Melody and the Old Sock's progress in post has been a little slow, but we're doing some retooling, and now that the holidays are over we're back in the editing suite, with post producer Joel Sacramento on point. I greatly appreciate the emails, calls, texts, naughty phone-camera pics, and the occasional surprise influx of cash (thank you, Stephen D) expressing continued support for the project.  This stuff is mighty helpful for keeping up my Pollyanna-like demeanor when challenges arise.  

There's a recent blog entry on my sporadic Melody production blog featuring our talented producer Katharin Mraz, whose company Ladie K Productions, Inc is "in association with" FMM and Atomic Puppy to make the film.  Check it out at www.cinefile.com/scott.  She makes being a workaholic look good! 

As far as production goes, there's just one shot we still need to get.  It involves a long tunnel, over half a mile of of yarn and string, and some old-school camera tricks.  The prop is quite a work of art in its own right.  Lane and Christian are finalizing the mechanics of movement and lighting for this rather unique technical challenge that we'll shoot before winter's end.

Here are a few behind the scenes stills from our most recent round of pick-ups in October, shot by Joel shortly after the last update.  We usually post 'em on the Melody Facebook Page, but we'll give you guys a peek first.  We reproduced the alley we shot in last April, and K found a fearless double (Jamie Kearns) who was game for anything, and lots of fun to play with.  You'll see me operating Old Sock in some of the pics, but they're just reaction shots and whatnot, and it wasn't worth pulling Monica off her other projects for it.  Rest assured, Monica remains the soul of Old Sock in the film.

That should do it for now. 

Until the next update:

Peace!

Scott

Hi Folks,

Terry Jun (Co-Creator/Exec Producer/DP/Visual Effects Supervisor) reminded me that there hasn’t been a progress report in quite some time.  My bad.  Here’s the short version:

Our new editor Mariia Wiemken is currently in Moscow, playing around with the Melody footage while editing for a successful TV series.  Michelle Gajus is working on some interesting ideas for an evocative credit sequence.  Illustrator Justin Chung just finished a book for Marvel, and is working on a kickin' one-sheet design.

Nearly everyone on the core production team is busy with exciting new projects, but rest assured, Melody continues to make progress.  It’s all taking longer than we hoped it would, but we’re determined to put out something you’ll be proud to be a part of.  It ain't comin' out the oven till it's done!

Did I miss mentioning stuff?  Surely, but that’s the gist of it.  More later.  In the meantime, here are some stills from our last round of pick-ups.

Thanks for hanging in there with us!

Scott

As many of you know, we have wrapped shooting on Melody and the Old Sock, aside from a day's worth of pick-ups, which I'm determining now as I go through the footage.  The machinery has been set in motion to get your Kickstarter incentives out to you, though it'll be a short while on that; we'll keep you posted.

I've attached 3 screen captures that correlate to the storyboard in Update #5, to give you an idea of how we went with that scene.  There were 2 notable changes from the way the shot was originally planned:  Delaney (DP) and Mike (AC) employed a "slider," which is basically a heavy-duty tripod-mounted dolly, to push in on Karisa (Melody) during the scene to add emotional impact.  Also, the blood drips in the sink never looked quite right, so Karisa suggested the blood smear, which worked like a charm.

3/26 12:10 AM

We resume shooting in a few hours, thanks to all of you!  It's midnight, so I should get some sleep.  Before I do that, here's the first shot of the second round of shooting for your perusal.

Our D.P. Lane drew the storyboards.  We're scheduled to spend two hours on this shot, from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM central time: an hour to block, frame, and light it, and another hour to rehearse both performance and camera movement.  I'd like to say we won't need that much time, but who can say?

The bathroom and hall outside it will be a closed set, essential personell only: Me, DP, AC, Sound, Gaffer, and possibly a grip.  There will be about 20 people chilling nearby, ready to spring into action. 

The team is amazing, and happy to be back in the thick of it!

Hi, gang

Thanks to all of you, and a couple of generous donors who chose to give cash instead of put it on their cards (Thank you, Allan and Charles!), we made our goal!

We resume shooting next weekend.

Booya.