Dark Design Pictures

My friend Dar from SAL was goggling info on the Bijou when she found this link. My co-worker Angela posted an article about Joined winning first place at SEP. She also talks about Texas Motion Picture Alliance. Thanks for the kind words Angela.

There is one more shoot day to go and I’m done with principle photography. Sunday was another good shoot day and things are beginning to fall into place. For the past few days I’ve been editing like a machine. Thing are beginning to come together. I showed a rough cut to Adam my co-worker and he liked it. It was better than the original. I have to agree. My copy of Sony Vegas 7 came in today. I’m excited. I comes with the DVD authoring tools as well as a limited copy of Magic Bullet. I was hoping it was going to be the full version but no such luck. With a price tag of $300 buck it’s going to have to wait.

The past couple of weeks work and not getting enough has been killing me. However, I’m getting my energy back. I haven’t posted much lately because of this, even though I’ve been doing a few things in the background. I’ve decided that I am going to venture down the path of a feature length film. So far the project is codenamed Unlucky 13. I’m not sure if that will be the title or not. This is going to be my gritty action movie. So far I’ve started working on the character and plot outline and about 7 pages. I think it coming together nicely. I’m shooting for 90 minutes. I don’t want to make it to long or to short. I don’t see the point in over doing it. I want to keep it simple so I can actually films this and have it look good. Before I start there are a few things I’m going to need to pickup. Daytime lights, a jib arm and a dolly! I’m looking at about $600 for the lights and I can DIY the dolly and jib arm. If my next quarterly bonus is good I can probably pick up the lights. The wife is going to kill me…. But I’m not planning on filming this till the end of the year so I’m not in any rush.

Sunday the 6th we start reshooting JGB. From the most part it was a very ruff shoot. Matt’s new place didn’t A/C, Moses showed up drunk. For the most part everyone was a bit on the rowdy side. I left that night rather pissed off and discouraged. As always Cindy and Jenn out do themselves. These two are such a class act when it comes to acting. With that said the footage turned out rather nice! So far I’ve been able to edit around the bullshit and things are being to come together. I have regained my optimism for this project.

The second reshoot started off ruff but quickly picked up steam. Wes was a few hours late due to a communication error. So while waiting I got a chance to sit down and talk to Cindy. Michael did make the shoot but it was probably for the best so I can’t be to pissed about it. Again had to do with the communication error. My mail server got blacklisted and I guess half the cast didn’t get the email. All that should be resolved now with the server. The shoot went great. Moses made up for his jackassary for the previous weekend.

I started editing the new footage this week. After two weeks of dreading how bad could of turned out, I was very happy to see that despite the fiasco the footage great. This Sunday should wrap up the major shooting. A few pickup shots after that and we are done. After the pilot is complete I’m going to turn my attention to Dodging Bullets.

This week I started reading Bret Stern’s How to Shoot a Feature Film for Under $10,000 (And Not Go to Jail) Great book, funny as hell. If you ever had the desire to become filmmaker it’s a good book to pick up and thumb through. A few of my film making friends decided to stop making short films and going for features. So I figures what the hell, I’ll at least entertain the idea. Though I do have one feature length script written it still needs a lot of work. Also it is a collaboration so I need my friends blessing before proceeding. However, do I want to get two more short films under my belt before proceed down the path of the great feature length film.

I’ve decided that I want to do a bare knuckle, hard hitting, gritty action movie. No explosions, no guns, just fist, bats and a lot of ass beatings. The plot is pretty simple. Thug breaks legs for a living. Thug wants more out of life. Thug wins the lottery and wants to skip down, all hell breaks loose. Though out the course of the story and want the protagonist to get more and more beat up as well as do a fair bit of ass kicking himself. So I guess we’ll see where this goes. I really want to get Dodging Bullets and 187 done first.