Andrew's Random Train of Thought: August 2007

(Originally posted on my MySpace blog back in 2007)

It was June 2003, during one of our Three Monkeys Worldwide "production" meetings, when the idea for Loss of Muffin came to be.

We were just a few months out from shooting Punching Hitler. We had just lost Penn & Teller as our stars (a story for another time) and were trying to figure out how we were going to pull this off without them. The other problem we were dealing with was what to shoot Hitler on. The previous September, we shot our Short The Meditation on a Canon XL-1 and weren't too impressed with the quality of the image (nor of the Short!). It was just three months later that we got our hands on the Panasonic camera but at the time, we were really worried.

Well, I was worried. Ed was of the opinion that as long as the script was good....it wouldn't matter what we shot on. I thought otherwise (it has to look good or it won't be taken seriously). So to prove his point, he was really hot on shooting something over the weekend using his itsy-bitsy camera (a one chip something or other). Scott and I joked around with him and our Hitler production meeting became a "What should Ed shoot this weekend" meeting.

At some point, Ed told us a joke with a silly, turn-of-the-century punchline that made us snicker. Fueled by that "laughter," Ed had the idea for his Short. And to make it even kookier, he would say it was adapted from something written by Edgar Allan Poe (who he was reading the collected works of). But which story to use? In the end, we chose ALL of them (in the credits, the title reads Based on the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe. Snicker!). But which official title to use? Thumbing through the table of contents, we found a winner - Loss of Breath. A Tale Neither in nor Out of Blackwood. Edgar be praised! We had our Short!

Ed made me swear on the lives of my children to edit whatever footage he shot. Not thinking he was serious, I said okay and the meeting was over.

The following Monday, Ed gave me a DV tape with raw footage. The nut actually did it!! So now I was sworn to edit the damn thing! I loaded the footage in and quickly cut something together with a basic scratch track (using the soundtrack from Four Rooms). I also made a horridly long end credit sequence (using music I really wanted to use in The Meditation but Ed refusing to let it in).

I dropped a VHS copy off with Ed two days later and let him review it. Apparently, he loved the flow of the project and wanted to work together on the final edit. He found a music track by Uber Superstar Sayed Sabrina to drop into the project and came to the edit bay the next day.

Using Soundtrack & Garage Band, Ed and I finished the rest of the music (becoming Three Monkey's official composer - Mark Andrews) and we dropped it in. We threw in some sound effects, I did some tightening and a few hours later...we were done. We had a completed Short.

Or so Ed thought. After all, this wouldn't be a Three Monkeys Worldwide production without the input of the Third Monkey. The next day, I called Scott in and we set to work on fine-tuning the "outlandish" end credits. Amusing mostly ourselves, we thew everything in including the kitchen sink. With that done...it was a wrap!

We submitted it to a few places and actually won an award (Best Comedic Short Under 5 Minutes). Who knew?

Now that the experience is 4 years in the past, I look back at Loss of Muffin with fondness and nostalgia. I didn't realize it at the time but Muffin was the first project in a really really really long time that felt like the "good old days." You know. Those days when a friend would call you up and say "Hey! You wanna shoot something this weekend?" and you say "Yeah! But what?" and your friend says "Who cares? Let's shoot!" then you race out the door. Making a Short hasn't felt that carefree in a long time. It's all based on schedules and budget and actors and producers and etcetera now. It was nice to goof around like that again.

I hope you enjoy this exercise in fooling around with no real intent.

Now....why "Remastered," you ask? (You'd better ask! I'm not typing all this shit for my health!)

Once Muffin was done, I mastered it onto a DV tape and forgot about it. Years later, I discovered the DV tape was faulty and the sound had several audio drop outs. And when I say several, I'm being very generous. It had TONS of drop outs. I always said that one day, I would go back and fix it. Of course, I never really meant it!

Cut to a couple of weeks ago. I was thumbing through Ed's CD collection and found a very small, mpg version of Loss of Muffin....with NO AUDIO DROP OUTS!!!! Apparently, this was a copy of something I gave him years ago before dumping the Short out on the crappy DV.

Re-loading the Short back into the computer and using this new-found audio, I remastered Muffin back to it's original "glory". The thumbnail version had it's share of problems so I only used that audio to cover up any drop outs from the original. And boy-oh-boy, was there plenty to cover up. Overall, this solution worked 90% of the time. There are a few glitches that couldn't be completely fixed but...I'm happy with it now.

So there you go. The story of the remastered Muffin. It'll never be perfect (heck, it never even started out perfect!) but it's finally done.

And...did I mention we won an award for it? I did? Oh. Well....whatever!

Andrew's Random Train of Thought

Thursday, August 23, 2007

ODE TO THE ASSHOLE PRINTER

Monday, August 20, 2007

THE STORY OF THE MAKING OF LOSS OF MUFFIN