Archive for September 2007

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Happy Birthday Lucas and final week of PREP!

Happy Birthday to my main man Lucas Miguel "The Duke" Sanchez! Went to Hong Kong Disney on Friday for his birthday and then had a nice little party for him at Matt's today as my beautiful boy turned 4! Love that little monkey like crazy. Four more days and the shoot begins! I feel like I still could use a month or so of prep but we're actually pretty ready to go over here. I'm looking forward to it like hell. Auditioned with the Pale Figures again last week and those boys are getting it pretty good. Their movement from the first rehearsal to this one is much improved. Some of those boys are freaking me out, man. I was working them through some exercises, seeing who moved best on the floor and on a table, starting to break them up into individual scenes and shit. I also chose the one that is going to deliver the first quick glimpse of the face of one of these things. This guy is scary, man, and I still haven't even seen him in the make-up. We lost the Tiny Village location last week. We had permission from the town but some higher ups in the government didn't want us shooting there. The place is pretty close to the mainland China border so that probably has something to do with it. Just a glimpse of the problems we'd be having if we were shooting on the mainland. So we went back the original village that Rob saw way back during his first visit here. We had discounted that place because it was going to be a ton of work for our production designer Lau but we're running out of options at this point and Lau actually liked this place a lot better than the one we lost. It is completely deserted except for an old man that lives out there with his dogs and the place is a mess, but with a little fixing and tweaking it's going to be creepy as hell. We went out there today with Lam our DP and Alan our Gaffer and they were a bit taken aback by the challenge of lighting this place from head to toe. I want to be able to take the actors through there in continuous takes so they're going to have to light the whole damn thing, but once Lam got permission to get more help from Gregg, he was optimistic about what had to be done out there. Riceball is in the house! Johnny Rice is here, ready to kick some major ass! Johnny is heading up our editing crew here and it's good to have him as part of the team on another film. That boy is a good man for sure. He's going to be editing the film and putting together a rough cut as we go to make sure we're getting everything we need. Then he'll head to Maryland after the shoot to assist Michael Cronin, who is coming back after his work on ALTERED. They'll probably end up as co-editors on this film since I'm positive Johnny is going to give us a ton of workable scenes but they worked together on ALTERED so things should run smoothly. Anyway, it's good to know Johnny is here in Hong Kong making sure all the footage gets in it's right place. Actor Tim Chiou got here last night. I didn't know him very well but he's such a good guy. He ended up coming to Lukey's party and he hung with us the whole afternoon, then had dinner with him. It's going to be a real joy watching him bring Yul to life. Amy Smart gets here tomorrow night. I may head out to meet here at the airport. We start our rehearsals with her on Tuesday. Can't wait to see her and Tim working it, man. The SEVENTH MOON website is up. It's just a bunch of links to the blogs and FLICKR accounts but Karcher did a fantastic job on it as usual. That boy is a freaking freak. Music is by KENT SPARLING, who'll be scoring the music with BLAIR WITCH and ALTERED alumni Tony Cora. Just a taste of the sickness they're going to produce. Tons of junk to do this week. Make-up tests, final fittings, hair-cuts, rehearsals, fight rehearsals, lighting test. Don't know how I'm going to get through it. Testing out the big helium balloon and our moving car shots on Thursday night and then we start shooting on Friday. Relatively simple day with Yul and Melissa meeting Ping and then a driving scene with a process trailer (which I've never shot on before), and then we get the weekend to work through any big issues and get shit together for Monday. I'm really behind on my shot sheets to I'm going to have to be catching up on nights and weekends during the first few weeks until I get it done. Going to be crazy for a while. But Stef and the kids go back home in two weeks so even though I'll miss them like mad, I'll have more time to work on junk. Hopefully continue posting, too. So that's the deal. Friday is the big day and I'm excited as hell about it. Looks like we're as tight as we can be right now and everyone is ready to start making this film, including me. Send good vibes my way! Please! This film has got to rock hard and steady! Steady rocking all night long! Peace. -ed

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Seventh Moon Website

The site's now live at www.seventhmoon.com At the moment this is a production site (much like we did Altered in the early days prior to releasing it as a full blown filmsite) that links back to here (the blog), the forum, both Ed and Matt's Flickr accounts as well as a ginormous quantity of production videos on YouTube. More content will be added as time develops, and methinks there's going to be pa-lenty to offer soon. Enjoy...

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Lighting test and tech scout - loads of fun!

Lighting test went really well on Thursday night. The crew is amazingly fast and we got through a ton of hard set-ups pretty efficiently. Got our first real view of the Pale Figure in action and it was tight as hell. The dude in the Pale Figure make-up, Jason, freaked me out a few times on the monitor, man. We had him jump up onto the hood of the car and try to get inside and his action plus Lam's camerawork resulted in some very creepy moments. So the plan is to just shoot a ton of stuff with these guys and then edit together the most fucked-up little bits from all the footage. We won't hold on these guys for more than a second most times in the film. Gregg and I were both really excited. Gregg called Rob in the states just to tell him how sweet it looked. Rob was happy to hear the good news. Lam lit the night scenes perfectly and we went through every single one of our tests with great results. I was really worried about lighting the night put it looked fine, especially since nothing has been color corrected. Our goal is to make it just bright enough to see and avoid over-lighting as much as possible. Lam adds just enough, man. He's a great DP. We worked today, Sunday. Is sucked. Hated leaving Stef and the kids on the weekend. I mean we got a lot of work done on the first day of the technical scout but I was tired and it started raining after lunch and it wasn't too much fun. We went to more than half the locations and I walked through what I wanted to do at each place. Then each department head and their people went off and figured out how to make it happen. My crew is awesome. Off to bed now. Tech scout day 2 tomorrow. Things are looking good. Real good. -ed

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Lighting test tomorrow and Beijing: Part I

Long day ahead of us tomorrow. We're being picked up at 10:30 and the lighting test begins sometime in the afternoon and should go until later in the night. Hopefully we'll be out of there by 9pm, but I'm not counting on it. Some kind of cold is kicking my ass, too. Stef had it bad yesterday and now I'm feeling a bit low and Matt is bed-ridden, I think. Him and I came home early today and he was out of commission for tonight. Him and Gregg have a budget meeting tomorrow morning with Tasman so it's questionable whether Compton will be there or not. Got back from Beijing on Sunday night. The trip was exhausting but it was an incredible experience. Our guide, Alan, who works at October Films in their Beijing office, was a godsend. She planned everything out for us and tried to keep our dumb American asses on a schedule. Got to the airport in Beijing on Friday night and immediately hit STARBUCKS. So sad but so reassuring to be able to get the same damn cup of coffee everywhere on earth. Right next to KFC, too. I was so tempted to pick up a crispy chicken sandwich there but I somehow fought the urge. Headed to our hotel, which was a little adventure. The traffic was crazy. Friday night rush hour in Beijing is just as bad as anywhere in the US. We get to our room and there's a little sign above the sink that tells us the water isn't potable unless it's boiled. This ain't no Hong Kong, that's for sure. Out to the first of our fabulous meals, this one of the best Peking Duck place in Beijing. Alan knows her restaurants, man. Private room, great service and fantastic food. We were pretty tired but we still went to a little Cuban bar nearby called Latinos. The kids danced while the Chinese clientele wondered what the hell these American kids were doing at a nightclub on Friday night. But the kids had a blast, so what the hell. Headed to the Great Wall on Saturday morning, after a visit to MCDONALDS for breakfast. Half way around the earth to eat breakfast at Mickey-freaking D's. So sad, but man, was that BIG BREAKFAST tight! The Great Wall was exactly as amazing and awe-inspired as I imagined it would be, except it was hot as balls and packed with tourists. My knees ached like crazy during the major climb. The kids got tired really quick and Stef and I had to carry them at least half the time. We also had to deal with stopping every five minutes or so so that groups of people could take photographs with our kids. I know it sounds crazy, but it's true. Especially Amelia, who got special attention because she's in such a cute age and her golden hair, but all three kids got a lot of attention from the Chinese. This ain't no Hong Kong, that's for sure. Binks loved it. She said that she loved being famous. It was fun, of course. I mean what parent doesn't love their kid being treated like something special? It caused a lot of delays, though. Gregg and I were saying that we should've set up a little booth somewhere and charged money to take pictures with the "cute whitey kids". We could've made a fortune. Anyway, much more to say about the trip but I'm freaking exhausted so that's it for now. I'll try to get back and finish the tale of Beijing. Wish us luck tomorrow. Big day for figuring out how the hell this film is going to look like. Counting on Lam to make me proud. Peace. -ed

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Life as an Independent Tap Dancer

So the last 3 weeks have been the most seriously chalenging weeks of my life.  I'm the son of a serial entrepreneur and presenting in front of people is something I have done or been a part of since I was 12 years old.  We are still raising the final investment money for Seventh Moon and I thought I would share a little about what it has been like. The money raise for production is done - we will have an edited movie no matter what.  It is the finishing funds that are critical.  I have presented to over 400 people in the last 7 weeks!  Each time my pitch takes about 30 minutes and then I am pelted with every question under the sun from "I see here in line 2140 you are talking about your HD Post process - please explain what that is?" to "What is a film negative?"  Mostly people want to know 1. How much money do you need?  2. What do I own in return? 3. And how much money am I going to make?  I have had pitches take 3 hours long!  Sometimes I meet with people 7 times before they finaly invest or worse - turn me down. I have pitched to everybody from brain surgeons, to real estate moguls, and even an Ultimate Fighting Champion!  I have pitched to a board room full of 26 people to a woman working out on her excercise bicycle in her mansion.  The rejections - no matter how you try and prepare for them - are tough.  Sometimes the investors give you all the signs in the world that they are in and then pull up short very suprisingly.  Other times people that I know probably will not invest come from left field and decide they want to be a part of it. Over all the economy has been challenging.  Many of the independent investors I know work in real estate and as everyone knows - especially in Florida - real estate is tough right now.  The credit crunch has not helped.  Still we are VERY close to being done.  I could not end an entry like this without making a pitch .  If anyone wants in inquire about investing in the film - email me at rob-at-robincowie.com.  Shares are $120,000.00 a pop so serious inquiries only please.  I'll let you know how it is going.  Time to wrap it up.  I have my next tap dancing appointment coming up for lunch.

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Seventh Moon on IMDB

Hi all. I wanted to let you know that Seventh Moon is on IMDb. Check it out by clicking here.