Moving On

Wow. Two years! Two years since I threw myself into all this, full force. Five years since I wrote the first draft of the script. 16 months since production on "Smalltimore" began. One year exactly since I screened the rough cut. 8 months since the (near) finished product (made a few small tweaks since then). 7 months since our first festival. 5 months since our first award. And four years exactly since my friend Thom, whom "Smalltimore," is dedicated to, died.

I am exhausted, and this is going to be very short. I have been sleeping like a log for the last several nights, now that my plate is nearly cleared. Giving myself a little break before the next big push forward, pursuing distribution, begins. Big screening is past, DVD is available for sale, almost 200 are already in circulation! Christmas is over, have low-key plans with friends for New Year's Eve... time for a little breather.

This afternoon I took my Mom and my brother to see "Dreamgirls" at the Hippodrome for their Christmas present, and I just got back from spending a couple hours at The Havana Club for Kelly Coston's birthday. My hair smells like cigars, but it was worth it to hang out with Kelly and Cheryl for awhile. I really do love that they turned out to be such great friends to each other, as well as friends of mine.

Tomorrow night I will see some more Smalltimore friends, Tucker and the boys et al will be playing at the Cat's Eye Pub in Fells Point for the 4th Annual Thom Hickling Memorial Party, and Phil Calvert promised to meet up with me there. You should join us!

Sorry this is a rather boring post, but it truly is just me winding down after a very long haul. There is still a lot more that lays before me, many miles to go, many challenges to overcome, and I hope you will keep following me through them. Thanks to those who have become my regular readers, and thanks especially to those of you who have been with me from the very beginning (or have gone back and read from the very beginning to catch up!). I look at my blog stats every day, and it is very gratifying to see so many repeat viewer, and viewers that spend a long time on the site. Eases any guilt I have for being long-winded :)

This is my final post on this blog. I have holiday company for a few more days, but soon I will make my first posting on the new blog, www.steelcorsetproductions.blogspot.com. Please add it to your RSS feed and continue on my journey with me. Two years into it, I still learn something new every day, and I am not expecting that to change, ever. I absolutely love that!

I hope all of you are having a fantastic holiday season, and whether 2009 was good to you or if you cannot wait to lay it to rest, I hope you all have big things to look forward to in the New Year, I hope that you have created or are creating great opportunities for yourselves. I myself am looking forward to laying my head on the chopping block - over and over again. Hold my hand?

You Should Be Reading This Blog

This other blog. In ADDITION to mine, that is. If you read this blog regularly, then there is a new blog I think you would be very interested in:

http://50in50.wordpress.com/

This is a new experiment by a guy I know named Brent Rose. Brent was one of the actors with Bill Pullman's "Expedition 6" group that stayed with me for 3 weeks in the summer of 2006. Brent has been living in NYC since then.

I'll let you read his blog instead of me reiterating it in detail, but bare-bones basics, he has decided to create a new character once a week for 50 weeks, and make a short film of it. I think it is an incredible exercise as an actor, and as a director I am enjoying reading about his "process". It is also very ambitious in that so far the shorts have each been about 5 minutes long, which Brett has been editing himself. Since each short has involved multiple scenes/locations, that is a WHOLE lotta time! Creating a character, acting, shooting, editing... it is really impressive if you think about it.

Brent is in his third week, and I have been meaning to mention his blog on this blog from the beginning, but I have been busy. I liked the characters the first two weeks, it seemed light and fun, but this week, "Al Griffin Goes Outside," really blew me away. I am not being facetious when I say, I laughed, I cried. It was so well done, so touching, so believable... and all without a word of dialogue. If this is only week 3, I can't wait to see what comes next.

The Waiting Game

[Gracie empties Thom's flask at the Washington Monument]

Damn, I HATE this game. I could use a drink myself.

Today was the day I was supposed to hear from the London Independent Film Festival to see if we got in, but haven't gotten any word from them. I have next to zero expectation of getting into that one anyway, but I just want to know.

Later this week I should find out if we made it into the Maryland Film Festival. I can't even talk about that one, it is too nerve-wracking. I am glad it is one of the first ones I will find out about, I don't want to wonder about it any longer.

For the next 11 weeks, I should be hearing from about one festival a week, yay or nay. I oscillate between being very excited about this, because it is something exciting to look forward to every week, to wringing my hands, wondering how I will feel if I start collecting one "NO" after the other? As my British friend Matthew would say, the whole thing, "does my head in."

But tonight I sat down with the big desk calendar and the colored mini-Sharpies I bought at Staples the other day, and logged all the info on the festivals I have submitted to so far: deadlines for submission (to those I haven't sent a DVD to yet), notification dates (when they tell me if I am in), and the dates of the actual festivals. This turned out to be a useful exercise in more ways than one. As I copied down the info from each festival, I was reminded exactly why I had submitted to each one, and that made me feel better, because I DO have specific reasons for submitting to almost all of them (though there are a few long shots in there for good measure. I love long shots. Ask anyone who has been to the track with me!). It had been awhile since I had thought of them each in such specifics, and lately I had been feeling like, oh dear lord, did I just waste a boatload of money submitting to festivals willy-nilly? And did I really just say "willy-nilly"?

But if course I didn't. That's not how I roll. I have reasons for (nearly) everything I do. I'm just nervous, that's all. Just like when I used to have photography exhibits. I would painstakingly develop and print the black and white photos myself, mat and frame them, measure the wires so they would all hang at the exact same height, curate so that the walls were well-balanced but interesting, and then worry that no one would show up. Then people would show up, and buy some photos, and everything was right with the world. Every artist I know feels the same way before every show. It is part of the process.

I want to talk more about it but I'm afraid I'll jinx myself, so I will leave it at that. I should have news for you soon, stay tuned, my faithful ones.

P.S. If you like my blog, I have found another you might like that sort of reminds me of mine, in that it is very first-person, taking you through the experience step by step, highs and lows, triumphs and roadblocks. This young man, Paul Ridley, just set a record for being the youngest American to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean, and did it to raise money for cancer research. He makes me look like a slacker. Check it out from the beginning, it is quite a journey of body and spirit: www.solorow.blogspot.com

Spin Me Right Round

(Cheryl Scungio as a rather drunken Gracie)

I'm a pretty happy camper today. Since Wednesday, our fans on the Facebook page, "Smalltimore, the Movie," (don't forget the comma) http://www.facebook.com/pages/Smalltimore-the-movie/54159809709?ref=ts has TRIPLED! Mostly through Kyle Holtgren's, Phil Calvert's, and my own friends, but we are also pulling in random people along the way, and I love that.

Eric got on board the other day, after I made a rather pointed plea to my friends who had not yet become fans. He is new to Facebook, and he asked me if it got me anything, having people sign up. Not per se, but it definitely helps. It is all about keeping the buzz going, keeping people talking about it, and if you think about it, it is kind of hard to keep people talking about a movie they've never seen, and don't know when they'll see it. But that is exactly what I have been doing for almost a year and a half now, via this blog, layering that with the occasional mass email, and now adding the Facebook page.

Anyone who has ever been to one of my parties or events can tell you that I know how to plan a good time, and a good turnout. Because what I am doing for Smalltimore is exactly what I do for all my events. Like I said in the very beginning, that is what making, and now marketing, a movie is - event planning. Scheduling, being organized, making sure everyone knows what they are supposed to be doing them and finding a way to reward them for doing it so that they stay excited about it. More than anything, it is about communication.

People forget things, and get bored quickly. We're all busy, and in this world where we watch the news with remote control in hand, flipping between several channels which each have one or more talking heads in the middle, various stock, weather, and time info in the corners and a streaming ticker across the bottom, our attention span has been reduced to the point that we require our information in sound bites. Collective social A.D.D.. Just the facts, Ma'am. And quickly!

Now that I have the FB page for the movie, that fills that niche, and I am glad to have it, despite the "new" FB being so annoying. But there are quite a few people that read this blog regularly, it gets an average of about 30 hits a day now. Until recently it was averaging 20, but it has gone up since I have been writing a lot lately. Which is nice, because I was afraid it would go down, that people would get bored with hearing so much from me!

I think the blog serves a certain purpose that I can't accomplish on FB. It is pretty stream-of-consciousness for me, and I think we all enjoy getting inside someone else's head, but my posts usually end up being some sort of story, and most people still like a good story. That's why we still love the movies! Especially if it is some sort of inside scoop, and even more so if it is some sort of inside scoop on a person. The days that receive the biggest number of hits are always the days that I post a profile of one of the actors (and my stat tracker differentiates between how many individuals view the page and how many page loads there are, so that number is not skewed by a few people returning to the page multiple times). BTW, Kyle, the biggest hits I have received in one day came on the day I profiled Phil Calvert - so don't think you're sailing away with that steak dinner quite yet. I think he is due for a comeback (see the posting earlier this week, "Feed a Starving Actor")!

I discovered that this (profiling individuals) was a very good tool a few years ago when I organized a couple group art shows with some of my artist friends here in Baltimore. I didn't have FB then, so I sent them out via mass emailing. We had great turnouts at both events. I received loads of compliments on them and no one minded at all that I was sending them a rather lengthy email once a week. As a matter of fact, once in awhile, I'll run into someone I haven't seen for a bit and they will tell me that they miss my mass emails!

I think the key is keeping it personal, that's what I try to do here. And funny, of course. It's not that hard. This IS Baltimore, after all. And Baltimore + actors = Plenty of material to work with.

Festivus for the Restofus

Hey gang, I am SO sorry I have been a totally lame blogger lately, but I have been super-concentrated on editing, as I had some big deadlines coming up. I was working 4, 6, 8 or more hours a day on editing, mostly sound. I would get through the whole movie, painstakingly going practically frame-by-frame (there are 24 frames per second. That is PER. SECOND.), would review it again whole scene at a time before moving on to the next scene, then when done watch the whole thing straight through, and then think, "I can't believe I thought that sounded good!" and would start the whole thing all over again. The hardest part about pre-production was breaking down the shooting schedule. The hardest thing about post-production is DEFINITELY editing sound.

Istarted editing yesterday at about 3:45pm and stopped about 5:30am this morning, slept for three hours while the movie burned to DVD, then spent the next couple hours watching the whole thing straight through to make sure it burned without any glitches and then burning a few more copies I needed to send out in the mail to be postmarked by today. THEN had to scrape several inches of snow and ice off my car before I could get to the post office.

Also spent 7 hours with Michelle and several of my actors one day last week recording ADR for some scenes that the dialogue and/or sound was terrible in. ADR, as you probably already know, stands for Automatic Dialogue Replacement. That is an oxymoron of epic proportions. There is NOTHING automatic about it.

Though it really isn't as hard as I thought it would be. And I even did some Foley stuff. Foley, as you also probably know, is little sound effects you might have to add in. Like, a cell phone ringing, a door slamming off-camera, a beer keg sputtering. Some of that is easy, like just recording a cell phone ringing. Some of it is harder, like shaking up a bottle of soda before opening it to make it sound like a sputtering keg. The hard part was keeping Michelle from talking while recording the sputtering.

The hard part is the layering of sound, which I have mentioned before. Conversation ver roomtone over music over barroom chatter... it is exhausting trying to figure out what levels sound somewhat natural but still allow the viewer to focus on the dialogue.

A lot of you have been following this blog for a long time, some even from the very beginning, over a year ago, and I am really hoping it will pay off for you soon. And by that, I mean, pay off for me :) About a month from now, I should start hearing from the festivals I have been submitting to, yay or nay. And I'm not going to sugarcoat it for you. You'll here about the ones Smalltimore does not get into as well as the ones it (knock on wood) does. Probably some of these results will result in stories of money wasted, either on long shots or in festivals that let Smalltimore in but are far more po'dunk than they tout themselves to be and don't do me any good at all. But the whole purpose of this blog is to give you the behind the scenes of how it does (or doesn't) all work. Who knows? I may have just spent the last 18+ months of my life and thousands of my own and other people's dollars on something that will never bear fruit. But, honestly, I don't think so. There are so many things, adventures, crusades that I have been on or in in my life that I have put a fraction of the time, effort, blood, sweat, tears, etc, into and in them have experienced moderate to great success. Making this movie blows anything I have ever done absolutely away. I have never worked so hard or so long at anything, and have never loved working so much. I know that what I have gotten out of this experience already is invaluable, and could never be replaced any more than it can be described. There is no way that all that was for naught. But send your good energy my way regardless!!!

4:00am is the New 1:00am

I haven't been writing much because I haven't been doing much, film-wise, since the holidays ended. Once I am out of the groove it is hard to get back in, and real life and its issues start taking up more and more of my time since I have allowed myself to become un-entrenched from the movie. Plus, as you know by now, I work best with a deadline. Right now, that deadline is January 31st, the late-late date to submit to the Maryland Film Festival. And if you have not picked up on this by now, I am not an 11th-hour kind of person. I am an 11:45 kind of person. Some personal things, and things at my current "real job" to take care of through this week, and next week I have to really hit the bricks.

But, a little bit more fun this weekend before I go back to marathon editing. One of my major investors, my friend Tom, and his girlfriend are coming to visit me. I can't even remember the last time I saw them! I think the last time I saw Melanie was for my birthday way back in MAY, and I think I have seen Tom once since then. They couldn't make it for the screening of the rough cut, so I am having a mini-screening for them and a couple other friends who couldn't make it that day. But first, a decadent dinner at the Prime Rib! Mmmmmmmmmmmmm... It's fun to play Grown-Ups sometimes.

Actually, I have been editing. In my head. Late at night. Which is why I probably can't sleep. I took sleep aids for two nights, thinking they would knock me right out since I have never taken sleep aids in my life. No such luck. They did nothing. So now I am not even bothering.

Maybe it is feeling guilty for not really working on things lately. I think more likely it is because my brain got used to filing through a million things a day and now is still coasting at a high velocity on its own momentum. I've also found myself to be highly emotional the last month or so. The first few weeks of feeling this way were puzzling to me, I know myself pretty well, and when I am feeling some way that makes me stop and wonder WHY I am feeling that way, I can usually pick it apart and figure it out. This time took me awhile, but I know what it is: I need to write.

The way I blow off steam is most often in the form of writing (or anything to do with words, like editing), drinking, or sex. Just being honest here, don't get squeamish on me (and no, that is not a call for volunteers; I need to FOCUS, here!). Obviously the first is the most productive method, the second the most counter-productive, the third the most fun. Writing/editing is what I have been doing non-stop for a full year now, so though I haven't had time to really get involved with anyone (nookie-wise) I was fine. Since I finished the rough cut, a week before Christmas, up until New Year's I had plenty of drinking time (a few friends may argue, too much). But even if I am blowing off steam with one of my vices, if I am not writing, the words just build up in my brain until I can find an outlet for them, they never just dissipate.

But other than this blog and email, I won't let myself write until I have the final cut of the movie finished. Once the words are out, all creativity dwindles, so sometimes I just have to let it build up like this. I have ideas for other projects, some good ones, I think, but I can't take my eye off the ball. I have to do everything I can to cut this movie into the best possible piece it can be, and then I have to do everything I can to get it off the ground. I owe that to all the people who worked so hard on it with me, to everyone who has put their faith in me from the start (or who converted along the way), and to myself. But once I'm there... man, I can't WAIT to start writing again. I know that's when I'll finally be able to sleep like a baby.

For Those of You Just Joining Us...

If you are new to all this, you can catch up with how "Smalltimore" unfolded from the very beginning, on my previous blog that I kept for the last year, while the REAL name of the movie was under wraps so nobody would scoop me: www.charmcitythemovie.blogspot.com

Yay! New Blog!

I am totally and absolutely drained, body and mind; but spirit and soul... my cup runneth over.

Saturday was The Big Day. The screening of the rough cut of, "Smalltimore," at the Creative Alliance. Some of the invited audience arrived before I even got there, almost half an hour before the doors were supposed to open. A steady stream of arrivals put my mind at ease immediately. It is such a blur, I'm not sure who arrived very first, but I do know that Russell DeoCampo (owner of the Wind-Up Space, who let me film there for two whole, long days) was among the first dozen. He was smiling almost wider than I was, and hugged me three times. More smiles and hugs every time someone new walked in. Everyone was so excited, and excited for me. It was so beyond any previous experience I could compare it to. I've had my "moments," before, at my annual Christmas party, or when I have had photography exhibits, or the group art exhibits I organized in 2006. But this was on a whole other level. This moment encompassed an entire year of my life. I wrote the first draft of the screenplay four years ago, and spent a good year just on the rewrites, but that was work in patches, when I felt like it. But honestly, from mid-December of 2007, my entire existence has been consumed by this project. It has changed my work ethic, my social circles, my whole life. It has changed me, as a person. That is certain.

As each of my actors, and artists, and friends who loaned me their homes and businesses arrived, I was so happy I could have burst. People kept asking me if I was nervous, but I wasn't, at all, which was sort of but not entirely strange. Before my holiday party, or an exhibit, I'm always a bit mad and I can't relax until I see a good crowd has arrived. I put a lot into those events and they have always come off successfully. I think maybe why I wasn't nervous was because all of those things have always gone well, and if I combined all the effort I put into all of them together... it wouldn't be a fraction of what went into this movie. And because this time, it wasn't just about my effort, my party, my success. There were SO many people that were a part of making this happen.

I thanked as many of them as I could in some opening remarks I gave before the screening. Starting with the people who loaned me their homes and businesses, Bill Dougherty (Dougherty's Pub), Russell DeoCampo (The Wind-Up Space), Lynn Hafner (Dionysus Lounge), Charles Lawrance (Fin Art), Phil Baty & Ron Peltzer, Caren Shelley, Greg Mirkin, and Steve Shen. Then the contributing artists, Caren Shelley, Jillian Jenkins, Allison Pasarew, Oletha DeVane, Leslie King-Hammond, Ellen Burchenal, Linda DePalma, Charles Lawrance, and Joyce Scott, as well as jewelry artists Caren Shelley, and Wayne Werner. Wayne made two custom pieces especially for the film. Getting to the nuts & bolts of the operation, my Director of Photography Michelle Farrell and her crew; my Production Crew headed by Production Manager Rebecca Clear Dean, who, among other duties wrangled the extras and an army of Production Assistant interns - and I absolutely did have to single out my "A Team" among them, Regina Guy, Corey Dillon, and David Sarmiento. These three were the first on board, the ones who were there every day, first in, last out, always did any crazy thing I asked of them with a smile on their face, in short, setting the bar for the other interns incredibly high and leading by example. And Charlie Anderson, of Stratatek Studios, who was my personal tutor on Final Cut Pro (editing), and who is not only a great teacher, but a VERY patient man.

I gave props to my amazing cast, whose onscreen chemistry was largely due to their genuine offscreen chemistry. From the greenest among them (for several, it was their first such project) to vets like Joyce Scott and Cheryl Scungio, they were all true professionals and a pleasure to work with. I have so much to say about each of them that I couldn't even BEGIN to do if we were going to get around to watching the movie, but I am going to profile each of them individually in this blog in the near future, so make sure to check back.

The soundtrack, which is not set in stone (and I met several new people at the screening who handed me their CDs and want to be involved) but will definitely include the work of T.T.Tucker & the Bum Rush Band, Joyce J. Scott, Jennifer Swartout, and Niki Lee.

Next, the "money people", the ones who wrote me very generous checks in order to bring you a much better version of the film than I could have possibly given you on my own (at least not without going into credit card debt for the rest of my life): my friend Tom Kyte - who knew that sleeping on his couch every weekend during my freshman year (my only year) at Pitt would pay off so well? Mark my words, make friends with smart people while you are young, they will be the ones with cash flow down the road... Dan Denning, who lives on the other side of the planet, but on whom one of the characters is based - I'll let you figure out which one for yourselves... my Mom, who surprised me with an unsolicited check, something that meant a great deal to me... Wayne Werner, my friend and one of several triple-threats on this production, as an Executive Producer, a contributing artist, and also Wayne is on the soundtrack via Tucker's band (the other triple threats being Joyce Scott, actor/artist/soundtrack, and Caren Shelley, artist (both sculpture &jewelry)/location/featured extra). And last but not least, my dear friend Mikey B., who not only wrote me a very generous check (and just handed me another one this week) but checked on me every step of the way, gave me full access to his cabin in the Poconos where I acomplished LOADS of work from pre- through post-production, and who was always my biggest cheerleader.

And lastly I explained to the audience the answer to the question that people ask me the most - how the hell did you pull this off, when you did not go to school for this and have never done anything like this in your life? Simple answer: I surrounded myself with people who know a lot more than I do, who were very generous with their time, who allowed me to pick their brains for hours on end, and who were always honest with me, whether it was what I wanted to hear or not. If you read this blog, you are already familiar with them - Al Letson, my dear friend who flew up from Jacksonville to be in one scene, just to give me a little "celeb cred", even though he was in the thick of pre-production of his radio program, "State of the Re:Union," that will start airing on NPR this spring... Sean Stanley, of Magic Wonder Show Productions, who, with his crew, helped me put together the initial trailer (which you can still see on YouTube - my acting debut!), and who spent many lunchtimes over the next several months, helping me tweak the script, and giving me lots of great production advice... Eric Thornett, of Piranha Pictures, who is my favorite sounding board and someone I can count on for anything at all, from moving furniture to blacking out windows to talking me down off a ledge... and finally, full circle back to Michelle Farrell, of Absolute Independent Pictures, who always went above and beyond the call of duty, always had my back and the best interests of the production at heart, and helped me pick up the slack wherever I fell short, just being green to all this, and who always, always found a way to make me laugh just when I wanted to cry (or kill someone).

What I didn't say in front of all those people, because I would have turned into a puddle of mush before their very eyes, is that especially with these people, Sean, Eric, and Michelle, who a year ago I didn't really know, what is really important to me is that they are now my friends, and if this movie goes no further, I have that and it makes everything that has happened so far worth it. That may sound very Hallmark-card, but I could not be more sincere. They are the ones who kept me sane, who propped me up, who got me through, and I will always remember them for that.

I'm not sure how long it took me to say all that, probably close to 15 minutes, but everyone gave me their full attention for the whole time. It was a strange and wonderful feeling, looking out at all these (mostly) familiar faces, people who had contributed in some way, or just friends that I am glad don't hate me for virtually ignoring them for a year. I think there were about 120 people there, it was a pretty packed house. I have spoken in front of much larger audiences than that, when I have been in London at the Awards Night of my friend Matthew's school, Songtime Theater Arts. I've presented an award there each of the last four years, as his "American liaison" that has connected him with Baltimore School for the Arts and Baltimore Theater Project. Those audiences have ranged from four hundred to SEVEN hundred people, and I can tell you that especially the first time (which of course, was the time with 700) I was so nervous that my voice, my knees (which luckily were hidden under a long skirt), and most noticeably my hands that were holding the card listing the nominees, were shaking uncontrollably. Each year it has gotten a little easier, but it is still nerve-wracking.

Saturday when I was in front of all those people, about to throw my creative soul upon their mercy, I didn't feel that way at all. The only thing I was nervous about was that I might get emotional, which is why I didn't go into sentimental detail when thanking everyone. There was so much love and support and camaraderie in that room, I felt like the luckiest person in the world. I'll admit that I did kind of lean on the stage, just in case my knees knocked. But they didn't. Not really. Somewhere in the middle of my little speech, I did think of that night in London in front of 700 people, and how different the feeling this afternoon was. My life is so different now. I am so different now. It is no exaggeration to say that this has been the most amazing year of my life. And I think the next year will have even more to come.