Saturday, November 26th 2005

Hello everyone, Andrew here to update you on the status of your favorite independent movie! It¹s true, we got a little behind schedule in post production, but are on track to be done by Christmas. So the New Year will find us seeking distribution so we can get the movie into the hands of the eager public! Jeff and I have elected to take the score in a slightly different direction, and have tapped a new musician to that end. Eric Daigh is nearly done with his SFX contributions to the project, and Jeff has completed editing on the project. Did you read about Folk Lore in the Traverse City Record Eagle, the Detroit News, the Mining Gazette, or the Mining Journal newspapers? It¹s a very exciting time, as the project nears completion and anticipation builds for the final product. Jeff and I plan to have a theatrical exhibition of Folk Lore in the Traverse City area, as well as selected showings in Marquette and Houghton counties. Check back to this page for information on that, as I will post it here as soon as I find out. Thanks for supporting Folk Lore!! -Andrew

Monday, August 29th 2005

George Washington Carver made a very valuable contribution to Folk Lore. "Well Andrew, that¹s crazy, he¹s been dead for years, how could he help?" Great question, here¹s the answer. Those in the know will instantly realize that George Washington Carver created peanut butter, primarily as a nutritional supplement for the working class. Peanut butter is a very cheap source of protein, does not spoil in the heat, and is mighty tasty. It was also the nutritional cornerstone of the Folk Lore craft services program. Nearly everyday members of the cast and crew had the opportunity to dine on two lovingly made peanut butter and Jelly sandwiches, primarily built by the talented sandwich artist Ben Dawson. The work flow goes like this: Take one whole loaf of whole wheat bread (the jam wont soak through nearly as fast as white bread). Remove the bread from the bag, and place half the bread on a clean surface. As fast as possible, apply peanut butter to the upturned slices. Apply your favorite type of jam to the other slices. Mate them together. Place the finished sandwiches into the bread bag, taking care to seal the bag with a twist tie (this helps the bread stay fresh). Eventually people will say they are tired of PBJ, but when everyone¹s worked hard for six hours and that¹s all you present (and your 25 miles into the middle of the woods), they will grudgingly eat it. Rinse and repeat! In other news, we will be on WNMC (www.wnmc.org) this evening from 9-11pm with DJ Clayton Smith. Make sure to listen for an inside scoop on cool Folk Lore news. -Andrew

Wednesday, August 24th 2005

Andrew here with a postproduction update extravaganza! The rough cut of the movie should be completed today, meaning we can start integrating sound effects and tightening up the pacing for the impending send off to our potential sales agent. Jeff and I had a great weekend at the Hobby Horse Farm of Mancelona MI, with their many skilled riders and authentic American Mustang horses. What will probably amount to about 2 minutes of finished product took about 8 hours to create, but the skill and enthusiasm of the riders made the time rush by. With the rough cut nearly finished, expect to see a preview of Folk Lore very soon. Also, for some live action commentary on the movie experience thus far, make sure to tune into Clayton Smiths WNMC (90.5) radio show Monday the 29th of August. Clayton will be interviewing Jeff and myself, as well as commenting on his experience creating the music for the project thus far. Jordon Ewers, the break out actor who played the ³Father² character will be returning to the studio from September 6th-12th to help implement some story changes. -Andrew

Friday, August 5th 2005

Andrew here with a little lesson on movie making. Most productions employ the use of some kind of clapboard when shooting, to ensure the proper sync of audio and video during postproduction. What this means is that before each shot, someone walks out in front of the camera with a clapboard and "claps" before each take. On the clapboard is a written description of the scene as well as what take is being recorded. Some of the fancy ones even have a time code on them that links up to a computer and automatically syncs up sound and video. Needless to say, that format is very expensive. Jeff and I employed a different system, affectionately called "The Clap". This means that before each take one of the actors or production people stand in front of the camera and physically clap. This is fairly effective method and doesn¹t cost anything. The only down side is the sound guy has to keep track of each take with a pad of paper (usually held by his teeth, as both hands are supporting the boom pole), resulting in some soggy paper and the ability to only communicate in vowels. The other problem is that since there is no clapboard person on set, the job doesn¹t always get done. This means that when the assistant editor (who could that beŠ) is syncing up all the audio in post some things end up taking forever when they should only take a few seconds. Instead of simply finding the clap at the beginning of each take, you have the pleasure of hunting through the entire clip looking for something to sync up with. You would think anything would work, like a voice, but remember that you must be accurate within 1/30th of a second. It¹s possible (as is being proven), just very time consuming. So, if you want to save some money and use "The Clap" make sure to stay on top of every take and demand that the clap be done. Fail to do this and you could hate yourself later. -Andrew

Tuesday, August 2nd 2005

Andrew here with a post production update! Jeff and I (mostly I) heavily attended the first Traverse City Film Festival over the past week, what a great experience! Sadly, the movie is a little behind on the rough cut now, but we are confident we will catch back up and meet our August 31st deadline. The rough cut is about an hour and 20 minutes long, putting it at just over half way through. Once the rough cut is done we will cut some trailers and start releasing our work onto the world! We have some fun post shoots coming up this week, namely our fairy scene at the green screen studio tomorrow and our burning Indian village and wickerman this coming Sunday. We are also trying to schedule in a "horses" scene for Saturday, but seem to be having a bit of trouble coming up with six riding horses. Alas, the show goes on and the search continues. Also of note, we will soon have a downloads section on the website featuring desktops and Instant messenger icons from your favorite independent feature! How Exciting! And now, a production story: This story focuses on the "native" sequence. The native sequence was an interesting obstacle to tackle for a variety of reasons, namely it was my first time operating the camera with the glidecam assembly. Jeff is the regular DP, but when he is unable to perform that duty, it falls to me. The native sequence (due to Jeff¹s role as the native) was the first of these instances, and that in and of itself made this scene personally challenging. Allow me to describe the set of this scene though, so that you may more accurately envision what was going on. The scene takes place in a cedar swamp, visually similar to the yoda swamp found in Empire Strikes Back. The scene required a 4x4x4 pit be dug through the floor of the bog, which was comprised mainly of thick tree roots and intensely unpleasant smelling mud. Fortunately, the task of digging this pit did not fall to me, as I was off acquiring a white wolf that was called for. After the set was properly dressed we began shooting (with Ben Dawson, VAMP, operating the sound equipment). This scene was shot out of order, as we had set out to shoot the concluding fight scenes first, and cover the ³birth² of native from the Edmond angle. Thus, shooting was progressing nicely and for a nice break from the action, we decided to shoot our wolf. Owen is the happiest looking wolf ever, and he just wasn¹t going to play along with the whole aggressive animal idea. On a side note, he is a very smart animal, knows how to outmaneuver his obedience chain, and promptly chews through his leash when he no longer feels like being on it. Needless to say, Owen wrangling was a full time job for someone. After we finished with Owen, we noticed that the generator appeared to be having problems (If you¹ve read any of the previous adventures, you will know that this was only one of many). With only a few hours of daylight left, we elected to send the generator to the shop and get a rental. Unfortunately, this crimped us on time for shooting the rest of the fight and we did not finish that evening. At least we made it home by 11:30pm (we start at 7am)...... The upside to this is that we knew we had to go back for a re-shoot, and while planning that we actually made a small story refinement that really helped to strengthen the scene overall. So, we finally got back out there for the re-shoot, got it in the can and left. That¹s only two times out to the cedar swamp, not bad right (Did I mention that we re-dig the 4x4x4 hole each time we go out?) We next returned to the swamp for the beginning of the "birth" portion, but since we didn¹t have our druid army that day, only the druid leader, we shot reaction shots and the beginnings of the ritual. That¹s three days. Day four, the birth and control of the native went very smoothly, and seeing them in post, cut together even better. So, this scene required a lot more work than we had anticipated (four days rather than two), but ended up turning out better than we had hoped. A fair trade I¹d say. -Andrew

Monday, July 18th 2005

Hello everyone, this is Andrew with a second postproduction news update. Things have been progressing very nicely for us over the course of the last week. We have about 25 minutes of rough cut footage and nearly all video and audio has been synched up. Our effects animator (Eric Daigh) has taken possession of some of our special effects plates and will be start work on animation very soon. Clayton will be meeting with us soon to start laying out the preliminary tracks and consult on general audio work. Jeff and I still feel we are on course for a finished product by the end of August. Also of note, the first Traverse City Film Festival (founded by Michael Moore) will be taking place the weekend of July 29th. Jeff and I have volunteered to help out at the festival during some of the evening showings, so if you happen to attend any of the great movies being shown make sure to keep an eye out!

And now, a production story:

It was our first day of shooting and things were progressing well. We had started shooting at 1pm (as this was our first really long night shoot day) and had a great start with the opening scene victim flashback. This scene was an interior, meaning that we were able to use house power as well as not worry about outside variable such as wind. Upon completion of the scene, the production moved on to our next location, an exterior located in a nearby field. This would be the first day we used our generator set-up which was simply a high dollar construction grade generator with a beautifully engineered "sound box" placed over it in hopes of decreasing noise production. To our dismay, the generator would not start upon request, seemingly as a result of our sound production box. No big deal, we moved the generator farther down the hill and mostly isolated it using natural terrain features. So, now that we had power established on the set we progressed to our first shot of the day, a scene of father leaving the crime scene and investigating a nearby field. To our (primarily my) dismay, the microphone really really really sucked when any kind of wind seemed to be present. This was surprising, as the microphone was very high end, came with wind gear, and shouldn¹t have any kind of problem. As a result, the audio from this entire scene will require a lot of post work to clean it up (not the end of the world, it¹s fixable, just labor intensive) Moving on in the day, it¹s now two thirty in the morning and Jeff and I have discovered that our high dollar microphone is completely useless. It seems it was totally incapable of picking up dialogue with any change of tone. Reflecting upon how people speak, it becomes readily apparent why this would become an issue. As a solution, Jeff and I borrowed (at 2:30 in the morning) a microphone from May, girlfriend of Piotr. She had come to visit Piotr and create a documentary on us for a class project in her masters of communications curriculum. This microphone (which cost far less money) was exponentially higher in quality than our microphone. We survived the night with ok-ish audio and got up early the next day to find a new solution. As I recall, this was a Sunday and a holiday weekend of some type. This meant we couldn¹t contact the online retailer with whom we had purchased the initial microphone for a solution. Jeff, Piotr, and I went to Traverse in search of the best microphone we could by, as we had a full night of shooting that could not be rescheduled. The only place open was radio shack, and the only microphone they had in stock was 29 dollars. We were in big trouble. We went to the Kuntaw club in the hopes of finding contact information for a fellow Kuntaw student with contacts at a local television station. Luckily, he was already there training alone for his eventual upcoming elevation to black belt status. He laughed as we told him our sob story, told us to relax, and 45 minutes later had produced a $3500 mic setup that we ultimately were able to keep for a week and half. Thus, the movie has really good sound now and we lived to fight another day. We went from totally screwed to best-case sound set-up in a matter of minutes. Making movies can be stressful, but it seems to always be an adventure. -Andrew

Sunday, July 10th 2005

Hello Everyone! Andrew here with his first post production news update.

Well, we finally wrapped on our principal photography, sending Piotr home and dropping Ben off at Hippyfest 2005 (He deserves the break...) Shooting was a monumental task, accented with technical adversity almost every day. An example for your amusement can be related in this tale: During our first principle photography excursion to the Upper Peninsula we were unable to shoot a few key scenes on our last scheduled day due to generator difficulties. Note that this was the professional generator we rented to replace the original generator that was being repaired / optimized in the shop. As we geared up to shoot on our final UP day, we discovered, to our horror, that the generator would not turn over. Of course, this was not only Sunday, but Fathers day as well. We were not able to get the generator fixed, and thus, we were unable to get to our planned locations for the day. The crew shot some other scenes using "house power" , wrapped Audrey, and headed back for the studio in Traverse City. Upon our return, we sent the defective generator back and picked up our refurbished old generator. It worked splendidly and all was good. A week went by, free of problems, as Jeff and I decided that the production needed the more extreme locations from the Upper Peninsula. We set a departure date, carefully packed the gear, and shoved off. Upon our arrival at the first of our isolated UP locations, we learned to our dismay that the gas tank portion of the generator had developed a huge crack along the top. Upon ignition, the generator would spew gasoline all over the rapidly heating exhaust mechanism. We quickly concluded that this would result in a large fire and cut power. So, here we are, miles from anywhere in the middle of the forest, standing around the newly broken generator we spent ten hours trucking up to the UP. The mood was dark to say the least. Fortunately, this took place on a Friday and we were able to rent another generator for the day to get our shots. Laughing yet? The biggest thing I learned from this experience is that making films is probably 80% problem solving. Fortunately, 98% of the shooting went really well and Jeff and I are looking forward to a fun postproduction. We hope to have a rough edit done by the end of July and a finished, saleable product completed by the end of August. Hopefully the updates from here on out will be filled with good will and cheer, as the editing process rolls along in a gentle, calm fashion. -Andrew

Thursday, July 7th 2005

Hello All!

This is Jeff, writing in with such a long update that I intend to write it in sections!

This is Part A.

Well, since I last wrote, we have had all the actors move in, trained relentlessly in martial arts ( www.kuntaw.org ), built our shooting rig, scheduled our shoot..... basically finished PREPRODUCTION. We then began PRODUCTION, shooting in the Greater Grand Traverse County area for 2 weeks, then up to Calumet and Marquette in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan for a week, and finally returning to the Lower Penninsula for one last week of work. As of Friday July 1st we are wrapped, though (as is always the case) their are a couple more things to shoot amidst the editing process.

I will do my best to touch on the important events of the last 8 weeks, starting first with:

PREPRODUCTION WRAP UP:

Audrey, Piotr ( "Pee-Oh-Trl"... you have to do a funny rolling R and L sound at the end that only the truly Polish can pull off ) and Ben all came and graced my basement floor, setting up a little commune of actors. We spent the subsequent days putting the remainder of our props together as well as getting our gear all set up. We also spent about 3 hours a day, 5 days a week at the AMKA facility training as hard as we could to get our actors ready to wield weapons. On top of all that Andrew and I went over the schedule again and again nailing people and places down.

One particularly beneficial day was when my dad gave us a Plat Map that shows who owns all the land in the 5 county area. This allowed us to know what was state land and what was not. There were so many great locations between Kingsley and Traverse City along the Manistee River that we ended up out there more than anywhere else.

We also got together for some very promising rehearsals, everyone has been very prepared and things ran very smoothly.

On a Personal note, my wife and I found out we were pregnant! Instead of being stressed or freaked, we all rejoiced and I looked at this as another reason to pour my all into this project.

Two days before Production, Jordon arrived. He decided to one up us all by pitching a tent in my backyard, even enduring a torrential rainstorm and giddily telling us how his "shit was floating away" that night. We moved on into official Production on the 28th of May.

To be continued....



Part B of my Mega News Update.

We slid into production starting with the attack on the opening crime scene victim followed that night by the investigation. We shot Father's House the next night, thus getting our night shoots done with up front. It was nice after that knowing that we didn't have any more 1 and a half day shoots after that.

For the next week we shot at Northwestern Michigan College ( www.nmc.edu ) in their Art Building, we also shot in an Apartment in downtown Traverse City, all around TC, and out into the countryside. We then shot at a barn on the peninsula to wrap up our first week.

The second week of July started at High Rollaway near Kingsley. This was one of our roughest days of shooting and we were not able to accomplish all we needed to! Thankfully we scheduled days off here and there to accommodate delays. Our crew then moved out to a crazy swamp near Ranch Rudolf to film the Native Fight Sequence, this was an interesting day since I had to relinquish the camera to Andrew and cover myself in muck to hop in front of the camera. It was an interesting challenge directing the shots while acting. No wonder Silent Bob is silent.

Wednesday the 8th was both the best day of shooting and the worst day of my adult life. We had a phenomenal shoot including a chase, a fight and a set of wonderful performances from Jordon and Stacey. We even finished early for the day! I was high on excitement until I got home and received some horrible news. Before my wife told me the bad news she made me promise to finish the movie no matter what. The baby my wife and I were having was dead. It's heart had failed to start up on its own and was not developing anymore. I escaped with her for a few hours while the crew set up that night's shot without me, then returned for a huge pyre in the field behind my house.

From here on out the shoot got rather surreal. I won't go into all of my heartache and struggles here, but suffice it to say that I had to push hard day and night for the next weeks to keep my head together.

to be concluded...



This is Part C.

We moved on into some more scenes in the woods and waters of Northern Michigan, leading up to Saturday the 11th when we shot the big action sequence of our picture. We had a small army of folks show up to play our Druids, they all performed marvelously and were real troopers.

After a "day off" we shot at a cherry orchard and got ready for the exodus to the Upper Peninsula. We arrived in Marquette and shot in the beautiful Dead River falls as well as at Little Presque Isle. In Hancock and and Calumet we shot the final scenes of our movie. The city of Calumet was so gracious and accommodating, going out of their way to provide us with wonderful rustic locations.

After Saturday July 18th, we said good bye to Jordon and then to Audrey.

Things eased up a bit, since most of the movie was now shot and we didn't have any actors with super tight schedules left. We took a couple days off, I collected myself, and then we shot the last scenes in the greater Grand Traverse area and Copper Harbor.

Piotr and Ben were set free.

I do no have the space here for the thanks that I owe certain people, just know that if you helped out I will do my best to say so in person. The helping hands that held this together will forever mean the world to me.

We are now firmly based back out of my home in Kingsley, cutting away and seeing how this beast goes together!

We'll continue to post on here as things come together.

Now back to assembling the fruits of our labor! - Jeff

Tuesday, June 28th 2005

Hello Everyone! Sorry for the lack of news over the last few weeks. The cast/crew have been working tirelessly over the last three weeks to make the best movie we can, and it has generally gone very well. We had many technical obstacles to overcome: the generator(s) malfunctioning, the 5 (!!) different mikes we have used over the course of the shoot thus far, the crazy locations, the travelŠ.. it¹s been a great time. The group had a hellish schedule to adhere to, but ultimately persevered. Jordon Ewers and Audrey Lucero (Father and Morgan) have wrapped, and only the Edmound / Vamp side remains to be completed. Fortunately, those scenes don¹t require the same schedule needed to complete photography. We anticipate that shooting will be done by the end of June, with post operations immediately following. For as long as it takes. -Andrew

Wednesday, May 4th 2005

G'day mates!

Jeff here, signing in for another update.

As you read, we are officially into Pre-Preproduction. Andrew and I are cooking along on things like this website, locations, props, costumes, equipment, and as always.... the script.

The website has new photos up. Check out some of the sweet backdrops that can only be found in Michigan!

Toby is mashing metal into masterpieces and everyday we get news of more progress.

And the toys have started to arrive. First up were the hard drives we will store all of our glorious HD footage on as well as the memory card for the audio device. This may all sound boring as heck, but to us it's the pieces of the puzzle! The brushes for our painting.

Now to get the rest...

On a personal note, Andrew and I are still in denial of the happiness we have in regards to our new life style. Finally being free of the shackles of wage slavery is an achievement we will never forget... even if the world finds a way to rope us back into its monotony later, we will always know that we at least had our Harrison Bergeron moment... flying high and beautiful and free above the shackles of "the way things should be". - Jeff

Thursday, April 28th 2005

Official Pre-production has begun!! As you can see by the website, things are heating up here at PMP. During the first week, Jeff and I have been able to secure more locations, develop and implement a shooting schedule, hook up with Clayton and Rose, and become bad-asses at Kuntaw! The majority of the production equipment has been ordered, and will arrive any day for us to start abusing. Make sure to stop by the Photo section of the webpage, as content is now available for perusal. Now you too can witness the beauty of the location scouts or the exceedingly high quality of Tobys efforts. We hope you like what you see! -Andrew

Sunday, March 20th 2005

Pre-pre-production rages on! The last month has been good to the “Folk Lore” project; casting has taken place, props have been produced, and a castle has been built. The production has nearly achieved its monetary goal for the high definition medium and is forecasting the funds to be in place by the beginning of the official pre-production period (April 22nd). Casting decisions will be finalized by April 22nd, so if you’re an actor reading this, don’t fret, the decision is close at hand.
Since the last update, Clayton Smith (See Claytons bio here) has begun on his original score composition. Check back often with the site, as it will be updated frequently in the coming weeks with location scout photo’s, production material photos, as well as some fun interviews with Jeff, Andrew, Toby, and Clayton. -Andrew

Friday, February 4th 2005

Hello all! Jeff here. This is the first news entry, so it is likely to be long as hell. Basically we have decided to make a movie! Andrew and I are forging a motion picture with very little money, lots of work, and a ton of help. We are currently raising the funds for our motion picture. We are more than half way there, and are fairly optimistic about our chances. I mean, there are always credit cards, right??? Flyers have been dropped from planes on the Michigan towns of Traverse City and Marquette. These flyers (aside from telling people to lay down there arms and trust me with their future) are also made to notify aspiring actors about my little project! Andrew and Justin have been amazingly hard core about getting that info out... its good to know that no matter how lazy I am, those guys will pick up my slack! By the way, if you want to contact us about casting, please email us! Jeff's E-mail and Andrew's E-mail
Aaron is the reason that you are reading this news at all, seeing as he put this little website together! We hope to hold our auditions the last week of February in Marquette and the first weeks of March in Traverse City. So far we have a handful of replies from the Marquette area, I hope to hear more from the Interlochen Center for the Arts and also Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City. The Old Town Playhouse will be getting a call soon. (Thanks for the leads Shelby!) Up in the frigid UP (Upper Peninsula of Michigan, for those of you not familiar with our Michigan nomenclature) Toby is hammering away, literally, at the weapons, models, and other various props for our movie. I hope to get a whole slew of photos up very soon for you all to see!...and Jordon is protecting our country. Aside from those things, I continue to work on the script. I am sure that will be a constant process of revision until our June shoot. Wish me luck! There will be more to read as things develop!!!! ....Jeff