News Updates From Michael Heck

NEWS UPDATES FROM MICHAEL HECK

.:April 29, 2009:.

Following up on recent news:

I have now submitted Motel Room to its first film festival in probably 4 years. I'll let you know if it gets in.

I took a look through my photographs and found lots of interesting stuff, but nothing from the October 1998 Corn shoot. Then I remembered that that was the semester that I took Photo 2 and printed a lot of my own phototgraphs, including the ones I took that day. The investigation continues.

Still battling with the IMDb, although they did add a "Trivia" section to the Puzzled page. Still hoping to get Nathan DuPree, Nathan DuPree: The Preginning, and Motel Room up there soon!

From Fall 1997, Ben Miller's Color Sync shoot in Far Rockaway, Queens, photo by Marta Bartholomew:

.:April 28, 2009:.

In honor of Puzzled's trip to Cannes next month, I've made my first-ever postcard!

Unfortunately I took no pictures during the making of Puzzled (although I have pictures of almost everything else from 1997, including some of Marta Bartholomew's pictures from Ben Miller's Color Sync shoot in Far Rockaway and Reuben Monastra's all-night extravaganza Color Sync trip to Binghampton), so all the images I have are taken directly out of the film, which means the resolution is pretty low. So it looks fine as a postcard, and on screen, but my dreams of having a full-sized poster will have to wait for another day.

This reminds me that many years ago I actually made posters for Nathan DuPree, Herb X, and Corn while working a particularly un-demanding office job (I recall designing them on Word, printing them on 11x17 ledger paper, and then photocopying them several times on different machines in order to make them look not like photocopies). What this means is that somewhere I have pictures from the Corn shoot from October 1998, although I haven't looked at them for the better part of a decade, but it might be fun to find them and put them up here, or maybe even design that poster of my dreams!

Also, all of this fun with Puzzled is making me regret the way I handled Motel Room. Motel Room was my biggest production yet, and although I did send it out to a (very) few festivals, it never had a premiere and was only shown on DVD to the cast, crew, and friends. So I recently added Motel Room to withoutabox.com, and I'm going to start looking for some festivals or markets that don't mind that the film was completed in 2005.

.:April 21, 2009:.

After 10 years, I'm finally on the IMDb! CHECK IT OUT!

Although this may not seem terribly exciting, it's pretty cool to me, because in order to get a film on the IMDb, it has to have an official "premiere," which not all of my films have. As you can see, my only credit so far is Puzzled, and the reason is that Puzzled will have its premiere this May at the Festival de Cannes in the Short Film Corner! This means I get to use this whenever Puzzled is mentioned:

And I am officially accredited for the 2009 Festival de Cannes, which means I can pretty much go wherever I want, if I happen to be in Cannes next month.

And I spruced up the Puzzled page to reflect its status as an officially premiered film: CLICK HERE!

I have a link on there to Puzzled's page on the Short Film Corner website, which is in French, but you can get to in English if you click around a bit.

.:April 14, 2009:.

I've never been one for film festivals, maybe because I applied to so many with Nathan DuPree and Nathan DuPree: The Preginning and only got into one each. Not that that's really bad, but I guess I never understood what was supposed to happen at festivals, so even if I had gotten into more of them, I wouldn't have known what to do once I was there. (For pictures from the 2003 Nihilist Film Festival, the World Premiere of Nathan DuPree: The Preginning, CLICK HERE!) So I never really applied to any festivals with Motel Room, and now I'm past the completion date for most of them for that film, anyway. But Puzzled, which was completed in 2008, is still mostly eligible, and so I thought it would make sense if I applied to some festivals with that film, because if I got in now I'd have something to talk about, now that I have a new project I'm working on and everything.

I used to apply for film festivals on paper. In fact, I even made a really nice press kit for Nathan DuPree: The Preginning, which I had printed and everything. These days, everything's on withoutabox.com, which is fine with me. What's even better is that most festivals can screen from DVD, which is totally not like it used to be. I used to send a VHS screener, and then if the film got accepted, most festivals would only screen film. I mean, that's pretty complicated.

This is a good opportunity to mention that recently Christina Johnson gave me a 16mm projector that she rescued from the garbage heap at her job (I think). So when I finally dragged in into my apartment I projected (on my wall) the final answer print from Nathan DuPree for the first time since the NYU First Run Festival in March 2000. It looked great but was completely out of sync, which I don't remember being such a problem the first time around. And since going out of sync is not something that usually happens to film prints over time, I imagine that problem lay elsewhere, although since it's the only film print I've ever made, I have nothing to compare it to.

.:April 7, 2009:.

I've been hearing a lot of amazing things about the movie Anvil since seeing the director and stars at the SoHo Apple Store recently. If you're thinking of seeing the movie but the trailer doesn't convince you, how about this video of the band recording their first song, Thumb Hang, for Rock Band? At 47 seconds it's a bit short (only Lips recording his solo), but I think it gives the right idea: CLICK HERE!

.:April 3, 2009:.

I've been taking lots of pictures lately, especially around Brooklyn. The weather's getting pretty nice so it's the perfect time to go out and explore, and believe me there's always lots to discover, no matter where you are. These were taken on March 12, when it maybe wasn't so warm yet, in the Gowanus area of Brooklyn. On a slightly different topic, I love shooting black and white, but I can't find a lab that will process 4x6 prints on black and white paper any more. I used to have it done at Spectra all the time, but the last time I was there, the prints came back on color paper, and they explained that real black and white machine prints don't exist any more. The next time I went over there, Spectra didn't exist any more.

.:March 31, 2009:.

It occurred to me that someone (anyone?) out there might be wondering, perhaps, whether Puzzled was shot on the Arri-SR or the CP-16. Or maybe, there is a person somewhere on earth confused about which of my films were edited on the Avid and which on Final Cut Pro (and which on tape-to-tape Beta-SP). Well, no more! I've created a new Films Details page that gives pretty much all of the information I have about all the films I've made. It gives basic technical details about the camera, sound, and editing equipment used for each film and video.

I can't imagine it, but if there is anyone out there who is not satisfied, and needs more information, let me know. Really though, I can't imagine it.

Films details page: CLICK HERE!

.:March 26, 2009:.

Last night I went over to the Apple store in SoHo and saw the best movie-related talkback I've ever attended. It was for Anvil: The Story of Anvil, a new documentary by Sacha Gervasi about the everlasting Canadian hard-rock band Anvil (Robb Reiner and Steve "Lips" Kudlow). Robb and Lips have been rocking together for over thirty years, and the movie chronicles their life together as lifelong friends and bandmates in a band that never quite had the success of their contemporaries. Some of the stories they were telling were absolutely amazing, and I can't wait to see the whole film (we were only shown clips, including a clip about the history of their first song, "Thumb Hang," the topic of which was culled from a high school lecture in Social Studies class about the Spanish Inquisition). And WWE star Chris Jericho was there!

To check out the movie's website and watch the trailer, CLICK HERE!

.:March 24, 2009:.

The Heck/Miller/Mirabello masterpiece Corn is now online! Filmed in October of 1998 in my dorm room with an Arri-S and just completed last year with new music by Adam Blau, Corn was an unofficial 6th Sight & Sound film (two years later) and was the last film I made with any Group 8 member in film school. It is also totally awsome, and features me in my only credited acting role in a film I directed or co-directed. Check it out!

» Watch Corn

.:March 17, 2009:.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I was lucky enough to share part of this St. Patrick's Day with the great Bill Winters! For those of you who still haven't seen his amazing reel, click CLICK HERE!

.:March 10, 2009:.

More work on the new project...things are going pretty well. I've also had a nagging desire to finish Motel Room in HD. It was actually shot in HDCAM, but to be honest with you, I don't know anything about HD, and everything I read gives me flashbacks to Sight & Sound: Video, where we learned that because of the innovation and standardization of color TV broadcasts (in 1953), we had to re-record our sound at -0.1% recording speed. Or maybe it was that we had to record at +0.1% and then input at regular speed. Something like that. Oddly, no one seemed the least bit concerned that we had to slow down (I think) our sound recording, even though I'm sure that affected something. In any case, just looking at the sequence settings in Final Cut is enough to make me never want to even attempt to finish something in HD (did you know the pixels aren't square in HD, either?), but the time will have to come eventually. I'm just getting NTSC down and it's going away forever in a few months.

The "everything you ever heard about 30 frames per second is completely wrong" lesson was nothing, incidentally, to the "miracle of sync" lesson, in which we learned about the crystal sync oscillator, which magically connects the film camera and sound recorder using mystical crystals. Of course this was in the days of the Nagra, with which I recorded the sound for both Puzzled and Nathan DuPree. By Herb X, I had graduated to DAT, but since we (Christina Johnson and I) edited that on Avid, we had to slow the DAT down the 0.1% to make it sync up with the picture. Which, incidentally it never really did, at least not all of the time.

.:March 3, 2009:.

I created two new pages on this site: one for Nathan DuPree and one for Nathan DuPree: The Preginning. If you remember (and there's no reason why you should), this website started as a site for the film Nathan DuPree: The Preginning, but as it's grown over the past 6 years I felt like it was finally time to create a single go-to page for each film that links to the quicktime, and the main films page, and, of course, the old pages as well. And it's an excuse to have two more amazing pictures back up for your viewing pleasure! Check out the new pages here:

» Nathan DuPree

» Nathan DuPree: The Preginning

.:February 24, 2009:.

I've been working all day to complete the all-new Sight & Sound page and I'm happy to announce that it is complete! What really took a long time was getting all five films to look halfway decent in quicktime. For some reason, even though the aspect ratio of 16mm film is the same as standard video, there were very thin black bars on the sides of the image in this video transfer, which were completely not obvious at all when watching on a television, but when viewing a quicktime movie on web pages with white backgrounds looked really terrible. So I spent the day re-formatting and uploading all five films, and I'm happy to report they look great!

Also for the first time ever, on the main Sight & Sound page are credits for all five films. Only Dream Horse and The Package were made with credits, so I had to do my best to remember the rest. I think I included everything. So this concludes my 12 1/2-year journey to finish these films properly, and I hope not to mess with them for at least another 12 1/2 years, when, perhaps, they will all be made into Star Trek-style holograms so we too can dance with the clown and seek love like the vampire. Perhaps then too we'll all find out together what exactly is in the package.

» Sight & Sound

» Watch Rabbit

» Watch Dream Horse

» Watch Last Dance

» Watch Vampire

» Watch The Package

.:February 24, 2009:.

I've been taking more time lately to update this website...there are quite a few things I've made that are not yet available for viewing on the Multimedia page, but I'm fixing that slowly.

To that effect, I have recently added what is considered by some to be my masterpiece. Fitting because I wasn't there for most of the shooting, but only because it happened all over the world. So until the other masterpiece know as Puzzled is available for viewing, content yourself with this exclusive behind-the-scenes look at a junior-year film crew c. 1997:

» Watch The Making Of Puzzled: Ten Years Later

.:February 22, 2009:.

I've been updating several pages on this site...adding Corn and Corn 2 to the Films page. You can also now watch Corn 2, which is pretty awesome. Here are the direct links to the new stuff:

» Corn

» Corn 2

» Watch Corn 2

Oh, and I've definitely mentioned this before, but do you ever go trolling the internet looking for people you know? Do you ever find anything that surprises you? Well, me too! I recently looked for the great Sean Carter and realized that he had directed a strange feature-length bastard filmchild of a wild bacchanalian orgy between Traffic, The Shining, and Naomi Watts, only to realize that this film did not exist and was only a preview meant to show the tone of Sean's newest screenplay, Culebra. But if you happen to be wondering what the child of three such divergent mises-en-scene would look like, check out the following diegesis and CLICK HERE.

.:February 20, 2009:.

Today is the last day of my first week as a full-time filmmaker. Actually, I've been full-time before, back in 2003 right after I shot Motel Room. I remember I missed my last day of work because that was the first day of the Motel Room shoot. After that, I didn't have a job so I was pretty much full-time filmmaking. But since I had just shot a film that was pretty much restricted to discount matinee movies and bouts of extreme depression. Sometime in early 2004 I started temping.

Of course I was full-time before that, like for most of 1999, 2000, and 2002. That's when the Nathan DuPree saga got made.

Speaking of Nathan DuPree, I've written several sequels, and one was a feature called Who Killed Alfred Minnow? which was a murder mystery of sorts, featuring detectives, three Alison Tremonts, and, of course, Nathan DuPree, Herbert H. Woolworth, and the Narrator. Of course now that Rigel Hunter is no longer with us, it hardly seems likely that I will ever add to the Nathan DuPree saga, and if you happen to be a huge fan, you'll have to content yourself with the two (or three, depending on who's counting) existing masterpieces.

I have a script for a new film, and so now I spend my time producing. Scheduling is easy for me, and budgeting is impossible. It's a good thing I have every receipt for everything I ever paid for for every film I ever made. I think I probably have the receipts from Sight & Sound somewhere, not that I plan on shooting my new film on 16mm black & white reversal, although if I did, something tells me loading up the old Arri-SR would be like riding a bike.

In conclusion, Friday being a good day for new beginnings, I would like to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new, exciting challanges that lie ahead. And seriously, I will update this more than once a month, I mean with real posts. Hopefully with some pictures, or something.

.:February 13, 2009:.

Today is the six-year anniversary of this news page!

Happy Anniversary to me!

.:February 7, 2009:.

Once again, it's been too long since I've checked in...I've been writing a lot lately and thinking of new things for the future. Last night I did get to see several of my friends from film school, most of whom I've kept in pretty good contact with over the years. In fact, most people I've kept in touch with after film school I've actually worked with on projects in the last several years, and that makes me feel really good. What I really want is that collaboration to continue, because if that was the best part about school then that can certainly be the best part of a career. I've always taken equal joy and satisfaction in working on other people's projects as on my own, and I hope I get to work on many exciting projects in the years to come.

I do, however, have a specific project in mind for myself. I was writing the script throughout the fall, and now I feel like I've finally finished revising and reworking things to the point where I have something I'm very happy with. I hope to have lots more to say about this project in the near future!

.:January 1, 2009:.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

.:December 19, 2008:.

Corn is done, Corn 2 is done, my new DVD is done. Everything is done, and just in time to start the new year off with a clean slate and looking forward to something new. For the last 2 years I've been focusing on this old work and it's been amazing...I really never thought I'd finish Puzzled and now it's my probably my favorite of all. And The Making Of Puzzled and Corn 2 were so much fun to make and really got me excited to embark on a completely new project in 2009.

Speaking of new projects, I received in my email a new script by Doug Mirabello, which he may not want me to talk about but I can tell you (having not yet finished it) that it is not just funny and scary and exciting, but also uniquely Doug. I'll say more once I finish reading.

Finally, I'm going to be sending out copies of the DVD soon, especially to everyone who participated in making these films. If there's anyone out there who helped make Rabbit, Dream Horse, Last Dance, Vampire, The Package, Puzzled, or Corn but hasn't heard from me in the last 10-12 years, drop me a line!

.:December 10, 2008:.

Only 40 days late, here are some awesome picture I took this Halloween in Miami Beach. I don't know any of these people:

.:December 8, 2008:.

I was lucky enough this evening to see the very first reading of Matt Carlson's new play at NYU's Grad Acting floor. It was read by a truly amazing cast and I was lucky to be there...I will definitely post any news about this new wonderful work!

.:December 7, 2008:.

This past Friday, I drove down to Haddonfield, NJ, and shot Corn 2 with Doug. It was the most fun I've had filmmaking in a long time, perhaps because it was the first time in over ten years that Doug and I had actually been in the same room together working on something new.

For the last couple years I've been working on all of my old projects in an attempt to collect them all on DVD. Two years ago I collected Nathan DuPree, Nathan DuPree: The Preginning, and Motel Room on a DVD collection, The Films Of Michael Heck. Since I had deleted scenes from both Motel Room and Nathan DuPree and the Knights of Yesterland, I was able to put together several DVD Special Features for that collection that made it more than just three of my old short films. For the last year or so I've been working on my earliest films, those made while I was still in school, and to that end I re-transferred my five Sight & Sound films, and re-edited Puzzled and Corn. However, when I started putting together the DVD menus in DVD Studio Pro, I realized that, having no deleted scenes and almost no photographs from the 1996-1998 era, I didn't have the opportunity to make any DVD special features for my second collection. However, I had already completed The Making Of Puzzled: Ten Years Later as a companion to the recently re-edited Puzzled, but I couldn't have a DVD with only one special feature! Since I was in the midst of finishing Corn, I thought that it would be very interesting to have a DVD-only special feature "sequel" to Corn, perhaps one that explored what has happened to the characters in the ten years following the events of Corn.

Coincidentally, Doug had told me that he was coming back to the east coast for a few days to visit family, and so I wrote him saying I had this desire to make Corn 2, and that, since I had no ideas, he should write a script for it. And that's exactly what happened: Doug wrote an amazing script that we shot this past Friday on DV in New Jersey. I took a look at the footage last night and I'll be editing all week, and of course I'll have some screenshots as soon as possible.

Finally, on the same day last week that I received Doug's script in my email inbox, I also received a link to Adam Blau's all new original score for Corn. It is amazing and takes a 5-minute short shot on black and white reversal with no sound in my dorm room in 1998 to the level of an actual film. Oh by the way if you are interested in learning more about the great and talented Adam Blau, check out myspace.com/adamblaumusic.

.:October 18, 2008:.

I still haven't completed any more interviews, but I have continued to attempt to start editing the four I have. This is not easy...I remember in film school documentary editors would come in all the time and say, "And we cut down 200 hours of footage into a 12-minute film!" as if the simple mathematics of the task made is somehow admirable (a fact with which I strongly disagreed as I struggled to stifle a yawn). However, what I'm finally realizing now is that, while the sheer number of tapes recorded does not necessarily improve the overall quality of your end product, it does make the journey from in-the-can to debut screening a lot more of a huge tedious pain. Hence, I have not gotten very far with my editing. And when it's all said and done, I'll wow everyone with how many reels it took me to make a 2-minute documentary trailer.

I did finally get a preview of the first minute and a half of the Corn score! It is awesome, and Doug agrees. Third co-director Ben did not immediately give a comment, but I'm trusting that he'll like it too.

Speaking of Ben, I recently helped him out with some filming for a trailer for a film he's trying to produce with filmmaking partner Brian Clyde. We shot some amazing hand-to-hand combat with some incredibly talented swordsmen he knows, all in the Manhattan woods of Inwood Park. If you don't believe me that there are woods in Manhattan, check out this picture:

.:September 18, 2008:.

No new interviews this week, but I did attempt to begin to edit the four I have into something cohesive. I have not yet succeeded and I realize now that it might take a bit more time than it did last year when I was editing The Making of Puzzled to make sense of these interviews. I have of course not given up hope but this is definitely new territory for me.

In case you're as big a Richard Wright and Pink Floyd fan as I am.

.:September 11, 2008:.

Seven years.

.:September 8, 2008:.

The lights are back on, perennials. Visible from my bathroom.

Interview 4 tonight, done. Am extremely excited now because I have enough for editing, to start. Still hope to have 6 soon but will really have to start bugging people.

Went very well tonight, and I think it was diverse enough that I will have while sticking pretty strictly to the same topic a nice variety in image and tone. But I'm starting to feel it all come together. I think it's important for me to start thinking seriously about a westcoast trip. Lots of people out there to talk to and certainly different.

.:September 6, 2008:.

Another interview is planned...no details yet. As mentioned I don't think there's a strong vision yet for the finished product, which is a strange way of going about things for me, at least new. Am trying to keep an open mind, and also to accept opportunities when they are presented. Am very excited about this coming week, fingers crossed. Would like to have 6-10 to work with maybe for a short preview, trailer. Cut by the end of the year.

One more bit of news: The Corn music is delayed, but as goal is December am still in good shape to finish DVD.V2.

Oh, and ever spend time searching for your friends on the internet?
Me too.

.:September 4, 2008:.

I shot another interview last week so now I have 3. Things are shaping up.

I have no Corn news...if you don't know what Corn is it's a short film I made senior year with Doug and Ben in lieu of Doug's senior film which didn't exist. We wrote and directed the film together, trading off camerawork and Sean Carter lighting and shooting too. It was a un-Sight and Sound Film, shot with a test rig and an Arri kit in my dorm room, about druids who seek to turn corn to gold. It's a black and white silent epic, an historical urban masterpiece. Soon it will have music by Adam Blau. My last film before I spent the next 4 years epicizing Nathan DuPree.

Puzzled is still done, as are my Sight and Sound films awaiting Corn to form a new sevenfilm DVD masterwork, Christmas release. Stay tuned!

.:August 16, 2008:.

I completed my second documentary interview last weekend...with each one I feel as though I'm getting closer to the main idea of the film. This is completely the opposite from the way I've made movies in the past, where months of preparations go into filming a few pages. In this case the "script" is that last thing to be dtermined, and I must start the journey without knowing the destination.

I shot this interview outside so I'm a bit nervous to hear the audio...I think it will be fine but I've also been kind of avoiding listening to it yet...I find it difficult when shooting interviews to keep them visually different and interesting, because they have to fulfill their narrative purpose, but in a movie full of interviews it can easily get visually repetitive. That's why I keep trying to shoot people where they work, which of course makes it doubly complicated...

.:July 31, 2008:.

Things have been going well this past week. The Puzzled DVD is done and a few copies have been put in the mail. I'm very happy with the way it looks and sounds...probably the best of any film so far. The Making of Puzzled bonus feature rounds out the DVD nicely as I don't have any photos from the set.

Also I taped the first interview with one of my film school friends...I hope there will be more to come soon as this is a very exciting project! My goal this summer is to shoot one per week so I'll have about six or seven done by the time September comes around. Not sure if that's going to be possible but I'm going to do my best...

.:June 21, 2008:.

Still working on my Sight and Sound films, although there's not that much to do so I'm already setting my sights on finishing Corn, the (really) final unfinished film from my past. For now here's one image from each of two more of my Sight and Sound films, Vampire and The Package!

.:June 13, 2008:.

The Puzzled DVD is almost complete, and I've begun work on my Sight and Sound films, finally. So I'll have more news soon, but for now here's an image from my first ever film, Rabbit, from Fall 1996.

.:May 31, 2008:.

I am currently uploading my photos from my trip to Vienna into my computer. This has been delayed by several weeks because, on the day that I was to leave on my vacation, my computer became very ill and was in need of serious attention. Since I was away for a week and a half, nothing was done, and then my return was followed by a period of denial during which I did absolutely nothing. Finally I packed up my G5 in its orginal box and drove it out to Garden City at 9am last Sunday for my appointment at the Genius Bar. The diagnosis: a new logic board. So now I am rocking two times, with the only side effect of the precedure being that I've lost access to both DVD Studio Pro and Final Cut Pro, which is terrible, but not horrible.

I have not yet finished the DVDs for the Grad Acting Class of 2008. There's nothing I can do about that now, especially now that I don't have any programs any more!

.:March 24, 2008:.

So many things have happened I don't quite know where to begin. I am currently working on a project with the NYU Grad Acting Class of 2008. I recently videorecorded their Freeplays, a series of self-produced work completed in the second semester of their third year. The plays were without exception wonderful; they are sixteen extremely talented young men and women. There were ten plays in all, presented in repertory during the week of March 4-9. I felt extremely lucky to have been able to see all of the productions, and I got a lot of practice working with a video camera with which I was previously not entirely familiar.

Now I am working to put all of the plays on DVD for the class. It is going slowly...I have been sick and even now that I am well it takes a long time for each. Digitizing must be done in real time and converting the Final Cut Pro Quicktime into DVD-ready MPEG-2 usually takes so long I set it to convert overnight.

About a week after I finished videotaping the Freeplays, I sat down with twelve of the sixteen members of the Class of 2008 and conducted short interviews. It went well but I was a bit nervous, having never conducted an interview before. I haven't gotten the chance yet to watch any of the footage...but soon!

.:February 20, 2008:.

Things are moving along with Puzzled...the interview featurette featuring Marta Bartholomew, Doug Mirabello, and Reuben Monastra is complete! This will be part of the upcoming Puzzled DVD and is the first documentary project I've ever made. I will also have it up on this site soon; I will let you know.

I finally checked out Jeremy Mack's amazing documentary High Score. Check out the trailer on his website:

.:February 13, 2008:.

Happy 5th Anniversary to me! This is the five-year mark for this update page, which I started working on way back in 2003 when I was in the process of finishing Nathan DuPree: The Preginning. Now I have actually moved backward as I have been spending the last several months re-editing Puzzled from 1997.

So the great Adam Blau has recently sent me the music score for Puzzled. It is of course amazing...I still think there's nothing quite so impressive as having original music created for a film, a real luxury. Just today I listened to the second version of his mix, and I think this is the one! This brings us ever closer to completing Puzzled, just in time for it's 10.5 anniversary!

I have been talking back and forth with Doug Mirabello about a longer project building on the short behind-the-scenes featurette I made to go along with the new cut of Puzzled. We are well on our way with our plans, which is very exciting, and I hope to have many more updates soon. For now, I can say that this project has brought me back in touch with several people from film school with whom I have not spoken in many months (or years), including Jeremy Mack, who gave me a copy of his latest film on DVD. For more info about his film High Score, click HERE!

Finally I'd like to say thank you to everyone who's ever stopped by to check on what's going on with me. Drop me a line sometime!

.:January 5, 2008:.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I know I missed it by a couple of days but you'll have to forgive me. As you may have noticed it's been about a month and there's been no news about Puzzled or the Puzzled DVD. That's because, unfortunately, I have no changes to report, and now we're looking at a spring release. Worse things could happen. I also realize that I never mentioned getting the transfer of my Sight and Sound films back from DuArt some time last month. It was very strange seeing them again, as they were the first films I ever made, back in 1996. But I need to do a little work on them before they are ready to show so maybe I'll do that...

Also there are rumblings of a bigger project, and I will certainly have more news soon...

|December 9, 2007|

I updated the pictures on the main pages of www.preginning.com with pictures from Puzzled: .:Home: :Films: :Sitemap: :Contact:.

I also created a new Puzzled credits page. Click HERE!

|December 8, 2007|

I was out of town for a week in Memphis, Tennessee, and I returned yesterday to find an email from genius/composer Adam Blau. In the email was a link to the first preview of the Puzzled score, and it is amazing. I am beside myself with excitement for this film...this was only a one minute segment, and it left me in a state of great anticipation for the rest. I will keep you posted and link to a preview for you to hear as soon as possible.

You may have noticed that it is now December. Of course this makes clear that the film may not be completed, as hoped, in 2007. Worse things have happened, and certainly I hope it will be worth the wait. However, I am working day and night to get it done as a new year's gift for all involved. All is not lost.

|November 23, 2007|

It's amazing what can happen in two short weeks. I have been hard at work on the Puzzled interviews film. I finally just started cutting the three interviews I had (Doug, Reuben, Marta) together. Thing were working really well...I've never cut documentary before but it was pretty smooth because it was just as if they were talking to each other, all telling bits and pieces of one story. However, I realized pretty quickly that I simply didn't have enough of Marta to fit together with the other two (and I had so much of Reuben that I couldn't begin to use it all). So I emailed Marta, and last weekend I went down to Philadelphia and interviewed her a second time. It was interesting because I had in mind pretty specific things I wanted to her to talk about because I knew that's where things were missing from her previous interview. But I got her talking and got more than enough to use, touching on the three main topics of the piece (Puzzled, Color Sync in general, and Group 8).

Anyway I was so excited about shooting a second interview with Marta that I cut everything together right away. After watching it many times I felt good enough about it to show. Technically it was difficult because the picture and sound quality varied so wildly between the interviews. For sound, I removed a buzz from Doug's interviews, but didn't adjust anything from the others, except overall volume. For picture, the only problem was Marta's interview that I shot. When shooting, I stopped and started the camera several times, and apparently the camera was white-balancing every time, yielding wildly different results. So I had to color balance everything to match what I thought was the best shot. I think it came out okay (it's not as if I'm cutting directly between two shots of Marta), but I find color balancing extremely difficult to do well (I am very impressed by people who can).

So the project is still not complete, but I am well on my way. I really want to go ahead and shoot the last interview (maybe I will rush and try to get it done this week!).

|November 8, 2007|

I have made no progress with the Puzzled interviews featurette. I don't really know where to begin, and anyway I still have one to shoot. But that, for now, is waiting on having a more complete rough cut of the film, so for now I wait. I've been finishing up some other projects that I've been trying for months to find time to complete, including two photo books that are now done. I still have not touched my photographs from last year's trip to Japan (the most I did was to post some photos on this news page of my trip to the Tokyo fish market). I have lots of photos from that trip; I guess I just don't know what to do with them yet.

I still have not finished reading Tristram Shandy, but perhaps I will start again tonight...sometimes I find it hard to read fiction while trying to create a story of my own. For example, I read a lot of history while making Motel Room, because for some reason history didn't distract me while making fiction. Perhaps then reading fiction shouldn't distract me while making documentary. Something like that.

There are bits and pieces of things I should start collecting in ernest. Brendan Hagan mentioned to me that all his work from film school is gone...lost in one too many moves. I've kept pretty good track of almost everything, so when it comes to making this featurette dynamic and interesting I really have no excuse...

|November 3, 2007|

So I forgot to mention that not only did I receive Doug's interview tape, but I have now digitized both Doug's amd Marta's tapes. This is thanks to digital 3-D animation genius Jim Vidal, who loaned me his mini-DV camera (since I have never owned a video camera and didn't have access this time around to a DV deck). The interviews are amazing and now I will be cutting them together with some old footage into something that at the very least makes some sense. I'm excited because I've never editing anything documentary before, so this is completely new for me. All three of the interviews talk about the time that we lit Marta's dorm room on fire (of course for more on that you'll just have to wait and see...).

Think I was joking about Jim Vidal being an animation genius? Click HERE and stand corrected!

|October 14, 2007|

I am now in possession of an interview tape from Marta. I don't, however, have any particular way to digitize said tape, but I will solve that problem soon. I currently have the picture set for Puzzled, as I mentioned, and the score is being created as I type. For the interviews, I am waiting patiently for something from LA, and lastly I hope to interview my Color Sync professor myself, but I'm waiting first to have a version of Puzzled with at least some sound design all the way through to show to him. In addition, I am still planning to take all of my (and Doug's) Sight and Sound films in to DuArt to be transferred. Maybe this week?

As usual, I have several tasks to complete and they all seem to be dependent on the others, but something will happen that will allow me to complete everything. The best case scenario is that I receive a tape from Doug and get my Sight and Sound stuff back from DuArt at roughly the same time that I get some music tracks from Adam. That way I can use those tracks (even if some changes will be made later) to make a more complete rough cut to show Prof. Rea, and then I can tape an interview with him (with a camera that I don't have), rent a deck and digitize everything. We'll see.

|September 22, 2007|

I have assurance that I will soon receive several more taped interviews, and I will able to start cutting them together, but for now I am waiting patiently. Regarding Puzzled itself, as far as I am concerned the picture is locked. There is much to do in the way of sound, but for now I thought it was time to share an image from the film:

I will also be in possession, very soon, of some very special films from Sight & Sound, Fall 1996. I have not seen them in many years so it's time to get excited!

|September 8, 2007|

So much is happening I don't know where to start: I have been working on the sound design for Puzzled and have a good beginning for some scenes. Other scenes will be completely music, and for other scenes I just need to record some wild tracks and mix that with music. There is one dialogue scene I haven't worked on yet, but there are only two lines and I'm not sure what I want yet. For the scenes I've already started I made some interesting recordings of different stereo noise that worked pretty well. I'll see how much I like it after a little time has passed.

I received a DVD from Reuben with some footage that he shot of himself interview-style for me for the Puzzled DVD. I am having some trouble importing the files into Final Cut so any assistance would be greatly appreciated (I'm using Handbrake 0.9.0). The footage looks great, however, and I'm really looking forward to putting the DVD together.

Oh, and Minimum Rage is back on the web. Click HERE.

|August 23, 2007|

So I have begun thinking about the sound and music for Puzzled, and although I'm very much hoping to have original music from the wonderful and talented Adam Blau (who provided the score for Motel Room), I have been inspired by some amazing music that I've mentioned here before. It's by Ryoji Ikeda and Carston Nicholai and it's from their collaboration called Cyclo. Check it out:

|August 19, 2007|

This has been a very busy week for the 10th anniversary edition of Puzzled...I finally dropped the original negative at DuArt. It's amazing because I still had it in the box from DuArt that they had given to me a decade ago. It helped, though, because I didn't have the orignal camera reports (I don't think there were any), but I did have the documentation from the original DuArt transfer in October 1997. I also had Sean Carter's original camera report, which was a huge help in laying back the sound.

I had the original negative from October 1997, plus a re-shoot from January 1998, titles I shot in spring 1999, and the 1/4" reel-to-reel magnetic sound. I also has the black and white reversal film from another project that will be finished along with Puzzled for this DVD. It was the last Heck/Mirabello collaboration of film school (and the latest so far), so I'll keep you in suspense.

So I had all that transferred to Digi-Beta and then dubbed to DV-Cam. The lovely Michelle Boylan helped me out with some studio time to digitize and now it's in Final Cut Pro. I've been working on it all weekend and now I have a very good looking rough cut!

I remember toward the end of senior year in 1999 I revisited Puzzled and tried, again, to complete the film editing on a Steenbeck flatbed editing machine. It was a disaster. I had used the film in sound design and titles classes, pieces of the work print were missing and everything was a general mess. But this weekend as soon as I started working on the footage it was as if not a day had passed; I remembered nearly every shot and every cut.

|May 30, 2007|

I thought I'd stop in and say hello...there may be some news fairly soon regarding the 10th anniversay edition of Puzzled, which I need to finish by October, which is a worthy goal, I think. Anyway it's a big project for me but must be done! I will definitely keep you posted...

|February 13, 2007|

I know it has been an incredibly long time since I last checked in, however today is the fourth anniversary of the very first News Update. So Happy Anniversary to me and hopefully this will not be the last update of 2007, even if it is a very belated first!

.:News Update Archive:.