Spoon's Metal Detektor

For years I wanted to use The Sound of Sinners by the Clash during a tryout sequence in Calvin Marshall.  Even just imagining the "judgement day" chorus to our storyboards seemed too good to be true.  Joe Strummer's ironic wail and that driving gospel-tinged rock 'n roll?  It was a perfect match for this pivotal sequence where Calvin's inflated view of his ability hits an all time high.

This time around in post, the sequence worked as well as I had hoped.  During test screenings, many Clash fans who ignored Sandinista! we're intrigued by the track and revisited this underrated opus.  I had a long history with this song and now that I could see and feel the finished sequence, it was devastating to be forced to choose another song.

I won't lie to you, money was the primary reason we had to let it go. Six figures has a nasty ring to it on a small movie.  And besides, we had already set up a favored nation structure for licensing songs from the majors.  Even if we could afford the huge price tag, we legally couldn't go against the structure we set up.  A structure that was implemented so we could license several major label songs at the same low rate and comfortably stay under budget. 

Usually in filmmaking, if you stay open minded and positive, a situation like this will become a blessing in disguise.  Enter SPOON. They've played driving jangle rock 'n roll for years and their growing catalog immediately presented us with a number of cool options. Funny, now that I think about it, even Britt Daniel's vocals are in the same universe as Joe's.  Both impassioned with a slight gravel...

After listening to every album obsessively, I had a short list right away; Don't Make Me A Target and Utilitarian -- but I was most smitten with Sister Jack.  Amazing song!  But there was just something about the connotations of the lyrics while watching Calvin play that I didn't quite love...    

And more importantly, I was hoping for a song that had a long enough bridge so the brief bits of dialogue (Coach, Calvin, Murphy) would fit better between the vocals.  (This was actually a problem with The Clash too)

Long story short, Metal Detektor became the song that not only replaced an irreplaceable song, but exceeded it in the end.  The tone and pace were made to order and the lyrics were less on the nose than The Clash's "Judgement Day" chorus.  Calvin was, in a way, getting away with a crime.  The Metal Detektor was ringing and he was doing all he could to get through the door.

Now, months later -- all of us working on the film love this sequence and would never replace Spoon.  Even if the The Clash was the same price.

Tomorrow the scene will be online and I will link to it from here.

Print Complete

Coach Little (Steve Zahn) and Calvin (Alex Frost)


A 35mm print of CALVIN MARSHALL unspooled in 5.1 at Deluxe on Friday.

With the exception of 7 opticals, image color and density were corrected photochemically over five days. The blacks are black and the whites are white. Specific shots were corrected warmer or cooler. Colors are bold. All without a Digital Intermediate.

While this way of making films is dying, our experience demonstrates that a DI isn't always necessary. The evidence is in how gorgeous our print looks. Shooting 35mm and cutting the negative is still an effective/viable work flow for filmmakers.

We are now in the final stages. The next month we'll be completing our HD master. This is the copy that will live on -- TV, dvd, blu-ray, VOD, etc.

Lots of news to report soon on marketing, publicity, our premiere, and distribution.

Sound is Finished

Yesterday we listened to the final sound mix of Calvin four times. It was especially exciting because there are no more changes left to be made.

A Dolby Rep was there at our approved dubb stage to create an MO of our work. Only Dolby can do this with their hardware. The whole process feels dated in a way but it's quite effective. The MO is basically a cartridge that holds about 2 GB.

On the cartridge is both our 5.1 mix and a 2.0 mix. These will be striped directly onto our prints so that when our prints play in theaters they will be in Dolby SR and sound great.

More news to report soon.

Still in Post

Our theatrical sound mix will be completed this week.

Print mastering with Dolby is scheduled for Wednesday, January 14th.

Color timing at Deluxe for our prints will be completed the last week of January.

Shortly after, EFILM will give us our HD master so DVD screeners will finally look and sound like they are supposed to.

Also in the works...

1. New website, blogs.

2. Trailer, teasers, marketing materials.

3. Details on our premiere and release schedule.

Mixing

Last week we mixed the film. It was an exciting experience to hear it all for the first time.

Tomorrow morning is the first official playback of our new 5.1 theatrical sound mix.

The rest of the day will be spent making final tweaks. Sound mix will lock tomorrow evening.

Dolby is scheduled for Tuesday's print master.

Deluxe is handling our picture. Early next year we'll be doing the color correction for our release. Very exited for this process.

Soon after we'll have our 35mm answer print and marry that to our new sound mix. Getting closer.

Final Stretch

A set photo from 11/20/07, the second week of shooting. This is the opening shot of the movie -- little leaguers follow Calvin (Alex Frost) onto the field.

There are over 1000 cuts in our 91 minute feature CALVIN MARSHALL. This week a negative cutter will begin matching key frames to cut lists and chop up over 30 hours of film negative and fuse the correct shots in order with film cement.

From the very beginning we planned to avoid a digital intermediate. DI's are very expensive and we felt the old school way of doing things was perfect for an uncomplicated, realistic indie like ours. There is only one B-Roll fade in our film and just 7 opticals -- two of which are the opening and closing credit sequences. The other 5 are: one freeze frame, one sped up shot, one slowed down shot and two reversed shots. Nearly all of our effect shots were done in camera: one fade out and quite a few high frame rates for slow motion.

During production we were intentional about our color palatte and used natural light whenever possible. We shot with Cooke S4 lenses (which are soft) on the best 35mm Kodak stocks. Color correction will be done photo-chemically at Deluxe.

The negative cut will take about three weeks. Simultaneously we'll be pre-mixing sound, recording foley/FX, additional dialogue, etc at Larson Studios in Hollywood.

The final dubb and print master are scheduled for mid-December.

Throughout post we've built the film with one light DV dailies on a dual G5 in Final Cut Pro. That's all we've been looking at for over a year now. It will be amazing to finally see it projected on film.

Picture Lock

According to our post-production schedule we stop cutting on November 7th and turn over the negative.

It felt like we had all the time in the world but now it is running out. Thankfully we don't need more time.

I am lucky to be working with a world class film editor over the next few weeks. He's showing me cutting tricks. Trimming a little here and a little there -- a few frames at a time.

In the end CALVIN MARSHALL will be about three minutes shorter. For the most part people who know the movie won't realize what was cut -- but they'll sense the tighter pacing.

Negative cut, ADR, final score, sound mix, etc. will keep us busy the rest of the year. If all goes well we will strike festival prints before 2008 is over.

Objectivity

How many times have you watched your favorite film?

I've seen The Graduate about 20 times. Three Colours Red, maybe 25 times. I doubt I've had more than 25 viewings of any one film. And keep in mind, those screenings are spread out -- weeks, months, years fall between them.

Over the last 10 months I've watched CALVIN MARSHALL hundreds of times. Maybe even a thousand.

Post-production is grueling. While I'm thrilled to be the editor, I understand now why directors generally don't cut their own films. Its because they need to do everything in their power to preserve objectivity. Another person shouldering the grind of the edit goes a long way towards doing that.

The long trek through the dark tunnel of post-production is taxing. If you have someone driving the bus who works in that tunnel for a living -- you'll have a much better chance of making it to the other side in good shape.

Post production is not a science. It's a collaboration of a few people binding together to somehow extract the best version of the movie from the movie.

Right now we have a great group assembled in the edit room and we see light at the end of the tunnel. And I'm trying to remain objective as we climb towards it.