Xmas 2019

Been trying to watch some Xmas stuff. Saw the Joe Bob thing, which was fun. He did Black Christmas, Jack Frost(what a shitty movie though) and Silent Night Deadly Night 2.

Tried to watch something called Unholy Night. Quit after about 30 minutes.

Watched Slay Belles. Pretty mediocre.

There's a movie called Let It Snow on Netflix--not horror, but the wife wanted to watch it and it didn't look as bad as the other Hallmark movies she watches. Turns out, not bad at all.

Watched Good Tidings right now. Seemed like Clownhouse but with a Xmas slant. Has some interesting shots and decent FX at the front but eventually gets too repetitious.

Started watching Anna and the Apocalypse--it's on now, so will let ya know.

I'm gonna do a best of/worst of list soon, I think.

Got no big plans for Xmas. Made cookies for the family--the kind we had as kids. They're a giant pain to make, so nobody makes them any more. I made them last year, and they went over big, so since I can't really afford to buy any real presents this year, cookies it is.

Took me 3.5 hours of baking. So honestly I wish I just had the money to buy gift certificates...

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The job hunt goes nowhere. Not sure what the deal is. Am I overqualified? Do people look at my resume and think...why is this guy looking to do regular jobs? He's a movie director...

So maybe I take the director job off the resume? Make it seem like I'm just an editor?

I'm still doing the video work for the auction company but it's sporadic. I'll get a decent check in January, but it's just gonna go to catching me up--and won't bridge the gap in what I've missed.

I posted that gig on that web site I mentioned a while back. The one where I'd edit a movie trailer for anyone's movie. Got two inquiries pretty fast--one from a guy who had a movie that had Ed Asner in it. He was very vague in what he wanted and wouldn't answer my questions directly. So I blew him off.

Other one wanted a trailer for his short but wanted to "pick my brain" before he ordered the gig. No thanks. People just want free stuff. I give out enough of that shit on my 100 blogs.

Anyway, Merry freakin' Xmas.

FOC Work Continues

Man, is it slow going. There are a lot of places where I cut and pushed shit together, and then it moves a dissolve. That dissolve is something I can't replicate now without going to find the original takes on both sides of it. So I've been doing that.

Did I mention that apparently I now grind my teeth in my sleep?

I was chewing popcorn about a month ago and felt a hard kernel in my mouth...but it turned out it was a crown of mine that came off. About a week later, a crown on the other side cracked. I had suspicions that I was grinding my teeth, because I'd wake up with my jaw clenched a lot.

So anyway, don't have the money to go get either fixed, so they've just been like that. Sure, I have insurance, but it's still probably going to cost at least a hundred bucks. Frankly, I'm behind on my actual bills so there's ZERO money for anything else.

Getting pretty frustrated on the job thing. I've submitted to probably 15 places. Some of them I wasn't keen to get, but figured I'd put up with the job for a year or something just to get something else on the resume, maybe get some leads elsewhere.

All these money problems are probably what's causing the stress that's causing me to grind my teeth at night.

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Had a fun night the other night. I went over to Stewie's to do the other commentary track for when I eventually put out the T1 and T2 blu ray. Malfi came over and I interviewed both of them for the making of, then we started drinking.

Watched a couple warm-up flicks--The Hidden first, and I was pretty shocked that neither of them had ever seen it. Then Just One Of The Guys, which is one of those movies that always makes me feel good.

Hell, by the time we got to T2, I was pretty drunk. Kept drinking anyway.

I don't remember much of what was said during the movie. Afterward we chatted a bit, and then the guys tried really hard to get me to not drive the 3 miles to my parents' house to sober up. Didn't work. Went over there and played video games with my brother for a few hours, then drove home...on the way, I can tell ya I was second-guessing that decision.

Crashed as soon as I got home at about 4:30am. Woke up at 1pm, still buzzed. Climbed back into bed and didn't wake up until 7pm. Haven't been that drunk in a long time, but really needed some R&R.

This week is Friday fun at Zig's, then a UFC fight at Luke's.

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Been writing. Still thinking about that T3 segment, but having a hard time cracking it. Like, it's SUCH a departure from everything I've done on the other segments that I'm not sure that the people who like the others will like this one.

It's nearly 100% psychological horror. Almost no gore. It might work if it was inside the whole movie, but if I plan on releasing it in segments first, not sure.
(and did I mention that A-zon has once again revised their payments come January 202 so that we may only get paid ONE CENT per hour? Depending on how popular your stuff is...it's crazy)

Don't know, man. There was a time when I thought I knew what bleak looked like, but all that shit's getting redefined.

Long Absence

Wow, almost a month since my last update! Haven't been in the mood much to update.

Have continued to hunt for freelance or contract jobs. No joy yet, so it was a tight November. Starting to fall behind in bills. Not fun.

Finished that script adaptation of my buddy's book. It's officially the longest script I've ever written--170 pages. Too long. Every page is more money, and if we want to shoot this, we'll  be killing ourselves over how long it takes to shoot that.

We're going to sit down soon after he reads it, and see if we can't figure out what to cut. It's VERY faithful to the book. I'm thinking about doing a slightly different version.

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Also, figured I'm gonna let my Creative Suite lapse once the year is over. Can save myself some money, and just use an older version of Premiere to edit stuff.

Problem is, I gotta get the redo of FOC done before that happens, since I started working on it with the suite. (and I won't be able to edit any newer Premiere files with the older Premiere program)

Dove into it. Man, it's painful to watch the first 70 minutes of it. So many problems. So many mismatched eyelines that I can't fix now. (sometimes you can flip the pic horizontal on one side, and they'll be looking right--but only if the person is symmetrical--which Shivers is not)

Things are all weird, in that some audio goes out of sync--and the movie, as put together, is like 11 minutes longer than the Lionsgate cut. So I'm trying to figure out where I cut by figuring out where they go back into sync

Then I'm missing a couple of pieces of music. That sucks. I had to literally rip the dvd and pull a section of audio from it for one short scene. It's really not noticeable unless you have an incredible sound system.

I've had to redo the end credits from scratch, cuz when they're blown up to HD, they go fuzzy. So I retyped every name and title.

I managed to get everything together, but it's still like 9 minutes longer than the release. I'm going to have to lay the entire Lionsgate version on top of the timeline, and then go through cut by cut. That will take some time.

Been catching up on a lot of TV, and some movies. (It2 -- so, so bad after the first 20 minutes.)