I Love You, I'm Sorry, And I'll Never Do It Again came from the imagination of Director/Writer Keith Snyder, acclaimed crime drama writer. A short crime musical featuring a talented cast and a taste of Busby Berkeley meets the Twilight Zone. All in short form but big on laughs. --Alan Gary, FanClubX

Cool, no? Now if I can just come up with a new title for the story I'll be telling you about soon, which you'll be able to read online. The editor hates the title I gave it, but at this point it's like renaming an old pet that doesn't have any picturesque new habits.

Speaking of that story, I crammed the manuscript into the book I'm reading so I could carry everything downstairs to the bus this evening. This may be the only time I have a story in Best American Short Stories.

I screwed up the delivery on my way out, though. My coworkers didn't get the joke.

ILY at Queens International Film Festival, Queens NY

ILY at FAIF-AICAA Film Festival, Downtime Disney in Anaheim

Nuit Blanche was a last-minute notification, so you couldn't go even if you wanted to. It was last night.

Queens is November 8-11. It's probably walking distance for me, so I'll be there. Tickets are available online, but the schedule's not up yet. Let me know if you're coming and we'll have coffee or something.

Cackalacky is October 18-21. They're running behind this year, and their website doesn't list schedule or venues yet. If you care about a screening in the Carolinas, keep an eye on the website.

And if you want to come away from a question with (a) less certainty than when you started, and (b) your eyes rolled farther north than a 13-year-old girl with parents who say pretty much anything, google "the plural of no."

So if you're in Toronto, and you're reading this blog right now, and you've suddenly got the urge to stay up all night and watch movies, here's what Shannonn Kelly (director of the ReelHeArt International Film Festival) wrote me:

The screening time is is play-as-you-go, but it will be in the last half of the event. In the Midnight to 7AM run because it's going to play with the other "cool films"- for the mature, artsy night-crawling crowd.

I stayed up until 5AM last season as and there were TONS of people roaming the streets ohhing and awh-ing-

Wednesday, September 12th, 2007
Film Block #3
8:00PM-11:00PM
The Historic Panida Theater

We're honored to be part of this year's Lakedance Festival!

It will screen with Shorts Program 5 at 7:00, August 18, 25, and September 1 at The Sanctuary of the Earth House at Lockerbie Central UMC, 237 N. East Street.

IndyFringe's slogan is Outrageous Outbursts of Film, and it's run partly by our friends at the Indianapolis Film Festival, which itself programmed ILY this year and Credo last year. The program looks great, and we're very happy to be part of the lineup!

If you bought a pass and didn't get an email from me today, please let me know as soon as possible.

I bought a block of passes so I could offer them at $12. There are 6 left. You can get them by clicking the poster on this page.

The pass you bought isn't just a ticket; it's a day pass. They run films all day on August 25, from 1PM to 9PM. You can get into all of them.

I LOVE YOU, I'M SORRY, AND I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN
August 25, 2007
3:17 PM
ACE Film Festival
Broad Street Ballroom
41 Broad Street, NYC (across from the stock exchange)
acefest.com/program07.htm

Your passes are will-call. They'll be under the name you gave Paypal when you bought them.

ILY CAST/CREW/FRIENDS AFTER-SCREENING HANG

Cast, crew, and friends of I LOVE YOU, I'M SORRY, AND I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN are invited to hang out afterwards at:

ADRIENNE'S PIZZA BAR
54 Stone Street
4:00ish PM
www.adriennespizzabar.com/
(If you heard we were meeting at Ulysses, that didn't work out.)

This is a casual hang, not a catered event. Buy pizza and eat it with us.

ACE FILM FESTIVAL'S OFFICIAL AFTER PARTY

Your pass also gets you into the ACE Film Festival AFTER PARTY:

ACE Film Festival After Party
August 25
10:00 PM
Bubble Lounge
225 W. Broadway
www.bubblelounge.com

ANY OTHER QUESTIONS?

Email me.

See you there!

Keith

Feel free to pick one (or two, or six) and send them around to whomever. Or, if you're one of those two-fisted anti-Latinate types, to whoever. Or, if you're one of those idle rich types, to your stupidest relative who's looking for a movie to invest in.

The day passes are will-call, so you will receive no paper tickets. You'll walk up to the ticket booth and give your name. (And you'll receive email about the passes, the after-screening hang, and the exact address and time before the day of the screening.)

Mac users: Control-click the image and save to disk.

PC users: Right-click the image and save to disk.

And once again, that button:

What do you think?

And here's that button again, for buying your pass:

THE SCREENING

The NYC premiere of I LOVE YOU, I'M SORRY, AND I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN will be at the ACE Film Festival Saturday, August 25, at 3:17 PM. (I'll explain the weird time in a minute.)

You're invited! It looks like a good-sized screen in a nice venue directly across from the New York Stock Exchange. The post-screening hang will probably be at Ulysses, but I haven't been by to check the place out yet.

THE TICKETS

ACE isn't offering individual screening tickets, only day passes. But I can't very well ask everybody I know to spend that kind of money just to come see my 15-minute film, so here's the deal: I bought a bunch of passes at a reduced price. If you want to attend, you buy one of them from me, for $12, using this button:

$12 is way less than you will be able to get these for in any other way. (And when this block sells out, I'll buy another block and we'll keep doing it this way.)

That gets you a pass to the ACE Film Festival all day, Saturday, August 25, for the price of a regular movie ticket. Sounds like a deal? Sounds like a deal. It's will-call, so after you buy, I'll let you know in email what you have to say when you show up at the Broad Street Ballroom.

As for the weird time (3:17 PM), it's because they aren't selling individual screening tickets. They just run movies all day, and you can go to whichever ones you want with your day pass. 3:17 is when ILY happens to pop up in the schedule. So come early, watch a bunch of flicks, catch our NYC premiere, and then come hang with us afterward. (And if you're only coming to see ILY, make sure you're seated by the start time.)

THE CATCH

In order to get the pass for $12, you have to be attending the screening of I LOVE YOU, I'M SORRY, AND I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN. Other filmmakers at the festival (or random people who found this entry through a Google search) can get their day passes the regular way: $40 at the ACE ticketing page.

THE HANG

The hang will be immediately after the ILY screening, at some bar or restaurant I haven't figured out yet. Any suggestions from NYC locals?

This is the official cast/crew/friends premiere party, so I'm hoping to get a crowd going. Everybody is welcome--and if you have an idea for using the event to get a little press, or know somebody who knows somebody, I'm all ears. (Not to mention that the media gets in free. So if you're media, don't spend twelve bucks. Just let me know you're coming and I'll tell you how to get a press pass.)

I think that's everything...

If you want to attend, or know someone in Toronto who does, email me. If you think you might want to attend, email me; there are enough passes that I can give them to might-shows. If you know a good place to post FREE PASSES TO KEITH'S SHORT FILM! go ahead and send them to this blog post. Seriously, the festival is really pushing these passes, and I'd love to get a crowd at the screening.

I'll check email late tonight from my hotel.

Tomorrow night, Tuesday 6/18
7 PM
ReelHeART Film Festival
Main Program A
Innis Town Hall
Innis College, University of Toronto
2 Sussex Avenue [1 block south of Bloor Street, on St. George Street]
Toronto, ON

Here's the trailer on YouTube:

The NYC premiere of I LOVE YOU, I'M SORRY, AND I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN will be at the ACE Film Festival Saturday, August 25, at 3:17 PM. (I'll explain the weird time in a minute.)

You're invited! It looks like a good-sized screen in a nice venue directly across from the New York Stock Exchange, and I'll find a bar or something for us to hang out at after the screening.

THE TICKETS

ACE isn't offering individual screening tickets, only day passes. But I can't very well ask everybody I know to spend that kind of money just to come see my 15-minute film, so here's the deal: I bought a bunch of passes at a reduced price. If you want to attend, you buy one of them from me, for $12, using this button:

$12 is way less than you will be able to get these for in any other way. (And when this block sells out, I'll buy another block and we'll keep doing it this way.)

That gets you a pass to the ACE Film Festival all day, Saturday, August 25, for the price of a regular movie ticket. Sounds like a deal? Sounds like a deal. It's will-call, so after you buy, I'll let you know in email what you have to say when you show up at the Broad Street Ballroom.

As for the weird time (3:17 PM), it's because they aren't selling individual screening tickets. They just run movies all day, and you can go to whichever ones you want with your day pass. 3:17 is when ILY happens to pop up in the schedule. So come early, watch a bunch of flicks, catch our NYC premiere, and then come hang with us afterward. (And if you're only coming to see ILY, make sure you're seated by the start time.)

THE CATCH

In order to get the pass for $12, you have to be attending the screening of I LOVE YOU, I'M SORRY, AND I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN. Other filmmakers at the festival (or random people who found this entry through a Google search) can get their day passes the regular way: $40 at the ACE ticketing page.

THE HANG

The hang will be immediately after the ILY screening, at some bar or restaurant I haven't figured out yet. Any suggestions from NYC locals?

This is the official cast/crew/friends premiere party, so I'm hoping to get a crowd going. Everybody is welcome--and if you have an idea for using the event to get a little press, or know somebody who knows somebody, I'm all ears. (Not to mention that the media gets in free. So if you're media, don't spend twelve bucks. Just let me know you're coming and I'll tell you how to get a press pass.)

I think that's everything...

I looked at the guy's reel. I showed it to Mike Faircloth, the executive producer. We both thought it felt right, so I emailed Dave Berliner and asked if he'd be interested in a New York short film. We talked (a lot), we emailed (a lot), and I ended up flying him out and putting him up for the shoot.

He was the right guy. Solid on the art, solid on the business, solid on working with a director taking a big step up in complexity. The morning I bought his ticket, he had me forward all the responses to my Craigslist crew ads. By the end of the day, he'd put the crew together--and during the shoot, that was one hell of a crew.

I like finding festivals near the people who work on the films. It's a way of showing support above and beyond the paycheck--it says the praise they've heard from me wasn't just lip service.

I'm very pleased to announce that I LOVE YOU, I'M SORRY, AND I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN will screen in competition at the St. Louis Filmmakers' Showcase, July 21-26 at the Tivoli Theater. Hopefully Dave and Guyot can both make it. Seeing as they've never met.

There is also a very chance of a Brooklyn screening on June 18 at 7 PM, but it's not confirmed yet.

One or the other of these New York events will be our official cast/crew/friends party. You're invited. I'll let you know when and where soon.

From their website:

Our unique festival happens annually on the 3rd weekend in July in sunny Corvallis, Oregon. Join us for a da Vinci-style weekend at the crossroads of art, science, and technology. There's music, entertainment, creative contests, exhibits, and hands-on activities for all ages.

Celebrate the 150th birthday of bike-friendly Corvallis with a wheely creative art bike to display in the Community Art Project.

I don't actually know what I'm doing, but this is kind of fun.

No! (In this context, anyway.) It's the name of the block of short films that I LOVE YOU, I'M SORRY, AND I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN will play in at the Indianapolis International Film Festival.

Here's the page that Google Alerts just Google Alerted me to:

ILY at the Indianapolis Film Festival

I always like reading how festivals summarize the film, partly because they usually do it better than I do.

It's screening April 30 and May 1.

If you look closely at their main page, you'll see Larry scrolling by in his yellow shirt. That's because CREDO screened there last year. We weren't able to attend, but I'm thinking I may be able to make it up there this time. Maybe even bring a toddler along, if I can figure that part of it out.

It's been a good week for creative results. Two cool festival acceptances, a very nice email from a fellow mystery writer about DEAD GRAY (my story in the the March/April Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine), and fan mail for SELL IN HELL, which just went online a few days ago.

Besides just the abstract coolness of any acceptance, this is like totally rad for three specific reasons.

One--and admittedly, this is a very narrow personal interest--it's great to be at a festival where short musicals are exhibited in a fantastic theater with truly awesome sound. I mean... they're musicals. Sound is kind of important.

You can't beat Mann's Chinese for sound. When we were there last year with CREDO, it was downright thrilling to hear my mix. My entire mix. My entire mix, including stuff I forgot I even mixed into it because I couldn't hear it at any of the previous festivals. (Oh yeah! There's gentle rain on the roof in that scene!)

Two, CREDO ended its festival run there last year, and Larry and I both felt it was just the right note to end on. We got to tell people we were playing at the Chinese and meet a bunch of fellow filmmakers I previously only knew from the Withoutabox.com forums, I got to see my East Coat and West Coast collaborators at the same table (Larry and Blake in the same car--I can die now), we did the surround mix for ILY on the Paramount lot while we were there (overseen by our friend Patrick Hogan, director of Pope Dreams, a film that Larry, Blake, and I were all vastly relieved was truly excellent, so we didn't have to be uncomfortable with the guy doing us this favor) and just generally have a great time.

Three, I'm from Los Angeles, and visiting home is now a writeoff--and I have five months to figure out money, travel, childcare...

Angelenos, mark your calendars.

Besides just the abstract coolness of any acceptance, this is like totally rad for three specific reasons.

One--and admittedly, this is a very narrow personal interest--it's great to be at a festival where short musicals are exhibited in a fantastic theater with truly awesome sound. I mean... they're musicals. Sound is kind of important.

You can't beat Mann's Chinese for sound. When we were there last year with CREDO, it was downright thrilling to hear my mix. My entire mix. My entire mix, including stuff I forgot I even mixed into it because I couldn't hear it at any of the previous festivals. (Oh yeah! There's gentle rain on the roof in that scene!)

Two, CREDO ended its festival run there last year, and Larry and I both felt it was just the right note to end on. We got to tell people we were playing at the Chinese and meet a bunch of fellow filmmakers I previously only knew from the Withoutabox.com forums, I got to see my East Coat and West Coast collaborators at the same table (Larry and Blake in the same car--I can die now), we did the surround mix for ILY on the Paramount lot while we were there (overseen by our friend Patrick Hogan, director of Pope Dreams, a film that Larry, Blake, and I were all vastly relieved was truly excellent, so we didn't have to be uncomfortable with the guy doing us this favor) and just generally have a great time.

Three, I'm from Los Angeles, and visiting home is now a writeoff--and I have five months to figure out money, travel, childcare...

Angelenos, mark your calendars.

Peter Linari, star of I LOVE YOU, I'M SORRY, AND I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN (playing soon at a film festival near you), has booked a recurring role on HBO's groundbreaking crime series THE WIRE. He's already shot the season opener episode. Look for him as Pete the bartender--and congratulations, Peter!

SELL IN HELL IS NOW ONLINE!

Encouraged by the success of putting CREDO online, I put SELL IN HELL up at YouTube today.

http://www.woollymammoth.com/sellinhell

Blog it, embed it, send it to your aunt. It's as low-quality as YouTube video always is, and I doubt it will prompt the same level of theological debate that CREDO has, but it's funny and has demons in it.

Enjoy.

SPEAKING OF CREDO

The response to CREDO has been one of the highlights of my creative career. The theological/artistic discussion at Real Live Preacher lasted a week, and we're still getting blogs linking to the film and saying how much they enjoyed it, and discussing the thoughts it provoked; people mailing it to each other; people emailing me to talk more about it; and so on. After a week, it passed 1,000 viewings--and it's not anywhere mainstream like YouTube or Google Video, where numbers like that generally happen.

Here's the Real Live Preacher post that started it:
http://www.reallivepreacher.com/node/886

Here's the page where you can watch it:
http://www.woollymammoth.com/credo/credo_rlp.html

You can watch it here.

This is a festival with a great presence on the Withoutabox message boards, and I make it a policy to support any festival that makes itself part of a filmmakers' community. On top of that, they also screened CREDO, and I was lucky enough to meet the director at Lake County last year and have a brief conversation about (what else?) film before each of us got pulled away by something pressing.

Thanks, Indianapolis! This is really cool. Can't wait to hear more about how it all shapes up...

However, I think one of the values of this page to other people is the openness with which I've described the process to this point. So following that precedent...

Four festival rejections in a 36-hour period can be a little tough on a writer/director. Luckily, the producer is generally the one who gets the email, and he doesn't share the bad ones with the rest of the cast and crew.

However, I'm also the producer.

It's hard to keep any kind of orientation and proportion when so many come in such a short period, so I went back and revised my festival spreadsheet so it would give me a clearer idea of where we are.

A 20% acceptance rate is a very nice festival run. We're currently at 24%. Before yesterday, we were at 31%. Tomorrow, who knows? Could dive to 11%, could leap to 40%. Regardless, we're actually doing very well--it's just that four of those random negative data points happened to hit at the same time, and human psychology isn't very perceptive in such cases.

I left two columns out of this graphic. On the left, we have a "priority" column that helps decide where to spend money. An A takes precedence over a B, a B over a C, a Q (Academy-qualifying) over no Q, an S (screened here before) over no S, and so on. It's more painful than you might think, assigning these letters, because I sometimes feel I'm reducing people to unfair and heartless codes, but there's no other good way to do it. I don't have unlimited money for submissions, duplication, and shipping

On the right, there's a "result notes" column. I left that out because it's mostly just the date we got accepted or rejected, but there's also a bit of information in it that I'm not supposed to give out yet.

Excel has a feature called "Conditional formatting" that lets me tell the spreadsheet that whenever the word "Yes" is entered into the Results column, it should be bold and red with a yellow background. In addition to being a little ego-boost, it also makes understanding the overall results at a glance much easier.

But mostly it just makes me feel better.

http://imdb.com/title/tt0961204/combined

Our current festival roster: Park City Film Music Festival, Syrcause International Film Festival, and Lake County Film Festival.

We're still waiting to hear from most of the festivals we submitted to. Stay tuned!

Larry and I were there last year with CREDO, and it's an absolutely fantastic festival. Great lineup, well-organized, panels, a white Hummer limo carting everybody around, and an actual red carpet at the awards ceremony (where we took home a Judges' Award).

I found out when someone on the Withoutabox message boards congratulated me, and it really turned my day around. (I'm in the middle of changing jobs, fighting with technical issues while trying to deliver audio to a new client, racing a story deadline, and the usual pile of frustrations.)

Syracuse is one of my favorite festivals. So if you're in the area April 16-22...

You can get the PDF of their schedule here.

Our schedule listing says:

I LOVE YOU, I'M SORRY, AND I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN (15m) Weirdly funny - Mobsters terrorize a man while dispensing marital advice.

It will then screen at the Lake County Film Festival, which we consider a friend of the family, even if the festival director won't stop telling people how we insisted we knew where we were going and then walked the wrong way in the snow and had to call him to pick us up. (That's a royal "we.")

Both these festivals selected CREDO last year, and PCFMF awarded it the Gold Jury Award, so we're very pleased to continue our association with them!

I'll keep you posted on the acceptances. Rejections, I figure you don't need to know about.

It's a new system, so I expect a few glitches, but it still looks like a big timesaver.

Here's the final box design:

And the final disk face design:

The dead space at the bottom of the disk face is for the UPC bar code. (That's why I had to move the small print into the right-hand silhouette.)

My first blog entry about it was in June, 2005, and it's consumed every non-day-job, non-little-boys waking moment since then--or anyway until about a month ago, when I got it to 99.9%, hit a problem after everything seemed OK, and ran out of energy.

So now I have to figure out where to hold the premiere party, how to afford it, and maybe how to use it to get a little press.

There are parts that still make me laugh after five hundred viewings. And then there are the little things I could have done better. You know that old saw about how a novel is never finished, only abandoned? Recently I saw it as "A film is never finished, only abandoned," attributed to George Lucas.

I've also seen "A painting is never finished, only abandoned," and "A work of art..." and "A poem..."

I googled "An opera is never finished, only abandoned," and got zero hits. So there's at least one discipline where the obsessives actually cross the finish line. Funny what patronage can do for you.

"Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea."
--Iris Murdoch

Clermont-Ferrand said no (which we expected; they programmed three films from the US out of 540 submissions), but we have two yesses.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you about them, because they're both behind-the-scenes.

But this puts us two for three with our first three responses. If we maintain anything even close to that percentage, this is going to be a hell of a success.

The sampling's too small to even guess at our eventual acceptance rate. But two out of three beats none out of three.

The director's an idiot

For the last six weeks or so, I've been prevented from calling it FINISHED by an issue with the surround sound mix. The music seems to be leaning somewhat to the left, rather than filling the entire left-to-right spectrum. (I'm not saying "stereo spectrum" because it's surround--that means six speakers. Stereo means two.)

The effects seem to be leaning a little to the right, too.

The dialogue, luckily, is dead center, where it's supposed to be.

But here's the problem. I don't have six speakers. I only have two, whether I'm listening in headphones or through the living room setup. So how do I fix this?

Well, duh. I go into Final Cut and increase the volume of the right stereo tracks and the left effects tracks, until it sounds right in stereo.

Seriously, this is such an obvious solution that those of you who aren't audio geeks have no idea what a moron I feel like. And those of you who ARE audio geeks, well, shut up.

This viewing surge began when I linked to it at my accidentally Internet-famous Letter to Ikea.

Animated title sequence for I LOVE YOU, I'M SORRY, AND I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN. It's 5 MB, so give it a couple of minutes to load if you're on dialup. (And those of you on Kaypros and TRS-80s, you won't be able to view it.)

The first version had lots of zoomy camera swoops and cool movement, but as soon as we put text over it, it became very hard to look at. We simplified it considerably--now it's basically an illustrated title card with some subtle 3D movement--and I'm very happy with it.

I've also uploaded it to the press area at the ILY website.

(And there are a couple of images in it that I haven't posted before...)

You may also remember that one of my legal issues in post-production is the appearance of a trademarked whiskey label, which I'm having obscured digitally.

Here's what I'm having it obscured with.

I first called it RED DEVIL, but that's already one of those ridiculous energy drinks. I don't need to solve my trademark issue by introducing a second trademark issue.

It'll be onscreen for about a second and a half, and it'll be upside-down, a sixteenth this size, and in motion. But you and I and Blake will know it's there.

The film isn't quite complete yet, and I won't have more copies for at least a couple more weeks. However, the remaining work doesn't affect festival submission (it's all legal stuff, not artistic), so off we go.

Wish us luck...

I'm scrambling to make the Clermont-Ferrand deadline, which is a DVD in French hands by a week from today. We had a change of key post-production personnel just yesterday, so we'll see.

If we miss it, no crisis. Clermont-Ferrand wasn't our original plan (I didn't actually think we'd be ready to submit to anyone until December), but it's a world-class short film festival. So it would be nice.

The contract for the digital post work was awarded today. The work itself should be done by the 26th (except for the phone number retouch, which I'm hoping to work around by asking that company whether they actually care that their number is in our film), and then we'll submit to our first festival.

I like everything about the most recent DVD design except for the vector version of the two looming thugs. I'll be reverting to the bitmap version of those silhouettes, which is a posterization of an actual frame from the film. It's not as sharp and clean, but I think it has more personality. (I may retouch it a little, though, so it doesn't look like Beretta's wearing a feather boa.)

I should also probably start thinking about the DVD. The festival submission version will be very straightforward, with a minimum of options in order to minimize the chance of screening errors. But if we ever get into distribution, I want the special features to include the ability to turn the various audio tracks on and off. The viewer should be able to watch with just foley, or just ambiences, or dialogue and music but no effects, or whatever combination is of interest. We're not there yet, but I'll keep the concept in mind as we nail down the festival version, so as not to cause myself unnecessary work when we move on to a general-release DVD.

And soon we'll have to think about where to hold the preview party...

Two of the retouch issues are artistic; two are legal. The artistic ones:

• There's a sequence in which the entire factory goes dark. Unfortunately, there's an EXIT sign in the actual factory location that wouldn't turn off. Our DP, Dave Berliner, started shooting around it, but I told him not to compromise his compositions, because I knew it would be easy to remove in post.

  You can actually see it in the storyboard/final shot comparison I posted previously, in the shot of Eddie whisking across the frame in his chair. It's the white speck on the left:

  

  Not a huge deal in that particular shot, but it annoys me in a lot of the others, so it must die.

• In the Lizzie Borden sequence, Lizzie's mom (played by a standing cutout illustrated by Ava Larkin) gets decapitated, and her head flies off. We rigged this with monofilament, which is unfortunately bright against the black background. I blacked it out somewhat for the trailer, and the illusion is helped further by so little of the shot being used in the trailer, but at full-brightness and full-run-time in the film, it's glaring (literally). You can see it about halfway through the trailer, right after the giant apple:

  

The legal ones:

• We shot in a real factory, and somehow we missed that there was a real phone number scribbled on a paper on a bulletin board. This is unfortunately the most expensive retouch of the whole job.
• We also missed that the bottle of whisky that Eddie keeps in his toolbox was positioned label-up, so the trademark showed. I cut around it to a great extent (it's only really in one shot, which goes by pretty quickly), but two seconds of whisky label needs obscuring.

That's about it. I've received several bids and expect to award the contract today or tomorrow, and then we'll go from there. The Clermont-Ferrand festival (a prestigious short film festival in France) just extended their registration deadline to October 30, so we should be able to hit it. After that, we solidify our festival strategy and off we go.

Okay, not all that different. But I managed to get "A short crime musical" in there, and enlarge the still-life a little at the same time.

The blog runs from pre-production through post. We're currently just a few weeks from completion, but by reading from the bottom of this page up, you'll catch up on the entire project.

You can access the main site here. It contains pre-production notes and pictures, MP3 downloads, desktop wallpaper, high-res trailers, cast and crew bios, and other things. (And if you're aching for an I LOVE YOU, I'M SORRY, AND I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN coffee mug, we're the exclusive source.)

Welcome!

Like, done.

Like...

Done.

It's a 5.1 Surround mix, which means when it plays in a movie theater, it'll sound like a movie.

Next: Wire removal, label greeking, and a few last-minute trims, and the film itself will be complete.

And I'm really sick of it.

I'm done working on the audio. If we're lucky, there will be a final polish mix in L.A. while we're there for CREDO.

I'm almost done working on the picture. There are some fixes to be done (wire removal, label greeking--which means means removal of a recognizable trademark--and stuff like that), but I'm getting competitive bids for them now. After removing light stands from CREDO one frame at a time in Photoshop, I don't need the experience again.

Once the audio is locked and the picture fixes are delivered, I'll put it all together, make half a dozen edits to remove about 30 seconds from the total running time, and...

It'll be done.

I'm kind of weirded out by that. I don't think there's been a day in the last year when I haven't worked on this film. I took it with me on vacation and worked while the boys napped. Every night I sing them their goodnight song around 8:30, walk into the living room, power up the computer, and stay up until... well, it's 1:29 AM now, and I'm still working on it. I don't read books. I don't watch movies. I work on ILY.

Well, that's not true. Kathleen and I watched COLUMBO together a few nights ago. It was nice. I still feel guilty.

As Dave the Pie Doctor observed in my comments area some time ago, I can't half-ass a project. I immerse. I've been immersed in this thing so long now that I can't really conceive of the alternative.

I shipped off the last of the artwork for a different DVD this evening: The promotional "business card" DVDs that I'll have on hand in L.A., which are geared toward getting CUPID & PSYCHE made. They contain CREDO in its entirety, the trailer of I LOVE YOU, I'M SORRY, AND I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN, information about the feature project, and information about me. Yeah, I remember now... I'm working toward a bigger project that will take over my life for even longer.

As oncoming trains go, that's a good one to get run over by.

See a few of you in Hollywood, I hope.

There's a good chance the final audio mix for I LOVE YOU, I'M SORRY, AND I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN will take place in L.A. while I'm there for CREDO's screening at the Chinese Theater. In order to take best advantage of our use of the room (which is associated with a very successful TV show, so I'll tell you about it after it's done, seeing as we could still get booted out at the last minute), I'm hitting the soundtrack as hard as I can. I want as much finessing as possible during our time in the room, which means I don't want any not-quite-right sounds, placeholder sounds, tiny sync problems, and so on. Every minute spent dithering about a sound's appropriateness, or moving things back and forth by thousandths of a second, is a minute not spent taking advantage of very limited time in a high-end mixing room.

You can tell where I am in the project because my to-do list doesn't say things like "Find a cinematographer" or "get picture cut together" anymore. Now it says things like--

In fact... here it is. The ones with bullets are completed.

ILY To-Do

FOR L.A.

· Finish mix w/out Foley.

Scour DATs for "Lizzie Borden takes a hatchet." · (If not there, record Larry) And Eddie yell of pain when the lid closes on his fingers.

Find the power cable for the DAT machine or buy a new one.

Move all linked files to KS Media Drive.

Get legal version of Bolero.

Body grabs post-Lizzie

Knee to Eddie's face - sfx

Less feet on Agnes' exit

Add impact sound to TL hitting Eddie's face

Change B's last racking sound

Add vibra-slap to first Delilah cymbal

Add timpani to Delilah's hip bumps

Align B hitting CP at end better

Buy/replace phone FX.

Even out background hiss in power-down sequence

Less gun rattle on pre-TL 2-shot.

Audio build (ting through punch) on slow-mo cymbals in Samson.

· Lizzie lightning strikes

Flasher SFX

Slide whistle hi-res into foley track. (Already bought and downloaded.)

Pre-L.A. mix with Bob Auld

· Record foley

Finish mix w/Foley.

Finish title sequence w/Jason

Change post-Eden sky to gray

Send mix to [helpful guy in L.A. who set up the final mix session]

· Finish title sequence music

· Alter first shot music (delay opening crescendo to JUST before thug entrance)

Meet w/[helpful guy in NY who thought the last version had pacing issues]

· Cut 20-40 seconds: · - Eddie's last reaction shot · - "Clarisse?" not necessary. Start w/ "Honey?" · - Revisit Samson cutting

· Record Larry: Samson grunts, "takes a hatchet."

FOR FINAL

Subcontract picture fixes:

1. Wire and head removal (Mrs. Borden)

2. Exit sign removal

3. Phone number removal

4. Fleischmann's label greeking

· Re-export Eden Ahh and lightning strike sound effect from DP

Noise-reduction on vocals

Eden graphics?

- - -

Don't forget:

All footage delayed exactly 13 seconds to allow for title sequence

The foley session was Monday. I took the day off from the day job and the train to New Jersey, where Cynthia (a friend of Greg, the choreographer) did footsteps, slaps, gun rattles, and so on. I synced it all up to picture on Tuesday and Wednesday. That doesn't mean it's finished--it still has to have its levels adjusted now that it's cohabiting with the music, the ambiences, the vocals, and so on. And a lot of will never be audible because (for example) a gun whoosh and rattle can't compete with a big forte blast from orchestra and industrial music effects.

One thing I'd love to do, if this is ever issued on DVD, is to allow the user to turn various soundtrack elements on and off, maybe in a Special Features section. Each of these tracks is a musical composition of its own; the factory machines, Samson and Delilah's desert sounds, the thugs' cigarette flicks, nose flicks, gun draws... music is organized sound, and the lines between music, musique concrete, soundtrack ambience, and foley are blurry.

Anyway, I've been waiting for video to render at Starbucks, and now it's done.

Ow! Another contraction...

Added 3:16 PM: Here's a partial list of my Sounddogs.com purchases for this project:

I finished doing that tonight.

Here's how it was.

Here's how it is.

The music I composed for the animated title sequence (which comes immediately before this) is very sneaky and mysterious. The original big noisy thing didn't work, coming on the heels of that--it needed to maintain the sneakiness as long as possible (while Eddie makes his entrance), and then crescendo quickly (just before the thugs make theirs).

It'll probably be about a week before I have the completed title sequence to show you.

IT ROCKS!

It's a first rough pass, but he nailed the concept. I started writing music to it last night and finished it this afternoon. As soon as he delivers the finished animation, I'll post a Quicktime.

This is the one we decided on:

I added an element (an apple--a reference to the fantasy vignettes) and Jason tweaked his overall concept. I should be able to share it within about a week.

In some cases, the left/right orientation is flipped, and the "through the window" shot is tighter than the storyboard. I also abandoned the zoom in/track out idea in the toolboxcam shot, both because it wasn't practical and because it's a cliché. But these essential compositions stayed pretty much the same.

	Didn't get this one. Snakes are expensive.

The second graphic is what Greg did with it.

The most amazing thing to me about this whole process is how my flightiest impulses and whims turn into logistical issues, cost issues, choreography issues, performance issues, framing issues and then a movie.

I'll eventually have a series of storyboard frames vs. finished shots at the ILY website, but for the moment, here's just this one pair.

If I recall correctly, it was Larry who said, "Here's your sketch."

I hate going blank. So here's a blog entry.

In creative work, I've made a point of not having a philosophy. I have lots of ideas, and I can talk about wanting the vocals to be natural, or how a performer providing her own melody is like an actor providing his own costume, or how the best way to break new ground is to work in areas where other people aren't working. I could call those things philosophies, but they're not. They're just thoughts, and they have pragmatic, not philosophical, roots. Any philosophy that grows from them is merely a thought experiment. Pretty flowers. Sometimes the flowers pollinate, but mostly they're just pretty.

My guiding artistic instinct has probably been my distrust of manifestos. For better or for worse--and I'm not young enough to think there's no "worse"---anything that puts a grand idea above a good result smells bad to me. All prescriptions for art remind me of a quote from THE FUTURIST MANIFESTO that Richard Zvonar gave me. Unfortunately, I can't find it. But trust me, it was great.

All right, fine. It was something to the effect of:

I have no doubt whatsoever as to either the brilliance of their ideas or the mediocrity of their art.

A manifesto is an elevator statement. That's what business books say you should have, so when somebody in an elevator says "What are you working on?" you can shoot this crafty little prepared blurb at them, and they understand and become a business ally and put you in touch with this other business ally who does all the distribution for Malta east of the Wied il-Gnasel river.

Networking, Ben. Networking.

And marketing, Ben. Hook. Nothing says "Marketing gimmick" like a nice fiery manifesto.

I also think of something RZ told me about his analysis of Webern, which is that the really interesting parts were where Webern departed from the rigorous twelve-tone system. Because--RZ supposed--he just thought it sounded better that way.

Manifestos, philosophies... I guess I should have one, but I'm just trying to make a living doing things I'll be proud of after I'm dead. I assume I'll be as tough an audience then as I am now.

But specifics? Love 'em. Here's where we're at now:

I had a casual screening for some unusually perceptive people this weekend, and it was nervewracking, both because it's always nervewracking and because they're unusually perceptive people and I didn't know all of them. I showed a 6-weeks-outdated version of the unfinished film (because it was a casual screening and that was all I could get onto a DVD in time), and the gaps in the audio track were painful. They've also now resulted in confusion for me, because the editing felt slow to at least one unusually perceptive person--so now I have to juggle that possibility against my already knowing that some moments drag because they're missing audio.

I'll get there when I get there. First, finish the audio. Then see how it feels.

The website is pretty well finished, though there's nothing in the PRESS or SCREENINGS areas yet. However, there are now hoody sweatshirts in the ILY shop.

I spent tonight bringing the real vocal audio tracks in from the recordist's Pro Tools file, laboriously digging through them to find the right takes, and lining them up with the camera audio, which will be turned off. This is all done by looking at waveforms and listening to the tracks. (This is similar to the process for CREDO, but without the benefit of video to help the process.)

Before this, I spent a few days working on a promotional DVD to have in-hand for FAIF, the festival where CREDO is playing at the Chinese Theater in October. Ain't this writer/director cool? Ain't these films of his cool? Ain't money a great thing to invest?

I'm very tired. Goodnight.

ILY downloads page

Mac version

PC version

You will need a recent version of Quicktime. The files are about 15 MB, so it'll take a while on a slow connection.

Sorry for the delay this morning. We found the first technical glitch.

This is everybody's entrance in the big noir wide shot. First the titles appear, then Eddie, then the Thugs. Like so:

I haven't done anything to the location audio yet, so the levels aren't consistent; Larry and Paul's voices get buried in the mix a few times. Here's the script again if you want to know what they're saying.

We used essentially the same technique as in CREDO (vocals recorded a capella on the set, music composed and laid in afterwards, in post), but with a big step up in complexity.

I haven't seen it yet, but I'll try to hit Barnes & Noble with the boys this afternoon.

The most irritatingly time-consuming part of this process is constantly having to "freeze tracks" in Digital Performer, because the 1GHz G4 Powerbook--which was plenty fast when I was cutting HD in Final Cut at Starbucks--can't handle 20 tracks of East/West Quantum Library String Orchestra, even with a 7200rpm external drive. So I've broken the orchestra into choirs (strings, brass, percussion, woodwinds, one Kontakt iteration for each) and I'm laboriously freezing, unfreezing, altering, freezing, unfreezing... and don't get me started on how often the freezes fail because the CPU can't keep up and I have to go looking for what OTHER track I can remove an output assignment from.

Wouldn't it make sense if freezes weren't just quick ways of routing a bounce to disk? The whole point is to get glitch-free playback after you've frozen. Does it make any sense at all to simply mute the other tracks (the ones you're not freezing), but still allow them to insist on processor cycles?

Yes, it does. But only from a marketing standpoint. Now MotU can say "We have a freeze-tracks feature!" But from a usability standpoint: GAH!

Foray into geekland over.

I couldn't find Somerset Maugham's THE SUMMING UP during the 5-minute search window before my Syracuse flight, so I didn't have it on hand to quote offhandedly. Tonight it was stacked sideways with only yellow page bottoms showing, but I knew those yellow page bottoms.

To my mind the drama took a wrong turning when the demand for realism led it to abandon the ornament of verse. Verse has a specific dramatic value as anyone can see by observing in himself the thrilling effect of a tirade in one of Racine's plays or of any of Shakespeare's great set pieces; and this is independent of the sense; it is due to the emotional power of rhythmical speech. But more than that: verse forces on the matter a conventional form that heightens the aesthetic effect. It enables the drama to achieve a beauty that is out of the question in a prose play. However much you may admire The Wild Duck, The Importance of Being Earnest, or Man and Superman, you cannot without abuse of the word claim that they are beautiful. But the chief value of verse is that it delivers a play from sober reality. It puts it on another level, at one remove from life, and so makes it easier for the audience to attune themselves to that state of feeling in which they are most susceptible to the drama's specific appeal. In that artificial medium, life is not presented in a word-for-word translation, but in a free rendering, and thus the dramatist has ample scope for the effects of which his art is capable.

It has occurred to me that possibly the dramatist would be wise now to go back to the origins of modern drama and call to his aid verse, dancing, music, and pageantry so that he might appeal to all possible sources of entertainment: but I am conscious that here again the cinema with its great resources can do better whatever the spoken theatre can do...

Two armed thugs in fig-leaf drag and Morning from Peer Gynt swelling in the soundtrack.

And I thought the sick part of my brain was done with this project when I finished the script.

I told Larry and Paul I wouldn't run thugs-in-drag pictures at my blog, so you can't see. But...

Oh.

My.

The running time is 18:44. By the time I'm done finessing the edits and finding places to (as I said over and over to my Tightening Your Writing students) cut or combine, it'll be in the 15-to-16-minute range. Then maybe 20 seconds for the title sequence and 30 for the end credits.

I generally leave my door open until I knock off so students with the midnight disease can talk to me. A few, padding down the hall to the communal bathroom with visions of story structure throbbing in their heads, may have wondered first where that odd giggling was coming from and then what kind of instructor they'd just spent their money on.

Next is the Syracuse Film Festival, where CREDO is up for three awards, and then I'm home home home, working on the second cut of the new film, writing a nonfiction proposal and then getting back to the novel, and giving two little boys tummy raspberries, bubble baths, and wagon rides to the park.

No more traveling. Home for a while.

I would have posted yesterday, but I spent 16 of the last 24 hours asleep.

Eddie, you'll enter camera left, walk into the factory this way, exit camera right.

Thugs, you'll wait a beat, amble in behind him, stop just inside the bay doors, case the joint.

Gorgeous. Amazing. Did you see those cigarette glows? Fantast--

What's that?

Is that a car?

Did somebody park...

There's the butt end of a car in our shot.

Whose car is that? We're running behind. Can we move that car? HEY! FIND OUT WHOSE--

Hold on--

Eddie, there's a car in the shot and we can't move it. It's your car, you're entering camera right.

WE'RE GOOD! DON'T MOVE THE CAR!

Roll camera.

Action.

Which sucks, since now if it doesn't work, there's nobody else to blame.

Downbeat's at 3:30 PM. See you all on the other side.

As of yesterday's phone call, Dave the DP and I are both feeling good about the schedule and the crew. More recent email has been with the illustrator of the FomeCore cutouts portraying God (in the Adam & Eve scene), a Philistine (in the Samson & Delilah scene), and Mrs. Borden (in the Lizzie & Mr. Borden scene) and the audio recordist.

Audio will be interesting on this film. We're taking another step up in complexity from what we did on CREDO. Not only are there up to three voices at a time to keep track of, but for costume reasons, the mic setups may vary in each of the th