Return of the Living Bong!!! Back from the DEAD!

Yesterday I felt as if I had woken up with in a bad dream and life had suddenly become not worth living! I guess all my fears of losing all the hard work I have put into my film for that past two years had suddenly become a reality! The last time I had a gut instinct I lost 15 years worth of my hard work due to faulty digital drives mass produced over seas. To be so close to the finish line then lose it all is not something I can even put in words. There is no way to express how I felt the moment I lost the film in its entirety. The countless hours I have spent in the dark in my basement learning software just to allow me to do a whole film in post is immeasurable! Not to mention the other countless hours I have spent putting to use my newly learned skills. All that time I spend on the film is time away from life! My friends can attest to my absence for the past few years as I have completely isolated myself from everyone just to get this movie completed. I have also sacrificed tremendous amounts of hours away from my wife and family. All of this just to pursue a dream that I have been chasing for the past 16 years.

The era of digital film making has its benefits but its down falls are also equally as deadly. When you turn your dream into a string of infinite 010101′s you are leaving your fate in the hands of technology. Although we have come a long ways in developing these truly magnificent and useful tools such as hard drives, RAM, video cards and computers in general, we still have a long way to go in making them full proof. I have built the best MAC I can afford to take on my first feature film and have put all my eggs in one basket. The MAC has served me well and I have treated it with equal respect as it does hold my future within its beautifully engineered shiny aluminum gut. Its scary how much trust one has to put on a machine that holds all the cards! Back ups have become a standard operating procedure for me ever since I lost my previous works ton a Western Digital drive which also held my life for a duration. Once it died as did all my hard work with in it! Luckily I did not have Bong on that drive at the time. Once Bong is finished I will take my MAC and bind it in thick chain and locks and place it in a glass chamber for eternity. I have used it to its full potential and it has delivered everything I have ever needed it to do but not with out a price. Yeas things cost money to upgrade and fix but its the emotional stress that I find more taxing than any dollar I have ever spent on upgrading or tech tuning. Once the MAC is put to sleep forever I will then start again with the newest MAC on the market and start another relationship with yet a newer monster which will end up owning me as all my other MACs have in the past. By all I mean only 2 of course since MAC’s are the best computers on the planet! ( That was a plug for Apple in hopes that Steve Jobs will support me as a filmmaker in the future…wink). Ok enough bullshit and to the news about Bongs future!

I received a call from my data recovery specialist late last night with great news! He was able to fix my drive and save Bong!! He assured me that the files were unharmed and that the drive would be good for more years to come. As much as I believe him because he proved he can bring something back from the dead even though several others had tried! I have lost my trust in yet another drive manufacturer which I’m sorry but I have to name. this time I almost lost more than just a movie due to a Seagate drive. The drive was 2 years old but the fact that it died 2 years almost to the date on Bongs anniversary is too creepy even for me! I have managed to replace the drive with a new Hitachi drive so now all internal drives are Hitachi and my MAC family is complete. Thank you to Andy Scott the data recovery specialist who jumped on the task and saved the day! I highly recommend his services to anyone who has to go through what I went through and I hope you dont! But if you do feel free to call Andy!

RecovaDat
“Raising your data from the dead”

( Six/Zero/Four – Eight/Eight/Two – Three/Nine/Nine/Seven

Long story short I have now got the Media 2 drive back in the MAC and everything is as it was before the 11th and the film is smoother and faster than ever. I guess the weird glitches I had experienced in the past had to do with a poor drive and not Final cut pro or the MAC acting up. How ironic is it that Bong, a Zombie movie has died then returned from the dead! Zombies rule!!!

Back to worQ!!

The count down begins!

Well, I cant believe I’m about to write an actual date which Bong will be done by! It has been an incredibly exhausting trip from day one of pre production to filming and then especially post. I must say I have had more near death experiences while in post than I did during pre and actual filming of the film itself. I guess the majority of my stress has come from bizarre software related issues in post which caused my film to not be accessible at some point or another. The amount of technical glitches and mishaps were honestly enough to make me want to quit many times and find the nearest bridge! However having been through many sleepless nights which blurred into days then weeks, I can say that it has been worth it. I never expected to take a film which I shot for only 5 thousand dollars and then turn around and make it look like a couple million all in post. The truth is I have done my best with what I have had available and I believe Ive succeeded in proving that I can do it. Along the way I have made a few new close friends and lost a few but some how through it all I managed to end up exactly where Im supposed to. Im glad to have had the help and support of all my friends and family who contributed their efforts to help me pursue my passion and dream. The film will be finished at the end of this month and ready to hit the circuits. November 30 th is the official completion date of Bong Of The Dead. Since I am at the end almost I decided to celebrate by designing a final film release poster which I will post here. Its almost the same as the last one but has a lot more grit. Ill keep you posted!

Bong Of The Dead Film Release poster

What a week!

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!!!

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

The road to completion is a constant uphill grind

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!!

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!

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!

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!

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.

Bong Of The Dead Movie inspired by Richard Branson!

Ive been working my butt off to say the least as I push towards a deadline which always seems to move further due to unexpected delays or life in general. I have recently had to find a full time job in order to be able to pay my bills so that I could continue working on my film with little stress. Only one week into my new job and I am introduced to Sir Richard Branson the eccentric Billionaire! Yes the real Richard Branson as in Virgin Mobile and Virgin Galactic. I sat not even 6 feet in front of him as I listened to his message about life, the environment and his new ventures to come. I finally built up the courage to ask him a question in front of hundreds of people. My question was how I could find myself in his seat in a few years? He smiled and told me that he has breakfast, lunch and diner just like me and that I should love my life as it is now and love all those around me including other people. To top it off he simply told me to “Just have fun”. I was in awe of his simple yet great answer because he is right! We should love our lives for the now and try to work on loving one another and through that positive way of thinking and acting we shall can all be successful. Afterward I met him in the parking lot and gave him a Bong Of The Dead T-shirt and said , “I signed it for you”. He smiled and gracefully said thank you before he jumped into his ride with his lovely virgin entourage. His simple yet powerful message is all I needed to help me carry on and work even harder on my film.