First SSL Screening Next Week!...and more daily posts

Share

Tweet

Guess what? Since you can't respond, and I don't even really know if you exist, I'll just tell you. This dagburn ol' movie I've been working on for oh-so-many years now, is done. I don't mean that the picture is done, but we're still working on sound stuff or that it's done but we're still going back and forth on a few tweaks here and there. I'm talking about this movie being done, son. (If you don't know what movie I'm talking about check the trailer HERE or to your right on this page if you're in desktop version)

There are DVDs on their way to my house for cast, crew, and Kickstarter donors. It has been seen by its first reviewer (I'll let you know how that turns out in about a week), and next Thursday, there will be a cast and crew screening. It's our first screening of this finished movie, and I think it's a pretty exciting thing - at least for me. I mean this movie is what I've been working on my whole adult life, and the cause of this movie - orgasm equality- is what I've devoted this blog to and what I imagine I'll be continuing to spend a lot of my future time on.

 So, since I've already completed a 10 day run of daily blog posts, and in honor of this first screening, I'm going to continue the daily posts until the day after the screening. That way I can finish the run off with some good pics from the cast screening party.

The Fun Bunch, from Science, Sex and the Ladies movie

Science, Sex and the Ladies Doesn't Fit IMDB's Idea of Docs, But Whatevs

Share

Tweet

Okay, since this blog is about both ladygasms and making movies (particularly making Science, Sex and the Ladies, of course), I'd like to just take a minute and speak about a tiny something I've been dealing with in relation to the movie. It involves IMDB and how Science, Sex and the Ladies just doesn't fit quite right.

Here's the deal. I added SSL to IMDB (check it here) a while ago, and I go in and update it every now and then. Well, one time I was looking around and went to one of the 3 actors in our movie who have their own IMD pages, and found that they were listed under the category "Self" for their part in SSL - as if they were just talking heads giving the audience expert information or something. After more research than I really wanted to do, I learned from another person on the IMDB message/Q&A boards that if a movie is marked as a documentary, then the default is for all people in the cast to be categorized as if they are appearing in the movie as themselves, and the only way to change that is to add the keyword "Reenactment" to your movie. Long story short, I did it, and after about 2 weeks of waiting for approval, it worked. Ellie Church, Bryan Patrick McCulley, and Joshua Ramsey, are all properly listed as Ensemble Cast Members under the Actor section on their pages.

However, I just want to point out that although I added reenactment as a keyword, I only did it to get our actors categorized properly. There are no reenactments in this movie. Honestly, SSL is not like any documentary I've ever seen, and because of that, it doesn't fit into the mold that is created for docs in IMDB or really anywhere. There are no expert talking heads. There are instead citations to back up the things said in the movie, and there's a full bibliography in the credits. The whole movie is completely scripted and the arguments are made within a series of vignettes using on-screen narrators, voice over narrators and actors. We call this style a "Visual Essay." Barnaby's sister Kora came up with that phrase for a short we did in 2005 called "Ladies and Gentleman We Assume." It was a test short for this movie. We thought she was a genius, and we've been using it ever since. Anyway, the whole ordeal was slightly annoying for me, as is most interactions I have with IMDB. However, I thought you might be very slightly interested, and I'm not sure when I last talked about what Science, Sex, and the Ladies is actually like.

Happy New Year - We Got Our Final Sound for the Movie!

Share

Tweet

Uh, that's right. On New Years Eve, we downloaded our final sound from our sound mixer. It's a little insane to me that this has happened, but I don't think it'll quite sink in until other people start watching it. Then, I'm not sure how I'll feel - hopefully not like people want to kill me for wasting an hour and 40 minutes of their lives.

Okay, there is just a touch left to do. We do have to watch and give any final notes about tweaks or changes to the mixer. We've actually already done that. We watched it on good speakers, with head phones, and with our bedroom TV, which for some reason has the worst, most terrible sound of any TV I've ever heard. It's really bad, I have to really concentrate to make out what people are saying in most TV shows.  So, we're giving him some minimal notes. We've gone over a lot of stuff already, so this is just icing. Point being, it shouldn't take too long to get it back. From that point, we slap it on the video, make some DVD's, send them to our cast and our Kickstarter backers, and have cast party viewing...and then a lot of marketing and stuff like that, but no need to speak too much about that now. For now, an actual finished movie is becoming a reality, and I'm just gonna enjoy that for a minute.

Oh- and even though we've watched this movie a million times, and we've spent numerous hours proof reading and watching for mistakes, somehow, we saw for the first time last night that we spelled "urethra" as "uretha" - twice on screen. So that needs to be fixed - cause it's pretty dumb. But that should get done before we have the music back, so don't worry - no delays.

I feel like 2014 is gonna be a good one for me. I hope all of you out there feel like your 2014 is gonna be a good one, and if you don't, I hope you're wrong. Thanks for reading my weird lady-gasm themed blog. I don't know who most of you are, but I sure have a lot of love for you, and that's a fact....jack.

A Good Christmas

Share

Tweet

Okay, I'm not gonna lie. I'm neglecting this blog a bit. We're in a busy cycle at work; we're doing a lot of home repairs right now; it's Christmas time and I got family and all that, and we're trying to get everything prepared for when the final sound for Sciences, Sex and the Ladies is delivered.

As far as the movie goes, we'll just have to lay the sound over our video and bada-boom, badda-bang, we got a finished movie. However, we still have to create the DVDs for our Kickstarter backers and for our cast and crew. We have to plan the cast showing, send out press kits, etc., etc. It's a whole big thing once the movie is for realz finished, and we really want to have as much done as possible beforehand so we are as prepared to spring into action once we get that sound....which looks like it's going to be really, really soon now. The day before Christmas Eve, we got word that all the music had been mixed and sent over to our re-recording mixer who was already 75% done at that point. So, it was the best Christmas present I got this yeas - the movie that I've been working on my whole adult life, actually fully coming to life. Now that's a good holiday.

I hope the holidays so far have allowed all of you some rest and relaxations, some fun, some friendly faces, and some good food. I'll be back in the swing of things soon, and I have some fun stuff prepared for the blog, so stay tuned.

Since I don't have any pictures of me from this year's Christmas readily available yet, below is a picture of me Christmas 2009 in a sweatshirt I think I stole from my best friend and still wear quite often. anyway, this was about 5 months after we finished shooting the majority of Science, Sex and the Ladies. (April -July 2009). Little did I know it'd be Christmas 2013 before that bitch was finished.


Trisha

Me, Christmas 2009

New Trailer for Science, Sex and the Ladies!

Share

Tweet

That's right, we cut a new trailer! Science, Sex and the Ladies is almost a finished movie, and it was time for a newer, fresher one. What's also super awesome about this is that the music is from our score that was recently recorded out in L.A. The only thing left for SSL to be complete is the the final sound sweetening on the last 1/3 last third of the movie.

Ah, this has been a long, long road to get here, and we're so close now. So, please enjoy our trailer. Oh- and please share if it strikes your fancy....and if ya want, you can like our movie troupe on Facebook...or not, I'll still "like" you either way (oh yeah, I stand by that pun - if one could even call that a pun). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfQW9ozrdWo

Recording the Score

Share

Tweet

Did I mention yet that watching a room full of musicians recording our score was crazy amazing? We started out the day with a room full of strings, moved on to wood winds, and then to a room of brass, ending with a sweet ass French Horn solo that will slather its beautiful self all over top of the Science, Sex and the Ladies romance novel segment. Thanks you , thank you, thank you Nathaniel Blume, our good and wise composer, for making this all happen.

Oh and when I say "musicians" played this music, what I meant was Me, Charlie and Barney threw down some hot percussion action, and it was perfect and awesome.

Oh - and see that TV? It actually didn't play our movie while the musicians were playing the score. It normally would, and it could have this time, but alas a strategic decision was made to not distract the musicians too much while playing. Oh musicians - could you not play and watch three large vulvas on the screen at the same time? Now that I think of it, those poor strings had a pretty difficult part right there where the vulvas are. They would have been staring at them a while. And that wild brass crew - oh the jokes that would have been a-flyin'. I can assure you that when the first set of brass was finished, they wouldn't have gone out into the lobby to eat pizza, drink wine, and talk about golf. Oh no, they would have hung in the booth to watch what other crazy shit popped up on that TV - and that's just too many people in the booth probably, so it was a good decision.

Ah, it was a good time. We got to meet some of Nathaniel's friends from back in composer school (I'm just gonna call it that). They manned the booth (boothers I think they call them) and were totally cool and fun. The engineer working the board was also awesome as hell. We even ended the session with a good ol' champagne toast (thanks to Nathaniel and his wife). We'll be missing the recording sessions for voice and for guitar/mandolin/ukulele/bass/etc...etc... that will be happening soon, but our hearts will be with them.

Okay, I'm done talking about our LA trip. Next post will be about something different, promise.

AnC in LA!

Share

Tweet

Okay, so I've been kinda off line the since my last post, but it was for good reason. The AnC 3 - me, Barnaby, and Charlie, took ourselves out to LA for the recording of the Science, Sex, and the Ladies score and for some creative collaborating with our sound re-recording mixer. (The name Sound Re-recording Mixer doesn't make much sense, I know. I just say he's the dude that makes all the voice/production recordings sound good and then puts the music, voices and sound effects together in a sweet, sweet beautiful mix, but it's technically called...Sound Re-recording Mixer. It's a carry over from the olden days of movie making.)

Anyway, it was...it was one of the best experiences of my life. Seeing this movie come together in this way after all the years of work that has been put into it up to this point, seeing that music being created...the way it was brought to life by the musicians...I'm not exaggerating when I say it brought tears to our eyes. Seriously, we were all talking later, and the gravity of what was finally happening and the really lovely sounds that were coming from the studio, got us all a bit. I'm not even embarrassed to say it. Our composer, Mr. Nathaniel Blume, not only created a bad ass score, organized everything, ran a tight ship day of, was super calm and nice through it all, but he also hosted us while we were in LA. We couldn't have asked for better accommodations and company from the Blumes. There is still a guitar/Ukulele/mandolin/bass recording happening and a voice recording happening, which would be awesome to see, but alas I have a job to get back to, and we did see the bulk of the score recorded so I'm pretty much on cloud nine.

So the whole score situation was out of this world awesome, but we were also incredibly pleased and excited to hear what Mr. Keith Waggoner had done with the dialogue in the movie so far. It sounds so clean and nice. It's really amazing how much that kind of treatment can up the whole feel of the movie. Honestly, we didn't know what to expect because we'd never gone through this sound post production part before, but I can tell you we were more than pleasantly surprised. The work Keith had done so far was more technical - just cleaning and such, but he'll be getting to the more artful part soon when he's really mixing the soundscape, and we are looking forward to experiencing that.

Ah, it was an amazing, awesome, exciting trip. We also got to see some friends and check out some sites. I couldn't be happier now to be honest. I'm about to get on a plane now, so there will be pictures to come. Also, if the plane goes down, know I died happy. Oh, and someone needs to finish the movie. My dying wish would be for someone to finish it...just so you know.

Is it really real? Is this movie really getting done?!

Share

Tweet

It might not be obvious all the time, but this blog all started from a movie; a movie I have been working on in some form or another since about 2003. A movie that has sucked from me a shit-ton of reading...and notetaking...and writing...and rewriting...and AnC group criticisms/discussions...and hard-core group script development...and all colors of pre-production...and wading through piles of goodwill clothes...a pretty crazy-ass 3 months of weekend production...re-shoots...edit crits...random areas of post production help for Charlie (who endured the large majority of editing and the hellishly insane amount graphic creations)...lots of lists...logistical/business/correspondence/promotion...hundreds of hours of just watching the movie to check for errors...and a large amount of worrying and feeling kinda desparate.

One of our promotional posters. That's me taking a rest in one of our few non green screen sets.

It was mostly really fun and rewarding, you know, along with being tedious and agonizing. It is also amazing - can I just stop and say amazing again - to really, truly see that this movie is going to be finished. I'm not just talking about the feeling of hitting a milestone in the process or the feeling of knowing, with time, that this will be a finished product. I'm talking about the actual light at the end of the tunnel. I'm talking about the picture is done. No more changes. No more tweaks. I'm talking about the final sound re-recording mixer guy is on the job as we speak and the score recording sessions are scheduled. I'm talking about we did a Kickstarter campaign so that we could pay people (professional people who can do important sound things that we simply cannot) to take the sound and finish it from here. I'm talking about this shit is about to be done, son.

I love this blog and I love that I have been able to continue thinking about, writing about, and engaging with people about these subjects even after I finished the movie script. I love that I can continue to to do all that long after the movie is done, but right now, I mostly just love the fact that the movie is really, really, for realz gonna be done, and I just had to tell you that.

Cuttin The Movie To The Bone, Ya'll!

Share

Tweet

Were you wondering how we here at AnC spent our 4th of July? I thought you might have been, so I'll tell you. We were cuttin' at the movie like those scissors in old Kroger commercials cut at coupons (thank Barney for that visual). Did it hurt? Yeah - it hurt sometimes. There were a couple things I wish we could keep, but you gotta let things go when they need to go, am I right? There were other cuts that seemed like a divine being shining through a hole in clouds. There were angels singing and shit. I liked doing those cuts. We lost some little awkward moments in the acting or the writing or transitions that I'd been hating for years, and when it suddenly seemed obvious how to get rid of them - like I said - angels and shit.

An excerpt from our Edit Decision List

Now we have, to this point, edited out all kinds of things from this movie. We did it in the writing stage, in the adaption to a screenplay stage, in the original edit, in the 2nd and 3rd edits. However, as Charlie pointed out, we never have cut anything that really hurt, and so it seemed like we weren't quite finished. Well, we did some painful cutting this time. Now, we weren't just willy nilly. We tried and debated each little snip. Some we were all down with from the git-go. Some we had to convince each other about. Although sometimes one of us goes into a cut or decides against a cut more reluctantly than the others, we do always come to a consensus, and honestly there wasn't a lot of bloodshed. It felt pretty good actually. I don't think the movie lost any of the info or style that we're passionate about it in, but it's more concise and less awkward. It's also about 7 minutes shorter.

Meeting notes:  
1 We ate a lot of Twizzlers, small bags of chips and drank many cans of soda/sodapop/pop/coke - whatever you want to call them. It was all leftovers from our last test screening.  
2 Also, we took a break to watch So You Think You Can Dance the first day of edits. That is the most baddest ass of shows, by the way. It's not some bullshit dancing like in Dancing with the Stars. This is insane top tier dancers doing sweet choreography, and it's not a snarky show. It's just fun entertainment, and it will make you feel like you are badly unfit and need to go pump some iron.  
3 I had been eating a lot of peanut butter, and that took its toll occasionally on the aroma of the room.  
4 We all enjoyed some hateful language towards each other. I feel Barnaby and Charlie's creative combo act involving some old kung fu movie style dubbing of harshness towards me was the most memorable.
5 We enjoyed Culver's one night and a summer home cooked meal of chicken breast, corn on the cob and strawberries another night.  
6 After we finished on the 4th of July, we saw The Heat, and it was pretty funny ya'll.

Our 2nd Test Screening!

Share

Tweet

This past Saturday we invited a small group of 20 and 30 somethings to watch our still slightly unfinished movie Science, Sex and the Ladies. Just like at our last screening, our participants filled out a questionnaire directly after the movie and then took part in a 1/2 hour discussion. It was a great discussion. We got great feedback on the written responses, and we even had some people email later with more feedback. In case any of you are reading this - I want to thank you again for taking the time to help us out.

So after both screenings, what is my overall take? To be honest, I just can't quite figure out how to talk about them. Overall I'm quite happy with the results and definitely got important and useful feedback. I want to just stick with the simple positives of it. I want to say that I heard from people both anonymously and face to face that they were really moved by the movie, that it spoke to the frustration and confusion they are currently experiencing in their sexual lives, that they learned some basic things about their sexual functioning, that the movie made them look at the history of their sexual relationships with a whole different perspective, and I wouldn't be lying. I did receive that sort of feedback. In fact almost everyone said the movie reflected their own experiences, but it's not really the whole story.

There was the couple of people who felt I didn't need to be so harsh about negating the vaginal orgasm. I expected that - actually I expected that there would be a lot more of that than there was. There were those who said they already knew most of it. I expected I'd get that from a certain demographic. There were also those worried about the hetero-centric nature of the movie. I knew that was coming also. All those things were calculated risks for us - things we thought about. There was also just basic criticism about areas that seemed too long or repetitive or too fast - a scene that was confusing - stuff like that, and those were expected too and quite useful to hear.

 But there was a weirder thing that I didn't see coming. I probably should have, but I didn't. I don't know if I can fully explain it, but I'll say it was feedback that seemed confused - confused I guess mostly because it focused very little on the movie itself and more on things that the individual people thought were important about the general subjects of sexuality, sociology, feminism, education - that sort of thing. It was a critique of ideas assumed to be in the movie that actually weren't at all; or it was a clear misunderstanding of points other people found repetitive; or it was a running annoyance about one particular thing that colored all the answers on a questionnaire. I know the movie is a lot of info, and I know that it is not a perfect information giving machine, but I feel like there was criticism and then there was this weird criticism that seemed to me to stem more from personal interests than about the actual movie. This weird criticism wasn't necessarily more harsh or anything. It was just kinda bizarre, and it took me aback. I mean we immediately thought, "what did we do wrong to get these reactions we had no intention of getting." Yes, there is a shit ton of information and a good amount of our personal taste in SSL, and we know some of it's bound to be ignored or misconstrued. I think there is another thing at play here, though, and I should have been more prepared for it given some of the situations I've encountered during the making of this movie and during the writing of this blog over the years.

We are messing with incredibly personal subjects. Everyone has experience with their own and sometimes others' sexuality and pleasure and gender. Some of us take great pride in our sexual persona or gender identity. Some of us hold such shame and confusion about it, and for most of us, our very identity is heavily intertwined with our sexuality and gender. We are going to get a really wide array of reactions, and among all the more positive ones, they might be weird, irrational, surprising, or insanely maddening, and I'm gonna be okay with that because sex and gender in this world have a whole lotta weird baggage. Plus, I think it'll be mostly ok. The truth is, even the people who had weird reactions and the people who were bothered by things like too much anti-vaginal orgasm talk were actually overall positive about the movie and almost everyone felt other peoples should see it. So, yeah - the test screenings gave us some great detailed insight that we're definitely moving forward with, but maybe the most exciting thing I took away is that this movie really does strike something - whatever it may be - with people, and they seem to want to talk about it. Truth is, that's all I ever wanted - to get a real conversation started in this culture about the female orgasm and its impact on our understanding of female sexuality. Simple, right? So, yeah, this whole putting a movie out and hearing what people have to say about it is going to be a scary mixed bag, but I have faith it's gonna be worth it.

Our Kickstarter Party Pics (From a Year Ago)

Share

Tweet

Charlie and I were looking through some old pictures on the computer - you know, checkin' out the nieces and nephew's b-days and such - and then we saw the pics from our Kickstarter Party from December 17th 2011 - about a year ago. Well, I figured I might as well share a few of them since we're all personal and friendly like on this blog these days.

It was a pretty awesome day actually. For those who weren't around back when we were doing it, let me let you in on what went down. We started a Kickstarter campaign to raise $20,000 for the recording of our score and proper sound finalization for Science, Sex and the Ladies. We hadn't spent anything on the movie up to that point except our own pocket money over the last 10 years, and we really wanted to make sure the sound and music was fabuloso - too many indie movies drop the ball on that. Plus, we had an awesome composer willing to collaborate with us, so we could put all the money into things like professional musicians, recording spaces and top notch audio work. Anyway, my point is, we thought the money could make a huge impact on our movie, but we weren't used to this whole fundraising thing, and I'm gonna be real honest - my stomach was in knots for the whole 30 days. The thing about Kickstarter is that if you don't get enough pledges to meet your goal by the end of the fundraising period, then no one pays and you get no money at all. So, we kinda really, really wanted to make sure we made our goal.

Like I said, the life was slowly being sucked out of me for the whole of the 30 days. To really make it on Kickstarter, you have to work your ass off, advertising, contacting, making good on goal point promises. We started out strong. It got a little slow, and then the last 36 hours, we started getting pledges like crazy. It was enough to make my stomach do back flips out my throat. We had planned a party to start right after the funding period ended, and long story short, we went right up to the last minute, but we made our goal. It was an incredible relief, so the party was a well needed celebration. (BTW, we are only a month or 2 away from the final finished movie with all the music and sound stuff finished!!!). Anyway, here is a quick picture tour of the party.

Our good friends the Fritz's came by early to help decorate and shoot the shit. The Shindig was at the home Barnaby moved into just a couple months before (he had not yet acquired 3 orange cats).

I'm obsessed with colored lights (and it was 8 days before Christmas), so we strung up lights all over the house.  Charlie's brother Andrew is delicately placing lights around the food as Barnaby watches (and I can only assume worries about something.)

People were pretty much just standing around checking the status on their phones at the beginning, probably worried we'd be just about 500 dollars short and start begging them to pledge or something (we weren't allowed to pledge on our own campaign). Honestly, that is kind of terrifying, I'm surprised anyone came, really. Below is one of our actors (and my cuz) Tim Stroud and Ms. Stephanie Fritz below that.

 That's me, Charlie, and Barnaby huddled around the computer just after we made our goal. What's up now, ya'll!

Let the party begin, party people! As you can see, it was quite civilized.

Me and Barnaby. I want to point out that Barnaby had just shaved down to a disturbingly styled mustache as a reward to our supporters after we got our 100th backer. He also kissed someone and did a break dance routine for other rewards during the campaign. Respect.

Our fine and mysterious actor, Mr. Joshua Ramsey, came by to hang with us for a while. It was quite a privilege to see you, sir, quite a privileged indeed.

 Charlie with a tie on over his AnC T-shirt. He was about to fire off a confetti gun in Barnaby's new house. What an asshole. I might have shot some off too.

 After lots of friendly conversation, congratulatory hugs, and drunken basement ping-pong, the party was over....just like this damn movie will be soon....finally.

Oh, and here's the Barnaby break dancing video we made as a reward for a supporters...just for fun.

Citations Are Fun!

Share

Tweet

I've  been working on something that I would guess is not usually a part of the movie making process. I'm checking all the on screen citations and bibliography entries for accuracy and proper MLA formatting. Oh yeah, it's exciting stuff. Actually, it is kida neat. Putting citations in a movie doesn't really have precedence, so I'm kinda making it up as I go, and that is actually pretty fun.

The way I've decided to go with it is to just keep the citation on screen (usually in the lower left hand corner) during the whole statement encompassed within the citation. This idea of using visual citations in the movie was decided upon very early on. Most documentaries give validity to the statements by having experts speak onscreen. The simple fact that the person speaking has some type of expertise makes the statements seem  worthy. We had no interest in creating this movie from a bunch of interviews. That didn't seem quite that exciting and entertaining to us, but also, it just frankly wouldn't be an efficient way to make our arguments. Many of the points made in the movie are a result of carefully mixing existing ideas and facts and then gleaning meaning that didn't exist within any one of the facts or ideas on their own. So, people speaking on-screen about their areas of expertise just wouldn't cut it. It always made sense to us to create this movie first as a carefully crafted research paper, and that naturally lends itself to validation through use of citations. Doing it this way allowed us to leave the visual part of the movie to do the job of supporting the arguments in a vivid and entertaining way; instead of wasting visuals possibilities on boring shots of people sitting in their offices speaking into the camera.

Anyway, I'm spending my time lately double checking all these citations, and making sure the bibliography at the end of the credits is in tip top shape.  That's what I've been up to.

Music and Sound Effects!!!!!

Share

Tweet

It's definitely been a fun and interesting process so far trying to hear/critique/think about music and sound effects on Science, Sex and the Ladies. For years, we have all been obsessed with thinking about how the movie will "look" (as in style-wise during the writing process, during the actual shooting process, and over the years as it's been edited and as effects were added), and now we're finally really focusing on sound.

Granted, we were pretty obsessed with sound in one way - getting good clean voices recorded, but thinking about sound creatively is a different story.

All in all I'm having a blast. Nathan is our composer, now living out in LA...so our meetings are Skype style. He, like us, is doing all this crazy work simply for the love of doing it, and it's fantastic because we've all wanted to collaborate on something for years.  He has been sending us scenes with his compositions (created with MIDI; not actually recorded with real instruments yet). Then Charlie, Barnaby, and I all try to get our thoughts together before we put our heads once again with Nathan's - for an old fashioned critique. It's a big ol'' ball of sweet, sweet collaborative. I ain't no music person, so just trying to put into words what I like and don't and why is kind of foreign, but Nathan is a patient dude, so it's been productive and fun. 

It's crazy, though, because I have to watch/listen to it a couple times before I can really see how the music is fitting in. Charlie and I were talking, and we think it's because we're so used to our own sort of rhythm we had while cutting and effecting. The rhythm with which Nathan sees the movie and with which he's working from is naturally different and actually doesn't register with me at first. It's like it reveals itself to me later, so I think it's really cool having that newer, fresh perspective. 

As for sound effects, Barnaby has been working hard on that. I've been watching it without sound effects for so long that it feels really weird at first. I have to kinda sit and digest it before I can wrap my head around what I like. This music and sound effect stuff is a challenge, and not just because it's stuff we've had the least amount of experience with. It's also because this movie is strange. It doesn't fit a genre, and there's not really precedent for this style, so we're kinda making it up; which is bad because it's hard, but super cool too because we have a lot of freedom.. The other awesome thing is simply that we are at this point in the movie making process, which means we are so, so, close, and I'm truly lovin' that.

Synchtube, Skype, and Music: "Science, Sex and the Ladies" Movie Update

Share

Tweet

Hey there ya'll readers. Just thought I'd give you an update on where we're at with this here movie. You may remember that we did a Kickstarter campaign for this movie in December and raised $20,000 to cover the recording of the score (you know - paying studio musicians, renting space suitable for movie score recording, paying an engineer - that sort of thing) plus paying for the final sound sweetening of the movie. (You can see the short video we made for the now closed Kickstarter campaign HERE - it includes a newer trailer)

So, quite awesomely, we have a fantastic budget for this part of the movie making process (thanks you, thank you again to everyone who was part of that), and we're really excited that we have the resources to put as much attention on the part of the movie you will be listening to as we did for the part of the movie you will be seeing.

The AnC Synchtube / Skype meeting!

Now here's where we're at. A few weeks ago, we finished our last round of tweeking and got a final version of the movie sent out to Nathaniel Blume, our old and awesome friend who is cool enough to collaborate with us on this. We actually met him randomly because Charlie's brother Paul happen to work with him in some kind of  IT related job, and when Nathan said he was interested in doing music for movies, Paul introduced us. He has since moved out to LA, completed film scoring studies in the SMPTV program at the University of Southern California, and makes a living in that business. Yet, he can't quite leave his Hoosier roots behind (and who can really), so that's where we come in.

He's been playing around with the movie for a while, but now that he has a final version, it's getting serious. The 3 of us in AnC - me, Charlie, and Barnaby -  have been meeting with Nathan to discuss where music should and should not be placed. As Nathan pointed out, this movie is not easily categorizable...it's not quite a doc or an informational movie or a narrative, so there's not a lot of precedence for this, and it's not really obvious where music should go. We're kinda figuring things out as we go here. Anyway, it's pretty fun, and I think Nathan is gonna do some cool stuff with it.

I'd also like to point out that we've figured a great way to have our meetings - being that he is in LA and we are in Greenfield, IN. So - we Skype with one computer, and we watch the movie together through Synchtube on another computer. It's a neat site. I create a "room" and upload the movie into it. Then people can join my room, and we all watch the same movie at the same time. I control it and when I rewind or pause - it rewinds or pauses for everyone. I love it. It's pretty new and run by like 2 guys right now, so I think it can be a little buggy, but it works great for us. We've gone through "the Science " and "the Sex" sections of the movie so far, and we'll be hitting "the Ladies" section soon.

Anyway, the movie is well on its way to being a finished piece......

Latest Round of Movie Fixes...Done.

Share

Tweet

I'm feeling pretty good. We just finished the latest round of edits, reshoots, fix-ups. We had a giant list of these things up on the wall - it consisted of 22 8x11 papers taped together behind the editing desk. The items are all marked off, and we just took a look at the movie - all put together - a couple nights ago. (Without some insane and stupid hardware issues that Charlie had to work through, it would have been a couple weeks before, but hey - that's the movie makin' life.)  

Anyway, we were really happy with all the changes. It feels like a real movie, and I have to give Charlie some major props here. He's the the one really doing the effects work, and I'm just gonna say, it's pretty bad-ass stuff. Obviously, there's not action or explosions like one would think of when thinking about effects, but pretty much the entire movie is an effect. It's almost all green screen - for one. Frankly though, it looks like there aren't a lot of effects in it - which I think is the best possible situation. Effects shouldn't look like effects. 

Now, the movie does have a really weird, stylized aesthetic that we've all been worried about pulling off, but after watching the movie, I'm super excited about it. This version is now in the hands of our kick-ass composer, and we'll be working more closely with him in the next month. We still have some small corrections and pep-ups for the movie, but it's barely a speck compared to what we've done. 

Here's some random pics for you to enjoy below. The first is me in a strange suit I had to wear for another scene as I'm primping an actor for her scene. The other ones are stills, and well, you'll just have to watch the movie to see what they're all about.

Our First Scene Release from "Science Sex and the Ladies"

Share

Tweet

As you may know, we are in the last 5 days of our Kickstarter.com campaign to fund the score and sound finalization for Science Sex and the Ladies. We are 51% to our goal amount, and if we don't get all the way there by 8pm EST on Saturday, December 17, 2011, our backers won't be charged for their pledges, and we won't get any money at all. That's how Kickstarter works - all or nothing. So, we need pledges and we need people to tell their friends about it. If you haven't yet, check it HERE - then pass on the link.

Although I've been kind of an obsessive nervous wreck since this fundraiser began, and it's been frustrating in a lot of ways, it's also been really cool and satisfying too. This is really our first time to truly promote the movie, so it's felt good to know we're getting the word out there. We've also received shout-outs, press, and pledges from some really fantastic feminist people and organizations; Betty Dodson, Annie Sprinkle, BookWoman, Filament Magazine, Early to Bed, The Feminists' Guide to Hollywood, university newspapers, local publications, and a fine arts auction house (http://www.antiquehelper.com/) will be donating a portion of its proceeds to us this Thursday. So, we're getting a lot of support and great press, but we still have a ways to go, so please help out if you can...and spread the word if you're down with this movie.

Now, when we made it to 110 backers, we released a little piece of Science Sex and the Ladies. We chose this one for a couple reasons. 1. It showcases several of our actors. 2. It gives a little taste of how the movie will move through a variety of on-screen and off-screen narrators. 3. It gives away a little about the movie's content, but it's not a full long argument. It is actually the transition between 2 arguments really.
Obviously, there is no music (and it could certainly use some), but it's a nice little cut from the movie....a touch of fun, a bit of cheese, some era costumes. When this scene begins, it has just finished discussing the roots of our modern cultural understanding of female orgasm and sex drive. Then the scene finishes just before discussing why it has changed so little (in some important ways) since then.
P.S. The book that's being read is one of the "sex manuals" for married couples that became quite popular after WWII. Here ya go....

Our Kickstarter Campaign!

Share

Tweet

T minus 40 minutes until we push the "Launch" button on our Kickstarter page. I'm eating Papa Johns and it's really good, but my stomach is still all jumbly about this. It's like Science Sex and the Ladie's coming out. We're all set to blast this news all over hell. The people I work with will finally know I'm a crazy person who spends years making movies about women's orgasms and masturbation and other such dirty thing. I always feel filthy asking friends and family to fund something of mine. What if they think it's ridiculous (or immoral), or don't give to this kind of stuff , or just don't have the cash at the moment, or they forgot? I understand that completely, but what if they don't understand that I understand? Also, we've never been great at getting funding - like a few hundred dollars is elusive to us. It just seems like there's no way we'll make $20,000 - and really, asking for $20,000, isn't that a little insane or greedy or something? Plus, after all these years of working on this, we've got to put up or shut up. It's scary and exciting and unreal.

Anyway, on top of all that, we've been trying to get all the sites updated and the press kits ready and all that crap that takes insanely longer than you'd think and way too much brain power. But it's about to happen. Now, I honestly have no idea who reads this blog. I know my friend Sherry (I just thought it's be fun to mention you in the blog) does most of the time, and some other friends and family from time to time. Chances are, if you are friend or family, you will also the information below on me, Barney, Charlie, and AnC's facebook page, plus get an email about it, so sorry for blowing you up so much. Anyone else - here's some info about our Kickstarter campaign.

At 8pm EST Thursday, November 17th, we begin a 30 day fundraising campaign through Kickstarter.com. Our goal is $20,000 by 8pm EST December 17, 2011. However, because Kickstarter only wants backer money to go to fully funded projects, our movie will not get any money (and backers will not be charged for their pledges) unless it meets the pledge goal. Check out our kickstarter page HERE.  You will find information about us and our project, pictures, and a 5 minute video that includes us telling our production story and the movie trailer. As you will see, we offer a variety of prizes for different levels of pledges including stills of the movie, signed pieces of our green screen, advanced DVDs of the movie, and hand crafted art pieces based on Science Sex and the Ladies among other cool gifts. Plus you can see how close we’re getting to our goal!

Our Second Festival Submission and Near Future Plans

Share

Tweet

We just shipped off a DVD of Science Sex and the Ladies for our 2nd festival submission. It is still not a final version, but it is a very watchable movie. The biggest changes from the version we sent to the first festival is, well, a whole lot of vulva and penis animation. The whole section explaining what is scientifically known about sexual response, the physical description of Master and Johnson's pleasure cycle in particular, is a strange sort of animated graphics. There was animation for this in the last version, but it was a rush job. This time it was worked over pretty good, and I'll tell ya what - it's pretty fun and explanatory.

I'm not tootin' my own horn here either, Charlie rocked this (and really all the technical post production bad ass-ery). He did things that I didn't even imagine were possible when we finished writing this a few years ago. Whether it's deemed sucky or worthy, one thing that can be said for this movie is that it taught Charlie a shit load. I mean it schooled all three of us pretty good, but Charlie got some professional level compositing skills out of this. Other than the animation, there were a few other small changes, and the scene relating to the book Dilemmas of Desire got a nice revamp.

Right after our first submission, the 3 of us went through the movie with a fine toothed comb and made a ridiculously large (and Charlie would say a bit confusing) spreadsheet with every change that we thinks needs to be made in order to get this in a polished final form. The changes that were made for this 2nd submission were just the top priority ones. Now Charlie will be starting at scene 1 and moving through all the changes till he gets to the end. Barnaby will be helping out with some rotoscoping and that kind of fun thing, and B and I both will be working on putting together the couple of short reshoots and obtaining needed materials, like pictures, sound effects, and voice overs.

But...before that, we will all be focused on one single thing for the next few days - getting our kickstarter.com fundraising campaign started. It's an awesome site that brings backers together with for-profit creative endeavors. Projects offer project related rewards for different levels of funding. The thing is, though, that once we set a fundraising goal and a campaign time frame, we have to make that much money in that amount of time, or we don't get any of it, and the backers who pledged don't get charged. Kickstarter does that so that backers' money only goes to projects that are fully funded and thus can actually get finished. Anyway, what all this means is that we have to have a kick ass project page and project video, and we have to have our press kits and get-the-word-out-further-than-our-circle-of-friends campaign ready to go as soon as we launch. So, you'll be hearing more about that soon. In the meantime, I will go to sleep and dream of the cinnamon rolls and bacon I will be eating for breakfast tomorrow, cause that's important too.

Final Shoot Before We Begin Submitting to Festivals!

Share

Tweet

The weekend shoot went better than we could have imagined. I mean there were issues we had to deal with - a ground loop coming through the boom, a point at the end of the day where Charlie suddenly thought we had lost all the sound recording (we didn't, but even the thought was pretty traumatizing)...and there was the fact that the actors had to see me and Barnaby in skin-tight morph suits. Honestly, other than that, everything got done as it was supposed to. We worked the hell out of our hair and make-up ladies (Lauren Bertelson and Rosalind Ferris), but as you can see from the pics below, they did a fantastic job, and the movie would not be the same without them. The actors were great too, nailin' lines right and left and rockin' the non-verbal acting. Even our good buddy Jake Fritz was helping crew the first part of the day. Thanks to all of you!
 

Ellie Church and Carlton Mohn on a canoe date!

Sarah Hoback, Bryan Patrick, and Ellie Church helping us discuss Sexy vs. Sexual

We spent all Saturday before hauling everything up there, hanging the green and the white screen, organizing the lighting - plus we shot a scene (using our Doc Johnson props) that day too. So, we spent all day Saturday and Sunday in production mode (which was actually kind of fun after being in post-production mode for so long), and got a total of 4 scenes completely shot. Two of these scenes - the ones we needed our new family of actors to be in - had been a nagging burden for a long time. We had these worked out visually before the first round of shooting in 2009, but they didn't involve actors. Then our ideas got less and less interesting to us and the work involved seem ridiculous. Then all the sudden festival submission time was approaching, so we had to decide on a approach quick-style, and honestly it was better than anything we had come up with before...and after watching the actors during shooting, we were all even more excited about how these scenes were turning out than we thought we'd be. I love it.  I'll leave you with some pics from the weekend. Enjoy!

Alfonso Gomez and Amber Helms (a fellow Mt. Vernon Alum) on a date with...well you'll just have to see the movie to learn why I'm tied up in an orange Morph Suit.

Elle Beals being coy

Doc Johnson, AnC Thanks You For The Dildo With Anus!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.