Cinefile

Hi, Cinefilers!  

Now that we’re almost wrapped on pick-ups (one shot left!), I could talk about how far we’ve come, how much further we must go, and the trials and drama of getting there.  And I will.  Another time.

Instead of talking production details though, this time I’d like to talk about one crewmember in particular.  Her name is Katharin Mraz, and she’s the amazing lead producer on Melody and the Old Sock.   I’ve been watching her pour her heart and soul into building her company (Ladie K Productions, Inc) first hand as she goes to school online full-time, modeling to pay the day to day bills, while raising a 5 year old and dealing with my knuckleheadedness on a day to day basis.  It boggles the mind.  

K came to the production with experience, having made a few shorts and acted in several films.  She co-wrote and starred in a feature while living in Hawaii, which is also where she started her modeling career.  Katharin is currently in post on 3 short films of her own, has just completed a radio drama, and may be taking her next production to India.

On Melody, not only did she find and coordinate much of our cast and crew, some on very short notice, she pushed up her sleeves and participated in craft services, MUA and wardrobe for doubles, props, etc.

Clearly, she’s a workaholic.  Her efforts during the first run of production, coupled with some hardline contract negotiation, earned her company an “In Association With” credit on the film.

Katharin was the 2nd producer to join us, after Ryan Atenhan, but quickly took the reigns and stormed ahead, asking piles of the right questions, putting gears in motion, and working with Ryan and the rest of the team to get us through the arduous exterior shoot last year.  As Ryan took a step back to focus on other things, she stuck with the project through some very difficult times and got us through interiors in March, partnering with Joel Sacramento, who officially joined us as a producer after exteriors.  

As we moved into post, she handed the reigns to Joel, though she can't help but stay involved.  Where does she find the time?

Check out producer Katharin Mraz of Ladie K Productions Inc:

www.imdb.com/name/nm3284397/
www.facebook.com/LadieKproductions
www.facebook.com/Ladiekproductionsinc
www.modelmayhem.com/204379

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Scott at 1/18/12 12:27 a.m.

Thanks, Mike. More soon! I look forward to sharing how our final shot, the "Stringtunnel," comes together.

Mike at 11/21/11 9:30 a.m.

Awesome stuff scott. Thanks for posting. Look forward to seeing more.

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Principle for Melody and the Old Sock has wrapped.  Again, very satisfied with the footage.  It was quite challenging, and I'm glad I was surrounded by such amazing people.  I may *technically* be a director, but it's gonna be a while before I consider myself a good one.   

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2 weeks to go on our Kickstarter deadline, and we're at 40% of our goal.  We just sent out another email to the crew, asking for their support, and will follow up with phone calls this week.  I'm also sending out press releases to various sites, which might result in a new contributor here or there.  One of our producers has urged me to recut the Kickstarter video to remove most of the pleading, and all of the "bleeps," and I think it's a good idea.  

There has been a metric crapload of behind the scenes drama in the time since we shot exteriors, but most of it appears to have been resolved.  I'd love to write about it here, right now, but I don't wish to alienate anyone.  I'll write about it all at some point after production, changing names to protect egos.  I look forward to telling the story, especially calling myself out for some of the dipsh*t decisions that I've made along the way.

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A week into our Kickstarter campaign, and we're almost 25% funded.  Most of the movement came from folks we contacted directly, though we got a few takers from among the good people who were browsing the Kickstarter site while we were still listed on the front page of the "New and Noteworthy" category.  I suspect we'll get a nice bump if and when one of the Kickstarter admins decides to feature us as a "Project of the Day" at some point.  Until then, we'll work harder on getting the word out.  Cinefile's Nelson Carvajal gave us a laundry list of solid ideas when I hit him up minutes before launching on the site, and we're working on putting those into motion one by one.  Our Kickstarter goal is 10 grand, but actual costs will be quite a bit higher, so we hope to surpass it.

Speaking of costs, I got my taxes done this week, and added up my 2010 Melody expenses.  Holy Cow! 

If anyone here has Kickstarter campaign advice, I'm all ears!

link

Kickstarter >> Melody and the Old Sock by Scott Feigen

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/185...

Scott Feigen is raising funds for Melody and the Old Sock on Kickstarter! Dark Fantasy meets Psychological Thriller meets the coolest sock puppet ever.

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Nelsoncarvajal at 2/11/11 11:14 a.m.

I really think you guys are putting together a great product at Kickstarter. In fact, your campaign is inspiring me to try and knock out some radical DIY cinema fundraising/moviemaking over the next month on Kickstarter too (though not on the scale of your awesome film!).

We'll definitely keep plugging away with Melody's campaign. Besides, I plan on crashing your party at Sundance 2012.

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I put up our Kickstarter page tonight.  After doing so, I contacted the producers, department heads and talent, asking for them to try to drum up a few donations tonight before we make it official on our facebooks and twitters and whatnot tomorrow.  

I feel good about what we put up there, but I can't help but wonder how much buy-in we'll get from the crew, and we kinda need everybody's buy-in to make this Kickstarter campaign work.  When we put up the facebook page, we asked our crew to share it and court likes from their FB friends, without much success.  Were we asking too much by requesting that our crew put the Melody FB page in their feeds every so often, or was it that we didn't ask the right way, or maybe the content just wasn't compelling enough?  

We haven't shot since October, so most of the crew probably hasn't given the film a second thought in months.  I, of course, can't NOT think about it.  Every day.  All the time.  Like a crazy person.

QUESTION:
What IS the right way to ask your cast and crew to put the Kickstarter word out to their friends, family, and business associates?  What will make it appealing and fun for them? 

link

Kickstarter >> Melody and the Old Sock by Scott Feigen

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/185...

Scott Feigen is raising funds for Melody and the Old Sock on Kickstarter! Dark Fantasy meets Psychological Horror meets the coolest sock puppet ever.

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Working with friends is very rewarding, but it ain't always easy.  That goes triple when you're in a relationship.  In either case, when there's conflict, you just gotta suck it up, drive on, and take the high road whenever possible.  Obviously.

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Scott at 12/22/10 11:56 p.m.

Amen, brother

Mike at 12/22/10 8:40 p.m.

Right on. It isn't always obvious though. :)

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Nelson boiled down a half hour of rambling into this piece.  Cast & crew that aren't mentioned in the vid should know that we raved about 'em.  Seriously.  Raved.  Like lunatics.  

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Scott at 12/22/10 5:49 p.m.

Thx, Mike

Mike at 12/4/10 3:53 p.m.

It was a great interview by all of you, by the way.

Mike at 12/4/10 3:45 p.m.

Let it be known!

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MELODY AND THE OLD SOCK

SLEEP 

As I continue to take inventory of what went right and what went wrong during exteriors, and consider how to make things run even better in the second phase of shooting, I keep coming back to the same thing: I NEEDED TO GET MORE SLEEP!

Since I'd never helmed anything the scale or complexity of Melody, the 2 weeks leading up to shooting exteriors were jam packed with a surprising number of last minute issues to address.  Couple that with trying to squeeze in a few more days of work, and I barely got any sleep during the final preproduction push, maybe 4 hours a night.  Apparently, I had the fakakta idea that I'd somehow catch up during the shoot; predictably, I was mistaken.

During the 2 week long shoot, I never got more than a couple hours of sleep a night.  Because we shot at night, and never got started as early as we could have, we were inevitably packing up the gaff truck as the sun rose.  It took a while to wind down, and because by that time everyone had gone to grab some shuteye, I cleaned up whatever carnage still remained from the night's shooting, and thought about what we nailed that night and what we didn't.  

I woke up 1 1/2 to 2 hours after falling sleep every morning, my head filled with all the things that had to be in place to get the day's shots.  We planned the shots carefully, but pulling off your vision on location is always fraught with unanticipated challenges. 

Fortunately, our department heads and producers were always on top of what needed to be done, and talent remained professional and flexible throughout the process.  By 3 days in of shooting, I was starting to space out here and there.  In those moments, there was a marked delay between when someone asked a question, and when the rusty gears in my head cranked up to speed to access the answer.  It was a pretty crappy feeling.  Howevah...

Because Delaney Teichler (our DP) knew the shots like the back of his hand, I trusted him to make practical creative decisions on the fly in those moments when I was out of it.  He and Christian Hins (our Gaffer) made it possible for me to get by, by giving me a beautiful image on the monitor to tweak shot by shot.  And that's how I got by when I was in that waking coma: shot by shot.

Our lead (Karisa) was occasionally...nonplussed that I wasn't giving her more specific direction when resetting for another take, or when I took an extended, exhausted moment to process and respond.  When something was obviously off, particularly with blocking in the frame, it was easy to tell her what to do differently.  In many cases, what wasn't quite right about a given take was a subtle performance issue with either line delivery or business, and I just needed her to do it again.  Every read is different, and every take has the potential to surprise you in a hundred beautiful ways.  In general, our talent (Monica, Carmine, Tom and Karisa) showed a great deal of patience with my sleep-deprived brain, and found a way to interpret the coded transmissions that were my notes to them.  What this entry all comes down to is:

GET SOME DAMN SLEEP 
and 
SURROUND YOURSELF WITH TALENTED, DEDICATED CAST AND CREW!

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Scott at 12/3/10 2 p.m.

I realize that I never specifically mentioned Terry Jun (my Atomic Puppy partner and Melody's A.D.), and the rest of the crew that stepped up all over the place, most of them dealing with sleep deprivation themselves. Everybody else: consider yourself mentioned.

Bava6 at 12/3/10 12:17 p.m.

Wow, quite a tale. I can't say you don't have dedication. I see what they mean when they say making movies is really hard. Your movie looks really cool, too.

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MELODY AND THE OLD SOCK

KICKSTARTER

We shot the talking heads stuff for our Kickstarter video last night.  Ironically, the time we spent shooting talent was far greater than the time it took to shoot behind the scenes folks.  Y'know, on second thought, maybe it's not so ironic.  We expect a lot from talent.  They're versatile, and can bring something new to every read, which is great fun to watch.  

We hope to raise 10 grand through Kickstarter.  It's a bit of a nail biter.  10 thousand seemed like a whole lot of money when we started preproduction 8 months ago, but we spent more than that in the first block of exteriors alone, much of it simply feeding and reimbursing expenses for cast and crew.  

Today comes the surprisingly challenging task of making the final selection in terms of other content that will appear in the vid, both dailies and behind the scenes footage.  There's a bunch of stuff we COULD use, but which is best?  How much is too much?  We wanna keep the running time short, but meaty enough to be effective.

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Plucharc at 12/4/10 2:31 p.m.

I'm sure you have, but if you haven't, take a look at some of the most successful KickStarter campaigns. There's no better way to get an idea of what works and doesn't than by looking at similar pitches (length, genre, etc.). I'm sure you've got some great stuff though, so I look forward to checking it out.

Take Care,
Chris

Bridgeworkpictures at 11/18/10 4:01 p.m.

USE ALL OF IT!!!

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MELODY AND THE OLD SOCK

NIGHT SHOOT IN THE WOODS: LOGISTICS I

We shot the bulk of exteriors for our dark fantasy short Melody and the Old Sock in October 2010, in a little town called Wauconda that's about an hour outside Chicago.  We shot everything at night in the woods on private property, except for a single night of shooting on a public road, which I'll ramble about in another post. 

Predictably, working in the woods was logistically challenging.  We were fortunate to have a nearby location to park the gaff truck, but it was still something of a bitch to deal with.  Trip hazards abounded, and flashlights were at a premium halfway through the shoot, what with crew members occasionally bringing them home and forgetting to return with them.

We used two generators.  One was quiet, the other... not so much.  Luckily we had a resident genius (Terry) who built a baffle made of, believe it or not, plywood and pink insulation.  Kept Pete the sound guy happy, and kept the neighbors from complaining.  One of the generators went down continuously throughout the shoot, and the solution wasn't discovered 'till the last couple days of shooting.  Until then, it was mostly our key grip Manny who tore ass through the trees on a moment's notice to bring it back online every time. 

Lighting dept had the greatest continuous challenge of all the departments, what with having to go back and forth to the gaff truck, and wrangle lights and cables in and around the trees.  With the guidance of our fantastic gaffer Christian, they pulled off some very high quality stuff, despite the difficulties.  It added time to each setup, something we quickly learned to adjust for.  We ended up dropping a few shots here and there, to focus on covering a bit more of the action in fewer shots than we originally planned.

There was one key reason we chose to shoot the EXT scenes that took place in the woods during the first 2 weeks in October, despite the damp cold: Mosquitoes.  Chicago had something of a record year for the little bastards this year, and when we scouted the location in the spring, they were bloody awful!  Every step summoned a cloud of 'em.  By October they're usually pretty dormant, and this year was no exception, thankfully.  The almanac predicted that we wouldn't get a huge amount of rain during the shoot, and luckily, that turned out to be the case.  

Another major issue with logistics was transportation of cast and crew from Chicago to the suburbs.  With no reliable public transportation options to help folks move 50 miles each way at odd hours, our producer K spent an inordinate amount of time just trying to get 30 people from place to place, which took a great deal of time away from her myriad other duties.  

* * *

We're currently scheduled to shoot interiors in January, and clean up the 3 remaining EXT scenes in March.  I'll continue to post musings on what we've already shot, and our challenges as we move into the next phase of shooting.

I'll wrap this first post by thanking Nelson Carvajal for turning me on to this site, and prompting me to start sharing our experiences here.  Thanks, Nelson!

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Plucharc at 12/4/10 2:29 p.m.

I'll never get tired of reading stories from the battlefield. The decision to shoot in early October was wise as nobody likes being eaten up while they're already dealing with a nighttime shoot in the woods.

I also feel for your producer, I've definitely found myself caught in that transportation nightmare.

Thanks for sharing!

Take Care,
Chris

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