Bong of the Dead Blog

Barry Nerling ADR was great!

Producer/Director — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 02:04:10 +0000

Today I had the pleasure of working with one of my favorite characters as well as actor from my film! Barry Nerling is one of those actors who pushes himself so hard in order to achieve greatness that its not only a pleasure to work with him but he also makes it easy! We started our ADR session today with a flawless effort both from Andres the sound engineer Wiz on the MIX as well as Barry himself. We wrapped up ahead of schedule so we decided to ADR some other odd zombie moans and groans for background voices. The whole process is time consuming but extremely fun!

Thanks Barry!
Thanks Andres!

Barry Nerling doing a voice over for his character Alex

Barry Nerling preparing to deliver a line as Andres Santana prepares the mix in the background.

Barry delivering as Alex the velin in Bong Of The Dead.

Simone Bailly ADR awesome!

Producer/Director — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:35:47 +0000

Well its been almost two solid years since I finished my movie and I’ve had more than my share of digital disasters while in post! Of course the issues re usually between computers, graphics cards, ram, third party filters, missing codec’s, hard drive crashes, missing footage, people jamming on you….well you get the point. In any case I am not going t0 give up that easy! I am now confident that what I have is definitely worth the fight to keep alive! After all there asre film makers who have remained in post for over 10 years just to finish their first film! I AM NOT one of those guys trust me. Ive been putting in solid hours in order to get the film out in time so that I can jump into the next.
Finally now that all the picture edits are done the ball is finally in someone else court! I’m talking about the second and possibly most important part of the film…Sound! Thank goodness for Andres Santana who is my genius sound designer that is in charge of ADR and final 5.1 mix output. His talents and abilities are untouchable by anyone in this industry! I can honestly say he is the best we have and I’m privileged to work along side him in making Bong sound great! Having a great sound designer teamed up with true talent such as Simone Bailly made ADR an incredibly smooth process to the point that it felt like we had already done it before! Andres was set up in less than 30 minutes with all his gear and when Simone stepped into my studio it was like clock work. She nailed every line even better than she had on the day. It only took 2-3 tries each time and we were bang on every time! Im now actually looking forward to every ADR session I have booked with my talent and cant wait to get them mixed in and get this film out into the world! It has been a long road but the light is closer now then ever! I ll have lots of pics and video about the behind the scenes coming up!

Simone Bailly records her lines 2 years later!

Simone watching herself as she rerecords her lines

Andres Santana mixing ADR sessions for Bong Of The Dead 2 years later!

What a week!

Producer/Director — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 19:57:33 +0000

Its been a crazy few weeks as I worked my ass off towards meeting a ridiculous deadline for two events at the same time! The first was the first time “Dead on Film” Rio theater zombie film festival which I had promised myself not to enter but could not resist since its the only zombie specific film festival Vancouver has to offer! Yes its a first time event but I know a good thing when I see it and I think this festival will get bigger as years go by. The reason I hate entering these stupid competitions is because the winners at these events are generally selected by other stupid people. Before you get your panties in a knot and bite my head off for sounding like an asshole please allow me to explain.

These competitions are no different then Halloween costume party contests! By that I mean its usually a place where a bunch of drunk and stoned individuals get together to watch some trippy shit that makes them laugh even though its probably not even funny. Then everyone gets to vote based on how many friends you have in the audience or how drunk the guy beside you was when he selected “Pissing doll” because it was great hand held camera work by a couple amateur stoners who thought it would be funny to shoot and place on you tube! Along comes a festival hell lets enter it! If these things were actually judged by a panel of experts who actually know what quality looks like and understand the process and can tell that a single shot may have taken a person 3 months to compile, then they would be worth entering. I think once again I am going back to the Fuck silly competitions and concentrate on the bigger picture.

Now that Im done venting lets talk about a much better day that definitely helped people know about Bong! The 2010 Vancouver Zombie walk kicked off on the 21st on a beautiful sunny day and was lead by the Bong OF The Dead cast as we marched down the street with a banner held up high! Lots of pictures on my face book wall posted by everyone so feel free to take a peak! Here is a couple cool ones of us leading about 6000 people on the march!

Bong OF The Dead March!

Leading the pack!

Finaly 260 shots done!!!

Producer/Director — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 06:59:37 +0000

So it has been one year and a bit since Ive been stuck in the dark confines of my theater slash Office where every second of my life has been dedicated to finishing my film entirely by myself now that in post! At the rate of 30 frames per second and shots varying from 1.5 seconds to 18 seconds long you can imagine the amount of work involved in trying to complete this movie when adding 260 shots which required compositing!

Through it all I have changed immensely not just as a Producer/Director but as an individual all together. Ive discovered who my true friends are and who are not. I feel a lot more knowledgeable of my craft now then ever since I had to submerge myself into editing and composting and learning software that is new to me in order to make it all possible. I can finally look back at all the hard work it took right from the start when I set out with to make a movie for only $5000. Had it not been for my loyal friends and family I would not have been bale to pull it off by spending so little and getting so much. Im now hoping to have the film done sometime in October as I push forward with Audio part of the project which deals with some rerecording of actors dialogues, sound FX and music.

I will hopefully have a new official trailer and some new mini documentary footage coming soon!

Thanks
Thomas

ARE YOU NUTS! NOT THE HOLLYWOOD SIGN!!!

Producer/Director — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 14:19:30 +0000

So a bit off topic from my usual Bong Bloging today. I was working away the other day when I suddenly caught a few minutes of the “Elen DeGeneres show which was blaring behind me. She was ending her show with her concern in regards to how a real estate company has proposed to build houses in place of the Hollywood landmark sign! Of course I being someone who not only loves Hollywood, its sign and its heritage representation of everything movies, it immediately caught my attention. Once Elen explained how horrible this plan was and that WE need to stop it from happening she proceeded to let us know as the viewers that if WE want to stop this demonstration of true corporate greed, then WE need to donate money and help raise $900,000 in order stop it!

Now the last time I checked Elen was a multi millionaire as are ALL her friends such as Oprah, Dr. Phill not to mention every A-list actor in Hollywood!!! Why is it that they need money from regular folks such as you and I who are struggling to make a living as is? Yet when something as unthinkable as this is presented then WE are supposed to scrape together what little money we dont have in order to stop it from occurring? I was hoping she was going to end the show by saying dont worry about it, I paid the bill myself because I can god damn well afford it! Hell her and Oprah could flip the bill alone if they did not buy that next luxury unnecessary home decoration by one of their high end celebrity designers!

Im glad that she brought the attention to the word on her show but if she really gave a damn then she or each and every Hollywood actor in Hollywood should step up and take care of this instead of asking US to come up with the money! I just want to say shame on her and all those rich entertainment industry corporations and individuals. You think at least the studios in California could pool together and take care of this. Nine hundred thousand dollars is a drop in a bucket for a city where billions of dollars are generated annually!

If I had the money trust me that I would flip this bill in a heartbeat! I cant believe that even the rich and famous in Hollywood dont seem to give a damn about its heritage and importance!

Not so generous Elen De Generes!

The road to completion is a constant uphill grind

Producer/Director — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 16:56:26 +0000

Its hard enough trying to do a film on your own in post with no crew but then throw in all the digital errors and glitches that come along every other day and its enough to want to hang yourself with your computer cord! I have had to endure so many silly glitches even though I spent $ 5000 on the latest and greatest Mac Pro Quad core in hopes of being able to breeze through my editing. The fact is no matter how much you spend you will always have to spend more! The computer does not like the codec, the video card does not like the filter, the Camera codec does not like the video card and on and on and on! For every problem you have to spend countless days without sleep trying to figure out why? why? why?!! I am a huge fan of MACs and have been for over 15 years but I must admit the new intel chips have taken them to a new low! I have never had so many crashes and stupid little glitches in my life. It sometimes feel like Im editing on a PC with the amount of problems I face on a daily basis.

NOW….all that BS aside I am still grinding and I refuse to be beat by a bunch of 0’s and 1’s! This film will get completed the way I want it to and on time! I just have to keep my sanity and hope I dont have a heart attack every time I turn on the mac. Im trying to get the film off to a submission for a film festival in the next couple of days and hope I can without any more trouble.

Big thank you to Video Copilot and Andrew Kramer!!

Producer/Director — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 09:52:16 +0000

Its been over a year since I’ve been working on Bong OF The Dead grinding away and learning some new tricks as I push forward. One of the biggest challenges for my movie was not having the budget to get the exact shots I wanted with exact locations during the filming process. However knowing that I was limited in the real world was not at all discouraging given the proper tools for post production. I was guided to a great website called Video Copilot which was founded by one of the coolest and most original Digital video Production gurus known to man! Im talking about Andrew Kramer the man who has dedicated a web site to the art and technique of post digital effects. The web site is not only incredibly helpful for learning great FREE techniques for creating stunning visual effects, but also an incredible resource for independent Film makers such as myself who have the ideas but not the budget. I have learned so many incredible techniques from Andrew Kramer, that with out him this film would not be possible. The film itself cost me 15K but the look and feel I am able to create by using Andrew Kramers online tutorials has given it the big budget look I was going for. Here is a small sample of a scene in which the heroes are preparing for war against the hordes of zombies to come. I had initially hung a homemade green screen beside the cabin we were filming at in order to hide cars and the house in the background. By using the techniques I have learned from Andrew Kramer I was able to remove the background and place in a deep wooded forest in order to make them seem isolated.

Before shot with green screen in background.

Forest with no lighting.

Final composite with Tommy as he walks out of cabin in battle gear.

Creating some cool advertisement for Bong Of The Dead!

Producer/Director — Thu, 27 May 2010 19:36:44 +0000

Hello to all you fellow Bongers! Its been a while since Ive posted here but its because I am unbelievably busy with editing and creating the final look of Bong Of The Dead. There is literally so much to say so instead of writing it all here I encourage you to check out the Tweets and Blogs which you can access right fr…om here:

http://www.bongofthedead.com/blog/

Most recently I got together with my Co-Producer and great Friend Mike Fields who surprised me with a totally cool design for the new Bong shirts! My jaw dropped the second I saw the shirts and jumped at the opportunity to get them made so that we could get the message out to the world while trying to raise a few bucks in order to pay for more shirts! Basically everyone who is a fan and wants to help support this film can purchase a shirt for $20 and the money raised will just buy more shirts. The circle will continue until the entire world is infected!! You cant be a real zombie if you don’t have a shirt! The coolest thing aside from the designs on the shirt is the fact that they were each hand made by Mike Fields himself and me. Every one has tremendous TLC go into it so you will be happy if you chose to sport one of these limited shirts. The more we get out into the world the more people will know about this special indie flick that will blow them all away! I am working towards a realistic deadline now to submit to an upcoming few festivals! As always please keep in mind the reason its taking a year and a half or more is because I am only one person doing an entire film by myself in my basement just like my mentor Robert Rodriguez. Only difference between Robert and myself is I dont have millions of dollars or a post crew. Not yet anyways!

So in closing if you want a shirt please send me an e-mail or a note and I can figure out how to get one to you with payment process and things. Also please help keep the Bong lit by telling as many people as you can about it so that they too end up infected! Bong has now spread across over 87 countries around the world and been translated into 13 languages on the web with promo material downloadable in over 4 major languages.

Keep on Bonging!

Sincerely
Thomas Newman

New limitted Bong OF The Dead shirts!

Another beautiful day and all is well!

Producer/Director — Thu, 13 May 2010 14:03:02 +0000

I may have come across a bit negative in my last post so I want to make up for it in this one. As frustrating as the process of doing an entire film on your own is, it is still worth every second especially when the results speak for themselves. I’m plugging away on the last of the CGI shots this week and will move onto the final stages of color correction on the locked edit. Once I’ve completed those two main components it will be time to round up the actors for some ADR. For those that are not familiar with the term “ADR”, it is the process in which you have to redo some of the dialogue of your film in a studio environment because your sound guy was so stoned during the filming that he actually recorded static at times instead of audio. Thanks sound guy! Luckily I now have one of the best sound designers that the Vancouver industry has ever seen and we will be working together closely to make the ADR as best as we can. I’m trying to make a few festival deadlines so the pressure is on to have this beast done and released asap. Theres nothing more satisfying then having your film come together after all the countless hours of work that’s been put into it.
Thanks for staying in tune!

Still grinding!

Producer/Director — Tue, 11 May 2010 22:13:17 +0000

Well It has been a year and counting since I finished Bong OF The Dead on a remote location in Langley BC with a crew of friends and family. I have been in post production editing, compositing, color correcting, scoring etc. etc…I realize it is taking a long time to complete but when you are one [person doing an entire film with Block Buster look, sound and feel it is no easy task. Your mind begins to play tricks on you to the point where its tough to tell if you’re doing it right or wrong, or if you’re on the right track at all. I know that there is no right or wrong though, there is only the fact that you must keep doing it and keep on working towards the end. It is soooo easy to give up and say this is too much or Ive had enough. The truth is I will always find ways to stay inspired and to continue pushing on even when some people around me have given up or quit! I have been let down a hundred times over by those who make promises but keep none. Those people are the ones that have one purpose in life and that is to stop those of us who have passion and drive and dreams which they know they can never have so they try to stop us from succeeding. Dreamers know who they are and the ones who want to crush those dreams know who they are as well. The way I see it is when I finally finish Bong and turn it over and launch my career to the level I dream of, I will thank everyone who has been there for me but most of all I will thank those of you who let me down! It is because of you that I push on and find the drive to fuel my passion. Its not in me to quit and I am not someone who gives up easily especially when I am standing at the gates of my dreams. All I have to do is finish this film and when its finally done people will see what one person can do with talent, drive and unstoppable passion. I will try to blog something with a video soon! Thanks for staying in tune.