March 2000

It's worth noting that the additional five grand we got was by putting together a prospectus coupled with my trailer--showed it to one of the actors(Jeff Kipers) who had some money and he agreed to come in as Executive Producer with the extra cash.

March 2000

I've been busy. Edited 2 separate trailers, twice. I lost a hard drive that had all of both trailers on it, so I had to start over. I had exported some rough copies onto VHS, but I wasn't happy with them, so I did it all over from scratch.

I've done some rough titles in 3D Max, an excellent program. With help from my brother, I've gone in and added blood digitally to the scene where Duke gets shot and it looks good.

I got enough money to get the rest of the footage transferred to Beta(at a cost of just over three grand), so I've got the entire movie now on Beta. It's down to a matter of editing.

We've picked up an additional five grand, which should be enough to finish the movie. I've got my eye on a couple of composers and I'm going to try to talk one into scoring the film for what is essentially peanuts.

Dec 1999/Jan 25, 2000

December 1999

Managed to get the money together for the 10 reels. I’ve gone through and tried to pick ten with what I hope will have the best shots on them.
What happens if they all come back blank? How fast am I gonna kill myself?

Jan 25, 2000

Got the footage, ten reels(about 1 hour 55 minutes of footage), transferred to video best light. I was a little worried about it, because RGB--the lab who did two reels to make sure nothing was wrong with the camera/film/etc--did a lousy best-light transfer.

Well, I'm happy to say, Fotokem did an outstanding job. I gave them minimal instructions, just asking that they lighten anything that was too dark.

I had picked the reels to be transferred with a general idea of how I want the trailer to look. If I need any shots that aren't on these ten reels, I'll have to shoot them on video and intersplice it, hoping that it's not too noticeable. The difference between how film looks and how video looks is pretty dramatic.

Some of the shots came out better than I could have expected. I think I can make a good trailer.

A little treat

Let's take a break from the past for a moment. I'll share with you the first 25 or so pages of the sequel to "Hunting Humans" that I started writing about 5 years ago(I think).

There's some background on the page about it. Check it out if you like Aric Blue.

Note: the formatting is off a little, but I've tried to preserve it as close to the original Final Draft version as I could.

http://www.kangaskahnfilms.com/hh2-txt.htm

November 1999

Wow, it was slightly over 10 years ago but it seems like a lifetime...

November 1999

Here's what it all boils down to: Money.

From the beginning, I had my eye on post-production. There are really two ways to go about it and they are as follows:

1. Shoot the film and get it transferred to video in as high-quality as you can get, with scene-by-scene color-corrections and all. Then, edit the entire movie on video and come up with a finished product on video(ala Robert Rodriguez). Shop that around, enter what festivals you can, see if any distributors are interested. If they go for it, the cost of doing the re-edit and all will be up to them. This is the over-all cheaper way of doing things, and the way I was looking at.

OR:

2. Shoot the film and get it best-light transferred to video with time-code. Edit on video with an AVID machine, then get the negative cut according to your EDL(Edit Decision List) that the AVID gives you. Then prints are made from your edited negative. These prints can be submitted to festivals and what have you. This is more expensive.

As it is, I raised all the money for the production on my own, but I over-taxed myself. Personal things have come up to keep me from raising other money(bought a house is the main one), so I'm stuck. I don't have enough money for either option right now.

So, the option I'm currently looking at is getting about 10 reels transferred at one-light(it doesn't look that great) and editing it into a trailer that I can show to some backers to get them to put up money. Getting the reels transferred is going to cost in the neighborhood of $1600.

Yes, film-making is expensive.

Equipment

Wow, for those who really MUST know everything that was used on a film.

THE EQUIPMENT

The Camera:
We shot on an Eclair NPR. It's a pretty compact camera, pretty quiet if you're not shooting in a small room with a shotgun microphone(which we did frequently).

The Film:

• All of it was shot on Kodak Vision 500, a very high-speed film. Too bad the actual company who sells it is not so speedy processing account applications. The film cost $135 per 400foot roll, and that gets you about 11.5 minutes at 24 frames per second, which is regular speed for film.

The Sound:

• We had an Audio Technica 835b shotgun microphone. Very sensitive. Too sensitive sometimes. We used a Mackie 1402VLZ Pro Mixer. I recommend it highly. We recorded all the sound onto a full-sized Panasonic DAT machine. We had a portable DAT, but didn't use it, as it didn't show levels very well.

The Lights: (Or lackof)

• We had a 1000watt Lowel DP light that went from flood to spot. Probably our most-used light. We had a 1000watt Lowel Soft Box that worked well. We had some Chinese Lanterns that we lit with bulbs ranging from 100 to 250watt. Other than that, all we had were some construction lights and creativity.

September 8th, 1999

This is surreal. This is the actual place where I started originally uploading this log WAAAAY back when.

September 8th

Started putting some of these journal entries up on the web. I figure filmmakers should get a kick out of them. I start it off with a list of the “Players” and “The Equipment” which is below:


Kevin Kangas, Director: His qualifications include extensive studies of the films of Michael Bay, as well as his ability to pronounce the title La Jetee. Sometimes, he can even tell you whether it was Einstein or Eisenstein who came up with the theory of relativity.

Rick Ganz, Lead Actor: Just because everyone wants him doesn't mean his ego is huge. His modesty is legendary, and mostly because we've only heard of it and never seen it. If you see him, make sure you ask him to get you an autograph from his cousin Ricky Martin.



David Gil, Director of Photography: He's the guy that shot that commercial with the one guy that's talking to the other guy when that thing happens. Yeah, you know the one. Just don't be his Assistant Cameraman if you like to sit down, because he gets miffed. And speaking of...


David Mun, Assistant Cameraman: Hey, you gotta give the handicapped a chance sometimes. And I hear we'll get a special tax break too.


Rick Shipley, Title Pending Outcome of Litigation: Local filmmaker whose titles include but are not limited to: "I Wish My Mom Was A Whore", "Die, Slut, Die, But Do The Laundry First", and "If Sheep, Horses Too".

Bubby Lewis, Lead Actor: Likes earrings a bit too much, if you know what I mean and I think you do. Sings and dances on set for no discernible reason. I think he thinks he's good.

And a lot of other good for nothings!

In case you didn't get it, almost all of the above is a lie. Read on and you'll see what the cast and crew was really like. Then, buy the book and see what kind of juicy stuff I could make up about them.