Stomp! Shout! Scream! Garage Rock Blog

Frankenstein

2011-01-13T15:40:00.003-05:00

In fifth grade I dressed up as Frankenstein for Halloween. I remember this specific Halloween because I was in costume-- green greasepaint, neck bolts and a paper mache' head piece while every other kid was in a t-shirt and store-bought mask. Those kids were amazed that I'd gone to so much trouble. I was completely embarrassed, maybe even mortified, but also kinda proud.

Here's a great blog post about the book-- Movie Monsters, I read so many times, I had it memorized-- that had the costume instructions.

http://wonderfulwonderblog.blogspot.com/2007/10/movie-monsters.html

And here's me as Frankenstein, circa 1978. I'm trying to hold my hands like the Frankenstein illustration. Whenever I do monster/zombie/vampire hands now, I still hold 'em that way.

Thirty years later, I'm turning 40, itching to get a new tattoo, but having trouble pinpointing the right image. I'd recently been through a particularly rough break-up, did some work getting my head screwed back on straight, and was feeling a bit renewed, greater than the sum of my parts/past, downright Frankenstein-esque. I think you can guess where this is going.

That's the right side of my torso, hipbone to armpit. Yes, I'm hirsute. Five one-hour sessions with Sam Parker at Memorial Tattoo and now I have the instructions on how to make a Frankenstein mask with me... all the time.

Here's me as Frankenstein in 2008.
It turned out a little Fresh Prince hi-fade, but gets better every year. So, yes, I'm another Frankenstein-obsessed monster kid.

Here's my 2010 edition:

Oh, yeah, Garage Rock! Here's a mix I made of 21 songs about Frankenstein for Halloween. Download and enjoy!

http://rapidshare.com/files/299699135/Frankenstein_Halloween_09.zip

Happy Halloween! Er, Happy New Year!

Where are they now? 2010

2010-08-12T16:11:00.011-04:00

Approaching the 6 year anniversary of the shooting of Stomp! Shout! Scream!, some folks might be asking-- Hey, what happened to all those great actors?

That's Cynthia Evans and Claire Bronson, Jody Viola and Theodora Viola respectively, on the same episode of Drop Dead Diva on Lifetime (Episode 109, "Last Year's Model"). Cynthia plays a housewife who wants a refund on her mortgage because her house is haunted. Claire plays a courtroom by-stander who gets called to the stand. And they're both awesome, of course.

[The crappy pictures were taken with an iPhone from a projected TV.]

SSS poster in Halloween 2

2010-07-30T11:00:00.000-04:00

Mad Tea Party

2010-07-25T20:22:00.001-04:00

Caught Mad Tea Party-- a one-man-band-ukulele duo-- in Asheville last weekend at Bele Chere. Their smiling, energetic, catchy fuzz-country-blues songs were an early-afternoon surprise in an otherwise bland afternoon of music (granted, we only stayed a few hours, it was 100fuckingdegrees). We did catch Southern Culture on the Skids Friday night who were great, as always. Their new songs sounded good to me, looking forward to their new record.

So Mad Tea Party comes highly recommended, especially live. This 7" naturally caught my attention.

I didn't want to carry it around all day so I settled on a Zombie Boogie t-shirt and their latest CD. But it's available as a easy-as-pie download with bonus song. Maybe I'm just a sucker for anything Halloween-ish, but it's my favorite of what I've heard so far.

And here's a music video by my friend Skizz!

And here's a link to the fairer half's blog about her awesome skeleton-Uke tattoo.

In the transition is the interesting stuff

2010-07-13T16:34:00.001-04:00

I think I love the '60s because it was a decade of such utter transition. Compare 1958 with 1972 and the world is a very, very different place. And it's inside these transitions where the most interesting things happen, new ideas clashing with old ones, nobody sure what's gonna win or what new ideas are gonna stick. Allot of people in the '50s thought rock n roll was a fad that would soon be replaced by Calypso or Bossa Nova.

When I was writing SSS, I wanted to place it in the exact transition between the naivete of the early '60s-- where the most important thing on most kids minds was What new dance is gonna replace The Twist?!-- and the bitter cynicism of the late '60s/'70s. It's in that transition when garage bands sprang up everywhere and teens were trying to write dance songs, but with fuzzed out Farfisa organs and reverb-drenched guitar chords. I found this video on a bootleg DVD of Garage Bands several years ago at Dragon*Con. It was significantly influential (along with the Hullabaloo DVD box set) in the look of SSS.

One video in particular really struck me-- PSYCHOTIC REACTION by The Count Five. It's been a couple years since I've see this clip, but I remember a moment-- when the garage-pop repetition turns into an atonal, off-time guitar solo and the Go-Go Girls have a look of panic because their happy dance steps no longer fit here. They don't know what to do.

Looking at this now, that moment is clearly in my head only. Regardless, this song will always represent the exact moment when innocence is lost and and the '50s became the '70s. After this, a whole lot of music became too self-aware, less fun and people started dancing with themselves instead of each other.

Man or Astroman?

2010-07-08T20:52:00.001-04:00

I hope this blog doesn't turn into an Oh-the-good-old-days kinda thing, but I'm really looking forward to seeing Man or Astroman? this weekend at The Earl's 15th Anniversary. Which makes me think of one of the first times I saw them play INVASION OF THE DRAGONMEN, mid-90s, probably at The Point.

Much like my Go Go Gorilla moment with the Hate Bombs, MoAM? nailed my noggin with a cultural reference that solidified my fandom for good. It took a few seconds for it register, but I recognized the samples from a Power Records Spiderman read-n-listen comicbook-n-record that I used to listen to on my Winnie the Pooh record player incessantly. It's at 1:40 into the clip below.

I own 18 MoAM? 7" singles. I counted. Here's the poster for the show, done by awesome guy Jordon Gum.

Q: What's wrong with you? A: Wavy Gravy

2010-07-07T20:06:00.001-04:00

Back in the summer of 1989 (feel free to stop reading if you hate blogs posts that start this way), I worked in Yellowstone National Park, waiting tables at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone Lodge. It was that summer that a cassette tape changed my musical taste... forever.

Living amid a hive a college students, free time was spent drinking and smoking pot, or road-tipping to Idaho/Jackson Hole/Canada to drink and smoke pot, or occasionally hiking. There were three guys from Minnesota (one from Bemidji, I remember b/c of his speech impediment), who had a home-recorded cassette called WAVY GRAVY. It was only recently that I realized the title had less to do with the '60s psychedelic icon than with Cleveland DJ The Mad Daddy. I could describe it to you note for note, but his guy's already done it, "There are, broadly speaking, two types of people in the world. Those who realise that the Wavy Gravy compilations are the greatest albums in the history of mankind; and those who suffer from unsightly genital warts. Which are you?"

I probably listened to that cassette 120 times in 120 (late) nights that summer. Not every night, but some nights 3 times in a row. By mid-summer, it took every fiber in our gaggle of stoners to not quote it verbatim every time we'd play it for someone new. We were annoying college students.

I got my own copy of this precious gold, but it never rang quite as true after that summer. A couple years later-- about the time I realized that the music I really loved was this thing called Garage Rock-- I saw The Hate Bombs at the Star Bar and their encore was "Go Go Gorilla". It was probably pretty close to when this was taped:

I never knew my favorite track from the summer of '89 wasn't just an novelty/obscurity, but a Garage rock classic! I've since become instantly enamored with any band who covers it. Clearly there was no better track to use in the climactic scene of Stomp! Shout! Scream!

[For the record, the Shandells' track is actually called "Gorilla." "Go Go Gorilla" is by the Ideals and more of a doo-wop classic.]

2 Girl Garage bands

2010-07-05T20:37:00.000-04:00

As much as I love pretty-much every 3-chord garage rock band, you put a couple of girls in the band and I'll love it even more. This is not surprising, consider... you know... that movie I made.

The Like

Picked up their CD at Criminal this week. The cover caught my eye, and since it was at the listening station, I listened. Good fuzzy guitars and Fafisa/Vox organ. On the pop side of garage, but really good. And of course, adorable in their '60s styling.

The Cocktail Slippers

Saw these girls at SXSW this past March. Like the Donnas, but *somehow* hotter. And Norwegian. Or: because they're Norwegian. Bought a couple CDs just so I could stare at 'em up close for 30 more seconds. They crank it up more on their first record, MASTERMIND, than the pop-ier second one ST. VALENTINES DAY MASACRE. Their part English, part Norwegian blog.

Swamp Rats

2010-07-02T11:38:00.004-04:00

The only band to out-Sonic The Sonics. The Swamp Rats from Pittsburgh. Available from awesome label Get Hip Records.

Garage Rock

2010-07-01T18:05:00.001-04:00

This blog has sat dormant since Stomp! Shout! Scream! was re-released on DVD by Indican Pictures (as Monster Beach Party A Go Go). Marketing and selling and such is now in their hands. So I'm going to use this space to write about what ever Garage Rock crosses my ears.

I found this 7" Single by The Vice Barons at Criminal Records today. I love singles, but have about 1,000 that I don't really listen to, so I don't really buy that many any more. This one grabbed me, however-- clearly the sexy-as-all-get-out cover and the song title DEATH WALK OF FRANKIE STEIN. It's a 4-track EP of fuzz guitar-organ surf songs. Other tracks are: SWAMP SUFER, BUZZ..., AND RADIANT. A google search found an album called FRIENDS IN LOW PLACES that sounds great on first listen. Thanks for reading.

Film Festival wrap up

2009-05-04T21:28:00.000-04:00

Stomp! Shout! Scream! premiered at the Austin Film Festival in October, 2005 and went on to screen 38 festivals (see list below) in 6 countries (USA, Canada, England, Brazil, Greece, & Australia), winning several Best-of Awards. Wow, that's awesome you might say. Here's how it happened.

From the middle of 2005 the beginning of 2009, I submitted to 133 film festivals. Yes, I'm a little OCD. Total entry fees (with a handful invites/fee wavers): $3,300. That's not including DVD screeners or postage or promotional stuff like postcards or posters or travel to actually get to any of these festivals.

In addition to getting the film seen and finding distribution, one of my goals was to have a screening in each of the 50 states. Between festivals and the limited theatrical run with Monogram Releasing... thirty down, twenty to go. Here's a handy map:
Do you live a a state that's still colored white? Contact me and let's set up a screening. Jay@stompshoutscream.com

Some moments that stick with me:

Austin Film Festival
I watched the sun come up and set from the seat of my VW GTI, driving the 14 hours Atlanta to Austin, with a car full of poster and promotional materials. The next morning at 5:00 AM, I was on an Austin morning show, talking about SSS's world premiere. The interview after me was Shane Black (screenwriter Lethal Weapon, Last Boyscout, Last Action Hero, etc.), who was there premiering KISS KISS BANG BANG. I saw him 20 hours later in the hotel bar and I think we had a moment.

DeadCENTER Film Festival, OK City, OK
SSS was the Opening Night Film, complete with local girl-garage rock band playing before the movie. It was screened in a city park on a beautiful night. Except that the sprinklers started up on the far side of the park as the movie started. They were systematically coming on across the park, ever closer to the movie watching crowd in their lawn chairs. One industrious festival volunteer gather a dozen small trash cans to cover the sprinklers when they popped up amoungst the crowd.

Santa Fe Film Festival
SSS screened on a Sunday night, but snow showers limited attendance to 7 people. I did get to meet '60s counter-culture icon Wavy Gravy.

Psychotronic Film Festival, Savannah, GA
Sold-out screening, great crowd, lots of fun. And SSS make the cover of both weekend entertainment papers!

Screenings & Awards

Toofy Film Festival (screened as a work-in-progress)
Boulder, Colorado
September, 2005
Winner: Best Feature Film

Austin Film Festival
Austin, Texas
October, 2005
World Premiere

B-Movie Film Festival
Syracuse, New York
March, 2006
Nomination: Best Cinematography
Nomination: Best Set Design

Backseat Film Festival
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
March, 2006

Sarasota Film Festival
Sarasota, Florida
April, 2006

Maryland Film Festival
Baltimore, Maryland
May, 2006

Portland Underground Film Festival
Portland, Oregon
June, 2006

Dead Center Film Festival
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
June, 2006
Opening Night Film

FILMSTOCK Film Festival
London, United Kingdom
June, 2006
European Premiere

Calgary Fringe Festival
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
August, 2006
Canadian Premiere

Atlanta Underground Film Festival
Atlanta, Georgia
August, 2006

Indie-World Film Festival
Belo Horizonte, Brazil
August, 2006
South American Premiere

Rome International Film Festival
Rome, Georgia
September, 2006

Eerie Horror Film Festival
Erie, Pennsylvania
October, 2006

Fargo Fantastic Film Festival
Fargo, North Dakota
October, 2006

The Red Bank International Film Festival
Red Bank, New Jersey
October, 2006
Closing Night Feature Film

Indie Memphis Film Festival
Memphis, Tennessee
October, 2006

It Came from Lake Michigan Film Festival
Racine, Wisconsin
October, 2006

Eureka Springs Digital Film Festival
Eureka Springs, Arkansas
November, 2006

MicroCineFest
Baltimore, Maryland
November, 2006
Closing Night Feature Film

Santa Fe Film Festival
Santa Fe, New Mexico
December, 2006

Southern Fried Flicks
Augusta, Georgia
January, 2007

Magnolia Film Festival
Starkville, Mississippi
February, 2007
Winner: Best Feature Film

San Francisco Frozen Film Festival
San Francisco, California
July, 2007

Landlocked Film Festival
Iowa City, Iowa
August, 2007

The B-Movie Celebration
Franklin, Indiana
August, 2007

Indieclub Halloween Spooktacular
Columbus, Ohio
October, 2007

Hell’s Half Mile Film Festival
Bay City, Michigan
October, 2007

Freakshow Horror Film Festival
Orlando, Florida
October, 2007

Melbourne Independent Filmmakers Festival
Melbourne, Florida
October, 2007

Sweet Onion Film Festival
Walla Walla, Washington
October, 2007
Winner: Best Feature Film

Psychotronic Film Festival
Savannah, Georgia
January, 2008

Foresite Film Festival
Ogden, Utah
March, 2008

All-American Film Festival
Durham, North Carolina
March, 2008

Gimme Shelter Film Festival
Athens, Greece
March, 2008
Eastern European Premiere

Appalachian Film Festival
Huntington, West Virginia
April, 2008

No Film Festival Required
Phoenix, Arizona
August, 2008

Schweitzer LakeDance Film Festival
Sandpoint, Idaho
September, 2008
Winner: Best Soundtrack

Asheville Film Festival
Ashville, North Carolina
November, 2008

A Night of Horror
Sydney, Australia
March, 2009
Australian Premiere

Theatrical?! How'd that happen?

2009-04-12T12:36:00.000-04:00

Three and a half years after premiering at the Austin Film Festival, Stomp! Shout! Scream! is in THEATERS now, April 10-17 2009. These theaters:

Nova Cinemas
Commerce, Georgia
Sun: 12:40, 3:00, 5:25, 7:40, 9:40
Mon-Thu: 5:25, 7:40, 9:40

Georgetown 14 Cinemas
Indianapolis, Indiana
1:10, 3:15, 5:20, 7:25, 9:30

Studio 10 Cinemas
Shelbyville, Indiana
1:10, 3:50, 7:00

Nova 10
Des Moines, Iowa
Sun-Mon: 1:15, 3:15, 5:15, 7:40
Tue-Thu: 5:15, 7:40

Nova 6 Theatres
Moline, Illinois
Sun: 12:45, 2:50, 5:00, 7:30, 9:30
Mon-Thu: 5:00, 7:30, 9:30

Theatres of Georgetown
Georgetown, Kentucky
Sun: 1:15, 3:15, 5:15, 7:15, 9:15
Mon-Thu: 5:15, 7:15, 9:15

Portsmouth Cinemas
Portsmouth, Ohio
1:35, 4:00, 7:20, 9:45

Branson Meadows Theatres
Branson, Missouri
Sun-Thu: 1:55, 4:30, 7:25

The Amp
Oxford, Mississippi
Sun: 1:35, 4:20, 7:25, 10:00
Mon-Thu: 4:20, 7:25, 10:00

So how did THAT happen? I am a glutton (or a fool or just OCD) for submitting my film to film festivals (112 submission, 37 screenings). One of them was the B-Movie Celebration in Franklin, IN. SSS showed there in August, 2007 where I met the organizer, Bill Dever. Bill has set up a distribution company, Monogram Releasing, and a franchise, B Movie Nation, to put movies in theaters. In January, 2009, he invited SSS to be part of the series. Other films are indie horror and 80's style gore flicks. most notibly Troma's Poltrygeist, directed by Lloyd Kaufman. SSS adds another flavor to the series-- shot on 35 mm, a throwback to the '60s rather than the '80s, and rather innocent comparatively. The deal Monogram offered was a good one (no money upfront, but a good % of gross ticket sales) and the cost of delivering SSS for theatrical was minimal. Minimal because this would be a digital theatrical run. I delivered SSS as a hi-def quicktime on a hard drive. The film would be distributed on blu-ray DVD and projected digitally. The initial theatrial run would be in two small theater chains, Nova Cinemas and Republic Theares. More theater chains would be added as success dictates.

With a this scale distribution (read: the tiniest of tiny) there would be no money for advertising or press agents. Generating a ticket-buying audience would have to be done on the internet and via word of mouth. With appologies to my facebook friends, I've been beating the drum of "SSS in theaters! April 10, 2009!!" for the last 3 weeks. Other tasks: updaing www.stompshoutcream.com; starting to twitter; creating a youtube channel; cut n pasting 5 years worth of my on-line 'journal' to this blog; sending out press-kits to every media outlet in the small towns in this theatrical run... There's more, but it's a blur. I was hoping to generate some PR interest and roll that into making a personal appearance in one of the markets (Louisville, KY was supposed to have 3 screens in the general area). Surely "Adult Swim Producer here to promote indie monster-beach-party flick" is a headline somewhere.

But... I got no bites, so I rounded up cast/crew/family/firends to gather at the 9:40 screening in Commerce, GA, about an hour north of Atlanta where I and most of the cast/crew/family/friends live.

I drove out to the Nova Cinemas for the 5:45 screening on Friday, where 2 patrons sat in the back of the small 85-seat theater. The projection was at the wrong aspect ratio (4:3 instead of 16:9, so everyone was streched tall and skinny). The folks at Nova were very kind and we figured out the propper settings on the projector in just a few minutes. I peaked my head into the 7:40 screening... dead empty. State-wide tornado warnings were serious enough that the few cast/crew/family/friends that were still up for coming had to abort the road trip. By the time 9:40 rolled around..I bought the only 4 tickets sold for me, Travis Young (Hector, the mechanic love-interest in the film) and our dates. We enjoyed the screening nonetheless, adding our own live commentary throughout.

On Saturday, I found out that a couple of the theaters originally scheduled to screen SSS were NOT screening it due to technical difficulties with their digital projection or conflicts with Monogram, including 2 of the 3 theaters around Louisville. I'm certainly glad I didn't make the trip up there. Bill also said that those theaters may still have a SSS run later and that other theater chains and indie theaters are interested in the film.

Making a 60's beach party monster movie does have an evergreen effect. It will never get dated. It's timeless. Like Citizen Kane. Or Night of the Lepus.

Stomp! Shout! Scream! in Theaters April 10, 2009

2009-03-24T12:17:00.000-04:00

For immediate release
March 24, 2009
Contact: Jay Wade Edwards
jay@stompshoutscream.com

B MOVIE NATION & “STOMP! SHOUT! SCREAM!” BRING FUN BACK TO THE MOVIES

Atlanta, GA (March 24, 2009) – B Movie Nation continues its theatrical run with Adult Swim producer Jay Wade Edwards’ STOMP! SHOUT! SCREAM! opening on 14 screens on April 10, 2009. The film centers around a mysterious murder, the all-girl rock band that becomes embroiled in the investigation, and Florida’s legendary Skunk Ape.

Replete with an original garage rock soundtrack and gorgeous 35 mm cinematography shot in pulsating ’60s colors, STOMP! SHOUT! SCREAM! was produced as if it were made in 1966 – without parody, condescension or retrospective irony.

“Independent films can be very heavy. True escapism is rare in independent cinema, but it’s something audiences really respond to when done well. Good storytelling, attention to craft and intelligent film making are not solely the property of high-minded drama,” noted Edwards. The writer/director/producer Edwards’ genre of choice is science fiction and horror of the 1950s and 1960s, and while he notes that these films are generally renowned for high camp and low production values, “films that transcended the science fiction and horror genre, such as CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, and THEM! inspired me to create an interesting story with compelling characters, but do it within the framework of a genre film. In other words, create something that’s as much fun to watch as it was to make.”

The soundtrack -- Catfight!, The Woggles, The Fleshtones, The Hate Bombs, The Penetrators, Tiger! Tiger! -- is a lovingly recreated party platter of surf/garage rock tunes that effectively evoke the era without dating itself. The all-girl band in the film performs original songs recorded by Atlanta all-girl band Catfight! Comprised of Susanne Gibboney (drums), Katy Graves (bass), and Jennifer Kraft Leavey (guitar), Catfight!’s influences range from The Stooges to The Shangri-las. “Catfight! is inspired by sixties good-time beach party music. We jumped at the chance to provide some songs for a cool flick in the style of our favorite movies and sounds. We can't believe our good fortune,” said Gibboney.

Cinematographer Evan Lieberman shot the feature on 35mm with the look of the 1960s beach party films – unnaturally bright, primary colors for the characters and locations that contrast with the dark, grungy look of the Skunk Ape. “STOMP! SHOUT! SCREAM! presented Jay, myself and the crew with the unique opportunity to reference the style of the great Floyd Crosby who shot the original beach party films of the 1960s,” said Lieberman. “Crosby used a simple yet dynamic sense of movement and an unusual degree of color saturation to create a playful sense of space that expressed the innocent fun and bright optimism of the time period before American youth culture descended into the more conflict-ridden psychedelia of the hippie era.” Edwards’ adds, “We bought leftover film and discovered it was from the Johnny Cash bio, WALK THE LINE, so our movie has a rock-and-roll lineage right down to the film stock!”
The film has screened at more than 30 festivals in five countries, including the Austin Film Festival where the Austin Chronicle noted, "STOMP! SHOUT! SCREAM! does it better than American International Pictures ever did… as much fun as an episode of Hullabaloo-- snappy bouffants, earnest braniacs, hippy-hippy-shake and all!"

The film has garnered praise worldwide, including: “A ridiculously delightful cinematic experience,” Film Threat. “In all its demented, straight-faced glory, John Waters would be proud,” Cinema Crazed. “See this picture for its catalogue of perfection,” John Huff, writer/director.

STOMP! SHOUT! SCREAM! includes cameos by “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” alumni Dana Snyder as well as Ned Hastings as the Skunk Ape. Animated titles were illustrated by renowned retro-tiki artist Derek Yaniger.

Edwards has worked as a professional television and film editor since 1991 and currently serves as editor and producer of “Aqua Teen Hunger Force”, both the series and COLON MOVIE FILM FOR THEATERS (2007), for Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. His other credits include “Space Ghost Coast to Coast,” “Squidbillies,” “The Brak Show,” documentaries, and numerous promotional campaigns.

Monogram Releasing launched B Movie Nation with an initial slate of cutting-edge B-Movies with Kevin Tenney's BRAIN DEAD on March 20th. Other films set for distribution include U.K. import, JACK SAYS, and the world's first English language Luchador movie, MIL MASCARAS VS. THE AZTEC MUMMY. "We have to make going to movies fun again," says Bucky Kolkmeyer of Monogram. "Movies are the classic form of American entertainment. We are going to give people a reason to go to the movies.”

For more information on please visit:
www.stompshoutscream.com
www.monogramreleasing.com
www.bmovienation.com

STOMP! SHOUT! SCREAM! opens April 10, 2009 at these theaters:

Nova Georgia
340 Tanger Drive
Commerce, Georgia 30529
(706) 423-9659

Nova Cinemas at Sabal Palms
2539 Federal Hwy
Fort Pierce, Florida 34982
(772) 489-8266

Georgetown 14 Cinemas
3898 Lafayette Road
Indianapolis, Indiana 46254
(317) 291-3456

Studio 10 Cinemas
1624 E. State Highway 44
Shelbyville, Indiana 46176
(317) 398-3549

Nova 10
4353 Merle Hay Road
Des Moines, Iowa 50310
(515) 270-8330

Nova 6 Theatres
2018 36th Ave
Moline, IL 61265
(309) 743-1153

Branson Meadows Theaters
4740 Gretna Road
Branson, Missouri 65616
(417) 332-2884

Dixie Dozen Cinemas
6801 Dixie Highway
Louisville, Kentucky 40258
(502) 935-3771

Theaters of Georgetown
401 Outlet Center Drive
Georgetown, Kentucky 40324
(502) 863-0055

Movie Palace Cinemas
1231 Woodland Drive
Elizabethtown, Kentucky 42701
(270) 769-1505

The Amp Oxford Mississippi
206 Commonwealth Boulevard
Oxford, Mississippi 38655
(662) 236-4080

Portsmouth Cinemas
1623 Chillicothe Street
Portsmouth, Ohio 45662
(740) 355-3456

Lake Geneva 4
244 Broad Street
Lake Geneva, Wisconsin 53147
(262) 248-2370

Nova Cinemas at the Hartford Theater
2941 State Road 83
Hartford, Wisconsin 53027
(262) 673-4121

Halloween screenings

2007-10-01T16:29:00.000-04:00

October marks the 3rd anniversary of shooting Stomp! Shout! Scream!. The film is having a screening renaissance-- five screenings in four weeks, including THREE new state premieres. Folks love a monster movie for Halloween. The screenings are:

Hell’s Half Mile Film Festival
Bay City, Michigan
October 12-14, 2007

Columbus IndieClub Halloween Spooktacular
Columbus, Ohio
October 14, 2007

The Freak Show Film Festival
Orlando, Florida
October 19-21, 2007

The Sweet Onion Film Festival
Walla Walla, Washington
October 26-28, 2007

The Melbourne International Filmmakers Festival
Melbourne, Florida
November 2-3, 2007

Please welcome Washington, Ohio, and Michigan to the family of states who have screened Stomp! Shout! Scream!

The best part about this month’s screenings is that now I can say, “Stomp! Shout! Scream! has screened everywhere— from ATLANTA to WALLA WALLA!” Please come out and check out the movie if you are anywhere close to these festivals. It is best experienced with an audience and a few beers.

Iowa, B-Movie Celebration, Springville NY & Mary's

2007-08-01T16:21:00.000-04:00

Stomp! Shout! Scream! had a pretty slow summer, screening-wise, but things are starting to pick up for the fall. The Skunk Ape invades the Midwest this month for screenings in Iowa and Indiana. The Landlocked Film Festival in Iowa City will screen the film each day during its festival, August 9, 10, & 11. The B-Movie Celebration near Indianapolis, Indiana, screens the film on Saturday, August 18 at 2:30 pm, but the whole weekend sounds pretty amazing. Tons of great movies screen all day and night, and B-movie icons Lloyd Kaufman, Tom Savini and Jim Wynorski will be in attendance. I just booked my travel to the B-Movie Celebration, so if anyone reads this and finds me in Indiana and says the secret password (“It’s an antediluvian simian creature”), you’ll get a free DVD.

Towns in New York, Iowa & Indiana were recently added to the Skunk Ape's march toward screenings in all 50 states. If you would like to host a Stomp! Shout! Scream! screening in your town, please contact me.

The New York state premiere was held in the charming hamlet of Springville on Saturday, July 21, by the rec department swimming pool. Dozens of residents enjoyed snacks, refreshments and a brisk swim while the movie screened under the stars. Thanks a bazillion to filmmaker Seth Wochensky & the Springville Center for the Arts for hosting me and the film. It was one of the best screenings to date.

Another completely ridiculous screening was held at Mary’s Bar in East Atlanta as part of their annual Summer Beach Party night. Bathing suits met gorilla suits on the dance floor. Thanks to Millie and all the nice folks at Mary’s for the screening and letting me DJ a set of monkey songs.

MicroCineFest, Rome, Santa Fe, IndieMemphis Film Festivals

2007-03-04T16:08:00.000-05:00

Stomp! Shout! Scream! had a good run of festival screenings last fall—Brazil, Rome, GA; Memphis, TN; Erie, PA; Red Bank, NJ; Fargo, ND; Eureka Springs, AR; Racine, WI, Baltimore, MD; and Santa Fe, NM. In 2007, screenings continued in Augusta, GA and most recently Starkville, MS. That’s 24 screenings in 16 states and 4 countries, with two Best Feature Film Awards (the first festival screening at the Toofy Film Festival and the most recent screening at the Magnolia Film Festival). It has always been my goal to have a screening in all 50 states. The film is 32% of the way there with outstanding film festival submissions in South Carolina, Iowa, Connecticut, Minnesota and Michigan.

If anyone reading this would like to screen Stomp! Shout! Scream! in their town, please contact me.

The festivals I’ve attended seem to fall into two categories: Small-town festivals bringing indie films that wouldn’t otherwise get screened there and city festivals that tend to be as much a society events as a film festival. Both festivals have their advantages. Bigger city festivals usually have more money to spend on filmmaker travel and parties, where small-town festivals often spend their efforts on creating a community for filmmakers to interact with each other and audiences. It’s these festivals that foster a community for filmmakers that I find the most fun. Making independent films is exhilarating, but also very, very hard work. It will certainly make you crazy. Finding other people with the same passions makes it all the more worthwhile and invigorates me to keep going.

Almost every year since 1999, I’ve traveled to Baltimore for MicroCineFest, “thee underground film festival in Baltimore, hon.” Without Skizz and MicroCineFest screening my short films early on, I would have never had the confidence to attempt making a feature film. This year, Stomp! Shout! Scream! was invited to be the closing night film (screened out of competition, so I could continue my tradition of being a judge for the festival). As always, watching great films, duck pin bowling, visiting the Visionary Art Museum, and hanging out with Nick, Mike and everyone else on the screening committee was truly the best film festival experience anyone could ever have. I can’t thank Skizz enough for all he’s done for me and for independent filmmakers everywhere.

The Rome (Georgia) International Film Festival generates very enthusiastic audiences and programs excellent films. I got to meet one of the biggest influences on my becoming a filmmaker-- Rich Schmidt, author of the now-classic Feature Filmmaking at Used Car Prices-- and view one of his early films, Emerald Cities, on a big screen.

Several filmmakers and organizers from the Santa Fe Film Festival were in attendance, which led to Stomp! Shout! Scream! screening in New Mexico in December. The highlight of my trip west was getting to see the creature feature The Host, an incredible monster movie from Korea. Go see it when it opens in the US in March.

Jay with '60s counterculture icon Wavy Gravy at the Santa Fe Film Festival.

In Santa Fe with filmmakers Donna Musil (Brats Our Journey Home) and Amy Linton (Sacco & Vanzetti).

The Red Bank International Film Festival screened the film back in October, where it received its best review yet from THE RAG—“ the monthly entertainment source serving the Jersey Shore.” “This movie totally ROCKS… FANTASTIC… well written and extremely imaginative. I wish more movies out there still had the clean and cleaver vibes of this retro flick,” said reviewer Debra Dynamite. I really wish I could have attended this one, I hear folks loved the film.

IndieMemphis is a wonderful festival that focuses on Southern films and filmmakers. I got to meet several super nice folks, including Oscar-nominated filmmakers Craig Brewer (Hustle and Flow and the upcoming Black Snake Moan) and Ray McKinnon. Stomp! Shout! Scream! got some great national press with a picture in MovieMaker Magazine thanks to IndieMemphis.

Austin Screening, soundtrack and semi-endorsements

2006-09-07T15:57:00.000-04:00

The good folks at the Austin Film Festival sponsored a Stomp! Shout! Scream! screening at the Alamo Draft House as part of their Best of the Fest series. Thanks to them for the great promotion in getting the film seen.

On hand was Mike from Chicken Ranch Records, who has put out the soundtrack. Along with all the songs from the film, there’s 3 additional tracks. The legendary Fleshtones contributed super rare, original surf tune that kicks ass. Tiger Tiger added “Black Daggers” which just had its video release recently. It also kicks much ass. The Clutters added an amazing, big, crunchy guitar-laden “Tainted Love”, originally recorded in 1964 by Gloria Jones, then covered in 1981 by Soft Cell. Wholly cow, it’ll rock your head off. Also on there is the full vocal version of The Woggles’ “One Four Three” which is heard as an instrumental during Theodora and Hector’s love montage. “Renegade Grinder” is a gear-head, buzz-saw-guitar, surf track from Johnny Knox & HI-TEST that’s only in the film for a quick snippet and has to be heard in it’s entirety. Tracks from The Evidents, The Vendettas, The Penetrators and, of course, all the Catfight! songs are there in their full glory. Go get a copy from Chicken Ranch, you won’t regret it.

Pictures from Dragon*Con 2006. Not necessarily endorsements:

Introspection & on-line reviews

2006-07-09T15:53:00.000-04:00

The latest analogy for film making that’s come into my brain is this: Film making is like cliff diving.

In cliff diving, you hurl yourself off the top of a mountain, hoping you don’t hit anything on the way down and successfully dive into the water. With film making, you hurl yourself off an emotional mountain hoping you are successful (artistically, monetarily). But with each step of production you land, splat, on another cliff. Then you have to pick yourself back up and hurl yourself off a cliff, into the abyss again. Always hoping you find success. That’s how I felt showing the script to friends for the first time… casting actors and hearing my words spoken aloud… raising money… launching into production… directing a cast and crew for the first time… submitting to film festivals… screening the film for strangers, hoping it plays to them like it does to me… and, most recently, starting DVD self-distribution. A project like this takes a great deal of commitment. It’s been 3 and 1/2 years since I started writing the script and I feel like I’m-- maybe-- at the half way point. I’ve always heard that finishing a film is only half the job. Marketing and selling it being a whopping other 50%. Now I really know what that means.

On that self-distribution trail are more film festivals. July is a pretty dry month festival-wise, but August and September are shaping up nicely with screenings in Atlanta, Rome (GA) and Calgary, Alberta, Canada. More on those soon.

On-line reviews are starting to come in. The John Waters comparison might be the best thing anyone as ever said about one of my films.

“Stomp! Shout! Scream! is a unique B monster movie romp that’s a lot of fun… Edwards never seeks to spoof, but tell an actual story, with great performances, and a wonderful soundtrack. I really enjoyed this in all its demented straight-faced glory. John Waters would be proud.”
Cinema-Crazed.com

“STOMP! SHOUT! SCREAM!(2006) is a delightful homage to/entry in the beach party/monster subgenre of Sixties drive-in fare, packed with rock & roll, bouffant hairdos, bikinis, and cheesy monsters…”
DVDLateShow.com

“Stomp! Shout! Scream! is a groovy movie... Fans of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello beach movies like Beach Blanket Bingo(1965) will dig it, as will fans of the Herschell Gordon Lewis film Blast-Off Girls(1967) or the “man in gorilla suit” movies like The Beast That Killed Women(1966).”
Pollystaffle.com

"It’s a tightrope walk to pay tribute to three separate genres of ‘60s movies – the beach party flick (think Frankie and Annette), the rock and roll movie (believe it or not, even Herman’s Hermits had their own movie in 1966), and the old-fashioned monster movie – without drifting into parody. Somehow, however, “Stomp! Shout! Scream!” pulls it off just about perfectly."
bullz-eye.com

FILMSTOCK, DeadCENTER, Portland Underground

2006-06-18T15:44:00.000-04:00

The biggest week in the festival life of Stomp! Shout! Scream! just ended. Three screenings on 2 continents, and 2 premieres-- all in 7 days.

I can’t personally report how the European premiere at FILMSTOCK in Luton, Bedfordshire, UK went. To be totally honest, I didn’t realize my passport had expired until I was at the airport, ready to fly out. There was nothing I could do, except send out apologetic emails and save that credit for some future overseas screening. A couple of emails filtered in from folks who saw the movie there and found this website or Stomp! Shout! Scream!’s myspace page. They said the crowd response was good and there was a big round of applause at the end.

Stomp! Shout! Scream! was selected to be the opening night film at the DeadCENTER Film Festival in Oklahoma City, OK. There was a pre-screening party at a beautiful art gallery, complete with girl-centric rock band-- The Oh! Johnny Girls, who rocked some Shangri-la’s covers—- and a formally-attired Skunk Ape.

Over 230 people came out to see the film on a beautiful night in the OK City park. Just as the film was set to start, the city’s sprinklers came on, on the other side of the park and systematically started moving closer to the screening and the movie goers. A cagey festival volunteer grabbed several small trash cans and had them at the ready to cover the sprinkler heads. A few folks did get wet, but it was a screening few will ever forget.

Stomp! Shout! Scream! ‘s west coast premiere was at the Portland Underground Film Festival, held at the Clinton Street Theater. Showing movie since 1914, it is the oldest continuously-operated theater in the country. A small but very appreciative crowd view the film and all stayed for one of the best Q & A sessions yet.
Thanks to everyone at these festivals for giving Stomp! Shout! Scream! such amazing exposure.

DVD Release party at ABC

2006-06-03T15:32:00.000-04:00

The DVD Release Party, held may 26 at the Atlanta Brewing Company, was a great success. Over 275 folks showed up to drink beer, watch the film, drool over the Dames Aflame, and rock out to Catfight!’s final performance. The pictures tell the story. Here’s a bunch of ‘em.

Thanks to Ashley Zeltzer for painting up her car.

Ned Hastings enjoying his performance as the Skunk Ape.

Maryland Film Festival Recap, reviews

2006-05-17T15:18:00.000-04:00

Stomp! Shout! Scream! screened at the Charles Theater as part of the Maryland Film Festival on Mother's Day to an appreciative crowd. A few DVDs were sold, I met some super-nice film makers and got to see some great films.
This was my 6th visit to Baltimore (The Monster Trilogy short films screened at Microcinefest and my documentary short was shown at the MFF, plus I’ve been a judge at Microcinefest). I say this every time I talk about these experiences-- I love Baltimore. No other festival that I’ve been to treats visiting film makers as well as these two festivals—nice accommodations, good crowds, great movies, great events (duck pin bowling, side trips to Orioles games and the Visionary Art Museum). For independent film makers who do this for the love of creating something and often little or no financial reward, going to Baltimore is truly motivational and a highlight of every year for me.

That's SSS Marketing Associate Ashley Zeltzer with LOL actress Tipper Newton.

Stomp! Shout! Scream! has gotten some swell on-line reviews:

“A sweet can of camp, a ridiculously delightful cinematic experience.”
Film Threat

“Stomp! Shout! Scream! was a total hoot. It's a note-perfect homage to '60s beach flicks and monster movies."
The Albuquerque Tribune

“Stomp! Shout! Scream! plays like a cross between Twin Peaks, Repo Man and Stranger Than Paradise with a little Beach Blanket Bingo thrown in to keep things interesting.”
Bradenton Herald

“The lighting was fabulous throughout - vibrant, evocative, sculptural. I loved it. The cast was great - just the right mix of real person and B-movie cliché, so that the whole movie came off like an episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, but with the 'bots' quips wrapped up into the movie itself.”
TheyreComing.com

Reminder: The DVD RELEASE PARTY will be Friday, May 26 at the Atlanta Brewing Company. Attendees will receive a Stomp! Shout! Scream! souvenir pint glass, see a screening of the film WITH the Dames Aflame Burlesque performing, dance to Catfight! live, AND drink all the delicious local brew they care to consume. Come celebrate the DVD release in Atlanta on Memorial Day weekend.

I hate to be such a salesman, but getting the movie seen is as important as getting it made. If you’ve seen the film and like it, tell your friends or write an on-line review on the IMDB or at Amazon. Those things go a LONG way toward generating interest. Thanks to everyone who has supported the film.

Film Festival Update & DVD Release Party

2006-04-23T15:10:00.000-04:00

Stomp! Shout! Scream! is seeing about a 15% return on film festival submissions. That’s a lot lower than one would hope, but for a film that was created for a VERY specific audience, I can’t be too disappointed. The submissions will keep going out, with the hope that there will be that one person on those screening committees who GETS it.

Here are the numbers since the submissions started in June 2005: 45 submissions, $1,250 in entry fees, 24 rejections, 8 acceptances, 3 Awards (Best Feature at Toofy; Best Cinematography & Best Set Design Nominations at the B-movie film festival), and 13 festivals still outstanding.

Four festivals extended invitations recently:
Maryland Film Festival, May 11-14
FILMSTOCK (London, UK) June 3, EUROPEAN PREMIERE!!!!
Dead CENTER Film Festival (Oklahoma City, OK) June 7 OPENING NIGHT FILM!!!!
Portland Underground Film Festival (Portland, OR) June 9

The plan is to have the director, producers and/or actors at all these screenings. The DVD, soundtrack and posters will be available after every screening. It’s a long road to pay everyone back that invested money and time, especially at $20 a pop, but this is the plan and we’re sticking to it. I have to keep reminding myself that no one can promote this thing as well as the folks who created it.

The DVD will have a fantabulous RELEASE PARTY on Friday, May 26 at the Atlanta Brewing Company, sponsored by Stomp and Stammer magazine. Attendees will receive a Stomp! Shout! Scream! souvenir pint glass, see a screening of the film, dance to Catfight! live, and drink all the delicious local brew they care to consume. Come celebrate the DVD release in Atlanta on Memorial Day weekend.

If you or someone you know might be interested in seeing a beach party rock and roll monster movie, please come out to one of these events and spread the word. If you can’t make it, there’s always the magic of internet commerce. Thanks!

Sarasota Film Festival Recap

2006-04-06T15:01:00.000-04:00

Director of Photography Evan Lieberman and I had a great experience at the Sarasota Film Festival last weekend. We drove down a few days early to promote the festival and Stomp! Shout! Scream!’s screenings. Our first stop was to catch the Little Steven’s Underground Garage show in Orlando on Wednesday night. The Romantics headlined and surprised us with their all-out Detroit garage rock. The real draw for us was seeing The Fleshtones. They always put on an amazing show, but I also couldn’t miss connecting with lead singer Peter Zaremba after exchanging emails and getting an awesome Fleshtones surf song for the soundtrack CD (coming out in another month or so on Chicken Ranch Records). It was a fantastic, if way too short, Fleshtones performance. Those tourist who wandered into the Hard Rock will never be the same. I also passed along a DVD to Dan Electro, Woggles drummer who was filling in with The 45s on this tour. He played the movie on the tour bus the next day and reported that Little Steven was impressed.

Thursday, we dropped off clip reels to TV stations and made phone calls all day, vying for any promotion we could get. We landed a spot on the local news/talk show Friday at noon on Sarasota’s ABC-7. And an on-location interview on SNN News 6 Friday night at the opening night Gala. I don’t know if the TV appearances sold any more tickets, but it was nice to play local-boy-done-good on TV. There was also a story in the Bradenton Herald the weekend before the festival. The festival invited me to join in a panel discussion, “Coffee and Conversation: Establishing Shots”, on Saturday morning. Despite it’s corn-ball title, this was one of the most interesting panels I’ve seen at any film festival. Panelists included Susan Seidleman (director of Desperately Seeking Susan, She-Devil and Boyton Beach Club, which was premiering at the festival), Lisa McWilliams (producer of documentary Before The Music Dies), and Jenny Abel & Jeff Hockett (producers of documentary Abel Raises Cane). Discussions of everyone’s films, their film festival experiences and even budgets and distribution was really informative for me and full-house coffee shop.

The Saturday screening was 50%+ full with a good amount of audience reaction-- lots of laughs throughout. During the screening, I hauled boxes of DVDs, posters and a folding table to just outside the screening room. There’s was a quick Q & A, then I ran out to man the sales table. My (probably unrealistic) goal is to sell a DVD to everyone who walks out the door. Sales certainly fell short of that, but was a success nonetheless.

Both Friday and Saturday nights had big parties for film makers and Sarasota society folk, with plenty of free booze and good food. The festival really is one of the best I’ve been to with great local support, stellar venues for screenings, and a fantastic program of indie and classic films.

After a short nights sleep, Sunday started early with a podcast interview for Evan and I. Then a noon screening for Stomp! Shout! Scream! This screening was almost a full house, probably 200+ folks. And not all of them friends of the family eihter. It was the first viewing for the local Florida cast- my grandma Theodora Viola; my best friend from High School Rhett; Will who plays young John Patterson; and the beach partying dancing girls-- Brittney, Jackie and Megan. They all said nice things about the film, which is extra rewarding considering they all worked on the film for virtually nothing. This screening had great DVD sales afterward-- a fantastic start to the financial life of the film.

That's Penelope Ann Miller, who was in Sarasota promoting her new film.

Indie Film Marathon, Sarasota, self-distribution

2006-03-26T14:57:00.000-05:00

Film making is such a marathon. Writing, raising money, producing, editing, mixing, and now marketing and promoting Stomp! Shout! Scream! has taken well over three years and the first dollar of income has yet to come in. Making tons of money was certainly NOT the impetus for taking on a project like this, but investors are involved and I feel a great responsibility to make this film as financially successful as possible.
And it’s really just the beginning of the public life of Stomp! Shout! Scream! Films can run on the festival circuit for a year or more. The plan has always been to travel with the film and sell DVDs after each screening. I knew it would be a 5 or 10 year project when I started, but being right in the middle is exhausting.
Actual income will start at the Sarasota Film Festival when Stomp! Shout! Scream! screens Saturday, April 1, 2006 at 5:00 pm (& again Sunday, April 2 at noon) and the just-finished DVD’s are sold for the first time. Like most everything on this film, the DVD was self-produced and will be self-distributed at festival screenings and on-line.

This will be a really special screening for several reasons. Stomp! Shout! Scream! will be seen for the first time ever in High Definition. I try to not evaluate or judge the film because I’m just too close to it, but I am certain that it will look BIG and BEAUTIFUL on that Regal Hollywood 20 screen. This will also be the first time for the Florida contingent of friends, family, volunteers and crew to see it. Investor, actress, band-namesake and my grandmother-- Theodora Viola-- will be there, too. I’m thrilled that she will be able to see it on a big screen, with a big home-town crowd.

The DVD is chuck-full of goodness. It has commentary from writer/director/me, DP Evan Lieberman, Producer Arma Benoit, actors Ned Hastings, Jonathan Green, Mary Kraft, and Cynthia Evans. There’s over an hour of behind-the-scenes vignettes, interviews, raw footage and deleted scenes—- all with commentary from cast and crew.

Cast/Crew Screening

2005-12-16T14:52:00.000-05:00

Stomp! Shout! Scream! had its hometown Atlanta premiere last Saturday night at the Landmark Midtown Art Cinema. It was a great success by all accounts—- standing room only in a 200+ seat theater, laughs and reactions throughout, even scattered applause after my favorite climactic scene in the movie. I was sweating the whole screening, but my friends assured me it wasn’t that hot in the theater. As the end credits rolled, I waited for someone else to walk up front and thank everyone for coming, but I was the one to walk up there. That’s a really nice and really weird feeling. It was truly thrilling to see the film on a big screen with cast, crew, family and friends.
Now I can concentrate on getting the DVD finished for a February or March release, when there will be another big party to celebrate. Also in the works: the soundtrack (on Chicken Ranch Records), posters, t-shirts, a 7” single, and more festival screenings.

Austin Film Festival Recap

2005-10-27T14:43:00.000-04:00

The day Stomp! Shout! Scream! premiered at the Austin Film Festival, I got an email from the Deep Ellum Film Festival that the film had been accepted to screen there. The festival is November 17-23, 2005. Check the website for the exact schedule in the next week.

Totaling up the festival submissions, Stomp! Shout! Scream! is 0 for 10 outside of Texas and 2 for 2 inside the Lone Star State.

To recap the Austin Film Festival, here’s my film maker blog from the AFF web site:

AFF Sun 10/16
Hello. Jay Edwards here to ramble about Stomp! Shout! Scream! and the Austin Film Festival. First I'll have to thank everyone at the festival, especially Chris Holland, for liking my film and offering to host its world premiere. Thanks for reading.

AFF Tue 10/18
I think I'm ready for this world premiere. Between now and Saturday, here's my schedule:
Wednesday: drive 14 hours, Atlanta to Austin.
Thursday: get interviewed at 5:00 AM on the Austin NBC morning show, sleep all day, and try to not get too drunk that night.
Friday: Juggle friends and family flying into town and try to sound like I belong on the "Comedy Writing for TV" panel at 1:45 PM. Oh, and show Stomp! Shout! Scream! to strangers for the first time ever at 10:00 PM. And try to not get too drunk afterward.
Saturday: Attempt to show up on time for the Writing Sci-Fi/Horror Panel at 10:45 AM.
After that, I think I'm done for a while and I can hide in dark movie theaters and watch movies.

AFF Thur 10/20
I'm in an awkward place. Somewhere between "5:00 AM TV interview" and "able to check into hotel." It's just after "14 hours in a car yesterday" and "no sleep." My delirium turns to elation when Stomp! Shout! Scream! gets its first review.

From the Austin Chronicle:
Edwards' loving homage to the short-lived beach-party-by-way-of-horror-film genre of the mid-Sixties does it better than American International Pictures ever did, with canny nods along the way to Them, Jaws, The Horror of Party Beach, and Roger Corman's own B-movie update Humanoids From the Deep. The arrival of an all-girl garage rock band in the quaint seaside community of Merriville Island coincides with a sudden rash of sandy mayhem that may be the result of the dreaded skunk-ape, which leaves behind a hideous odor to match its rampant carnage. On the trail of the beast are a trio of semicompetent cops ("It just don't make no sense – what kind of a homicidal maniac would do something like this?") and the requisite smart guy from the local college, who's final utterances remind us to forget about the skies, already, what we really need to be watching are the tides. It's nearly as much fun as an episode of Hullabaloo, snappy bouffants, earnest braniacs, hippy-hippy-shake, and all.

AFF Sat 10/22
The Stomp! Shout! Scream! premiere screening went pretty well last night.

Chris Holland from the festival and I both felt a sellout was coming from the way folks were talking, but the theater was about just 60% full. That's a little disappointing at first, but then I realized that was just due to our expectations. Promoting a film on the festival circuit is a marathon, not a one-time thing. There will be plenty of opportunities to get the film seen.

The film got lots of laughter throughout and a really nice reception from moviegoers afterward. Thanks to everyone who came out to see it. I personally went right out and guzzled beer with family and friends until the bars closed at 2 AM. That made it a little hard to get out to the panels this morning, but I made it. Now I'll nap and plan out some movie watching for the rest of my time in Austin.

AFF Tue 10/25
Unfortunately, I will not be at the screening tonight. The cartoon sweat shop demanded my presence back in Atlanta. Chris and the festival have concocted a little something in my absence. It's way funnier that I'd be at the screening.

Stomp! Shout! Scream! has gotten some scathingly bad reviews on the AFF web site. It's upsetting at first, of course. And I hate that it might affect attendance at the festival. But if EVERYONE liked the movie, it would be a total failure. I'm not trying to make "E.T." here. If you don't get it in the first 10 minutes, then, yeah, you'll probably hate it and that's fine with me. I know there's an audience out there that does get it.

Austin in 1 week, indie film Marketing

2005-10-16T14:37:00.000-04:00

Just in case you haven’t heard: Stomp! Shout! Scream! will have its WORLD PREMIERE at 10:00 PM, on Friday, October 21, 2005 at the Landmark Dobie Theater as part of the Austin Film Festival. The film will screen again at 9:30 PM at the Dobie on Tuesday, October 25. Visit the festival website for ticket info.

There’s one last bit of business left in order to call Stomp! Shout! Scream! really done. The end credits have not been put on the final master tape, but that will happen this weekend. As with most indie films, the credit list is long, but not because there’s tons of crew. The actual film crew is just 20 or so people. There’s just lots and lots of people to thank. And I wanted to let the entire theme song play out since Jennifer and Catfight! wrote and recorded such a fantastic song, complete with hysterical breakdown in the middle. Film festivals usually have film makers do Q & A after screenings, so viewers are usually obliged to stick around through an entire credit sequence. This film’s is pretty long, so to spruce it up a bit, I had renown Tiki artist Derek Yaniger do some character illustrations to intersperse amidst the usual list of names and titles. He’s incredible and the illustrations he did for Stomp! Shout! Scream! are absolutely perfect.

Looming just after the movie’s premiere will be working to put together the DVD. I have almost 10 hours of behind the scenes footage, so it will be a monumental undertaking.

Marketing update: The posters will be ready for Austin and they have turned out beautifully thanks to Buffi at Tweet Design. I splurged on full size movie posters, 27” x 41”. It’s one more thing that will make this low budget monster thing seem like a real movie. The stickers just came in today. Postcards and new business cards are scheduled to arrive the day before I drive to Austin.

I’m constantly praising all the folks who have worked on Stomp! Shout! Scream! and they deserve an enormous amount of credit for making the film so much more than I ever could. Stomp! Shout! Scream! has been incredibly lucky to have such a support “staff” of people who like the project and are willing to work hard and have some fun. That was the plan all along and getting into The Austin Film Festival is proof of lots of people’s good work. I’m sure it will pay off on Friday night.

sound mix, color correction for Premiere in Austin

2005-10-02T22:11:00.000-04:00

Just in case you haven’t heard: Stomp! Shout! Scream! will have its world premiere on October 21, 2005 as part of the Austin Film Festival and Screenwriters Conference. Visit the festival website for tickets and screening info.

Another part of film making is trying to get people to come see your film. Newspapers and other press outlets are the best resource for letting people know the details. It makes me feel like a pimp, selling my product, but I spent the last week working on press releases, credit lists, a “statement of the director”, formatting news articles, etc., to put in the first official press kit. All that stuff is on the Media page on stompshoutscream.com.

Post-production on the film took a couple of major leaps forward this week. It’s at this stage that you go to the experts and hope they can perform those miracles you always hear about. Director of Photography Evan Lieberman and I supervised the final color correction in Cinefilm’s Spirit transfer suite. Due to the usual time and money constraints of indie film making, we had to shoot several scenes at the wrong time of day. Colorist Ron Anderson worked his magic and fixed all the problem scenes, plus greatly improved several scenes that were already looking good. Now Stomp! Shout! Scream! looks absolutely fantastic. I can’t say enough about Evan, the extremely talented crew he put together, and Ron’s expertise that combined to get this film looking as good as it does.

Michael and Juan at Soapbox Studios put in a Herculean effort over the weekend to finish the sound mix for the movie. Once again, there’s nothing like going to the experts and getting them to work their magic. Everyone involved in the sound mix commented about how we picked one of the hardest possible locations to get quality sound—- the beach, at night. One long dialog scene has waves, a generator, and RF interference competing with the actor’s lines. Michael was able to EQ the voices just right and make the scene, and the whole movie, sound better than I would have ever imagined.

Maybe they’re just being nice, but everyone who has helped on the film says that it was great fun to work on. I started this whole project to have fun with the creative people I know, not because I wanted more work.

Principle photography started one year ago this week. I never thought it would take this long or be this hard, but seeing the color-corrected images finally married up to a pristine sound mix sure feels good. I am really, really looking forward to Austin.

Here's 3 shots taken from Day One of shooting, one year ago today.

Toofy Film Festival, sound mixing, World Premiere

2005-09-16T22:03:00.000-04:00

Stomp! Shout! Scream! had its first public showing as a work-in-progress at the Toofy Film Festival last weekend. The audience laughed in all the right places and had nothing but positive comments after wards. It was a great learning experience and quite a thrill to see the film on a big screen for the first time. I could see (and hear) that there’s still work to be done, but the film is close to being complete.

Leading up to the screening, Juan and Tony at Soapbox Studios worked very, very hard to get the audio ship-shape, including a session from 6 pm to 3 am Wednesday, after working a full shift at their day jobs. It’s incredible what professional studio speakers reveal. What I thought was a pretty strong mix coming out of Final Cut turns out to have endless, irritating flaws. No matter how good the location sound is—and this film’s is damn good—once you start cutting it up, you introduce all kinds of problems. In locations like a working garage or a public beach or even in a controlled environment like a warehouse office, sound recordings are just going to be different on different takes. There’s no way to avoid extensive labor when it comes to getting a pristine sound mix. I’m sure the film’s sound will be great, it’s just a much longer run than Juan or I anticipated.

Part of the process of mixing is bringing in the actors to re-read the lines that can’t be used from the location recordings. Its called automatic dialog replacement (ADR), but that’s a misnomer because it is anything but automatic. The actors and Juan did a super job, making something that’s completely disjointed look and sound seamless. The best part was adding in screams of terror. All the actresses have incredible horror screams, but for a distant scream on the beach I put Tony in the booth to perform his best girl scream. It’s awesome.

Saving the best news for last, Stomp! Shout! Scream! will have it’s world premiere as part of the Austin Film Festival and Screenwriters Conference. This is a great honor for me and for everyone associated with the production. The film will screen twice during the week-long festival with the premiere on Friday, October 21 (exact time and location TBA). This is the deadline I’ve been waiting for. In the next month Stomp! Shout! Scream! can finally be put to bed, production-wise.

Film Festival rejection, validation

2005-09-04T21:59:00.000-04:00

Submitting to film festivals makes me think a lot about the nature of being a film maker. I guess anyone who creates something for public consumption goes through an internal debate over what constitutes success, satisfaction, and validation. So what is it that film makers want? They want total strangers to sit in the dark and like what they’ve created. They want to be liked for what they’ve done. Once you’ve been to a film festival and had even one person come up to you after a screening and gush over how much they liked your film… well, then you’re hooked for life. I have that addiction and I’ve been working for almost 3 years to return to that place. I know there’s an audience for Stomp! Shout! Scream! and getting the film to them is now foremost in my mind.

I have received rejection letters from a few of the big festivals. Toronto, “We regret to inform you that we are unable to find a place for your film in this year’s programme. Large numbers of festival submissions have made the selection process increasingly difficult, and inevitable we must exclude promising films from the Festival.” Sidewalk, “Our screening committees have diligently viewed hundreds of submissions, and valiantly battled in support of their favorite films. We are unable to include many of our own favorites due to the nature of a weekend film festival such as Sidewalk.” Savannah, “Thank you for entering Stomp! Shout! Scream! into the Savannah Film Festival 2005. Unfortunately, your film submission was not selected for final competition.”

No matter what they put in the letter, the clichés always really mean, “We like these other films better than yours.” Rejection letters are infinitely better than no response at all which is totally maddening. No big deal, I tell myself. If I made a film that everyone liked, it would be the most bland, boring turd of a movie imaginable. Festival submissions still outstanding are Austin, St. Louis, Hollywood Horror, F4, Portland Underground, Deep Ellum, and Anchorage. New festival deadlines come around every week and I’ll just keep submitting until someone says yes.

Soon after writing that, one festival DID say yes. The Toofy Film Festival in Boulder, Colorado had invited Stomp! Shout! Scream! to screen as a WORK-IN-PROGRESS on Sunday, September 18. The sound mix won’t be finished by that time-- good enough to be heard in public, just not completely done. If anyone reading this knows folks in Denver/Boulder, please alert them to this screening. I would love a full house and lots of feedback for me to make a better monster movie.

Skunk Ape Trilogy

2005-08-21T21:50:00.000-04:00

While Stomp! Shout! Scream! is getting an audio make-over in someone else’s hands, two other tasks are keeping me busy: creating marketing & promotional materials and doing research for the next Skunk Ape script.

Back in the fall of 2003 when I was finishing the writing of Stomp! Shout! Scream!, I realized that that script should be the start of a Skunk Ape Trilogy. I came up with a structure arc for the three movies pretty quickly. #1 was a 1966 Beach Party movie with a Garage Rock soundtrack; #2 , a 1972 Animals Attack movie with Country Music; #3, a 1977 Punk Rock movie (the exact movie genre on this one still isn’t quite clear). Locations through the 3 movies would move east to west: Florida for the Beach Party, the Midwest for the Animals Attack/Country music, and Los Angeles for the Punk Rock finale. Just like in 2003, I’ve been watching all the movies I can find within the genre that I’ll be writing. It’s been a summer of Kingdom of the Spiders (1977), Empire of the Ants (1977), Grizzly (1976), The Crater Lake Monster (1977), Frogs (1972), Squirm (1976), and Day of the Animals (1977). And there’s lots more.

Watching ‘50s & ‘60s low-budget monster flicks and beach party movie is tons of campy fun. Watching low-budget ‘70s Animal Attack movies is, well... a chore. The ‘50s & ‘60s films always ended on a moral, just or uplifting note, accompanied by a speech by the lead actor, something like “Man is a thinking creature and as such, the greatest in the universe…” Often the plots in these film were wrapped up quickly, idealistically, always leaving room for hope. The low-budget horror films of the‘70s are universally filled with a palpable, persistent hopelessness. Kingdom of the Spiders ends with Williams Shatner trapped in a cabin. The last shot of the film is a matte painting of the town covered in spider webs. That’s it. Everyone dies. The End. Downer movies are not necessarily such a bad thing as source material for writing a film, but it sure makes for film watching and film making that’s just not much fun. And who wants to make monster movies if they aren’t fun? All this leads me back to what I realized when I started writing Stomp! Shout! Scream!: I have to come up with a good story, populated with interesting characters, and employ only the appealing elements of genre movies to give the film it’s style.

Another part of script research is keenly knowing the location of where things take place. Stomp! Shout! Scream! was set in Florida, partially because I knew I could save money by shooting in my home town, but also because I could clearly picture all the locations in my head while I was writing. For the next Skunk Ape movie, a small Midwest town seems like the right location, even though I’m not certain of my story yet and I’ve never spent any time in the Midwest. So, I took a road trip to Iowa for the 4th of July holiday to visit my friend Mitch and his family. I brought along the Skunk Ape costume and my camera to see how a big black ape creature looked lumbering through the cornfields. It looked pretty awesome.

For marketing and promotion, Tweet Design will be creating the poster, DVD packaging, soundtrack packaging, business cards, stationery, t-shirts, and some undetermined give-a-way item. Marketing a film appropriately is every bit as important as making a good film. I didn’t become a film maker because I wanted to be in advertising and sales, but that’s definitely part of the process. And creating posters and t-shirts for a beach party rock and roll monster movie will most certainly be part of the fun.

Audio Sweetening

2005-07-24T21:47:00.000-04:00

It’s been a long summer trying to get Stomp! Shout! Scream! completed. With picture locked, animation and the Hi-Def conform done, the sound mix is the next big step. All the audio post production clichés apply here. “Audio is more than half of the video.” “No matter how good the visuals, you’ll loose an audience if they can’t hear the dialog.” Something I learned succinctly when I started doing short films was that if a film has good professional sound, people will excuse a whole lot of visual, story, and other flaws. Juan at Soapbox Studios has been hard at work and gave the film a great complement when we first got started. He said that the location sound and post production audio was so good that he really doesn’t have much to do, just clean up the dialog and stay out of the way of a good film. I’ve realized that until I have a real deadline-- like a festival screening—there isn’t a whole lot of pressure to finish the audio. So we’ll probably keep tweaking it until the first festival acceptance letter comes in. Hopefully that will happen soon. I’d really hoped to have a cast & crew, family & friends viewing party this summer, but that will just have to wait until after a festival premiere.

On the festival front, submissions are going out every week. I’m doing lots of internet research, looking for festivals with good reputations that have shown films like Stomp! Shout! Scream! in the past. In addition to Toronto, Austin, and Sidewalk, I’ve submitted to some big festivals (St. Louis, Hamptons, Hollywood Horror Sci-Fi and Fantasy), some local ones (Savannah, Asheville), and some that just look like great fun (Coney Island, Rehoboth Beach, Portland Underground, Shriekfest in LA, F4 in Seattle, Rebelfest in Toronto, and Toofy in Boulder). If anyone reading this knows anyone at one of these festivals, put in a good work for me. Thanks.

Animated Credits done, HI-Def conform

2005-06-19T21:37:00.000-04:00

The animated opening credits are complete. I’m thrilled with them, although I had a crisis a day after they were delivered. While viewing the edited film with Director of Photography Evan Lieberman, I realized that Theodora, the lead character, is not properly established if the audience doesn’t see her on stage singing the theme song early in the movie. Theodora has to be seen happy and alive on-stage and depressed and cranky off-stage. That contrast sets up her mysterious past and the reveal of that past is the best moment in the film. If I use an animated character in the opening credits, all the audience sees is the cranky side and there’s no sympathy for her.
The main reason I decided to do an animated opening credit sequence was because the footage we shot of the actresses performing the theme didn’t turn out that great. It was our first day of shooting and we just didn’t have time to make it what it needed to be. My dilemma was: use the iffy footage and interrupt the flow of the animation, OR have a main character that isn’t properly established.

Compounding this problem was the fact that my HD conform was scheduled for Monday night after my animation was delivered Friday night. I had one day to find a solution. I tried inter-cutting the live footage with the animation, but that was problematic since both scenes were choreographed and lip-synched to the first 2 verses of the song. My solution was to edit in a chorus & verse that I’d removed long ago to shorten the credit sequence. I put the live footage all together in the middle of the animated credits, used a screen wipe to transition in and out of it and, voila, problem(s) solved. The animation retains it’s punch and integrity. And the live footage is short, succinct and a little surprising after seeing the animation. AND the audience gets to see Theodora happy and rocking on stage. At least, I’m pretty sure it solved my issues. As I’ve said before, it’s impossible for me to really judge the movie with any perspective since this month is the 3 &1/2 year mark since I start writing it.

That HD conform session went very smoothly. The fine professionals at Crawford Post did an excellent job, above and beyond my expectations, especially for a low-budget project like this one. Here’s some geeky movie totals: 77 minutes, 510 edits, one dissolve, two wipes (in the opening credits), two dips to black, one shot was blown up 15% in the film-to-HD transfer. Otherwise, no effects, no compositing. There’s still some color correction to be done for a few scenes, but the picture portion of Stomp! Shout! Scream! is essentially done.

Festival submission deadlines are here and I’ve had to send out tapes with a rough mix on them. While this audio is certainly not bad, I would have preferred to have some kind of professional mix by this point. Hopefully, that won’t detract from the film’s appeal. Toronto, Austin, and Sidewalk in Birmingham all have submissions and tapes. I probably won’t hear anything until August or later, so I’m trying to stay guardedly hopeful. At this point, it’s just depends on whether the movie is good enough or not.

Here's 3 pics of me on Day One of shooting, taking the "director's pose."

Opening credits, first festival deadline

2005-05-29T14:50:00.000-04:00

Stomp! Shout! Scream! is approaching it’s first deadline. The entry cut-off dates for the big Fall film festivals are coming up in June and the film still needs to be conformed and mixed in order to be ready. I’ve been saying since day one that a rough cut Stomp! Shout! Scream! just looks like a crappy movie, but an HD-ready, mixed-in-surround-sound, beautiful Stomp! Shout! Scream! is really something. I think it is. I did get a look at the re-transferred HD tapes earlier this week and by all accounts the film is absolutely beautiful. No one will believe that we got the look we got on our budget.

The last month has seen the animated opening credits inch forward. The hazard of working with really talented people is that they’re often very busy. Since I had more time than money (still no money, but now less time), Radical Axis Animation Studios kindly offered to do the animation at a reduced rate in their “down time.” There hasn’t been as much down time as they’d expected and the animation is in need of some work before it’s done. All the pieces are there for a really amazing open, I just hope it’ll be ready when my deadline hits.

As far as the mix goes, I’ve resigned myself to getting a rough mix that takes care of any major sound issues and going back to do a fine-tuned surround mix later. A good 90% of our location sound is perfectly good for the mix, it’s just those few lines that had to be recorded in impossible situations that will need to be replaced. Once again, I’m working with a really talented sound designer, but he’s just been so busy that we haven’t started on the mix yet.

The festival deadline is, of course, a self-imposed one. There are lots of great festivals year-round that I’d be happy to premiere at. The one with the best reputation for being a festival for film-lovers is the Toronto International Film Festival, especially the Midnight Madness Programme. That’s the one festival this fall that-- in my mind-- trumps all the rest. That’s the one I’d hold my world premiere for over any others. I just have to get the film ready and hope they will want to screen it.

Slatemen of SSS

2005-04-25T14:34:00.000-04:00

Assistant Camera, Hugh Braselton with the smart slate.

Assistant Director, Ales Orr, on Day one of shooting.

Grip/Electric, Tony Holley in Florida.

Grip/Electric Mike Brune (future star of Blood Car)

Tony Holly again, on the beach. Everyone looks really good on 35 mm.

Mike Brune again. Great lighting by DP Evan Lieberman and gaffer Jon Swindall.

Forgot the slate, no time to find it, that's me clapping as a slate.

Actors Mary Kraft, Cynthia Evans and Jonathan Green slate themselves for a drive 'n' talk take.

Last one for sex appeal.

Finishing in hi-def

2005-04-24T14:13:00.000-04:00

Another week has gone by and Stomp! Shout! Scream! is another inch closer to being done. I saw more animation story boards this week and heard more soundtrack music. Nothing too huge to report there, so I’ll talk technical about how this film will be finished.

The decision process started back before the first frame was shot. At some point while writing the script, I decided that this movie should be produced as if it was made in 1966-- period costumes, music, locations, etc. Since it was going to be made with limited resources, reproducing the schedule constraints and shooting style of the era’s low budget films would be necessary and stylistically appropriate. I always assumed the movie, at best, would be shot on super-16mm film-- for budget reasons and to maintaining the wide-screen look and feel of film. DP Evan Lieberman and producer Arma Benoit worked their favor magic and delivered a budget that allowed us to shoot on 35mm. Evan pushed hard for 35mm so he could perfectly emulate the bright, over-saturated, primary colors of the ‘60s beach party movies. Shooting 35mm over super-16mm gave me the option of a more traditional finishing process-- cutting the original camera negative as the final conform of the film, as opposed to a video-only post production. The best part of having that option was that I didn’t need to make that film-vs-video decision until well into post production.

Before any decisions can be made on how to finish the film for screenings, I had to speculate how and where the film would be seen. I always saw Stomp! Shout! Scream! as a festival circuit, midnight movie kinda film, with home video/DVD being another way many folks would see the movie. Coupled with the fact that so few films get picked up for distribution, I decided early on to settle for a video finish with the option to get back to the original film negative if the opportunity presented itself.

So here’s the process so far:
1) Cinefilm Atlanta did a ‘one-light’ film transfer (quick and with only the most basic of color correction) of the 35mm film negative to digi-beta video tape, letterboxed for 1:1.85 aspect ratio. Usually, time code (numbers that track each frame of video) and key code (also called edge numbers, which track each frame of film) are put along the bottom edge of the frame. These were left off our transfers because it was thought that these digital beta tapes would eventually be source tapes for the final conform.

2) With the film-to-tape transfer came Flex Files—computer spreadsheets that track the video’s time code (which runs at 30 frames per second [fps]) and the corresponding film key code (which runs at 24 fps). I used Apple’s Cinema Tools software to import the Flex Files and turn them into batch digitize logs that could be imported into Final Cut Pro. I digitized all of the film transfer tapes (about 7 hours) into Final Cut Pro 4.5 at the Cartoon Network production office using Blackmagic Design’s Decklink Pro video card. Normally, you would have to digitize at 30 fps, then re-compress all your footage into a quicktime that runs at 24 fps using Cinema Tools. This is done so that one frame in the computer equals one film frame. The Decklink Pro card comes with a codec (a quicktime format, like MPEG) that digitizes at 24 fps, eliminating one long, tedious step. Next, I had to move all my film footage from the office to my computer at home, which could only edit at DV resolution. I used FCP’s Media Manager to export my project and all my footage into the DV codec and carried it home on a firewire hard drive. I linked the digitized/exported clips to the Cinema tools database and I was ready to edit, with the option of either finishing on video (via an EDL [edit decision list] and the digibeta transfer tapes) or by cutting the film negative (via a negative cut list and a professional negative cutter). I’m editing on a 3 year old Power Mac G4 that feeds video to a Panasonic DV tape deck & a regular old TV via a firewire cable. I’m storing my footage (a couple hundred megabytes) on Medea SCSI drives, but firewire drives would work just as well.

3) The next step was syncing up the video with the location audio, which was recorded on DAT tapes. I digitized the DAT tapes with an old DAT deck at the office using an optical cable that plugged directly into the PowerMac G5. Since I didn’t have deck control and therefore no time code reference, the smart slate used in production (an electronic clapper that has an LED readout showing the rolling time code on the DAT tapes) would not match the TC on my digitized audio. Luckily, the smart slate rarely worked correctly and whomever was slating the scenes would resort to doing an “old fashion”, which means you actually slap the sticks on the clapper together, giving you a visual and audio sync point. Between PA Juston Rindlesbach and myself, we spent about 40 hours syncing the audio and video together. One of the great benefits of working in Final Cut Pro at DV resolution was the ability to copy the whole project and all the digitized footage onto a firewire drive and let Juston take it home and sync takes on his laptop, sitting at his kitchen table.

4) I edited the film. I’ve always described myself as not so much a writer/director, but as an editor with control issues. I really went through the last 2 1/2 years of hard work to get to this point-- so that I would have something to edit, at home, without anyone to answer to. It was truly enjoyable, although with limited numbers of takes and a 75-80 minute movie, I only wish there was more for me to do.

This is were the film stands now. The editing is 95% done. The final pieces of the score will be delivered soon and the picture will then be locked. I’ve decided to spend the money to get to a High Definition master of Stomp! Shout! Scream! It’s expensive (about $6,000) but nowhere near the cost of getting a 35mm film print, ($20,000+) and it allows for more control over editing in the opening and closing credit sequences and color correction of the entire film. I’m gambling a bit on the spread of HD projectors into the film festival circuit, where the majority of my screenings will take place (hopefully), but I think the potential markets for a beach party rock and roll monster movie that’s on High Definition out-way the risks. Here’s how I’ll get there:

5) Cinefilm will re-transfer all the 35mm film negative to Sony HDCAM SR tapes with time code that matches my original film transfers to D-beta. There are other HD formats, but if I’m going to go to HD, I should go for the highest quality available and that’s the Sony HDCAM SR. Normally transferring everything would be prohibitively expensive and you would only transfer the shots used in the final film, but because our shooting ratio was so low (like 4 to 1), it will be quicker to just re-transfer everything, probably about 10 hours of unsupervised transfer time.

6) The thing that makes working in HD so expensive is that only the high-end post production houses can justify purchasing the tape decks. Sony HDCAM or Panasonic D5 decks run somewhere around $100,000. Finding one of these post houses that can work in uncompressed HD and that’s interested in donating time to no-budget indie feature film is not easy. So for the conform, I’ve weaseled my way into a weekend session at [a nameless cable network broadcasting facility located in Atlanta] in their AVID DS suite. The easiest way to move the project from Final Cut Pro to the DS is with a good ol’ EDL. It simply lists the time code and tape number of each shot and where it belongs on the master tape. The latest edit of Stomp! Shout! Scream! has 490 cuts, one dissolve and one fade to black. Simple, with no CGI, no special effects. That’s how Roger Corman would’ve done it and that’s how I’m doing it now.

7) The final step in finishing the video will be to return to Cinefilm with a conformed HD master tape and spend a day or two in color correction. (Concurrent with finishing the video, the sound mix will be completed, but that’s probably another whole, boring journal entry just like this one.)

The reasoning behind all this time and money is to take advantage of High Definition’s ability to be screened in theaters, big and beautiful, on HD video projectors. Plus the thirst for any HD product on television has become voracious. Finally, if the stars align just exactly right and Stomp! Shout! Scream! wins the equivalent of the indie film lottery and gets some kind of theatrical distribution, the path to striking multiple 35mm film prints from an HD master is relatively straight forward.

I’ve been scouring the internet for detailed info just like this from other independent film makers without a lot of luck. Hopefully, this all makes some kind of sense and I’ve helped someone out there.

Scoring, Animated credits

2005-04-17T15:39:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned in my last journal, these entries may be few and far between while Stomp! Shout! Scream! makes the last few steps toward the finish line of post production. I didn’t realize it’d be 6 weeks before I’d have anything to talk about.
The film’s score is almost done. Composer John Cerreta has done great work. We’ve met maybe 6 times and at least once a meeting, I giggle to the point of out-and-out laughter. Not because what he’s done is goofy, clown-ish music, but because it’s so perfect for what we’re aiming at.

The animated opening credit sequence is progressing well also. Designer Evan Miga at Racial Axis has done a great job story boarding the sequence. I saw the first rough movements of the animated band playing last week. Animator Todd Redner is using the original footage we shot for the scene as reference to wonderful effect. I can’t thank everyone at Radical enough for the added production value this will give the final film. It’s really going to look great.

Here’s the remaining schedule: another 2-3 weeks to finish the score, 4-5 weeks to complete the animation, Cinefilm Atlanta will re-transfer all the original 35mm film to Hi-Definition tape, the edit will be conformed on HD (more on this later), a day or two of HD tape-to-tape color correction at Cinefilm, and finally I’ll start to mix the sound. As I’ve said before, these last steps are the ones that really make this film so much more than the sum of it’s parts.

finishing the edit

2005-02-27T15:35:00.000-05:00

Four months after finishing principle photography on Stomp! Shout! Scream!, I can see the light at the end of the post production tunnel. There’s a fine-tuned rough cut, completed and delivered to soundtrack composer John Ceretta, a long-time Atlanta musician who’s compositions for the Center for Puppetry Arts’ productions have won him tremendous accolades. John has about 6 weeks to deliver his music and at that point I’ll “lock the picture.” That is, I’ll stop messing with it and call it essentially done. Another exciting prospect in the works is having the opening titles animated at Radical Axis, the company that animates Adult Swim shows. Radical Axis principals Scott Fry and Craig Hartin have been great supporters of this project since the beginning and I’m trilled that we’ll be able to work together.

One major goal I had for the film was to be able to show it in theaters, but generally films with small budgets can’t afford to get a negative cut and strike prints. I'm still trying to work out the details, but it looks like I’ll be able to transfer my 35mm negative to High Definition video tape, enabling the final film to be seen big and beautiful. More and more film festivals and theaters are using HD video projectors to show low budget films, and television has developed a voracious appetite for anything HD. These are excellent prospects for getting Stomp! Shout! Scream! seen by as many people as possible.

The next 2 months will be spent putting the final polishes on the film and, like most of the film making process, it’s pretty tedious and not at all glamorous (and, therefore, these journals may not be as frequent). I hope to have a finished film in May, start submitting to film festivals in June, and premiering in the fall. That sure seems like a long ways away, but I’ve been working on this project since January 2003 and it’s no time to get impatient. The time and effort spent over the next few months is some of the most important in the production of this film. A film like this-- a beach party rock and roll monster movie-- has a built-in audience, but also a limited audience. By putting in that extra bit of energy into the fine-tuning of this film, by polishing this thing until it’s the best looking, best sounding beach party monster movie it can be, I can hopefully push Stomp! Shout! Scream! beyond it’s built-in limitations.

Shooting the flashback on 16mm

2005-02-20T15:24:00.000-05:00

Sunday, February 20, 2005

Evan Lieberman and I just returned from a quick weekend trip back to Bradenton, Florida to shoot the last scene for Stomp! Shout! Scream! It’s a flashback where John Patterson tells the story of when his parents went into the everglades to collect samples for their lab and disappeared. Their airboat was found adrift with the smell of the Skunk Ape on it and John has been chasing the creature ever since. The scene is only 6 or 7 shots, about 45 seconds in the film, but it’s pivotal in setting up John’s character. Evan and I have decided to shoot it on 16mm film, using the kind of film stock and cameras that were used in the early 1950’s, the era we’re flashing back to. We’ll shoot everything twice-with two cameras (a Bolex and a Bell & Howell) and two different kinds of film.

My best friend from high school, Rhett, helped out when production was in full swing back in October, cooking for the cast and crew. Now, he’s offered up his Dad’s back yard as our location, a canal off the Braden River, a perfect double for the everglades. And he found an airboat for us to use for the shoot, courtesy of his friend who I only know as "Hoss." Absolutely amazing. Rhett will play the Dad in the flashback. My mom is playing the mom. Playing John as a kid is Will Harrison, the 8-year-old son of family friends.

Evan and I shoot for an hour Saturday morning before the “cast” arrives-- beauty shots, swampy detail shots. We go out in Rhett’s dad’s bass boat and get some shots that glide just above the water’s edge. Will, Rhett, and my mom are all good as the flashback actors and we shoot lots of different set ups. At the end of the day, I put on the Skunk Ape outfit and traipse around the palmettos while Evan shoots from the boat. I don’t know where we’ll use it, but you can’t have enough Skunk Ape footage.

All totaled, we shoot about 20 minutes of film. We’re not sure what it’s going to look like, but that’s all part of the fun.

DAy 11 Recap

2005-02-13T15:09:00.000-05:00

DAY ELEVEN (Saturday, October 16)
Locations: Beach, Anna Maria Island, Florida

Our final day of shooting and we have something like 14 pages of script to cover. The long days and nights are starting to wear on the crew. That first day of summer camp attitude is long gone and folks are generally all business. Mostly the attitude is let’s just get this done. Maybe that’s just me, but I’m as ready to wrap this up as anybody. A person can be in charge of everything for only so long.

On set today is my grandmother, Theodora Viola, namesake of the lead character and the fictional band in the movie.

She made a hat out of plastic vines especially for her visit to the set, so she could hide from the Skunk Ape. “Nana” to me, she has invested in the film and has been my greatest supporter in the world. I sent her a script and a picture of the actors we’d cast and she read the script over and over with the pictures of the actors. She was thrilled to meet the cast and everyone on set was immediately charmed by her. There’s a short scene in the film where Deputy Bob has to clear some old folks from the beach, which was the perfect spot for Nana’s cameo appearance. For her scene, she’s sitting in a beach chair with a transistor radio up to her ear and yelling, “What?! What?!” while Bob repeats his lines about the beach being closed. She’s really great in her role and it turns into one of my favorite moments in the film. Later she says that this was the best day of her life.

Early in pre-production, one flaw in the script was brought to my attention. My beach party rock and roll monster movie has no actual beach party in it-- the climatic party takes place at Hector’s garage. All those Frankie and Annette beach party movies were supposedly full of innocent fun, but they still had plenty of scantily clad girls dancing on the beach. It wasn’t appropriate to ask our lead actresses to don bikini and we needed to increase the “jiggle factor’ for potential marketing’s sake. The solution that Evan and I came up with was to change the scene where Bob tries to clear retirees off the beach-- add dancing bikini girls instead of old folks. It wasn’t until noon on our last day of shooting that we actually got our dancing beach girls. They are the baby-sitting friend’s of friend’s of my mom. We had to remove the belly rings and cover up a tattoo or two, but otherwise they were perfect, complete with period bikinis. We shot the dancing scene and got loads of promo pics with them and Ned Hastings in the Skunk Ape outfit. Not surprisingly, this scene also created our largest crowd of on-lookers. In the end, we shot the Deputy Bob scene with both Nana and dancing girls. Both will be in the final film.

Day 10 Recap

2005-02-05T14:52:00.000-05:00

DAY TEN (Friday, October 15)
Locations: Beach, Anna Maria Island, Florida

Nine days into our beach party rock and roll monster movie and finally we get a full day of beach shooting. In fact, the last two days of production are going to be shot right outside of our production office/beach house. That’s the beauty of exterior location shooting (beach, forest, desert), just turn the camera around and you have a whole “new” location. According to Reagan’s script supervisor reports, here’s what we have left to shoot: about thirty pages of script; 34 scenes, approximate 42 minutes of screen time; two more long, long days. The only encouraging thing is that the majority of the beach scenes are walk ‘n’ talk (a favorite of the no budget film, if you haven’t noticed by now), which require little or no coverage. I’ve planned for simple dolly tracking shots that follow along with our actors, no coverage, no cutaways. The actors just do the scene from start to finish one, two, maybe three times and we move on to the next set up. Hopefully the dialog will be interesting enough and the location visual enough that it won’t matter if it’s not the most dynamic in the world.

Biggest potential problem with beach shooting: sand in the equipment. Compounding factor: a stiff, constant wind blowing along the beach all day. The good work of our camera crew keeps anything from going wrong and we have no problems with scratched film or the camera breaking down.

We shoot one of my favorite setups of the whole film Friday afternoon. It’s scene #30, where the police officers and scientist John Patterson examine the mysterious debris for the first time. We set up a fairly square wide shot with the 4 actors standing in a line on the far side of the debris. As John pokes around in the debris, the camera dollies in toward the actors, settling along the side of the debris, ending in a medium profile of John with the policemen reacting right into the camera. When I first saw the film transfer of this scene, I exclaimed, “It’s a real movie! It looks just like a real movie!” The combination of talented actors, good costumes, a camera department that can execute a smooth dolly move (on the cheapest of dolly track in loose sand), a beautiful location and perfect weather makes for a breath-taking shot. Maybe for the average viewer, it just looks like any other movie, but for me, just getting to that ‘just like any other movie’ quality is quite an accomplishment.

Another fun sequence is the scene where Deputy Frank meets his demise at the hands of the Skunk Ape. Just one week before shooting, the actor cast for Frank had to leave the production. The character has just two scenes, but due to the nature of film scheduling, those scenes have to be shot Tuesday and Friday while we’re in Florida. That means a lot of sitting around for an actor that’s killed off on page 10 of the script. At Evan’s encouragement, I cast Assistant Director Alex Orr in the role after one brief phone conversation. [Alex went on to Direct the awesome film Blood Car a couple years after this.] For anyone who has been on a film set, you know how appropriate it is to have a death scene for the AD. His job is to be the bad guy, to yell at the cast and crew, to keep the entire production on schedule. While Alex is incredible at his job-- he’s kept the production moving without any conflicts or breakdowns-- it’s inevitable that he’s going to get on people’s nerves. For his death scene, the script calls for him to walk up to the debris, hear a noise, peer into the debris, drop his flashlight, and get pulled into the debris with a scream. For the last shot, I want a POV shot from inside the debris. Art Director Lisa Yeiser simply makes a wreath of seaweed and palm fronds to put in front of the camera which we set on the ground tilted up. Ned is nowhere to be found, so Lisa dons the gorilla gloves and crouches just out of frame. Alex leans in (cue creepy music)… the hairy hand slowly reaches up… he screams… and cut to the next scene. It’s too early in the film to reveal the Skunk Ape entirely, so keeping him mysterious will hopefully maintain some kind of tension. That is... until the audience sees the $99 gorilla costume. All in all, Friday is one of our best days shooting. We get all the shots we planned and nobody had to say up all night.

Day 9 Recap

2005-01-30T14:29:00.000-05:00

DAY NINE (Thursday, October 14)
Locations: Beach, Anna Maria Island, Florida; ‘Spanish Fort’, Egmont Key State park, Florida

After getting to bed about 4:00 AM the night before, Thursday starts at a hazy and blurry 9:00 AM to shoot one quick scene of Carol (Mary Kraft) and Jody (Cynthia Evans) discovering a Skunk Ape victim in the surf. It’s a minimalist crew call-- me, Evan as DP, Bill Burton operating the camera, Art Department-ers Lisa and Scott creating the dead body, and the sounds guys-- all of us working on no sleep.

We don’t have an Assistant Director or Assistant Camera, so we forget to grab the slate. I stand in front of the actresses and clap my hands at the start of each take, hoping I can sync this later. Our deadline is 11:00 AM since Mary has to be back in Atlanta by 7:30 PM to be on stage at Dad’s Garage Theater. Our goal is three shots: the actresses walk ‘n’ talk down the beach and we pan with ‘em and let them exit frame; the actresses then walk into a medium shot and react to the bloody, mangled body; and lastly the dead body cutaway. We get two takes of the walk ‘n’ talk and three of the MS with reactions and Mary is gone (see journal 8 for the rest of that adventure). The reaction shot is priceless, the classic shock and shuttering of seeing something horrific, one of those things that makes me giggle despite myself. Our Production Assistant Juston Rindlesbach grabs some quick shots of Cynthia and Mary on the beach rehearsing their reactions and they are the best production still of the shoot. Thank you Juston for these and all the great stills in this journal.

The majority of the rest of our day is spent traveling to and from our most beautiful location, The Battery at Egmont Key State park, an island out in the middle of Tampa Bay.

To get there we have to drive to St. Pete, then catch a chartered boat-- over 2 hours travel time each way. Like the rest of our week, we have perfect weather and shoot some beautiful, dramatic film. Arma buys water shoes for the crew since we have to pull the big pontoon boat onto the shore to get to the battery. The local ranger generously lets us use his 4-wheeler to cart our production gear. We have a hard out of 11:00 PM, so we hustle through our shots list, but get everything we planned to shoot and load up the boat. Since we couldn’t bring a catering spread out to Egmont Key, we treat the crew to the only open restaurant we can find at 1:30 AM, Waffle House.

editing, Day 8 Recap

2005-01-16T14:16:00.000-05:00

To update the post-production status, I’m about 70% through my first edit. I’m happy with it, but I’m trying to not judge the quality of things at this point. I’m just trying to get the scenes to cut together any way that works. It’s enjoyable-- lots of things make me laugh and exclaim, “I love this!”-- but I’m starting to feel the pressure of getting something done. My biggest concern right now is how am I going to get a film print that looks great and doesn’t cost more than the production itself. I was hoping the new Sony HDV format that comes out next month would be the Rosetta Stone of my post process. The deck is reasonably inexpensive and I thought I could cut the negative, do a color-correction film transfer to the Sony HDV, finish titles & credits myself in Final Cut, then strike a film print from the HDV master. Turns out the Sony HDV format isn’t going to work-- not enough resolution, not the right input/output capabilities, just not right.

I can still go this route, I just need to find film transfer & color correction to a real High Definition format. And find someone who can insert my titles and credits to that HD master. All this will be very expensive, but having a 35mm film print and an HD master opens up a lot of doors that a simple, standard-definition video finish does not.

This is all too much big picture stuff to worry about right now. I need to finish the editing of the film first, see how good it is and go from there.

Here’s another daily recap from the shoot.
DAY EIGHT (Wednesday, October 13)
Locations: Sarasota Jungle Gardens, Sarasota, Florida; Coquina Beach, Bradenton, Florida; Beach House Motel, St. Petersburg, Florida

This is the start of the longest two days of the entire shoot. Crew Call for me, Evan (DP), Bill (Camera Operator), Arma (producer), Claire and Travis is 9:00 AM for the drive to Sarasota Jungle Gardens. We’re shooting scenes of Theodora and Hector frolicking for the ‘love montage’.

Sarasota Jungle Gardens is an old-school Florida attraction, straight out of the ‘60s with talking bird shows, Tiki statues everywhere and flamingos that eat out of your hand. The location and the weather are perfect, absolutely gorgeous . They even let us use their golf cart to lug our camera & tripod around. We get 4 or 5 shots and head to Coquina Beach to meet the full crew for lunch and pickup one scene with the Ford Fairlane that we missed the day before. We shoot two takes of dialog and a couple of drive-bys, then pack up about 2:00 pm to start the one hour drive to St. Pete to shoot our motel interiors.

Unfortunately, our cube truck (with all our props and film) couldn’t follow the production directions because of weight or height or something and got lost, then got stuck in Tampa rush-hour traffic. The whole crew is on location, ready to shoot, and we don’t have any film. Everyone wanders up to the ‘Dairy Barn’ to get ice cream and sits around. I work on shots lists for the next couple of days. It’s quite frustrating, but not a bad break for a crew that’s been running pretty hard for a couple of days. After a 3 & 1/2 hour wait, we get our first shot at the motel at 7:07 pm. We shoot our interior daytime scenes first, using lights to cheat the Florida sunshine. Most of the scenes are dialog heavy with a little blocking to keep things interesting. We have two night exteriors that we save to the end of the day. I have to cut two scenes and we wrap at 2:45 AM. Nobody gets back to their rooms until after 4:00 AM.

Just to make things interesting, Gaffer John Swindall, who is driving me, Evan and Bill home, gets pulled over for speeding 50 yards from our beach house. Amazingly, the local police office lets him go without a ticket and offers to be an extra in the movie. I pass out the instant I make it to my room. That’s a good thing because we have another 9:00 AM call on Thursday to shoot Mary Kraft’s last scene before she has to drive back to Atlanta (see journal # 8). I guess if you don’t have at least one 20 hour day on your no-budget indie feature, you’re just not doing it right.

Imaginary double feature, Day 7 recap

2005-01-09T14:03:00.000-05:00

I’ve been trying to come up with films that would play with Stomp! Shout! Scream! at the ultimate drive-in double feature in my mind. Of course, any vintage beach party movie would set the mood. Or any 1950’s monster movie would work, especially those in the Roger Corman oeuvre. But of the recent, independent, no-budget films that have broken out to gain a wide audience, I think the original El Mariachi, directed by Robert Rodriguez, would work best. I saw and loved his short film, Bedhead, at the Atlanta Film Festival when I first moved to Atlanta in 1991. And I saw El Mariachi at the High Museum with Rodriguez there to introduce the film and take Q & A afterwards. I remember him admitting that the sped up keyboard-playing scene was shot that way because they were running out of film and wanted to get the entire scene shot. It was a combination of necessity and creative decision making and it played perfectly in the final film. It was an exhilarating, inspirational experience. He created a no-budget, silly, action film that was playing at an art museum. Fun. Funny. And artistic. I’m hoping my film can approach that very high standard.

Here’s another daily recap from the shoot.
DAY SEVEN (Tuesday, October 12)
Location: Coquina Beach, Bradenton, Florida

By far the most frustrating day yet.

It’s our first day in Florida, we have some new crew members and nobody really knows what we’re doing or where they should be. We’re all late getting to location and the production cars are there waiting for us. After a few chaotic minutes of finding everyone and everything, Evan and I scout around and determine that using the isolated beach roadside opposite the original location will be best for our day’s work and we start setting up. After a crew call of 2:00 pm, we don’t get our first shot off until 3:45. The 90 degree heat doesn’t help things. I’m just thankful it’s not worse. We have one visit from the local police, but our permits and proof of production insurance is all in place and they leave us alone after 5 minutes. It doesn’t hurt having a police officer from the St. Petersburg Police Department on set with the vintage police car we’ve rented for the day.
We have 12 pages to cover today and limited time with the production cars, so I have to consolidate my shots lists drastically. Instead of being able to get two or three angles of our driving and talking scenes, I can only get one. I also have to cut three scenes in order to get the more important scenes completed. Luckily Ed Sluss, the owner of the Ford Fairlane, is willing to come back the next day, so we can pick up one daytime scene we don’t get shot. We have to wait for it to get dark to shoot our night scenes, but our dinner order doesn’t arrive until we have to get back to work, so nobody really gets a dinner break.

The actor with the longest day is Travis Young (Hector). He has one scene, where he’s walking down a lonely road by himself and the Ford Fairlane passes him, shining it’s headlights on him. He doesn't even have any dialog. We end up shooting it at the very end of our day, about 12:30 that night. We fake the headlights with production lights since the Fairlane had to leave. Travis was on set for over 10 hours and ended up working-- walking down the road four times-- for 20 minutes. At the end of the day, we still got 10 pages of script shot and no major catastrophes.

New Year's Reflections, Travel Day Recap

2005-01-02T13:54:00.000-05:00

It’s a new year and I guess it’s time to try to reflect on Stomp! Shout! Scream! Two years ago, there was only the idea that I should make a beach party feature film. One year ago, there was just a script and a business plan. In January, I starting fund raising in earnest, meeting with lawyers, trying to get a contract in place. In February, I started meeting with casting director Amy Barrat and collecting head shots. In March, Rob Gal recorded Catfight!’s original songs for the film. With only 20% of funding in place, we went forward with two (long) days of casting in May. One month later we had a cast in place and I was picking up all the extra editing and producing work I could find. By September, it looked like the film would have it’s $100,000 budget, and I spent a weekend in Florida location scouting. And October 4-16, we shot the damn thing.

For most of the process, it was just me making phone calls, asking for favors, pushing this thing along. Nothing was exactly easy (I talked to 8 different lawyers before I found one who would write the contract I wanted), but every few months, there was an energizing step in the process-- hearing the original songs, seeing actors read the script, finding the perfect motel & beach locations, having band practice with the actresses. It’s hard to put any true perspective on what I’ve accomplished to this point. A whole hell of a lot in some respects, but really nothing if the film doesn't get seen or isn't really that good. This is why I don’t like to look back and reflect. Tying to focus on the big, big picture makes the process too daunting, down right overwhelming. I’d rather just go back to my basement edit suite and make the smallest of decisions one at a time and keep doing that until it’s done. Worrying about weather it’s a great piece of art doesn't do me any good, I have to just keep working and making it the best I can.

Another daily recap.
Monday, October 11
Travel Day
Producer Arma Benoit secured a passenger van to accommodate the cast and crew who didn’t take their own cars on the 8 hour trip from Atlanta to Bradenton, Florida. Cinematographer Evan Lieberman and I take the van so we can work on shot lists for the first several days in Florida. The highlight of the trip is stopping at the most appropriate of all truck stops on I-75. Once we get to Florida, we have to spend way too much time figuring out who is sleeping where in our triplex beach house. Thankfully, Assistant Director Alex Orr sees our plight and takes over. It’s his job to be the bad guy when necessary and this is a great occasion for him to do just that. A few crew members will have to sleep on couches, but once everyone gets there, it’s a free-for-all and the summer camp attitude takes over.

To escape the chaos of people arriving, Claire Bronson and I jump in someone’s car to find a convenience store for supplies. I dump all my stress on her and immediately feel better. On our way back to the crew beach house/ compound, we pass Art Director Lisa Yieser and her assistant Scott Dupree in the ‘60s station wagon that they’ve driven down from Atlanta with bad breaks. They’re turning around in the middle of the road, lost and frazzled. Just then she calls me on my cell phone and asks where I am. I hop out of the car and tell her that I’m the guy in the road walking toward her car. I get in with them and take them to the compound.

A huge thank you goes to Amanda at Edge Sharff Properties who gave us an incredible deal on our production housing. While I wish I could stay with the majority of the crew, Arma, Evan and I will sleep at another beach house which also serves as our production office while in Florida. Stories of the crew staying up all night, every night, to see the sunrise, make me thankful for the privacy and the precious few hours of sleep I do get.

Day 6 Recap

2004-12-19T13:39:00.000-05:00

DAY SIX (Sunday, October 10)
Location: Stockbridge Citgo / the garage

This is our last day of shooting in Atlanta before we relocate the cast and crew to Bradenton, Florida. Scenes for today include the band’s practice at the garage, scientist John Patterson’s emotional moment when he and the Skunk Ape lock eyes, and several pickups from the previous 2 days at the garage.
One scene we’ll do today is where Sheriff Brag and Deputy Bob spot the Skunk Ape leaving the garage and chase him from the garage. There’s a couple of lines of dialog right before they spot him. It’s Bob filling time with his opinions on luncheon meat, “I don’t like baloney. Now fried baloney…that’s OK. Hey, that looks like a Skunk Ape.” The combination of the dialog (overhead verbatim at a Taco Bell some 10 years ago) and actor Chris Hines' perfectly deadpan delivery makes it one of my favorite moments in the movie.

The most involved shot is where we have to kill one of the leading characters.

The script calls for the Skunk Ape to pick him up over his head and ‘break him in half’. I wrote that, but I have no earthly idea how we’re going to sell it. While Skunk Ape actor Ned Hastings is ‘the largest mammal I know’ (his words), he still can’t pickup a full grown man and military press him over his head. After much debate, we put the camera on the ground, tilted almost straight up at the back of Ned’s shoulder while he sits on an apple box. He grips the actor around the collar while burly key grip John Stephens hunch over just out of frame with black fabric draped over him. Our to-be-killed actor lays across John’s back and all Ned has to do is movie his arm up on cue. John will do the heavy lifting with his back and legs. It’s into the twelfth hour on set for the cast and crew, but everyone is gathered around to watch. We do 3 takes and get what we need. I call for two more because we’re having too much fun.

Here’s some statistics from the script supervisor’s reports after half of our shooting schedule: 321 slates, 160 setups, 38 completed scenes (of 102), almost 40 pages (of 96) completed, and roughly 33 minutes, 19 seconds of monster movie in the can (of an estimated 95:30).

Data provided by extraordinary script supervisor Reagan Brandon. I’ve had to omit only one scene from our schedule, which is covered in another scene with a quick line of dialog. While we have the majority of our work ahead of us, we’ve had an enormously successful first week of shooting.

Day 5 recap

2004-12-12T13:20:00.000-05:00

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be editing the film as much as I can, so instead of detailing that, I’ll be catching up on the daily recaps.

DAY FIVE (Saturday, October 9)
Location: Stockbridge Citgo / the garage
Today is the day we shoot all of our dialog scenes at the garage. I have shot lists for each scene, but on location those often get drastically changed. Looking at the script for a particular scene, I plan for an establishing wide shot, close ups for certain lines and dolly moves to get the characters from one side of the garage to the other, etc. When we get to the garage and start blocking with actors, we invariable start running up against limited amounts of film and time. What I usually end up with is an establishing shot that dollies into a 2 shot for dialog and maybe a cutaway or reverse angle. Maybe. The fewer shots, the fewer setups, the faster we can move. For the really long dialog scenes, we dolly along with the actors in the classic walk ‘n’ talk, then have them stop walking when we run out of track. It’s these times where I have to find the critical elements of a scene and accent those and drop everything else. And I won’t know how successful I was until the whole film is put together. All an indie director can do is get the best crew and the best actors they can find and hope it works, hope that they made the right compromises.

The most complicated scene for the day is where Theodora meets Hector. Actor Travis Young was cast as Hector exactly one week ago, but I’m not worried about the actor’s performances. They’ve worked together before and they rehearse on-set incessantly up to the time we shoot. In this scene, Hector is toying with Theodora, only doling out information bit by bit to extend their interaction. She eventually get pissed and is about to storm out, when he starts singing one of her songs, the theme song of the movie. He just keeps singing, rather poorly, and smiling at her until she is charmed. Travis and Claire’s performance is great. I can really feel Theodora’s frustration and Travis has great eyes that really can charm anyone. We start the scene with Hector under the hood of the band’s station wagon. He doesn't come out until several lines into their dialog and crosses the garage. The camera and Theodora follow him and we end with an over-the-shoulder (OTS) shot looking at Hector. Theodora gets angry and turns to exit, right toward the camera, and stops in a close-up (CU). We’ve just covered 90% of the scene in one shot/one setup: the establishing WS, dolly to the OTS, and Claire walks into a CU for her emotional reaction. Our coverage is a Hector CU from the same camera position as the OTS and the reverse angle over Hector’s shoulder of Theodora’s dialog. The biggest hurdle is that the weather had changed and the reverse angle looking at Claire has dark, cloudy skies in the background. The grips put up a big silk on a metal frame to tone down the clouds and I hope we can color correct it to match the rest of the scenes later. We get all of our angles and move on to the next scene, next set up.

One of those setups includes Ned Hastings (out of his Skunk Ape costume) and Dana Snyder (voice of Master Shake on Aqua Teen Hunger Force) as two customers driving a classic car in the establishing shot of the Garage. I think Dana’s only line is “Thanks, we wouldn’t miss the party.” Being the consummate profession, he and I discusses at length his character’s back story and motivation, but the fact that everything that comes out of his mouth makes me laugh, I’m not too worried about it.

ready to Edit, Day Off Recap

2004-12-05T13:15:00.000-05:00

After a couple of weeks off from journaling (Thanks Arma & Ed), I’m back with an update on Stomp! Shout! Scream! It’s almost two months since we ended shooting the film and I have yet to make my first official edit of the film. That’s part procrastination, part trepidation, part some other –ation, I’m sure. That’s not to say the nothing has been done. I have synced my audio and video (with much help from PA/editor Juston Rindlesbach), edited a teaser trailer, and edited a short behind-the-scenes clip for the song “Back off My Baby” which is performed in the film. All this stuff will be available here soon. Getting something for investors and potential distributors to see has been the top priority. I’ve settled into the fact that writing, directing, & editing the film is only a portion of my work. I’m also going to have to find a way to market and sell the film, too. As far as getting the film edited, I’m waiting for an extended chunk of time to really dive into the cutting. And now that I’m almost out of things to procrastinate with, I guess that’ll be very soon.

Here’s another recap from the shoot:
Friday, October 8
Our only day off.
That is, the crew has a day off. I spend the day catching up on sleep, organizing the plan to feed the cast and crew in Florida with my mom, and making shot lists for Saturday & Sunday with Evan for 4 or 5 hours. We have over 13 pages to cover in 2 days, plus pickups from Tuesday. I spent my only night off during the shoot going out to dinner and catching, appropriately, John Waters’ Dirty Shame.

From Ed, Ford Fairlane owner

2004-11-28T13:01:00.000-05:00

I received a call about 3 weeks ago from John with Film Cars, asking if I would like to help put together some cars for a movie that was being shot in Bradenton, Florida and Treasure Island, Florida. Stomp! Shout! Scream! is a feature film-- a 1966 beach-party rock and roll monster movie featuring the legend of the Everglades Skunk Ape. The production company wanted about 8-10 60's cars for the shoot. They wanted Fords and Mopars. John had a few cars already lined up. I knew the people with those cars so sounded like fun. I contacted Art Director Lisa Yeiser in Atlanta who was requesting the cars and got more information from her on what they wanted. They wanted a 60's car that could be made into a police car, a car that would be driven and a few cars just parked. For about a week I gather pictures of different cars in the area and talked with the owners asking them if they were interested in their cars being used in a movie. I sent Lisa pictures of around 30 cars. She sent the pictures to the producer who rejected most of them as not being what he wanted. She also asked the rate for renting the cars per day. After all of this they decided on having just a police car and using my car as the driven car in Bradenton, Florida on Tuesday then using my car and friend’s car, a 1964 Chevrolet at a motel on Treasure Island, Florida on Wednesday. Not being able to find a car that they liked for the police car I contacted the Pinellas County Florida Police. I knew they had a 60's police car. After talking with the man in charge of the garage I gave him the information and the lady’s name and phone number in Atlanta. He contacted her and worked the details out on using the Police car.

On Tuesday Oct. 12, 2004 I drove down to Coquina Beach in Bradenton, Florida. I needed to be there at 2:00 pm. I arrived around 1:30 pm. While I was sitting in the park waiting I saw the Pinellas County flatbed truck with the 60's police car on it drive by. After waiting a while to see if he turned around I headed south on Beach Drive looking for him. I found him about 4 miles down the road where he had just turned around. We both stopped and talked then he followed me back to Coquina Beach. After about 10 more minutes the production company trucks arrived. It was decided to go down the street to a small park area where there was a side dirt road that was along the canal. The film company had driven down a old white 60's Ford Falcon Station Wagon that was used as the car the 3 girls were driving on vacation to Florida in the movie. They parked the car on the side of the dirt road next to the canal. The car was supposed to be broken down and they were waiting for someone to drive by to help them. That is where my car came in. It was used as the car the young man was driving and stopped to help them out. The filming took most of the day and into the night. A camera was mounted on the hood with lights inside the car. The 3 girls and guy were in the car talking while they filmed. The car was driven down the dirt road very slowly. This went on for about 2 hours.

One scene called for the young man to open the trunk and put the suit cases of the girls in it. I was watching when he keep looking around then finally had me come over. He wanted to know where the remote trunk release was. After telling him this was a 1965 car and he had to use the key he then couldn't find the trunk lock. Another one had him driving at night and needed to turn the car head lights on. He again fumbled around and when I went up to the car he was trying to turn the lights on by trying to turn the turn signal lever. I had to show him the light switch on the dash.
Later that night they used the police car that came along the dirt road. More shots of my car with the guy and girls in it then my car was finished for the night. I left around 10:45 pm. The police car was still there filming. They cancelled the cars needed at the motel in Treasure Island on Wednesday. They wanted my car back again at Coquina Beach in Bradenton, Florida at 1:00pm for more filming the next day. They mounted the camera on the passenger side door with the four people inside the car. They drove the car up and down the dirt road. The filming took about an hour. The guys that were mounting the camera's on my car took extra care to make sure nothing happened to it. It was covered with blankets and straps that were covered in towels. Was really interesting watching things happening. I would do it again.

- Ed Sluss
Ford Fairlane Owner

Craft Services favorite: Ramen Noodles, by Arma

2004-11-21T12:55:00.000-05:00

It is almost impossible to eat Ramen Noodles gracefully. Fortunately, it is similar to sweating in Atlanta during the month of August. Everybody does it, so no one seems to worry too much about how they look when they ARE doing it. Having said that, there is still always that one person judging whose pit stains are the worst. I am that person. Therefore, the following is a list from most the graceful to the most disgusting consumers of Ramen Noodles.
Cutest Ramen eater: Cynthia Evans "Jody"
Most Graceful Ramen eater: Ezekiel Lewis-Boom Operator. Don't ask me HOW, but they both managed to not gross me out.
Most Normal Ramen eater: Thomas "TK" Kay-Best Boy Grip. He's half messy, half clean.
Slurpiest Ramen eater: John Stephens-Key Grip. He's loud and proud!
Drippiest Ramen eater: Evan Lieberman-Director of Photography. I'd swear it was as if he'd never had them before and the broth caught him off guard.
Slowest Ramen eater: Claire Bronson-"Theodora" She cheated and ate them carefully. Had she eaten in a normal pace, I could tell she would have been wearing those noodles.
Messiest Ramen eater: Me-Producer. I WAS wearing those noodles.
And the honor of most disgusting Ramen eater on our crew:
Aaron Siegel- sound mixer. For the love of all that is good and sacred, Aaron, don't ever eat Ramen Noodles in public again. And, quite frankly, I'd stay away from soup of any kind on dates. (But I love you and you are terrific!)

Arma Benoit
Producer
Stomp! Shout! Scream!

(Note: All complaints can be sent directly to Arma. All rebuttals will be reprinted here. -Jay)

Eyemo Camera, Day 4 recap

2004-11-14T12:41:00.000-05:00

There’s a few shots that we didn’t get during principal photography. In the script, Theodora and Hector go on a ‘Viva Las Vegas’-style love montage that starts with them on a roller coaster and continues through their day of fun and frolic. It’s an important shot because it’s a turning point for Theodora’s character. It shocks her out of her malaise. Or that’s the theory. Anyway, we didn’t have time to find or shoot a roller coaster during our full production, so I got Claire, Travis, Melissa and Evan back together to grab a couple of pick up shots last Sunday.
We used an Eyemo camera, which is a World War II era camera that’s tiny and virtually indestructible. It’s like a little iron crate that shoots 1,000 feet of 35mm film at a time (about a minute)—perfect for a little guerrilla film making. Here’s some pictures.

Here’s another recap from the shoot:

DAY FOUR (Thursday, October 7)
Location: Fabric Warehouse / The Police Station

This was one of our more relaxed days. That’s a remarkable statement, considering we had to shoot over 10 pages of dialog-heavy script. The only location for the day was the police station interior located in the fabric warehouse where we’d been shooting the day before. We decided to proceed as if it was a 3-camera TV show— that is, light one end of the room and shoot in that direction all day. Eliminating the need to ‘flip the room’ (moving all the lighting and camera equipment to shoot reverse shots) was the only way we could get all of our pages done in a 10-hour day. It seems to have worked. We got everything done thanks to the hard-working crew. I can't say enough about the crew and the actors. Not a flubbed line all day and spot-on performances by everybody. And the film transfers look great—just like a police station in a 60’s film.

I have one more story from the doctor’s office location. Actor Jonathan Green, who plays scientist John Patterson, has a long, ridiculous monologue (complete with flashback) where he tells the story of how his parents disappeared while doing research in the Florida Everglades and how he’s been chasing the Skunk Ape ever since. Zeke, the boom operator, got the giggles and kept cracking up during his speech. He whole job is to be really quiet, so we can get great sound, but he couldn’t keep from laughing. I think he broke just one take, but was stifling laughter every time, which infected the whole crew. That’s definitely a tribute to Jonathan’s ability to delivery the speech in that 1950’s scientist seriousness without it being too flat or emotionless. Brilliant. And encouraging.

Post Production starts, Nov. 7, 2004

2004-11-07T10:20:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I am a do-it-yourself-er and sometimes I’m not. If it’s household repairs that requite a big chunk of my time and effort… not so much. I’d rather get a professional to do it right and just write the check. When it comes to editing however, I’m a firm believer in “if you want it done right, do it yourself.” So, I spent just about every waking minute last Halloween weekend at the office loading my film transfer tapes and audio tapes into Final Cut Pro.

Now’s a good time to go completely dorky on technical specs on editing Stomp! Shout! Scream! We shot short end 35mm film (Kodak 5245, 52…I don’t really know), which was developed and transferred to recycled Digibeta tape by Cinefilm, Atlanta (a perk of working for Turner Broadcasting is you can easily find slightly used tape stock waiting to be dumped). Of course, the ultimate objective is to have a film print that can be shown in theaters, but that requires a negative cut or a digital intermediate--- both very expensive propositions. I’m going to start the editing process with that plan in mind, but I can always switch to a video finish using the film transfers I already have. The determining factor there being… money.

Cinefilm provided me with Flex files, which are databases that track the film’s edge numbers and their relationship to the timecode on the film transfer tapes. I’ve never used Cinema Tools (Apple’s film database software), so I spent the last two weeks reading the help file and everything I can find on-line about this process. First, I imported the flex files into Cinema Tools and then exported a batch digitize list for Final Cut Pro. The batch capture worked perfectly, all my clips loaded in a scant 10-hour Saturday. At Cartoon Network, we use the Black Magic Decklink Pro video cards which can digitize 29.97 frames-per-second NTSC video into 23.98 fps QT movies, eliminating the need to use Cinema Tools’ reverse telecine function. I loaded the film with the Black Magic’s 10-bit uncompressed codec, but I’ll be editing on a DV–based Final Cut Pro system in my basement, so I used Final Cut’s media manager to export all my footage into DV. Cinema Tools reconnected all the digitized clips to the database, so I think I’m ready to start cutting and the computer will keep track of the timecode/edge numbers in the background.

And then there’s the footage itself. Thanks to the expertise and very hard work of cinematographer Evan Lieberman, Gaffer John Swindall and all the rest of the crew, the film looks absolutely BEAUTIFUL. It was always our intention to make a fun, beach party, b-movie, horror film, but do it with an acute attention to craft-- believable characters, a good story, professional actors working with real emotions and a professional film crew making beautiful pictures. From the very start, Evan and I wanted to make the film like those '60s Frankie & Annette Beach Party movies. From the look of the film transfers, we’ve definitely succeed in the crafting of beautiful images.

Now preparing audio for edit is a whole other process. Sound mixer Aaron Siegel and boom operators Zeke and Thomas did excellent work in less than optimal conditions. Extra special thanks goes to Mike Filosa and Adam Jones who supplied the extensive audio equipment. Aaron delivered time-coded DAT tapes which sound excellent. We tried to use a smart slate (an electronic version of the traditional film clapper with rolling timecode numbers), but it was a less than perfect model and we ended up using the ‘old-fashion’ slate methods most of the time. Often during shooting, just trying to reset the camera frame and focus to actually read the timecode numbers on the slate was too difficult for our sprinter’s pace of film making. All totaled, I have about 8 hours of film transfer and about 9 hours of audio. Next I sit in front of my computer and sync the two together. I don’t know how long that’s going to take. Traditionally, syncing is considered film maker’s drudgery, but I plan to relish every minute. I am working on a beach party rock and roll monster movie of my own creation.

I’ve heard film makers say that making a bad movie is just as hard as making a good one and it’s impossible to know if your film is good or bad while your in the middle of it. I can certainly understand that statement now more than ever. I’m just going to keep plowing through until it’s done, doing everything I can to make it the best I can.

Here’s another recap of the shoot:
DAY THREE (Wednesday, October 6)
Location: Fabric Warehouse / The Doctor’s Office

Special thanks goes to Matt Hyman, assistant to Art Director Lisa Yeiser, who found and secured our Doctor’s office and the police station interior locations—some spare offices at a fabric manufacturer’s warehouse. These are two of the four interiors for the entire production and the art ‘department’ (Lisa, Matt, and Scott Dupree) did wonderful work. For the Doctor’s office scenes, we took an empty, white-wall business office and dressed it up to be our exam room. Lisa dug up fantastic set dressing, but some of the props came from an old doctor’s house call bag my mom found at an antique store several years ago. We used an existing waiting room to be the doctor’s business office, which was very nicely dressed to begin with (as in, it hadn’t changed a bit since the early '60s). Running a little behind schedule while shooting our exam room scenes, we decided to switch the set dressing, rather than flip all the lights to the other side of the room. In theory, we just had to turn the exam table around, flip our characters positions and put new props behind them. But when you’re dealing with camera placement, character eye-lines and crossing the 180-degree line… everything gets complicated. I think we did everything right, but I won’t really know until I start cutting those shots right next to each other. It’s another example of just trusting the crew to do the right thing.

Mary Kraft's wild ride, 10/30/04

2004-10-30T18:04:00.000-04:00

From Mary Kraft:

So, Jay and Arma and anyone else involved in scheduling were nice enough to deal with adding one more snag to their already snag-ridden, pre-production-engulfed lives. I, Mary Kraft, Carol the bass-player, was simultaneously in Stomp! Shout! Scream!, and in a nearly 2 month long run of Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical! at Dad's Garage Theatre here in Atlanta as Donna the Cheerleader . I had to be in Atlanta, GA, on stage at the theater, no matter what, at 8:00pm every Thursday-Saturday. Hmmmm. We're shooting the majority of the film in Bradenton, FL. Hmmmm. More on that in a bit.

It was tough, mentally, to be at the beach and not be able to...well...do...beach-y things.
Monday we got there about midnight--Cynthia (Jody) and Claire (Theodora) and I drove down together...that was the most time we had ever spent together and I thought we had a ridiculously good time. Topics discussed: Religion, politics, family, marriage, agents!, and why that Subway/Dairy Queen/Souvenir shop/alligator head emporium/gas station/giant sewer smelled like a giant crap took a crap on a crap. Interesting side note 1: Cynthia can start tearing up with sickness at the mere mention of a televised surgery.

When we arrived in FL at the house, Jay and the van pulled up shortly thereafter with 12-packs of beer and I can say it was a beautiful moment. We hung out at the beach and then back at the guys' house til way too late, but I still managed to get up and go jogging and swimming the next morning before settling in with Melissa for my daily hair/torture session. How did the women do it back then? Good Lord! To this day, whenever I see Melissa, my scalp starts tingling and my eyes water. (By the way, never a better makeup/hair person than Melissa...wow, what a trooper, she did it all and did it with a great attitude)

We shot all day/night Tuesday, got back to the house, somewhere around 2 am?? Can't remember. Regardless, still in time for some cocktails. Chris Hines and Claire were nice enough to go grocery shopping while Cynthia, Jonathan and I shot our scene in an awesome light blue Ford Fairlane whose air-conditioning smelled like Brawny the paper towel giant had just taken off his socks which he’d had on for 2 weeks. We decided to go without the a/c…. Interesting side note 2: talking about the reeking socks made Jonathan sicker than the actual sock smell. The rest of the crew got back a little after us, and everyone fell right back into place, and another night of 4:00 am (or later) bedtimes.

No jogging/swimming Wednesday morning, just a quick walk and some shell-collecting. You know, the shells you pick up then get home and throw in the trash. Then straight to the hair chair with Melissa. Then Cynthia, then Claire. Then we all drive to Treasure Island... then... 3 hours later... the film gets there. Another story. Let's just say we had some down time at the old motel which was our location for the day. We finally get to shoot as the sun's about to go down, so now we (and by we, I mean gaffer/lighting director John Swindall) have to create daylight with lighting. It all works out, but it's a long, long night of shooting, as this is all of the Violas’ motel room dialogue scenes. We wrap that at about, oh, 3:00 am, then drive an hour back to Bradenton, so another 4 am bedtime....after a beer or two. Cynthia is slightly mentally disabled from lack of sleep, Jonathan tells me Travis and Ned are asleep, and I think Claire and Melissa are in their room asleep, so--thankfully--I go to bed. I found out later that Ned (Skunk Ape) woke up, Claire and Melissa were over there having cocktails, and stayed up til like 7:00am?? Good damn thing I knew nothing about that.

Interesting side note 3: The dietary necessities of the band and Melissa made for enough material for a movie within a movie. I’m a vegetarian, who very occasionally eats seafood, so I’m used to being the problem. This was a nice reprieve.

I had to wake up at 7:45am on Thursday to pack for Atlanta and get ready for my beach scene with Jody where we find the mangled body. So, I go into the hair chair with Melissa (who was up til 7) at about 8:30. We have to shoot this scene before 11:15 which is my absolute cut-off time, like, gotta be in the car at 11:15 and heading toward Atlanta. We're on the beach, we're shooting, it's 10:15, it's 10:30, it's 10:55, we do a couple more takes, it's 11:13 and we wrap, I hug everyone and run off to the car, hair NOT blowing in the wind, Cynthia running behind me (same hair, not blowing either) as pit crew for the quick change. I throw off my clothes at the car and hand them to her, pull on my shorts and shirt and realize I have to have something to drink for the trip, so we run back inside, Cynthia runs to the fridge, and we're like, "There's no water.... Where's all the WATER!!! Grab a Coke!" She grabs the fridge pack and stabs at the carton with a sharp knife to open it, pulls one out and we realize she's stabbed it with the knife, so it's spewing coke, "Get another one!" "Here!" "Thanks!" "We'll miss you!" "I'll miss you too!" "Bye!" "Bye!" ...Peel out.

I'm cruisin' making good time, listening to Bread: The Anthology, ("If a picture paints a thousand words.....", "Baby I'ma want you"), I round a corner just north of Valdosta and see traffic at a stand-still. As far as I can see, cars are stopped, inching forward. I panic. I try not to panic. I panic. I shouldn't have had the caffeine. I have more caffeine. Panic. Call my boyfriend, Dan, in Atlanta to start the ball rolling on getting in touch with those at the theater who I don't really want to give this information to but who need to know. The managing director calls me and is a very calm contrast to my inside-of-a-golf-ball-shredded-nerves-I've-had-7-hours-of-sleep-in-the-last-2-days mental state. She goes online to find out traffic/construction info, she gives me some alternate routes, she says they'll hold the show for up to 15 minutes if I need it and offer free drinks. Finally the traffic starts to clear after about 25-30 minutes--all of my "padding" I'd built in for a luxury like a shower before the show. I haul ass, which means 11-14 miles over the speed limit. Kathryn calls back at intervals to see how I'm doing, stressing that it's better that I make it back alive and we hold one show, than have to cancel all the shows. She says they've looked up some porn trivia that they will ask the audience in the hold if we need one. That's cool. How very Dad's Garage. I pull into the theater parking lot at 7:34pm. I run in, still in full hair (you can't get a brush through this stuff, people) and makeup. I wash my hair quickly in a sink in the workshop in back, dry it, straighten it, wipe off a little brown eyeshadow and replace with blue, add lip gloss, then some more lip gloss, put on my spankies and cheerleading outfit, grab my pompoms ("We're at Places, people!") and jump on stage. No porn trivia. No hold. At the buzzer. And so pumped full of caffeine and adrenaline that the show was barely containable. Great audience. Great rush.

This is so crazy.

Why do anything else?

- Mary Kraft
Carol, bass player
Stomp! Shout! Scream!

Coming down from the shot, 10/24/04

2004-10-24T17:47:00.000-04:00

Every night since we wrapped production, I've had dreams that wake me up in the middle of the night. I'm on set directing, and everybody’s working hard, but we can't ever get the shot off. Hours go by and my mind is just racing. I'm setting and re-setting up the shot, but we never roll film. It's one of those frustration dreams that never let's you get to any kind of conclusion. I used to have similar ones when I first started editing professionally, when I wasn’t as knowledgeable or experienced as I should have been to be doing what I was doing. I’d have some bizarre, frustrating dream and I’d wake up and think about it. When I got back to sleep, I’d dream it again, but with the scenes rearranged. I’d wake up again and analyze what I’d done differently in my re-edited dream. I’d go back to sleep and re-dream/re-edit it yet again. I’d do this all night long, never really getting any decent sleep. I called it the non-linear editor's nightmare. Anyway, it's back, but now I'm on set and I never get anything shot, let alone to the edit.

For the first time in over 2 years, I took all the garage rock out of the CD changer in my car. Garage was all I was listening to anyway, but in my obsession with this beach party rock and roll monster movie, I felt like I had to immerse myself in all things garage to prepare for the shooting of the film. Now that we've wrapped shooting, I can, at least while I'm stuck in traffic, finally think about something else for a while. Mostly I'll be thinking about the script for “Skunk Ape II”, in which the audience will catch up with lead character Theodora 5 years later, when she's playing early ‘70s country/rock music. I went out and got the Gram Parson’s Anthology to start my ‘research’ already.

Here's another recap of the shoot:

DAY TWO (Tuesday, October 5)
Location: Stockbridge Citgo / The Garage

Day Two is when we shoot the climatic scene of the movie with the band playing a party and the Skunk Ape attacks. It's just 3 scenes, less than 4 pages, but it's also lots of setups, wrangling extras and we have to finish by midnight. We have an early call on Wednesday and we have to return to this location later in the week, so we don't want to annoy the garage owner. Call is 5:00 pm, but the day starts for me at 2:30 when Claire, Mary and Cynthia arrive at my house for another band practice and session with Melissa Sandefur, our hair/make up artist.

On all my short films, the ‘cast’ has been my friends—mostly co-workers at Cartoon Network and Turner Broadcasting-- so this was my first time directing professional actors. I've talked to other film makers who have said that working with actors was their favorite part of the process. Having gone through it, I have to agree with them. Working with the actors at rehearsals and watching them turn my script into characters and my admittedly forced dialog into normal-sounding conversation was amazing. Everyone on the cast was remarkable, not one forgotten line and not one false performance during the whole production.

Anyway, back to Tuesday night. With our strict 5 to 1 shooting ratio, we can only shoot a few angles and then just a few takes of each scene. Nevertheless, DP Evan Lieberman and I plan 22 set ups for the climatic scene, half of them facing the stage where all the action happens and half of them from behind the stage. Due to the time it takes to flip all the lights around, we have to shoot all our shots facing one direction, then the other. Determining the most efficient order to do this is the job of the Assistant Director, Alex Orr. It's also his job to bark at cast and crew to make sure everyone is aware of the plan and is doing it. Alex did a fantastic job throughout the production, but especially on this day. We are able to shoot all but 4 of our set ups and those are cutaways and close-ups that we can pick up later in the week when we return to the garage location. I also have to thank all my friends who dressed up and showed up to be extras on a late Tuesday night 30 miles outside of Atlanta.

Wrap principle photography, 10/18/04

2004-10-18T17:41:00.000-04:00

At 4:30 AM, Sunday morning, Stomp! Shout! Scream! principle photography wrapped. While there's a few pick up shots left to get, I think-- I hope-- there's a whole film's worth of film waiting to be edited. I'll get my first look at the footage this week. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be just organizing all my materials to edit the film, so instead of detailing that kind of busy-work, I'll dole out some on-set anecdotes.

DAY ONE
Location: Lenny’s / Dive Bar

The day starts with the actresses arriving at my house at 11:00 AM for band practice, then they are in makeup for a couple of hours. Call is for 2:00 PM, we get our first shot about 4:00 pm. I meet virtually all the crew members for the first time on set. The stress of directing has me more antsy that I realized it would. I'm most freaked out by how brightly lit Lenny’s is. In my mind, it's supposed to be a dingy, dirty dive bar and the last thing I want is for it to look like it's been lit for a movie. Evan Lieberman, the director of photography, assures me that is not the case. It's very hard to let go. I feel like I'm whining at every set up. Once I realize I'm just going to have to trust him and the crew he's assembled—- because, really, what choice to I have-- I feel much better. I can concentrate on the actors, the shot lists, and getting everything done.

Feature films usually try to average a couple of pages of script a day, but on our budget/schedule, we're shooting our 95 page script in 11 days. That's 8.6 pages per day and today we had just under 5 pages scheduled: a conversation over beers, the opening credits sequence where the on-screen band plays the theme song and the introduction of the love interest, Hector. We get it all with plenty of coverage and wrap at about 2:00AM.

from the man behind the mask, 10/13/04

2004-10-13T17:27:00.000-04:00

From Ned Hastings.

As both a co-worker of Jay Edwards on Aqua Teen Hunger Force and also as a – shall we say – feature player in Stomp! Shout! Scream!, I am adding my own diary entry on the production of Jay's little opus.

Well, week two of production is under way, and week one was a real blast for me. The first week was shot here in Atlanta, and this second week is being shot in Florida (or what's left of it). As you may know from an earlier diary entry of Jay's (with the accompanying ridiculous picture of me), I am playing the monster at the center of the movie. He is a Florida Skunk Ape, which is the state's native name for Bigfoot. The costume, cinematically, leaves much to be desired, but Jay promised me that he was planning to show the creature only in long shots, and shadows, and such. This I liked because a) I am not an actor and b) as I said, it's a pretty funny suit. Imagine my pleasure when I saw that photo on the Web.

That was sarcasm, by the way.

I kid because I love.

With Jay away for the two weeks of his shoot, I have been helping to hold down the fort at Cartoon Network. This has meant that I have had only two shooting days so far. But I've been to the set on two other days, just because it's so cool. In fact, I've been telling everyone in the office to go watch Jay shoot, because no one quite understands the scope of this project. There is somewhere around 25 to 30 people working or waiting to work at any given time, there's a 35mm camera with operator, there's a Director of Photography and an A.D. keeping the whole thing on track; and it's just really fun and totally cool.

And there's Jay at the center of it all, cool as a cucumber.

I, on the other hand, am usually anything but 'cool as a cucumber.' Besides the fur suit pictured elsewhere in these diaries, I am also wearing a black long-sleeved under-suit like the kind athletes wear. I also wear ridiculous feet (two different versions – the suit is evolving), and some black gunk all around my eyes. I'd like to say that wearing that stuff makes me feel like Michael Keaton in his batsuit, but it's closer to the truth to compare this to Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca. For a variety of reasons.

To put it mildly, that suit is hot as Hell. It's not too bad when I don't wear the mask and gloves, but as soon as they come on the sweat starts to pour. My chin sweats so much that the stuff comes out the mouth of the mask, making the creature appear to drool. Which, come to think of it, is not a bad way to play the poor beast.

Right, Ned – you're 'playing' this character.

Actually, I'm merely attempting to embody the character. I put on the suit, do whatever Jay tells me I'm supposed to do, and use my eyes a little to show what I'm 'thinking.' I knew I should have paid closer attention in those mime classes. So far, I've stormed a stage at a rock and roll show about 30 times, grabbing the heroine lustily nearly every time (perk). I've also killed one character, which is cool. What else? I've sort of 'danced.' Lots of people would say that whenever I dance, it's 'sort of dancing,' but this is different. It makes sense in the movie. OK, no it doesn't, but it was fun anyway.

I've also done a couple of 'stunts,' which involved a good bit of the usual movie-making chicanery to pull off. I will neither explain these moments nor divulge the tricks behind them here – you'll have to see the movie and/or the DVD extras. But, again, it was really fun.

I also had a fun moment on screen in which I do not play a rampaging, hairy, sexually aroused beast. Dana Snyder, who is the voice of Master Shake on Aqua Teen Hunger Force, was in town the latter part of last week. I didn't have to shoot on any of the nights or days that he was here, so I got to hang out with him a lot. I took him down to the set so that he could see how awesome it was and, lo and behold, Jay asked not just Dana, but also me to be in one shot of the film. That was cool. He had a line, and then we peeled out in a vintage car. Cool – my first appearance in a movie in which I wasn't wearing fur and make-up around my eyes. (I was also in The Birdcage. Again: sarcasm.)

I am jealous of my cast and crew mates. Everyone else went down on Monday via caravan, but here it is Wednesday and I am not going down until tonight. In fact, I'm flying in a few hours. Oddly, the guy I "killed" the other night volunteered to pick me up. What a stalwart band of troupers we are! Seriously, I've had such a good time hanging out with everyone that I hate not being able to experience these travel and shooting days with them. All of the actors have been really great to watch and to get to know. They actually treat me as an equal, even though they are all trained professionals and I'm just there because I'm the largest mammal the director knows. They are really great actors and watching them has been fascinating. I hate that I've missed out on these few days of travel, work, and bonding time with everyone.

But, I'm heading down soon to talk Jazz with Adrian, kid with the girls, and prattle on about movies with any poor soul who gets within earshot of me. Of course, I'll also put on the suit, "kill" a couple more people, and continue to attempt to drag off the heroine for my own nefarious aims; and hopefully sweat off a few pounds while I'm at it.

I'm looking forward to getting down there and back on set. This is in spite of the fact that the crew's tendency to call all of the actors by the name of their character means that I am called "Skunk Ape" by nearly everyone.

I thought I'd shook off that nickname back in ballet school, but it's back?

- Ned Hastings
Skunk Ape
Stomp! Shout! Scream!

End of first week of shooting, 10/10/04

2004-10-10T11:27:00.000-04:00

At the end of our first week of shooting, I can say, with out a doubt, this is the hardest thing I've ever done. I've been editing for 15 years and I do things a certain way. I get all my source materials right in front of me, figure out what the limits are to whatever I'm doing, and start making decisions based on all the parameters. Directing an indie feature film gives you plenty of limiting factors, but you also have endless options at the same time. I'm essentially trying to edit the film in my head, on set, on the fly. After a couple of hours of this, my brain in mush. Luckily I have people like Evan Lieberman, the D.P., Alex Orr, the Assistant Director, and Reagan Brandon, script supervisor, to help me out. They, along with a very talented, very hard working crew, are helping make a real feature film. We have shot almost every shot we've planned to shoot, which by all accounts is remarkable for an indie film, or any film. I have plenty of stories, but it's very late and I'm very tired. Here's pictures from our first week.

last minute casting, costuming, 10/2/04

2004-10-02T11:11:00.000-04:00

All that stuff I wrote last week about the highs and lows of the film making process-- well, there's been plenty more lows. On Wednesday, 5 days out from our first day of production, Frank Robert, our newly cast and rehearsed Deputy Tillis called to tell me he has a family emergency and will not be able to be in the film. He feels awful about it and I have no recourse but to let him go. I can't really say that I'm depressed, despondent or dejected because I'm just too weary of pushing this thing along with not much more that willpower and enthusiasm to feel much of anything. I know we'll find someone, but the process will be painful. Luckily, Frank called me 24 hours later with a recommendation. His good friend, Adrian Roberts (no relation) is qualified, experienced and available. I cast him over the phone without hearing him read a single line from the script. We'll meet for the first time at a costume fitting on Sunday.

Friday is my first day of full time movie making. I've been only available nights, weekends and the occasional phone call or fax during my day job with Adult Swim. I can't say that my brain is fully firing on all cylinders from the business and stress of the last two weeks and the cold that makes my nose and eyes run like a faucet. There's a production meeting at 11:00 AM to meet some of the crew and then go to our Atlanta locations. At the meeting is Arma Benoit Stephens, producer; Evan Lieberman, DP; John Swindall; gaffer; and Arma’s husband John Stephens, key grip. We talk schedule, mostly about what scenes Hector, the Latino Mechanic love-interest, can be written out of because our actor has some scheduling conflicts on the days when he's most needed on set. I dive into the final shooting script I rewrote two nights before and try to wrap my brain around that while the camera department talks in a completely foreign language of lighting and dolly and who knows what else. I scribble and work on my script but don't really get anywhere when it's time to head to our first location of the day, the garage. This is the location for our most demanding scene, where the Skunk Ape kidnaps Theodora in the middle of the band's performance. The garage doesn't have some things that we need so we improvise and come up with other solutions. I make John Stephens pick me up and carry me around like the Skunk Ape will carry around Theodora-- newlyweds-over-the-threshold-style. I think it's hilarious, but I'm not sure everyone gets me yet. We all start figuring out how we'll shoot this complicated scene and I go through it thinking out loud as we go. Many decisions are based on the fact that we can't find a special effects make-up artist to do a Skunk Ape face. We'll just shoot the creature over-the-shoulder or back lit. Later that day Arma and I come to the conclusions that all the compromises that we're making based on lack of money and time will only make the film better, more like the films we're trying to emulate.

Next location is a fabric warehouse where we're going to shoot our police station and doctor’s office interiors. The rooms are generic white (good for a Doctor’s exam room), but really small (bad for Police station). Matt, the assistant art director, shows us some of the older offices that are still in use and we hit gold. They're wood paneled with original 1960’s furniture-- perfect. We still don't have a police exterior or a doctor’s office exterior. We decide that we'll do without either of those locations, we'll just shoot ‘em as interiors.

The last location is Lenny’s, which is where we'll shoot the dive bar scene on Day One. It's the first scene where we see the all-girl garage rock band, The Violas, playing the theme song for the movie. Lenny’s is perfect and I run to meet the actresses for band practice and costume fitting.

One idea I wanted to explore was to try to record Claire Bronson’s voice on location to use when we mix the movie. I’d tape an iPod or something to her back and play the Catfight! theme song in earphones. That way she can just sing along with the song, but we'll be able to record clean vocals. We'd get one or two takes, then switch to shooting MOS (no sync sound recording) of the band playing along with the song. Claire hasn't ever sung publicly and this kinda freaked her out. At band practice Friday afternoon, the prospect of doing this was effecting her confidence and I killed the idea. While the Claire, Mary Kraft (bass) and Cynthia Evans (drums) are not quite ready to go out on tour, they'll be much better than any of the lip-syncing professional bands in the ‘60s beach party movies. Wardrobe Stylist Jason Sky come by with dresses and go-go boots and the actresses look amazing. What a great day of film making I've had.

Then, the actor I've cast as Hector calls and lets me know that he has been offered another very well-paying job that he can't turn down. Now, I have less than 48 hours to recast the romantic lead role. There goes the giddy high of indie film making. The calls go out, once again, to Arma, Evan, the cast and Amy Barratt, the casting director looking for a new Hector.

I give myself until 3:00pm Saturday to audition/beg actors and then I'll cast the best I can find. Costumes will have to be refitted, schedules reworked. Jonathan Green, who plays scientist John Patterson in the film, calls with a high recommendation for his friend Travis Young. I call and wake up Travis and he's at my house by 11:00 am to audition. I play Theodora and see if he can seduce me. It works and Travis is our new & improved Hector. I meet with Evan for a few hours to make our shot list for Day One, despite my total lack of energy. It's essentially where I direct the movie: Start with a close-up that dollies out to an establishing 3-shot; close-ups for these characters for these lines; 2 shot for these lines; etc. We are, of course, limited by a strict 5 to 1 shooting ratio, but it's totally invigorating.

Sunday is spent doing more shot lists for Days Two & Three and costume fittings for all the male actors. Luckily, the costumes bought for the old Hector fit the new Hector. Jason couldn't find the right suit for John the scientist. I pull a green thrift store suit of my closet and it fits perfectly. I tell Jonathan that I'll be wearing it to the premiere of the movie, so don't mess it up. Ned Hasting, my friend and work-mate on Aqua Teen Hunger Force, is playing the monster in the film, the Skunk Ape (the Everglades version of Bigfoot). He's is 6 foot 6 and as he puts it, "the largest mammal I know." But he's also an encyclopedia of film and a great resource to have on set.He tries on the $99 gorilla costume, but can't pull it over his gargantuan thighs. In the middle of my living room, I have a pair of scissors pointed directly at his crotch. Less than 24 hours from the fist time I get to yell action and I'm starting to enjoy myself again.

One week to shoot, 9/27/04

2004-09-27T10:51:00.000-04:00

One week to shooting. This must be why people don’t make low budget feature films very often. This week has been nothing but stress-- fighting our schedule, worrying over locations and putting out fires. And I'm probably only hearing half of the crises since Arma, the producer on the front lines, solves most of them before they get to me. Occasionally, mixed in with the panic attacks, there are moments of sheer glee.

About 10 days ago, the fine actor we had cast as Deputy Tillis became unavailable. Several harried days of calling Amy, our casting director, and pestering our existing cast for recommendations brought us a grand total of two actors to audition. One of them, Frank Roberts, turned out to be a perfect fit for the role. And he's available. And he likes the script. And he's a great actor.

As of this moment, we don't have a doctor's office to shoot 3 interior and one exterior scene. After driving around most of Saturday through every small town off I-75 with in 2 hours of Atlanta, I have one potential location. That scene has to be shot in 10 days.

Our lead actress, Claire Bronson, hasn't ever played guitar. Due to some previous commitments (like planning a wedding, getting married, and going on a honeymoon), she only has two weeks to become the guitar-playing, lead singer of a kick-ass 1966 garage rock band. Luckily, Jennifer Leavey, singer & guitarist for Catfight!, volunteered her Saturday to teach Claire the chords to all the songs she wrote for the Stomp! Shout! Scream! Claire picked it up beautify and has been practicing every day. We'll put her singing voice to the test next.

Rehearsals. Sunday afternoon, Claire, Cynthia Evans, and Mary Kraft-- collectively The Violas-- read with Jonathan Green who plays John Patterson, the scientist called in from out of town to help identify the mysterious debris that washed upon the shores of this quiet beach town. I left one scene in the film unwritten. It’s early in the film and the girls are diving their tour van. (Actually, now it's a station wagon because that what we can get, but for our purpose here, it’s the tour van.) The main function for this scene is to establish the personalities of the 3 girls. My plan is to have the actresses write, improv, and/or ad-lib this scene, based on the characters that are created from my script and their interpretation of it. We played around with this on Sunday, but came to the conclusion that it’s too early for this. Once we get into shooting and get to know each other and the story lines better, we'll know exactly what this scene is about. It'll all just come together. That's the plan. I hope it works.

Frank, Bill Szymanski, and Chris Hines—the police force for the town—read with Jonathan and Nancy Riggs, who is playing the town doctor, on Monday night. We read by candlelight thanks to the remnants of Hurricane Jeanne, which knocked out my electricity. It's very strange hearing my dialog read by actors who can make it sound like a real, natural conversation, even though it's often completely ridiculous. Only truly gifted actors can take lines like, "This creature is the missing link between man and ape. This is what scientists have been looking for, for decades. If we could capture him! Capture him alive!?" and make them sound believable. Right now, my favorite line is from Deputy Bob, who is a monster movie fan and is excited about there being something going on in this sleepy town. I love it not because it's great writing, but because Chris Hines can deliver it so well. "I don't like baloney sandwiches. Now fried baloney’s OK. Hey, that looks like a skunk ape."

This is the sheer glee part.

pre-production 9/12/04

2004-09-12T10:28:00.000-04:00

September 12, 2004
In two weeks, I will be on a feature film set, directing real actors, calling the shots to a real 35mm film crew, and making it all up as I go along. I’ve really never been on a film set. I’m an editor who has made a couple of shorts, been to several film festivals, but really, honestly, I’m more comfortable in a dark room with zeros and ones than out in the bright sunlight with grips, gaffers, best boys, AD’s or PA’s. Actual production has always been a necessary evil to get to post production for me. Maybe that’s how I ended up working in animation where it’s all post production (I edit and produce Aqua Teen Hunger Force for Adult Swim in my day job). I’m as ready as I’ll ever be to leap into my first feature film. Here’s how I got exactly here.

In the fall of 2002, I had my first good idea for Stomp! Shout! Scream!. I’d been watching every ‘60s beach party movie I could find, along with trying (unsuccessfully) to start my own garage rock band (we learned "Louie Louie" and played it over and over). In every one of those movies, Annette would get angry at Frankie and walk the beach singing a lonesome lament. My friends in the Atlanta all-girl rock band Catfight! had written a song several years ago about a girl who has a summer romance that leaves her with more than a broken heart. The song was the perfect marriage of 1960s nostalgia and twisted humor. Place that song into a beach party movie and not only did I have a terrific movie moment-- the kind that makes you giggle and snort with the joy of film making-- I also had a great back story for my main character. In January 2003, I started writing early Saturday mornings, fueled by gallons of black tea.

Certain ideas started to come together: Set the film in 1966 and have it revolve around an all-girl garage rock band. Try to get Catfight! to write the songs for the band in the film to perform. Make it a monster movie because 1) that’s what I know and B) the plot and humor of the actual beach party movies are downright awful. Use the legend of the Florida Skunk Ape (the Everglades' version of Bigfoot). Add a scientist, a Latino mechanic love interest and an insecure Sheriff. After 4 months, I had 60 pages. After 9 months and lots of advice from film making and script writing friends, I had close to 90 pages.

I contacted Arma Benoit, a friend who produces commercials and music videos and who had been involved with the making of my monster movie short films, The Monster Trilogy. She committed to the project in the first minute of our phone call. After she read my script, she admitted that she would do the project based on our friendship regardless of the quality of the script. Turns out, she loved the script and said that we could really have something great on our hands. She said the if I can raise $100,000, we could shoot this on film with a professional cast and crew. Arma’s enthusiasm provided a great boost of confidence that was waning after almost a year of work on the script.

I immediately started researching the financing and marketing of indie genre films. I read all I could about creating a business plan and finding investors. Eventually, the plan was to find 20 people who would invest $5,000 each. At Thanksgiving of 2003 with a 30-page business plan in hand, I pitched my immediate and extended family. I received lots of encouragement, but no actual checks. In February of 2004, I had my first investor meeting with friends of my parents and got my first financial commitment for $5,000. My mom, dad and grandmother soon followed with investment commitments. Over the next 6 months, I solicited advice from anyone that would listen, while working overtime on every project available at Cartoon Network, saving as much of my own money as I could for the film. By August, I miraculously had my entire budget in place. Stomp! Shout! Scream! would be produced this fall.

Jennifer Leavey, Catfight!’s singer and songwriter, was also very enthusiastic about the script and being a part of the film. In March 2004, Jennifer, Katy Graves, and Susanne Gibboney recorded 4 amazing garage rock anthems for fictional band ‘The Violas’ to perform in the movie. Rob Gal, at his Snack ‘n’ Shack Studios, added his recording expertise and Farfisa organ playing to the proceedings.

Arma introduced me to Evan Lieberman, indie film director, cinematographer, PhD of Film Studies and lecturer at Emory University. We immediately clicked and a partnership formed from a love of B-movies, garage rock, and a dedication to well-crafted independent films. Evan lead me to Amy Barratt, a film maker who has worked with virtually every theater group in Atlanta. Amy joined our production team as Casting Director and lead us to the casting of an amazing group of local talent. The actresses who have been cast as the band are currently learning their instruments and the Catfight! songs. There was a considerable amount of debate over weather we should start casting before we had our financing in place. The chicken-and-egg question was: Can you get investments without a cast in place or can you get a cast of sought-after theater actors to commit without financing (or a shooting schedule) in place. We chose to cast first and willed ourselves into production no matter what finances I came up with. So far, so good.

Arma, Evan and I just returned from a weekend in Bradenton & St. Petersburg, Florida finding beaches, motels and an old fort to use as locations. More locations around Atlanta are being scouted. Costumes, props, and someone to make our Skunk Ape costume are in the works. Principal Photography starts October 4. I'll keep posting these reports as we go through production and post.