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It can really takes a lot out of a person.
Posted by Jody at 06:27 PM
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At 12:41 AM, Tell Me was completed and burned to DVD.
I have a film!
*sits... enjoys the moment*
Okay, time to make another one.
Posted by Jody at 01:06 AM
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Last night Dan and I worked out some of the kinks that cropped up with the short. Major conflict was that I edited on a newer edition of Final Cut Pro Studio than he did, 5.1.2 vs. 5.0. Mine is a post binary re-write to take advantage of the Core2Duo chips. Dan is still utilizing the older software designed for two Intel processors.
To update his copy requires getting a disk from Mac, which was going to take far too long. It looked like we were going to have to create a whole new project and re-edit the movie from scratch...
Enter XML.
Apple has an Exchange format built into FCP. Basically, all the edits, tweaks, colors, sounds, and assorted work done on a project can be exported as a text file and imported into a different program to replicate what was going on. I was able to save a rather complicated document to a .txt file that contained a text representation of every bit of activity that I'd done. Dan opened it in his edition of FCP, reconnected media, opened my project files, and voila, he had a full copy of my project, ready for editing.
Note to anyone stumbling across this entry while searching for "Importing newer Final Cut Pro project into older Final Cut Pro program" in a search engine, all I did was use the EXPORT drop down, clicked the XML link, and used the VERSION 2 interchange format. This created a readable file that Dan used in reverse, with IMPORT, XML, etc. to duplicate my work in his older edition of FCP.
Also, I had a problem mailing the XML file. Apparently, Apple Mail doesn't understand how to package the XML file for transport (I've run into that problem before with back-up software.) Workaround is to Zip the XML, and attach the archive to the Mail message. No problem after that.
Last note. Dan noticed -- well, to him it was blindingly obvious -- that I'd frakked the settings in the project, having imported 16:9 footage into a project and tagging it twice as anamorphic. I thought it looked fine on the screen but apparently I was just asking for trouble...
We couldn't find an easy way to correct every sequence and nested sequence in the project. No global changes were working. Finally, what we did was click into the "Effects" tab, drop down the "Distort" section, and reset the field to "0." That cleared everything up. Takes forever and a day to do that in all of the sequences, but it fixed a problem I didn't even know I'd made.
Frakkin learning curves.
Posted by Jody at 11:19 AM
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More in the ever umm...lengthening drama of completing the short.
An editor has materialized to help get the short in shape. Irony of it is, he was there the whole time -- well, the whole time he and I had been working on this new project I've been dropping vague hints about. We're working to have a pretty good copy ready before the March 9th deadline at Outfest. Special effects and music won't be set by then, but if the short makes it in, we will be ready in time for the July festival.
I hope.
The Guys will like the news, especially Sean. Getting into a festival would be welcome news, especially after all the tragedy surrounding Bryan Kocis' murder. I think Bo has about given up on the project ever being done. And then there's Chase...
Posted by Jody at 01:37 PM
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**Updated 2/7/07**
Well, it seems this "Drake" fellow is still on the loose. The man mentioned below is NOT him, at least not according to the latest news reports. I was really hoping they were closer to catching the bastard who killed Bryan Koscis.
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One: Met with an editor today. She gave me some pointers on how to make the edit on the short better. I'm going to jump back into it, as well as seeing what a few other friends think.
Two: More related than anything else, looks like the police have a "person of interest" in the Bryan Kocis murder, a guy by the name of "Drake." Drake was the person Kocis was apparently going to meet shortly before his death. According to the linked article, "Drake" seems to be this guy, a 19 year-old escort and model. The faces and bodies appear to match.
If you know anything one way or the other, please let the Pennsylvania State Police know, at 570-697-2000.
*updated with new information*
Posted by Jody at 01:26 PM
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"Shaken"
January 27, 2007
So I get home Thursday and do my usual virtual beachcombing of Google Alerts, Wiki Warnings, Newsgroup notifications, RSS feeds and other factual detritus marooned on the electronic shores of my in-box, when I stumbled over the last piece of information I ever expected to see:
"Cobra Video Porn Producer Bryan Kocis Murdered."
That's not good.
I was familiar with Kocis from having cast Sean Lockhart, of "Brent Corrigan" fame, in my most recent short film. Sean and I'd become friends afterwards.
Along the way, he told me about his experiences as an under-age model in the porn industry, a bit about his personal and professional relationship with Kocis, as well as what he was hoping to do with his life. (I later wrote about all of this for an article in GayWebMonkey magazine.)
Those details as well as information about Sean's and Kocis' battle over the name "Brent Corrigan" are freely available all over the web. No need for me to rehash it. I will say though that the most accurate information can be found in quotes from either Sean or Kocis directly; details provided by "friends of friends of friends" aren't worth much.
Last week, Sean told me he thought he'd finally reached an agreement with Kocis. Earlier this week he'd confirmed that the deal was in place. They'd been able to work something out that made Kocis happy an allowed Sean to continue on as "Brent." What really surprised him was that in the middle of all the negotiating, Kocis turned around and did him a personal favor, completely at odds with the spite and vitriol that had recently passed between them. Unexpected but appreciated, according to Sean.
The February settlement was supposed to take everyone out of the limelight, establish a new status quo, and get all parties back to work.
And then this horrible news hit.
We texted earlier Friday afternoon. Sean said he was pretty shaken by everything and trying to make sense of it all. Rollercoaster. Pretty normal, considering. No, he didn't tell me any details. No, I didn't ask.
Of course my first sympathies are with Sean. He's a friend. I know him. Back when I was social worker, I knew a lot of people like him. I learned how complicated relationships like the one between Bryan and Sean were. "Shaken" understates the emotions of a situation like this.
Still, despite how I might personally feel about Bryan Kocis, his history, ethics, and videos, it is pretty awful how he died. Condolences to his friends and family. No doubt he meant a great deal to them.
To Sean, I know it feels like another punch after a host of others. Hang in there, regardless. You are a tough and you have lots of shoulders to lean on. Myself and the rest of your friends, we know that in the end you are going to be alright.
Posted by Jody at 12:09 PM
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I've now progressed to Sound Track Pro Hell.
I hate learning curves.
Posted by Jody at 04:06 PM
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This morning I finished the rough cut of the short film.
About bloody time.
It's been both fun and a chore to log the footage, sort the footage, and arrange the footage. After spending far too much time on this rough edit, I've gotten a much better understanding of myself as both a director and writer: how well is what's on the page on the screen? What shortcuts did I take that I shouldn't have? What shortcuts could have been taken that weren't. What did I need more footage of? Less?
Something I stumbled across that really helped me in the rough edit was advice from Walter Murch to turn the sound off when doing the first edit and just let the images guide your hand. Revealatory. Without worrying about the audio being right for the scene, I focused instead on getting the faces, relationships an reactions to be close to what I thought I was "right" for the scene.
When I played the scene back, I was surprised to find that the audio track was far closer to what it should be than I thought. There were a few times when I'd even timed the cuts exactly to the breaks in the dialogue. While it's possible I'm cherry picking my data points, remembering my hits and forgetting my misses, there was the feeling of freedom that came from sublimating concerns over the audio appropriateness at this stage and focusing instead on the visual.
So too, much like with writing where problems in the written narrative get worked out at non-writing times with flashes of insight into the direction a particular story should take, I've discovered that problems in the narrative of the film, kinks where I wasn't sure how to edit something to take best advantage of the available footage, were solved in a similar, minding-my-own-business flash of insight. ("If I just take this edit here and place it before that edit there...") Fascinating how the brain works.
Now comes the tinkering part, where I play with the cuts, angles and performances to create the best tale I can tell. I'm really excited by this, much like how excited much more excited I am to edit a 100 page script than to actually produce each and every page of it in the first place.
I might just make my goal of having a "mostly done" movie by the first of December.
Posted by Jody at 01:21 PM
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I think I'm getting the hang of this.
I was rather intimidated by Final Cut when I sat down to edit my [short] film a few months back. The learning curve of FC is huge, with everything from matting on the fly to mutli-channel mixing available with a few clicks or key codes, the simple cut and trims I wanted to do were obscured by Feature Freedom.
Over the weekend though that started to change. I found myself rather effortlessly dropping pieces into and pulling them out of sequences, ripple and roll editing to get dramatic timing right, and tweaking colors to supplement the tones of the scenes. I've been reordering lines and line readings, recasting the overall order of the piece in light of the reality of the footage I have.
In other words I'm getting better.
With luck I'll meet my goal of a rough cut of the movie by Halloween (Happy Birthday Sean), though just like in writing, the key to perfection with a project is working the material over and over again, trying subtle variations and alternate takes until things click across the board.
Then comes the real hell: friend's critiques.
Last night I spoke with a guy very interested in scoring the short. If his music is as good as I think, I'll be able to cut it, some general footage, and some of the matte work into a trailer. My goal for the final project is January of 2007, with a premiere at whatever film festival I'm able to get into.
And then I can start thinking about the next one.
Posted by Jody at 11:41 AM
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Short Shoot Diary II #11: The Hells of Homo Horror High-Def
With the end of the quarter on me (I graduate next Friday) I've been struggling to stay afloat in a seastorm of final projects. The Short Film has been languishing for a few days as I've jumped around completing other stuff due far earlier.
One of the other big problems too is that my precious iMac is just one generation too old to really do HDV and do it well. The G5 chip, sans dedicated video processing circuits, doesn't have the strength to do all the unpacking and re-packing necessary to handle HDV natively. Apparently the new Intel chips do, and even the chips in the new Mac Books do, but these older G5 chips rely heavily on memory and software code to do the job.
I tried a few work arounds, including purchasing memory upgrades, disk scans and finally iLife utilizing iMovie HD. I never got a good enough fix that addressed all the concerns I had. I finally bit the bullet and downconverted the HDV signal to SDV, and imported all of that in to my now (2GB memory tricked out) iMac.
The footage still looks lovely (everyone would have seen it in standard def anyway), with the acting and photography being really, really good. I'm finishing the logging now and hope to get started on the actual editing of the piece next week.
My goal is to put some kind of teaser on here next week. 30 seconds. Quicktime scalable. All of that goodness.
More soon.
Posted by Jody at 12:17 AM
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I made another one.
Last night, at 9:45 PM, on a super-windy beach, against the black of night lit from embers of a fire, I called "cut." My latest short film, my fifth attempt, ended principal photography. After Words was in the can.
As usual, I'm behind in posting my journal notes, pictures and assorted bric-a-bracia. I'll have some time on Friday to finally become human again. I should get to it this weekend.
In the mean time, I want to thank Chad, Beau, Brent, Chase, Steven, BJ, Jeny, Adam and Dan for giving me their time, energy but most of all, their trust in the creation of this project.
More soon!
Posted by Jody at 08:42 PM
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So in order to do this one up right, I decided I'd work with people I knew. Known commodities. People with lots of skill and energy that I knew could pull off the role. Hayden Christensen and Leonardo DiCaprio wouldn't return my calls, so I had to actually delve a little deeper into my own past for my players.
Beau Puckett
 Beau Puckett plays my lead, August. Beau and I go back over a decade to Washington D.C., and a show that I wrote for called "Inside / Outside the Beltway." It was the first gay soap, all done with local D.C. actors, on a half a shoe-string, and syndicated around the country on Public Access Cable. (Queer As Folk copied us.)
Beau and I reconnected after many a year gap, both surprised as hell that we were working opposite sides of the street here in Hollywood. (Neither his pimp or my pimp would let us talk --territory, profits and all that -- so first chance we grabbed the convertible caddy and left 'em behind.) Beau has won several acting awards in the ensuing years, proving how good he is. I'm totally amazed too that he's still smokin' hot. It's not fair that I look mature and he still looks sexy. Life, don't talk to me about life.
Chase Masters
 Next up is Chase Masters, playing the mysterious Sumner. He's the ex-flame of August's life, the one true love, who appears seemingly out of the ether. Coincidence, or fate? (wah-wah-waaaaahh!) Chase was one of the stars of my last piece (clips of which can be found here) that just didn't 100% jell together. I scrapped the whole thing. Given what I've seen of other gay-themed shorts (and features) that have actually made it to the DVD shelves, I was far, far too harsh on it. Still, I'd know it could be better. And that would bother me.
None of it was any fault of Chase's. He's a great actor, singer and limo driver. Also another hottie... though he really gets what he wants with his Southern Accent, batting his eyes, and crooning. In my general direction. Last time around he got me to make him eggs for breakfast before we started shooting. I trumped him this time. Beau is from the south too. I'm going to pit them against each other. Perhaps southern-inflected puppy dog eyes will cancel each other out. Or it will utterly destroy me.
B. Paul "Brent" Corrigan
 Third to bat is Brent Corrigan with the key role of Skippy. (Yes, "Skippy." Trust me.) I've never worked with Brent before. I actually caught him in, of all things, a porn film (you read that right.) I stopped paying attention to the plot (as it were) of the movie and said "Damn, that kid can improv. I bet he can act." Since he was the only one acting, the only one who didn't look like he was just there for... well, you know, he made an impression. (You, on the left, with the snarky comment. Leave my page. Now.)
Since the character of Skippy seems (hint) like he wandered in from some adult film being shot down the hall, I figured it didn't hurt to ask someone from that world if they'd like a chance to play him. Through the power of the internet, I asked Brent to if he was up for it.
I thought my best selling point was that Skippy wasn't a sex role. He doesn't get naked in this -- though I can't say the same about the other characters. (Come on. I know what my audience wants.) What I forgot (modestly) was that the real deal closer was that the script was well written and that the part, while small, is fun to play. Brent jumped at the chance. (Smart guy, Brent.) After meeting up with him (I'll write about that soon), I'm certain he's going to do a damn fine job.
And since he's only 19, if he doesn't, I'll ground him for a month.
So that's it. That's my Big Three. My Trio of Terror. My Team of Torment. My Triangle of Trepidation. My...
Okay, I'll stop now.
More soon.
Posted by Jody at 02:13 PM
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Would you believe in 20 days I'm making a film?
Yeah, that's about how I feel.
I'm actually well ahead of the game. I've got my cast locked, 90% of my locations set, 90% of my crew in place, 100% of my other producers in place, script is fine, storyboards are shaping up, and even found a company that's going to do my one big VFX shot for me. Vunderfull, vright?
I'm still nervous. My last projects have never been finished. Photography commenced, and scenes were edited, and one even got as far as being scored and shown to a few people. Yet they just were never that good. I got better with each film, no doubt. I've learned a lot about what can be done and what can't be done and how to do something that can be done a certain way to make it look like you did something that can't be done. I've just never had it all come together.
This time....
Now that I'm about to be a big film school graduate (anyone want to cover my mortgage for a few months...no more student loans), I should be able to make something good, presentable, even marketable, long term. The people I've gathered are all excellent, the plan is working and we should be able to meet our days.
It's just that the jumble of nerves never totally goes away.
I'll have the script up in a few days. It's another in my long line of "HomoHorror" films called, after many backs and forths, "After Words." It's a bit trippy, loopy, Twilight-Zone on acid-esque, but it'll scare you, make you cry and reach for the remote to watch it again. Promise
Posted by Jody at 01:52 PM
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Truth be told, I should probably be writing about the brilliant stupidity found in this article from the "Catholic Eductation Network" titled "An Evening with Darwin in New York" -- a supposed expose on the "faith" of "Darwinists". It's full of the usual crap, about how "Intelligent Design" is proving that evolution is matter of faith, that biologists and anthropologists are "agnostic" to evolution, and that the deceptively intelligent work of Behe, Denton and Wolfram have proven that evolution and Darwin's ideas are just "the culture war conducted by other means."
I don't have a degree in science. I have two degrees, one advanced, in social science (Political and Psychology & Education) and, in about eight weeks, a new advanced degree one in fine art (Screenwriting) so I'm not an expert in evolution by any means.
But I am educated, and even I, a liberal writer, can hunt through the books on my shelves, the accumulation of Human Knowledge (and ignorance) on the internet, and consult working scientists for enough information to point by point take apart take apart the crack-pot author of the article. (No observed evidence of Macroevolution? How dumb are you?)
What's galling to me is that the doofus behind the "Evening" article can do the same work I can and realize his point is vacant and, since he speaks in terms of furthering education, particularly vile. Education takes some work, but anyone can do it. Obviously though, this is far to much to ask in the case. Considering the book he has for sale (I linked it somewhere in here) I think I know why he doesn't care to do the work.
I wrote all of this as an introduction. See I'm making another movie, another short film. It's going to be a fucking awesome short film, something fun and meaningful at least to me and those involved. It comes out of our collective love of telling stories, of finding the best ways to be part of telling them -- be it as writers, as actors, or crew. As I've done before (though a lot of it crashed off line and sits now in a backup file that's a bitch to get through) I'm going to my best to write about the experience of making fiction. The fun of it. The joy in it.
This introduction is here as a reminder that whatever truths are found in a story, they are still stories, lies that tell truths. Science and the reasoning behind it, the hard, tedious work that countless people across the planet and back through the ages do and have done, that's about reality. That's about finding what actually is, what we're actually a small, small part of.
Stories, no matter how large or small, comment on the life They take liberties with reality to point the way to important matters. But don't confuse stories with reality, don't confuse them with life. The author of the "Evening" article, full of arrogance and hubris, makes that mistake. He holds fast to an ancient tale, perverting real work, real effort, real achievement, so that his special storybook remains firmly in place. We can only tell stories, we can only believe in the power of stories, when we have an idea of what's actually real. You need both to have, in a sense, either.
Enjoy each for what it is. Don't make them into what they aren't.
'Cause you're an asshole if you do.
Posted by Jody at 10:54 AM
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