10-21-2008
Update on Studio 44: The show will air in mid November instead of October 16 as originally planned. It's better we take our time planning out the season than to rush into it. We promise you the show will be better with the extra couple of weeks! We're thinking about doing some special episodes, but more on that later (secrets... secrets...) 
09-30-2008
Melissa from CCF back again! Sorry for the Internet silence;
I shall explain.
About Charlie: This is part of the reason why I haven?t been
on the site lately (the other is that I?ve been too busy to film anything new,
though I do have two short scripts lined up to film hopefully next month).
Charlie was completely edited, color corrected, and soundtracked (new word!) in
May. The why hasn?t it seen the light of day yet? Technical problem. I shot the
film in 24P (for non filmmakers- 24 frames per second opposed to the usual 30
fps or 29.97 if you want to be specific). The problem was that after I edited
the film in Final Cut Pro I sent it to Soundtrack Pro, another program, to do
the sound mix. The I had to send it back into FCP and low and behold, my sound
is out of sync. I think Soundtrack mixed the sound in 30 fps. This meant that
in the beginning of the film it was fine, but by the end of the 20 minute film
it was horrible out of sync.
I didn?t catch this problem until later (I needed a brake
from the movie after 3-4 weeks of editing) and by that time I didn?t have
access to the school computers. I tried over the summer to capture it with Avid
at home and manually sync it up, but Avid didn?t like how I also shot the film
in widescreen (this is Avid DV, not the complete Avid studios edit with) so I
had to wait till I got back to school. This weekend I finally was able to sync
it up.
I?m proud of it and I want people to see it now. I?m not
sure when I?ll post it online (I need to read up on film festival rules- some
of them don?t want films to premiere online before they play at a festival) but
I?ll have it up as soon as I can!
Onto new stuff! Flash Mob Austin had an event on Friday, September
26 where we had someone pretend to be a celebrity in town for Austin City
Limits (the huge music festival). They were downtown on Saturday night and our
mission was complete with an entourage for ?Laney?, our fake celebrity, paparazzi,
and crazed fans (I was one of the fans). As Laney and her followers went down 6th
street there were people who weren?t with the Flash Mob asking who she was and
taking pictures of her, which was the whole point of the event; get as many
people downtown as possible to believe Laney was real (and to have amazing
fun!).
I shot some footage from a fan?s perspective and I?m waiting
on footage another flash-mobber shot from another perspective. I?m the editor
of the video and it?s coming along well! I?m trying to have that finished and
online sometime this week.
But wait, there?s more! Yes, after months of hiatus I?m back
with oodles of projects! This next one will keep me busy all year. I?m working on
a web show called Studio 44 about a high school filmmaking class led by a Hollywood wanna-be
teacher. The class attempts to make the teacher?s feature film script a reality
with many kooky characters, crazy antics, and fun comedy along the way. It?s
shot in documentary style and will be fun to watch!
For the first couple episodes I?m producer, lead editor,
color artist, and second camera; a little bit of everything to keep me busy. We?re
a small production so most of the jobs will rotate around and everyone will
have the chance to write and direct an episode. We?re looking at 13-15 episodes
by May 2009 (oh-nine!) with one episode released about every other week. The
first episode is set to premier on October 16! Check us out:
http://www.studio44.org
(website currently under construction)
http://www.youtube.com/studio44films
http://www.metacafe.com/channels/Studio+44/
(We also have a Revver channel, Studio44, but I don?t think
you can link to that until we have videos up.)
There?s ways to make money based on hits on Revver and
Metacafe. I?ll post again about that when I know the details. It?d be great if
you could support our project that way!
That?s it for now. I?ll post updates when I have Flash Mob
edited and up and when more information about the web show can be released
(oooh, so secretive are we!).
04-04-2008
Exciting stuff happening at CCF! We're very busy but it's all productive film stuff so that's good.
Show your support for CCF by voting for our submission into the Monkey Video Contest (make a music video for Two Loons for Tea's song Monkey). Go here to see and vote for the CCF entry: http://www.sarathan.com/monkeyvideocontest/voting-pages/video14fs.html
Thanks for your support! 
Right now we're in production for a 20 minute short called Charlie (working title but who knows, we may end up using it in the end). We shot some exterior scenes on Saturday. It was off and on rain here and at one point we went into evacuate mode to protect the equipment from what we thought would soon turn into pouring rain (luckily it stopped after about 30 seconds and we could finish shooting the scene). That's Austin for you.
On Thursday we shot at the Alamo Draft House, South Lamar location bright and early in the morning! 7:30 AM cast and crew call. Thank you amazing actors, crew, and of course Kristen, that Draft House manager, for being there before then and ready to roll! Kristen, thanks for letting us shoot where we did. You gave us some great freedom and it'll make those scenes in the film look amazing! Shooting in the movie theater went smoothly; we finished in about two and a half hours. We shot the opening scene and the final scene in the movie theater and both were great. That last scene should be magic on film if editing plays out well. Erin and Gary- you two were so prepared and that last scene we shot is exactly how I pictured it when I wrote it. Patrick- is there anything on set you didn't do? Thanks for helping out in every aspect of the day's shoot (and glad to hear you're feeling better now- shooting while you were sick, that's dedication!). Sally- thanks for jumping in and helping speed things along. The lighting looked fantastic on the day (I haven't watched the footage back but I'm sure it looks just as good on the tape). Jim and Sue- thanks for catering and lending an extra hand in every aspect of shooting.
Phew. Two days down. Two or three more to go. Two more locations to visit. We can make it!
02-10-2008
The top secret commercial contest project is not so secret anymore- it's a commercial for the candy bar 100 Grand. (It's on the contest website so I can talk about it here). That shoot was a quick, easy, fun shoot. I really wish I could have used the candy bar break after heating the chocolate bar in the microwave, but sadly it was too long for a 30 second spot!
The weather was nice out today so we grabbed the camera and shot some juggling footage at a park. I'm capturing that now so it'll be edited sometime soon. Look out for some cool shots and cool juggling skills! I like shooting one of those grab-a-camera-and-shoot-whatever-we-think-looks-cool projects now and then (Come to think of it, juggling always seems to be the subject of those kind of projects). Perfect shoot except for some bugs as we started loosing daylight.
Make sure you check out the media page if you haven't already. There's a couple new projects for your viewing pleasure (100 Grand commercial, Superhero, and Willowbrooks Lane).
02-04-2008
Today I finished editing an entry for a commercial contest. The shoot went really quickly and easily thanks to a fun cast and crew (Erin, Mark, Patrick, Jim, Sue)! I'll post the video on here after it's on the contest's website.
In the meantime, I'm working on a couple scripts, ideas, and early pre-production on a 20+ minute short film that we'll start shooting in either March or April.
11-05-2007
All five of the "Life's good" contest entries are edited, polished, and up on YouTube. You can watch them on the Media page or on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/ChocolateCoveredFilm. So here's the making of rundown of the movies!
Let's start with the juggling one because we shot that one first. The idea was to showcase Patrick's amazing juggling skills (you have no idea how quickly he learned how to do four balls!) so we headed over to the local elementary school and shot some footage. The idea was to get him juggling on different levels or planes and mesh them together so it looked like there were multiple Patricks. I've never tried to edit anything like this so I didn't know if it would come out looking amazing, just OK, or horrible. I hope it's more on the "amazing side" because I'm pleased with how it came out! The silhouette shots were spur of the moment things when we happened to be walking in this ditch and saw the way the sun looked.
Onto the next video: the Grim Reaper! This was shot in the same alleyway as Danger (and a few other projects that aren't on the site) and used the same kind of film noir lighting with the elongated shadows. The staging took several rehearsals to get right. The goal was to make the happy character (based on Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp character if you couldn't tell) look smaller than the foreboding bad guy. Both actors were about the same height so their closeness to the light source determined how tall their shadows would be. After a couple takes we got it right (and went into a simple editing job!).
Video number three: Finding Money. This was a straightforward shoot from a simple idea; a boy finds money in his pockets that must have been in there when the pants went in the wash, but with a twist. The money is never ending! Instead of just the crumpled one dollar bill in his pocket, the boy pulls out bills from every pocket and ends up with a fistful of dollars (Why, why, why did I just make a reference to a western?! I can't stand westerns!). Nice acting- I love the reaction shots as he continues to pull out the money.
Next short: Chocolate. This was another simple shoot. I just covered the scene from various angles and cut it together to make it seem like a frantic scrabble for the candy. There wasn't much of a story to this one, just my love of chocolate!
And last, but not least, After Life. This is what goes on in my brain when I get on a creative spree- watch out everyone! It's a spoof commercial for After Life, the After Life that comes in a box and can help you get your wings (like Clarence)! Made in the same crazy strange spirit as Obnoxious Bagpipes, this short shows how good life, or that is to say the after-life, can be. We were a little fuzzy on the idea when we were shooting; it was just a concept and we didn't have time to script anything before hand so we winged it (no pun intended).
All the music was from freeplaymusic.com (thanks to an amazing site that has great music for little filmmakers like us).
11-04-2007
We've just done the equivalent of a film marathon this weekend! We're entering the "Life's good when..." contest on YouTube and since the deadline is lurking around the corner we sprinted through several short films (nothing like leaving stuff till the last minute...). We made five shorts, all finishing the phrase "Life's good...". As of this second, three are completely finished, one just needs music, and one needs editing and music. Keep an eye on our YouTube page: http://www.youtube.com/ChocolateCoveredFilm (yes, I know it's missing the "s" at the end but the username was just one letter too long) and the Media page with the spiffy new player! I'll write more about the filming process of the shorts in a while, but now I have to finish editing the last films.
10-18-2007
So my short didn't win the Shlotzsky's competition, but I know the people who did win (congrats! if you're reading this). Like before, the Austin Film Festival was a blast. Some really helpful panels, some semi-helpful panels- but lots of fun! I'll make a more detailed report later. Right now film wise I'm working on a script. It's rolling along nicely. It's a serious drama and I've had a couple problems along the way but I should have it finished this weekend (cross your fingers). Obviously I'll have to go back after the first draft is done and tweak the dialogue and all that good stuff. Right now it's 16 pages long (equal to about 16 minutes on screen) which is longer than I was meaning to write, but the story got a little more complicated as I got into the middle of it. As long as it's not needlessly long, I'm happy with it!
09-26-2007
It's Shlotzsky's time again! Last year we entered a competition for Shlotzsky's and the Austin Film Festival called "Sandwich your story". The goal is to make a 60 second short film. Easy, right? Sort of. The hardest part is coming up with a simple story that can be told quickly. We shot this year's entry on Saturday- great shoot, lots of fun, actors you were amazing! Director of Photography, some great shots! I finished editing the short yesterday. My main problem wasn't that it was too long, it was too short. The dialogue moved along so quickly that it ended up being about 45 seconds long. I added some extra shots into the beginning and end to fix that, so now it's 60 seconds. That was sent into the competition today so we'll probably find out in a couple weeks how well it did. Fingers crossed!
09-08-2007
I've been doing a lot of writing since making my last batch of films. I have two finished short film scripts and a bunch of other half-done ones. I've also been shooting some test footage with my new light kit! Lots of fun, especially the filters. (It's cool to make the whole room blue or green). Air Scrubbers is still playing on TV which is very cool!
06-03-2007
I posted a while back that the clean air PSA, Air Scrubbers, won the contest it was for. A couple days ago I got to reshoot it with a KXAN crew (the news people who will air the PSA) which was lots of fun! We reshot it pretty much shot-for-shot what the original is. (It had to be reshot because there was an issue with the brightness and sound that wouldn't work if they played it on TV). I got to direct it again which made me happy! So that'll play on TV during "Ozone Season" (AKA July-October).
I'm busy writing scripts again. I have three short film scripts in the works now and I plan on shooting them all this summer. I've already shot one short film (which was pretty much improvised, but it's still great!) which I may put up on the site (I need to get the actor's permission first).
I plan on shooting Double Trouble this summer too, probably in July. I still need to work out locations. After I get locations secured I'll start casting.
05-05-2007
The music video has been edited and it looks amazing! We've also been busy the past week with filming and editing 1472 Willowbrooks Lane, which is a short comedy film about a family eating dinner and crazy things happen to them. It was a really fun shoot with a fun cast and we got some amazing footage from it. It was easy to edit, which isn't always the case (sometimes we have to get creative and reuse certain shots, but don't tell anybody!)
The one thing I needed to fix in post production was the color. We shot with two different cameras and the footage from one camera was very dull and the other camera had some beautiful saturated colors, so I had to match them up. It wasn't that hard and I think color correction is actually really fun!
That's all the projects for a while. I think we all deserve a break for a while. I'll be writing more short films and then it's back to work on Double Trouble which I haven't forgotten about!
04-07-2007
The clean air PSA has been sent to that competition, Danger and Everybody Wants to be a Superhero have been sent to a film festival (more info on the festivals page), and the anti-drinking PSA will be going out soon to that competition so we're being kept busy to say the least.
We were also set to film the music video today but it rained. It hasn't rained all week so it chose to rain today. It's the curse of filmmakers: bad weather. Since most of the shoot is outside and there's only one interior scene (very short) we have to reschedule. It shouldn't be too bad, we'll get it all filmed soon.
In the meantime, we have casting for our next short which is a nice character piece. It'll be about 10 minutes long which is a little longer than what we've been doing recently (all these 30 second PSA's). i don't want to say too much now, maybe when we get closer to filming (it's such a fun script with a lot of plot twists so I don't want to ruin it for anyone)!
03-05-2007
The shoot for the clean air PSA (Public Service Announcement) went well despite the fact that only four people showed up. We shot it by the pond by the Arboretum in Austin, TX (very nice place to shoot. I'll definitely be using that spot again!) and I edited the footage this morning. It looks fantastic! I have a week to get the final cut locked down so I'm playing around with brightness, contrast, saturation, color; making it look really cool!
I've also made yet another revision to the Double Trouble script, read more about it on the Double Trouble page.
02-23-2007
Everybody Wants to be a Superhero is finished! I'm really happy and proud of the way it turned out. We had our first small showing of it and the audience seemed to like it a lot. It's fun to make movies, but it's even better getting to enjoy them with an audience! Since it's finished (except for film festivals) I'll make a new page for it under the completed projects page. When it's through the festival process, I'll post the film here!
02-15-2007
Everybody Wants to be a Superhero is (mostly) edited and complete with music and sound effects. The only thing we have left is to film and insert a scene into the middle. We'll film that next week sometime and then it'll be officially done! I'm really happy with the way it's coming out. There's a classic Batman style fight scene at the end which was a lot of fun to edit! The set looks amazing, the costumes and props are so cool, and the punching sound effect got used a lot. We also have the random POW and BAM words pop up in the fight scene.
On a different note, since Danger wasn't accepted into SXSW (sad...) I'll put it up on the site once I find some free time.
02-03-2007
Ahh, the weekend! We filmed the sci-fi short Everybody Wants to be a Superhero on Thursday. Overall I think it went really well! The footage (which I've only seen a little bit of) looks and sounds great. We hit a couple snags though. We went 30 mins over schedule, but I don't think that's too bad. I'd like to thank everyone now who helps with the shoot: Mr. McLaughlin, Sue, Jim, Patrick, Abigail, Kassidy, Jonathan, Martin, John, and Susy! On Monday we get to start editing and we have one more scene to shoot on Tuesday.
01-29-2007
Wow it's been a long time since I've updated, sorry about that. There really hasn't been much to report until today. We're working on a new short: a sci-fi spoof on Batman and 1960's style sci-fi/superhero stuff. It should be fun! The film is cast, we made all of the props from scratch today (with the help of some inspiring screen shots from the Original Series Star Trek!) and we're working on costumes. We're shooting on Thursday, February 1st (yes, this Thursday) which seems really close but pre-production is pretty much set (just the last few costumes needed). The cast is excited about it which makes me excited! This is not a serious film; it's supposed to be fun and cheesy (in content, not filming quality!). And yes, I'll post the film on here when it's done.
01-02-2007
I've been busy working on storyboards for Double Trouble (more on that on the Double Trouble page). I got some filming done when we went on vacation to Galveston, TX. It was good to play around with the camera even if it's not for a narrative story! Danger was sent to SXSW and I'm back into anxious-wait-for-film-festival-news mode! SXSW happens in the spring so I've got a bit of a wait until they announce the accepted films.
12-05-2006
YAY!!! If you read the update on the home page then you know why I'm so happy! I passed my Final Cut Pro Certification Test!!! YAY!!!! *does a happy dance* It feels like such a relief. No more studying shortcut keys and menu options! It was a hard test but there were some really easy ones too (I remember the first and last questions were really easy- I guess they wanted to be nice). Now I get to focus more on Double Trouble and my short (which yes, after it's gone through festival entries, it will be put on the site).
12-01-2006
Just a quick update for today! The sci-fi script just needs a couple touch ups (mainly formatting issues), Double Trouble is still where it was last time I posted (it's OK to not have astounding progress from time to time, I have other things going on besides writing), and I take the FCP certification test on Tuesday so I'll be studying like crazy this weekend!!!
I'm itching to get my hands back on Avid and finish that last family videos DVD but I told myself "no Avid a week before the FCP test". (They're different editing softwares- FCP is Apple and Avid is Windows. There are some big differences between the two!)
On a very random side note, I have "A Marshmallow World" by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin stuck in my head. Great song but it's starting to get annoying!
11-17-2006
Wow. Long time, no updates here! Sorry about that but I don't have much to write about until now. On Wednesday and Thursday I wrote a 6 page script because I felt so inspired! What is it about, you ask? Let's just say that it's a sci-fi spoof! (More info will come when it's closer to production!) It still has a couple kinks I need to work out but apart from that I'm really pleased with it!
More exciting news- today I finished my Final Cut Pro training!!! Yay! Three months...sixteen chapters...six hundred pages in the book... and it's all over!!! I'll use the week after Thanksgiving to study my notes and then I take the certification test on the first Tuesday in December! For those of you who don't know, the test is to become FCP certified (meaning you know what you're doing when you edit with FCP). It's taken online and about 60% of people who take the test pass. Wish me luck!
And how is Double Trouble coming along? I'm doing some final revisions, I'll have a couple people read that, then I get to focus on getting pre-production underway! From now on, all Double Trouble updates will be on the new Double Trouble page!
I've also finished and put on DVD parts 2, 3, and 4 of the Family Videos series!
I see that my last post was made during the AFF. If you want to read my review of the festival, you can read it here.
10-20-2006
Very exciting time right now! I have a pass to the Austin Film Festival (it started yesterday). The panels are great, the movies are great... It's so much fun! The panels are really helpful right now because I'm in the midst of writing a feature.
Another cool thing- I'm working on becoming Final Cut Pro certified. I'll take the test in early December. (I love Avid but since I can't get Avid certified, I'll take FCP!) It's all very exciting and intensive training!
09-23-2006
Sorry for the web silence! I haven't had much time to update.
We shot our short for the AFF competition (see the 9-14-06 post below). The shoot went well! It was good to actually film something because I've been editing and writing for the past couple months! We've also edited the short and added music so it' all ready for submission! (Since the competition is still open, I won't go into detail about the content of our short!)
I'm still working on draft 7 of the script. There have been some major changes- new scenes, more explanation for certain things. It's coming along nicely!
Just a little while ago I saw Out of the Past on Tuner Classic Movies. It's a pretty good film noir and I'm adding it to the awesome movies list! The movie has so many turns and a surprise ending!
09-14-2006
This weekend we're shooting a short for an Austin Film Festival competition (the competition's page is here). It should be fun!
I'm still working on draft 7 of the script! It's looking really good!
08-27-2006
There hasn't been much to talk about lately. I took a break from writing the script for a while and had some other people read it. I made a couple small changes. Now I'm going to tackle a couple larger problems. I know that sounds really vague but I don't want to give out major plot secrets on the internet until I get the script copyrighted.
I got some more costumes. I'll try to get some pictures of them up soon.
08-08-2006
Part 1 of the VHS project is on DVD complete with menus and hidden Easter eggs! It took me a long time to get it to burn because I got an error message every time. I fixed it thgouh and the DVD works fine. Part 2 is ready to be burned to DVD if I can just get past a different error message that keeps popping up!
The script it now on draft 5 and has most of the problems worked out of it. I'm working on concept art right now with Patrick.
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