We're Screening Near Canton, Ohio

If you happen to be a local reader -- I'm showing our little short film tomorrow night near here.

Multilevel Relationship will be screening tomorrow night (Wednesday, September 2nd) at the Sandy Valley Public Library just south of Canton. I've been a big fan of the Sandy Valley Independent Short Film Series (hosted by Kim Ann) for years -- there's always great food, great conversations and great films.



The show starts at 6:30 and it's guaranteed to be a good time! You should join us!

Multilevel Relationship is Screening in Cleveland Tomorrow!

The Ohio Independent Film Festival is currently running at Cleveland Public Theatre right now.

Tomorrow night, Multilevel Relationship will be screening during the SHORTS 4 program at 8 pm. Here's the slate of all the films & if you scroll down you can find our program. For $10, it should be a good program of shorts (12 short films in all). Hope to see you there.

Muskegon Film Fest

It was fun to see Multilevel Relationship on the big screen in our home town -- which also happens to be the town where we shot it.

Thanks to friends and family who came to be supportive & thanks to the great staff of volunteer organizers that created such a cool festival vibe.

Great times at the Maryland Film Festival

As most of you know, Multilevel Relationship played at the Maryland Film Festival. Daniel and I took a road trip out and had a great time there.



The festival did an awesome job of giving filmmakers space to talk to each other and interested audiences about their process, craft and work. Also treated us with all kinds of perks.


(can you see how close I'm standing to John Waters?)

We were feeling pretty famous and important most of the time. Until every time we saw somebody really famous and remembered our place in the Great-Chain-of-Being-(Celebrities).



We got to reunite with seldom-seen, but greatly-enjoyable cousins in DC & see a ton of other great films.

Next up? Muskegon Film Festival!

We're up to Four Fests now...

We're feeling excited and greatful about the acceptances. (And yes, of course there have been rejections, but we're not going to boast about those on this blog.)

Hope you can come see the film at one of the fests!

Multilevel Relationship Coming to a Theatre Near You!

If you live in Northeastern Ohio, Multilevel Relationship is playing soon. We just received word that we're an official selection of the Ohio Independent Film Festival (whose dates are currently moving) *and* the Akron Film Festival.

You can find out more about the Akron Film Festival here, and you can come watch Multilevel Relationship on April 4th at 9:15 p.m. at the Akron Art Museum in downtown Akron.

I Don't Know Who Rocks More?

My brother...

(this guy)

rocks because:

1. he makes up songs Listen or buy here

2. he's my little brother (in other words -- just being related to me makes you a little bit of a rocker)

3. he secured the rights to all three songs that I fell in love with for Multilevel Relationship...

On the other hand, these bands rock, because they play fierce rock music:

Listen to The Soft Drugs here.

Listen to "Everything" by Dolly Varden.

Track Star's Green to Gold (you'll have to see the finished film to hear this awesome song).

January Update

Now that I'm doing the fine tuning of the rough cut -- into a final cut, I'm increasingly bumping up against my limitations as an editor. Hopefully those limitations will all be overcome by the time you, dear reader, encounter the film. (In fact, the fact that you will watch the film later, makes me hesitate at disclosing my inadequacies; but I still believe in the film enough to believe that my admissions won't weaken your viewing experience.)

It just becomes increasingly obvious to me how intuitive some editing skills become over time....and so in these moments I'm aware of how I can grow both as an editor and as a director. Which ultimately is probably good.

This fine tuning includes syncing sound and visuals more tightly, getting into & out of scenes more quickly, being ruthless about cutting lines, being more creative (and sometimes more conventional) with transitions...

Daniel and I decided this month that we need to actually put both of our energies into one movie at a time and still try to finish MLR within the February / March time frame, leaving SITM for our best energies afterward.

He's just finished a reboot of his business & has started to inch down the matrimonial aisle (a long and unbelievable story that also grows out of our filming time together in July...).

December Update

Finally! I cracked the code! (turns out that it's as simple as reading the user's manual.)

November Update

With a rough (rough, rough) edit my left pocket, my (paid) job heating up, and a window of opportunity looming, Daniel and I together focused on getting some ADR done in Chicago.

My yearly academic convention was scheduled for late November, and both Levi and Anna live and work in Chicago. So the two of us glutted ourselves on self-taught crash courses in ADR & looping. Books, websites, calls in to experts. Daniel finally settled on using Logic and a software add-on that would simplify the process.

I took the bus from Canton to Chicago -- Daniel drove over from Michigan and we transformed our hotel room into a sound-damped-down space with a huge recording set piece in the middle of the room. I taped sound panels at head level at intervals around the entire room, we duct taped sheets and bedspreads in front of doorways, entrances and one entire wall. We pulled the curtains absolutely closed.





We got two of Levi's lines done (finally!) after many malfunctions when Anna showed up. We had finished her lines when the system went down again (!). Anna and Levi and I went around the corner to Buddy Guy's and had some great conversation over some great jambalaya while Daniel stayed on the phone with tech support.

At the end of the day we were disappointed to have to give up on looping Levi, but had at least enjoyed being together again with these creative spirits who we enjoy so much.

October Update

This month was even more of a struggle than September, in terms of keeping those Thursdays free of interruptions: Advising filled a (thurs)day, shooting a short film with Andrew Gates filled a (thurs)day, and littler other accretions filled the equivalent of another day (grading, designing a new course).

So that's the bad news.

But the good news that I'm this close to having a rough (very rough!) cut of MLR (which I've taken to calling it in my myriad of todo lists).

I'm utterly baffled by the process of compositing. I don't know why I hoped that it would be more natural and intuitive. If you think about it, it's one of the most unnatural things in the world -- right up there with apparating, beaming & haunting.

While I like the rhythm of my cutting right now, I don't trust myself or my criticism of myself. I just feel too close to the project. I'm the sort of social processor who wants to put this rough cut up on the web for everyone to look at it -- but I know that wouldn't be such a great idea...

September Update

I spent this month sifting through the footage of Multilevel Relationship and uploading the best clips to the computer. Because we shot Multilevel partly in the house on Cedar Street, the scenes are strewn all across the seven tapes we used. Unlike the compact (locationally and time-wise) Stick In The Mud, which we wrapped in two days and in one location, we only filled three tapes worth of footage.

Andrew Gates who just happens to still work in my academic department, did a ton of the grunt work in cleaning up our logs and organizing the footage.

I was able to keep most of my Thursday's sacred for the footage. I have one other movie/art project that I had said yes to before we even started pre-production that I also have to fit into my Thursday-break-from-professor-like work. The good news is that it only managed to steal half a Thursday this month.

August Update

For both Daniel and I, August has been the time to catch up with all the things that we put on hold in order to make the movie happen.

For me that's meant getting ready for starting school and starting classes. For Daniel, it's included the overwhelming tasks of selling a house, selling most of his belongings, navigating a divorce and moving -- all while trying to father two-year-old twin boys.

We have divided the projects between us. Daniel will be editing STICK IN THE MUD.

I'll be editing MULTILEVEL RELATIONSHIP.

I'm eager for school to start so hopefully film editing will fit more neatly into the space that I've carved out for it (Thursday mornings --- and occasionally ALL DAY Thursday).

That's a Wrap!

After five days of early mornings, late nights, freezing waves, sandy bathing suits, amazing food, endless rooms constantly transforming from rent-a-center-bed-dorms-into-sets, ice cream, dailies, diabetic shocks, a hundred hilarious stories and one magical twilight hike -- we've wrapped primary footage for two short films.

The whole experience was as exhausting and exhilerating -- as fulfilling and rewarding as we could have hoped. I know that I can speak for the whole production team when I say thanks to an amazingly talented cast & a tremendously skilled and hard-working crew.

This kind of work -- creative, intense and chaotic -- can only be this enjoyable when you work with amazing people. It was a good four days...

Thanks to everyone who inhabited and pitched in at Cedar Street --

Danielle, Emily, Daniel, Andrew, Michelle, Johnny, Anna, Levi, Katie, Tim & Chad.

Great News About Our Cast

I'll post at great length about their various attributes later, but I'm happy to announce our cast...



Tim Carmany will play the role of STEVEN in Stick in the Mud



Katie Rose will play the role of JENN in Stick in the Mud



Johnny Russell will play the role of TERRY in Stick in the Mud and KENNY in Multilevel Relationship



Anna Carini will play the role of ERIN in Stick in the Mud and Becca in Multilevel Relationship



Leve Petree will play the role of AARON in Stick in the Mud

I can't tell you how excited I am about these casts. I'm actually (literally) dreaming them in their roles..

Good Things Coming Together

Our cast is coming together -- we should have more of an announcement about them soon -- but we're continuing to find great people to work on our team.

We're still looking for an audio technician if anybody knows one...

I do have to say a big THANK YOU to the folks at the Michigan Film Office! They've been very helpful -- even though our production isn't making the wheels of industry in Michigan spin (yet!), they've still been prompt, geneous & resourceful in the way they've responded to us...

Still Casting

We're receiving headshots and resumes from actors these days, and we're excited to see our talent pool growing. We feel increasingly excited about the group of actors that we're assembling. Have you sent your headshot in, yet? Your acting resume?

Hurry! We want you!

I just dug up an old headshot of Johnny Russell our lead for Multilevel Relationship. He's gonna make a great Kenny.

Technological Choices

Some of you know about some of the technical choices that we're aiming for in this film -- that will make things more interesting than the average Digital Cinema shoot.

Daniel and I just spent a weekend together and one of the choices we're wrestling with has to do with a compositing technique that we're using for a section of Multilevel Relationship.

The super cool hipster-rific choice is to use the ancient Hitchcock-old-school Rear Projection technology...the definitely more manipulable, but also way more synthetic technique of Greenscreening. Old School vs. New School.

No decision yet, just round one of the debates....

Why Short Films Are Worth Your While

We’re very interested in telling good stories that focus on everyday worlds. As shifts in technology enable more filmmakers to make films and larger and more diverse audiences to watch those films, we want to work in genres that are both familiar and strange to these new audiences. The scale of small films and non-traditional distribution demands that these stories offer a kind of unique honesty to their viewers; honesty that builds on popular film, but moves in a more subtle direction. Like the Duplass brothers, Andrew Bujalski and many of Richard Linklater’s films we want to create cinema that surprises the viewer, but not in a way that makes them obscure or difficult to penetrate.

While the film industries, internet experts and distribution specialists struggle to find viable distribution and production models for short and alternative films, we want to keep making the films. We believe that the art should not just follow the technology, but that technologies should also be responsive to emerging story-telling.

In order to make these films in the meantime, though, we need the support of volunteers, communities and groups. We’re investing our own time, equipment and capital in this project, but shooting a film is dependent upon the partnership of community institutions, too.

How Community Members Can Be Involved

We need locations, food donations, permits and the support of the local film community in order to make these particular films a reality.

While both of our films have distinctly Michigan and Midwestern roots, Stick in the Mud will be an especially poignant visual display of the beauty and sprawl of Muskegon’s Lake Michigan beaches. Multilevel Relationship includes three restaurant locations, and we are committed to filming in locally owned eateries.

Since our $0 budget production can only offer deferred payment plans to any of the cast and crew, we’re confident that the best compensation we can offer to local businesses, organizations and groups is to include them in a “Special Thanks” section in the credits of the film. For particularly generous donations, we will single out the sponsor for a particularly generous “Thank You” in the credits. We’ll also mention your organization on our blog and website.