Blog.
Snow and It’s Effect on Editing
It’s snowing today and although we love snow, we don’t love it in October. We’re thinking of packing up all-things-editing and heading down to Athens, Ohio for a while where it’s pushing 70 for at least the next ten days.
The Athens house is yellow too so no problem there.
Athens is home to Ohio University and where our MFA Film Program lives. When we started the program we bought a house because it was cheaper than renting and our 130# buddy Max could have a big yard all to himself.
Max December 6, 2002- November 3, 2015
Can’t remember if I told you we were doing the rough cut (like the first draft) of our feature ourselves. We had a great editor on set (Dan Geiger, the on-location editor for Fargo) that cut a lot of scenes but then we remembered that we like editing and it would be a perfect winter project. Ski in the morning (the yellowhouse is on the Craftsbury Outdoor Center nordic ski trails) then edit in the afternoon and evening.
‘Back To The Future’ and Acting
Kathy, Harry and Vince at Harry’s house back in February after 120 pages and 10 hours of going through the screenplay page by page.
Amazing editor, Harry Keramidas, (Back To The Future), had a great piece of advice for us the other day, “Taking a few weeks away will also give you a better perspective of what you got rather than what you wanted”….and he would know.Happily back at our yellow house in Vermont, we sort through loose ends from the shoot (shocking how many of those there are even after we thought we had them all sorted!) while breathing a little* before settling in to finish our rough cut.
*what does ‘breathing a little’ really mean? Vince and I (Kathy) are taking a film acting class. We thought it’d be interesting to be on the other side of ‘action’ for a change. Our scene this week was from Cheers. And for all your Cheers buffs, it’s the one where Diane’s cat dies.
A Day In The Life Of An Indie Film Actor: An Actor’s Perspective
Mark Wilmes, the editor of the The Tyler Tribute (the local newspaper), in his typical style, wrote an entertaining piece for the paper a few weeks ago that we thought would be fun to share.
This is Mark.
Oh and did we tell you there is pie?
I’d like to think I’m the same down-to-earth person I was last week at this time. I suppose there are some subtle changes to the trained eye, but I feel like being in the white-hot glare of the movie business hasn’t affected how I treat the “little people.”
Others seem to be handling the transition well. From the talk I heard over the weekend, there have probably been about a hundred Tyler and Lake Benton area residents who have been rounded up to play extras in the “Hap and Ashley” movie that is being shot in the area. You may have read about the filming in the Tyler paper over the past couple of months. Tyler native Kathy Swanson and her husband Vince O’Connell have been shooting a feature film in the area.
I’ve been helping round up some of these people but until last week I had avoided the stark honesty of a high definition movie camera.
My movie career was hatched on Monday of last week. At least I think it was Monday. The headiness of being caught up in the swirl of imagining my star on the Walk of Fame has me in a bit of a fog.
Why is everyone smiling?
With sixty-two actors and thirty-nine locations behind us, we finished shooting about three weeks ago.
We showed a 30 minute first assembly of a few scenes at the wrap* party. Judging from the reaction of the hugely biased group, the film will be a crowd pleaser for some crowds.
*in film making ‘wrap’ means the filming is done and the project is ready to go into post-production.
Pictured here is the majority of our dedicated crew!
(Not pictured: Joel Hamilton, Key Grip, Matthew Willets, Swing Grip, Tashauna Swanson, Web Design & Social Media.)
A View From the Crew
It’s a wrap.
We thought it would be fun to feature a few photos from the perspectives of our dedicated crew.
Photo Credit: Joel Hamilton, Key Grip
Photo Credit: Joel Hamilton, Key Grip
Photo Credit: Joel Hamilton, Key Grip
Day 10 of Filming
I can’t decide if the time is flying or standing still…either way, here are some behind the scenes photos and if you aren’t jealous, you should be.
Prairie Home Companion’s regular, Sue Scott, came down to be Shirley, the waitress.
A little manure never hurt anyone.
The crew doesn’t come to the set without their Hap and Ashley water bottles! (more…)