Dark Design Pictures

This weekend the wife is going out of town with here sister, and nothing film related is going on. So leaves me with lots of free time to lounge around in my boxers, do some editing of 1-800-Tech-Support, catch up on some TV. Oh, update the web site. The blog is running and old ass version of WordPress. And the 1-800-Tech-Support web site has some issues with the skin. Menus, that would be nice! I’ve also had some promo ideas for 1-800 that I would like to start working on. So much filming so little time to do anything else. Well I guess now I do. Better not watch to much TV then.

While surfing the Video Copilot forum last night I came across this short film called Suddenly by Magnus Engsfors. It is a cool example of the neat things you can do with After Effect, Photoshop and still photography. I have to say it is an incredible short film. The music was well chosen and the effects are well done. Though I know the techniques that Magnus not 100% sure how he pulled it off. I’m guessing he used a green screen to get the photos of himself hanging and shot the background separately. I wish I was this creative. Very nicely done.

I figured it was time for an update on 1-800-Tech-Support. Things are going. Not as smoothly as I would like but we are making progress. Between scheduling delays and construction at the office, filming has been lets say interesting. Principle photography has been completed for Episode 1 and Episode 2 is near completion. Last night we started on Episode 4 and should have that one in the can in Oct along with Episode 3. Between Cup of Joe and 1-800-Tech-Support, this is going to be a long filming weekend.

Monday Sept 8th was the first official shooting day for the show. It continued Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. It was a hell of a long week, but Ep1 is 90% complete and Ep2 is about 75% done.

I have to give my cast some major kudos. They are a hell of a team. On Monday I was watching the dailies while capture the footage and I was laughing my ass off. Whitney is an incredible actor. She has dived into the role of Erica and has made it her own. Matthew is another one of my star players. I have known Matthew for many years and he has come a long way as an actor. From hitman to goth fearing geek it is always a pleasure working with him. Now Christian, well that’s another story… LOL Just kidding. This is the 3rd project I’ve worked with him on. From his performance to his on set antics, I always enjoy working with him.

Great job guys! Hopefully by the end of the series you guys won’t want me dead. LOL

The IDE cable went bad and not the hard drive. I think I’m going to go backup my server now.!

But this time it’s for 1-800-Tech-Support! It has been a long long day, but it was worth it. We managed to knock out all of the Tom and Joel scenes for Episode 1. The adventure continues on Thursday.

Okay now that I am done with my pity party I’ve managed to rework the schedule. Shooting officially begins Sept 8th…. I hope. A location has been nailed down for the part scene on the 13th and everyone has been notified about the schedule changes. Hopefully that means they will read it and show up. LOL Okay I’m going to go die and now and get some sleep.

Yesterday was a complete and total disaster. Do to an issue at work which I had fucking caused; I had to cancel the shoot. I really can’t go into detail about it, but it was colossal fuck up. I’m very very aggravated and disappointed. This is the 3rd time I’ve had to put off filming for 1-800-Tech-Support because of something (vacation, holidays, schedules, disasters, you name it). It hard enough trying to nail down schedules, wrangle everyone to a single location and then have to cancel last minute. Luckily I had the good sense to call everyone a head of time to let them know that there was a delay and a possible cancellation. Ugh what a day. I didn’t leave work till 9:30PM. Now the process start over of trying to get Monday and Wednesday rescheduled. I wanted to do it last night but I didn’t have the energy. Today is a new day and I’m not going to dwell on it. There are other things for me to be annoyed at today.

Shooting begins tomorrow, I think….. So far I’ve had an actor cancel and then find out that they can shoot after all in a span of 45 minutes. Ugh, heart attack!!! Well at least thing are back on schedule…..for now. LOL Tomorrow we will shoot Ep 1 Scenes 10, 13, 15, 16, 19 and Ep 2 Scenes 4, 6, 7, 8. Yeah I’m being hopeful. I know I won’t get that far, but I can try. We’ll probably get through most of Ep 1. Ugh time for shot log.

Labor day weekend was alright. Yesterday my hard drive crashed so I’ve been spending the last couple of days trying to get my laptop up and running and trying to recover my data. Luckily I’ve managed to save all the scripts which I’m honestly the most concerned about. There is other data I’m concerned about but that is the most important to me. I can recover my MP3 and movies off my ipod. I may have lost my Invaders Zim Episodes which would make me sad. But what can I do….