3 Lousy Sentences

It happened again. Last night I was at a networking event, and the dreaded question was asked: "So what's your documentary about?" I could go on for hours. But, that's not what people want to hear, and that's not how to sell a documentary. I need a snappy three sentence this-is-what-the-thing-is-about. Funny thing is that I've struggled with this since I started making the film. It makes me think that maybe even I don't know what the film is about.

Imagine: Tokyo...Early 21st Century
The city is flooded with gaijin...
foreign men seeking their fortunes
in the wild, wild east.

Most will crash out or cash out within three or four years
Tokyo Cowboys is about those who stayed.

That's the best I've come up with so far.

Emailed the music rights company to get advice.
Continued to build the TC network (this is my secret marketing weapon to be revealed later)
Worked the day job.
Rice and beans...

Finally managed to compress the film onto one disc using Compressor...yeah. I've started to distribute the disc around again. I'm just ready to move on to the next step, which is locking the picture and sorting out the sound. But, as Orson Welles said, "We will sell no wine before its time."

Half Empty...Half Full...

This is the glass half empty:

I'm just getting so frustrated. We finished the 4th cut on Wednesday and were going to burn the DVDs on Thursday. After spending hours exporting the Quicktime file and importing into DVD Studio Pro, we find out that the film won't fit on one disc. Not, we have to figure out how to compress (read picture quality suffers) or burn it onto two DVDs (really inconvenient for the viewers) or burn it onto a dual layer disc, which is about 5 times the price of a regular DVD. I won't even go into the nightmare it has been to try to source these discs. Give me an effing break!

The glass is half full:

Hurrah! We've finished the 4th cut. It will take us a few days to iron out the technical issues of burning it onto DVDs (we are becoming tech wizards!), and then we can send it off to our viewers. We are so so close to a picture lock.

4th Circle of Hell: Can anyone else smell that?

We've got the 4th cut, or pretty much near the 4th cut. Patrick is in Sweden for a few days, so I watched the whole thing over again and made notes. My notes are getting shorter and shorter, which, I guess, is a good thing.

The rights could be an absolute nightmare. Coppe and Terminal11 have been so cool. They have given me permission to use "Bird's Midair Heatstroke" at the beginning of the film, so that's one down and 67 more to go. Been doing a lot of research on Fair Use and have found some good stuff at Center for Social Media. Also went to Borders today and read a bit of the The Documentary Film Makers Handbook: A Guerilla Guide, which clarified a few points...mostly that I should have raised more money and hired a music supervisor. Live and learn.

But, still...there are some things that I have no idea about. For example:

Home video Mark took years ago at EWC (permission was verbally granted at the time)
Video of a live Sumo event that we shot
Video of a Baptist revival that we shot

Well, onwards anyway...haven't gotten a paid gig in ages so back on the rice and beans:

"rice and beans, rice and beans, we love rice and beans!"

which means some wicked farts are coming out of my butt.

Recent Stuff

OK, so we're almost at cut 4, and I think that might be a picture lock (although we will remain relatively fluid until the Online). Patrick has been fast forwarding through all of the tapes (500+ of them, as you might remember). He's looking for possible shots that he might have missed. At first I thought this was a big waste of time, but it's really paying off. The last time he looked at all of the footage was 2 years ago. At that time, we didn't really have a film. Now we do...we have a context. The bits and pieces he's extracting from his breakneck revisitation are adding richness to the film.

I've been tweaking the voice over, researching rights, and trying not to get overly excited. I have a festival wheel on my fridge. Sometimes I just look at it and dream of that future...that very near future.

We've been showing a few people cut 3.2. And, we are getting extremely good feedback. We showed it to MK the other day. He's Japanese, so I was very keen to get his take on the film. He really liked it, and he thinks that it will have a market in Japan amongst the Japanese. That is fab. I just hope the cowboys are ready for that eventuality.

After this cut, we are going to show it to some really hard critics...just to see if the film and the two of us can stand up to it.

Rights

Just got the wedding video from Mark. It's actually better than I expected as I wasn't expecting a TV Infomercial featuring their wedding. It's fab! Patrick quickly cut it together, and I wrote the voice over. New he's laying it over the scene and popping it in. That will bring us to cut 4.

Spoke to DJ a few days ago. He watched cut 3.1, and he really liked it. He biggest criticism was that the film seemed to end too abruptly. He wanted to see a "where are you now" bit for each cowoby. Actually S & M mentioned that when they watched it as well. So, I've written all of the cowboys to see where they are now, and I've got the scoop. So, we'll cut that in to 4.0 as well.

Rights are giving me a headache. Where do I start? There's all of Ken's TV stuff, the Patrick Harlan TV & Radio stuff, "I'm just a Girl" (I've heard that Gwen Stefani never gives rights). And, I would need them given as I don't have any money.

Tired now.

It's Hard to Believe

I know! We are so close to a picture lock. We're just cutting in bits of Mark's wedding video then sending it out to our test audience. After feedback from them and some adjustments, we can finally move on to the next step, which is sound design. Yeah.

Thanks, thanks and thanks again.

Tony comes up to me today and says that he's read the blog all the way through. I am chuffed. Didn't think anyone was reading except Rob and Nat. He inspired me to go back through and read it myself. So, I got through about half of it, and, you know what, there were some really important things that it reminded me of. So thanks for that Tony!

Before that, got up early and worked on a short story about Tokyo, which I'm entering into a contest in June. The prize is £5000. Imagine wild success and just a little bit of partying if I won that. Then went into LFS and worked. Came home and watched Sans Soliel again. I just love that film, and it inspired me again. That was Patrick's suggestion. He's also put all of the Tokyo footage onto two DVDs (3 hours worth) for more inspiration, so that's my remit for tomorrow.

Gave the film to Alan for a crit. Thursday is the day. Hopefully.

I have so much to be thankful for, and sometimes I forget it.

Joe is in hospital, and I am thankful that he is getting better.

Thanks to the universe and to "the man upstairs" for looking after us all.

Screening

Screened the cut of Tokyo Cowboys to one of our investors on Friday. I think it went well. He really liked it and gave us some good feedback, which we are now incorporating for the next private screening tomorrow night...another investor. I think in about a week, we'll have the next big cut. Then we'll start to screen it to a wider audience.

Tired, but happy.

High Quality Trailer

You can now see a high quality version of the Trailer here. Enjoy!

We burned a copy of the whole film last night. On Friday we will have our first screening, so here we go!

Show Cut!

Have made tremendous progress since the last blog entry. Yesterday, we finished the "show cut." We watched the whole thing through, and, like a daft cow, I cried. I guess it's just the stress of it all, but it did not motivate Patrick, the poor thing.

In any case, we're doing our first screening to investors on Friday. I'm shitting myself. We still have a few bits and bobs to sort out before then. After the screening, the next step will be to cut in the Japanese sequences, so we'll be watching some Japanese footage over the weekend.

I think we must be about 3 weeks behind schedule, but I can't really tell anymore. Just plug on through until we are finished. That's the way to go.

Unblocked

After three days of being blocked, blocked, blocked, I have finally finished Nice Guyjin for the screening cut. Not really blocked...really. Just writing a load of crap. But...finally...today...not crap. You ever wonder why writers use their bowels as a metaphore for their writing?

T-Shirts

Was looking through my notes trying to write the final VO for Nice Guyjin when I found this: a post card detailing quotes I had seen on T-Shirts on the final trip to Japan.

And here they are:

Thank you for your Continued Efforts
Bad Ass Yellow Boy
I have never been to the moon.
Unauthorized entry punishable by law
I'm Cookie
We can Know various truths
No one has ever seen the future
Rip Ass

You have to totally love the Japanese to pieces!

Today

Worked on Nice Guyjin all day today including writing the introductory DVO. This is a very tricky bit, but Patrick and I outlined a plan of attack today. So, it's more voice over writing and recording for me and more editing for Patrick.

It's midnight on a Friday night. I'm still working. Patrick says we need to push it harder. OK. A little more yoga...a little more stretching...a little more massage.
I feel like a Japanese Salaliman.

Tokyo Porno

So, I've re-recorded all of the voice over, and Patrick has almost finished re-digitizing everything. Whew! Now we get back to the editing. I think we just want to be done with it.

On an aside, JA emailed today that he'd seen the first two minutes of Tokyo Cowboys in a prono. We suspect that it's been ripped off from the Youtube site. JA is investigating and will get back to us with more details soon.

Bummer

Haven't actually been able to blog for the past few days. A terrible, terrible thing happened on Friday, and I'm still recovering.



Well, it wasn't actually the whole project. It was only that the whole project got made "offline." For those of you in the know, you know that our life has been a living hell. For those of you who don't know what offline is, just trust me that our lives have been a living hell. But, PJ and I decided to try to do the "glass is half full thing." Spending days digitizing has allowed PJ some much needed time for writing, and I've been writing and working from the paper cut. It's all coming together, but we're now nearly 2 weeks behind schedule for our May 31st completion. Bummer, but at least we're not dead.

Warranty is Cool

Spoke to the guy who repaired Bruce, and (there is a God), Bruce is still under his warranty. Luckily, the drive contained only media, which can be re-captured. We've freed up space on Nobuko and Big Mamma by deleting old render files and making some stuff offline, so we can carry on with the work, which, by the way, is going swimmingly.

Spent the day writing Voice Over for Mark's bit, and I think it is in really good shape. Now working on Act 2 where Aki gets pregnant, Ken quits headhunting and we meet the weird and wonderful Cloudy B. Bongwater.

The Mighty Bruce

Oh, for f*&k's sake

I am so sick and tired of these stupid hard drives. Bruce, who you may recall was repaired for a whopping £125, has gone down again. I have spent the evening searching on the Interent to see if there is anything I can do. I've swapped the cables, repaired permissions, shut off everything and waited for 15 minutes and have done a little witchy dance. But it still doesn't work. What is frustrating is that things were going really well. We were moving quickly, and we are on tract to finish the show cut within the week. Now I don't know what to do other than curse and then go to bed.

Call to Action

The UK Govt are about to propose restrictions on photography in public places which could make street photography and documentary photography against the law. There's a petition on the Downing St website against the Government's proposals to restrict the use of photography in public areas. Sign up to the petition now......

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Photography/

And then please forward this email.