That is awesome and I hope your editing goes smoothly. Can't wait to see the finished product. And Again, congrats!

This last weekend I completed a rough edit of this film, and the learning experience continues. It's hard to describe just how much I've learned about the movie-making process by doing this whole thing on my own like this. You can go to film school if you want, but being in the middle of the whole thing from beginning to end is some serious real life training complete with mistakes you catch in post and wish you caught on location.

Naturally, I found some amateurish mistakes on my part that I'll learn from for future films. One of the most notable was where the actors' hands ended up during the individual shots. For instance, person A might have their hands folded for their individual shot and the wide shot, but draped over a pillow or something for person B's shot causing a random hand to show up in that shot only, blowing the continuity. This forced me to zoom in on person B in post, throwing off the sharpness of their shot (maybe that was the point - actors are really self-centered at times).

One amusing "mistake" for the moment has to do with clocks in the background. I knew about the clocks, but they really weren't ending up in any shots. Not to the point that you could actually read them anyway. Well, it turns out that one clock turned out to be very, very readable in the only scene where a time was specifically identified. A character spouts out, "you call me over here at 10 o'clock at night..." when the clock behind the person she's talking to clearly shows 9:20. Now, I can always say that we shot this the day before daylight savings time's "fall back", and that character just set his clock back early, but since movies don't come with programs, I'll probably just overdub her saying nine instead of ten since the actual time is unimportant.

It will also be fun to pick out lights in the glass of pictures on the walls, and in some instances, you can probably pick me out of the glass reflections. D'oh. I think I might have seen myself a couple of times, but I only just realized that it might be possible the last time I watched it through. Fortunately, I caught the most blatant instance of this on location and moved the glass. That one would have been embarrassing.

Our next task is to shoot a couple of city shots for some transitions (you know, the unscripted, yet totally necessary stuff), and then I'm turning the soundtrack over to my brother (the light and sound guy) to clean up and balance the sound as well as determine whether we have to rerecord the dialogue of any of the outdoor scenes in a more controlled indoor situation. Also going to be turning over a copy of the rough edit to the guy writing the music as I'd rather someone else deal with it since I'm doing enough.

But it's coming along. Thought I'd throw out an update on it if anyone happened to be interested still.

Finding those little continuity flubs in films can be fun.  And it happens even in the big Hollywood movies.  You may want to have some fresh eyes look at the film.


Phil

I definitely will be doing that when I get it good to my own satisfaction. That second set of eyes that hasn't been immersed in the whole thing for the past four months is beyond useful. That's why the big studios do previews...to get that second opinion. I'm pretty sure the composer hasn't read the script yet, so that'll be fresh eyes number one...

It's been almost a year since the last post on here, but post production is not only complete, but if you search for the title on Amazon, it's out there. How'd it go? Well...

I seem to have some notoriety for sound problems. First, my brother took months in cleaning up the sound to the best of his ability, and then there are still shortcomings. It's mostly good, and don't get me wrong, you can hear and understand everything being said, so volume is no issue. The main problem is inconsistentcy. I ran a leveler on the whole soundtrack so you can hear it all consistently without fooling with your TV volume through the whole stupid film (looking at you Matrix series), but in a couple of places, you can hear the breaks between the cuts. Honestly, only 90 straight seconds bothers me, and I'll bet it'll be forgotten as the film goes on since it's near the beginning.

Issue 2 was that my composer backed out and guess who ended up going back to his roots to write and record the music? Yeah, that'd be me. It wasn't so bad, really. The music feels like it fits the movie, actually, when it comes to the style of its recording. A bonus there is that I also have a soundtrack with my name on it. That proof is forthcoming. But I ended up doing 5 songs for it that I played piano, bass, drums, guitar, and even trombone as well as sang on. You can hear the songs at http://www.myspace.com/georgewillsonmusic.

Since the final runtime of the film was only 72 minutes (still feature length, but a tad short), I added the short I did in 07 as a bonus to the DVD, so you don't feel completely ripped off. I also plugged in a deleted scene (yeah, there was one; go figure), an extended scene, and some outtakes for fun. Because the movie is available on Amazon.com for purchase, I was able to submit the information to imdb.com, and it should be up in probably 3 more weeks (due to the sheer number of new entires needed for it, only one of the actors was already on there).

I may update this thread one more time when it's on IMDB (though I'll more likely kickoff a new thread since it'd be new and different and cool), but as of now, it's done. I'm looking forward to shooting the next one from here which will be a collection of four short horror/thriller pieces (I believe two of the four have been on SS at one time or another). I've given it the title Inexplicable, and it will be a bit more complicated that No Kind of Life, which will be nice. It also isn't, and since most of the previous cast is interested in another go-round, that'll make them happy to do something different.

And if anyone has wondered and just doesn't want to ask, I have kept my mind open as I've read scripts on here to see what might work in my non-budget world, but for now, I'm shooting the ones I have that were specifically written for a microbudget environment to get my feet under me before screwing up someone else's. After all, I would want to deliver something everyone can be proud of, not something that you'll introduce with disclaimers.

Incidentally, if you want to get a copy of it with a discount, and can handle CreateSpace, you can use discount code H63WMLZU at https://www.createspace.com/273480 to get 15% off the purchase price there, which might help with the shipping. I really need to put a trailer together.

Actually, the script is still online at http://www.fempiror.com/otherscripts/NoKindOfLifev3a.pdf. It's the last draft before we started shooting on the 18th, so you'll notice a few things about it that differ from what we normally have around here. First, it has scene numbers. You have no idea how essential scene numbers are when shooting. You'll also notice asterisk along the right hand margin in places along with words in red and even a single line at the top of a couple pages with an A designation. I use Final Draft for the shooting script and lock the pages so that when I have to make changes, the cast only needs the pages that changed. The asterisk and red helps them to find the parts that changed. When I sent this copy, I actually sent another version that showed the previous parts struckout. Final Draft makes that whole part really, really convenient.

Anyway, I'm happy it's done, and I'm looking forward to what comes next.

George,

Congrats, that's good stuff.  I read the script when I first got onto the sight.  Very good. I enjoyed it.  But since you directed it, I'm sure you stayed true to your original intent.

Look forward to seeing it.

Ghostwriter

Greetings once more everyone. I'm posting this to tell you that I posted the trailer into the first post of this thread. So by now, you've probably already seen it and are commenting, but if you haven't, get to post 1 and watch it!

Well done George! It must feel great to have things wrapped up.  It's an amazing commitment to film a feature, something to be proud of - for sure.

Awesome!  George, you're a cool guy I'm glad to see this kind of shit.

I have work now but later I'll send you a PM about No Kind of Life, among other things.  We have stuff to discuss my friend!

Quoted from slabstaa Awesome!  George, you're a cool guy I'm glad to see this kind of shit. I have work now but later I'll send you a PM about No Kind of Life, among other things.  We have stuff to discuss my friend!

I look forward to it. I like to discuss stuff. My freshman feature is behind me. It's time to make something good.

Um . . . this is all well and good but I got a certain Novel By a certain George sitting on my shelf that I will read soon. I hope this project isn't keeping you away from writing your novels incase I should want to read the second part in your chronicles.

Nah, the second book almost has a complete first draft. I can multi-task fairly well. Also planning the next feature... I keep busy.