Mixology

Long day working on the mix of Kennyboy. Really exciting to see the final audio come together. Jake, Josh and Brendan have been working hard the last few weeks and have done a fantastic job. They're great guys to work with and the movie is finally assuming its finished form. There's still a few more visual effects to work in, but hopefully that's coming along shortly.

It was a hard day of work, but the audio guys really did all the heavy lifting getting the film ready for the mix. Red Robin supplied any missing calories from the long day. Mike single-handedly made management reconsider their bottomless fries policy, while Patrick and I altered the time-milkshake continuum.

quick follow-up

I had a good conversation with our lead sound operative last night. Sounds like he's making good progress. His team has been handling all the post details, and final mix is not so far in the future.

Update

Things are moving along. Exact completion date hasn't been set, but it's coming up soon.

Fire it up

Let's hop in that way-back machine and head for the spring of 2008. Flowers were blooming, it was snowing and Kennyboy shooting was in full swing. Here are some "lost" production pics of our day with Terence.





Expensive stuff - in the sink!


I think everyone pretty much expected to see something like this.



Bad to worse...



As for that update, Kenny is getting all shipped off to our audio man, who will be working quickly to finalize Kennyboy. We're not quite there yet, but we're getting much closer.

Update?

This is an update to expect an update soon.

Congratulations...

to Nicholas Kocan, Kennyboy's Director of Photography. He just had his screenplay accepted to the Mexico International Film Festival. This is a great achievement, so be sure to congratulate him if you see him on the street or in his bedroom or however you experience Nicholas Kocan.

Adobe and Foley (Dave)

Adobe has CS5 out these days. Normally I wouldn't be too excited at the latest iteration, except they've apparently revamped the rendering engine so everything works much faster, along with native 64-bit support. Given the length of the editing on this film, it might have been worth it to wait. Ten times faster project loading time would literally change my entire life.

I'm also intrigued about their claims that they now support real 2 hour length project editing. We've entered the phase on the project where Premiere reliably crashes at least once a day. It did so well for so long, but it's back to its old tricks. I guess we've really pushed its limits and it would be interesting to see how it would perform in CS5, but we're not going to try it now.


Also, Keith Olbermann did an interview with Dave Foley of Kids in the Hall regarding his old communism sketch and how it prophesied Glenn Beck. The sketch itself is of more interest for all you Kenny-philes given its content and some of the specific assertions Mr. Foley makes. Check it out:

Video

Cyborg Ted

Ted doing the dirty work.


Don't mess with the sound guy.

Getting closer

We're polishing up a final cut of the picture. The boys knocked out some of the last little bits of footage that will be coming my way. Again, they've really taken Kennyboy on their shoulders and made it happen. Once I get that footage dropped in, we should be pretty close being "done". The film will still need to be handed off for the final audio mix, which is a lot of work, but at least it feels like it's downhill from here. Nevertheless, it'll be mid-summer at the earliest that we'll see the finished product.

"We'll do the drink take essentially."

I encountered the above quote while screening some of the new footage the B-unit guys sent me. Apparently, that is what happens when you send men like that into the wild with a camera. I'll just leave it by saying they should have turned off the camera at that point rather than doing their best "Beerfest" impression.

Actually, the B-unit have been busting their rear ends to gather up the last bits of footage and ship it to far away me. They deserve a ton of credit, as do those who've given them a hand in their efforts. I've been working on incorporating their material into the final edit and it's looking great.



Since I've seen all the footage a million times and wrote the script, a lot of the humor fades away (only to leave me pondering the stark, neo-realist beauty and existential tremblings of the picture) with the familiarity. It's always refreshing then when I see new footage or revisit a scene after some time away and it just makes me crack up laughing. Like when Fender "Five Take" Robinson finally puts that fastball down the middle and Mike hits it out of the park or when Paul does just about anything.

It all reminds me how many hilarious performances are in this film. I think that's why I spend so much time agonizing over the movie, because I want to make sure everyone gets the best reception possible.

And because the person I borrowed the money from has no qualms about running my car off a mountain road all 80's TV-style.

Real Hollywood Glamour

As a director, very little of my time is spent "directing", in the sense of inspiring an actor to release the performance of their career. Most of my time is actually spent emailing or talking on the phone. I often come home, turn on the computer intending to do a little fine-tuning on Kennyboy, and three hours later I'll finish up my correspondence.

It's pretty busy these days between arranging some last B-unit shooting, receiving edit feedback, coordinating post-production, reviewing F/X and recording voiceover. It feels like this is all in the way of making the movie, but it's really just what making a movie is.

Chief Bryant, AKA "The Egg Smasher"

The tyrant loosens his grip...

This blog post comes courtesy of Assistant Director Mike. I've silenced his voice long enough, maybe. Here's what he had to say about the shoot last night:


Thanks to Stuart who filled the last speaking role of the movie. We've been very lucky to have great actors with a high degree a professionalism work on this film. Perhaps that is a testament to the quality of acting in the area, perhaps we've just been lucky.

We filmed in Nick's house, again. This time we threw raw egg around his kitchen which is not too terrible compared to the armed nuclear warhead we threw around his living room, but regardless, sorry Nick. I hope we cleaned it all up for you.

We didn't necessarily film in the locations we intended. In one scene the Chief is turning on the shower, but we forgot that the bathroom walls were covered with mirrors. Rather than set a record for the highest number of camera reflections in a shot (infinity), we opted for the bedroom. I think we made the right decision and got some very entertaining footage.

We also filmed the first non-human animal of the film. Dorian Gray, Nick's pooch managed to cute his way into some footage. That reminds me, we also filmed Kroz the Alien... Do we have to put a "no Kroz's were hurt in this film" notice in the credits?

It feels really good to have the Chief scenes done. They've been hanging over our heads since we started filming and for one reason or another they've eluded us. The list is shrinking and Patrick and Nick are largely responsible for it. Thanks, guys.

Gotta love that microphone

Thine sound man has been on the move over the last week or so. Sightings have placed him and his recording gear in Kenmore and as far away as West Seattle in a quest to capture our radio voices. And man, do they sound GOOD! Kudos to Patrick for gathering up some great audio.

Keeping the dream alive

Patrick just watched the most recent version of the film and sent along some great notes for stuff to tweak in the edit. The weekend saw the delivery of some of the first final effects as well, which is cool. There is a lot of 3-d stuff still to come in, this was mostly 2-d stuff.

Also, never animate a digital numeric display. That is a lot of keyframes. Only in the morning after, while contemplating the affair did it occur to me a graphical element like a needle would have made life a lot easier.

More f/x goodies

Some new work in progress shots of the scenes with the rocket launch. Our man John is cranking out some awesome stuff.

A note from the Director

Hello everyone,

I wanted to let people know what's going on with the movie at the moment. Kennyboy has now been in the works for two years, which is a very long time. I know that everyone really wants it to be done, and certainly so do all of us on the production team. When people join up on an indie production like this, there is always the fear that the project won't come to fruition. It is a very realistic fear as often projects do fall apart whether for logistical, financial or other reasons.

When I started this blog, the intention was to put an account on the web of what happens during the production of a movie like this. Someone reading it can see one possible path of a production - lots of unexpected events that can jeopardize and delay it. Some we could control and tried to as much as we could. Others we couldn't, like when I lost my job. Unfortunately, I'm sure a lot of people out there are in a similar situation right now. There's nothing you can really do, it just means that the project can't always move forward smoothly.

We never wanted the project to take this long but it simply has. Just as depressingly perhaps, it will still take longer. That may be disappointing for many of you, but that's the reality. We're not giving up on it. I can assure you all that whatever pain you feel over how long this is taken, it is a hundred times worse for me and the others on the production crew.

During editing, we've found a few pickup shots we needed. We shot most of them, but there are still a few more minutes of footage to get. Mike, Patrick and Nick are going to be working hard on that. Right now, they need positive support from everyone. You all contributed hard work on the production and now we've got a last hard push to finish up those few shots and complete the audio post-production. We should all be proud of the work we've done and support each other as we finish up the work that remains. We've got a neat little film on our hands.

This movie's gonna end someday.

Justin

Slogging

Still moving along, slowly for a number of reasons. But I wanted to share some of the cool concept/preliminary special effects art. Here's a couple of shots of the spaceplane and space station, courtesy of our good man John.