John Q. Phats Entertainment

Watching some of my old short films last night I’ve realized how far everyone involved in all of this has come.  Acting has gotten better, camera work has gotten better, lighting has gotten way better, editing has gotten better, and sound has definitely gotten much better.  I’m not really sure how we all got here.  I think we were all just committed to making a better product.  It was pretty much a process of refining.  We would try something else and if that didn’t work out, we would figure out a different way of doing.  For example, in The Train Wreck, the sound is horrible.  That’s because it was our first time using the boom mic.  We thought we would be smart and hold the boom mic low and aim it up rather then high and aim it down.  What we didn’t realize is that the boom mic would pick up EVERYTHING that went on with the actors feet.  You can hear every single footstep the actors took in that short film.  It’s really annoying.  The next innovation in sound actually happened on Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  In the last short film that we did Gabe complained that it had the sound quality of a porno.  So, we looked up some information on the Internet regarding sound for short films and found some pretty good stuff.  We spent probably about 15 minutes before each scene finding not only the right position for the boom mic but the right settings for the camera to match that.  I have to say that Do Nice Guys Finish Last is probably the best sounding thing we’ve done so far.  Which may be sad, but whatever, we’re getting there.  I guess my point is, is that…  I’m not really sure what my point is.  I guess I’m just writing.
I just got the new cut of Do Nice Guys Finish Last from Gabe.  I can’t wait to see it.  I think we are extremely close to a final cut.  Probably just a few changes here and there and we’ll be done.  Then, we can start doing color correction.  Which in all honestly, sucks.  Color correction is one of those things that you have to do, but really don’t want to.  Like returning your ex girlfriends DVD’s or going to a funeral.  It’s just lame.  Can’t modern technology take care of this for us yet?  Can’t you have two shots and click on a box that says “I want these two thingies to look like they are the same color”?  I mean, do we really have to spend hours fidgeting with some stupid little knobs to get it to do that?  We have satellites that can read a license plate from space, but we can’t do that?  Really?  It’s total bullshit, it really is.  I’m actually just trying to be funny.  Color correction really isn’t that bad.  It’s just kind of tedious.  For some reason, Gabe is actually excited about it.  Maybe he’s just tired of my nit picky editing notes.  The last one was pretty bad.  I think there was a portion where I cut like .5 of a second off of a shot.  I’m pretty sure when I’m coming up with stuff like that, we are pretty damn close to a final cut.

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.

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.

So, I want to shoot some stuff for Nice Guys Finish Last, unfortunately The Plague might take one of our actors from us.  The main actor in the short got the flu.  Luckily there is some stuff we can shoot with Valerie that only requires her.  The greatest thing about owning all of my equipment is that I can pretty much shoot anything with a 3 person crew.  Usually, I actually only need a 2 man crew, but with this short film, I’m shooting with two cameras.  So, I need two camera operators and a boom mic operator.  Sean has become my unofficial boom mic operator.  He’s amazing at not moving and he has big burley boom mic operator arms.  It’s almost like having a wise cracking stand that can move if needed.  What can I say?  He’s good at what he does.  In a perfect world, I would have a five person crew.  Two camera operators, a boom mic operator, a lighting person, and someone that’s telling the camera operators where to go and what to do.  I like to focus on the actors.  Camera work can be fun, but I absolutely hate being a camera operator and director at the same time.  Which I can do, but it sucks.  Usually, I end up with sub par stuff when I do that.  I kind of suck as a camera operator.  I usually end up trying to split my attention between directing and shooting and it never really works.