The Filmmakers' Night Before Deadline

Sometime last Tuesday or Wednesday night, mired deep in the middle of the edit for A True Patriot, poetical lines of frustration began seeping into my mind around my concentration. I took a few minutes off to write them down, and it quickly morphed into the Filmmakers' Night Before Deadline. Thankfully not EVERYTHING in the poem happened to me this time, but a good bit of it did...including multiple power failures due to a bad AC power adapter during the edit and ...

It's rather rough, and some of the lines don't really scan, but this is more-or-less just as I wrote them down. With no further ado...

Twas the night before deadline, and all through the house,
Every timeline was rolling, and I burned out my mouse.
The titles were perfect, animated with care,
But the effects shots were not--in fact far from fair.

I was still up; could not go to bed,
Visions of transparency danced in my head.
When I the spacebar to output did tap,
My camera decided to take a short nap.

Then from my laptop the hard drive did clatter,
After Effects had eaten the RAM and crunched on my platter.
I sprang to my desk and quick as a flash,
Shut down iTunes for the fast final dash.

As soon as free resources had hit a new low,
The circuit overloaded and my power strip did blow!
Thank God for Autosave; my files were fine;
My nerves were not--I 'bout lost my mind.

My rendering sure wasn't moving too quick,
Time, on the other hand, was continuing to tick.
Faster than sound the deadline approached,
But then I remembered how I'd been coached:

"Bake cookies!" I shouted up, "Raisin!"
"Chocolate, Oatmeal," to tempt the mailman!
Let me print up the cover, clean up that shot,
Finish my render, and you'll have the lot!...

Hope this helps relieve some stress for a filmmaker rapidly approaching a deadline!

IHS,

John Calvin Young

Completed Project: "Richard Caswell: A True Patriot"

Friday noon we shipped off A True Patriot to the first competition we're entering it in--we were racing to complete it before the deadline. After four 8AM-to-midnight days of editing, studio recording, and post-production, we finally exported it out to tape Friday AM. This is the first film I've shot in widescreen, and I really enjoyed the experience. I learned a lot while DPing and editing this film, as it has been a step beyond anything we've ever shot before. Shooting interviews/narration is especially hard as well--when you are both the narrator and the one lighting and shooting the scene.

The film will probably be released on DVD sometime late this spring, but I may be able to put together a short trailer before then. Hopefully a website and pictures will follow as well, but I'm already getting tied up in my next project...

IHS,

John Calvin

My Daughter's Dates

I know this is late, but here is our film...it's taken me this long to catch up on sleep...



It was great working with everybody on the project: Paul and Sheilah Munger, Ryan Bruce, and Chuck Fultz, plus the cast. The film website is at www.mydaughtersdates.com. We placed 18th out of 71 entries in the rankings by points but in the first couple of days up we were #2 in total views...not sure where we are now. Hope you enjoy it!

In His Service,

John Calvin Young

Another 1 AM Post

I'm sitting here at 1 AM with three other great brothers in Christ working over the script for our entry in the Christian Filmmakers.org 24-hour film contest. Unfortunately, the majority opinion of the team holds that I can't even disclose the title 6 hours before we get the security elements for the shoot. Ah well. $500 top prize, 24 hours, four laptops, a desktop and a XL-2...plus a great crew of Christian guys and girls... it's going to be an interesting Saturday. Off to bed now--if I can get a wifi connection on set I may be able to post some updates during the day.

In His Service,

John Calvin Young

Film Shoot + Life = Stress & Sleep Deprivation

Ohh...It's 1 AM here at the Studios, and I and my brother are deep in the throes of Film Shoot Eve-itis. You've all been through this before, and will recognize the symptoms--red-rimmed eyes at 9 AM on-set, the D.P. (me) falling asleep standing straight up, and...storyboards that made "perfect" sense at the time, but will probably look like a script for "America's Funniest Home Videos" come daylight. There's a mic shockmount that needs to be fixed, software which needs to be reinstalled, and the final storyboards to finish before we go to bed. And that's with approximately 5 hours and 17 minutes until we HAVE to be up in the morning to leave for the shoot. Thankfully this is only a short project, but it seems the simpler the project, the closer the deadline... I guess I'll post more information later, including some fantastic shots from our trench set for the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge that we shot last week. Teaser: it includes a live-firing field gun and muskets. Right now I just need to get the storyboards approved and make a decision about the shockmount before we go to our belated rest...and we'll leave the rest in the Lord's hands.

IHS,

John Calvin