John Q. Phats Entertainment

So, we shot some scenes for Nice Guys Finish Last last night.  It feels weird doing things like this.  Normally, I plan and plan and then just shoot the entire short film in one day.  It’s odd for me to break it up like this.  It’s a huge script so I guess I should have expected that.  Shooting anything is such a strange process.  You spend half an hour setting up the lights, 10 minutes testing the boom mic and getting it in the right position, another 10 making sure the camera settings are just right, 10 clearing crap from the background of the scene, and 30 – 40 going over the scene with the actors to make sure they are delivering it how you want it.  So, after about an hour and a half of tooling around with shit, you finally hit record and do 20 takes in roughly 20 minutes.  Then you’re done.  This is an actual quote from last night:
“What?!  What do you mean we’re done?!  We spent an hour and a half setting up all of that shit!”  That’s the way it goes though.  It’s a lot like setting up dominos to fall down.  Or like sex, with a high maintenance chick. 
I used to really feel bad about making everyone wait around while I made adjustments with actors.  Not so much anymore.  First off, recently I’ve been told that most people enjoy watching that process.  It’s interesting to see.  Second of all, it all doesn’t really matter.  You have to get a good scene out of it.  If you don’t get a good scene, you have to either re shoot it or live with it.  Reshooting it means going through that hour and a half long setup process again.  Living with it means putting up with the fact that you could have made something that a lot of people have put a lot of time in to much better.
I’m not really sure how to transition in to this next paragraph, so whatever.  Last night was a lot of fun.  We had a makeup artist.  Like a real makeup artist, not just some girl that’s a friend of mine that I call a makeup artist.  She had a makeup holster.  It was kind of awesome.  I even got you yell “Makeup!” once or twice.  You should have seen how pretty Caine was.  I never really thought about makeup, but it really did make a big difference.  We also had a clapper.  Which will be insanely useful for editing.  I’m using two cameras for this one, so linking up the footage is vital.  The clapper, which I think I will name “Clacky” also looks pretty damn professional.  We are moving in that direction, so it fits.   

P.S. The Censored showing at the Los Angeles United Film Festival is tonight.  Hopefully, I’ll see you guys there.

So, last Sunday, I got caught unprepared.  Seriously, that’s what happened, I fucked up.  I wanted to shoot a scene in a restuarant.  Let me tell you the mess that ensued.  We were going to shoot one of the restaurant scenes for Nice Guys Finish Last.  So, I had a small crew together and no extras but for whatever the reason, I didn’t care.  Well, crew bailed on me.  Turns out the ride for most the crew ended up getting drunk in Corona.  Regardless, I wasn’t ready at all.  I hadn’t tested shit.  So I figured “hey, I can make this my test day.”  So, I’m setting up the lights to test them out and realize that I left the god damned power chords at my house.  That’s alright, I can test the boom mic and my new shock mount.  Not so fast, remember, I’m what some people refer to as “legally retarded.”  I left the boom mic (XLR) chord at my house too.  If I were another person, I would have punched myself square in the balls.  Believe it or not this all turned out to be a good thing.  It really made me think to myself “What the hell am I doing here?”  This restaurant scene is pretty hard core and requires a lot of prep work.  I think I got caught up in the excitement of Censored’s appearance at the film festival…..  Which is tomorrow.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m still insanely excited about it, but these past 3 days have been a frantic mess of me trying to get my shit together for Nice Guys Finish Last.  I’m starting to get a handle on everything though.  We are actually shooting a few small scenes tomorrow night.  Which, I’m totally prepared for.  I’m through dicking around, Sunday was a wake up call.  Yes it’s exciting that Censored is playing at a film festival, but after the festival, I’m back to square one.  So, I have to start taking this thing seriously.
P.S. One last plug for my short film playing in the Los Angeles United Film Festival.  It’s $10.00 to get in and we are playing with a movie called Unfinished Documentary on Masturbation.  I hope to see you guys there.  You can buy tickets here:
Lot Angeles United Film Festival- Tickets

Gabe was able to work on Stuck a little bit and make it better.  I’m starting to get the ball rolling on Nice Guys Finish Last.  I’m going to try and get together with Chris and Caine sometime this week to film something for you guys.  But no more of this split screen shit.  Seriously, I’m tired of editing like that, I’m also tired of Chris moving the God damned beer right before the last freaking shot.
Gabe says that my audio sounds like a porno.  I’m glad he sees the direction I’m going with this.  When it comes to audio, I have absolutely no clue what the hell I’m doing.  I put the thingy on the end of the thingy, plug it in to the thingy, and then hang the thingy over the scene and pray that it works.  The main problem is, is that I’m picking up more then the audio from the actor or actors on screen.  I’m getting a lot of background noise.  I think I record with the levels to high. 
“Yeah, fuck it, red bars means it’s working……Right?”
Anyway, it needs some work.  I’ll probably film some tests this weekend.