Tags: Behind the Scenes, Brad, Film, Morgan, Production Notes, Still Life, Video
This is an un-edited recording of us setting up for the master of shot Scene1D.
If you want to see the take you can skip to 1:29 in the video.
This is the third take and the one we are going to use in the final movie.
Tags: Brad, Morgan, Still Life, Video
This Sunday the Seattle Times did an article on STIFF, the festival The Hot Dog Cycle is playing in. They used a picture from the film.
We also now have a facebook page for the STIFF showing.
Tags: Brad, Film, film festival, Morgan, seattle true independent, The Hot Dog Cycle
at The Stranger gave us our short It’s in the P-I its first review and surprisingly it was good!
…most interestingly, an exploration of the end of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer through the words of its former staffers.
and then it continues in true Stranger fashion:
Making it all really, truly worthwhile: Love You More, a hot, hot short about young love, hasty sex, and the music of the Buzzcocks.
Tags: Brad, Common Language Project, Documentary, film festival, International Documentary Challenge, It's in the P-I, Morgan
So SIFF and STIFF both have our films up on their respective websites. “It’s in the P-I” and “The Hot Dog Cycle” are both such different movies that fit so well for the festivals they are in. It is crazy that something we made has this life outside of us. It is now something to be marketed and watched by people who may not necessarily have any relationship to us. I am dually excited and scared by the prospect of some random person watching these things we all thought was a good idea to make months ago.
A screen grab of the webpage for our short "It's in the P-I."
A screen grab of the webpage for our short "The Hot Dog Cycle."
You can and should go to both of these screenings as these movies worth seeing on a large screen with other people around and we’ll be there!
Tags: accepted, Brad, Common Language Project, Documentary, Film, film festival, International Documentary Challenge, It's in the P-I, Morgan, seattle true independent, The Hot Dog Cycle
“I’d like to invite Bradley Hutchinson’s IT’S IN THE P-I to be screened as an official selection of the 35th Seattle International Film Festival (May 21-June 11) to be shown during the Short Film Weekend (May 29-31, 2009). All of the shorts will be screened at the new state-of-the-art SIFF Cinema where all formats are brilliantly projected. SIFF is also a recognized Oscar™ nominating Festival.
The Seattle International Film Festival is the largest and most well-attended film festival in the United States with 150,000 attendees expected in 2009. SIFF screens a wide selection of the best new international features and documentaries over the 25-day festival, presenting more than 400 films from over 50 countries. With extensive local, national and international media coverage, the Festival has emerged as one of the country’s most accessible and highly publicized film events.
We would be honored to present your film in Seattle and look forward to receiving your confirmation of its availability. Of course, if you have questions or require additional information please contact me.”
Tags: accepted, Brad, Common Language Project, Documentary, event, film festival, International Documentary Challenge, The Hot Dog Cycle
So I believe it was our intention to blog quite a bit more concerning this whole five day International Documentary Film Challenge thing we just got through doing. Not to make excuses, but shit got drastic. The movie was good enough that we put more time in energy into it than it probably warranted. The final title was “Its in the PI.” It concerns itself with the plight of Seattle’s Post-Intelligencer, Seattle’s oldest daily newspaper. It came out much better then anything else I have worked on that could call itself nonfiction, but it took a toll on all of us. I was glad to work within this new entity “the Something Factory.” It is the melding of the Common Language Project, The Last Quest and some of our other awesomely talented friends. It was great to work with people who put as much passionate obsession into their work as I do. Here is the logo I created to go at the end of the credits:
So anyways I am posting this on the blog to let you know why nothing was posted for the last few days and to also let you know that Morgan and I are going to do some video podcasts for ya’all in the next few days doing a breakdown of a scene from the movie.
Alright well it is 4:15am and I go now to be unconscious.
Tags: Brad, Common Language Project, International Documentary Challenge, Morgan, Video
Dear reader,
The Last Quest has entered the International Documentary Challenge with the members of the Common Language Project.
We brainstormed on Monday about the possible ideas we had for the competition. Here are the genres they provide and our top candidates:
1st person:
The story of my parent’s relationship. It is quite a touching story, filled with thrills and chills. To sum it up they have been married for 30 years and still make out all the time. It was love at first sight but my mom was married and my dad didn’t want to have even a steady girlfriend.
Art
Our friend Cat knows a guy that is involved with a group that does things like:
1) Get these huge machines from Boeing that spit electricity at things at amazing voltage.
2) Shoot this electricity at quarters.
3) Give these shrunken weirdo electricity quarters to friends.
Biography / Character Study
Aurthur Wright has a public access show about getting healthy. He works out for the first 1/2 of the show and then cooks a delicious healthy mean for the second half of his show. He also weighs 350 lbs, is active in the Black Vietnam Vet community and has had a tracheotomy.
Experimental
Janet also has a public access show. Her story is twisted and crazy and wonderful. She used to export Washington apples to Japan from the Bahamas. She is now a private dectective and she describes her clients are “eccentric.” We were going to interview her about her life and then make a video mosaic similar to The Tracy Fragments.
Historical
Our angle to this was a history of a relationship. We were going to use my parents again.
Music
“Morgan proposes to Carolyn Mark.” It’s true, I love her. To the point where I would go ask her to marry me. In Canada. While someone was filming it. Actually I think that’s the only way I could get up the nerve to do it.
Nature
Had you any idea there was a group of people that got together to “fancy guinea pigs?” Katie did.
Social Issue / Political
We were going to do a story about the PI closing. It is going out of buisness in the next week or so.
Sports
We were going to make a documentary about Bike Jousting.
They give you two genres (pick one), and a theme that you have about 5 days to make a 4 – 7 minute documentarty about. We drew Musical and Historical. The theme is Fear / Hope.
Thankfully we decided not to drive to Cananda. And I don’t have to ruin my life and ask Ms. Mark to marry me, out of the blue, with no hope of her saying yes, pissing off the girl I’m dating and bringing my tender ego (recently bolstered by exercising and heavy vitamin intake) to new and exciting lows.
We also decided not to do the history of my parents relationship. The PI story was just too hot and timely. And also four of the people we are working with are or have been journalists and they feel strongly about the topic.
So they went today and had three half hour long amazing interviews. The rest of it might be a little difficult to come together, I’m editing and producing this one, so I’ll give you an update when I have one…
Love,
Morgan
Tags: Brad, Brainstorm, Common Language Project, Documentary, Film, Genre, International Documentary Challenge, Morgan, Video
Once you have shot a movie the work is far from over. There are hours upon hours of watching, re-watching and re-re-watching of what you have shot and figuring out how to make sense of the madness that is raw footage. Editing is a special skill that few people have the proper amount of respect for. The Hot Dog Cycle editing period lasted far too long as all of the steam that we built up in finishing production did not carry us through. Things like life, love and the ever present pursuit of money got in the way. From the time we had everything shot till when we were picture locked (when the editing is completely done) was about seven months. Here is scene 1 in picture lock:
After picture lock there was still a ton of work to be done. We had to compose the music, color correct the picture, record the narration, add all the sound effects and add the computer graphic hearts that the script called for. This process went a lot faster. From the time the picture was locked till we were completely done with the movie was only a month. Our computer graphics and color correction was done by an artist in San Francisco, Jed Smith. We physically mailed him a hard drive with the footage on it. He did all of his work at his home all of our correspondence took place online. He then sent back the finished files on the drive a few weeks later. For the music Morgan composed the music in his home studio with help from our sound designer Kelsey Wood. As Morgan worked on the audio Kelsey did looping (re-recording of actor’s line) with myself and the other primary actors. Our final audio mix was done at the audio studio Bad Animals. This was an amazing process that warrants its own future blog post. Here is the final sequence:
So this is the final blog post for this particular exercise. I hope the class got something out of these posts. I had a lot of fun writing them.
Our cast, crew and friend screening for The Hot Dog Cycle will be happening later this month. This weekend The Last Quest will be working on a Documentary Challenge requiring us to make a documentary film from scratch in all of five day (exciting!). Also our distributor Cassidy Dimon has agreed to write a blog post about distributing short films in the next couple of weeks… So yeah come back every once in awhile and see what is happening here with us.
Tags: Behind the Scenes, Brad, Scene 1, The Hot Dog Cycle
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