KGB Productions

Between writing some new/old material, and getting all the elements together for the DVD of " Deadly Obsessions ". It's been a busy few days. Of course there is also the day job too which keeps me going, which I don't mind, so there is little down time. Being a father of two boys also keeps me busy, but that's all par for the course, and somewhat enjoyable. I say somewhat because it does get a little crazy when both boys start crying, and yours truly feels like Michael Keaton's character in "Mr. Mom". I've been working on a script for some time now, and it's been going through several drafts and several severe plot line changes. They say the key to writing is re-writing, and I would have to agree with them on that. I'm sure there's another re-write in this scripts history, but one that isn't so dramatic. I've nailed down characters, plot lines, and resolution. Now comes the details which will change as I write it, and if I...

Here is an interesting story on how some filmmakers tackled the copyright issues in their film " Mad Hot Ballroom ". The documentary is about young children doing what else ballroom dancing" to several different songs. I've always been frustrated at the copyright issue, and what is fair use and what isn't. Where I work we adhere to "royalty free" copyrighted material for projects, but there have been a number of times where I felt it should have fallen into the "fair use" domain, but once you add lawyers to the mix the field becomes littered with landmines. The article makes an interesting point in saying that maybe the filmmakers were being too cautious, but then again as an indie the film-makers had to protect themselves, and even school districts insulate themselves by enforcing the royalty free music only policy. It's too bad because interesting material gets censored before it's even shot. One more thing the filmmaker of today has...

Okay so I have to comment on Romero's latest flim "Land of the Dead". If anyone would like to hear the master himself NPR has two interviews with Romero. One interview done a year ago, and the other done during the premiere of his latest dead installment. Needless to say that Romero's latest is one which will not disappoint. But now for the bad news, and that is the latest box office places it 5th, and has made a little more then $10 million. It's still early but not good for summer business especially when the remake of "War of the Worlds" is releasing Wednesday. I just hope that Romero gets another shot at doing another film. Romero has been a maverick in filmmaking for sometime, and in an interview he did when "Dawn of the Dead" came out he talked about regional filmmaking, and it was an interesting concept to subscribe to, and now with the internet, and niche film markets opening up more and more you can see Romero was ahead of his time. I ...

Okay so I'm all psyched to see this film. George Romero remains a favorite of mine, and I'm amazed to see that even Romero has a hard time getting films financed, and this from a guy who has a track record. As a teen I was heavily influenced by Romero. Creating all those backyard movies way back when in my youth were fun. It's been about twenty years since the last dead film, and I'm anxious to see the results. My thoughts on Romero can go on and on, so I won't do that here. Needless to say that it's good to see a talented filmmaker get his shot again. The horror genre needs to be resurrected if you pardon the pun.

So I was reading this article on pitching a film to a studio. It seems that a Michael Davis a 44 year old director of straight to video films has gotten a deal at New Line Cinema to direct a film called "Shoot'em Up". In the article it says that studios in Hollywood don't look at people over 40, and usually stick with young talent. Well I think I know why Hollywood has been loosing some of it's audience . It's the age factor. Hollywood is notorious for it's short sidedness, and it's attraction to youth. All one has to do is look under plastic surgeons and one will find a plethora of doctors all located in the Los Angeles area. But I digress, and this is all nothing new, so why the anachromony? Because I don't think it's over for me. Maybe call me a dreamer, or a hopeful romantic, but I in no way feel like I'm done, and that I'm toast. The old battle cry "I have not yet begun to fight" comes to mind, and I like it. Davis di...

Two ideas have gotten hold of me, and both would make excellent films. I have not fleshed out the details, but it is something I'm very interested in. The above picture is from a pulp novel written by the late Jim Thompson . You can put his type of writing under such books as Dashiell Hammett, or Mickey Spillane, but Thompson was a bit more harder edge hence my like for his novels. There have been a number of films over the years that were based on Thompson's work. The Grifters , After Dark My Sweat , and the Getaway are all films that have had some success. Even "the Killer Inside Me" was made into a interesting film, but lately Thompson's presence has been absent in cinema. The rights to his stories are too expensive for this independent producer to ever buy an option on one of his stories, so I've been toying with doing something in that same genre using my own story. What appeals to me in these stories is the grit, and the rawness of the material. So henc...

So after finishing the trailer for the film what's a person to do if funds are low, but ideas are plentiful? The answer is write, write and rewrite. So that's what's happening. In no area in the film-making process is the idea of a story more powerful then in the writing stage. It is here where YOU , and only YOU begin the long film-making process. All things are possible at this stage, and all avenues are open to you. You as the writer are God in your universe, and it is you who manipulate characters, storylines, and plot points. Of course when production begins, and even when you start pre-production things in the story will change due to time, financial constraints, and just pure luck. That's the magic or should I say the reality of film-making. Chaos ensures, but if your good it's a sort of a organized chaos. Yes I know that doesn't make a lot of sense, but in film-making little does. For a really funny and yet eye opening account of film-making see the mov...

The past few weeks I've been busy cutting trailers for my film "Deadly Obsessions", and looking into expanding the web site and getting a merchant account so I can start selling the film. I also need to put the film onto DVD, and I've been looking at pricing. In the past day I've finalized the video, and converted it into an MPEG file. Cutting trailers is an art form all to itself. I read interviews with filmmakers who worked for Roger Corman, and in the interview they say that they would cut in a shot of an exploding helicopter if the footage from the film wasn't visual interesting. While cutting my trailer for the film that sentiment reverberated in my head for some time. To put it bluntly there are no rules to editing trailers. Just as long as you get people interested in the film. Well I haven't gone that far and edited in some exploding vehicles, but I hope I have made the film a bit more interesting with the footage I've included. At first I jus...

In an article in Britain's Guardian Jean-Luc Godard was quoted as saying: "It's over, there was a time maybe when cinema could have improved society, but that time was missed." Now far be it from me to criticize the great Jean-luc Godard, but I have to disagree with the above statement. To me it sounds like sour grapes. Godard himself mentions in the article that his movies have been unsuccessful in a commercial sense. I happen to disagree on that also but that's another argument for another time. I guess Godard is measuring his success to what Hollyweird produces, and it's success at the box office. I'll agree that the film business is just that a film business, but to say that cinema is over, and that no good can come from it is wrong. There is a lot of cinema out there that works, and gets it's message through. Of course since the results are not measured in the millions, Hollyweird and its brethren are not paying too much attention to theses small ...

I've been in a quandary for a while now. I've completed my first film, and I'm trying to get it into film festivals, but no luck there, so what do I do? I've been itching to do another film, but my resources are stretched thin. I'm also still working on getting my film "Deadly Obsessions" out there and seen. At this point all I want is to see it on a video shelf, but there isn't enough hours in the day for me to concentrate on selling the film, getting another film together, and of course working at my day job. After all I have a family and I like my job, so it's hard being torn in so many directions. I would like to just get a home for the film, and get it out there. I didn't make the film for profit though I was aware of keeping my overhead down so I could do the film for less, and for all intensive purposes I did that, but now I need to sell it. By the summer I'll be able to put the film onto DVD. Come hell or high water that's what ...

After locking the film down I was ready for the mix. I mixed my film at Agnello Films in northern NJ by Tom Agnello. Tom is a cinematographer & editor, and he knows his stuff. Over three days we mixed the film, and it all went well because of Tom. The one problem that Tom found was that some of the footage seemed out of synch. This was attributed to me not coding the film and mag track so that when I began cutting the film I lost synch. When projected it became a bit noticeable, so Tom had to take the time to re-synch some of the footage. We also added some new sound effects that he thought would help. Tom has an extensive collection of sound effects, and it took him no time to cut them in. We edited on a another 6 plate editor, which was similar to a KEM. Tom is one of the few who still edit this way. His basement is his studio, and it works without a hitch. Tom is also familiar with the people at Color Lab down near Washington DC where the film was printed. So if you are going to...

Found this picture the other day, and it is of me dressed as the killer in some Super-8 short I was making at the time. I had been very influenced by films like "Halloween", "Friday the 13th", and a whole slew of low budget horror films to numerous to mention. I was always filming something, and trying to coax people to star in my films. You see the technical was never a problem with me. It was getting the people to work on the films that was hard. Usually they were my friends & family, but a lot of the time I had to do a lot of filling in. I can even remember getting my mom to run the camera for a quick shot of me dressed as the killer, or as a victim. It's ironic that that still is a problem. As you know if you've been reading this blog I do try and pay my actors and crew when I can, but it's hard to do so now even though expenses for DV filmmaking aren't as much as they would be if I was shooting on film. When I went to film school I was excit...

So how did I go about scoring the film with music? Well I enlisted an old time friend by the name of Peter J. Gorritz who lives in LosAngeles California. Peter and I go way back, and we had talked about the score when I was in LA for a visit. The above photo is of me when I did my commentary to Peter for the music. I literally videotaped the film from the flatbed editor, and talked into a microphone as the film was being played on the editor. On one channel I had the films dialogue and on the other channel I had my voice telling Peter what I thought the music should be like, or when it should comes in and out. Basically it was for queuing music in and out of the film. As for the musical style Peter and I had talked about that over the phone and through emails. I recommended several films, and he recommended several composer's style, and in essence that's how the counteract evolved. As Peter scored the film he would send me two discs. One with the music synch to the picture as a...

Okay I've made a film, and done several short films now what? Work that's what. It's rather difficult to balance filmmaking and life in general. Since making a film can tax your resources both in the physical realm as well as the emotional realm it can be difficult to produce a good piece of work. A support mechanism is needed to help people like yourself to create interesting films, but in today's culture that is so hard to do or develop for that matter. I have been a member of a crew and felt worthless, and hated every minute of it, and on the other hand I've been in a work environment where everyone is working for the project because they believe in it, and enjoyed every second of it. These are two extremes, and there seems to be no middle ground. I guess one needs to keep plugging along, and take from each project something they can use later. Filmmaking is a group effort, but in that group are one or two individuals who move the project forward. It is these p...

I started editing as soon as I got my film back from the lab, but before I could get creative I had to first begin the mundane chores of logging shots, and syncing up the footage. This is time consuming, and sometimes can be quite tedious. But it was something that had to be done. I should have also gotten my film and mag track coded after I sync up the footage. Coding is when numbers are printed on your workprint & magnetic track so that after you cut the slate from the picture you can sync up your footage by matching the numbers from the film to the mag track. I didn't and so I sometime had to sync by eye, and later found out in some shots that I was off synch by a frame or two. If this was done in video I be dead, but since I was doing it in film the out of synch footage didn't look that bad. Of course when editing on my Moviola Flatbed editor I oly saw a small image on the view screen. To get a better sense of how in synch you are one should see it projected. You...

As a student in filmmaking I had some contempt for older filmmakers. The a rrogance of youth prevented me from appreciating artists that had come first. It was only in my second year in college that I discovered the French New Wave, and I feel in love. I began devouring all things that covered that period, which also lead me to learning other American directors such as Ford, Hawks, and Chaplin. The history of cinema is not that old, but yet all that we do toady is based on things that other filmmakers did. Such filmmakers as Keaton, Chaplin, Eisenstein, and Griffith were pioneers in filmmaking. They discovered the language of the cinema. What is this language of cinema you ask? Well like any other subject filmmaking has rules that seem to have been grounded in the narrative. The way we tell a story can be done in several ways, and in the cinema different shots, and angles can be used to convey a different emotions. The early filmmakers found out this by trial and error. After all Ediso...

So what was the budget? How much did this all cost. The answer which every producer should give should be an honest one, and that answer is "under a million". I can even say that it was well under 100k. Are you interested now? The biggest expense was filmstock which ran me around 3 to 4K, and then processing and sound transfer to a magnetic track, which ran an additional 7k. After that I was my own editor, and the expenses dropped. Food, transportation, and housing also ate a lot of my budget. I could have easily halved the budget for the last three items if I one, hired local actors, two gotten catering from fast food places, and three didn't supply any transportation for actors. Some actors had commitments like auditions to go to, so a car was provided. Three actors shared one car. It did work out, and the actors were all satisfied and relaxed. They did not feel like cattle, and it showed, so supplying transportation to the actors was a good thing. I used the rental age...

I'll try and deal with how I became involved in my film, and how long this obsession has been raging on. i had always wanted to do a feature. There were several times where I thought I was going to actually make it happen, but always the plans fell through. SO I decided to put the burden on "myself" alone. The old saying: "if you want something done right, do it yourself" actually has a lot of truth in it. I had written my screenplay two years earlier before production began. In that time I was consumed by how I would get the film off the ground by myself. I used Final Draft for my screenwriting program, nad I used movie magic for my scheduling software. Movie Magic allowed me to import my screenplay from Final draft, and create my schedule for shooting the film. I figured that it would take me 12 to 14 days to shoot the film since my film was limited in location, and in actors. I should have found someone to help me, but I could not since I had no firm date on ...

Okay so what is my definition of a filmmaker? I've worked on numerous productions, and been on staff at various production houses & ad agencies, and the one thing that separates professionals from the wanna-be's is that they have the technical know how to put together a film no matter what the format is. Film, video, DV, or any other format a true professional filmmaker KNOWS the process of production from pre to post. That's not to say that you need to know ALL, but it sure does help when you're up against a deadline, and you have questions on how the production process flows. I found out everything there is to know about filmmaking during my thesis film in "Production 40.3" in college. The film was a short 5 minute piece called "Freedom". It was about someone running form someone and trying to reach freedom from across the fence. I learned later while reading "Skywalking" that George Lucas did a film called "Freheit" which i...

It started around when I was eight years old. I had been interested in photography since I was six or seven. I took pictures of my GI-Joe's in various states of action. I was also a voracious comic book reader. Fantastic Four, Sergeant Fury, The Avengers, Dr. Strange, and more all fascinated me and entertained me for hours. I even for a short time drew my own comic books with stories I created myself. Then after my grandmother died I inherited her Super-8 camera, which was a simple point and shoot type of camera. I read about stop-motion photography, and studied films that contained stop-motion. Such films as Mighty Joe Young, King Kong, and the Sinbad pictures all had stop motion in them. I tried to emulate that with my cheap camera by shooting in short bursts. The results weren't what I wanted, but they showed promise. I eventually acquired a camera which could do single frame shooting, and suddenly my world opened up. I would read Special effects magazines, and I even s...