2/13/01

Today was our first real production meeting. We discussed actors and had some readings. My idea for the screenplay was relayed to the crew, comments and suggestions were noted. We have decided to shoot in Boston, as well as locations that are close together. I as a Director and Procucer have been going over the budget and will be changing it after a DP has been chosen. The meeting went 3 hrs and accomplished more in that 3 hrs then in the evening previous. Right now my only concern is finding a DP and Gaffer to assist with the production.

2/20/01

Todays meeting went very well. We have decided who the cast is going to be and also who is going to do what on the film. Due to some other issues, it seems as though I will be DPing the film myself. If you know anybody who wants a DP job, lemme know! Anyhow, everything else went fine and this friday the cast and crew will know who I have casted, so hold on to your hats!

2/27/01

Another great meeting with all the crew. We are finally getting our act together. Redwan over at Labisto has been a great hand in making this happen. He has set up a shooting date for monday the 5th at 8:00 for us to shoot. We have also been blessed with Tom Ford who is letting us kill him for the movie in his own house! WOW! This film is finally starting to make sense and is going very well. We shot the first footage of the film tonight at the local community access TV studio. The footage shot marks the beginning of Principal photography which is a landmark occasion. In other, bad news, we have not been able to get permits to shoot in Boston, so my decision was made today not to shoot the majority of the film in boston, but in Newton MA where Tom lives. Its a great town, sorta city looking and will work excellent, nobody cares in Newton where we shoot or what we do. Even better news, Tom's house is near a field where the mayor speech will be shot but its also near the Riverside D line stop! So ya take the train and it saves us all a huge amount of time and headaches picking everybody up and such. I mean, some people might get special service (stacie) but ya never know. Anyhow, I am starting to feel some very good vibes about this film, I hope you all are too.

3/2/01

Havin' fun now! Shooting is scheduled to begin Saturday the 3rd and we are ready to go! After getting all the equipment over to the Fords Residence, we have started to work out some of the major issues with the shooting and go over the screenplay with the actors. We have spent the entire evening working on dialog and starting to shoot the documentry. Things are on the up and up for us right now, I just hope tomorrow will be a great day to shoot!

3/3/01

HA, well things did not go as planned. I am sick in bed with a temp of 103! Its crazy that after all this prepration something as simple as getting sick can bring production to a hault. After calling everybody and re-arranging the schedule for shooting and it might work. Kurt and Elizabeth, our two actors, are leaving on wednesday night, so that leaves us 4 days to complete 8 principal sequences with the actors. To top all of this off, there is a huge storm moving in our direction that might hault production, or give us the well deserved snow footage that will help the story. To put it another way, I am looking forward to shooting in the snow and seeing what black and white snow looks like. Tonight Kurt is coming over to discuss the following day and make sence out of the production. If the snow stays away long enough, the film might just work. If it snows sunday, we might be fucked! My fingers are crossed and we'll just have to see what tomorrow brings! As for now, I am taking tuns of drugs and maybe, just maybe, I'll be good enough tomorrow to actually make sence out of the largest sequence in the film. Tom has already agreed to finish his stuff the following saturday the 10th so we could very well be in good condition. We'll just have to keep our fingers crossed and pray the storm does not fuck over the shoot.

3/03/01

I want some of that crack I was smoking when I figured I could shoot this film.. This is an impossible shoot and we are the crew to do it! Today, everthing that could have gone wrong did. From shooting for over 16hrs straight and into the following day, from the camera breaking every few minutes. This day will be remembered as the "first day of shooting, gone wrong" Even when I loaded the camera at about 11PM I fucked up and lost an entire roll of film, due to my tiredness. I am writing this at 2:47 AM in the morning, right after getting back from the shoot. Alexey and Dave have gone in town to drop people off. ITs been a long fucking day. You don't realise it until the beginning of the day seems to be one day and the night seems to be another. At that point, you know the shoot has gone way overtime and over budget. So to re-cap, Kurt Hanss left the project, Dave Laehn became the new lead actor. The camera fueses blew 3 times and I had to hotwire it together. The sun was going down and we had to continue shooting with freezing hands and bodys that would not get unfrozen. I had Hypothermia the entire day and when I finally thawed out, I was caughing up a fucking lung. Not only did we blow fuses in the camera, but we fucking blew them in the Fords basement running 2 1k's 1, 2k and a whole bunch of stuff off the same circut. We had a guy in the basement clicking over the circut breaker when it failed, he had a walkie talkie.. hehe.. Finally, if that was not enough, it took us over 3 hrs to prep the evening shot and get it ready. I was starting to get tired before it was dark, now it was dark and we were starting an entirely new setup. If I had known it would have taken this long, I would have stopped and continued it another day. To put it another way, if it were not for the crew and I mean the entire crew, the bunch of em' we would have not gotten what we did today done. So yes, in a few ways we are fucked. The storm is coming which is going to prohibit us filming tomorrow. I pissed off Aaron my friend when he waited up for me till midngiht until I called him and said can the shoot tomorrow. I pissed off the crew I love because I could not feed them!

I learned a lot today, and thanks to the entire crew working as a team, that knowlege will go a long way in the future. For anybody who reads this, if you need a crew, just call on these guys! They are the best!

3/6/01

So again, I am sick in bed today and yesterday. The storm hit and stopped production, well I stopped production but the storm did not help issues. Today we are re-working the schedule and depending on my sickness and getting better, we should be able to shoot a substantial chunk of the film before having to stop for a month and coming back to shoot in April.

3/7/01

We shot today, yes we did. I am completely exhausted and need some sleep. What I will log here is that we completed two more scenes for the film and another location is finished. But the sad news is, we don't have a lead actor anymore. We are stuck with a friend who probably won't be able to finish the project. So we are back to square one with finding somebody. The good news is, we have not shot any IMPORTANT scenes with the actor we have now. So re-shoots is only one sequence and very easy to do. SO! the schedule is being changed once again. We are taking 3 weeks off and then coming back to production starting with a meeting April 3rd. Time for bed and we'll get this done, oh we will!

4/9/01

So we continued to shoot this weekend, wraping up some needed scenes with the new actor. I welcome Chris to the cast of The Perfect Moment. So far so good. We have a new restaurant which is in my home town of Wellesley. It should work out great. The owners are happy and its just around the corrner from my house! The shooting over the weekend went good. We shot everything in Matts apartment. Over 18 shots in 2 days, which for me is very fast. Stacy turned into an AD and Videographer! haha! now she will be in the credits under several things.. Zack is hanging out writing the score and doing his best to control the boom. We had a pretty good weekend, things went smoothly and slowly as always. I'm just dying to look at the footage!

4/13/01

I am writing this log entry before we start to shoot tomorrow. Its about 12:30 on friday night, hence saturday morning. I have just revised the shooting schedule and things look pretty good. I feel with good weather and good spirit, we should be able to pull this one off saturday and parts of sunday. Get it in the bag and to the lab as soon as possible. Zack and I need to begin post production and I need to get back to studying for school. The sooner I get this film done, the sooner I can get A's in school. I am looking forward to finishing up this film after over a month of production and struggles to find the right people to act. I don't really know the outcome of this film. Maybe it will be a piece of shit, worthy of not being shown anywhere, but maybe it will be good enough to be seen by others. I just cut the first teaser. I will not be seen by anybody till the film has finished shooting. I believe in not showing people the footage until all photography is done and I am satisfied. Since I am the director/photographer/producer and editor, The final say is mine. Next week I will be busy, but the 23rd there should be a teaser up online at sometime of this movie. Principal photography will be over and I will be spending my time on re-shoots and figuring out how to get the score up and running. But as of now, its quarter to 1 in the AM. I am tired and need sleep, so hopefully the next log entry will be good news, I don't know. It better be good news, because if its not, thats the end of the Perfect Moment for now, we'll just have to see..

4/15/01

Well, its quarter to 10 on the 15th and we had an amazing day of principal photography yesterday. Not only did we get everything shot with the main actors, but we also invented some new scenes on the fly and did some very daring photography as well. The film is finally starting to come together. I am shooting again on monday the 16th to wrap up ALL of the sound photography and shoot some of the well needed exteriors. The documentary is coming along very nicely. We shot over 3 tapes in one day, due to the amount of time spent shooting. There was a sort of relief when I was dropping people off late last night. People were sleeping in the car on the way home. They were relieved the shooting was coming to an end. Stacking up the film, not yet processed, we found over 6 rolls and a 7th coming tomorrow. So we shot a TUN of film the last few days and I expect every single frame to be usable, which is not crazy, since we shot over 3 takes of each scene for coverage sake. As production is slowly coming to an end, I can look back on the days we were shooting as very educational to all who were involved. The amount of sweat and energy but into this production has been staggering! As Director/Producer/co-writer and DP, My job never ends until the last copy of the film has been handed out. So we have a few months for post production, but the teaser is already up online, so check it out!

10/1/01

Ok, OK, OK, so its been a long time. Its f-ing midnight and I'm tired. This month we are going to finish The Perfect Moment. I have decided to get it done sooner then later and do the transfer on the Emerson POS transfer machine. This will allow me to start work on Xaviers Theory with a slated date of production December 2001. There will be post production updates here in this section as it happens.

1/1/02

Well this year I anticipate finishing this film! Yes, its about time I get off my sorry ass and try to complete something for once. I talked to Stacie last night and she was kinda happy that I was actually going to finish it! Well I am god dam it and nothing, I mean NOTHING is going to stand in my way this time.. well maybe a bit of snow.. hehe.. more info about the 2002 shooting to come!

1/30/02

Its almost midnight on a wednesday night. I'm broke as usual, so broke that I have been putting some shit that I actually want, on ebay to sell. Things are looking up. I finally have the OK from Emerson to finish TPM! WOOP! I finally have the OK from Alexey and Stacie that they are in! WOOP! now all I need is a crew and the original crew could help. And of course I can't forget chris or Elizabeth who worked so hard from the beginning to make this film possible. I don't know where I would be w/o them helping. Well the good news is, Alexey won't be dissappearing this time we shoot. No, sir, he will be the producer and a good one at that. He is going to read how to be a good producer and learn the ways of boston producing. This is a big step, producer and AD rolled into one part.. I hope things do go well. I have the upmost appreciation for the people involved in this project. They have always been here for me. I have treated them like dirt and they still come to help. This time they will be treated like royalty and for that, I hope, they will be willing to help on other projects of mine. All I can think about is; less then one month from now, we will be shooting TPM! Its very exciting and very concerning. We don't have a screenplay that works with the new scenes. We don't have money for film stock and we don't have any idea what we are going to shoot yet! To say nothing about our post production plan of doing a digital telecine of the film and editing digitally, which is almost impossible w/o money! So money should be coming soon! How, Where, Why? I don't know yet, but it will come and I will love it! So if your reading this and you have extra money lying around, donate to the Tyler fund, he needs it. So without further adue, I'm going to bed. Watch as I fall asleep dreaming of a film that will one day be sitting on my DVD shelf! hehehe.. good night all and here goes nothing! TPM starts right now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2/22/02

Well, tomrrow it begins! We are starting from scratch again! A new crew, a similar cast and a whole bunch of new adventures to happen. Today I spent the entire day at the FEC trying to get equipment and finding out that I really can't! OUCH! twas tough, but after some phone calles and a few e-mails, things started to come together and finally I was able to get equipment. The next step was getting it to my car, which obvously was a challange in itself. Luckally I had a friend come along and help. WOOP, whithout him, my car certantly would have been towed! I hate boston sometimes! Anyhow, things went reletivly well after that eventful first moments of the day. I went down to RI and hopped in the pool to hang out and spend sometime underwater. Now this is where this log book strays off and goes in a completely different direction. Things in my future are changing and its for the better, but not for this log, to put it plainly, shit yo.. thats I gotta say! So without further adue, I'm going to bed! Tomorrow is going to be a big day!

2/23/02

HA! thats all Alexey said this morning when I was a full hour late! The BL did not want to work this morning and I finally fixed the issue, which was as simple as lubing a part which was stuck shut! I love Emerson's BL's! Poor Bernie can't fix them all at once! Anyhow, the camera worked great after that and I left the house at 11:15, call time at alexeys house was 10:30, so I was late again! Anything new? So I arrive, with Tim in hand, ready to shoot. Of course my sound guy, Zack, was not to be seen. After a conversation with my dad at home, trying to get him to send me the phone # of poor Zack. I called Zack up around 12 or so and discussed his issues with me. After a few minutes I realized he was not coming because he was sick! He promised he'd be around sunday though.. so few! We had enough crew and at 12:30 we started to work. From there on out everything stopped working! The poor old nagra's fuse blew and I had to replace it! The poor old Bauer mic's screws were poping out all over the place and needed to be screwed back in. Meanwhile I'm trying to be gaffer, director, DP and so on.. to be blunt, it was too much work, but thats what happenes when you have new crew on a film set. They are all learning, and thats what I need them to do, learn, but learn fast.. hehe.. So of course, the first shot of the day has to be the biggest, its what I always do. It took me 2 hours to set up an alabrate mirror setup, which can be seen in the still gallary of this site. It was a confusing and very bright stetup. I mean we were shooting on 7276, which is of course 50 ASA! Basically the sun had to be in the room we were shooting in! And the sun was across the hallway bairly peeking into windows! My idea of mirrors would not work, but instead, I took the mirrors and used 5 lights to bounce light across the room via the mirrors. It created a very kool look to a scene which was suppose to be morning. As Alexey said "its a room with NO windows which looks like a room with 12" But thats ok, because it works well, in my opinion. Anyhoo, the shooting of that scene went well, after all the technical difficultys were solved, that scene went smoothly. It was not over then! After that scene we had to do a bit of gurella work, outside in the hallway! Alexey told us not to plant lights everywhere, so we did not. He took the initiative and helped to place lights where I need them. So lets do the job list, alexey is a producer/gaffer/writer/co-director.. yea.. sure.. Anyhow, overworked and underpaid we set up this shot. We were ready to shoot when.. BOOM! the entire circut of the hallway went off. We went in to dark for a split second and the emergency lights turned on! WOOPS! Alexey turned around and said "Everybody, get all the equipment into my apartment and shut the door" so we did. The 25min setup time took 3 min to take down and throw into his room. Meanwhile, I tried, without any flashlight to fix the problem. I failed and we all sat to have lunch! Meanwhile, we set up the shower scene and planned 2 more shots which were not scrpited. Sadly we were unable to use Elizabeth in a crutial scene today, it will have to be shot at a later date. After lunch we moved on to shoot the majority of the other scenes including liz in the morning. They went off without a hitch and just as we were ready to quit, the film rolled out and that finished off our day with a bang! We unloaded the mag, packed up the gear and preped the house for a presentation of the film I did last year. Everybody laughed their heads off to The ID Project Revisited and Alexey and I realized that we had something in both The ID Project and TPM that other filmmakers did not have and thats us!

2/28/02

Why does this always happen to me? I'm sick! We have stopped production! Luckily this time, Liz and all the rest CAN come back to shoot, but not until March 16th and 17th, which leaves Alexey and myself time to prep. Its kinda good and kinda bad. I hope I'm better and ready to go by the 15th, which is a possibility. And maybe, just maybe the FEC will have a sound recorder of some sort for me to use! Wouldn't that be nice? I'm keeping my hopes up. Its absolutly funny how a year ago to the weekend, I was sick. Yes this time its just a cold.. but still, I'm sick enough not to attend school! So, I'm going to prep, prep, prep for the 16th and hope for the best. Get a good crew planned and ready to go. I'm hopeing for gold.. but ya never know, I might just get silver.

3/16/02

Well it begins again. No sickness, No issues of physical problems = one hell of a shoot. Thats right folks, we shot a tun of film and got ALL of the principal photography done today! Yes I know there will be re-shoots which can all be done with a bolex and a 100ft roll of 500 ASA stock, but hell. Anyhow, toady went very well. We all woke up early, hung out at Alexeys place for 2 hours before all of us finally arrived, (zack) and then proceeded to shoot. We had some changes in the second actress, but they were all settled by mid morning. The shoot went pretty smoothly, no crazy lighting setups, no redicilous gaffing jobs and definitly a LARGE location so we could all spred our legs unlike last week. So we were doing well. Same crew minus Tim, but it worked well. The moral was high, until lunchtime and of course, I'm shooting a FUCKING movie, I'm not gonna stop because I'm hungry..! Thats why you NEED catering. Oh well, what can I do. Sadly one of the BL mags was fucked up and it was jamming the film, so we only got off like 100 ft or so before the mag froze up for the 4th time and I gave up on it. It was a bit frusterating, but over all it made us use the 500 ASA stock which we would not have used otherwise. So oh well, same cost to us and its in color! WOOP! Man the poor telecine person is going to be upset. In other news, today marked the FINAL DAY of photography on documentary of TPM. If there is any more footage shot, it will be purly by mistke. We are not shooting with a crew anymore, everything will be just liz and I, which worked great during the summer of 2001. So I guess we ARN"T finished after all, but we are so close that, one evening with a bolex and its in the can! Alexey wrote the Perfect Moment song over the night and we started to shoot the music video. Alexey and I are fools for Liz and every time we see her in the cameras eye, we drewl. So there is a whole bunch of her and a whole bunch of us drewling. Yea, so things, after the small kinks, went well. I can't imagine a perfect, non-kink, day anyhow. I'm just not that type of filmmaker, I'd think something was wrong if something did not fail drastically! So monday I bring back the equipment in the evening with Alexey and BAM! Thats it! No more Emerson's cumbersom equipment. If the film we shot does not come out, shit who cares! the scene will just not appear in the film! Its not a big deal. We had a great time today, we shot 5 DSR-300 tapes and one VX-1000 tape, so we have TUNS of behind the scenes footage. Its great because its our last day and we are wrapping everything up. I mean the final thing Liz will ever say on FILM for this movie was today! Its difficult to realize that finally this project, after over a year of work,is finally coming together. I thank all the crew and cast for a job well done!

6/23/02

Well, the film looks great! After spending a few nights cutting it together its slowly coming together. Its been a long process from development to screenplay to shooting and now post production, but so far its moving right along. I'm thinking of a release SOON! I can't schedule anything due to Alexey being away, but when he gets his ass back from Germany, we can sit down and plan a release date. The show, so far, looks great. The pieces are all there, its time for ADR and some other sound effects and maybe a new transfer. I was able to do a FREE transfer at Emerson, but it blew hard core, so I kinda put that idea off and am cutting from that footage as a reference mark only and plan to cut up the original positive in somewhat of an order and get that transferred and then I'll have a good transfer to work with. I've shown the show to a few people and most of them really enjoy it. Nobody yet has asked me to play it over and over again which means its not THAT good, but ya know, its OK. Alexey and I are still posing the question on moving to LA and ya never know, we still might do that. I love Boston so we'll see if I can talk him out of it... hehe.. So we'll see what happens, I still feel we can get this project done before summer is over and I'm sticking to my guns this time!

11/20/02

Another year has gone by without the film being done! Alexey and I are happily living in Los Angeles and I am still plugging away on the film. It sits in the background of my computer wanting to come out but it can't due to money. We have not been able to afford a new transfer, we have not been able to record ALL the missing dialog and we are still missing some key editing strokes of genius to make the story work for both of us, so here on my computer it sits. I don't know what will happen to it now. I'm kinda concerned that neither Alexey or myself have any idea of what to do with it now. I will be honest in saying, its not my priority. I have other gigs going on, bigger projects and I'm waiting for Kerry to come from the east cost with Matt to record her dialog. Elizabeth is going to do her dialog ASAP since she is here in CA with Emerson. Once that is done, we'll be all set! So we'll see what happens. We might have a distribution offer, we may even hit festivals with it.. the sky is the limit. As for today, well its shot, its cut, now it needs to be fine tuned and re-transferred into the masterpiece which it will become!