2010 Clearwater Film Festival

It’s been almost a year since I first wrote on this blog, and it’s been more than 6 months since my last entry. I’ll get to what went in on in the last six months in the next entry. But for now, I have something more exciting to talk about. My first film festival!

This is not entirely true, I was in films as an actor in both the 2007 edition and the 2008 edition of the Calgary International Film Festival. The movies were ‘No Sense’ and ‘Secret of the Nutcracker.’

But on September 29th I landed in Tampa Florida on my way to the beach town of Clearwater for the 2010 Clearwater Film Festival for my first festival as a filmmaker.



I show up at ‘Water’s Edge’, a swanky condo right on the water where I head up to the penthouse suite for the Opening Night Gala.

I had no idea what to expect of this fest since it’s the festival’s inaugural year. But showing up and being told to head on up to the penthouse suite, that’s a comforting start. In the elevator, this lady told me she really liked my film…nice! She was one of the panelists responsible for choosing which films get in.

We get to the top floor, I’m nervous because everyone’s well dressed and I don’t know anyone besides Ali and Kevin (who was acting as producer at the fest). But within about a minute, a guy comes up to us and introduces himself as Pietro D’Alessio, but I know this already because I was doing my homework by knowing who the judges, panelists, and organizers were, just in case I happened to run into them.



Pietro told us how much he liked the movie and he had a bunch of questions for us. This is outstanding, within 5 minutes of being at the party one of the judges has come up to us to tell us how much he likes our movie. Beauty. Great start. Pietro went on to being our biggest fan and biggest promoter the whole weekend. It was outstanding. I’d be getting a drink at the bar (free Stella incidentally (booyah!)) and I’d hear Pietro talking up our movie to someone else on the other side of the room. Then he’d bring over more people and introduce us.

So clutch. Accomplishment intros to other filmmakers from a judge of the festival. I thought it’d be tough to go up and talk to people and network and such but with Pietro the networking was done for us.

Before the end of the night 2 more judges came up to us and told us how much they liked the movie. The one judge, Tom Thompson thought I was out of my mind for taking on such a project. Out of my mind and ambitious were two things I was happy to embody.

As someone who’s trying to get into a business that’s nearly impossible to get into, not having respect as a filmmaker because of my age was something I was fully expecting to encounter at this festival, but having these judges talk up the movie was invaluable because as a result nobody was un-talk-to-able haha.

Another guy we chatted with was another young guy, a journalist from Tampa, Joe Belcastro, who was going to do a piece on the festival. We chatted about career changes from office jobs to creative jobs. Scary but cool. We talked about horror movies and other movies. I told him he should catch my movie if he can. He said he’d try. But he also said that if he wrote something, there was no guarantee that it would be positive. If he didn’t like it, he wasn’t going to lie. I’m still confident, possibly because the judges are filling my head with positive comments haha. But I tell him that anything written about it, positive or negative, would be a plus.

First night. Success. Compliments from judges. Possibly someone writing about the movie. Free Stella.
Next day. Head over to Clearwater Beach to a hotel to meet up with a couple of other filmmakers to do an interview with this lady Dawn Reese.



We then head over to the Clearwater Cinema Café (where my film will screen the next day) to catch a couple of short films and to meet up with Joe Belcastro to give him a screener of the movie in case he can’t make it to the screening the next day.
We then race back to the same hotel we were just at to go to a panel on packaging and the business of pre-development. Incidentally, we thought Clearwater was going to be a small town, it took a good 30 minutes to get from the café to the hotel.
The panel was very informative. So much stuff I had no idea about. I get the sense if and when I ever get to the point where I have a budget upwards of 50, 100, 200, 500k and have a big time actor interested, the stuff that Russell Hess and Nancy McBride will be very, very good to know.

LLC the movie. Private Placement Memorandums. Lawyers. Investors. Unit Production Managers. Distribution before filming. These types of things.

From there we go to the hotel restaurant and bar patio that’s right on the water with a bunch of people. Pietro, Nancy, a great guy who was a volunteer Marcos Baca, a blogger Christina, a director Justin Evans (check out the cool trailer for his movie A Lonely Place for Dying), Ali and Kevin.




We eat and chat about movies, the festival, and all sorts of stuff while watching the Florida sunset. Not bad. Not bad at all.
But all to soon, it’s back to business. Over to the Capitol Theatre to see a documentary by another Justin, Justin Hunt. A documentary called Absent, about the effect that absent fathers have on families, communities, and society. This movie had an interview with James Hetfield, the lead singer of Metallica. That guy’s impressive, very well spoken and very articulate (are those the same things haha). Anyways, very cool movie. Some crazy dude in the audience in the Q & A after the movie suggested sterilization as a solution for dealing with family issues. Haha what a nut.

After that Twenty Ten was playing. Twenty Ten is an Australian movie. The director and producer came to the festival as well. It felt like us, low-budget aussie movie, low-budget Canadian movie, it felt like we needed to support each other. The movie was cool. I liked it. It had some really naturalistic writing, some good acting, plus it’s tough not to fall in love with everyone who has an aussie accent.

Back to the hotel. We’ve got ‘the’ screening the next day. Got to be on my game tomorrow.

We show up to the screening in our nicest clothes. Me in my black suit (I brought it, I had to wear it to the screening), Ali in a very nice dress skirt. One problem. Not too many people showed up. Understandable, for several reasons: it was at 1pm on a Friday, but more importantly all the people at the parties we’d gone to where we were talking up the movie were filmmakers, and all the filmmakers were at the panel about distribution that was going on at the same time half way across town.



But I was still pumped because the people that were there really liked the movie, and plus, we got to see it again on the big screen, which is always sweet. It looked and sounded really great.

What I learned over the course of my days in Florida was that what was most important about this experience was networking, going to educational panels, and learning as much as I can from people that I would otherwise not have access to.
After we finished the screening and chatted with all the people that came to the show, we raced back to the hotel on the beach to catch the rest of the educational panel on distribution. The on-going theme of the weekend was the emphasis of staying on top of new media and internet based methods of distribution. Especially for indies, it’s important to utilize tools that internet and digital business can offer to make some money. Probably not huge money, but enough to keep indies going.

Then we stayed for the next panel called the Art of the Deal with two knowledgeable guys: Tom Thompson and Robert Sterett. These guys had some valuable insight based on their experiences twenty years in the biz being producers. I learned a lot more about distribution and film markets. Us and the aussies were there and so our films got talked about in terms of advice they had for us and what we could possibly get in terms of distribution. And having Pietro there was awesome because he would ask these guys questions pretty much on our behalf. I would be sitting there thinking …would that be a dumb question to ask…gah…I feel like I should know that …then Pietro would ask it pretty much for us and the aussies.

On to some more parties. Friday night, 4 parties…all at various places right on the beach. On the beach at a yacht club…At the beach bar at the Hilton. Beauty. Another guy I haven’t mentioned…Mike Rembis, the guy who set up the entire festival, he was around a lot the whole weekend. It was always great talking to him, he always had interesting stories about his experiences. He’s a writer/director/actor (these people that do multiple things, Justin Evans would call them slashers haha…nice) like me so he had some cool stories. He’d gone to Cannes and won a 24 hour film challenge. Very cool guy. Plus he put on the first festival that my film got into so automatically I’m a fan.



The coolest parts about these parties (aside from the free Stella of course) was hearing people’s stories and advice because almost everyone there has been doing this way longer than I have. Not just about the business of films and filmmaking but little things too. For instance Marcos has my exact same camera and editing software and all that stuff, so I learned so many little things about my camera that I didn’t know. Invaluable. Great night.

It was funny, we’re at all these beach front parties, but it’s dark…I’m like “I’m sensing there’s an AMAZING view here, but I can’t see it haha” I had been in florida three days and hadn’t been on the beach. Oh well, this was a business trip right.

Saturday. Awards day. Nice. Catered meal, gathering of movie buffs and awards. This was right up my alley.

The awards start up after everyone is fed. First award of the day: Best Supporting Actor. They announce everything in alphabetical order so the last one was John Webb. I’m like WHOA! John got nominated that’s sweet! And the winner is…John Webb WHOA!!!!! John just won!!! I’m thinking how pumped John’s going to be when we tell him. So I went up and accepted the award on his behalf. John obviously used his 7 minutes of screen time well. (I don’t know if it’s seven, but it’s not too much)

We pick up 4 more nominations in the next 20 minutes…

Best Supporting Actress for ALI!! I was really hoping she’d win that. Unfortunately she didn’t though.

Best Actor for me! That’s really cool. No win though. No big deal.

Best International Film. Sweet. No win though. Oh well, the Spanish movie that won was very good (and, I’m pretty sure, about a 100 times more expensive) .

Best Director for me! Haha if they only knew I was a shitty director that simply does a million takes. Just kidding…kind of…haha. Another loss but we’re still glowing from John’s win.

Then the big one: Best Triple Threat Filmmaker comes up. This is a biggie, because it’s one of the awards that if you win you’re movie gets replayed on Saturday night at the Capitol Theatre…(picture the plaza in Calgary plus a second level of seats): nomination…check…my hearts pumping. Winner: Me! YAY!!!! That was really really cool. Because from now on I get to call myself an award winning filmmaker!!



It completely legitimizes everything I done up to this point. Because I tell people I made a movie, they don’t know exactly what to think. Or if I have to tell people at a job interview how I can account for the last year and a half of my life I now get to say I was working on an award winning film. I am now an award winning filmmaker. That’s so so cool because as I said before, it’s so tough to get respect from people in the business if you haven’t done anything of note. But even more , it’s important to people who aren’t in the business, because now I seem much less like a bum who’s just been avoiding getting a ‘real job’.

I know this all seems very self-centered and self indulgent, and that I shouldn’t care what other people think. But I’ll tell you, it gets real tough having to tell people that you’ve made a movie, and they go “can I see it in theatres, or at blockbuster” ummm no, just because that’s not really how things work but normal people think along the lines of “if I can’t rent it or see it in theatres, it must not be good, it’s probably some home movie shit” but now I get to say, well I’ve been submitting to film festivals and I got into one…bing! Lightbulb turns on because everyone is aware that film festivals exist…”Really?” “Yeah, and it won a couple of awards too” Bam! I’ve just gone from being a bum in their eyes to being respectable all in two sentences. But I digress.

We phone John after the ceremony he’s sooooo pumped, and regretful that he wasn’t there with us. But getting the award is great consolation for him haha.

Now I’m pretty well on top of the world. My movie’s getting reshown at 7pm, the award guarantees a bigger crowd.
Phone calls are made, people are pumped, but there’s no time to doddle, we’ve got to rush over to Capitol theatre immediately.
Ali and Kevin ride with Pietro so that I can ride with Marcos so we can talk about camera business. Since he has the same camera and editing set up, he’s teaching me a few things on the go. For example, on my camera… 1 frame every 2 seconds = awesome shot where everything is super sped up.

At the Capitol theatre we get there just in time to catch a re-showing of a mini-feature by some film students from Jersey…The accents on these guys were outstanding. These guys were not so much Jersey Shore as they were Brooklyn-type guys that you might see in a bar fight. They certainly weren’t the artsy folk that you normally see at film festivals.



I chat with these guys afterwards about their movie, and they’re pumped to see mine because they saw that it won awards. These guys were outstanding to have in the crowd at the screening. Everything that I had initially written for people my age, the stuff that I thought was funny, these guys were howling at. All the Sharky stuff was a big hit with these fellas. Beauty. Because these guys were laughing, it let other people know it was cool to laugh at this stuff.

Watching with an audience is always interesting because until you’ve done it a few times, you have no idea how things are going. But I started to pick up on the times where people would literally not move in there seats for a certain period of time, then they’d relax a bit afterwards. Those parts where people don’t move, you know those are working, but you also need the, how shall I say…not down times…but peaks and valleys to allow the audience to stay with you.

I, of course, realized all of this after the screening of course once I knew that everyone dug the movie.
The movie has very little effect on me anymore, especially after talking it up so much the entire weekend it does very little to live up to the expectations I’m building up for others. But you could just feel the vibes in the room after the screening was done, like people had just been through a workout but were really pumped at the same time. It was as if the movie kind of came out of nowhere for them. I was getting these vibes, because people had so many questions that went along the lines of:

“how did you do that…how long did that take to film??”

“this was your first movie? What other festivals has it shown at so far?” “Uh, none,” “Really?? Well it won’t be the last”

“Who funded it?” “I did.” “You did??” “How much was the budget? “ “Let’s just say it’s extremely micro-budget”

And so on.

These comments were coming from all demographics as well. The Jersey boys, a group of 50 year old ladies, old people, young people, all sorts.

A festival volunteer came up to us afterwards and said she hadn’t been affected by a movie as much as that since the Departed (not bad company).

And again like the premiere in Calgary, I was getting a lot of “we really liked it…no seriously, we really really liked it…really.” And so if you thought it was shit, you’d say “I liked it” then you’d leave it at that. There be no need to add the “no, really, I’m serious, I really liked it,” adding that if you thought it was shit would just be malicious, and unnecessary. This is what leads me to believe that people actually liked it.



It was just so cool, to have everyone so pumped for us. It was a really good feeling to have. To the right in the photo we have (from left to right Marcos Baca, Justin Evans, Mike Rembis, slasher Jeff Rector (behind), Pietro D'Alessio, Acting Teacher Corinne Broskette, me, and Ali)

But the question remains…why then, if people liked it here in Calgary at our screening, and at two separate screenings in Florida, and it can win awards…How is is then, that it can get unanimously rejected from 30 other festivals (give or take a few)? How does that happen. What am I missing?

The thing that I was most worried about, the audio, never got brought up. The video had a bit of feedback such as the blacks in the color palette in some scenes were crushed (not too sure what this means yet) but I know that it’s something audiences don’t notice. But other than that, technical issues weren’t an issue for anyone I talked to. It wasn’t as polished as other films sure, but that’s part of its charm right ;)

Why then does it get rejected from everything, including the hometown Calgary International Film Festival? I don’t know. I let you guys know when I do. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not bitter about the process, I’m just a bit….befuddled. There’s something else going on but I don’t know what it is.

But overall I’m very happy…very very happy with how things turned out in Clearwater. It was a great time, and it gave a great look into how film festivals go down. Picture the episode of Entourage where they go to Sundance just on a smaller scale, and that’s what it was like. Panels, parties, movies, networking, hanging out in hot tubs with topless girls talking about waiting to get the offer from James Cameron to play Aquaman…you know, those sorts of things. That last one may have just been in Entourage…I’m not too sure though.

Hopefully this won’t be the last festival. Hopefully everyone thinks the way Joe Belcastro does…check out the link to his article on the festival. And hopefully my next post won’t take six months…

Joe Belcastro's article link:

http://www.examiner.com/movie-in-tampa-bay/hidden-gems-found-at-the-clearwater-film-festival

Premiere!!

I’ve spent the last few days looking at old videos that I’d put together, stuff I’d edited, stuff I’d written, stuff I filmed, and for the most part, it’s all terrible. Significantly more terrible than I remember it being.

The first couple of times I showed people Railed Up, they always seemed really surprised that it was good. This kind of surprised me at the time…Because I’m thinking to myself, when would I have given people the idea that I’d make something bad. But after the last few days of checking out the early “Neil the filmmaker/actor/editor” stuff, even I’m surprised that I was able to get a decent finished product. Really. My old stuff is so bad. With the exception of maybe the Big Rock commercial for last year’s eddies, everything is brutal. And even the Big Rock commercial incomprehensible to everyone but me, so probably a miss, overall.



As soon as I got my Panasonic HVX200 camera, I was testing everything out and practicing editing with final cut pro, so I made a 13 minute short “Coke Sharking”, which inspired the Sharky scene from Railed Up…which is the first dream sequence. Incidentally, this was where I came up with the idea of playing multiple guys, and have half of it be a dream, because originally Billy, Glenn, and Sharky were different guys. But I wanted to practice, so I played all three. This of course didn’t make sense as a complete short film, so I added a scene at the end where I wake up and realize it was a dream. Not a bad idea. So anyways, I made this short film, it was bad. Bad writing, bad acting, slow slow pace, overall quite painful to watch.

But what I’ve concluded, is that there is so much practice that is needed in order to be good at this. You have to make a lot of embarrassing garbage before you can come up with anything decent. I guess the lesson here is that as bad as Coke Sharking was…it was practice, and it gave me an idea that was essential to Railed Up and Wrecked. So as painful as it may be to watch now, it helped the process.



And once again, the jury’s still out on whether Railed Up is any good. I, myself, think it’s good. But I also thought all that old shit I did was good, and it wasn’t. So I hope it’s just that I’ve gained perspective, and not that I’m just being delusional. For those people that have seen it, I’m honestly not fishing for compliments here, I’m just trying to illustrate how truly alarming it is to believe something to be true (that my early shit was actually good) and then realize how false that belief turned out to be. In short, blind spots in my perspective are currently my biggest fear.

But on to the important stuff: On March 9, 2010 about 150 people showed up to watch a screening of the film at the Plaza theatre in Calgary. This was amazing, because this was supposed to be friends, family, and crew screening, but pretty much everyone I knew showed up. It was truly amazing. I’ve really got to thank everyone so much for coming out!

The posters were up in the lobby and out by the front door. People were flooding in right before the show popcorn and pop in hand, the 300+ seat theatre was more than half full. Super super cool. And to have “Railed Up and Wrecked” on the marquee right under best picture winner “the Hurt Locker” was pretty outstanding to see.



To see the movie, on the big screen was awesome…I think. I don’t how much of it I actually watched because, as cool as it was, it was also one of the most nervewracking experiences of my life. I hardly remember watching the movie at all, after the first 2 minutes. I was more interested in watching everyone else watch the movie. And what I’ve discovered is that it’s very hard to read people’s reactions when you’re looking at the back of their heads haha. I was getting a pretty good sense that people were into it, but I was never sure. There weren’t a lot of people fidgeting in their seats, or yawning excessively or anything like that.

Nonetheless, the whole time the movie’s going on, I’m wondering “are they still with me” “If they can make it to this point, I got ‘em,” then that point comes, and I proceed to repeat that process in smaller increments until the end. And I feel the end of the movie’s very strong, and so as the end was approaching, my heart was beating sooo hard, because I’m thinking if the ending hits, they’ll like the movie.

Haha even reading this I feel ridiculous. I realize now that I had completely lost all perspective on the movie as a movie. I guess that happens after the 100th viewing.



Making a very personal movie is essentially like putting all parts of yourself out there for people to see. And when “people” happens to be everyone you know, it gets pretty scary. So after the hour and a half long panic attack, the movie ended, and it got a big ovation, followed by lots of compliments from people as they flooded out into the lobby and then later to the pub across the street.

As a side note, I’ve been to enough indie productions to have seen that, in spite of what people actually think about the movie, it’s mandatory to say how great it was to the people who made it…because they expect you to say something, but what are you going to say “it sucked,”… probably not. But I got the sense like people’s compliments were much more genuine, because I got a lot of “I wasn’t expecting to like it, but I actually did,” And that would be just a malicious thing to say if it wasn’t true. Because if they didn’t like it, a simple “that was really good” would have sufficed, but to add the “I didn’t expect to like it” comment if it wasn’t true would just be unnecessary.

Haha, I’m fully aware how self indulgent this all is, and how much I’m over-analyzing everything, but when something takes over your life to the extent this movie has, these are the things you think about.

So what now. Before this, people had no expectations of me. Now they do. So what now. Immediately comes the fear that, “that was it…that’s all I’ve got in me, that was all I had, now it’s done, how am I supposed to come up with another story that can exceed the first one,” But I realize that’s just my mind being a little bitch. The important thing, is to get going on the next one, to be sure to put in a lot of thought and effort, and to use the things I learned on the first one, and just fuckin give’r haha. As Jay-z would say it’s “on to next one,” Incidentally check out that video…very cool.

Oh yeah, and now comes that small task of trying to continue to take Railed Up to the next level… film festivals…and attempting the near impossible task of trying to get distribution of any kind. I don’t think most people are aware of the sheer number of movies that never go anywhere. “Not even dvd?” you ask. No. Not even dvd. Getting Railed Up distributed on dvd would be AAAMMMMAAAZZZING. Stars would need to align to see this thing in your neighborhood blockbuster video. So I’m going to do my best to move some stars into alignment.

Escaping Digital Purgatory

Finishing the movie 100% has been a very anti-climactic process. It’s beginning to feel like the third Lord of the Rings movie, every time I think it’s done, it’s not quite, there’s more endings to come. And like in LOTR, each ending is necessary for the story, but it still feels like a lot of endings all the same.



At first, I finished picture editing according to the script. I'd gone through all the hours and hours of raw footage and selected the performances and shots I wanted to use…ending #1.

Then I edited picture down for time, took out entire scenes and smaller parts here and there…ending #2.

This felt like an ending because more or less had picture lock…1 hour 36 minutes.

Then it was time for music and sound effects. Did this for about a month and a half. Finished that... ending #3…BAM! Movie over…right? Wrong.



Then came mixing audio levels…Scene by scene, levels were even. …done, ending #4. What I mean by this is that if I watched scene 1, jade's voice and neil's voice were at the same level. Now that didn't mean that scene 1 and 2 were the same sound level. Quite the contrary. Some scenes (although mixed properly unto themselves) were super quiet and some were super loud.

I burned a copy after ending #4

Side note: I’ve been editing with bose headphones this whole time so that I could hear exactly what’s going. So I mixed the audio accordingly.



I then listened to it on the tv, and the sound did not sound mixed the same as it did in the headphones. Understandable of course. But since it takes 8 odd hours to encode the movie again, it’s not exactly a “oh haha, that’s too quiet…oh well,” no. It’s more a DAMMMMMMITTTTT! And the audio mix…wasn’t even close. It was a good ten db off throughout the whole movie…all you need to know is that’s a lot. And then, some spots had little bits that were much too loud and distracting. And pretty much over all the music and added sound effects were too quiet.

Incidentally, I have a new list of enemies as an audio mixer...they are:
-doors shutting

-high fives or slapping handshakes



-flip phones being shut

-glasses/beer bottles/shot glasses being put on tables

-pretty much any two surfaces hitting each other



-latches of any kind

-screen doors doing anything aside from nothing

-foldable knives being opened and closed



-people saying the word fuck (something about this word is so harsh that it spikes audio levels like you wouldn't believe)

-Neil for writing the word fuck so many times in his script

All of these things suck because they spike audio levels to unacceptable levels.

So days upon days were spent balancing levels of entire scenes more effectively by using the decibel level meter in final cut. And on Thursday February 18 at 1:00am in the morning, we had ending #5. And as it stands today…this is the ending that ended all the endings.

It took only one hour to encode the audio. I thought we were cruising. Something to note, I was leaving Calgary for five days on Friday morning at 5 am. So I needed to finish it before then, there was no way I was leaving it for 5 days and try to enjoy some time with relatives. That just couldn’t happen. So 1 hour to encode audio. Beauty. Video was cruising along, and so by 2 am I went to bed. Woke up, video encode was doing ok, a little slow, but only 4 hours to go…or so it estimated. At 3 pm I had to go to work. When I left, the computer projected the encoding had 20 minutes to go. Beauty. At ten I’d finish work, come home and burn the movie. I phone John on my break at 7. Ask if the encoding’s done. 5 hours 26 minutes to go John tells me…GAHHHHH!!!



Now maybe it’s because my computer was being put through the ringer. It had been working and processing shit for about 48 hours straight by this point. So it was running out of gas, quickly. Meanwhile, I try to concentrate at work. This was an exercise in futility for me. As anyone who knows me knows, if I start worrying about something, I will obsess over it incessantly until something gets resolved. So for 3 hours I was worrying whether or not my computer would shit the bed and completely shut down. This has been something I’d become increasingly paranoid about over the last couple of weeks. It’s pretty much my greatest fear that my computer will shut down or break or just stop working and my movie will be lost forever. Anyways, I get home at 10:13pm. Run to my computer. Railed Up and Wrecked-Sequence 1 edit 4.m2v successful as of 9:22pm Thursday February 19, 2010. HAHA SUCCESS!!!!

It was a good thing I did all that worrying too, because I’m sure that it helped.

From when I had done my horrible audio mixed dvd, I had put together the a dvd menu and had created all the chapters and everything. So I brought in the new files, and started burning copies.

At long last, my greatest fear had been alleviated. My project had escaped the digital purgatory of my computer and it was now in my hands in the form of a beautiful gold dvd. So I immediately burned 7 more copies haha.

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.

Look to the Beard

A couple of days ago John, Scott, I were getting still pics taken for the movie’s poster/dvd with our photographer Chris Tait (christait.ca if interested) and something occurred to me. As we set up, it occurred to me that every decision that was made about the film’s schedule was based on my beard.



I always wondered where big movies start with scheduling. Obviously you would group scenes by location and film accordingly. And you would to do things somewhat sequentially to keep the prima donna actors (like me) happy. But where do you start?

Well luckily I didn’t have to think about that too hard. Because I had no choice but to start at a certain point in the story because of my beard.

Well my facial hair and hair length to be exact. How ridiculous is that!! All that other stuff, actor availability, location availability, convenience, that was all secondary to how my hair/facial hair needed to look in each scene.

It’s funny, having worn every proverbial hat on this project that I possibly could, I’ve realized that all the Neils don’t really like each other. For example: Neil the producer, the guy that needs to schedule out how to film a 91 page script within a reasonable amount of time, thinks that Neil the writer is an asshole for creating a veritable logistical nightmare by writing in that Neil the actor needs play 7 (that’s right 7?!?) different parts.

Neil the producer suspects that Neil the prima donna actor was in the writer’s ear the whole writing process going “give me more to do….No no screw that, I can play that part too, and that part too, oh and hey why not that one.” Haha, basically Neil the producer thinks that Neil in all other forms are dicks.

Before you get too worried that this is some weird one-man movie…well wait it is. No I’m just kidding, there are plenty of other good-looking people to look at.

But yeah, here’s how I scheduled the movie.

First we filmed 'early story Trent' who had grossly long, dirty facial hair and long hair to match which meant that we filmed the 18 scenes with bearded Trent first in the first two weeks. We also filmed 3 scenes with the dream character that I also play named Sharky (who was essentially Trent’s subconsciously ill-informed caricature-like interpretation of what a coke head would be like).

I grew that facial hair for about a month and a half. I even had this beauty movember worthy beard and mustache combination for my convocation. Haha, that’s commitment for you. Needless to say Nicole wasn’t thrilled about my grizzly adams face…haha, she wasn’t actually angry, she would just give me a much needed hard time every once and awhile ;)



Next up I shaved off the beard. A momentous day indeed. Within 10 minutes of shaving, I started filming one of four flashback scenes of early Trent.

From there I got a minor trim of my mop and started filming the second half of the real life story with Trent (and by real life, I mean: not dream sequence stuff). This amounted to 42 scenes. Which at the time I thought would mean we were almost done filming…HA HA was I ever wrong. This took us to about July 16th ish…give or take a week.



So we did this epic marathon over 3 weeks I think. Over this period I shaved daily for the first week and a half…then I stopped. Because this is as we’re approaching the climax of the movie where Trent’s falling apart, so I figured it would be good that I was no longer clean-shaven. Incidentally, my week and a half stubble is my sweet spot, where my facial hair looks kind of cool, without being creepy or dirty looking. See my convocation picture for the definition of creepy and dirty facial hair.

So once we finished filming the last of that segment. It was big haircut time. My f***ing bowl cut (which became the bane of my existence) was transformed into my best attempt at Tyler Durden hair.

From this point all but 5 members of the 14 person cast were done filming.

Real life sequence was done filming. It was onto the dream sequence.

The character Billy came first. Billy’s the cool one of the two main dream versions of Trent. Billy = how Trent wishes he could be mixed with his interpretation of what his brother was like. Glenn = Trent’s interpretation of how he sees himself and the possessor of all of Trent’s weaknesses and shortcomings in real life. In short Billy’s cool and Glenn’s a tool.

Billy had 23 scenes. This took a good two and a half, maybe three weeks.



You have to understand, playing a cool version of myself, was surprisingly difficult…haha. I had to work my ass off and do a lot of takes to come off cool. I’m pretty proud of how it has turned out so far. But it was a struggle. It was interesting to see some of my tells that I wasn’t feeling a hundred percent sure of myself. My voice wouldn’t come out as strongly, I would speak quicker and would trip over my words, and sometimes my eyes would almost flutter as I blinked when I was not feeling the Billyness.

After finishing Billy’s scenes. I had to do 8 of Glenn’s 20 scenes, because the second half of the movie, Glenn tries to look better so he has some facial hair, and slightly more stylin’ hair. So for 8 scenes, I would do Billy, then right away, change my outfit and hair and film Glenn. That was actually really helpful, because it made it easier to remember what it was I’m reacting off of.

Once I was done Billy and late Glenn. I got another haircut and started to do early Glenn.

Early Glenn is super awkward, and kind of toolish. This was surprisingly easy for me to play haha. Dammit. It was actually a tough balance to have Glenn be toolish, but not over the top bad acting toolish. Like when you see someone playing a nerd on tv and in movies and it’s so viciously over the top. That’s what I didn’t want. The result was an awkward kind of strange guy.
One of the most interesting things I realized so far from the people who have seen some of the movie is that girls love Glenn and guys despise Glenn.

I have a theory about this. Girls like Glenn because he’s cute and awkward and they feel sorry for Glenn because he’s kind of a nice guy, and he’s trying his best to be cool. But! But, girls love Glenn not at all in the way that that’s what they look for in a guy. Guys on the other hand can’t stand Glenn, because he’s so awkward and toolish. He’d be the guy who the guys would make fun of in the hockey dressing room. I think the reason that guys really can’t handle Glenn is because of the fact that guy’s see the worst of themselves in Glenn. All guys know that they have the potential to be, in some capacity, like Glenn. All guys (I’m generalizing here obviously, but most guys) fear being weak, unconfident, and just generally awkward and uncomfortable in their own skin. And that’s what Glenn represents.

So I get a haircut. And to get into Glenn, what I would do was shower, then put zero product in my hair, so it would just sit there not spiked but just kind of foofy (foofy??!!?) just very unstylish. Then I would wear my nerdy glasses. (I have two pairs…one for early Glenn, and a dark framed more stylish pair for later Glenn).

And bam! Just looking like this would make me feel very self conscious and painfully self-aware. This combination of lack of style and crippling self doubt equaled the perfect Glenntastic cocktail. And to cap it off, when I’m not paying attention, sometimes I smile and my bottom lip covers some of my top teeth, and I just strongly resemble a tool...this is Glenn.



I know that all these things I’m writing make me sound really vain but when you watch 20 odd takes of 20 odd scenes where you're playing cooler and toolier versions of yourself, you start to notice trends.

So for the next 2 or three weeks, we filmed Glenn’s half of the remaining 12 scenes.

After finishing these scenes I was still not finished. Believe it or not. Haha. There are actually 3 more scenes where there are not only 2 versions of me (Billy and Glenn) but a third guy. To date I’ve only finished one of those…and unfortunately (or fortunately if you’re sick of seeing Neil) I think this’ll be the first to be cut. Not because it’s a bad scene, just because it kind of crushes some positive/comedic flow of the segment in which it resides.

So to date we have filmed 96 of the 99 scenes. 2 of the last three that need to be filmed are waiting on…you guessed it…my hair and facial hair. And the last one, we just haven’t got to yet. It’s tough to schedule people in the fall, they’re always doing their own thing…selfish bastards. Just kidding.

So there it is. That’s how you schedule a movie. Look to the beard. It will reveal the answers to all your scheduling problems.

Running Out of Running Time

I wonder about things like this: if you like you're job, you don't ever want to leave it. Then it's always on your mind. But if you hate your job, you leave it at the end of the day, and you don't think about it. Except the odd lingering feeling that you hate your job of course. Which of these two situations is better for all the other parts of life that aren't your job. Circumstances have lead me to be in this state of mind today, which makes editing a struggle.

Although another reason editing's a struggle is that it tends to be a pain in the ass to see Lady's Speed Stick on a shelf in the background of my scene. I can't use that shot. And yes, is the answer, I do wear Lady's Speed Stick (kidding...maybe).

An hour and 19 minutes done, and I'm still a ways from the climax. The last movie I saw was Trainspotting. Running time 94 minutes. I am worried. But other of my favs include Fight Club 139 minutes, Pulp Fiction 154 minutes. So clearly, unlike some people I don't discriminate based on length...(haha). It takes balls to try to make a movie longer than two hours. Cuz long movies that don't quite hit the mark are painful. Short movies that have even an ounce of filler, feel unfulfilling. It's a tightrope Spud...a fuckin tightrope.




Railed Up and Wrecked has two stories that it's following. Trent's story. And Dream Story which is Trent's way of subconsciously dealing with everything through two main characters Billy and Glenn. Billy is Trent's dream interpretation of his brother as well as how he'd like to be; and Glenn is Trent's interpretation of himself. Trainspotting only follows Renton's story. Pulp Fiction follows three stories (Vincent's, Butch's and Jules'). So based on this very precise mathematical system of 1 story = 90 min (Trainspotting) and 3 stories = 150 mins (Pulp Fiction) that should put Railed Up at exactly 120 minutes with 2 stories. Right?? Haha, I hope so.



Running time is always on my mind lately. It's always that 'but' in my mind. Like "Damn that's a sick line, I can't cut that.....but"

1 hour 19 minutes. That's the mark I hit early this afternoon. Things are slow. I am sad. But that's a from a combination of things. This project is all consuming. When I'm not editing, or working on it in some way or another I feel like I should be. Is this bad? I don't know. Probably not. I don't yet have enough perspective yet still being in the thick of it.. I'm probably just having a rough day.

hmmm...

I think that's it for now..





Here's a couple for pics from the movie...This is from a beauty scene where John's character beats the shit out of the blond lookin fella Mitch, while 3 guys hold him back, Scott (the shaved head guy), Matt (Black Shirt Guy), and Bruce (looks super worried guy)