From August 26th, to September 20th, 2008

A long time since a diary entry huh?

Well, a lot has happened in the near month I haven’t written anything.

I’m guessing most people that peep this diary out are people that know me, and as such, are aware of the major change my life has taken thanks to an email that got circulated around. I had no plans of making this public at all, but since my hand was dealt for me, I might as well, but I’m not going to talk too much about it.

Sue and I broke up but we are going to try and remain friends. She is still a very important person to me that I care for, and we have a lot of history together, so I’m hoping we can make the friendship work.

That’s all I’m going to say about it.

During this time, I have put all the footage of the past three projects (Desolation Row, Episode 4, and the Quest for the Past Concert) into my computer. There was one snag, and this is going into geeky tech shit right now, so skip ahead if you don’t dig on that.

The new drive I bought, I basically just plugged it in and went to town, not thinking about what kind of format the drive was in, and truthfully, not caring. It turns out that it was in a FAT 32 format.

A FAT32 you say?

Yes, a FAT32. What that means is that the drive has a maximum file size. So I could only put and save files up to a certain size on the drive. But why is that important you ask? Here’s why it’s important.

I wanted to capture each individual tape from the concert as one big file. Video files are pretty big. As such, I could only input about 18 minutes of footage at a time onto the drive, and not the hour I wanted to. So, the capture process would stop, I would have to start it again, and later on have to try and sync it back up to the footage before it stopped.

This is a ridiculous process, so I learned how to reformat my drive into an NTFS drive, which doesn’t have a file size limit. Once I did that, I recaptured all the tapes again, then synced them all up with one another.

Well, almost all the tapes.

It turns out I’m missing one, and we can’t seem to find it anywhere. It was the final tape for the encore, and as much as I want to really dig into editing this beast, I don’t feel right doing so without this final tape.

The search continues…

I also felt the need to clean up my living space, so that took a couple of weeks to do, because the shit was dank. Cleaning is a metaphor for life and when something is out of order, cleaning is a good way to get it straight again. My living situation cleaned up, I started back to work on Desolation Row.

I’m not sure how others edit, but the way I handle it is very meticulously. I edit in a way that I get the best performances out of the actors for every single line they say. I don’t want to go too much into the whole process here, but I’m about 11 scenes away from finishing my assembly cut of the flick. Right now, it’s running about two hours or so, then I’ll choose which takes and such to use to get my rough cut.

I don’t know what my plan is right now. We still have other shit to shoot for the concert, so I might do the assembly cut of Desolation Row, then do the assembly of Episode 4, then move to a rough cut of the Row again if we still haven’t shot the rest of the footage we need for the concert.

The assembly cuts are so boring to do, I think this might be the best way to dive from one show to the next without feeling the bog down of having to start something all over again.

During all this, I’ve also been plugging away at the script for the LA Director. I’ve basically been given the green light to write whatever I want. At least I think I have. It sounds like a sweet deal, but it’s a little hectic of a process when you don’t exactly have a story in mind. I’ve got probably close to ten pages of notes that I’ve been scribbling down, and I know the story is pretty close to falling out of my head and onto the page. Most of the pieces are there, I’m just waiting for it to coagulate in my brain. Too bad my brain is on thinners it seems.

We’re also gearing up for another couple of projects that will be shot almost back to back again, but on a smaller scale: Pricks, penned by Steve and directed by Bill, and Santa’s List, penned by me, and directed by Bill, and starring me. Yeah, that’s right baby. Carey Lewis is making his way to the big screen!

Well, maybe not to a big screen, but definitely onto a DVD that you can watch at your own convenience. Well, maybe not at your own convenience, but definitely when I sit your ass down and make you watch it.

We’ve had a few preliminary talks about Pricks, among other things, such as Santa’s List, as well as the Stag and Doe for Bill and Leanne. It falls close to Halloween, so we’re hoping to make it a huge party as well. There’s a live band there and people are encouraged to go in costume, so it should be good times. Come and check it out.

If you don’t, I’ll kill you.