“January” Production Diary #10

22 minutes and 29 seconds.

The final running-time for “January.”

It is finished.

It’s been written, rehearsed, acted, storyboarded, reworked, filmed, edited, synced with audio, color corrected.

As I think about how far we’ve come in the past few months, I am astonished. Even more so, I am humbled. It has been such an incredible privilege to work with every single individual on this film, regardless of how seemingly-small their contributions have been. I thank all of you from the deepest depths of my heart for all of your hard work, time, and talent. This film would not have gotten off the ground if it wasn’t for your diligence and commitment to excellence.

I also have to thank all of you who have donated to this film—family, friends, friends of friends, friends of family, strangers I’ve never met but who I hope to shake their hands. Thank you all for your overwhelming support. Our goal on Kickstarter was to raise $350. Your contributions totalled $730: twice our goal.

The other thing I reflect upon as I write this final production diary, as tears thinly hide behind my eyes, is how far I have come in just 19 years. I can still remember asking my mom for permission to use her videocamera to make a movie with friends; her showing me how to work it: press the red button to start or stop, this lever zooms, this is the lens cap. Slowly, as I began to monopolize the camcorder more and more, I stopped asking my mom for permission to use the videocamera. When it finally died, after several years of service, I saved up money to buy my very own videocamera. Of course, a digital videocamera was expensive for a fifth grader to save up for, but my parents helped split the cost. My parents have always been supportive, and have made sure that the price of expensive equipment hasn’t held me back from progressing as a filmmaker. Whether it was loaning me money, splitting costs, or coming up with more chores to get paid for, my mom and dad, grandma, aunt, uncle, cousins, and sister have always been supportive of my creative endeavors in film. It was my family that supported me, complimented me, encouraged me, and who were there for me each year I participated in the 48 Hour Film Project. One year, when my grandma asked if I’d rather just work with my friends for the competition, I said, “Of course not. I need you guys.”

And I do.

I really, really do.

What’s more, I want you all to know how much I appreciate your encouragement. My mom could easily have told me, “No, you can’t use the camcorder; it’s very expensive.” But she didn’t. 

Thank you, mom. Thank you, dad. Thank you Maggie and Dee and Ree and Brian and Morgan and Julie and Rachel and Gran and Grandad and Uncle B, and anybody else who I’ve forgotten, and I’m sorry if I have forgotten anybody, and please know that I am thankful, so incredibly thankful for all your support.

The film is complete. It’s taken three months, but it’s done.

I can’t wait to share it with all of you. I can’t wait to show you what you’ve had a hand in creating.

I know you’ll all be proud.

LOVE,

BRENT

“January” Production Diary #9

We have been hard at work the past few days, and the film is really coming along. Not much to really report, as they’ve all been minuscule polishing sorts of things, but the film is almost ready to be graded.

We have confirmed that a high school class of juniors studying American Film will have “January” screened to them in its current iteration, so that we can get feedback from a diverse group of audience-members before we start submitting it to festivals. I’m pretty pumped to get lots of feedback on it, and I’m definitely interested to see what several classes of high schoolers think about it—hopefully they can connect to it in some way, but regardless it’s great to get it out there.

In lieu of more words (I’m not feeling verbose today, how strange!) I’ll post a bunch of pictures from the process. Hopefully they’ll give you some insight into production!

LOVE,

BRENT

“January” Production Diary #8

It’s been a while. I’ve been busy. Hello, again!

Production on “January” (which I can never decide if I should italicize or put in quotation marks) is coming along quite nicely. Several days ago, we looked at a rough-cut of the film, to see how we needed to proceed forward in order to meet our deadline, February 29th.

When I looked at the rough-cut, I was not happy with it. There were some fundamental issues in this rough-cut, namely pacing. Many of the cuts felt quite mechanical, and the edit was desperately in need of more organic, fluid editing. It felt clunky. At this point, Chris, Dan, and I had a conversation about how to proceed, and we decided to split the work up to cover more ground more quickly. Chris would re-edit several sequences, going off of my notes, and would begin synchronizing the audio. As Chris was doing this, Dan and I would work on fine-tuning Chris’ edits, and polishing up the scenes.

The outlook was grim, to be generous. We had 16 days and were almost a month behind, due to how long it had taken us to get the rough-cut completed. I was terrified.

After the first two days, things were looking slightly more positive. The first scene was looking ten times better, but I was still pretty scared. We had completed roughly a minute and fifty seconds of the film, which will have a total running time of about twenty-four minutes. That meant that we were only 8% done after two days of work. 14 more of these eight-percent-two-days would mean that we’d only be between 60%-70% done with the final film, on the day we needed to submit it to the festival.

It was a weird feeling to have; on one hand, the film was looking miles better, but on the other it was still taking a long time to complete things, as we were trying to get this next cut as close-to-perfect as possible. With these doubts in mind, I went to bed Monday night.

The rest of the week has been a blur. Somehow it was Tuesday, now it’s Friday, and the film is now in the 50%-60% range. Dan, Chris, and I have kicked it into overdrive, but I must really give a hand to Chris and Dan, as they’ve been spending most of their free-time working on the film. It’s really coming along, and one of Chris’ re-edits was so close to the mark, that it only took about an hour to clean it up, and make it even better. Dan, too, has been cranking out tons of high-quality work, and he is easily one of the most efficient editors I’ve ever seen work. 

The film is looking great. It’s really coming together, and the stark contrast between Sunday’s edit and our current, working edit is almost laughable. What’s even more encouraging is that after we complete the montage—which we’re having tons of fun with, props to Zach and Evan for really bringing a lot of energy to this scene—we don’t have much more to polish. Of the remaining four scenes, two of them are monologues, which are 99% perfect, and one of the other scenes, the big argument between Evan and Steph—which still gives me chills when I watch it—is close-to-perfect as well. 

What’s even more encouraging is the fact that tomorrow is Saturday, meaning no classes. From tonight until the end of tomorrow night, we can just start grinding out as much of this edit as possible. Once we have the next edit to start cleaning up, we get to start screening the film to test audiences. This could happen as early as Sunday afternoon, and is a particularly exciting/scary part.

One thing that I’d like to do before I’m finished with this post is shout-out to Jack Atterholt, AKA “Drivel Kid,” who’s done the soundtrack for this film. His soundtrack is phenomenal. The tracks are evocative, poignant, and beautiful. Not only is it a great collection of pieces, they are adding SO MUCH to the editing process. They’re bringing the performances and visuals to life in such a vibrant way, that it’s impossible to imagine any other soundtrack working for the film at all. It’s been a pleasure working with him throughout, and the quality of his compositions is truly appreciated. I know that he’s working on his next album, and I’ll make sure to provide you with the link when it’s released; this guy is going places.

The adventure is beginning to come to a close, but we’ll still be hard at work after we meet deadline; after all, what’s a DVD without special features?

Get there.

LOVE,

BRENT