'On The Downlow' - Some Nip & Tucks
January 4th 2004- Oh no no we got a whole lot of snow! Yep, that mighty whitey cold stuff fell in a big way here in Chicago. While Tadeo & I wait to hear from the various festivals if 'Downlow' has been accepted, he sends me some drafts for a future film we will be working on ('Prodigal Son'). This and our feature film remake of 'Greasepaint' are slowly being typed away, scene by scene - idea by idea - by me on my trusty little ol' laptop. We had planned to shoot both these films back to back this coming fall but Tadeo suggests that we may have to wait until 2005 since our pockets are a bit shallow. We shall see how things turn out.
February 12th 2004 - As we wait patiently for film festivals to contact us, I meet with Tadeo & discuss our future projects. We work out the structure of 'Prodigal Son' & it is really coming along great. We also discuss future works 'Greasepaint' & 'King of the Lesbians'.
February 24th 2004 - Tadeo invests & receives a Steady-Cam for our slow growing production company. This will really make our future films flow much smoother.
March 6th 2004 - The first draft to 'Greasepaint' is up to 45 pages & is hilarious! We can't wait to start shooting.
Entered By Tadeo Garcia
Beginning in March I moved all the editing equipment out of my office in the restaurant's basement to some nicer and remodeled quarters on the southwest side of Chicago. This move was better. It’s closer to home and it’s closer to Roger. Should we have any issues with the flick, we’re just a 5 minute ride away from each other. Anywho, I got settled in and fired up the computer. And the thing literally fired up. As I was connecting the sound system to the computer, I noticed a strange electrical smell. I looked up and one of my hard drives was smoking! I freaked out and unplugged the computer right away. It was too late, by the time I turned on the computer again, 2 of my four drives were damaged. There was a lot of valuable editing info stored in them and it was all gone. Yeah, I’ll have to admit I freaked out because there was no good quality version of the film left. We would have to recut the whole thing. I didn’t mind it because I knew the film from watching it so many times. I called Roger and told him about the ordeal. Luckily, there was one version of the film in one of the hard drives that did not suffer any damage. Actually, it was the whole film cut into 5 separate files.The reason I had saved it like that was because originally, when I would lay the film out to tape, there was a glitch that would skip in the film, then throw the whole thing off sync. I decided to capture one chunk of the film at a time, then recapture it and put it back together on a new timeline and the glitch was gone.
Now, the good thing about this was that I had saved the most updated version of the film digitally. The bad part was that it was one big clip, which means that I could not easily cut around it. Everything was together, the picture, the soundtrack, the sound effects, and picture effects. If anything had to be changed, I would literally have to re cut and resync the sound effects and visual effects. We made with what we had and the flick was saved….so far.
March 11th 2004 - Some interesting things are happening with our film 'On The DownLow'. I'm not going to say what just yet, but it's pretty wild.
Entered From Tadeo Garcia
A few days later I received a call from the past. It was Jesse Rodriguez, the guy I had met at Reeling 2003. I was surprised to hear from him. He told me he had good news. The film was already accepted to the N.Y. INTERNATIONAL LATINO FILM FESTIVAL. Cool I thought. However, there were a few changed that would have to be done in order for it to be included. I was hesitant, but I decided to listen to their reasoning. Jesse conference called me with the N.Y. LATINO FILM FESTIVAL director, Calixto. He told me how much he liked the film and would like to include it into the film festival, but then he lowered the bomb about cutting out certain parts of the film including the exclusion of a whole scene altogether. I was shocked so I scheduled a meeting with Jesse and Roger so for that we could meet. Let us hear Roger’s side of the story: Originally I was against it, I mean this film was our vision & to be told to change something about it was like dealing with Hollywood producers who make all kind of changes in big films - Some good, most of it bad. But I figured we should meet up with Jesse anyway to hear what he wanted to do. After all, he knows more about the film festival circuit a lot more than we do.
Wow. info overload!
March 11th 2004 - Tadeo & I meet with Jesse & discuss the changes. These basically involved making the film a lot tighter buy cutting out some un-needed dialogue. The scenes that got the most cuts were scenes involving Officer Dorvak, Angel & his mom & the courtroom scene between Isaac & his sister Laura. Tadeo - "The newest cut of the film I have to admit, works great! Jesse’s going to have a screening with 2 different groups of people and get their feedback. Let’s see what they say."
March 12th 2004 - The results came in from the first group. They loved the film however, they though that the beginning was too long. Oh no! At least they were happy with the cop scene being cut down, I was too, it actually worked better. Thanks Jesse.
March 14th 2004 - The Sunday Chicago Tribune prints a small interview with Tadeo about or film making it's way to the film fest in Italy!
Tadeo writes - "The results came in from the 2nd group of people who watched the film. These guys were nuts over the film. They absolutely loved it! However, they though that the beginning was too long. I don’t want to cut the beginning anymore. I like it just the way it is. Jesse suggests to put the opening scene after the “climax portion” of the film because it will help it more and people are going to be more intrigued about these characters. Hmmmmmmmmmmm?"
March 15th 2004 - Changes a many going on with our little film. Between Tadeo & myself we are grumbling, wondering, trying to figure out if we're going the right way.
Tadeo writes - "We met at Jesse’s house for a meeting between myself, Roger, and Gil, who takes care of the press releases. Jesse fills Gil in on the 411 of the film then he drops the bomb again. I had brought a crappy demo of how the film will cut if we did move the thing around. Ewwwwwww. We had a heated debate and yours truly was keeping his trap shut instead of shouting obscenities. We all made good points of the film though and everyone’s view was valid and it made the film work. But as Jesse says, and it is very unfortunate, film fest programmers have hundreds of films they have to look through. They can only get to the first 10 minutes though. If they’re not caught into the film within that time frame, they chunk it and move on to the next one. That really pisses me off (and myself) , and not just for me, but for the other independents like us, who pour their heart and time into a film. And who knows? Maybe somewhere in that pile, is the best film in history. Who knows?
Taking all that into consideration, I just want to get the film out. Besides, we can always have the director’s cut on DVD. I made the changes, and, it wasn’t that bad. I just have to watch it in a different mind frame.
March 15th 2004 - We watched the film again in it's new cut and it makes a little more sense. Jesse made one more suggestion and Tadeo trimmed the flick more. He then sent a revised copy to him.
March 17th 2004- Tadeo goes to work to subtitle the entire 'Downlow' film in Spanish for the European fests. After working through the night he completes it many grueling hours later. Would he do it again? You bet he would!
Tadeo writes - "I received a call from Jesse and he says the film is great and now it’s ready for Spanish subtitles. Mind you it all has to be subtitled by Thursday night because he’s taking the flick to the Guadalajara film festival in Mexico and pitch it to they're festival directors out in Latin America. It’s Wednesday. Can I do it? I start to work on it at 5p.m. that night."
MARCH 18TH Entered By Tadeo Garcia
It’s 4 in the morning and I barley finished subtitling the scene with Isaac and Angel at the burger joint. All that dialogue so little time. I know that I’m tired because I’m nodding off at the keyboard. I know my writing skills in Spanish are bad, but nodding off and typing gibberish won’t help the film. I konk out.
It’s 7 in the morning. My neck aches but I gotta get back to work.
9:00a.m. - I polished off the scene after the burger joint. Will it ever end?
1:00p.m. - I just finished off the scene with Isaac and Angel in the car talking. This was the scene I feared the most because of the heavy dialogue. I look at the time and it’s ticking away. I try not to think about it and work some more. My mom calls me and asks me why I’m not at work. She then sends my brother with something to eat and he looks over my mistakes. God bless my mom.
3:00p.m. - I finished off the scene with Isaac & Angel in the bedroom after the initiation.
5:00p.m. - I get a call from Jesse who is on the other line with the director of the JACKSONVILLE FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL. She loved the film and personally congratulates me on being accepted into their festival in May. Wow! Thanks!
6:00p.m. - Cool, I finished off the scene with Isaac and Reaper in the park. It looks like less dialogue as the flick progresses. Reminder, do what I did with my first film. Shoot it silent and just rely on the physical performance.
8:00p.m. - It’s getting close! Now I have to subtitle the end scene.
9:13p.m. - I’m finished! Now I have to render the damned thing.That’ll take an hour. I’m gonna get me some tacos now.
10:30p.m. - Change of plans on the taco’s. It was chicken. I get back to the studio and now to lay check any other misspellings. Its all good and now to lay it of on tape. I watch the movie “Scream” haven’t seen that in like 7 years.
March 19th 2004 - Tadeo writes - "Gil comes over to update the press releases. I get the copy of the film ready. We work on the press releases until like 12:30a.m. I drop off the film to Jesse and wish him well on his trip."
April 8th 2004 -
Here is a listing of the Film Fests 'ON THE DOWNLOW' has been accepted to (so far) ...
Turin G&L International Film Festival in Italy (April)
Jacksonville International Film Festival in Florida (May)
Antelope Valley Independent Film Festival in California (May)
NewFest 2004: The 16th New York LGB&T Film Festival (June 11th)
San Francisco International G&L Film Festival (June 22nd)
OutFest 2004 Los Angeles G&L Film Festival (July 14th)
New York International Latino Film Festival (July 28th & 30th)
Cinesol International Film Festival in Texas
More to come!
Next - On The 'Downlow' Road
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Copyright ©2004 Roger B. Domian