IN THE COOLER launch!

We will be premiering our film for friends, cast and crew on Wednesday December 9, 2009, at the Concordia Fine Arts Building in Montreal: 1395 René Lesvesque, room VA-114.

Meet and greetL 6:00 pm
Screening: 6:30 pm


See attached for details!

BRAVO! broadcast will be in Spring 2010

I just heard that Bravo! will broadcast our film "sometime in Spring 2010."

In the meantime, we will be submitting to various festivals. We have already been short-listed at Clermont-Ferrand based on a work-in-progress we submitted.

There is still some technical short-stroking to do on the festival version. Once we're done, we'll have a better idea of when the launch/premiere for cast, crew, friends and family will be.

Stay tuned!

In the meantime, here is a copy of our promotional postcard artwork.

Sign, sealed, delivered

A copy of IN THE COOLER sent off to Bravo! yesterday. Off to New York City for a little perspective reboot.

Foley and out

We were back in at Boogie studio yesterday working the sound mix for the film. We have our extra 50%!

The sound for one of our scenes was totally unusable. Last week, I ADR'd my character's voice. Yesterday, we did Foley - incidental sound, post, to picture. Unexpected fun: me in the recording booth shuffling various papers around and snapping my fingers, Jacob rubbing two pillows together to simulate the natural sound of character movement (from clothing.)After years of experience, he is an expert in frottage!

Ended the evening with a finished film, sound and picture wise. Really enjoyed seeing the almost-almost final product while sipping red wine with the mighty Denis Eric.

There's some business with frame rates to adjust, and then striping.

We hope to deliver a final version to Bravo! by the end of next week.

Then it really will be all over.

Except the blowing up to 35 mm, DVD dubs, labels, festival entries - and, oh yeah, a launch party! Starting to look like it will be in early December now.

A world revealed

We spent the greater part of the day yesterday at Vision Globale doing color correction.

Wow! For the first time, we saw the images we shot on the RED on a large screen. Really, really nice. This thing looks like a film, a real cut above anything we've done before (and all of which was pretty good, too, may I submit humbly.) When a 35 mm print is struck this thing will be a real knock-out. We had been working with the offline files for a long time, at way lower resolution, and I had got used to looking at images that are maybe 20% of what you the viewer will see.

Speaking as an old-timer once again, it is a marvel to see what has become possible with digital technology - colour correcting just a small part of the image, or changing the correction in mid-shot after a camera movement. As Jacob said yesterday, this used to be possible optically in the analog world, but it would take forever and cost tons and tons of money. With the wonders you can do digitally in sound and image, it's no wonder so many are tempted to "fix it in post."

But you must resist! If you've got a great script, performances, and images to work with from the start, it's all so much better. Sound, too - but that's another story, for our next chapter.

Tomorrow we go back to Vision Globale for the final online. Next week, we should stripe final sound.

Working the other fifty percent

As I wrote before, what you hear in a film is 50% of what you see. Lately, that's what we've been working on.

Last week, Jacob and I drove out to Robert's house/studio, somehow taking the most circuitous route possible through the suburbs. We spent a few hours with V Bob working on the final details of his score, which is now completed and works beautifully.

Yesterday, we spent several more hours in Boogie Studio, with our favourite engineer Denis Eric Pednault. Denis' first professional job was sound engineer on LEONARD,LIGHT MY CIGARETTE! which his training could not have prepared him for. He's been working with us ever since. Now he's a Dad and owns his own place - a big man.

We were there for a few reasons. My father Tom came in to read his parts as Narrator, bringing the voice we loved from ARTIE'S FILM to the mix. I also ADR'd one of my scenes that hadn't been recorded properly. And, finally, we started mixing, mastering, etc... But time ran out and Denis will continue to do it on his own.

Attached: photos of Jacob and Denis-Eric in the studio at Boogie, and Jacob with my father in the recording booth.

We're almost there!

And now you can hear the Demo!

Robert has posted the IN THE COOLER demo at his MySpace page. It's the last selection inthe Music player.

Here is the link:

http://www.myspace.com/robertmarchand

Enjoy!