecessary because it had essentially been told already.

Now I thought that I’d be clear of this, because I thought my story was rather “out there.” I thought a story where a there’s a dream sequence where the main actor inhabits four characters (it used to be 6, two of them got edited out for time), would have been original.

A little side note here is when I tell people this, immediately I get the puzzled look followed by the feeling that I’m pretty sure they’re thinking this is like the nutty professor or something. So I figure from now on I’ll just describe the movie as John’s gf, Kerry, did the other night, Railed Up and Wrecked is Nutty Professor meets Requiem for a Dream. Haha. This isn’t really serious but my buddy Will-when people ask him to describe a movie he may have seen lately- he will look at them straight faced and say that it’s Hotel Rwanda meets Save the Last Dance hahaha.

Anyways, I saw a couple of movies lately that are encroaching on my original idea. First is the Michael Cera movie, Youth in Revolt where the nerdy Michael Cera invents a “supplementary personality” a cooler version of him to help him get the girl and all that. Dangerously close to the less cool – more cool versions of the main character in the dream in my movie. I saw that trailer, I was like DAMMIT! Screw you Michael Cera haha.



Next was the movie “Moon” with Sam Rockwell. This might be a bit a spoiler, kind of, even though you find this out half hour in, (skip ahead if you don’t want to know). So in Moon, there are multiple Sam Rockwells that interact with each other. It’s pretty much just him acting opposite himself for the whole movie. I saw that movie I was like DAMMIT! Screw you Sam Rockwell, even though he did a really good job playing different versions of himself…but screw you SR anyways haha.




The last one which I don’t even think I’ll mention because that would ruin a twist in my movie. But either way I saw yet another where I had the DAMMIT screw you response.

Having said all this though, I will reassure you that Railed Up is still very original. But these surface similarities are starting to piss me off haha.

A lot of times on this project I’ve considered making a list of all the things I still had to do before the movie would be done. And then I realized that would be a very disheartening thing to do, because there has always been so much to do. So I just chipped away at things as they came to me.

I’ve been all about doing it in small chunks to make it manageable and not get overwhelmed, while every once and awhile allowing my mind to wander to the big picture of how much is left to do. But Now! I have a list of about 10 things to do before this thing is done done.

Being somewhat obsessive compulsive helps quite a bit with organizing a large project like this. Usually I’d recommend writing things down in some giant excel file to keep things organized. But because I’ve been over and over the script countless times while writing and filming, then over it countless more times editing, then the same doing music and sound business; I’m so familiar with Railed Up that my head’s become that excel file.

If you say a number between 1 and 100, the first thing that’ll pop into my head will be the scene that that number corresponds to in the movie. My notebook would be completely incomprehensible to everyone besides me, partially because of my chicken scratch writing, but also because it’s just the vomit that results when I try to write down part of my cerebral excel file. Here’s an excerpt:

To go:

32 violin deep base on head turn

48 pick on string high pitch sound

57 alteration on car

39 fucked sound

43 song pump up desperado

Haha nonsense. If I were to die, this movie would be unfinishable, because these would have been the instructions I would have left behind.



Something that I find interesting is that as I re-read some of my notes it seems as though there’s A LOT of music/sound that I’ve added to the movie. This is something that I don’t think a lot of people are conscious of: there are a lot fewer moments than you would think in tv and movies that don’t have music or some sort of atmospheric sound in them.

This was one of the things that I started to think about as soon as I started trying to screen write. The moment that sticks out in my mind is listening to commentary on El Mariachi, and being shocked that all the sound was recorded separately from the film. As in, they filmed a scene, cut, then recorded the audio separate. This was done out of necessity because the camera Robert Rodriguez was using was old and loud and would’ve fucked the sound up to an un-useable degree.

This baffled me. So I watched the movie again, and aside from being stunned that the audio was recorded separately and that Rodriguez had to sync up all the dialogue and sound effects by hand afterwards, I realized how much music and sound texture was used, in addition to the dialogue. It’s way more than you think there is.

I know this, because I was talking to Ali about the music the other day and she was all worried that I was going to ruin things by having music in so many scenes. But I told her to pay attention to it when watching movies and tv. Seriously, pay attention. It’s weird how much there is.

Having said that, I don’t think I’ve overdone it. I never ever wanted the music to be overly distracting or call attention to itself. But we’ll have to see. Because after all, even though it’s a small list of things left to do, I still have a list of things to do before we’ll be able to tell if I’ve succeeded. ps I'll keep 'em coming Feds.

Railed Up Music Making

It takes a good 8 hours to encode an hour and 35 minute movie to get high quality picture and sound. So on December 19th, I watched anxiously as my 2 year old laptop struggled to process this encoding. But once it was done, I burned the movie onto a dvd, and for the first time I had the movie, in its entirety, in my hands. This was pretty much 3 months to the day from when I started editing, and 6 months from the day I began filming, 7 months from the day I finished the final draft of the script, and 2 years and 9 months from the time I cooked up the idea that I wanted to make a movie.




To be standing there with a copy of my movie, I felt so relieved because the last month leading up to that day, I’d become increasingly paranoid that something was gonna happen to my computer, or my hardrives and I’d lose everything. So to have the movie in my hand, free from the fragile computer world that it was previously living in, I felt a million times better.
As I watched the whole thing for the first time on our big screen tv, I got so overwhelmed. When the ending came, I couldn’t keep it together. I mean, I’d seen the thing probably fifty odd times before but watching it all together, in one sitting, made me realize it was an actual movie, and for the most part, it worked. Part of the reason I was overwhelmed, was because this movie represented my whole life, for all intents and purposes, for the last 8 months. And if it didn’t work out, or it sucked, man I would’ve felt shitty. But to see it come together, felt so good because up until now, I was apprehensive to tell anyone what it was I was up to because of the fear that the movie might suck, and I’d be embarrassed as hell to tell people that I spent the last 8 months making a piece of shit amateur Canadian movie. So to see it together and find out that wasn’t the case, I felt able to proudly tell people what I’d been up to. This next pic by the way, is the entire movie in final cut, the scale is an hour and a half across.



Having said that…this thing is far faaaaaarrrrrr from being done. And it’s been tough to free myself from my self-adulation to realize: right now, it has potential to be good, and the people who have seen it at this stage, can see the potential. But if I don’t get my ass back in gear and fine tune this movie, it will be just an unfinished movie that had potential and will just be chalked up to a cool accomplishment. That ain’t gonna happen. This movie must be THE SHIT! It must be.
So the movie’s edited together…what else is there to do you might ask. Well, the audio is still choppy and there’s probably only 40% of the music in there, not to mention anytype of sound effects/ mood setting atmospheric sounds. The main issue with sound is achieving continuity of sound. No changes in levels from cut to cut.

This has proved very challenging, because when we were filming, the ambient sound always seemed to be changing. It doesn’t matter if it was inside, outside, whatever. From take to take, something was always different. Maybe the furnace turned on, or just the different sounds from one direction of the microphone to the other. Or maybe the asshole birds would chirp away for ten minutes straight then not make a peep. Or maybe there was an airplane within 20 miles of our filming (which there always was) that would fuck up the sound. Or maybe there’s a guy mowing his lawn at 8pm on a Friday night right across from the spot where we’re filming an emotional scene, trying to get it finished before the sun sets. This means that in any given scene, I need to find out what the loudest ambient sound is, and overlay it over the cuts that don’t have that sound. Ridiculous. Not to mention the fact that us retarded actors would always try to get the best performance even if that meant talking over one another, which is the single biggest nightmare for audio editors, because if there’s no break in speaking…how the shit do I cut it. I don’t know how it’s really done by pro audio editors, but those guys are working some magic let me tell you.

Now music on the other hand has been a great process so far. I know I still have a long way to go, but so far so good. One of the best parts about doing something creative like this film, it tends to bring out the creative side in everyone you know. I’ve connected with buddies I’ve played hockey with and friends of friends that I probably wouldn’t normally have because we have this common creativity. So I tell them I’m making a movie, I find out they play the guitar or sing or whatever. And just like that, they start making music for me. It’s like these guys have this creativity and this represents another outlet for them to express themselves. This is all sounding very pompous I know like actors talking about their craft and all that, but you know what I mean.

I’ve recently been working with a guy named Ty Williams, this guy’s got skills on guitarra. It’s been a strange process because here’s how these recording sessions go down.

We watch the scene that needs music.

Neil: K Ty, we need something that sounds badass, maybe kinda bluesy maybe, I dunno.

Ty: Well should we do it down low like this (ty plays some blues magic) or up higher like this (ty plays more magic again, this time higher)

(Neil scrambles across the room to try to set up the camera and microphone as fast as possible)

Neil: Both, we’re doing both!! Do that exact same thing again. K you ready?

Ty: I don’t even know really what I did.

Neil: Just do it again…k we’re going.

We record, Ty busts out magic…Not always exactly the same, but the same vibe at the very least.




Like I said, it’s been a strange experience to have something very abstract in my mind: basically just a vibe, then telling someone that vibe, and they turn it into something concrete. Now the little above convo doesn’t always yield a complete song right away, that’d be too good to be true. But what it does do is get that initial vibe out prepped for us to sculpt it to fit the scene.

And the way we’ve been scoring this movie is the definition of DIY, I love it. I set up my camera on my tripod, on the far side of the room, I get Ty to sit, guitar in hand, on the couch closest to the tv, I bookend the shot with Ty on one side of the shot and the tv on the other. I set the mic up on the boom. I press record on the camera, I press play on whatever scene we’re working, and Ty watches the scene and plays as he watches. And presto!!! Haha, usually it takes an entire night of playing, recording, writing, re-writing, and not to mention one or two beers (or a case haha) to get about three or four scenes, depending on how productive we happen to be that night, or until Ty’s fingers start to bleed. Whichever occurs first. On occasion, we would toss on a movie as inspiration, one of the most memorable being "It Might Get Loud" a documentary about the guitar that follows three terrible guitar players ;) Jack White, Jimmy Page, and The Edge. Nothing gets you into the creative guitar playing frame of mind better than that movie. One of the year's best by my account.

And then I started employing this method in my own way by myself. I hooked up my new (Christmas present (thanks mom and dad!!)) tv in front of my computer editing area. And I would watch a scene as I attempted to do some scoring of my own, using the program logic express. Add a little violin and add a little piano in for the more emotionally driven scenes. Anyways that’ll do it for now…back to work, instead of sitting here typing about it haha.