From Script to Screen Part 2 -- and THE CHALLENGE

We continue our comparison of the 3rd draft outline of On the Cutting Room Floor and the final shooting scripting (the 10th draft) in Part 2 of "From Script to Screen."

Also, in this week's edition, special guest and On the Cutting Room Floor producer Chris Wolf issues a challenge to the listeners of Skinny Bones on Air.

Show links:

On the Cutting Room Floor shooting script (in pdf)
On the Cutting Room Floor Draft 3 Outline (in PDF)

More ADR tech problems, but there is a silver lining!

Last night was a long night - we had Dan Reichel (he plays Manny Hansen, and is the man pictured at the front of the On the Cutting Room Floor site) come in to redo lines for the first conference room scene.
First off, the DVD that had all the scenes in QT format was damaged, so we couldn't get a straight QT copy of the scene onto the computer. We did have a compressed video copy of the scene, but that just wouldn't work, because QT and Logic have a problem playing compressed video together.
So, we brought the compressed video into Final Cut Pro, rendered out a QT version, and than brought it back into Logic. However, the compressed video didn't have audio ... luckily I had exported the audio tracks for each character in the scene as seperate aiff's, so we were able to drop those into logic and play 'em back with the video.

Anyway, we started the session about an hour late ... but something wasn't working just right -- the audio we recorded always seemed to be just a little off from the video ... and the original production audio that we had dropped in also seemed a little bit off. We figured out that Logic was having some difficulties playing back the QT video and the seperate audio tracks back, so it was slightly out of sync. So, we went back to Final Cut, dropped the video and the audio into a project and rendered them out together.

Problem solved. Dan ripped through the rest of the lines and we were out of there by 9:30PM -- total tech setback was about an hour and a half.

However, like it says in the title, there was a silver lining to all of this! Jim Waters (engineer of the studio we're doing the dialogue recording at) started using the seperate audio track's waveforms as a visual guide for Dan to figure out when his old dialogue started. Even though the seperate audio tracks were playing slightly off in Logic, visually they were in the right place, it was just a latency issue. So, by using the waveform as a visual cue, he was able to zero in on the timing of his delivery right away. I'm going to start rendering out seperate audio for all the characters for all the scenes that need ADRing so we can start using the new method, which, despite it being the result of an hour and a half headache, will be really helpful for the duration of the ADR sessions. And I'll leave you all with that run on setence to chew through ... oh, one more thing, no pics from that session 'cause we were bogged down by the probs, but no worries, next time Dan is in there, I'll snap a few shots and throw them up here!

ADR pics, voting, etc

Alright, some quick updates --
Joe Jones came in and did some dialogue replacement for three scenes -- he probably has to do the most ADR work out of all the actors, I think it'll end up being a total of 10 scenes, and he's knocking 'em down. We got five more to do and than he's ADR free!!
Check out the pics here.

Also, you may have noticed that the voting sidebar stuff is gone -- too much clutter.
But I won't get mad if you want to vote for the Skinny Bones podcast anyway :) The new system lets you vote once every 24 hours -- so, if you find yourself getting bored, with nothing to do at the same time each day ...

Coming up next -- more on our plans for Tribeca

From Script to Screen Part 1

This week we start a really cool (in my humble opinion) series that explores the changes that the On the Cutting Room Floor script went through between draft 3 -- well, the outline for draft 3 -- (when it was given the generic placeholder title of "Hollywood Murder Mystery") to draft 10, the actual shooting script. Writing the script was kind of a trial by fire thing for me, because there are no good examples out there of how much a script goes through before it's ready to shoot (or nearly ready, as the case may be). So, I offer up my flawed 3rd draft to rake across the coals of bitter criticsm (what do I care? It's draft 3, we shot the damn thing -- nothing you can say can make me cry ... I may let out a low moan or a pathetic sniffle ...) so that I can at least help fill the void somewhat in showing how radically different a work in progress script can be in comparison to the "final" work.



Show links:

On the Cutting Room Floor shooting script (in pdf)
On the Cutting Room Floor Draft 3 Outline (in PDF)
On the Cutting Room Floor Draft 3 Outline Notes (in PDF)

Proof from Steve

So, it seems that Skinny Bones on Air cohost Steve Gladish really does fly helicopters for the army.

Yeah, I really don't buy that Photoshop job either, but just humor him.

Tribeca '05

So, it looks like Chris Wolf, his girlfriend Cassie Sherwood, my wife Yui and myself are going to the '05 Tribeca film festival. It's all but set in stone (more of a chisled tracing right now) -- Chris and I are going to book tickets, and do a hybrid 'stay at a hotel/stay at his sister's place' deal so we don't come back broke ... broker ... brokEST. There we go.

Anyway, we'll be heading up there in April, so we got a bunch of time to nail all these things down. You might be asking yourself -- the film's not done, why's he going to a film festival? Well, that's a damn fine question. I've been to quite a few local film festivals, but nothing on the larger side of fests (i.e. Sundance, Toronto, Tribeca, etc), so I figured now would be a good time to acclimate myself to the whole thing before heading out with my own movie. Also, it'd make a damn good topic for the podcast -- so look out for my "Live! (sorta) from Tribeca!" podcast series in April.

British Actor Joe Jones talks about his work in England and in the states

This week we talk with On the Cutting Room Floor actor Joe Jones.

Updates

So, with the movie post-production workflow in full swing (ADR sessions, mixing, cutting scenes, fx, etc) time is becoming pretty scarce. Due to this we will be temporarily ending the audio updates portion of Skinny Bones on Air. The weekly podcast will still continue and updates will still be posted, just in text form. I will mirror them on both the blog.skinnybones.net site and www.skinnybonesonair.com.

That being said, let's get to some updates! Yeah!

First off - Megan Mioduski came into the studio this past Sunday and ripped her through her first dialogue replacement session. Now that we've got her lines recorded, the first three scenes of the movie are ready for a final mix and, once it gets scored, it'll be itching to get commited to DVD. But it will have to wait. There are other scenes too y'know.
Check out pics of Megan in action at Waterworks here.

My brother Raj Garewal came into lay down some more dialogue this past Tuesday. He showed off his dialogue skills on two scenes. The last scene we worked on has a majorly angry monologue from him, and the final block of lines required some pretty intense breaking down to nail the timing and emotion. It's a really important scene, and he was great at not only juggling the timing constraints, but also at maintaing the energy and keeping the anger real.
Check out some pics from that session here.

Jim Waters, the man behind Waterworks Studio, and I have been discussing the opening credits sequence of the movie. The sequence shows clips from dead screenwriter Nik Schiltz' past movies, which are all American Pie style teen comedies. The song used in it is The Solace Brothers' "20 Hour Ride." Musically the song works prefectly with the credit sequence, but Jim said he was a little put off by the lyrics, which really didn't have anything to do with what was going on on screen. I liked that aspect, because it seemed to fit that teen comedy thing where the hit single attached to the movie has nothing to do with the actual film (please see Marilyn Manson's cover of "Tainted Love" used in and to promote "Not Another Teen Movie." Please also check out the DVD extras to see the video that was made for the song in conjunction with the movie. Please scratch your head in confusion). Jim had a copy of an instrumental version of the song (he recorded The Solace Bros' album) and I took that and dropped it into the credits. It worked ... somewhat. The on screen action that was timed tightly to the music came across a lot stronger, but the song felt empty without the lyrics. However, Jim's goal was not to get a non-lyric version of the song into the movie. He suggested that he bring the band back into the studio to record new lyrics. So, he took the instrumental and the original song, and mixed them so that, whenever any dialogue during the credit sequence occurred, there was only the instrumental track playing. That mix was perfect -- the energy was always really intense and I didn't need to drop the volume of the song during those moments of dialogue. So, using that as a lyrical map, we gave a copy to Dan and John of The Solace Brothers, and they are hard at work making new lyrics for the tune. I can't wait to hear it and I can't thank Jim, John and Dan enough for putting in all this harddwork on the song. And, again, I can't thank Jim enough for dedicating all this studio time to helping us ADR the movie.

So, that was the first non-audio update of the New Year! Look for more!
Next week on Skinny Bones on Air, we talk with British actor Joe Jones.
Then we change things up a bit on Monday the 24th - we start a four part series looking at the changes made in the script. Steve and I compare a 3rd draft of the script (from when it was called, generically, "Hollywood Murder Mystery") to the final shooting script (which is the 10th draft of said screenplay). It should be pretty fun and interesting. If you haven't read the shooting script, get it here.

Linda Gross shares her tips on how to have an acting career outside of LA

This week we talk with On the Cutting Room Floor actress Linda Gross (Jenny -- blonde woman on the left).

Pictures of two ADR sessions and more updates

Pictures of ADR sessions, got three ADR sessions done last week and we take a listen to the Videostore Cowboy's comments on his podcast.

Show links:
ADR Photos
Videostore Cowboy

Skinny Bones on Air for January 3rd, 2005

We talk with executive producer (and my wife) Yui Umehara-Garewal.