Damn, Mike.

I'm the Other Guy...

You might hear from me now and then... actually, you'll probably hear from me more now than again, Mike is notoriously unfaithful to this wonderful world of bloggery. I, however, keep up fairly well on my own extremely famouse blog, Simplicity from Chaos. Yes, that is what you might call a shameless plug, but I promise, I have more to say than that, click "Read more..." to see it...

I'm Stephen... all that F. Stephen stuff is for rèsûmés (ascii fun). I'm also known here on the interwebs as fyrephlie, but, that's neither here nor there... or anywhere else. Don't let Mike fool you though, he may act like interaction with technology is like holy water to Jack-a-lope, but he's got some mad skills...

As Mike said, I'm taggin' along on this ride we're calling Ink. Ink is a beautiful thing, it's carefully crafted, wonderfully written (with my help) and though it would probably have been better if I'd written it (there'd be more raping, murdering, crazy people, and general tragedy done up right), I'm glad to be a part of it. It makes me shudder that there won't be an ounce of blood on set, though.

My place, also as he mentioned, will be more technical than anything. I'm artistic, just like Mike is, but in different ways. I'm also techy, I know how shutter speeds work on cameras, I know how computers do what they do, and I could explain all of it in boring, tedious detail.

Also, as Mike said (it irks me to admit he was ever right about anything ever...), this blog will be, at least for the time being, to the production of Ink. We are planning on shooting this thing for as little money as possible. Of course, a lot of that has to do with the fact that neither of us have any to spend. Don't get me wrong, we're not going into this with some MyFirstHandyCams, we'll be getting us some real equipment just like the big kids use, and hopefully when all is said and done, we'll have something worth watching. If that doesn't happen, it will likely be an shit ton of fun.

I thought I would make my first post about what Mike and I did this weekend, then after reflecting, I thought I would talk a little about the history of this thing too.

Mike's been working on this thing since, well, I think sometime in 2004, at least, that is the first time he revealed it to me, which arrived in my mailbox Sept. 29th, 2004. He had replied when I sent him something I was working on at the time. It went like this:

Give and ye shall receive...

here is something i've been working on. This is the first 60 or so
pages of a screenplay i've been working on. i hope to start filming
next winter...but who knows if that will happen.

[pointlessness removed]

anyway, it's a comedy about some guys workin' in a tattoo shop on what
is supposed to be a really busy saturday, the only problem...no
customers...all day. lemme know what you think...it's still pretty
rough, but i have another 50 or 60 pages to write before i can go back
and start revising.

i will read your story today sometime.

anyway, i look forward to your thoughts.

[pointlessness removed]

call me.

or you die.

mike

It's certainly evolved quite a bit from that first bit of crap he sent me (yes, the PDF file is still intact, it might even make it on the DVD as a Special Feature), and I have to admit that I'm pretty fucking proud of the bastard for actually finishing it. As soon as he sent it to me, I was hooked on it, and, without trying to toot my own horn, I've been pressuring him ever since to get it done, reading drafts and send notes and thoughts, most of which he ignored, which is probably why it will be a success.

So, he finally finished it, and hopefully he'll talk a little about it's evolution here in the blog. Now that we've got a working script, we

So, on to this weekend. That, up there is Mike. He's trying damn hard to look as cool as possible with his aging camcorder in his hand, but, there's a reason behind this asshattery. We went out with the distinct purpose of shooting some 'practice' footage. Mostly the idea was to see if we could frame some shots and shoot some footage and end up with something interesting. We chose something simple... the opening sequence of the very film we're working on.

I'd like to think of it as some kind of logic challenge... like a sudoku puzzle, or one of those stupid metal ring things you find in places like Spencer's. Mike thinks the whole process makes sense, at least, that is what I've gleaned from his attitude about it.

My job, was to 'act' by driving my (shitty) car around while Mike shot me. He told me where to go, and what to do, and I did my best to do it.

From there, we took the whole works back to my place, connected camera to computer, and put it all together with Premiere Pro. It didn't take long to figure out what we were missing. First, we were missing decent audio, because his cam was picking up pretty much just wind. That was easy to fix by hopping in the car again and driving around for a few minutes with the windows up. The other thing, the one that follows "first" was what we didn't shoot, and that wasn't fixable, though to Mike's credit, it wasn't much, and considering we made no plans at all to do it, he was able to think the scene through pretty well on the fly.

We had what we had, and I did my best to make it work. With him over my shoulder, telling me what he wanted where, we strung a bunch of it together, and what came out was actually decent. The whole process took us about 5 hours, but, I think what we learned was well worth the time spent. You may get to see it at some point as well, I need to add a few things in After Effects, which is something I'm struggling to get used to. Premiere (and Audition as well) is a cake walk, After Effects is something else entirely.

For you tech people out there, I will likely tell you about my trials and tribulations with all of the equipment and software, and hopefully give some people tidbits they can use if they ever try this. Also, I will soon make a run through of the gear we have, so that as we add the things we're getting to the list on the right, you'll have a frame of reference. Besides, who doesn't love hearing about Gigbyes, operating systems and CCDs?

With all that said, this is just the beginning, but, I think it's a rather auspicious start. So, damn Mike, you started a blog, and I'm already crapping all over it.

Keep on keepin' on.

//transmission ends//