Undivided: The Preston and Steve Experience
Production Blog Page 2 (August - December 2010)
Go to Blog Page 3>
12/24/10
As you may have noticed, it's been a little while since my last entry. Unfortunately running your own film production company while working a full-time day job takes it's toll time-wise. Another consideration is that I'm also responsible for the adminstrative tasks behind the scenes as well which is what I've been wrapped up with most recently. Raising money to fund the company has been one of the goals I've been most actively pursuing lately. We have some interest in that area now and there are some exciting developments on the horizon.
A rough cut of the documentary is finished and was approved by the people behind this project, it's really shaping up to be something fun and special.
Rest assured that the post-production cycle is still happening and that new entries are coming to this blog soon.
Stay tuned and until the next entry (which is coming shortly) - HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
9/16/10
Even though I haven't been writing, I have been working. Primarily I was tackling some technical challenges with the footage but it looks like I've been able to resolve the problems. I won't bore you with the geeky details, suffice it to say that the technical side of production can be quite challenging and a very enriching learning experience.
The rough cut is being assembled as I type this, it's going to take a looooooong time to build. Once I get it burned to DVD, it will be sent to WMMR so the member of the show and the powers that be at the station can see where it's going as well as to my music maestro and motion graphics master. More as things progress, but for now I'll be taking a little break to get caught up on some rest and start to get ready for the next steps of the production.
9/11/10 and 9/12/10
Dealing with technical issues over the last 2 days, not much to say other than it's like being in the middle of a great workout and then getting kicked in the balls halfway through your set.
More later after I escape from technical hell and resolve everything.
9/9/10
Deciding the content for the show daily is based on numerous things - news, personal experiences from members of the show, guests, and callers to name but a few. Steve showed me their topic list that contains roughly 70 - 80 go to topics that they can refer to at any time. The members of the show have a conference call each night and come up with a general idea of what's going to be discussed the next day. According to Steve, the "ass" and things related is a topic that comes up on a somewhat regular basis but is not something they can dwell on too much, much to the delight of the females on the show who can get grossed out by too much disgusting guy stuff.
On a side note - from a fan perspective they keep the show fresh each day. While they do cover some gross stuff here and there, their topics range from current news and local events to music, politics, and much more. I find them to be a real breath of fresh air where they can have you laughing your ass off one minute but then be promoting a local charity with the F.O.P. (Fraternal Order of Police) the next. We've had a number of police officers in the Philadelphia area gunned down over the past few years and the show is always supportive of the police and their families.
Not to harp on the Howard Stern show but, listening to Preston and Steve, I have so much more of an appreciation for who they are and the type of show they run. I have trouble listening to Howard's show now as a result as I get sick of listening to Howard whine and hearing about the latest drama with Artie and his bullshit. They seem like spoiled babies moreso than an entertaining morning radio show.
Finished editing general show interviews. Back to more specific segments. Time for the Granny Grand Prix! Getting to shoot a group of 9 grandmas ranging from ages 68-89 racing in go-karts was really fun! You can't ask for a more enjoyable shooting experience. This segment is going to be a fun segment to watch when we have the music and graphics in place.
I'm working on the mixer segment next. Their mixers are, for lack of a better word, wild. If you're single and attend, there's ample opportunity to hook up, if you're not, you can just sit back, have a drink and enjoy the show as the night gets progressively more crazy as people continue to drink. That includes the members of the show, with the exception of Steve. Wow, I can't really talk too much about what goes on during the rest of this segment.
One of the things that sets this show apart from others is the devotion of the fans. There's a phenomenon known as "Tattoosday", where fans can come in and get a free tattoo. The catch is that is has to tie in with the show somehow. They can get whatever image they want, but there has to be a reference to the Preston and Steve show incorporated into the tattoo somewhere. It started off as somewhat of a temporary bit but turned into something much more. They've been doing it for over 3 years now and the waiting list is backlogged for a couple of years.
9/8/10
Working on Steve Morrison's interview now. Ironically, Steve is one of the more serious people off-air but seems to always have a joke waiting in the wings somewhere as he was a professional, touring stand up comedian before he joined the show. He also does a lot of their joke commercial bits. He's also the one with probably the most defined vision for the future of the show. I dove into the topic of his stand up career and how it translates to radio, there's some interesting insight there. Steve doesn't drink, smoke or do recreational drugs.
Steve's very tech savvy, really wants to take the show into some interesting directions. Each member has very different ideas about what their best and worst moments of the show are.
This segment's rough is done. Sometimes it goes quickly and just flows. It takes a long time for my computer to do anything because it's a bit older than I'd like (it's a 6 year old G5 warhorse). It still chugs away and gets the job done, it just takes a little longer with HD. Sometimes, a lot longer. But it gives me time to be constructive in other ways while I'm waiting, such as writing blog entries.
Onto general show interviews with a variety of people. Preston talking about how the show got started. The right people at the right time. Back to more rendering, done editing for the night.
9/7/10
Back to Nick's interview...
His is probably the most radio-geekish interview. It's a nice insight into the industry. If you can, try to dig up the podcast of the Preston and Steve show from June or July of '09. Look for the drunk day Double-Dare episode. Nick almost died that day, drunk and in a vat of ice cream, then there's the Casey, uh, moment with Mark Summers. That's all I can say about that.
Render, render, render... We do a lot of waiting in the post production process, which can make video production people look lazy when in fact, we're just waiting for the machine to build a temporary preview of whatever we're working on. Sorry, the geek theme today continues...
Going to see Machete' later this week, looking forward to reviewing it for the blog. Kevin's reviews continually crack me up.
Finished up with Nick, did some basic color correction just for the rough, working on Preston's interview next.
I love Final Cut Pro and my Macs. Have to wash off the filth of Windows from the day. Blech. I exaggerate of course (but not really, as much as that damn system crashes...).
Rendering does give me time to free associate while I'm editing, that's kind of cool. See? I'm doing it now. Render's done.
I like to multi-task while I work when I can to keep my brain moving, I can't turn the damn thing off most of the time and it's nice to keep it occupied.
Dinner break. Computer has 57 minutes to go on this latest render.
Done!
The show gets a lot of female visitors, many of them on the hot side as you'll see in the doc, I was curious how some of the wives feel about that. Everybody is kind enough to address my probing questions into their home lives a bit.
Preston interview is done! So am I, except for some rendering of course.
9/6/10
Celebrated my 5th year wedding anniversary over the weekend, very nice. Also had 2 days off, I mean, really off. I did a little work here and there, but mostly just relaxed, first time I've done that in months. Really re-charged my batteries, I'm ready to get back into it. So, without further adieu, I return to working on Marisa's interview.
Marisa is one of the key players behind the scenes. She makes it on the air now and then throughout the show, but she handles more of the production duties in the control room. She wrangles the interns, coordinates the constant flood of incoming phone calls from listeners (which is really constant by the way), gets information to the on-air folks via numerous flat screens around the studio, helps to orchestrate their event appearances from a technical standpoint as well as a host of other things. She's the sole single member of the show and does like to put it out there that she's looking and open to dating the right guy. One thing about the members of the show is that they share their personal lives and really open up to the listeners. There are some filters here and there, but for the most part they let it hang out without pretense.
That was an easy one to finish up. All of the people on the show are very personable, they're very nice, everyday, regular people.
Nick's interview is up next.
His interview reminds me how cool he is. Nick is kind of like your favorite neighborhood friend growing up. He's easy going and fun to talk to, as well as very personable. When you send him an email, you get a reply back very quickly, he seems to be constantly in touch with tons of people at any given time. He's even like that when I cornered him a bit with a question about strippers on the show and his wife. He didn't bat an eye, he just smiled and answered the question.
That's it for today. Happy labor day everyone!
8/30/10
Still working on the Casey interview. On a side note, it's 92 degrees here in my studio. Ever try to edit in a sweat lodge?
Hey! Is that my spirit guide or one of our cats? I think I'm hallucinating...
Anyway. Casey apparently has a thing for Selma Hayek (who doesn't?). Still have a lot to cut out of here, too long unfortunately. Will be doing some test audience things with the content to see where I take it. More bonus footage.
Kathy Romano's segment is next on the chopping block (get it? it's an editing joke! isn't that freakin' clever?).
We talk some radio industry stuff here as well as good and bad guests on the show. The interview questions range between the serious and not so much, hope everyone enjoys some of the questions I asked. There are some good and unexpected answers here in the cast interviews as you get to know everyone a bit better off the air. That's kind of one of the cool things about this crew, who you get on air is pretty much the same as off air. Now, their energy is a bit more mellow as a lot of that comes out during the show. But otherwise, they're nice, laid back people. No airs about them. Although Steve Morrison can be a little grumpy but who isn't at 4:30 in the morning...
One of Kathy's favorite guests was Mark Wahlberg. By all accounts I keep hearing how nice he is from various friends that have either met or worked with him in the Philly market.
Wife visited briefly here in the lodge, couldn't hack it, went below for cool air. Must take break, losing consciousness from dehydration.
BTW - I think that's the new name of my studio - "The Lodge".
8/28/10
Awww man, it's really nice outside, wish I could just move my whole base of operations here and work outside. Oh well, back to the Stephen Lynch interview.
Good songs, his stuff is funny. Wow, he made his way through YouTube. Mostly people taping him at open mics, they post on YouTube, he catches on EVERYWHERE. Very cool. Tours his ass off, hard worker.
Some station in Philadelphia apparently hooked up jumper cables to Stephen Lynch's nipples. Weird.
Onto the next segment...
Starting on the cast interviews. Casey is up to bat.
A show like this can really impact people's personal lives for good and bad. Either way there's a large impact because it's nearly constant as it extends beyond the show. They have appearances to do, fund raisers, and so on. When you're younger and in radio, you can live almost like a rock star. When you're older, not so much. Families develop and time catches up. So to continue at the same pace get's difficult and a bit unrealistic.
Radio is kind of a vulnerable profession to work in. You have to move to where the work is if you want to make a decent living at it. The format can change (and has) literally overnight, often forcing people out of jobs just as quickly. Finding jobs (especially on the air) is difficult at best as people tend to hang on to their slots as long as they can if it's full time. Moving from station in the same market is possible and happens often, other times you have to move. Danny Bonaduce is in the Philly market now. His show is doing OK but not great in the ratings here. If things don't work out, onto the next market, wherever that is.
More Casey to go. I've been at this most of the afternoon, dinner break.
8/25/10
Working pretty heavy duty now, things have settled down a bit, lots going on there for awhile family-wise, hectic.
Putting finishing touches on Chris Hardwick interview segment. I forgot how funny this segment is. Can't wait for everyone to see it. Lots of footage I can't use, will have to include bonus scenes.
Working on next celebrity interview segment. This time it's the Boondock Saints cast and director. Now I say cast because I have to be generic about 1 of them since his agent never returned my emails or phone calls (really? you're just THAT busy?). Norman Reedus and Troy Duffy both luckily did get back to me and I have some great footage of them. You'll have to pardon the mosaic.
Some great background info here from Troy Duffy about the Boondock Saints films, I'm eager for fans to check this out.
"Douche bags love movies for the wrong reasons" - Steve Morrison
Gotta love that.
Damn! This is killing me, I have a lot of good interview footage with Troy Duffy, independent filmmakers would love this interview. I'd love to let this play out, but I gotta keep it lean and mean.
Norman Reedus got thrown through the window of a car. Ouch.
Cool, that interview was great. As Porky Pig would say: "Th, Th, The, The, That's ALLLL Folks!". I'm done for the night. Stephen Lynch interview next.
8/24/10
Woohoo! 3 days in a row, hot damn!
Working on trimming the blood drive segment a bit today. Basically I'm trying to get all the segments trimmed a bit along with production notes organized for the rough cut. I need to send the rough cut out in the next week or so in order for WMMR to see what I've done up to this point and also so my music guru (Paul Zerman) and graphics master (Brett Triantafillou) can see it and start coming up with ideas. I'm remarkably lucky to be surrounded by talented artists that are willing to work with me and lend their expertise to Cinema Alliance. I couldn't have asked for 2 more talented dudes than Paul and Brett (who are also very good friends of mine). I'm even more fortunate to have a network of talent at my disposal as I have actors, dancers, production crew, writers, musicians, graphic designers, and a bevy of other artists that I can get in touch with who will jump on board to the projects I'm working on.
Paul's already been working in the background collecting music for this project. We have confirmed releases and music from a number of artists that I'll announce later, our roster of music includes some international talent as well that I'm very excited about.
I had already started on this so there wasn't much to do for the rough. Added some notes, trimmed here and there, gotta wait until I have the music in place before I can edit it down.
So, onto the celebrity interview segments. First up, Chris Hardwick from Hard and Phirm, The Nerdist, G4, MTV, stand up comedy, and the list goes on. Talented dude. Nice guy too. It's great to meet someone who's in entertainment and is down to earth. Chris is really laid back and easy to converse with. He's also friends with Rob Zombie; go figure, the nerdist and the zombie are buddies. Too cool. You'll hear more in the interview...
One of the great things about working on this is that I got to interview some of the celebrities coming by the show, I'm working on my Chris Hardwick interview at the moment.
Dinner break, back soon.
My wife locked herself out of our house during her lunch break and I had to go pick her up from work. Ahhhh, married life. By the way, my wife is a valuable part of the CA production team and is awesome to work with. (Yes, she's probably reading this :) )
Dinner break over, back to work...
Chris is really into the tech of the P&S studio, he's quite the tech geek.
Working on the next interview. This isn't so much an interview as it's just shooting what's going on over the air. Currently there are 3 adult movie stars (Teagan Presley, Sunny Leone, and Eva Angelina) at the mics playing a game with Preston. I'm not sure who's reading this blog so suffice it to say that you'll just have to watch the doc to see what happens. Sorry about that (not really).
It's late, that's it, time to get this posted and call it a night. Until next time...
8/23/10
Back on deck. Finished the rough of the Camp Out segment. That was one of my favorite segments so far. Getting lots of inspiration for complimentary design elements.
Sorry, filmmaker geekness aside.
Starting on the Cardboard Classic segment. That was another crazy event. People. LOTS of people. All having a good time. At 7am.
Drunk. 7am. Dressed up in gorilla suits. No shit. I love this stuff.
Dinner break, I'm back.
The lengths people go to for this event is pretty amazing. I've attended Burning Man and events like Burning Man and have to say that this crowd came with the same innovative spirit as people that are crazy enough to build large structures in the desert. Same thing here but in the snow. People will take months to build these sleds, simply for the enjoyment of hauling it to Jack Frost mountain, lugging it up the mountain and then for one run down (if they make it down) and that's it. Like I said, amazing. It makes me want to join in, crazy, crazy.
A sumo wrestling ring, a Coors Light blimp, Tiger's Cadillac SUV and the Sta-Puf Marshmallow Man all make appearances in sled form. They've gotta haul these things BY HAND up the side of a tube run on the mountain. And some of these sleds are big! Sta-Puf is about 15 feet tall at least.
Once the sleds are up, it's off to the "races". The goal of the race seems to be just to get to the bottom, it doesn't really matter who gets there first. The Coors Light Hindenberg has some issues but the mime that's riding the Eiffel Tower seems to be doing just fine, stupid mime.
The giant shopping cart is pretty cool as is watching the animal cage crash and burn.
At the end of the day, it's just more cardboard. Classic.
8/22/10
I never made it back the next day after my last entry, had to work late at the day gig.
I also had another editing session in there but didn't blog, sorry about that. Bad filmmaker! Bad! Bad!
Working on the Camp Out for Hunger segment. This is one of the segments I find a bit inspirational as you can tell both Preston and Steve are passionate about the cause and the benefit it brings to the community. Philabundance collects the food from this event and re-distributes it directly to the people that need it. In our current economic times, it's great to see people come out to support and donate. It also inspires me to go out each year and buy a bag of groceries for donation as well, you almost can't help but get wrapped up in it. The energy, the motivation, the people involved, are all great.
There's a fierce thunderstorm happening right now. It's kind of making me feel like Dr. Frankenstein in his lab in the old horror movies, lightning crackling just outside of the window, the thunder making the windows vibrate. BWHAAAHAHAAA!!! IT'S ALIVE!!! THE PRESTON AND STEVE BLOGUMENTARY IS ALIVE!!!
Sorry, temporary lapse of sanity as the thunder diminshes in the distance and my attention turns back towards my creation.
HOLY SHIT! That one was intense! Just outside MY damn window! Gotta shut down, definitely risking equipment at this point...
8/9/10
Lots of life in the past 6 daze, yes, daze.
Tightening up segments now, working on the Camp Out segment. Lots of good stuff in here, hopefully bonus material for DVD.
Still waiting on emails to be returned. Agents can be great or a real pain in the ass. I'm experiencing both right now.
Editor's block. Trying to think of clever seque. Ack. Meditation break.
Inspiration, gotta love it. Simple is good, it's easy to over-think it.
Holy shit, it's 91 degrees up here.
Oh, good, it's down to 89.
One crazy thing about Camp Out is that it's constant. During my interview with Preston and Steve in the RV they were staying in, you could hear all kinds of activity in the background. There's a band playing, there are forklifts driving around, people all over doing all kinds of work loading food, etc., it's always moving. I think we did this interview at around 9:30pm.
Getting a head of steam on this finally. More tomorrow.
8/1/10
Typically editing for me is really enjoyable, the problem is I need to devote some time to it, it's hard to get in a groove when you only have 30 minutes here or an hour there. Luckily, I have most of this afternoon to get crankin', which is great.
It can be difficult to pick up where you left off as well if you haven't worked on a project in awhile.
One of the reasons I love this show is because of the dedication that the show has to it's listeners and vice-versa. There are plenty of shows out there but so many of the hosts claim to "love" their audience but don't really connect the same way this show does. During the interview I have with Steve Morrison, he really goes into this dedication to the audience that's beyond what you'll hear most radio hosts say with regard to their listeners. It seems to me that most of the big radio shows tend to take the people that listen for granted, whereas the focus with The Preston and Steve show is entirely based around the audience and their enjoyment of the show.
One of the questions I posed was who was a great interview and who wasn't. It's not surprising to hear Casey say that Trey Anastasio from Phish was great since Casey's a huge fan. It was surprising to hear that Patton Oswald was an asshole.
The members of the show think about the future and their place in it as well as the technology that places the show in the listeners hands. They have the radio station as well as an online streaming version of the show, podcasts and an IPhone app.
One of Nick's scariest moments from the show was thinking that he was going to die while being dunked in a giant vat of ice cream while he was drunk. (It'll make sense when you see the documentary, but it sounds crazy, doesn't it?).
