Archive for March, 2007

Last night, my wife and I went to see Premonition, the new Sandra Bullock movie. The description reads, “A housewife is shocked when her husband dies in a car crash and reappears the next day. She realizes it was a premonition and tries to avoid the tragedy.”

When I think about movies that closely resemble ours, my list includes movies like Butterfly Effect, Memento, and now Premonition. Interestingly, there are many parallels to this movie and our movie.

But, after reading how the critics slammed the movie, I was a bit concerned for our project, because of the similarities. But, after seeing the movie last night, I saw considerable differences; ones that I believe will distinguish the two movies.

*** WARNING ***
*** The following contains spoilers for Premonition and our  movie. ***First, the ending of Premonition was a major downer. My wife hated it. As did I. And, after reading the user reviews from IMDB, it seems that most everyone hated the ending as well. (I wonder if they are positioning the DVD sales for an “alternate ending”.)

When I first read the script for our project, the ending was very similar, a bit of a downer. It was the kind of ending where you hope he can make a difference, but doesn’t. Same with Premonition. She has the chance to change something but can’t. It was very down. Very fatalistic.

Our writer and I spent a few months finding the ending that I wanted, and we did. Kudos to Nick, the writer! He landed the perfect ending, one where our hero saves the day, and you leave the story/movie feeling good. One crew member read it and told me, “I had goose bumps at the end.”

Yeah! Goose Bumps!

Another story flaw I found in Premonition was that the audience was never challenged to figure anything out. They were spoon fed the entire movie, starting with the trailer. Once you watch it, you know the whole story. There’s nothing to figure out.

Our Project is considerably different. From the start, you don’t realize what’s going on. It’s not till page 50 that you realize what’s happening, and even then, you’re not sure you know what’s happening. You’re still challenged as the viewer to figure it out.

Finally, the other flaw I saw in Premonition was that they relied on all the horror tricks: jump moments, fright music, bugs, etc. It was too predictable, too obvious. As I start working on our edit, I need to make sure we don’t rely on the those cliché moments.

I thought Sandra Bullock’s performance was strong. I think she’s a good actress. To swing from comedy to drama and do it well takes talent.

If you get a chance, go see Premonition, and post your comments. I would enjoy hearing from you.

I can only describe what I’m experiencing now as “nesting”. I don’t know how else to describe it.

Let me explain. As we finished our shoot about a week ago, I took the first couple of days to just exhale and relax. Coming down from the adrenaline and caffeine was a bit of a challenge, but I started feeling normal again after a couple of days.

But even after coming down, I still couldn’t start editing. I would sit there in front of my computer and just stare at all the clutter around me, and it was not conducive for creative flow. I thought back to some of the post production houses I’ve worked in. They were so cool looking, very creative, clean and just fun to be in. Then I looked around my computer office, and realized, This isn’t much fun..

So, I told me wife, “We’re having a garage sale this weekend, and we’re going to get rid of a lot of junk.” And we did. We started cleaning and selling and cleaning and selling. By the end of the garage sale, I sold every piece of furniture in my office, along with a bunch of other junk. My office was barren.

With $700 cash in hand, we moved to our next step: Ikea. For my office, I wanted something cool, something creative, something different. I wanted a place to escape to, a place to create, a place to be different.

I started by researching colors. What colors create the right mood? What mood do I want to be in when I create? What do I want to surround myself with?

Two of my favorite colors are blue and orange. These two colors are foundational when it comes to mood. For example, take a look at this picture:

What two primary colors do you see? Blue and orange. They happen in nature.

They are also at the opposite ends of the color wheel:

Interestingly, orange and blue are used extensively in filmmaking to set a mood or tone for a certain scene. Let me give you an example. Here’s a shot from me and my son’s movie, Growing Up. And, I have removed all color:

What is he thinking about? Don’t really know. Could be thinking about school, about dogs or about stealing some candy. Not really sure. But, add some color…

Now, what is he thinking about? The color is “warmer”. Warmer colors are like those of a fireplace or a lamp in the front room. It often represents warmth, peace, home and family. Maybe Caleb is thinking about how much he loves his parents.

But, change the color to blue:

Now, he’s thinking about dangerous things, or about doing something at night. Blue is often used to set the tone for nighttime or darker scenes.

Next time you watch a film, take notice of the color of a scene. Watch how the color changes with the tone of the scene. What is the feeling of the scene, and what color does the filmmaker use to set the tone.

Check out this webpage on the science behind these two color “temperatures”.

So, with all that said, I decided on these two colors for my new office. But, I didn’t really want a sunset office nor a cold, uninviting office. So, I landed on orange. But again, I didn’t want a neon orange neither. So, I settled on a deeper, darker burnt orange for my new office. And since I’m a graduate of University of Texas at Austin, this was a great choice!

And so yesterday, my son and I painted all day long to change my boring white office into an exciting burnt orange editing suite.

Some may call it procrastination. I call it nesting.

We have wrapped our production! Kind of. We still have half a day shooting left for the Police Chief Hudson scenes, but most of the key photography has been completed.

The wrap party on Saturday night was great! We had a wonderful time sharing and reminiscing about the previous 3 weeks. I really enjoyed hearing people’s thoughts about everything. Our cast and crew were truly amazing. It was such a joy to work with everyone.

Bobby Bastarache (First AD), Jennifer Beasley (UPM), Russ Pond

Scarlett McAlister (Sara Grunning), Jim Macdonald (Paul Grunning)

What’s Next

I must say, it’s been an incredible journey these past three weeks. I was feeling really good up until the last few days of the shoot. Tiredness really set in. But, we pressed on and captured some amazing footage.

All in all, we captured about 56 tapes of HD footage. With each tape being 30 minutes long, we have about 28 hours of HD footage to work through. And, what’s amazing is that every take of every shot is on one hard drive in my computer. And, embedded within that 28 hours of amazing footage is a movie, a story to be told.

My first task is to create a trailer for the project. It serves two purposes:
• To provide a marketing piece that we can start getting out to potential distributors.
• To provide a foundation for editing. Robert Rodriguez (Spy Kids, Desperado) said that he always cuts a trailer first so that when he’s editing, he has that one thing to go back to over and over to help him keep his energy and focus on the story to be told.

After I finish the trailer, I’ll start editing of the show. I’m really excited about the days and weeks ahead. Editing is one my favorite parts of this process. It’s where the story comes alive. It’s where you get to shape and build and mold your story into what you want it to be. And, I’m really excited about it.

It’s also nice to have my house back.

It was used the final week of shooting for the Grunning Home. My wife is a really trooper! It’s not easy inviting a bunch of strangers into your home for 14 hours a day, especially when they are moving all your furniture and changing everything around.

The funny part is that we had a squib scene, and we did two takes. On both of the takes, blood went flying everywhere, and splattered against our living room wall. I’m sure that will be a huge selling point when we get ready to sell.