03.15.08
Posted in Uncategorized, Entertainment, new movies, FilmMaking, movie, movies at 8:04 am by mcclung_1
I don’t know about the coolest filmmaker on the planet part, but we have officially started pre-production on Kerberos. The coolest filmmaker bit was a demonstration of SEO from Google’s “coolest guy“, Brad Fallon — hey, look it up! And you know what? I have to say — he’s pretty cool!
I’m not even the coolest filmmaker in Atlanta, unless they all keep moving to LA, which is not so cool. So that’s all a bit silly, I wasn’t even the coolest guy in high school, maybe not even since first grade, where I was really cool, and I was cool with that, so even as a joke, the coolest filmmaker thing is pretty cool!
Now for the really cool part - I am starting on my next film, Kerberos. And what’s cool, (okay okay - I’m cool enough to know know this is bound to get un-cool real quick!), is that Brad Fallon is our Executive Producer. What makes that so… interesting, is that Brad, a very successful internet marketing guru and acknowledged SEO expert, (search engine optimization) and all around cool guy, is “outside the box” and so thinks “outside the box”, and I have high hopes for the marketing and success of Kerberos. More on all that soon…
So not only are we starting production on a really (hmmmm… what word could I use here?) script, as on my first feature, Blood Ties, I am really pushing the limits of independent, low, and by most standards NO-budget filmmaking.
Still, as I have let 3 years go by posting Blood Ties and knocking out the short film AM Session, now playing on HBO, technology has gotten better, I have gotten better, we have more resources for the production and the marketing and delivery of the film, and so once again the convergence is there.
I have also made a lot of friends in the local acting and production community, and watching and helping them to help me on Blood Ties, I am in a position as the director/producer to do some major paybacks by casting some of these same strong actors in really strong roles and crew members in positions of greater responsibility and visibility.
Using your friends on a movie, when they just happen to be the best people for the job, is pretty damn cool!
–
“Talking people and doing people, for myself, I hope to do”
Kely McClung
www.bloodtiesmovie.com
www.kerberosbites.com
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03.10.08
Posted in Uncategorized, Entertainment, new movies, FilmMaking, movies at 4:54 pm by mcclung_1
Okay - “you’ve lost it” - yeah probably - “it’s a trick” - yep - definitely!
Most ‘good’ filmmakers make their movie first - without cameras or money. Oh, storyboards. Well sure, maybe. But on big films, storyboards are not free, they take an enormous amount of work and can take a lot of money and time. Artists with the skills to translate someone else’s ideas to the teams of people involved on bigger productions are very specialized, make huge contributions, and are generally well compensated for their efforts.
There are storyboard programs that help, software that make even the most artistically challenged filmmakers (arts takes many forms but notice how the words in that phrase don’t really bode well for the outcome). Storyboard Quick is probably the fastest and easiest. Then comes their studio versions, and programs like Poser and Frame Forge can not only set up scenes but let you dial in focal lengths and actual lens and lighting dynamics. Antics is a relatively new program that adds drag and drop animation cycles and takes everything up a couple more levels.
Another option is to draw. What about the artistically challenged part? Well, get over yourself. Anyone can draw a stick figure… Have you ever looked at the genius of Alfred Hitchcock translated as his simple sketches?
If you know Photoshop, (and if not, you should probably learn a bit) you can scan photos or if nothing else cut pictures from magazines and lay them out on a table in a rough semblance of your mind’s shots. How else are you going to get to work with Nicole or George or Tom?
Major car stunts are almost always worked out with Match Box cars and trucks. A small digital camera and some plastic super heroes can go along way if you take the time.
Or scour your friends and the arts schools. Bulletin boards, Craig’s List. Someone, somewhere has to be able to draw, and if you actually have strong ideas and a good story, they would probably love the opportunity to contribute.
But let’s go back further. What about the story? Is it as strong as it can be? The dialog written with the genuine voice of the characters? I don’t feel scripts should be written in such a way that they count on actors to bring it to life. It should have life before they read it. That’s not to preempt their work, but to insure that the written words empower them to contribute their talents.
Can you hear it? The score, the songs, the sound design? Can you hear the problem sounds? The traffic, and airplanes, the leaf blowers and the children next door? The intruding location sounds or the boomy, echoey room you are planning on filming in?
What about the smell? Oh come on… that’s too much! Can you really watch Alien and not smell the machine oil and metallic breath of the vast, dank ship? Do you really think Ridley didn’t smell it before he had sets built? And what about the stench of death in blood drenched farmlands or the rising yeast of fresh baked bread in A Very Long Engagement? If you watch the amazing behind the scenes documentary for that film, you’ll know that Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a genius and there is no way those smells were not taken into account.
And what about touch? The texture of cloth, or the pain of flesh rent by knife or bullet or disease. Or the delicate whisper of electricity at the gentle touch of a lover? The characters are going to have to feel all that and more if the story is going to breath life.
Sure it’s all going to change, but this time of imagining, playing it over and over, editing the shots and the pace, the smells and sounds in your imagination, is the time you are given to make the film on your own. Without money. Without cameras.
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03.06.08
Posted in Uncategorized, Entertainment, new movies, FilmMaking, movie, movies at 8:45 am by mcclung_1
Cameras are not rolling, no sound is being recorded, no graphics nor 3D magic is being made, but already I can see many talents and personalities start to form into something beyond themselves and take joy in the beginnings of our newest film, KERBEROS.
Though I wrote the dark, gritty cop story almost a year ago, between finishing Blood Ties and taking on and completing AM Session, and we had a first read-through 6 months ago, last night’s meeting of the main 8 actors (out of 56) and the man who will become our executive producer was the first time the monster actually took the breath of life on its own.
They say by writing goals you give them power, and certainly by throwing them out into the vast electronic tablets of the Internet you make them resolute, allowing them to pat you on the back or bite you in the ass in some far off future. So as they pertain to Kerberos now, here are first thoughts/goals.
To make a kick-ass movie that entertains, questions, and surprises - the story on paper is already there and does just that.
The actors are there - so to make sure they are filmed and edited in ways that allow the movie to take advantage of their talents and to push and pull them into performances beyond even what they think they can do.
To translate the visions in my head to the screen by using the various artistic talents of our crew. Once again already planning on how to take them further than what they’ve done before.
To raise the level of our production, both visuals and sound. We are shooting high definition, then processing with Digital Film Design’s post magic to create the look, and will concentrate of acquiring good location sound as well as better engineering in our final sound design and delivery.
To be open to those creative choices in the editing which express my own quirky ideas of entertainment and keep the movie my own.
To find a wide distribution model that allows everyone’s work to get noticed. And to make enough money for everyone in a unique participation deal so that people are thrilled to do the next movie - which is waiting to jump in with new lessons learned the moment this one is done.
Blood Ties
Kerberos
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03.03.08
Posted in Uncategorized, Entertainment, new movies, FilmMaking, movie, movies at 5:31 pm by mcclung_1
Wow -
Besides pushing forward on TEARS, my newest short film, I have pretty much been given the green light for my next feature, another raw, gritty, action thriller called KERBEROS.
KERBEROS, the Greek spelling of the three-headed dog that guarded the gates to the underworld, is a fitting metaphor for the cops and robbers and the dirty cops that populate the story.
Unlike BLOOD TIES, the international no budget thriller I shot in Thailand, Cambodia, and in several cities in the U.S., this one is to be shot within a hundred miles of my home in Atlanta, Georgia.
Anything but easy, which seems to be a big part of my style, this one is full of action, a tentative cast of 56, and sees me in front and behind the camera again.
Also unlike BLOOD TIES, or even AM SESSION, we’ll do our best to document the process and I’ll try to keep up on the posts in hopes that whatever information I can share helps others in their own projects and/or gives people a deeper appreciation of what we pull off.
Like Hercules who subdued and brought KERBEROS into the light and the palace of Eurystheus, hopefully these words will allow me to do the same with my film and let me show off the talents of all those who work on it.
Kely McClung
BLOOD TIES
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Posted in Uncategorized, Entertainment, new movies, FilmMaking, movies at 8:55 am by mcclung_1
With offers on the table to direct a couple of no budget features, it’s been a challenge to hold out and keep pulling my own projects together. “Bird in the hand and all that”… but I can see the patterns developing that make me know I am doing the right thing (besides the fact that I do not want to commit another significant percentage of my life and efforts to projects I am not absolutely passionate about!).
After directing AM SESSION last year, and watching dozens if not hundreds of short films at various film festivals, I have looked at short films in an entirely different way, and have dozens of ideas floating around, with a few now committed to paper. Wanting to take advantage of relationships and contacts made on BLOOD TIES while shooting in Thailand, I wrote the short film TEARS, which uses the exotic location to illustrate personal responsibility in making the planet a bit better. Will it actually make the planet better? Who knows? But it’s a statement that I want to make and have figured out a way to say with a small film that relies on all my film making skills to pull off.
I think the need to make the film is representative of the need of the artist to make art. Whether any one else ever sees it that way is not really up to me. Only that I express my own ideas in a way that satisfies my own need to communicate.
I draw and paint, write, and of course after more than 30 years of doing martial arts, I think even the physical expression of that as ‘art’, but film, by it’s nature, and the fact that it takes so much intellectualizing and planning to ‘direct’ the resources into something coherent, can easily be turned into something different - maybe better, maybe worse - again, not for me to say and I don’t even try, but it becomes a struggle sometimes to keep the element of personal expression as the central component.
For now I’ll try to reign in the excitement and trepidation that comes from looking at a blank piece of paper, an empty canvas, a physical situation where the outcome has not yet been determined or played itself out - and know that as an artist I’m getting ready for the ultimate blessing of being able to create.
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02.27.08
Posted in Entertainment, new movies, FilmMaking, movies at 3:47 pm by mcclung_1
So many times in my career I have been told that I can’t possibly be a serious editor or filmmaker if I didn’t edit with the big A - no not Adobe… Avid. Now of course I hear some of those same people telling me I can’t possibly be a serious editor or filmmaker unless I use Final Cut. eeesshhhh…
When I started planning and testing for Blood Ties, I originally checked into as many shareware video editing programs I could find, just for the foreseeable joy of saying I used one. I checked out quite few, but as I am somewhat of an After FX Guru and pretty comfortable with most of the advanced features of Photoshop, I gave Premiere Pro another look.
As my work flow ends up creating the entire 93 minute movie with uncompressed tiff’s, I am glad I went with Premiere for it’s media handling abilities. Blood Ties exists across 17 hard drives with thousands of files being accessed from hundreds of directories. I won’t pretend it’s worked flawlessly, but most my issues have come from hard drive failure, my own stupidity, and from the unique work flow developed from 3 years of extensive testing to allow me to take my humble MiniDV footage and turning into something much more palatable.
See before and after examples here
Let me say here that I am in no way putting down any other editing system or platform, but the reality of the Blood Ties budget meant building my own computer with my limited budget and computer building skills, and the near constant integration of After FX and Photoshop in a work flow that takes me back and forth in several relatively complicated steps.
For sound, I spent time with Pro Tools and Nuendo, but once again found myself relying on Premiere, so I investigated and eventually settled on Audition for the more advanced chores.
My color correction was done in After FX and Photoshop, then re-imported back to Premiere for the rendering. Here’s another example.
Later, the DVD and the menu creation for Blood Ties were also done in Adobe programs. And of course the art, the posters, the box cover and the website.
Could someone else have done better with Avid or Final Cut? I don’t think so. Could they handle more layers or more effects, or done it quicker? Maybe.
They might have found a better way to cut the “gun scene” - seventy-seven seconds of mayhem with 142 cuts, 114 tracks of audio mixed in 5.1, and visually composited in After Fx with over 1200 layers, each with multiple filters, and controlled by hundreds of animated masks. Maybe.
When I trained full time in the martial arts (for over 20 years), I always knew there must be someone who had more talent, was faster - stronger, had more time, better teachers, and a better situation for learning. So I made myself work harder. I have several blackbelts, have worked with some of the greatest teachers of the world, and traveled across the world and back to learn more.
It probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that for my first feature film, I called on my experiences working with some of the greatest low budget filmmakers of the world, worked 12 to 15 hours a day for four years and traveled across the world and back to shoot it.
I guess if I had film cameras and film to put in it and money to process it, had a Smoke, an Inferno, and a Da Vinci in my living room, I could have maybe been more ambitious and pushed even harder. I hope someday to have all those. In the meantime, I am building a new computer, and investigating some really cool new shareware programs….
And nope — I don’t work for Adobe… I’ll pretty much use any hammer at hand if it will drive the nail - though I am looking forward to whatever they come up with next!
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02.25.08
Posted in Entertainment at 8:11 pm by mcclung_1
Yeah, yeah. The movie’s not that long, it just has been for me. Everyone else, besides friends and family, will get to see the 93 minute version. And the reality is, I might be on it another couple years, though what anyone sees will still be the 93 minute version.
“Blood Ties” was filmed with no money by a crew of three in both the US and Thailand (with just a few moments over the border into Cambodia). Just to make things a bit more complicated, we filmed in the mountains of Virginia, Washington D.C. on the Mall, The Port of Miami, and Atlanta. Our crew numbers stayed at a maximum of three and our cast grew to 154.
And post production? Me. Sound, visual effects, editing, ADR, Foley, graphics, titles, music? Me. Which is not to say everything is great, it’s just what we could afford on a no budget movie. Every time I’d get ready to fire myself, I’d remember that I’m the only guy I could afford! And even with that, I definitely had some long talks with myself.
Is it worth watching? We hope so, and our success on the beginning of the film circuit says we might be right. Blood Ties won The Action on Film International Film Festival’s “Action Film of the Year”, The Audience Award for “Best Director” at the Big Bang Film Festival, “Best of the Festival” at the Indie Fest USA International Film Festival, “Best Visual Effects” at the same, and has been nominated for various other awards at various other festivals.
Could I teach something about directing? Yeah, probably, even though Blood Ties is a first movie. About editing? Yeah, I’m known as a strong editor. After Effects, sound editing, composing for film, and 200 other subjects involved in making a movie? I’m pretty sure I could. But that’s not want I want to teach or preach or pass on in these few words.
The lesson I hope to share right now is in creating a vision - not only of the movie and what you want it to be but how you want to be perceived - keeping it in mind, and striving toward it with as little compromise as possible no matter how long it takes. Knowing that in twenty or thirty years, your first film won’t matter in the scheme of things except that it will always be, no matter how successful or not, your first film.
One of the things to strive for is surrounding yourself with a strong cheering section. My film partner, my family, my amazing girlfriend. Though they might not physically take on the work, without them, there is no movie. My film partner, Robert Pralgo put up the initial money, as well as a seemingly endless trickle of money since. He also co-starred, help cast, pushed, pulled and dared me to make a better movie than what we thought was possible. My family never talked down to me even though I am the one brother of five who they all have to worry about if I have a roof over my head. And the Amazing Amanda let me see the movie from many different angles, again setting me up to challenge myself to make it even stronger. Our crew of three rotated several times, and our cast gave their all because they somehow knew that I believed in what I was doing. There would be no movie without all of their many efforts. I give credit to almost everyone I meet and genuinely mean and feel it. They color the way I look at myself and my work, and are reflected in the images jumping around on screen. And jump around they do!
Blood Ties embraced the hand held look simply because I knew where I was wanting to shoot, a tripod, a dolly, or a steadicam would get us arrested. “You mean you aren’t supposed to shoot on the Mall or the Port or in the streets of a foreign country without permission?” Permission is relatively easy to get, if you pay for it. And that just wasn’t part of the budget!
I am sure I could talk about the making of the movie for the about the same length of time it took to make it. And maybe I’ll get the chance to write more. There is a lot more information on our website and other people are starting to talk and write as well. What I hope with this introduction is to pass on the challenge to others to make the movies they want to see. To learn and persevere. To look at the art around them and if they find themselves saying “I could do that” – then to do it!
Kely McClung
previously published in Blogger
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Posted in Entertainment at 8:04 pm by mcclung_1
BLOOD TIES wins The Action On Film International Film Festival’s “
ACTION FILM OF THE YEAR“!
Screening on July 28th (2007), at the AOFF, BLOOD TIES (http://www.bloodtiesmovie.com/) was able to win “Action Film of the Year”. Though the festival was predominately action, there were many films that stretched that definition. Rob Pralgo (co-star and executive producer) and I really did not think it would happen even though we of course knew about the nomination for both AFOTY and the ‘Best Action Sequence of the Year.
Mark Harris (the kick ass role of Rourke in the film), traveled across the country to cheer us on and partake in the fest’s atmosphere and seemed convinced it was a lock, but Mark’s… Mark, so who knew?
We had other cast members show up as well, most who had moved to LA to seek their fortunes, including the always wonderful Samantha Worthen, (another cast member) who always seems to be everywhere at once supporting everyone.
We were thrilled that many other friends made it and we had a really strong and positive screening, with enthusiastic questioning and responses at the end.
My girl, the “Amazing Amanda”, who always seems to have it together so much more than me, was there by my side, trying to rein in my enthusiasm and excitement over our film and the response it was getting.
With over 1000 people attending the awards ceremony, our sit down dinner had me facing away from the awards stage, and the announcement really didn’t register until “AA” started trying to get me to quit eating the cheesecake and realize they were calling our name.
The fest was great - and of course the win made it SO MUCH BETTER - and we all saw some significant talent, and though it sounds pretty corny, we made a lot of new friends including David No (FORGED - Best Short Film at Dragon Con and The Melbourne Underground Film Festival), Igor Breakenback (GOOD LUCK WITH THAT), and Takeshi Maya (KAGE).
Can’t wait for what’s next… oh yeah… the Rome International Film Festival last month, the Big Bang Film Festival in Philly on the 17th -21st, and of course the Indie Fest USA!
Kely McClung
Previously published in blogger…
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Posted in Uncategorized at 7:40 pm by mcclung_1
Traveling the World with “BLOOD TIES”
Written by Nathan Flood Saturday, 15 September 2007
That’s how it always starts. “I’ve got this great idea for a movie.”
Pretend you do have this great idea for a movie (I know it’s hard, but try). You decide to pitch it to a buddy with a little bit of money in hopes he’ll jump on board. You’ve got this great script and you’re ready to go, where at this point your buddy asks, “Where you going to film it?” And your answer is?
If your answer is Thailand, you’re lying (or insane), unless your name happens to be Kely McClung, because that was really his answer. Throwing independent filmmaking logic out the window, Kely pitched the idea for his film Blood Ties and its halfway-around-the-world bizzaro location to friend Robert Pralgo, and somehow, someway, got him to say yes.
Blood Ties, is an action film set not only in Thailand, but also a few more wallet conducive locations including; Washington, D.C., Miami, Virginia, and, oh yeah, Atlanta.
Filmed in a jittery, cinema verite, Blair Witch meets Bourne Ultimatum style, the concept of the film is, as listed on the filmmakers’ website (http://www.bloodtiesmovie.com/), “Jim, (Robert Pralgo) would be kidnapped, and Jack, (Kely McClung) would save him; in essence, Rob would get his ass kicked everywhere he went, and everywhere Kely would go, he’d kick everybody’s ass.” How’s that for an action film? Okay, there’s a lot more to it than that, but at its core it’s an action film, so you have to figure there’s a significant bit of ass kickin’.
The obvious story here is about Thailand. What the hell are two Atlanta boys doing shooting in Thailand? I mean, I like Thai a whole lot, but these guys must have Pad Thai running out of their brains or something. Half the budget’s blown before the plane even touches the ground. Now that’s a story, and it’s a great angle for the film, but after spending a little while talking to Kely and Robert I realized they weren’t curry freaks, they knew what they were doing. They sold me on Thailand. It was the perfect choice for the film.
Knowing the film’s action would be focused around Kely’s martial arts skills (he’s a black belt in 5 types of martial arts as well as a former world champion in full contact stick fighting), and having no sizable budget for guns, squibs and FX, shooting it on the streets of Atlanta wouldn’t play real. According to Kely, “How do you justify filming in an Atlanta setting where someone will bring out a Mac-10 and just shoot you?” Couple that with the fact Thailand looks seriously cool as well as your actors and crew will work for a fraction of U.S. prices and suddenly you’re talking Thai.
Now that I see shooting in Thailand makes sense from both a cost and quality standpoint, where’s my story? Do you ever watch the DVD extras? You know, where the director or whoever tells you about all the behind the scenes you don’t really care about unless you’re some type of fanboy (see my article in last month’s CinemATL for explanation if you don’t know what a fanboy is). Well, it’ll be worth listening to on Blood Ties. There’s not a scene in the film where they didn’t have some interesting story.
Story after story after story. A huge blowout over an $8.00 toy gun purchase, dealing with a Thai mobster for a location agreement, getting stopped by the secret service in Washington D.C., almost getting busted by the NSA in Miami, border guards harassing them in Cambodia, broken ribs, food poisoning, hiring Thai taxi drivers to play thugs, meeting your D.P. for the first time in Thailand, making fake rain, shooting in an abandoned and burned out 42 story building and a bunch of other stories of things that happened to them over the filming. They literally told me so many stories I started to wonder if the film was going to be half as interesting.
The bad guy awaits a beating.To find out, they showed me a small clip of the film where Kely’s character kicks some serious ass and takes out 23 bad guys in 77 seconds (or 1 bad guy every 3.4 seconds). I was impressed. It didn’t just look good, it looked great.
They told me one of their best and funniest compliments about the scene was someone who remarked, “This looks like it’s a real movie”. And they’re right. Seeing that one fight scene, I knew they had something special. It looks like it could be in the Bourne Ultimatum yet they achieved it with 1/3000th of the budget.
And then came the stories. There were the professional fighters who brought their own stunt gear including a Styrofoam chair to be smashed over someone’s head and fake rebar to be impaled on. There were the 4 plastic guns that had to be shared by all the bad guys to make it look like every one had a weapon. And in post, to make the guns and everything look real, they had to add 1327 layers in After Effects, each with multiple animated masks and 4-5 effects in each layer as well as 140 tracks of sound.
And that’s just 77 seconds. That’s when I realized they were going to have the impossible task of telling all this on the DVD commentary track. I suggested they pause the film during the commentary track just to get in all the stories. Probably stretch the movie to 3 hours.
But that’s one of the great things about this film, all the extras. Not that you’ll see the stories on screen, for that, you’ll have to wait for the DVD extras. Some seriously great stories.
Nathan Flood is an editor for CinemATL
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Posted in Uncategorized at 7:34 pm by mcclung_1
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