Bender!

So in the race to finish the flick, today I'm synching voices and mixing audio while I watch the box set of Friday the 13th. Watching parts one to eight and drinking coffee, eating junk. Having a ball.

One thousand things still to do, but I see the end, and the premiere has been booked. It will be a pretty big night, first time shoawing the film to an audience. But not worried right now, the film has taken on such a life of its own, everyday it gets better, I'm proud of it.

FIGHTEVIL
SDROG

MAD RACE!!!

It's like theater, nothing happens until the last second, and you have no idea how it's all going to come together, and at the last second, at the zero hour, as you stare down the horror and give in to it, miracles happen and things start to gel.

6/6/6 at Startime Cinemas in Roswell GA will be our first screening.

Laura Mallis
Robert Sasaki
Richard Servello
Chris Rickwood
Jayson Hammett
Mike Jackson
Jeff Harden
S.C. Caruso
Jeremy Sewell

These are the people working their asses off to see it happens. I'm just sound editing and doing a bit of last second ADR (chicken voice).

So much has happened in the two months since the last blog, it'll take some time to get it all figured out, but the movie is starting to feel like a, gulp, movie.

FIGHTEVIL and get back to work!
SD

Update 2000

So here's what's going on,

We are talking to a NEW composer, one who looks very promising and who has done some really cool projects in the past. I will be meeting with him later in the month, after I send him a copy of the flick.

I saw some tests for the opeing credit sequence by Jeremy Sewell. These blew my mind and I'm so glad I went with a talented detail oriented graphic designer instead of slapping something together myself on the Adobe Titletronomatic.

The foley breakdown is done, looking forward to sound grabbing.

Synching the ADR is still going on. Very time consuming.

FIGHTEVIL
SAM DROG

Perspective

This is a picture of me and some friends, some of whom worked on Zombeak!, after working on a short film called Glorious. The director, Jayson Hammett, is on the floor and he's been a bud of mine for about 13 years. Behind the camera is Mike Jackson, who did the concept art for Zombeak! and who is an awesome guy. The long blond haired guy is Aidan Hayes who is now in L.A. hobnobbing but who worked as assistant camera on Zombeak! Glorius was a shitty day of shooting in the rain and a lot of damn fun. Making little short films is awesome and something I'm looking forward to doing once I'm done choaking this chicken.

It's an exciting time for short films due to the internet and so many streaming sites; a worldwide audience. Google video has one of my old things up, called sixty seconds, you can check it out here...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6708249318795555648&q=sixty+seconds

So anyway, just editing away at the soundtrack, getting voices in place, chop chop chop. And sometimes you really feel like this process will never end, that you haven't gotten anywhere, that the film will beat you, so it's time to be objective.

I can't remember a time where I wasn't working on this movie, so I did something, went through all the documents and letters and tracked the progress of the film.

written June 03 -3 months- Sept 03
propro Sept 03 -9 months- June 04
shot June 04 -3 months- August 04
picture edited August 04 -8 months -april 05
sound edited April 05 -10 months- feb 06
effects and tweeking Feb 06 -4 months- june 06
world premiere 6/6/6

Of coarse this premiere is barring me getting a bad parasite and eating my family, but I see it as fate that the process has taken so long for us to have such a boss opening night.

About every section takes about as long as it takes to have a baby, so maybe this is just natural human gestation. Or maybe I'm on crack.

Regardless, filmmaking is a never ending mo-fo that beats the crap out of you mentally, physically, spiritually; then makes you yern to do it all over again.

FIGHTEVIL
sdrog

Scare the SHIZZILE out of ya!

So here is a frame grab I got from one of the effects artists today as he adds demonic glowing eyes to the film. Pretty neat!

Also I'm so excited at how much the sound work is adding to the film. We have one character, Samuel, who is this hulking mountain of a man, and adding his breathing and maniacal laughter to scenes creates so much dread in the atmosphere. He's like a Darth Vader presence through out the movie.

More later...

FIGHT EVIL

SMEAR MACHINE

SO I’m just really stoked that I can put photos up on the blog that I decided to throw this one up here, it’s of my editing station. I finally have it how I like it, minus my John Carpenter signed Halloween poster mounted above.

You MAC heads can sit back smugly and mock my DELL system running Adobe Pro. It doesn’t crash nearly as much as it should, cause I drive this puppy like a mule. It does fine, I just need MORE PROGRAMS!!! Programs for lightning, programs for fog, programs to turn home movies into Big Trouble in Little China spectacles.

Because I’m feeling freaky and because when I was trying to get a system together I got a lot of bunk from a lot of people, I’m just going to tell you people out there who are trying to build a system to edit on what I’m using, and it’s working fine for me.

Precision WorkStation 340
Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.53GHz
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
1 GB RAM
Hard Drives = 456.30 GB (I have 366 GB used up)
Adobe Premiere Pro
Video Card Radeon VE
Sound Card Creative SB Live! Series (WDM)
I have two internal DVD drives, but unfortunately Dell only provides (at the time) a DVD-RW only burn drive so I bought
Memorex 1394/USB20 Drive IEEE 1394 SBP2 Device to store on DVDs

FIGHT EVIL

Tisket a Basket Case

So everyone laughed about the sleep deprivation that goes on with a new baby, and let me just say…

Believe the Hype.

I’ve felt like a zombie most my life, but nothing compared to the drooling shambling foul tempered corpse that I’ve become since the arrival of “The One”.

It’s amazing how for cuteness will get you. Baby Sarah can vomit and piss all over you, can not allow you to sleep more then an hour and a half at a time, but she’s sooooo cuuuute! Can’t be mad at her. Just look at her. What was I complaining about?

So the movie front has had a breakthrough on music with the addition of Ken Henslee joining our mad little cult. We’ve discussed ideas over the phone, he lives in Athens, and he proved himself to be totally committed by scoring 12 minutes of film in the last week. Sure it’s just ideas of how the scenes can go, but I find him dead on with my sensibilities, and is willing to show me unfinished work, and that is so rare. Most artists won’t show you jack until it is framed and mounted and completely concrete. Hell, I’m like that. I’m completely like that. But I don’t have to work with me.

My point is that Ken is a collaborator that doesn’t get precious about what he’s doing and that is invaluable, maybe I can learn something from him.

We continue recruiting people for the digital effects, just so many shots to put out before my desired release date. Hell, I even got a copy of Photoshop to throw in myself.

The synching of voices is time consuming and maddening. I can’t wait to get to the foley. Then it will be me and some friends with I-RIVERS hitting the streets for all manors of sounds, both practical and bizarre.

FIGHT EVIL

Baby City

I gotz me a baby! She's 8 lbs 14 ozs and was born on Jan 11th and came home on Friday the 13th! Life is great, I find myself staring at the baby for hours and just everything is revolving around this little girl, Sarah. She is pure joy.

I showed her her first horror film on the 14th, The Dead Next Door. She loved it and couldn't believe what Bookwater pulled off with such limited means. I loved it too.

So I'm on vacation next week and plan on synching the remaining voices when not playing with the baby.

On a downer side, our composer has had to bow out due to having the new and demanding job of designing a monorail for San Diego. Disappointing sure but we'll soldier on and usually this means an unexpected blessing down the road. Every set back really just makes the film stronger.

I recieved some effects from Matt Green te other day and was impressed. Finally seeing these things makes me very happy. We still have a long way to go, and are farmng out effects to several more peeps to meet our release date.

There are also some really cool promotion opportunities coming up that I hope will get the name Zombeak out there.

But the next bite of the elephant for me will be to synch up the voices, and then I'll worry about the next thing, and that will be foley.

Here's some cool flicks I just saw:
OLDBOY
CREEP
DEAD NEXT DOOR
EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE
GODZILLA: FINAL WARS

All of these where awesome!

FIGHTEVIL
SAMDROG

Creepy Voodoo Chick

So now we've finished getting Vascara looped into the movie so that completes that whole redub the whole movie thing that we neurotically decided to do. Why? Well, you got to love it when you rent a flick and you can't understand a damn word the people are saying and of coarse there was the whole "hey, I can hear every sound on the planet in the back ground, including me weeping."

So we've replaced all the lines of dialogue with fresh shiny new ones and now we do need to grab a few more lines from the bit players, but that's like a total of three lines and no big jump there.

I'm meeting with the Green Machine next week to pick up some effect shots that he's been hammering away on as he moves his stuff in to Atlanta from Pittsburgh and New Orleans. I like working with roaming gypsies, they bring a certain salt of the earthness to the work.

I've told the rest of the peeps (music and titles) to continue on in their secret labs and to surprise me with wonderful gifts of movie stuff as it comes to them, as I will be deep into foley and synching and all sorts of technical mumbo-jumbo while also having my first child, a girl, due the thirtieth of this month. Exciting stuff and I can't wait to teach her how to be a sound editor so I won't have to mess with that crap again.

BUT! it seems like we may have a new guy on the film that will be creating a CG skull for the film to lay into a few thingies that will make some cool widgits seem more, how you say... um, fantastico.

FIGHTEVIL
SDROG

Melissa Looped Out

So we have just finished looping out our BBQ waitress / zombie killing actress Melissa Gilbert (not the president of SAG, the other one). So now we just have Vascara left to come in and deliver her long soliloquies on the virtues of the devil EXACTLY LIKE SHE DID IT A YEAR AGO! Piece of cake.

Elsewhere in beak world, music continues to come in from San Fran, and now we have a quicktime version of the trailer on our website! So get groovy with your bad self.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

SO here is the big update.

We have 90 percent of the looping done, and we are now getting music in from our genius in San Diego Charles Hume. It is finally starting to FEEL like a movie as the rough edges are being striped off and the whole thing starts to gel.

It's like plaster drying.

So besides looping and listing to the music, not much more to tell ya, I don't think we're going to have the thing ready by tonight, but ya know, Evil Dead spent three years in post.

I'm hoping to have it done in a few months, here's all that has to happen:

1. looping finished
2. Foley finished
3. jee-wizz digital effects finished
4. opening title sequence finished
5. color correcting finished
6. music finished.
7. sound mix finished.
8. then just watch it one more time and kill the last of my darlings.
9. then the big premiere with lights and paparazzi and crew members overdosing in back alley.

HOORAY! So I think I might actually be able to finish this by Wed.
FIGHTEVIL
SDROG

Loop'n Mo-Fo

So I'm laying in Barry's tracks after spending about a week off. My brain just wanted to destroy. Felt about as creative as a turnip (not very).

BUT MAN! Is the looping of Lucy/Samuel a lot of damn fun! Putting in his dialogue isn't as challenging as far as syncing, because he's wearing a mask most of the time, but the challenge is laying in non stop breathing for all his scenes and not letting on that it's the same breaths, and also making them react to the stuff going on. It's like creating dialogue, and really helps the mood.

Samuel is like a force of nature, and even when off screen, you should be able to hear him breathing and reacting, like a lunatic Greek chorus.

FIGHTEVIL
SDROG

Waz Up

So we have Jason Von Stein looped out and funky, and I vomited a gallon of green tea this morning, so

a) I'm really glad to have another actor's ADR done and
b) you CAN drink too many antioxidants.

Yesterday I met with a cool guy who worked on a flick called Jack O’ Lantern which stars some of the folks from Zombeak! (Tracy and Melissa). I went to pick his brain about distribution and share horror stories. He gave me some cool advice at Chilies.

So right now I'm cutting up the dialogue track for Fasmagger, then we'll get him in here, then finish everyones ADR, then dredge the effects off the mud caked bottom of New Orleans (where Matt Green was working on them), then music, then titles and some screenings, then releasing the thing to a drunken Halloween party somewhere in your future.

Oh yeah, we did do Dragon Con this year and canvassed the place with our fliers. It was cool to see the gang from another Atlanta project GEEKIN. We have Zombeak! actors in this one too! (Adam and Jason) Here's some websites to check out!
http://www.us.imdb.com/title/tt0405055/combined
http://www.geekinmovie.com/

Adam Looped Out!

Hey! Guess What?!?

I finished looping all of Adam's dialogue. Well, I recorded it and stuck it all in the computer, logged it up, just have to sync it now.

I'm doing this not because all the location sound was garbage, because a lot was fine, but man when you compare on set sound to studio sound, there is no comparison. Sound is tricky, and if not nurtured can really wreck your film. I hate the crappy reverb we got in the old house, I didn't notice it until I started replacing it. I love the obsessive compulsive control I can have over every word now. I can make the levels just right, and not have to worry about making the crickets from a mile away getting louder or softer as well.

I got an e-mail from producer Wes telling me he has a grab bag of effects for me, and my heart goes aflutter.

The freaky thing was that Adam was moving this Friday to New York! I though it wasn't until November so when he told me the news, I nearly had a heart attack.

This weekend is Dragon Con! I hope to be a small presence there, even if it's just walking around in a raincoat and whispering the title in rubber tipped ears.

FIGHTEVIL
SDROG

LOOPING UPDATE!

One down, seven to go! Finished Barry the other day, and it is awesome how much looping the movie has improved the whole enchilada.

But, a funny thing about having a lengthy post production, eventually people's lives change and they leave you. Here's a recent e-mail I sent to Adam to arrange his ADR sessions.

Hello!

I hear crazy things the other day while Barry was over looping (yeah, I said looping, can ya dig it!)

I hear you're moving away from the roost and going to the big city with your lady Jennifer, thus beginning a new and exciting chapter in the odyssey of your life. That is beautiful...

AND COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE!!!

What if in seven months I need you to do some obscure promotional stunt for a couple of hours and you're in New York. THANKS A LOT DUDE!!!! No one can move forward with their lives until the movie is done, which I'm shooting for (around) Halloween 2015!

Oh well.

So let's get this crazy thing done with. I need you Adam more then I've ever needed anyone. Please come back to me so we might consummate this movie, and loop your dialogue. Ask Barry, it's a trippy process.

So I see from an email (from six months ago) that you are free Sundays and Mondays! Lets do this on the next Monday you are free. It should only take a day, Barry took longer, but he breaths through the whole movie.

CALL ME XXX-XXX-XXXX

OR

Answer this email with a phone number that works, the one I have for you brings me to some archaic mail box that requires an MIT Degree to figure out.

FIGHTEVIL
SDROG

FAST UPDATE!

1. Began looping Barry "Samuel/Lucy" Bishop's dialogue. This is an intense process that strains the brain and twists the nerves. It's nothing you can just crap out, but will all be worth it though once it's done. Nothing worth doing is easy.

2. I'm starting to get effects in from Green Machine EFX located in New Orleans. I have been told that all the gunshots have been rendered and are in route by mail, and I've seen some tests of some floating Satan presence that is pretty exciting, so we are good in that area.

3. The opening title theme has been put together and I'm waiting to get over to the composers place to grab a listen. Can't wait.

4. The next thing to do will be to put Barry's new lines in the flick and get them to match up and adjust some levels and blah blah blah. He's coming back in in a week to finish up and to edit in the gun shots once they arrive. Oh yeah, and then get the title theme to the title guy so he can start the title sequence for real though.

ROCK!

Breakthrough!!!

Here's an email I got from a cool dude named Tracy from Unspeakable Mag!

hello,
i was curious if you could give me some info on Zombeak...is it available yet, i'd love to check it out....please fill me in when ya can...thanks. Tracy

www.unspeakablemag.com

Unspeakable Magazine
c/0 --Necroscopic Unlimited--
Tracy Crockett

http://www.theancient-movie.com

http://www.unspeakablemag.com
http://www.spellcaster.addr.com http://xsorbit28.com/users5/unspeakableindies/index.php
www.horrorchannel.com
www.everythingscary.com

AND HERE'S WHAT I TOLD HIM!

Greetings Tracy,

Love the trailer, very rad. Damn good idea, a great way to make a movie. Crazy enough to work. Gotta love the people crazy enough to try and do this for a living.

So Zombeak!

It's been cut together and has a nice little flow to it all. For the last two months I have been working on the sound edit; basically teaching myself how to do such a thing, gathering equipment and trying all sorts of different set ups and so forth. Finally I had a break through this very same day when I received a new mike in the mail that has solved all my problems.

So the next step is getting all the actors in for some ADR, I refuse to be one of those low budget movies where you can't tell what people are saying.

On other fronts, we are gearing up for a test screening the first weekend of August to a select group of 17-22 year olds to see how the movie plays. The opening titles are being plotted out by a mad genius. Digital Effects are being hammered on somewhere in New Orleans. Tomorrow we are having a big music jam session to generate ideas and get a temp track for the test screening.

Thanks for asking, we just eat this elephant one bite at a time, it will all be worth it once people everywhere can sit back and enjoy it.

Keep Rock'in
SAM DROG

AND I RECOMEND EVERYONE to check out the sites he mentioned, they be cool brothers.

PRODUCTION E-MAIL!

here's a snipit from my e-mail:
anyone like the Misfits?


-----Original Message-----From: p@yahoo.com [mailto:phibes13@yahoo.com] Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2005 8:43 PMTo: b@hotmail.comSubject: Check out Misfits Meet the Nutley Brass!

Dear john

Have you heard about the new Misfits Lounge CD? It's called "Misfits meet the Nutley Brass: Fiend Club Lounge" and it's a Loungecore tribute to the legendary horror-punk band! The CD is an official Misfits Records release and comes with a free limited edition drink coaster. 'Fiend Club Lounge' includes 11 classic era Misfits favorites interpreted in retro-lounge style! Original Misfits guitarist Franche Coma even commented on the CD saying 'I was truly, truly impressed!'. Check out the eCard and preview 3 songs in their entirety plus see flash animations of the incredible cover art by legendary horror artist Basil Gogos by visiting http://www.rykodisc-media.com/misfits/

and here's what I said

That's hysterical!!!
Hawr hawr hawr!

I'm going into the movie to add some dramatic pauses in the last half, nothing major and nothing that will affect the footage you gave to Matt, just something to give a little more body and atmosphere to the film; it kind of races by like a strobe light. I ain't touching the opening up until the chicken shows, but we need a little more dramatic pausations.

Does the crapping corpse work for you? I might try the scene without it.

Also the title guy is doing storyboards.

The music guy is setting up his studio with a crap load of equipment. He owns the rights to a song that's really big in Greece.

I have the sound board thing set up and humming, it's cool! We'll be able to do so much to the Zombie voices and chicken stuff. Now just sound proofing the room.

Looking forward to ADR, and hearing music, and seeing the effects filter in.

FIGHTEVIL
SDROG

Testing 1,2,3... testing

Wow, sound editing is driving me INSANE! I put a clip on loop and tweek tweek tweek until the words have lost all meaning. It's fun actually, but I know I'm dring the house nuts.

So the computer is taking the mike, but here's the probelm. It gives a decent sound, but the level is low and there is a electrical whine in the background.

I have a camera mike that I could use, gives a strong signal but records every sound in creation.

My camera has no external mike jack. How did I miss that?

LAND OF THE DEAD tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, huff... huff... !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FIGHTEVIL

Summer Con Complete

So we came, we saw, we kicked it's ass!

Summer Con was a lot of fun and gave us a great forum to spread the word of our little killer chicken movie. Thanks Danny, and thanks Summer Con for the invite.

Wes "producer" Campbell and I rambled for a bit, showed a scene, a trailer, some bloopers, and a "on the set" documentary.

It was great to see Susan Waters, one of our actors in the crowd and catch up with her.

Cindy Morgan, the girl from TRON was there, but I was too shy to come up to here and tell here how in love I was with her back when I was eight. It just makes things SO UNCOMFORTABLE! I vowed never to approach another actor I liked from my childhood after blathering infront of Bill "Choptop" Mossely at last years Dragon Con.

Nice dealers room, some great Godzilla merch.

The video presentation went fine, the sound was bad, but it gave me opportunity to blabber more.

Thanks Jayson for coming out, I owe you one.

FIGHTEVIL
SDROG