"INSOMNIAC," aka "The neverending feature"

[Christian Neil]

Greetings!

I'm new here, and figured I'd jump right in and introduce my movie, followed by myself. So here goes:

INSOMNIAC (tentatively scheduled for completion in fall 2008)

Starring: Christopher Tribe, T.J. Frame, Rebecca Jones, and Jermaine McClure
Director of Photography: Leon Tidwell
Post-Production by: Christian Neil, Kelly Griffin, Leif Hassell, LeeWood Thomas and Leon Tidwell
Produced by: Rebecca Jones, Leon Tidwell
Executive Producer: Chris N. Wilks
Written and Directed by: Christian Neil

Synopsis:

“Of all the mistakes that I’ve made in my life, I seem to recall the worst ones most vividly”.

Insomniac is the story of a man who made one small error in judgment long ago that cost one man his career, and three people their lives.

Cody Russell, former juvenile delinquent and current street hood, befriends Jason Dillon, a bright young man with his whole life ahead of him. Jason and his older sister Amber grew up under the strict guidance of their father Duke, a retired Marine who expected his household to operate with military precision. Amber got married as young as she could to get out of the house, leaving Jason alone to deal with the authoritarian and often cruel guidance of their father. Frustrated by his father’s stern parenting, Jason begins the path to juvenile delinquency, and finds himself getting drawn deeper and deeper into a world where perhaps for once, he can be the one calling the shots.

There is one last hope for Jason, in the form of Eric Stillman, a caseworker for A.C.E.D., a publicly-funded organization that provides mentorships for at-risk teens. Encouraged by his sister to give it a shot, and provided unconventional incentives by his Mr. Stillman, Jason begins to turn himself around, and soon thereafter, he begins the long path to reconciliation with his father, who dies suddenly.

For a long time, Jason’s identity was based on the premise of being at odds with his father, and when that was taken away from him, he found himself particularly vulnerable. His friend Cody, short-handed for a job, decides that he can use this to his advantage, and is surprised when Jason says no.

So Cody decides that if he wants Jason to come with him, he’ll need to get him away from Eric, and he happens to know a way to do it. Cody discovers, completely by accident, a rather indiscreet personal relationship between Eric and Amber. When Jason doesn’t cooperate, Cody grabs his camera phone, and successfully makes an educated guess of their whereabouts. And when Cody emails the photo to Jason, he decides to go ahead and send a copy to Eric’s boss.

All hell breaks loose for Eric and Amber when they are outed, and they soon find themselves with no one else to turn to, and nothing left to lose. And, more importantly, they find themselves paying little or no attention to Jason, and he’s able to sneak away easily and go on a job with Cody.

The following morning, Amber finds herself leaving Eric’s side in a huff, and returning home to find disturbing news about Jason, and she decides that it is time that she finally step up, and do for Jason what she never thought she would ever have to do.

Insomniac is a story of a man who wants to be remembered for the mistakes he’s made, and the story of a man who always wants to remember his mistakes.

I'll post pictures, stills, and trailers as I have them, but I intend this thread more as a place to blow off steam than to promote. I can assure you that once this movie's finished, I'll shout it from the rooftops, but for now, I'm mainly looking to document my progress for people who better understand the bittersweet joys of pulling off a feature. Most of my friends in real life and on the internet are not themselves filmmakers, and I'm trying to make an effort to remember that this stuff is not nearly as fascinating to them as it is to us.

INSOMNIAC is a feature length project shot entirely in Arkansas, featuring all local talent, and absolutely no budget. At least that was true for a while, but I've dipped into my pockets to the tune of at least 3 grand when I stopped adding receipts up a couple of years ago.

We've been in production for over three years, and have encountered setback after setback. I'll reveal relevant details as needed, but the highlights include some tragically bad casting choices, and recasting several leads after shooting was 80% done (It took me a while to learn to fire people), multiple revisions of the script, actors that put on (or lost 50 pounds), large amounts of cast and crew attrition, and for me personally, a 2 month hospital stay (unrelated to the movie).

As you can imagine, there have been many voices in my ear telling me to pull the plug and call it a day. But, as any of my ex-girlfriends will tell you, I'm not always a very good listener. I've made it a point to see things through, because I've had a lot of people who have worked very hard, and I don't want to let them down.

The good news is that I have a day job as a special ed teacher, and when June rolls around, my schedule lightens up significantly, and I've been able to commit a lot of time to whipping things into shape. I started with a 143 page script, and have managed to whittle it down to a lean 86 minute runtime, with a good narrative flow, and for the most part, it all looks and sounds pretty good. I just completed my first draft of audio design and color correction, and watched the DVD with a notebook, into which I jot down every single solitary problem. A cut is timed incorrectly, a dissolve doesn't work, the music's too loud, etc. On the first draft, I had about 180something things to fix, most of which could be fixed in a matter of minutes. I'm in the process of fixing as many of those 180 things as I can, and then enlisting the appropriate help as needed to fix the things that are beyond my powers.

I do have a tendency to get long-winded, so I'll wrap up by saying that I am very excited about the movie, and have enjoyed the experience immensely, in spite of all of the myriad setbacks we've encountered. I knew that there would be challenges, but had no idea that there would be so many. I've also known that there would be a lot of pain taken away by simply uttering the words "I quit." But I'm glad that I didn't, because we're very close to delivering a finished film, and the fact that I can still stand to watch it after all this time means something to me. I don't think my movie's going to be the next Clerks, Halloween or El Mariachi, and don't expect to get rich or famous. But it's going to be something that I'm willing to sign my name to, and I'm okay with that.

Looking forward to getting to know people here, and look forward to hearing about the movies that you're working on.

Chris

 

[egyptianboxer104]

Sounds great. Curious for some screen grabs and trailer.

 

[filmman]

Sounds like a good story. What did you shoot it with? How many production days did you use? What's your background as a filmmaker? What system are you editing it on? How do you plan to market it?

Good lluck with the movie.

 

[Christian Neil]

Sounds great. Curious for some screen grabs and trailer.

I'll make it a point to put some stills up next week, and I'll probably cut a couple of trailers after I finish this pass of audio and color correction. I also have an awesome poster, but I'm currently playing phone tag with my designer.

Here's a little teaser trailer that Kelly made that should tide you over:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=28296260

Thanks for the comment and interest!

 

[Christian Neil]

Sounds like a good story. What did you shoot it with? How many production days did you use? What's your background as a filmmaker? What system are you editing it on? How do you plan to market it?

Good lluck with the movie.

Thanks for the kind words. We mostly shot with a GL2, which was a great camera, but wore the poor thing out. After that, we made do with an XL1-S, and shot some of our establisher with our DP's new HD camera in DV mode (I can't remember the model number, but it's a Canon).

Production days is a challenging question to answer concisely, because we usually shot during evenings 2-3 days a week from about 7-11, with a few odd weekends where we shot for about 10-12 hours. This went on off and on for a couple of years, and we wrapped principal photography about a year ago. I can tell you that we have used 109 DV tapes so far (I counted them while waiting for a render to finish).

This is my first feature, but I've been in and around music and filmmaking for about 15 years, maybe closer to 20 if you include fooling around with a camcorder as a teen. I have a Radio/Television Degree from Arkansas State University, and produced some live and taped programs for the TV station and did a semester on-air with KASU. But I never took a job in the field, because it never paid that well, and spent a lot of years writing, waiting for filmmaking to become affordable. Over the past 3-4 years I've done a number of other projects such as music videos for local bands, and a few documentary shorts. My biggest achievement thus far was executive producing a 10 minute documentary about my school with one of my classes. The video came in first in the contest we entered, and ran opening night at The Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival in 2007, as well as the first Little Rock Film Festival.

I've edited using Premiere Pro 2.0, and AfterEffects 7.0. I have a PC with a 2.41 GHz Athlon processor, 1.5 Gb of RAM, and two internal hard drives (200 Gb and 250Gb, which seemed like a ton at the time). I also currently have my work spread out over 3 500 Gb external drives, which are all currently screaming for space.

As for distribution, I'll probably sell DVDs or downloads off a website. I haven't given third-party distribution a ton of thought, because I know I'll be offered virtually nothing for it. Ultimately, self-distribution means less money, but you still own your movie, which somehow seems more important.

I hope I answered all your questions to your satisfaction. Thanks again for your kind words and interest!

 

[filmman]

I appreciate the candor. So many people approach a filmmaking career with a lot of BS. For me the most interesting is how you managed to use the technology; you're very resourceful. I think you're going places, because you have demonstrated talent and your feet are on the ground.

You're right about distribution too. That's been my experience too. Digital filmmaking will allow us to break through eventually. I wish you the best of luck. Keep on plugging.

 

[egyptianboxer104]

Looks interesting.

How much do you think you'll sell it for? and was the trailer color corrected?

 

[Christian Neil]

I appreciate the candor. So many people approach a filmmaking career with a lot of BS. For me the most interesting is how you managed to use the technology; you're very resourceful. I think you're going places, because you have demonstrated talent and your feet are on the ground.

You're right about distribution too. That's been my experience too. Digital filmmaking will allow us to break through eventually. I wish you the best of luck. Keep on plugging.

I've actually been told on a few occasions that I'm a little too honest and don't spin enough. But my experience has been that most of the time, the truth is more interesting than anything I can make up :happy:

Fortunately, I have a day job that I love and don't intend to quit. I've found that there is room for both in my life.

Thanks again for the words of encouragement!

 

[Christian Neil]

Looks interesting.

How much do you think you'll sell it for? and was the trailer color corrected?

I'll probably sell DVDs for $10-15, and if I go the download route, probably between $5-10. I may offer both, depending on how much it costs to set it up. And I'll probably post a coupon of some sort here when I release the Disk.

The trailer was not color corrected...it's just something that was thrown together a few months ago for people getting impatient. I'm waiting on some art from my designer before I put out the "Official" trailers, because I'm going to give my credits and titling a look that's visually consistent with the poster. Hopefully, I'll have some new trailers cut and posted within the next few weeks.

 

[Christian Neil]

Over the weekend, I forced myself to walk away from the post-production effort, and concentrate on blowing off a little steam. I pride myself on my work ethic, and my ability to stay on task, but from time to time, I have to combat burnout. Right now, I'm forcing myself to deal with pesky fine details that I have skipped over, and also having to think creatively about scenes that I've been working on for a very long time. I often feel like the mythological Icarus, flying too close to the sun. There's nothing wrong with being hyperfocused, because that's the way things get done, but it helps to look at the material with the freshest eyes and ears I can. At this moment, I have no official deadlines to meet, but I set them for myself because I need them. But as of recent, I've been trying to make myself scale back some of my goals so that I can focus more on matters at hand.

One of the problems that I'm having to deal with is a severe lack of B roll and establishing footage. I would usually try to get 3-5 pages of script shot every night, and do so within about 3 hours of engaged shooting time. I made the mistake of writing too much material that took place at night, and before we "fell back," it wouldn't get dark until about 8:30. The actors and crew all agreed to stay until 11:00 on weeknights, but around 10:30, they'd start to fidget and sigh and gaze at their watches. Compound that with a couple of lead actors that were not considered to be paragons of punctuality, and it would cut into our time considerably. We knew that we didn't need the actors to shoot our establishers, and most of our locations were here in town. We were going to get to them eventually, but we never quite did.

We did go shoot establishers eventually, but a lot of the locations were shot from the same angle and under the same lighting conditions. I need some of them multiple times, and it looks a little lazy to use the same ones over and over again. And in some cases, I need to establish the transition from day to night or night to day, and haven't been able to bring myself to get up at 6:00 and go shoot the sun rising.

So, as a means to this end, I recently purchased some stock footage libraries from Digital Juice, and am starting to find clips that match my locations and fit thematically into my story. So far, it looks as though I will be able to address most of my issues with establishers from the stock footage libraries, and I consider the money well-spent. As of recent, I've been breaking out the Amex card to buy more production assets, such as music, stock footage, and sound effects libraries, and have spent just under a grand in the past couple of months. It stings a little, but those are things that I have been in need of for a while, and I'm glad to have them. I just need to make a bunch more movies to get maximum bang for my buck, and I intend to do just that.

BTW, I'm not a compensated endorser for Digital Juice, but I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't mention what a value they are for the money. They run a lot of sales and promotions, particularly if you buy multiple items or spend certain dollar amounts, and you can really stock up on the (relatively) cheap.

I suppose that I have taken a long enough break now, and must now get back to work. This footage is not going to color correct itself...

 

[Christian Neil]

I've been making decent progress at this round of color correction and audio mixdown, and have 4 sequences left to work on out of the 13 that make up the whole movie before I'll burn another DVD. My post-production process consists of burning a DVD and watching it with a notebook, where I make detailed notes of everything that needs to be fixed. I burned my last DVD about a week and a half ago, and made a little over 180 notes, and hopefully after I burn this DVD, I'll have less than 100 things written down, less than 50 the next time, and so on.

The sequence that I just finished had some significant problems with timing during the opening minute of the 6 minute sequence. I had a problem with a boom shadow on the wall behind one of the actors, but since he moves in front of the shadow a couple of times, the only way I could see to fix the problem involved rotoscoping, or creating a garbage matte of some sort. I could find it within my power to fix those problems if I felt like watching tutorials on Creative Cow or Video Co-Pilot (both excellent resources), but I decided instead to peruse my stock footage libraries, and found a way to tell the same story by cutting the scene, and adding a couple of clips from the library.

A couple of the mantras I repeat in all my creative endeavors are "kill your children," and "If it sucks, cut it." As both the writer/director and the lead editor on the project, I made the resolve from the start not to get overly emotional about the things that I shot. My ultimate goal is to have every frame and every note of music serve the purpose of driving the story forward and revealing more information about the main characters, and what I always strive to do is to remove everything that doesn't belong. I've cut many scenes that I really liked, because they slowed things down too much, because that's what you have to do.

I always try to watch my work as a film buff, and not as the filmmaker. I pretend like I don't know anyone in the film, and I just happened to rent the video. It can be sobering, but once again, that's what you have to do.

The sequence I just finished, and the one that I'm about to start working on today have been hands-down the most troublesome in the entire movie. It's the material at the end of the second act leading up to the big showdown at the end. Originally, I had a couple of sequences that were over 10 minutes long, and they dragged badly. But I had no idea how to cut them down, because they were so mediocre on the first draft. So I passed them off to Kelly Griffin, a very close personal friend who played one of my villains, and plays in WishTribe (myspace.com/wishtribemusic), who supplied a lot of the music for the film. I met Kelly a couple of years ago, and he had tons of experience with music, but virtually no experience with editing or post-production. But he has been a very quick study, and I dare to say that his skills probably exceed even my own now. I don't offer such praise lightly, but he definitely proved himself with the work that he did on these two sequences alone. With his help, the sequences are now 6 minutes and 7.5 minutes, and work pretty well.

One of the things that I really like about this sequence I just finished is that there is music under every frame, and we do some funky things to match the music from scene to scene. The first scene has a laid-back midtempo WishTribe Track with a beat, and it matches the opening note of the cinematic score for the next scene perfectly. The scene that follows pans up to another WishTribe song, a slow power ballad, and where a pickup to a break occurs in the song, it cuts instantly to the opening pickup of a wailing blues track that underscores the first of two "showdown" scenes. I still need to tweak the volume on the tracks and match them more cleanly, but the timings seem to work now, and I have that sequence to a stage where I can safely abandon it for now.

I love music of all kinds, and my tastes are so eclectic, I'd be pressed to name a favorite band or even genre of music. I make iPod playlists that go seamlessly from SlipKnot to Three 6 Mafia to Bocephus to Miles Davis to P-Funk, and it always seems to make sense to me. But the problem with playing in a band is that you always seem to get forced into some sort of box eventually if you want to get out of the garage. Filmmaking, on the other hand, doesn't have that same restriction. I've tried to allow my musical choices to be influenced mostly by the appropriateness of the scene, but I also try to use those choices to express my own tastes as much as I can.

One thing that is a little bit challenging is the reality that until I have some money to blow, I can't use commerically available music. I can't use the music that I listened to when I wrote the story, and that is a setback. I'm limited to what I feel like buying (and I've bought quite a bit recently), or what I can get from local bands. Unfortunately, most local bands don't release a lot of instrumental tracks, and I've only been able to use a small portion of what's been offered to me. But I've tried to use as much as I can, because we've got a lot of talent available locally, and I'd be a fool not to take full advantage.

Perhaps in the future I'll listen more carefully to the music I own, and try to write accordingly. It will make me a better director if I can be more clear on the subordinate points of my vision, and I intend to shoot less from the fly in the future, and get it right the first time.

One other thing I tend to do is keep some side projects going as much as I can, to cleanse the palate a little bit. I have found that the thinner I spread myself, the better my work gets, and have managed to strike a pretty good balance. Currently in the rotation are a couple more screenplays, one called Perfect Strangers and one called Theta House.

Perfect Strangers is the first feature I wrote about ten years ago, and INSOMNIAC was the short film screenplay I was going to shoot for practice before I tackled a feature. It was supposed to be the easy one. But after a recent read of PS, I realized that it would be a very easy one to produce. It's a romantic comedy with two lead characters and 4 supporting characters, and only needs 3-5 locations. After I whittle it down from 115 to 80 pages, I may be able to shoot it in 4-6 weekends. It's a lot talkier and more character-driven than INSOMNIAC, but if I cast it right, it should be a really strong movie. It's definitely my most well-developed idea, and most easily producible, and once I unload my current monkey off my back, I'm going to go to the mattresses for a couple of months and see how much more I can get it to jump off the page.

Theta House is a project that will be based in large part on my experiences as a fraternity member in the undergrad days. I pledged my sophomore year, and around the time that I got initiated, our alumni board and nationals cleaned house. I was appointed VP of finance as soon as I got initiated, and quickly realized that being a member was way more challenging than being a pledge. Our house was #1 on campus in fights and parties, and pretty much nothing else, and as an officer, I didn't ever get the chance to party that hard, because I was too busy paying bands and DJs, breaking up fights, and generally being responsible. If there was ever a lawsuit, they would have went after the officers first, and I tried to prevent that.

After graduation, my chapter got kicked off campus, and about a year later, someone torched our house. Now there's a grassy field where our house used to me, and it's like we were never there at all.

Suffice it to say, there's definitely multiple stories to be told, and the challenge is figuring out the unifying theme to all of them. The screenplay is going to be more compartmentalized than usual, because I'm probably going to have a master story arc for each act, with different lead characters for each. One act will follow a couple of pledges, one will follow a couple of members, and one will follow a couple of alumni. And even though the story has a tendency to be very dark, I want it to be a funny story if I can.

What I don't want to do is make a stereotypical "frat house" story that involves dumb-jock date-rapist power drinkers. I want a story that reflects the complexity of the characters, and I want something that makes the characters sympathetic. I certainly want to tell a complete story, warts and all, but my objective is to tell a story that won't demonize the experience of fraternities. I'm glad I was Greek in college, and I hope that if I have a son, he'll fulfill his legacy. But the movies don't quite get fraternities right*, and I hope to change that.

Anyway, I need to stop typing and start editing. I'll check back in when I have more to report....

* Animal House may be the exception. I would say that many comparisons could be drawn to my house and the Delta house, and we also had some other fraternities on campus that were similar to the Omegas. I didn't go to a big east coast school with a bunch of old-money kids, but there were definitely significant class distinctions. But the Delta House were certainly a loveable ragtag group, and I'd rather present the chapter that way.

 

[YaBoyTopher]

I like your concept for Theta House, when i heard the title i cringed thinking another teen frat comedy.

But I think you have a pretty interesting twist on the genre, I would suggest sticking to the real life story as much as possible and just fictionalize when you need a more depth or action, Because from your description your real life experience sounds like it would be a pretty entertaining story.

I can see the ending scene now your main character returning to watch the old frat house burn.

But anyways good luck finishing your edit i look forward to reading about your progress.

 

[Christian Neil]

I like your concept for Theta House, when i heard the title i cringed thinking another teen frat comedy.

But I think you have a pretty interesting twist on the genre, I would suggest sticking to the real life story as much as possible and just fictionalize when you need a more depth or action, Because from your description your real life experience sounds like it would be a pretty entertaining story.

I can see the ending scene now your main character returning to watch the old frat house burn.

But anyways good luck finishing your edit i look forward to reading about your progress.

My big goal is to tell the story right, and the truth is way more interesting than anything I could make up. I will change names to protect the guilty as hell, of course, and most of the characters will be composites of several people. I had about 50 brothers in my chapter, and that's way too many characters to think about.

One challenge I know I'm going to face when I cast is finding young male actors. Male actors are in short supply, particularly those who can come off straight on camera convincingly. And the double-edged sword is that younger actors are more undependable than usual, because they get grounded sometimes.

I actually had that very thought about watching the house burn, but I had that in mind for the opening scene. I like revealing part of the ending at the start, because the viewer starts off a little more empowered. They know where it's going, and they can just sit back and enjoy the details.

Ironically, my chapter had gotten a lot stronger between the time I graduated and the time they got kicked off campus. I returned for homecoming a couple of times, and was really impressed by how much they had turned things around. But they had a hazing incident, and surrendered the charter to nationals, and the house sat vacant for about 6 months before it was torched. Theories abound about who did it, but that information has not been revealed to me or anyone I know, and it was declared Arson, but no arrests were ever made (this was about 7-8 years ago). It could be a nifty conspiracy story, but not one I'm privy to. I'd prefer to focus on the parts of it I knew best.

Thanks for the interest and kind words!

 

[Christian Neil]

I've started out working a little out of sequence, and have skipped over my Showdown scene and jumped straight ahead to the end credits. There were some problems with formatting, and a few things were outside of the title safe areas on the screen. I also had to add some more names. I'm always afraid of leaving someone out, so I've included a couple of personal acknowledgements for people who drove me to be creative at a young age, as well as a few people who did nothing directly on the film, but offered advice or encouragement along the way. I'd rather err on the side of caution, because so many people have been wonderful to our production every step of the way, with no expectation of compensation.

One cast member succumbed to a bout of pneumonia late last year, and the scene that he was in was cut. But I found a way to use one of his shots as an easter egg at the end of the closing credits, as well as a R.I.P. for him. The guy's name was Gary Haywood, and he does appear as an extra in a bar scene, but he showed up to another shoot, and I gave him a part as a thug. He had never acted before, but he was a really large mean-looking black guy and he did a hell of a job acting tough, and then later getting his ass kicked. Looks can be deceiving, though, because in the few conversations I had with him, he was a super nice guy who tried very hard to give me what I wanted, and I'm happy to give him a tribute, even if only for 5 seconds.

Today's agenda includes working on fixing some problems with my showdown scene, and my bar fight scene, and this weekend, I'll return to the DVD and notebook before my next round. I will probably take some time in the next couple of weeks to shoot a couple of things I can't find in my stock footage and audio libraries, and to do a bit more writing and recording with my lead character, who is also my narrator.

In scriptwriting, they tell you that using VO and flashback are cop-outs, and my original script did not have either. But I rationalized the change, realizing that it was a decision made as a director and an editor. I had two first acts that were fairly well-developed, a third act that was decent, but in the process of shooting, the second act got lost in the shuffle. But when I decided to think in terms of two acts instead of three, everything came together. And if I could replace a boring 3 minute scene with two lines of VO, it seemed to be an obvious choice.

One other thing I decided is to take more time in the middle of working to watch movies, and have been watching a typically eclectic assortment of films. I finally got around to watching Casablanca last night, just to see what the fuss was all about. A very fine movie, although the stuff that has come out since is too big a draw to consider it an all time favorite. It was one of the thousands of movies to come out of the old vertically integrated studio system, and was treated with no more deference than anything else created at the time. But the public has clearly spoken, and it rose to the top. One thing that I didn't care for was listening to Bogie speak through his false teeth. Kind of hard to picture anyone as a romantic lead with a mouthful of poli-grip, or whatever it was they were using at the time.

Right now, I'm watching Krzysztof Kieslowski's Blue, and digging it so far. I have been in love with Juliette Binoche since Chocolat, and her beauty makes up for the fact that most of the movies are so slow.

I also got the finally released on DVD Gymkata, which is hands down my favorite "so bad it's good" movie. It's going to be a great weekend!

 

[Christian Neil]

I finished the current draft of color correction and mixdown a day ahead of schedule, and started the DVD burning before I watched a couple of movies in bed. The intent was to go to sleep, but I got too wrapped up in a little Return of the Living Dead, followed by Killer Klowns from Outer Space. I had an interesting experience while watching Return....there was a zombie padlocked in a meat locker, and the owner of the building tells one of his employees the combination to the lock. Just so happens, the lock I carry in my gym bag has the exact same combination....I even dug it out to check.

Killer Klowns is one I've seen a bunch of time, but never get tired of. The Chiodo brothers seemed to get more from a nickel than most people could get from $5, and managed to make a damn entertaining movie. It's always been interesting to me how many people are scared of clowns, and they definitely used that to their advantage.

I woke up today at the crack of noon, and popped the DVD into the player as soon as I was up and stirring. The current runtime is 85 minutes and change, and I managed to watch the whole thing at one sitting without wanting to put a gun in my mouth too many times. There is still a lot to be done, but progress clearly has been made. There are a couple of problematic shots that I'm having some trouble making look good, and some of the audio still needs to be cleaned or replaced. But the majority of the problems I saw were dissolves that weren't timed right with the music, levels not quite balanced and minor, easy-to-fix technical glitches. I am very encouraged with the progress that I've made over the past few weeks, and am now going to bring in some other editors to have a look. I know I have a lot more work ahead of me, but for right now, I need a little vacation from the post-production effort. I need to spend some time rewriting my VOs and getting them recorded, and hopefully laying them down on top of some cleaner audio after Leon's taken a crack at everything.

With all the tools that we have at our disposal, there is no good excuse to release a movie that doesn't look and sound great. Compound that with 3 years in production, and we have even less of an excuse. People may not like the movie or want to buy it, but they won't be able to say that it didn't look or sound good. As far as I'm concerned, a movie that doesn't look or sound good isn't really a movie at all. It's a home video.

I mention often that I pretend that I had nothing to do with my work when I watch it, and try to honestly evaluate my work at all times. By that standard, if I were that hypothetical viewer, I feel that the movie was a worthwhile investment of my time. I also know that I've seen far worse movies that get distribution and/or theatrical release. I don't think it's going to generate massive word-of-mouth the way that Halloween or Clerks did, but I reckon that I'm aggressive enough to make sure a lot of people see it, either at film festivals, or at 4-wall screenings.

Commercial viablity issues aside, I can say that the experience of making the movie needs to be shared in some way. I learned a whole lot of ways not to make a movie, I learned a lot about myself and what I'm capable of, and met many new people with many different personalities. I've suffered more abuse than any human should have to endure, and at different times experienced paranoia, frustration, anger, sadness, and embarassment. I've lost friends, and allowed my already pathetic social life to dwindle into nonexistence. And I've lost count of the number of miles I put on the 4 cars I've owned since we started, the number of minutes on the cell phone, and the number of hours wasted waiting for people to show up.

Most crew people aspire to be directors themselves, because they think they can do the job better than the guy they're working for. And they're right. I started writing scripts ten years ago on my first film shoot. The script sucked, the writer/executive producer was a raving egomaniac who had been seriously shortchanged in the common sense department, and it was hands-down one of the most miserable experiences I'd ever had. My role as producer was calling the producer's students up and conning them into paying $1500 each to be in a short film. I managed to line up about 10 people, mostly kids, and he wrote a script for the people he had. It was one of the most ethically bankrupt ways to get something produced, and one of the most personally miserable experiences I'd had in my life. But it filled me with piss and vinegar, and I only had to wait about 10 more years before I got to be a director myself. And I decided to start with a feature, which was probably a mistake.

But the thing that your average crewman doesn't realize is that being a director is both the best and the worst job. There is a small amount of glamour and prestige, such as the days when you're in charge of a whole bunch of people at a really cool location, or if you get the chance to do Q&A at a big festival screening. But that's less than 5-10% of the job. The rest of your time is very lonely, very frustrating, and filled with bad news. You're the lightning rod that is struck with every setback, every excuse, and every inconvenience. You spend more time as a counselor than you do a director, and you have to deliver all the bad news. It's also your job to fire people, which really sucks.

For me, it's worth it. Filmmaking is a good match with virtually every interest and influence that I have, and making something good is a high unmatched by anything else I've experienced. And of all the things I've tried and quit in my life, this is the only one that I can't seem to get away from. Even when I take a break from it, I spend my time watching movies. I don't really have any other hobbies anymore, and don't really plan on taking any up in the future. I feel like I've been blessed with a virtually inexhaustible stockpile of ideas, and bringing them to fruition is my mission in life. I don't know where I end and movies begin, and I don't care. This is who I am, and what I do.

Anyway, I'm heading out to go see Hancock in an hour, so I'll wrap up this ramble for now. Happy 4th to all of you!

 

[Christian Neil]

I know that all of you have been waiting with bated breath to hear about the status of INSOMNIAC, and I apologize for keeping everyone in suspense. I had a very busy summer and fall, and kind of let this place slip through the cracks.

We finally finished the feature in December, and managed to make the deadline for SXSW. We should be getting our rejection in February, and then we'll see where we're going to take it from there. I'm doing some research on Withoutabox to find some festivals that are within a day's drive from Little Rock, and we'll see what happens.

We did manage to arrange a local screening on the 18th of January at one of our movie theaters here that specializes in Indie films, and I'm kind of sweating bullets about getting enough butts in seats. We are getting a couple of pretty good writeups that will come out prior to the screening, and I'm in the process of trying to pester the bejesus out of all of our cast and crew to bring lots of friends. I have 191 seats I'm trying to fill, and already have a good chunk of them filled with cast, crew, and guests. Hopefully we'll get enough paid admissions through the door to make a decent dent in all of the out-of-pocket expenses that we've incurred along the way, which I estimate to be about 5 grand. It also set me back about $1500 to order the DVDs, T-Shirts, and posters, but I'm optimistic that we're going to be able to make some decent sales right out of the gate.

As the old saying goes, movies are never finished, just abandoned, and there are a couple of spots where the audio is a little rougher than I'd like. But you can hear everyone, and 90% of the film sounds really good. We also made the decision to convert everything to black and white, because the differences between the three cameras was far too noticeable in color, and we couldn't get it to match up to my satisfaction.

We wound up with an 86 minute runtime, and speaking as my own worst critic, it moves at a pretty good pace. I feel very proud of what we were able to come up with, especially considering what we had to work with. I know that I've got better movies in me, but I'm not ashamed of this one in the least.

I'm currently working on a couple more scripts, and am having a little trouble deciding on the edgy one, or the romantic comedy. I plan on starting production on another one by late summer, early fall of '09, and am going to try and pull the next one off in under a year. I learned many important lessons about how not to make a movie, and hopefully I won't make all the same mistakes the next time around. I've learned that 80% of good directing is good casting (maybe more), and that I need to work with a smaller family next time around. I've also learned that I need to write shorter scripts, and to be more clear with the cast and crew about the story that we're trying to tell. I need to spend more time lighting scenes correctly, and need to make sure that we do a better job of recording clean audio. Many, many lessons were learned, but those are the big highlights.

If any of you here on the board are in Arkansas, I'd love for you to attend our screening on the 18th. I've included a copy of the news release for the event, and when the writeups are printed, I'll post links to the online articles. Additionally, anyone interested in signing up for our mailing list can do so by sending a blank email to insomniacmovie@gmail.com with "Subscribe" in the subject line.

Finally, we have a trailer up on YouTube that can be located at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz3f1MJ0lbI

Thanks!

Chris

 

[cigsmcgee]

As far as I'm concerned, a movie that doesn't look or sound good isn't really a movie at all. It's a home video.

sorry, but got to disagree with you on that one. some of my favorite movies are from godard and the maysle brothers, and no one could say that any of their films are technical achievements. they work because of the characters and that intangible quality about people and behavior.

I think there is something to be said about a movie that sacrafices look and style for honesty, because its often impossible to get both.

I live in LR, and have been making a feature for about as long as you have. I saw that yours is playing at Market Street. what's the catch? do you have to pay them? I know they are kindof cheap over there, and I can't say I have much nice things to say about how they run their ship. just curious as to how the deal went down.

and are you submitting to the LRFF? or is the market street screening all you have planned? we're hoping to get "Slumberland" into the fest, but if that doesnt pan out we'd have to look at other ways of getting it shown.

anyway, good luck. I know exactly what youve been going through, the anger and doubt and maxed out external drives. but theres nothing like cutting a movie together. its madness.