After learning of the editing disaster I ran a couple of errands and bought some more tickets to the gala for people who had helped us, then went to fuego’s hotel to hang before the ceremony. I took the laptop down to the gardens, where a crew was busily setting up for a wedding. I found a table in the shade, settled in, then went to fetch a beer.

I tried not to think of the upcoming festivities. From this point, far distant, I know I wrote, editing one of my works in progress, but I have no specifics. It’s not important. It was a pleasant afternoon, and I was in a pleasant place. I roused myself to go share an early supper with the folks, who are as excited about this whole thing as I am, and from there I went down to the Kiva, a big ‘ol theater at the Albuquerque convention center. There was no way we were going to fill that place. Not with the price of entry at eighteen bucks plus fees, twenty-five at the door.

I heard that fuego was on the way; they had finished an “exhibition edit” of Pirates only half an hour before. I cornered him when he arrived. He was near-delirious from sleep deprivation. “The cut the judges got,” he said, “has problems. Chippie never rendered all the title graphics, and there’s a couple other holes.” I was dismayed by the title graphic thing, as whole disaster had been when they copied the files to the master machine. Everyone had assumed they were done. Chippie just had a different definition of “done”. The version the crowd would see was much better than what the judges got. At that moment I wrote off any hope of carrying away the grand prize.

Each crew got a block of free tickets. The number of tickets for our crew was far from adequate, so I had bought a bunch more so everyone could get in. I stood near the ticket window, intercepting our crew members and giving out tickets. The show was starting, time was running out, and I still had a couple of tickets. Effin’ Genie had asked for eight tickets, but I had held the line at two and a DVD. She was a no-show, leaving me with two extra very expensive tickets.

Meanwhile, the line stretched across the lobby. This was a hot ticket indeed, and my days of bitching about the ticket price seemed unfounded. People were coming. They were excited. This was a Big Event.

The show was starting, but I needed to get a beer before I went in. By the time I got inside it was dark, and I couldn’t find the rest of my people. I missed the introductory speeches, boo hoo, and groped my way to a seat as the first of the sorts, Sympathy for the Devil, began. It was good. There was not nearly as much to the script as we had, which gave them the time to show some beautiful scenery. The movie is, at heart, a single joke, and they did it well. They got a big round of applause and deserved it.

Next came Confessions of a Reluctant Bra Buyer. This flick was a sweet story of a girl coming of age, and the whole production lived or died on the girl they could cast in the lead role. I had been around for much of the casting and I was worried for them. Not a problem. The lead was on it, sincere, and cute as heck. She was natural and easy in front of the camera. A couple of the supporting roles were weaker, but overall the movie worked. Big cheers, well deserved, etc.

Between flicks I had been trying to find my people, but at the start of the third movie I was still standing in the back, just behind the sound guys. The third movie was Pirates of the White Sand. I stood, rigid, nervous, as the camera moved from the pirate flag flapping in the breeze to Captain Moab, for his first line. People were laughing. There was a buzz about Pirates, and people were ready. I wasn’t thrilled about the audio in the first bit, but things were working as we hammered into the opening titles, Bird and Dway’s fucking awesome music launching us into the movie as we watched the Crusader roaring down the empty highway.

Then they turned it down. I was all over the sound guy. “Can you turn it up? This is rock and roll!” he pointed to the next booth over. “It’s their call.”

I popped over to the next booth and there was Smithers. “I need it louder!” I said, and he hopped out of his seat to talk to the sound guy.

By the time he got there, the titles were over and the dialog had started. “Oh, Hell,” Ruthie said, booming though the auditorium. Good thing they hadn’t turned it up. “Que?” asked Miguel, almost inaudible. “You know those guys?” I stepped back from the sound console and leaned against the back wall for support. The editors had spent long hours before the disaster trying to compensate for terribly shoddy sound work on set, and most of that had been lost. I stayed for the whole movie, but just barely. The audience was still reacting well, getting into the whole pirate vibe, but I was dying. It wasn’t just the audio, the lighting was unbalanced and harsh. Some of the acting wasn’t up to par. The last was my fault. Ruthie had been steadily improving during the shoot, but Miguel never showed on set what he had in his audition. Maybe in the future, when fuego as director doesn’t have all the other shit to worry about that an AD would normally handle, he will be able to spend more energy on the performance of the actors. There are times when I decided to keep out of the way when a choice comment – “Jimmy! Give me more! Show me what you had during casting!” may have made a difference. In this way I failed fuego, the crew, and myself. Sure, it’s easy to say in hindsight, and hindsight is the devil’s currency, but there it is. I could have done better.

A tougher time when I knew things weren’t going the way I wanted them to, but sat back and relied on the experts: I came to the set to find a very subdued set of pirates. They were trying as hard as they could to put out, but the sound guy had told them they were too loud. I sat outside, head in hands, listening to quiet pirates. These were the same guys that had swept me along with them with their shouting during rehearsals, soaring on the joy and unfettered exuberance. Right then I should have had a smack-down with the sound guy. “Buddy,” I ought to have said, “We’re all here to serve the story. And in the story people are shouting. Your challenge is to make it work.”

I didn’t say that, but on the last day of shooting we set up the boys again and let them holler. A lot of that footage is in the cut. We needed more. We needed more even miking. We needed fewer boom shadows ruining sweet takes. We needed a sound pro on set. Our main guy may have known sound, but he lacked leadership, did not tutor or demand the best of his crew, and I found myself listening to an emergency cut with audio problems that, in my ignorant opinion, should never have made it off the set. “Cut,” says the director. He looks at the Director of Photography, he looks at his sound guy, and he says, “Print it.” He is counting on his crew to tell him if there were problems. Sound guy’s biggest flaw was that he was quiet when he needed to make noise.

As the showing of our little flick ended I ran into Dog Bone, who had played one of the pirates. He’s been in a big movie or two, and only reluctantly joined our scurvy crew, based on his belief in the strength of the script. He was pissed at the result. I was pissed too, and neither of us did anything to diminish the other’s pissedness. He went off looking to beat up Charles the First. I just wanted out of there.

More flicks came and went, and many of them were good. Coppola’s work was, frankly, tedious, but a lot of people ate it up. I must have missed something.

Blah, blah, blah. On to the awards.

Moab got best actor. He is the single reason that we couldn’t fit our little story in twelve minutes. There was just so much of him, and it hurt to cut any of him out. He deserved it, and let’s all raise a toast to Cap’n Moab. Toooooooooooooast!

The audience did not see the same film the judges saw, and that is part of the reason we won the audience choice award. We had a lot of shouting on our side. We stood up on stage, fuego and I, holding our little plastic trophy in sweaty hands, as they announced the grand prize winner. It was not us. Nor should it have been. It is possible, when we get the real cut together, that ours will eclipse the other entries. We certainly have the most to gain by throwing off all the other restrictions – we have footage wew couldn’t use, and we have the time to tell the story right. I’m really, really anxious to see how it comes out.

4

Sweet!

Thanks!

I managed to finagle my way into the editing room yesterday, but it did nothing to put me at ease – in fact, it did the opposite. The sound was uneven, thre was no background audio, the music wasn’t in, the lights were harsh and flat, and there were still plenty of rough spots in the flow. The movie is only allowed to the twelve minutes long, and this cut was fourteen and a half.

Charles the First didn’t seem worried. He estimated five hours to have something good enough, and the rest of the time until this morning to make it continuously better. He knows far more about the biz than I do, but I’ve been the boss of enough optimistic software engineers to trust my instincts when they give me an estimate. What it boils down to is that when you have lots of little things to do, and each time estimate has an error of half an hour, when you estimate your safety factor you have to combine the estimated error range of each task. I was seeing a possible creep of several hours just to get the piece to a showable state.

I wasn’t worried about the length until later, when I realized that a whole sequence was missing from the version I watched.

They asked me for feedback, and I pointed out a couple of problem areas, but the sound was bad enough that I didn’t think about other issues until later. Over the course of the afternoon and evening I left a series of messages with fuego about lighting and timing of certain parts. I never heard back.

Part of me (most of me) says “Those guys are pros, anything I spot they can see also,” but they’re awfully close to it now. They may just be accustomed to the way certain things are, and not be able to see that the comedic timing is off.

It doesn’t matter anymore. The tape was due more than an hour ago. I have heard nothing from them, but they must be tired. While I slept last night they were down in the trenches. However it comes out it won’t be for lack of effort or lack of skill. Pablo is with them, and he’s damn good. Another editor down from Santa Fe Arthur the Dog-Face Boy, was putting the finishing touches on the title sequence last I heard. The work could not have been in better hands.

Still, skilled and dedicated workers or not, the second hands keeps sweeping around, minutes and hours tick past, and no amount of skill can stop them. They are sleeping now, I hope, with smiles on their faces, knowing they have done well. All I can do is wait.

4

Sweet!

Thanks!

Drove out to the set with Charles the First and a whole bunch of breakfast burritos in tow, to supplement the meager fare provided by the Shootout. I was immediately a very popular guy. Yes, you can buy friendship, if you use the correct currency. There was a good buzz on the set as we set up to finish the interior shots. I had my laptop with me of course, and on the computer was the rendition of “All for Me Grog” that was going to form the backbone of the music. On tap for today was to finish filming the interior, leaving us with helicopters and re-dos for our last day of shooting.

I hooked up the laptop to the boom box that served as the bar’s sound system, so we could play it before action started, allowing Kentucky Jack to get the time for dancing on the table. The shot was a long boom/dolly shot that followed the pitcher from a table back to the bar, showing all the pirates partying madly on the way. When the pitcher reaches the bar there is business with Ruthie, Moab, and Izzy. We rehearsed the shot a few times, and then went for it, me turning the musing on and off and then hiding behind the bar. Kentucky Jack would dance wildly for the duration of the shot, then do it again, and again. The dude was in shape, no doubt about it.

Finally it all worked perfectly. Everything moved together, the dialog between Moab and Ruthie was good, and all were happy. Except Giovanni. He stood up from the camera and said, “boom shadow”. Everyone groaned. fuego made a colorful comment in Czech. The microphone boom was casting a shadow on the far wall, obvious in the shot, ruining it. No one had told Louie how to wiggle the boom to see where its shadows were. I doubt he was even aware that it was part of his responsibility to check for shadows. Giovanni calmed himself, they figured out a new place for the boom, and kept trying.

I left before lunchtime – no sense in using up more of the precious food, although by now Rudolph was making runs to a nearby casino for trays of extra food. I needed to get back anyway, to sit with Pablo and go over the opening credit sequence. Progress on that front was slow; the treasure map wasn’t even done yet, and the other elements of the animation were not ever begun. So we sat, I went over how I would like things to move and how the story of the treasure was to be revealed along with the story of who had made the film. After that I called fuego, to see if there was anything I could take out to them on the set. “We wrapped early,” he said. “We have everything we need.”

I thought of things I wanted them to take another shot at – shots of pirates when they are allowed to raise their voices was at the top of my list, and it looked like after the helicopters in the morning we would have time to go back and try several of the things that we good but could be better. Giovanni was arranging to borrow a longer boom for the car pull-away shot, and we could go for better performances in a couple of key places as well. Word from the editing room was that audio levels were good, and we were all feeling the excitement of a production going smoothly.

2

Sweet!

Thanks!

NOTE: I plan to add pictures here, but words come first.

After finally surrendering to sleep at about 2:30, I set the alarm for 5:30. That wasn’t necessary; when it went off I had been up for an hour already, sucking down caffeine and trying to set up rocket igniters with shaking hands. I put things aside and went downtown for the last, most appropriate, and silliest of the pre-shoot ceremonies, the traditional shotgun start. When I got there the streets were blocked off, and Central Avenue was filled with milling film wanna-bees like me and film pros like fuego. A city bus was parked in the middle of the street. I had missed the big arrival of Coppola’s crew in their rolling set, but the man always likes to make an entrance.

His movie is either going to be brilliant or it’s going to suck hard.

Poof! The fake shotgun fired confetti into the air, at which point the Directors of Photography were supposed to race to their cameras, giving the event a sense of urgency. Right. Someone who’s been around long enough to be a DP isn’t going to race down the middle of the street in front of a lot of people. After a dignified stroll by the seven top camera guys it was time to rally the troops and get them out to the site.

Tired and wired I made my way back home to pack up the potato – this damn tuber-based special effect that has dominated my waking hours and haunted my dreams. Soon it would be over. I did a little more setup, testing the balance of the spud in the holder. Meanwhile, I needed to print up a set of storyboards. Pablo was coming by the house to pick them up so we could put them up on the wall at the location. Maybe it was the humidity, maybe sunspots, maybe I was just doing it wrong, but that damn printer did not want to work. I would get perhaps a page or two — sometimes none at all — before warning lights flashed, a klaxon sounded, the reactor scrambled and the neighborhood had to be evacuated.

The evacuation was necessary to protect the neighbors from the choice stream of invective issuing from my throat, complete with a spray of blood-tinged spittle.

OK, maybe I’m exaggerating a little. Anyway, by the time Pablo got there, about two-thirds of the pages had printed. I gave him those and promised the rest when I came out to the set. He left and I continued. When my vision wasn’t too clouded by blue spots caused by hyperventilation I worked on the potato, carefully taping sparkler fragments to rocket igniters, sorting them into piles of red and green. Finally I was ready to pack up and head out to the set.

Before I left I checked my email quickly, and waiting for me was a message from a musician buddy of mine. I hadn’t heard a response from my last nervous plea and had written him off, but Harvey had come through. He and Doug had put together a cover of an old sailor’s tune, All For Me Grog that rocked. Perfect for the last remaining musical hole in the flick, which starts with a shot of an empty pitcher with GROG written on the side. One listen to the music lifted my spirits immensely.

The morning was already heating up, and the humidity was becoming oppressive. As I wove down the deserted highway one of the lenses fell out of my sunglasses and the potato in the trunk started making an odd bubbling noise. The car began to glow…

No, wait, that’s Repo Man.

When I reached the set shooting had begun. fuego had decided to start with an exterior shot while the sky was still relatively empty. A big, loud fan was providing wind enough to hold Jolly Roger stiffly flapping, just as the script called for. I watched for a while as they repeated the shot in different ways, sometimes optimozed for wind, sometimes for sound. We paused when trains rumbled past nearby or a light plane buzzed overhead.

“Let’s move on,” fuego said, and the first shot was in the can. More than a hundred shots to go, but the team was working well.

I set up an area inside the bar and laid out the potato tools, but I held off carving up the stunt spud in case we wanted a hero shot of it in Kentucky Jack’s hand first. There was little for me to do then, except lend an ineffectual hand to Bonnie and her assistant Alex as they completed set dressing, undermine Archie’s productivity as he tinkered away on props in his mobile workshop, and hand out by the food table. I was a cheerleader more than anything else, but the pirate energy was gradually mounting, and there was a buzz on the set that things were working.

After the parking lot scene, it was time for the pirates to load up into the Crusader and head out onto the highway for the trickiest shot of all. The Sheriff’s department was there to seal off the road while we shot, the pirates filled the crusader to overflowing, the flag snapped in the breeze as the mighty vehicle pulled out of the parking lot for the first run. What followed was a long, grueling, sun-baked period, fuego’s voice crackling over the walkie-talkie: “Let’s do it again.” Finally we were as close to getting the shot as our equipment would allow, which meant it was not bad but not great. The editors had a lot to work with and there was coverage to fall back on if the shot just didn’t work out. Archie had created a superb “Crusader” nameplate for the back of the craft that gave us a nice alternate shot.

Some time later that morning the documentary crew showed up. There were two cameramen, a producer… and the woman I had see at the party the night before. The one who looked like Rose. She was interviewing crew members during the lunch break, and eventually she asked to interview me. “My name’s Delilah,” she said. She has dimples and an open smile. Her eyes were behind sunglasses.

The cameras focussed on me. The last time I had been interviewed was long ago, and I had been wooden and awkward. Not this time. We were making a movie, based on words I had helped write, and I was floating. I projected my excitement back at Delilah and into the camera, and they were all smiling too, and I could feel them catch the bug. I don’t remember what all the questions were, and I don’t remember very many of my answers, but Delilah and I had a nice chat. “We’re making a movie!” I said more than once.

She ended by asking me about the creative process. My answer to that is different than what most people expect, and I wish I had another chance to express it for the cameras. Later, I came up with a much more succinct answer than the ramble I gave the cameras: Everyone is creative. Artists are people who use their creativity and finish what they start. That last part is important. How many creative projects have you, dear reader, started and not finished, or simply planned in your head, hoping to do one day?

After the interviews, Delilah and crew stuck around for a while, to get some footage of one of our particularly choice shots. Perhaps it was my imagination, but she seemed to be hanging around next to me more than was strictly necessary. I was all right with that, though when Moab came over to discuss the woman he had slept with the night before (complete with body language) it did kind of spoil the magic. “Are you in love?” Delilah asked. “Oh, no,” replied the pirate captain. “My primary lover is here in town.”

I think it was my imagination — the hanging out part, that is. Finally I had to prepare the potato, and I didn’t see much of Delilah after that. I carved and taped, and Archie provided improvised toothpicks to hold the stunt potato together. I broke a potato probe, but fortunately the electrician had a spare. All was ready, or as ready as it was going to be. I went back outside but Delilah was gone. She would not see my big moment on set, when my pyrotechnics would either make or break my career as a special effects guy.

As it turned out, I wouldn’t get to see it either. I was hunkered down in the dirt behind the bow of the Crusader, watching Pablo for a signal when Kentucky Jack stuck the probes into the potato. Finally all was rigged and ready. I lay in the dirt as we went through a couple of rehearsals. I watched Moab and the crew working together as if they had been sailing together all their lives. Nobby Pete was off-the-wall looney and added to every shot. Rehearsals done, I gripped two wires between sweaty fingers and watched for my cue.

“Hold on,” Giovanni, the Director of Photography, said. A glitch was fixed and we were ready.

“Train,” Sam the sound guy said. We waited for the lumbering freight to pass. I wiped my palms on my grubby shorts and waited along with everyone else.

Finally, fuego said “action.” Paul gave me the cue and I touched the wires together. After a small but agonizing delay I heard the hiss and saw the look of surprise on Pablo’s face. “It worked! It worked!” hollered Nobby Pete, ad-libbing. I wanted to holler, too.

I had ammo for three more shots, and we used it all, and it worked every time. We adjusted for the delay and things got even better. On the last take the delay was longer than on the others (it used a different style of rocket igniter), and (I am told) Nobby Pete had time to put a disappointed look on his face before lighting up along with the potato. I scrambled up out of the dirt and my work was done.

The rest of the day passed. The plan had been to use the last part of the day to rehearse the biggest scene, an interior shot, but things went so smoothly we had time to go ahead and shoot it. We wrapped for the day, tired, dirty, and ahead of schedule.

1

Sweet!

Thanks!

A most productive day indeed. We started out by meeting Rudy and Bonnie a J&J Café. fuego looked around the place and said, “This is a lot better than I thought from the pictures.” We discussed how we were going to make the shots work, how we were going to build the counter, and so forth. We had a viable location and the director had blessed it. *Whew!* We could get going on the serious set preparation.

Still, the other site under consideration, Wild Horse Mesa Bar, was just plain better on the outside. Sitting alone along a stretch of 2-lane, there’s just nothing else like it. We discussed ways to perhaps cheat the WHMB Exterior onto J&J, but the places are simply too different. It was still morning, and WHMB doesn’t open until two. fuego and I ran around town, getting his phone set up and other essentials and peering through the window of a defunct diner whose furniture we may be using. The stuff was nice, if a little too shiny and new. It didn’t really match J&J’s that well, though.

In the early afternoon we met back up with the others and we headed out into the desert to choose which stretch of highway worked for which shot. It’s beautiful out there; our little flick is going to be gorgeous. After a few photo stops we were at White Horse Mesa Bar. It was open and busy – not with patrons but with painters. Genie, the owner, is sprucing the place up (and adding more Christmas lights).

fuego looked around a bit, found a great shot through the front door, across the parking lot, past a faded sign for the bar, and on to the red mesas beyond. I been aware of the shot, but I had not communicated the potential to fuego effectively. Sometimes you just have to be there. Pending a conversation with the Art Director, we selected White Horse Mesa Bar as our location. If Bonnie said OK, we could get going on the serious set preparation.

That evening it was back to Los Alamos for fuego and me, to recover the Hotelsmobile and see the folks. And heck, as long as we were up on the hill for the evening, we took the opportunity to stay out with Jojo (my beer slave) and Spencer until the wee hours of the morning. We enjoyed the distinctive ambience of Canyon Bar and Grill. We even got to see a bar fight! Woohoo!

1

Sweet!

Thanks!