Rock 'n' Roll Nightmares

Well the next project has begun...a little sooner than I expected, but rarely do things go as planned these days.

Synapse Films will be bringing the metal/rock/horror opus ROCK N' ROLL NIGHTMARE to DVD in 2006. A new hi-def transfer has already been completed, and there will be extra features on the disc, including commentary with star/writer/rock legend Jon Mikl Thor and director John Fasano, as well as....well therein lies a tale.

In discussions for possible bonus materials for this release, the idea of shooting a new interview with Jon Mikl Thor came up, as he was due to pass through the Detroit area on a leg of his current tour. Thor was eager enough to do the interview and also threw out the idea of shooting some of the live performance itself for a possible new music video of the song "We Live To Rock" from the movie.

Well, after some communications back and forth (not easy when you are a man on a cross-country tour), Thor agreed to do the interview at the I-Rock Bar & Nightclub in Detroit last night, Saturday, August 13th. His show wasn't until late in the evening, but we decided to hook up around 7 PM at the club during setup and before any crowd activity began.

Now ideally, what I really needed was about 45 minutes before the scheduled meeting time to scope out the prime shooting location in the club, set up the camera, lights, etc. With an atmosphere like a nightclub, there would be plenty of possible options as far as backgrounds for the interview, but with the noise of sound checks, gear boxes being unloaded, and the general bar mayhem, it would make things challenging in other ways. My hope was to arrive around 6 P.M. and be ready to go upon Thor's arrival.

That was my hope. Along for the ride on this journey was Synapse co-owner Jerry Chandler, who tried to warn me on the way down to the club that these bar owners rarely get there before they have to, and tend not to be the most accomodating folks on the face of the Earth. I tried to remain optimistic, but as we arrived at the I-Rock around 6:05, there was no one around. The place was barren. And it wasn't exactly the safest neighborhood I've ever been in either. Jerry and I ended up driving around for about an hour, killing time until we just settled on waiting it out in the empty parking lot of the club, praying someone would eventually show up.

Sure enough, it wouldn't be until 7:30 when we would gain access to the place, and by then the band crews were already unloading their gear and in short the place was active as all hell. Thor and Co. arrived shortly before we entered the bar, and for the next 15 minutes, it was panic time for me.

My hope had been to set up the interview using the bare stage as a backdrop, but that was squashed immediately as the side door near the stage was wide open and the unloading of equipment was just too calamitous. I eventually settled on a smaller corner back near the bar (which wasn't open yet) which allowed for a little more privacy, and the blue 'n' red neon lights adorning the bar itself made for a nice colorful arrangement that wouldn't distract too much from Mr. Thor.

Of course, time was rapidly running out to do the interview. Soon the band would be doing soundchecks and the drums and guitars would be thumping loudly and tuning up. We had about 45 minutes to get this done, and that would include my set up time!

Somehow I got the camera positioned, a floodlight readied and the mic hooked up as Jon Mikl Thor positioned himself on a bar stool for his interview. Jerry Chandler had the task of asking the prepared questions I had typed out and I would just ride the camera for the duration.

It must be said first that Thor was wonderful. A truly nice and warm gentleman with a gregarious spirit and a real pleasure to be around. For our entire time at the club, he made Jerry and myself feel like a part of the band, and I have to say it was a real treat. I've never been much for rock shows or concerts but this was a terrific experience overall.

The interview went very well. Thor had fun playing to the camera and going back down memory lane with the movie and his career. There were a few interruptions with some of the sound checks and whatnot but nothing catastrophic. My only wish for the interview is that I had had more time to tinker with the lighting. With the few minutes I had, it was either do it fast or not at all. In the end though, the footage looked very nice. I use a Panasonic DVX-100A and shot the interview in 24p so it adds a nice warm feeling to the whole shebangabang. Even with the hasty lighting, the deep shadows and intimate surroundings I think complemented Thor well. Here's a snapshot from the footage to give you an idea of what to expect in the finished piece.

Around 8 P.M. the interview was over and Jerry and I ducked out for some pizza at Pasquale's Restaurant which was about a half-hour drive from the bar. If you've ever had pizza there you'll know why we would go that distance for the meal. Thor was due back on stage around 11 PM, and "We Live To Rock" would be the third song in his set. I wasn't at all sure how I was gonna pull this off.

I've never done anything like a music video before, or even taped a musical performance. In order to get enough coverage, you really need a multi-camera shoot. One for the stage, one to shoot the band from the crowd, and then another to capture crowd reaction and everything else that might be needed. Or the other option is for the band to perform the song more than once, so a single-camera shoot can take each of those perspectives one at a time.

Of course, I have one camera and one chance to get the song. Now Thor and his bandmates were more than accomodating and told me I had free acccess to the stage during the show and that I could do whatever I needed to get the best angles.

Jerry and I arrived back at the I-Rock around 11 p.m. and we hung out with the band backstage in the green room. Or actually it was more like a gray room with no ventilation and an odor that verified the club's multi-year history with sweaty rock and rap performers. Truly it was the smell of music...and glorious it was in a way.

Around midnight, Thor was on. I decided to go out and tape the first two songs from various angles, which would allow me to get more comfortable with the stage as well as pick up bits and pieces that could be used as cutaways for the video. This was a largely successful idea, and I have a feeling I should have enough to cut something together with. Then "We Live To Rock" was upon me, and before I knew it the song was over and I had managed to capture it from the stage and with the crowd and back again on the stage. By and large I got some pretty good coverage, and I was thrilled with the lighting and the general atmosphere that got captured while I was onstage. This camera is terrific in odd lighting situations, and it got the all the vibrant stage lights and smoke with a great deal of clarity. Here's one moment from the song that turned out pretty nice I think...

After the show, Jerry and I exchanged goodbyes with Thor and the band as well as the refreshingly non-difficult manager of the I-Rock club who was very genial and helpful during our time there. Thor, as I write this, is getting ready to perform in Madison, Wisconsin before heading south on his grand tour of America. I certainly wish him and his band the best, and if you have a chance to see him, I cannot recommend it enough. Check out his tour schedule at www.ThorCentral.com

So, now I have the footage and in the next few weeks I will start putting stuff together. Although taping the interview and performances was a rushed process, the editing will not be as the DVD isn't due until next year.

In the meantime, I've got some other projects looming, including one I'm really looking forward to...but this blog entry has gone on long enough so I'll save that for next time.

Thanks for reading, and rock on!

"Nailed" Shut!

Well it's done. NAILED has wrapped...at last.

After the grueling multi-interview fest that was AFTEREFFECTS, I figured NAILED, with its single interview format, would be a nice little job with little or no real roadblocks or problems.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Believe me, when you are a producer or editor, you gain an immediate sympathy for anyone who ventures into this profession and can somehow manage to not only keep their sanity but actually turn out decent work. The time pressures, the technical demands, and most importantly the creative decisionmaking can be overbearing to a large degree most of the time.

With NAILED, I was in an awkward situation. The interview in question was with writer/director Terry Lofton. It was originally filmed for the director's own limited edition DVD of NAIL GUN MASSACRE which was released late last year before Synapse acquired the rights to do an official special edition release which is due in October.

The footage was shot by Loyd Cryer of Dallas, Texas and was filmed on location in Seagoville, Texas in the general store where a couple of the film's scenes were shot. The footage was then edited into a 25 minute piece which appears on the aforementioned LE DVD from Lofton.

This is the same footage that was sent to me to create my own featurette, since the distributors wanted something new to promote this upcoming remastered DVD with. Understandable, but a little problematic. Was I to take the existing featurette (which wasn't bad at all, to be honest) and just remaster and tinker with it a little bit, or should I start from scratch? As good as the interview was, there were many questions I would have asked that weren't, and I felt that I might not have what I needed to do the piece.

It was this debate that held me up on this project for a while. Briefly I seriously entertained travelling down to Texas to re-film Terry Lofton therefore avoiding this issue altogether, but personal and budgetary restrictions put a kibosh on that plan.

So in the end, I decided to simply re-trace the steps of the original featurette and essentially remaster the whole thing from scratch. All the film clips used in the first featurette were off an older master, so I would be able to use the new HD 16x9 master to replace those old clips with brand spankin' new ones. Speaking of 16x9, I decided to reformat all the interview clips for the widescreen format, since the film was going to be presented that way for the first time.

This is a tricky proposition since anytime you blow-up or otherwise mess with exisiting 4x3 video and try to adapt it to new anamorphic 16x9 dimensions, you run the risk of creating a seriously softened or grainier image along with the potential for reduced definition and an overall lackluster presentation. Fortunately the interview footage survived the transition very well with just a hint of softness on the edges.

What also helped is that the interview originally had very intense and colorful lighting which for reasons unknown to me, was leeched out of the featurette on the LE DVD. Although at times the hues on the footage were a bit much, I ended up keeping the rich colors at the original intensity which helped brighten up the proceedings immensely.

Here's a comparison to help illustrate what I am talking about.



Fortunately for the purposes of the 16x9 conversion, the interview had been largely framed in the camera with a great deal of headroom or space at the bottom of the frame which allowed me to repurpose all the shots in widescreen without sacrificing any compositional integrity. Ooh that's a pompous phrase isn't it?....Compositional integrity...man I'm high-falutin aints I?

I have to give props to Cryer and his cameraman for the interview. The various questions were all good and they seemed to get a lot out of Terry Lofton, who comes off as a very genial and good-natured guy. Hopefully they'll like the new featurette. I ended up dramatically altering the structure and the editing of the piece as I went along, so it doesn't bear much resemblance to what came before. Some bits I left out, and I added back in about 3 minutes of footage that went unused before. I ended up shooting a cool title sequence in my basement for it, which involved eight boxes of nails...but I'll let you find out more about that when the DVD hits this Fall.

Ironically after all was said and done, NAILED is almost exactly the same length as the previous featurette, but contains about 4 minutes more of Terry Lofton's interview than the other one? Just goes to show you how inexact a science editing can be sometimes. Personal styles and preferences can radically change the content at any given stage. In a way, I wish the old featurette could be included so people could see two different shots at the same material, but I think NAILED will satisfy. I'm happy with it.

I also put together an expanded section of outtakes that runs longer than the previous DVDs selection. Since the outtakes' original audio tracks are long gone, I ended up cutting together some unused comments from Terry's interview into sort of a makeshift commentary for the outtakes. Turned out pretty good actually.

Well NAIL GUN MASSACRE has now officially left my radar....on to other stuff. I'm getting ready to start posting clips of the various Red Shirt projects on the website. In case you haven't noticed yet, the Our Projects and About Us sections of the site are finally finished.

There is a major new documentary project on the horizon, but I can't talk about it yet. Hopefully for the next update.

Thanks for reading, and I appreciate that you keep coming by to read this crap!