PFAF Program - Page 13

It's very exciting to see "Clipped" in the festival's full-color program. No, the novelty hasn't worn off yet for me.*

I'm also happy that they pulled a cool still from the film for the sidebar photo as it was one of my favorite shots of the production. Kirk set that one up by making Matt lay on the Brooklyn Heights sidewalk for about a half hour while people kept walking around us giving funny looks. The natural light was amazing as the sun was setting across the river.

Framing Matt's face upside-down was also a great choice that adds to the disjointed psyche of the character (JP) at this point in the film. In this shot, JP starts to smile, but to the viewer's brain seeing it inverted, initially processes it as a frown. Why is JP laying on the sidewalk having so many mixed emotions? Come down at 5pm and find out!

* PFAF's standard policy for programs is to list just one member of the team, and I was the lucky one. Just so there's no confusion, we are very much a team of four Guts, and would've preferred equal billing.

The New Phonebook's Here! The New Phonebook's Here!

The Philadelphia Film & Animation Festival schedules are in, and "Clipped" has been given an amazing time slot. We'll be part of the Blue Showcase at 5:00 PM on Saturday, September 29th. We're somebody now!

"Clipped" will be sandwiched between two high-profile films: "Steampunk Vs. Superhero," from Guy Loki Productions, who ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund their puppet- and prop-heavy production; and "Four Fists of Judgment," a highly choreographed action film from Justice Productions, the making of which was well documented on them YouTubes. Also in our block is "Gary's Got Game" from Joe Blodgett, who had one of my favorite films at last year's festival, and several other 2011 award winners.

All that translates to a great quality block of entertainment, and very stiff competition. As this is Team Guts Guts Guts Guts' first year submitting a film, we're in it mostly for the fun and experience, but there's no denying how awesome it would be to hear our friends and family cheering along when "Clipped" flashes on the big screen for the first time. If you're interested in checking out the screening, you can pick up a ticket through Ticketfly, and probably in person at the festival. We'll be in town from Thursday-Sunday checking out all the films, and hope to see you around.

One last thing... here's the official "Clipped" logline, if you haven't seen it already:

JP teeters on the brink of madness as he suffers alienation after being mysteriously robbed of a basic physical ability. 

Totally vague dark dramedy comin' atcha!

The 21-Day Pizza Project

Team Guts Guts Guts Guts was not always a lean, mean, producing machine. Early on, we found that one of our weakest points was our inability to agree on a place to order food from, when to order it, and what we each wanted to eat. It was mildly annoying when it was just the four of us, but it was torture when we had hungry actors on the set, especially when we finally got the delivery, then had to taunt them with plates of food they couldn't eat during a dinner scene.

This is just a bit of what happened pretty much every time we got together:


Unfortunately, we didn't seem to get the hang of the food/work balance until the last few days of production, when we went for a staggered, Every Man For Himself feeding schedule so some of the team was always working hard while the others were fresh on the bench.

Next time we'll have to get a catering engineer on set.

Movie Poster

Designed by team member Alan Camuto, the Guts Guts Guts Guts team presents their official movie poster for their short film entitled "Clipped". Special thanks to Aisha L. Joseph for modeling her lovely hands!

Leopardactyl Scores!

Musical stupor-group Leopardactyl was enlisted to record the score to "Clipped." Because we had only a very rough cut of the film at the time, Kirk and I decided not to attempt to create the music based on visual cues and instead went with the traditional Leopardactyl approach--wing it. We thought back to the script and storyboards, watched the rough cut once, and then went off wherever our inspiration took us.

Kirk came up with 4 or 5 beats on his Korg Triton while I tuned up and got Pro Tools running. Each beat would have 2 or 3 different variations. Then we jammed on the beats until we had something we liked, and recorded it. Sometimes we would record different, but related parts for each beat's variation, and other times we recorded straight through the changes. Again, we weren't overtly concerned that we had something for each and every scene--we just wanted enough music that we enjoyed and felt represented the tone of the film overall.

The next day I edited down the sections. Some were split into short, loop-able segments to be squeezed into whatever length the scene was, and others were left in their long, complete forms. I then tackled our "dance song," which was specifically called for in the script. Two weeks earlier, I had written a few lines of lyrics, then Kirk turned them into a scrappy little techno demo in Garageband by the time we needed to shoot the scene. I then took Kirk's demo, added some MIDI percussion straight from 80s and 90s electronic drumkits, and expanded the vocals a bit. Then we slapped it right into the film.

Other tracks seemed to fit so perfectly in some scenes that it scared us. Weird, free-form sounds that Kirk added on the Korg the night before ended up mirroring visual cues with no editing involved at all. Of course, not everything was quite as simple, so the next day I recorded a few bass-only tracks based on our longer themes to fit our short framing segments. I also recorded echoing chords intended to run backwards into the flashback sequences (there's a story about those too, but it's so nerdy that I won't share it here).

In the end, we had something we liked for each scene that needed music, and even felt that some of those scenes were actually enhanced by the soundtrack. We did have one track that ultimately found no home in the film ("Clipped" is only 10 minutes long, jeez), but we liked it enough to finish it and share with you. It's called "Superjumper."