I should have my head examined...

...for filming a scene where I sing a song right next to a really loud fountain.

Animus: TEAM DRAMA

Animus from Cold Coffee Media on Vimeo.

5:00 am : watched our full rough edit

I am taking that filmmakers have been blurry-eyed editing and that is why the blogging is getting lack... but a quick update - as we have a lot to do in less than 12 hours. The rough edit made me happy! Real Happy! I was worried about length but I think I may be able to get the film at exactly 15 minutes... (another challenge).

Jason Grech (Mad Man Editor) put together some great titles and we are working hard to even out the sound a bit - as that will potentially be the crowd killer - I also realized I would be a much better "silent film" director - I talk too much during the scene and now I have to spend a few hours getting rid of my voice from the scenes.

So to it I go, I hope the rest of the folks are enjoying this sleepless phase... kind of surreal.

P.S. I wanted to get you a teaser trailer: maybe it will happen - but don't hold it against me.



*image of my timeline! - Lots of Cuts!

i think its gunna get crazy...

so with the onset of a sleepless night i start to play with graphics and i waste like 3 hours working on cool titles... better turn the sails back westward!

TEAM ACTION WRAPS! - we hope

That's a wrap! Hot damn - I think we have everything we need - if not - it is up to post production to fill in the holes. An impromptu scene with Shane Morgan and Jeff Clark sealed the deal.

We are now prepping with a little food, drink, and brewing the coffee for the all nighter. We will see you all tomorrow. Will try to post up a teaser trailer ASAP! Happy post productions!

One more scene!

So last night was a tremendous success - I have to thank Kathleen and Bruce Weimer (La Grande Fire Chief) for their blessing and access to the Eastern Oregon Fire Museum. It was a great location to shoot in. We shot our two final fight scenes in their and had a great time weaving in and out of some of La Grande's history.



David Cheney (Not sure the spelling of his last name yet) , Mike Cooper, and Buck Potter along with Action hero Jeff D. Clark choreographed some more awesome fight scenes and made it easy for me to jump in with the camera and get all the angles we needed. The shoot took about 4 hours and we were all exhausted afterwords ... hence no blog last night.

Jason is currently hard at work editing up the fight footage as well as the footage we had shot at Hought's earlier yesterday. Thank you Carla for the use of your space -

I am working on the final scene that we will be shooting in the next couple of hours... and that will be a wrap! Will blog a bit more after that.

Planning on an all nighter tonight - so if you see the Cold Coffee Lights on it means we are hard at working making some sense of our action film!

unitl then.... (* the photo is of Jeff and Dan - bloodied up for the final battle!)

We're finished filming? For real?

Yes,
We are. We double, triple, quadruple, and dare I say quintuple checked our shooting script, and can now safely say, we have filmed everything we could ever need. After capturing the footage, the total came to just shy of ... I don't remember. A long time. Then like some crazy person, I stayed up till close to 4am editing the whole thing because I just couldn't stand the suspense. All that's left now is dumping on some more music and SFX, which we will be doing tonight.

Shooting last night went very well, largely thanks to Dan who, with the help of highlighters, and a tazer kept my sleep deprived mind at least somewhat on track. The sporadic rain proved to be a formidable challenge, but if anyone complains about continuity I can say "We filmed this in three days!" and then punch them right in the kisser.

I've had two full time jobs this week, and I do believe it's starting to catch up to me. So I shall bid you all a fond farewell until Friday evening. I'll add some pictures to this blog later this evening from my death bed.

Shooting is Wrapped for the Musical!

Ok, yesterday was a big day. For some reason I got it on my crazy head to create the biggest, most elaborate scene with as many people as I could possibly muster up. This is a difficult task for may reasons; the first being that there are three other crews shooting three2 other films around town, so gathering extras that aren't being used by another crew is challenging to say the least.

The scene I'm referring to is out opening scene which takes place outside the La Grande public library, which is the location I drew out of a hat on Monday.  We set up the outside of the library as a promenade of street performers with crowd members watching an wandering around while our lead actress walks past.  I was so impressed with the turnout of volunteer actors who dressed themselves as mimes, belly-dancers, magicians and more.

The highlight for me was that my friend Benjamin  Morgan, the award-winning director of Quality of Life showed up with his family to be crowd members.  When Ben realized that I was just about in over my head in dealing with the 30-ish people who had showed up to act, he offered to help in directing the extras.  This was a live-saving gesture that completely ensured our success for the day as far as I'm concerned.

I've been behind the camera for the majority of the shoot, except for the two scenes where I'm actually on camera.  Chuck Peters had been awesome at taking the reigns during those times. We've worked together on several projects over the years and I was blessed to have drawn his name out of the hat.  I'm having an awesome time working with him on this film.

This morning we shot the final scene in Bud Jackson's Sportsman's Bar and Grill.  The scene featured Josie Quillan and myself, and is the most dialogue-driven scene of our script.  It ties the story together like The Dude's rug.  It went very well to say the least.

This evening I've laid out a rough edit just to see how long the film will be.  It's looking like a healthy 12 minutes.  That's gonna work out just fine.

Tomorrow is going to be a long day of editing.  I'm stoked.  I've been experimenting with some digital orchestra through Garage Band, and I will also be recording some original music that I wrote for the film.  Miranda is interested in the editing process, so I think she'll be my sidekick for as long as she can hang  :)

P.S.  I stopped by the Firestation Museum for a few minutes and watched the Action Team filming a fight scene.  It was incredible.  I cant wait to see all these movies on Friday Night!!!

See you at Max Square!

Mike Surber

Relying heavily on editing - and post!

It is becoming pretty apparent that although I had a basic story in mind - that a lack of a solid concept is taking its toll. We have some great scenes shot - some not so great scenes, some big holes altogether, and a brand new concept dreamt of last night - to creatively implement without much of a structured script.

So that's happening... here is a recap of yesterday.

Shooting (TUESDAY AUGUST 19):
6:00: shot a great fight scene in the alley way behind "Ricki Lees" - the old "Mamacitas". Buck and Dan spent 3 hours getting beating down by Jeff. We did some great choreography - pulled off a few stunts (no one got hurt) .

10:00 am: We shot some of the initial establishing shots at Hought's 24 Flavors. We were missing our lead actor so we got a bunch of filler shots of kids eating ice cream, restaurant patrons and establishing our "Handler/Mystic" Renae Wells. Weather or not any of that is useable - only time will tell.

9:00 pm: We decided we needed a filler scene to establish why one of the thugs was not getting beat up in the fight scene we shot earlier in the day (Mike Cooper) had to work. So we visited Waypoint Studio where Test Audiences were rehearsing for Saturday's music at the festival. They were gracious enough to give us 20 minutes of their time to shoot. Thanks TA.

OTHER HAPPENINGS YESTERDAY:

1. The Fire Museum:

Took some photos at the Fire Museum - and was greeted warmly by Kathleen and the Fire Chief (Thanks for the SUpport and excitement.) We will be shooting a nice chase scene through out the classic fire engines tonight.

2. Mega Beard Records

About 1:00 am this morning I decided to go home and try to get 6 hours of sleep in - when I stumbled upon the MEGA BEARD crew - they had a cd of music for us and our fight scenes... so I walked back in and we all sat (Avery, Jeff, Jason, and I ) a previewed some great action music (beats?) music... laid it under our roughly cut fight scene from earlier that day - and BOOM - we had a solid scene - It is pretty amazing how much we can take the sound and music of a film for granted - when really it is the connective tissue to the whole project... Huge thanks Mega Beard !

A little late with the Blog ...

Don't worry, I'm not still up, but after sleeping two hours Sunday night, and four hours Monday night, I promised myself that I'd go to sleep as soon as we were done filming Tuesday. So, filming went faster than expected again, when our other location ended up working perfectly. A big part of that is thanks to Trish, who went crazy with arranging her house for us. We were done by 9 and I was home in bed pretty close to 10 o'clock, and I've got to tell you, I feel like a million bucks today after sleeping for around 10 hours.

Here are a couple pictures from Monday night's filming that didn't make it into Monday night's blog:







Now all that needs to happen is sunny weather, and so far today, it's not looking very promising. Oh well ... improvisation is our friend.