I got the movie transferred from Digibeta to DVD for the first time ever. I watch about the first half at lunch today and it’s probably the first time I’ve seen the movie in about five years. My initial thoughts are..
1) It looks very good. The one thing I’ve always been confident about is the overall look of the movie and this is especially true on DVD…it just looks great.
2) The music problems aren’t as bad as they could be. Lots of the scenes that need replacement music don’t have any dialog over them, which means it’s easy enough to swap out one music track for another.
3) It needs re-editing. A lot of the individual shots just stay on the screen too long. It’s a comedy, so it needs to be tighter.
All in all, I’m excited. I have had ideas for changes and they are going to work, I think. The problems are there but they are all solvable.
I’m starting this without being 100% sure about how it’s going to go…but here goes…
We’re having a contest! My no-budget comedy Breathing Room needs music - score, soundtrack, everything.
If you win - I use your song in the movie. Did I mention there was no budget? I’m also going to be releasing the film online, free under a Creative Commons license so I won’t be getting rich off of your hard work. The idea is that it’s promotion for everyone.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting silent scenes from the movie that need music.
Click here for the first scene… It’s about halfway through the movie and there’s no dialog. It’s the main character taking a break in their backyard.
Christine Kane is a singer / songwriter from North Carolina who also has an interesting blog about creativity. I just discovered her blog today but she seems like a great example of the new independent artist; creating a body of work, working on self-promotion and coming up with different ways to support herself and her work. For example, Kane also does retreats for women four times a year that sell out months in advance.
She has a really great post on how to not take thing personally, something that’s especially a problem for artists. My experience on my film Breathing Room was that I took the response to the film personally even though the response wasn’t really that bad. Here’s Kane’s first suggestion and it’s very apros pro.
1 - SWSWSWSW
This stands for “Some will. Some won’t. So what? Someone’s waiting!” It means that some people are going to love what you do. Then, there will be those who visit your blog, look at your paintings, listen to your songs, read your poems, review your resume - and they’ll shrug and say, “Yea, not so much.” So what? Somewhere out there someone is waiting for your gift. And if you have to keep working on your craft, or wait a little while, that’s okay!
This is important advice for any artist. Just so true; there are people who hate your favorite movie and love the film you walked out of the theater on. There’s just too many people and too many opinions to think you’re going to get everyone to like you.
You hear so often that sex and violence sell. My $30,000 independent film Breathing Room is a romantic comedy so there’s really no violence. Someone pounds on a door at one point but I think that’s it. There’s really no sex. A kiss. But there is some skin, don’t you worry…and I guess it works because this picture has about 20 times more views than any of the other photos on Flickr at this point.
John O’Rourke was one of the producers on Breathing Room but on a really small indie production like this one was, just saying he was a producer doesn’t quite cover it. John worked his ass off on the movie; helping to organize, work deals, and acting as a mentor to me. He had a ton of great advice on every aspect of the film.
I haven’t talked to John in years but a quick IMDB search shows that he’s been working as a 1st Assistant Director for a lot of shows. In television, the 1st A.D. basically runs the show; directors change week-to-week and they have to earn the respect of the crew but the 1st is a constant.
I’m continuing the process of updating Breathing Room’s IMDB page, including getting the title changed back to Breathing Room. There are like three other films named Breathing Room but there weren’t when I started the movie. I think I’ve added the rest of the cast and now I need to figure out and add crew. You can pay $10 and add a picture to your IMDB listing so I think I’ll do that soon, too but you know….ten bucks is ten bucks. No need to rush.
Floyd Van Buskirk plays Uncle Russell in Breathing Room. Floyd gets a ton of work, including stints on TV shows like How I Met Your Mother, NCIS, and Reno 911. He’s a great improv actor who got a weird bit of fame when he was featured on Bravo’s TV workout last season as a client.
A lot of Breathing Room revolves around phone calls. Missed calls, answering machine messages, all night phone calls. Here’s Doug Langdale (writer / producer of cartoons like Dave The Barbarian and Earthworm Jim) as Joe, the anarchist punk semi-friend of Adam’s.
