SHORT BUT PRODUCTIVE

James and I went over to Connor's to grab all of our gear. it was there for sooooo freak'n long! thanks for letting us leave it there, guys.

I showed Connor my mock up of the website and chatted with him, I think we lit a fire! he said he was going to get right at it. later that night we were sent this little treat:

it shall be our navigation bar! cool!

SOMEONE IN SHANGHAI KNOWS ABOUT SKITTLEBRAU

every day I have to check google analytics, even though only the Skittlebrau people are the ones checking my blog and the HQ splash page, BUT I just checked it and get this, someone in Shanghai, China just checked out my blog!

Ola! Skittlebru rules!!!!!!! know that China, know that!

WEEKEND = LOST TIME... NOPE!

I had an amazing weekend, but part of me was a little, "didn't get too much work done...." well today took care of any tiny thought of that feeling!

I worked the entire day on the Skittlebrau test site. now I'm no Bill Web-Guy, but I've really come a looooong way today with building websites!

I'ma show everyone on wednesday what I have in mind and if they're down with it, SkittlebrauHQ.com might launch for reals as early as next week!

FUN!!!!!

I love good days! don't you? I'm sure everyone does.

OH MY LANTA

what a cock'n weekend... cuts, swelling and bruises all over my body.... gotta love a good hockey tourney.

didn't get as much work done as I was hoping, BUT I did get some done!

took the day off yesterday to recover, back to reality today and ready to rock! 

working on a spec website right now and I now have all the elements to bring it together. trust me, won't be anything special but it might do the job, will have to check with everyone before we try a launch. 

booya!

BURSTS - ADR

I didn't blog yesterday on purpose, cause I was so annoyed and frustrated! basically I didn't get anything done.

the today. got up at my usual time (8:50 am), I was a little tired so I thought I'd put my head down for a few mins... I woke up at 2pm!!!! BAD BAD BAD. I have a hockey tourney this weekend, I was going to take her easy, but now it looks like I'm working in between games. who are we kidding, that's exactly what I want to do!

I had said I wanted to post some of the bursts and I was thinking I wanted to post of the hilarious ADR session, BAMO two birds with one stone! nothing special, needs colour correction and audio levels, but I just wanted to get it up!

the producers were tossing around links to the web series "The Guild" today. this show has done what I want to do with Skittlebrau: they get 2.5 million views per episode, well then we're going for 5 million per!!!!!

VIDEOFACT

went into the office today and met with, Raj (one of the producers). he's very keen on us applying for videofact. the deadline is in june. I'ma feel out the boys, see what they think. good be a good way to get some $.

promofact is also an option! wheels are in motion.

"I'M THE KING OF FOLEY!"

the last day was a blast! the beer and canadian club flowed as we celebrated / tied up some loose ends.

we started off with publicity stills. big big big up to James for those AND another big big up to the actors for doing that stuff! we had you guys rap a lot, really appreciate it! like I always say, "you get what you put into it," and from what I've heard from James, that rapping stuff is amazing!!!

we also did some shorts that we can toss up in and around the big episodes as fun little vids, there's some stills below.

one neat little thang came up as well, I wanted to ask a question to the guys in character for one of the shorts, but it turned into a full out awesome interview with the dudes! tons of material! check out the pics below:

C-HAIR (notice the Molson Dry, "the champaign of shitty beers" hanging out next to him)



THE BOUNCE



KING BENSLEY



K-HYPE



I selected all stills with them smoking or drinking.... funny

Here are a few stills from the shorts:

EVIL BENSLEY



MTV CRIBS: KING BENSLEY



THE BONG FUNERAL (I am SO excited to cut this one!!!)



K-HYPE'S SWEET DREAMS



every time we're over at the boys' place, the ashtray on the balcony has a mini bonfire going in it. well this time was no different, however, when I went to get some video of it, it exploded!!!



cool!

this was the first time we had ever shot while drinking and it was quite apparent that we shouldn't on serious days! we knocked over a bunch of beer bottles and such. here's a clean up attempt:



after we were done shooting we moved on to doing some ADR, which means I got the guys to watch some video and try to mimic what they're saying so I can get better audio for the show. THIS WAS HILARIOUS!!!!!!! King Bensley was my favorite. there was a few shots of him crying and the same thing happened every time: he would start off crying, then it would turn into uncontrollable giggles! the best part of all was when the Bensley finished up a long take and belted out, "I'm the King of foley!".... even though we were doing ADR. HAHAHA!

we wrapped things up by watching rough cuts of all the episodes. I am so so so so greatful for all the hard work everybody put into this!!! I have nothing but the highest of hopes! I really thing if we play our cards right we will have a hit on our hands!

fingers crossed!

there's no doubt everyone needs to take some time off, but I'm damn excited to get back at it!!!!

yes

A DAY OFF AFTER THE END

took the day off yesterday, like I mean first day since december where a there wasnt a lick of Skittlebrau done! that's because saturday was our last day and lemme be the first to say it was an f'n blast! 

I'll talk about it a little more and post a few stills later today, as for now I need to harvest all my precious video!!!!

JAMIE PARKHILL IS AN EXCELLENT MUSICIAN!!!

Jamie Parkhill's (K-Hype) band, Ages, is playing tonight in Toronto:

772A Dundas St. West

they go on at 9

$5 at the door

going to be awesome!!!!!

JAMES HEASLIP IS AN EXCELLENT PHOTOGRAPHER!!!

just adding some of the blue screen bursts to one of the episodes and i stumbled upon this awesome photo of Connor. if you haven't checked out James' blog, do so! he is awesome!!!

http://jamesheaslip.blogspot.com

i may post some of the bursts, they're hilarious!

THE BIG BM'S BIG DANCE

what an awesome, wicked day! just hung out on the cpu and worked on The Big BM's effects. things are really coming together and starting to look like what could be at least close to a finished product:

I must admit, the first time I played back Bensley's rap section, I did laugh out loud a little. I hope to have all the rough stuff done for all to watch on saturday, fingers crossed!

COMPROMISE

hear that kids?

meet in the middle and all shall work out! 

beers, they shall be had!

I HATE BEING A "LEADER"

I put leader in quotes cause I really didn't and don't want to be a leader on this project, I've wanted it to be team to the end, but I understand the shitty decisions have to come down to me. of course the last shooting day comes to one of those shitty thangs:

The short it, we have our photoshoot, ADR, pickups and wrap party scheduled Saturday the 18th. 

Jamie Parkhill (K-Hype), emailed me yesterday saying that he'd like to move it to Sunday because saturday was to be nice weather and Sunday the opposite. I had no problem with that, provided it didn't mess with anyone else's availability.

This morning I got an email from Kyle Waterman (creator and crew member) saying he can't make the shoot on Sunday "if it's the only day that works for everyone then by all means have a good one."

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH fuck. Kyle is literally the worst person who could say they couldn't come.

on one side: Kyle has been with us since the beginning and has put a lot of his time into this and I think it's only fair that he is there to celebrate with us at this shoot

on the other side: he isn't really needed for the shoot from a work standpoint

wow, so shitty.

I thought about it and thought about it and decided that it's the beginning of the nice weather, there will be many more nice days and this is a team so Kyle should be there.

if anyone wants to work it out with Kyle that they'd like to do it on Sunday, feel free. I just hope people respect that I didn't want to be the person to do that. I would have made the same decision for anyone else on the cast or crew.

see what I mean though about being a boss?!?! it sucks! it sucks, it sucks! either decision I make, someone's upset! 

AHHHHHHHHHH! when I feel like this, I burry myself in some work. I give you, C-Hair in the film adaptation of the world renowned book: "Booty Call"

C-HAIR ON THE TRACK

did this last night. meant to put it up but I had to make some hamburgers. thusly is life.

very funny:

"D-HYD" ROUGH EDIT

mr. James Heaslip gave me a look at his rough cut for D-Hyd and it's easy to say: that episode has a VERY good chance at being our best episode when the dust settles.

James really desurves a pat on the back. he cut, what I believe to be, the best edited rap sequence yet and he was daring enough to just let the scene play out in a single shot for the second rap sequence. daring as all hell, I couldn't do that, but it paid off as it works well. he also cut a splotchy ending (that's what I was thinking on the day while shooting) together really well. even made the POV stuff work, we will need some help from Connor on some music to stitch it together.

everyone turned in some seriously awesome performances. Drew and Jamie had some wicked chemistry.

D-Hyd shall strike again, I can promise you that!



the producers, Zark and Raj, watched it and said, they can't wait to make some money off of this! yes, sir.

Nick, James, Kyle and myself had a little meeting today to talk about this weekend's photo-day. gonna take some stills, shoot some shorts, do some ADR and chat about the future of Skittlebrau!

shall prove to be a good time me thinks.

ROUGH EDIT OF "K-FOLK"

a very tight little episode. big shout out to the boys, ya'll pulled off a dialogue heavy episode with some great performances!

my "what was I thinking" of the day: not shooting 2 cameras on the opening folk song... stupid... just stupid! 

because of my stupidity, I've left the folk opening and the rap ending to work on later, I feel like doing some Big BM right now.

WWW.SKITTLEBRAUHQ.COM - COMING SOON

the "coming soon" page is up! i guess i may as well put some links up there in the mean time. i'll do that later today.

www.skittlebrauhq.com

SHOOTING "K-FOLK" (ON SATURDAY)

a tardy post, the product of a busy easter weekend.

K-FOLK is the last of our bigger season 1 episodes. it was a blast!!! things kinda ultra-clicked for the first time. we were able to take larger breaks and be a little more relaxed. we even finished everything at 4pm! very exciting. it was a very dialogue heavy show, so that obviously played a large part in that.

we had a guest star that went by the name Brandon Bliss (of Saint Alvia (www.saintalvia.com)). he played K-Hype's hired gun. a quiet, guitar playing cowboy that K-Hype thought he had power over.

thanks again, Brandon!

gonna do a cut right now then do some more Big BM. shall be a fun, productive day!

PS. 8 HRS...

of sleep is essential to (for me) before a shoot.

check

PREP FOR K-FOLK

it wasn't a good friday, it was an awesome friday! much fun, thanks all.

just finished prepping shots for K-Folk. seems easy enough. nobody's wrestling, nobody's falling off the balcony, just a lot of quick awesome dialogue. I'm happy to be ending it with this episode, really gives the boys a chance to show off the acting that they've become so much more comfortable with. especially in the last scene. it'll be interesting to see if we need to break it up into pieces. we'll see tomorrow.

kind of sad this run of episodes is done as of tomorrow. no matter what production your on, it becomes a type of family, being in the trenches together. this one's no different, a bunch of great people working really hard. I know this ain't the end (in my mind it's just the start) but the sweet and innocent first season is done, from now on it's formulaic and tight!

I love Skittlebrau!!!!!!!!! big things to come!!!

SKITTLEBRAUHQ HAS A PARKING SPACE!

we purchased our web hosting for www.skittlebrauHQ.com today. very exciting! tomorrow there shall be a "coming soon" splash page.

really want to get this website moving nowski. let's use it for the music and some little little videos. i'm worried this will come to a screeching halt (www.borderpatrolshow.com, is obviously a big part of that) so I've been pushing Nick to talk to his web guy and will do the same with Connor. we need to do this, cause it ain't our money paying for this shit, we need to produce!

we had a celebration lunch at "St. Hubert's" (Georgian's fav spot) for Nick's last day. Bolton even showed up. lots of talk about colons and such, typical Georgian Entertainment outing. the elderly got a kick out of us.

came home and did a little more work on C-Hair in the back seat. started on the profile stuff. the depth of feild is giving me a bit of a prob, but after a little feathering and some colour correction, we'll be just fine.

feeling a little stir crazy because of no $ from unemployment (and a $30 parking ticket today) but I've managed to get a free night out with Maple Pics. THANKS, MUCH NEEDED!!!! 

beeeeeeeer

looks like I've gotta prep tomorrow, it'll be a good Friday.

HOW IT ALL STARTED

keep this as streamlined as possible:

Showcase's "Rent-A-Goalie," the amazing show that's paid my bills for 3 years, was held back before season 4. our bosses told us to make something with our free time.

a few days later I went to karaoke with my friends and one of them (Jamie Parkhill (K-Hype)) took me out to his car to hear the new Skittlebrau song that he was featured in.

it was funny, yet awesome at the same time.... gears were in motion.

next day, James and I were on our way to work and Skittlebrau and came up and BAMO, that was the thing we develop while RAG is down.

went our bosses, they liked it, went to the band, they liked the idea. Writing began (which looking back was painful as shit and is a story for another day).

K-FOLK FINAL SCRIPT AND MORE BM BLUE SCREEN

K-FOLK

spent the morning at the office going over the K-Folk script with Nick. the only thing to touch up was making K-Hype more bossy. the biggest changes were things needed to say "I" instead of "we" when it came to matters of the band.

booya! prep for shots and blocking tomorrow and i'll be ready to roll on saturday! if the folk music part of the show turns out well, this episode will be amazing!!!!! and of course it will.

THE BIG BM

came home around 2:30 and went back at some Big BM blue screen stuff. just to change it up for today I did some C-Hair in the back of the car to start off his verse. tried to get as much masking done as possible. looking at this still it's quite obvious that colour correction and proper keying (as well as getting rid of faint red squares) will go a long way:

back in college I was alright when it came to After Effects, but somewhere along the way it dropped out of my tool kit. happy to say I've started to get the hang of it again: today was the first time I'd ever motion tracked something! it was for the featured shot above. I motion tracked Bernie's tie and assigned the data to C-Hair so it looks like he's bumping along in the car with the boys. so simple, so easy and it really puts him in the scene.

EDITING AS A WHOLE

Bob (The Bounce) emailed me today asking if the band can be involved in the editing. I want this to be as communal as  possible, so of course they're more than welcome! after James and I finish our cuts, I'd love to sit down and go over things and try some of their suggestions. the only thing I would request would be to set a day to do it in Toronto so we can have everyone in an editing suit, opposed to 5 people huddled around a laptop.

trust me, it will be worth the 45 min drive.

CUTTING THE BIG BM

stayed home today and worked (damn hard if I may say!) in nothing but my gitch. started off with attacking "The Big BM" footage. organized, then started cutting! the edit went by pretty fast and came out at 3 mins (that's without the rap parts).

then moved onto bensley's rap section. laid shit down rough, did some rough keying and masking just to see where I want stuff to be... figuring it out has been harder than expected, but I can see, this is going to be some funny.

King Bensley and Bernie Mac having a dance:

King Bensley calling Bernie:

King Bensley praying to god.... that no one sees the sandbag in his castle.... maybe King Bensley has sandbags... yeah that's it!

way way way too funny! thanks for doing it all those times guys! I used the best parts but it will also make for great bonus feature.

good day. very good day.

THE LOGO

over the past few weeks we've had some serious meetings about launching this bitch onto the inter-web. we bought our urls (www.skittlebrauHQ.com, watch for it) but we don't want to put anything up until we've come up with our branding strat.

i wanted to try my hand at a few logos but because we're still in production i'm finding that i can't seem to get my brain to work in a post production sort of way, it's all prep for the next episode.

the great Chris Szarka (Producer of Rent-A-Goalie) always says, "surround yourself with genius!" well, C-Hair (Connor Lovat Fraser or CLF as i like to call him... to James) went ahead and made some awesome wicked logos:

really digging the old school, dirty but still bright look... very much what the show is: dirty and gritty looking but still a comedy.

yes. yes, this is coming together quite nicely.

WHY DIDN'T I START THIS IN EARLIER?

if i had started this in november i would have had a record of the months we spent writing a series, only to see it turn into something totally different 2 weeks before shooting.

....actually, that would have been frustrating for me to read...

maybe the timing is just right.

i spelll like a 5th grader and i english real bad, but i am going to try to stick to this so i (and whom ever else may be interested) can have a journal of sorts about the series that was, is and will be SKITTLEBRAU!!!!