Liars and Lunatics :: Film Blog

Here’s something we probably already knew, but are still amazed at the discovery:

Put some ominous music under some images, and bingo! It changes the whole feel.

For example: When we first began working on the title menu for the DVD of our film Liars and Lunatics, we chose images of James and Paige having a picnic. These scenes are flashbacks that are usually accompanied by a wistful music box tune.

But for the title menu, we wanted to try something different.

We used a piece of music from the film that is very emotional and gets your heart rate up. Put it under the picnic scenes and those images (that are usually so nostalgic) now seem ominous… Like you know there’s something bad going to happen to these people, but they’re completely unaware of it.

That’d probably be categorized as dramatic irony, right?
 
In any case, it’s amazing what music can do…

{{ photo :: James and Paige having a picnic, completely unaware of the trying time ahead of them }}

Sorry for the delay in this post. We’ve been very busy finalizing the Liars and Lunatics DVD before it’s sent out for duplication. Very busy. (Oh, did we already mention that we’ve been very busy?)

First we had to fix any problems in the color. Saturday was spent on finalizing the surround sound (which took only four hours, instead of the eight hours we anticipated).

One of these days it will be done. Hopefully in time for Christmas…

P.S. Want us to send you an email when the DVDs will be ready for order? Click here.

Well, we’ve locked the movie…

Oh, except that we decided to work on the surround sound a bit. For the Gala on October 26th.

Guess it’s true that you never really finish a movie. You just abandon it at some point.

Spent the whole day yesterday doing some color correction on Liars and Lunatics. The movie seemed a bit dark in places. And some of the color was off in a few scenes.

There were moments when we wished to turn the whole movie into black and white… That would be a whole lot easier for matching color tones, wouldn’t it? 

 P.S. Will try to put up Part Two of the Behind the Scenes featurette on YouTube sometime this week or early next.

Spent the past few days fixing up little bits of the Liars and Lunatics movie. Most of it was spent in rendering the footage. (For all you non-techies, that’s what must be done before we can burn a DVD copy.) 

We have to render each section (usually 2-5 scenes blocked together) and then render the final movie as a whole. We’re still tweaking bits and pieces, trying to get everything ready for October’s premiere in Manhattan.  

This takes time of course. It actually takes about four hours to render the video portion of the full movie. And another 20 minutes to do the audio. And then we have to watch carefully for any glitches, mistakes, or otherwise.

We’re actually rendering a scene right now, which is why we have the time to write a few words in this blog.

Waiting is so much fun… 

Does anyone know that September is supposed to be “Be Kind to Your Editor” Month?

Guess that goes for film editors, too. Right?

Does anyone want to mention this fact to our computer? Because, so far, the computer does not seem to be aware of this…

{{ photo :: Editing a scene from Liars and Lunatics. }}

We spent Labor Day doing… what else? Work… (Isn’t that why it’s called “Labor” Day?)

We were cleaning up all the files on the computer. Putting raw footage files together; putting the trailer and behind-the-scenes files together; moving everything around on the different hard drives. It’s strange where some files end up…

And now the computer has to figure out (or rather we have to help the computer figure out) where everything is located. Which means more work. But hey, someone has to do it… 

Working of lots of things right now. No time for a real post. Will try to do something tomorrow, maybe… Looking at dates and theatres for a New York City premiere (guess that’ll also be our World Premiere, too)… Working on the editing… No time even to add a photo to this post…

Well, we’ve started work on a film trailer for Liars and Lunatics… That’s right, soon you’ll be able to view a 2-minute sneak-peak of all our hard work…

We’re trying a few different things… some voice-overs and different music.  We’re considering putting in some huge explosions… Maybe a car chase or two… Also looking at including some cool aliens landing on the roof of the courthouse… (Then again, that might be a bit misleading. Guess we should stick with our own footage!)

We’ll post the trailer… hopefully sooner rather than later. We’ll see when it’s ready. Stay tuned…

P.S. Some trailer trivia :: The word “trailer” apparently comes from the fact that movie theatres would show these advertisements at the end of a movie. However, this changed when it became obvious that the audiences tended to leave the theatre as soon as the featured film ended. Still, the name stuck. Now when we go to the movies, we have to sit through 30 minutes of trailers…

You know what? We really are affected by the media, aren’t we?

Take us Moon Brothers for example. After all the recent non-stop coverage over the Don Imus incident, we are actually planning to add an Imus-style rant to our film Liars and Lunatics.

Well, in any case, the whole premise of our film—an evangelist admitting himself into a mental asylum—is kind of shocking, isn’t it? Something that you might hear on his radio program (er… former radio program).

Will this addition make it into the movie? Who knows? We’re testing it out.

Hmmm… Maybe Don Imus would like to try out for the role of the radio commentator?

{{ photo :: James Jamisin (played by Joseph A. Halsey) in a straitjacket. }}