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)

Snorting Flour

It’s 11:15am, I just had a mini panic attack. I’d just hit the 70 minute mark of edited material on Railed Up and Wrecked when the power goes out. My external hard-drives don’t have any juice, so final cut pro (my editing software) starts looking for files that are no longer there. Everything goes red. In Final Cut, red means bad.

11:23am power comes back on. I open up final cut. It takes literally a minute because of the size of the movie. A minute’s a long time to have look at a window telling you the progress of opening a file, that if lost, would cause me to go into a homicidal rage . I’m pretty sure it’ll be all good, but I still worry, because that’s what I do. I worry about stuff, it feels like I’m doing something. After the long minute, it opens, the red is gone, everything’s all good.

Still, not a great feeling to have after finishing up editing a real cool scene with a great performance by one of my actors, Brendan Hunter. This guy’s a beauty. He gives off a Peter Saarsgard type of vibe because of his voice. Except Brendan has this intensity that makes it seem like he might just snap at any moment and, maybe kick your teeth in, if he feels so inclined.

I wish I had more scenes with the guy. When we were filming, I never really knew what he was going to do. After the 15th take, (each take was different incidentally), he started to get right up in my face at the end of the scene. This was a perfect character choice, as the guy he’s playing is named DB (I couldn’t think of a name for this character while writing so I called him DB, which was my short hand for DoucheBag). The first time Brendan got up in my face, I was so taken aback that I literally could not handle the tension, so I would laugh and fuck up the take. Neil the editor is now angry at Neil the actor for being a bitch and not being able to stay in character because Brendan was dishing out gold.





DB is one of 4 characters that Trent (my character) and Mike (Scott Reid’s character) go to deal drugs to. Each of the four guys only has one scene each. All these guys did truly bang up jobs with these parts. These were some of the most fun scenes to film. Maybe because all the guys playing them were very unpredictable. Case in point: Dusty McDougall pictured below began snorting the flour I had brought as prop cocaine at the end of each take!! Even when he wasn’t on camera…Haha Beauty. Each scene had it’s own little tangential story that helped them be fleshed out characters. But not so tangential that they take away from the main story.



I read this book about screenwriting by Syd Field, it was a decent book, less a few big lies, such as with a screenplay: a page of script = a minute film. Syd you dirty liar. I have a 90-page script that’s going to be a 135-minute first cut. I don’t actually blame Syd, because I’d say 90% of the stuff in his book helped me.

This book is still covered in post it notes marking all the important info. That’s something I was into for a while, what with studying and all. So all the books I read for like two years were all fat cuz they were overflowing with post it notes. Quick side note: All my third year engg notebooks are covered in post it notes containing the millions of invented fractured English words that my teachers would use. Example: Mow-teep-why = Multiply. In-vin-a-mint = Environment. Per-mee-tee = Permeability. Trripell Hump Backattack =??? Something involving some chemical reaction ???. Haha good times.



Anyways Syd Field’s book talked about how a scene has to be doing one of two things, or else it doesn’t belong in the movie. A scene either has to move the plot forward, or else it has to reveal something about the characters. The plot ones are important otherwise you a have stagnant movie, that’s not really headed anywhere. But if have nothing but these scenes, you have a boring movie that takes a straight-line path from A to B. And the second type, this is where I found a lot of freedom in the script writing. I tried to come up with the most interesting, funny, entertaining ways of revealing certain things about characters. Did I go overboard sometimes? Absolutely. But that’s what editing’s for, poor Sharky’s 7 minute speech will probably be cut down to 2 or 3 minutes ☹ Not cuz it’s bad just cuz the point can be gotten across with 2 or 3 minutes.

One thing that really helped me as far as screenwriting was the structure that the screenplay needs to follow according to good old Syd Field. Now again the structure part is like the plot moving scenes I mentioned. There’s certain points you need to hit, like the point about 15 to 20 pages in that sends the main character out of old world and into the new world where they will go through stuff that will change them yada yada yada: essentially sending them into the action of the story. Then another point 90 pages in (this is based on Syd’s erroneous 120 page recommendation, essentially 3 quarters of the way through) where something sends the character towards the climax.

So if you know the beginning, the end, and these two points, you’re good to go. Now it’s within this structure that a good writer (whether or not I am or not remains to be seen, but we’ll go on the assumption that at least I know what good is….maybe) can find freedom. You can take a bunch of different paths to get between these four points. So with Railed Up I tried to not do the run of the mill straight line between the four points, but I also tried not to have the line veer so far of the straight line path that it gets lost in tangential BS that slows it down too much.

So with the four guys DB (Intense manic Peter Saarsgard), Ozzy (played by my buddy Izzy haha), Chase (played by flour snorting Dustin MacDougall), and Anton (a very late find, this guy needed to be the epitome of douchebaggery, as well as kind of tough, played very nicely by Todd Moon (who is not as big of a doucher as the one he’s playing)) I was able to come up with interesting and entertaining ways to reveal certain things about certain key characters, none of which I will reveal right now.



Movies are surprisingly not that long incidentally. I’ll explain. Once I realized Mi Heramano: my 140 page “masterpieceofshit” needed to be rewritten. I did it differently. Over the summer and beginning of fall, before 4th year structural got out of control with homework, I would carry around my notebook, writing down ideas, scenes, orders of scenes, beginning, end, other structural points, funny pieces of dialogue, the points I wanted to get across with each scene etc etc etc. I would bring this everywhere, to class, to watch my gf (Nicole ;)) and my sister Ali ( who’s in the movie as….my cousin…big stretch I know, I’m so creative haha) play hockey with the Dinos. You never know where or when ideas'll hit you.

Then by October 2008, school got too busy, so I left everything to fully concentrate on school. Then in December 2008, I picked back up the notebook, and for a couple days really finished fleshing out ideas, structure and what I wanted the movie to say.

Then I busted out my trustee macbook pro, and started writing this bitch out. Now screenplay formatting is a pain in the ass and seriously gets in the way of creative flow. So over the course of two weeks (but mainly 3 or 4 five-hour writing sessions) I wrote a 25 page jumble that was the whole screenplay. This was something only I could understand, because there’d be dialogue without noting who said it. But this was enough for me to be able to put it away again by January, concentrate on my final semester, and be able to pick it up again in May and just transcribe my Neil code jumble into a formatted screenplay.

But that’s what I’m saying, my 25 page jumble = 91 page screenplay = 135 min first cut. Ridiculous! That just shows you how long books are and how movies are just a completely different medium. Without getting into too many differences, you can get a lot more into a 400 page book as far as ideas, insight, intricate stories etc. But with film, you have the advantage of significantly higher sensory impact on your audience. That means, that with film, you better know what you want to say, and the ideas you want to get across, because you only have 25 pages to do it.

Just to bring things back around, if I was writing Railed Up the book DB, Chase, Ozzy, and Anton would probably have fully developed tangential stories of their own within the main story. But because I don’t have time to veer too far off the main path of the movie, we only get a glimpse into these characters. But hopefully it’s enough to like what we’re shown.