SIFF Official Selection

Dry Rain is an official selection to the 2008 Seattle International Film Festival! We're really excited about being in our home town fest. The screening will be Saturday, May 31 4:00 pm, SIFF Cinema. Go to the SIFF Website and buy your tickets now!

Final Answer Print

Today, we sat down with the crew at Alpha Cine to screen our first answer print of Dry Rain. An Answer Print is a release print that is created to look at all the technical things to make sure they've come together on the screen and look right. Things like color, lip synch, and other details get reviewed to ensure it looks right.

I tell you, looking at the print on the screen was so awesome. Finally! To see it big and not on a video monitor or worse, on a small computer screen in some low res Quicktime. It was great to see all the subtle details in the image and performance. So we're on to the next step....getting it into the festivals.

At the screening, we had, amongst a couple of friends and some lab employees, Jeff Tilotson, our colorist from Flying Spot Film Transfer, Shane Dillon, the final conform and EQ artist that put the together in its final form at Flying Spot, Mark Brown, the artist that does the film out from digital files, Lisa Cohen, the lab's producer and the lab owner, Don Jensen. It was great to have everyone there and put eyes on the finished print. And my first audience. It was a little intimidating to have an audience of such discernible people, but it went over well.

We'll make a few tweaks to the contrast in a couple of scenes, but we are nearly there!

Final Mix

Tonight, I made my way down to Clatter and Din to do our final mix on Dry Rain. Usually in this session, you review the work, make some minor tweaks, ensure the mix is good (the balance of music and sound efx and the actor's voices) and your all done. Tonight, we had to bring in the music from the music we just recorded at the House of Sound (HOS) and tweak some sound FX. Most of Monday and Tuesday, Chris from HOS mixed the music tracks and engineered them into the final form. He posted the tracks on the Clatter and Din website. Now all of this sounds complicated, but it was super easy. The only thing I feared, with our tight deadline, was that a file might be corrupted or something was just plain wrong. Well, it all worked out really well.

The tight deadline was driven by two factors: 1) we have the opportunity to submit to SIFF by mid March and 2) I am leaving the country to shoot a TV show in Nepal and Bhutan...more on that later, but needless to say, we have to get stuff done!

I sat in with the good folks at Clatter and Din to do the final mix. Vince Werner was the lead designer and engineer with Thad Wharton doing the heavy lifting and final mix. These guys are totally on their game. I sat in with them multiple times over the course of the winter working through the details of the sound. The great thing is I didn't have to spend a lot of time with the guys. They got it dialed in fast, took great direction and we're super collaborative.

Tonight, Thad and I brought in the final mixed music from Chris White. We laid that in and then just attended to a few minor tweaks. Thad and Vince had done so much work up to this point, we hardly had to do anything. The mix went super smooth. I'm looking forward to hearing it and seeing it all on the big screen!

Burns Like Hell Fire

This weekend, we did the final recording of the score for Dry Rain. Chris White, from House of Sound, brought together brought together a fantastic group of musicians to make it all happen. Burns Like Hell Fire is a Spokane based band that has been around for awhile now. They're western flavor and alt country sound merged with Chris' sensabilities was perfect for the score. We recorded over two days at the HOS studio in Downtown Spokane. It went super smooth and we managed to get it all done. Chris had already recorded some of the tracks, so we were just focusing on two or three tracks and touching up another.

It's funny how projects like this always feed on past experiences and relationships. Jamie Maker and Aaron Saye played on our tracks, but they are also members of the band The Makers. A couple of years ago, I directed a music video for the boys for their new album "Everybody Rise." The clip turned out super cool and of course, they were great to work with. Have a look at it here: http://www.loadedpictures.com/themakers Fast forward to 2008, Jamie works with Chris White regularily. When Dry Rain came up, Jamie was stoked to jump on board and help out. Aaron manages to crawl into the studio quite often too, and he was down. The rest of the Burns Like Hell Fire crew volunteered too, so we had a band to play out what Chris and I had in our minds.

It was a fun weekend of just working out riffs and sitting back and letting the band run with the ideas. I was fighting a cold that had gotten ugly. I was on a roller coaster of a fever than chills than back to a fever. I managed to pull out of the funk by Sunday afternoon, but I was hurtin for sure!

Special thanks go out to Chris White for putting it all together and making it sound so good! Also, the band. Thank you!

Aaron Saye - Drums
Jared Dunn - Guitar
Jamie Maker - Guitar and Pedal Steal Guitar
Bill Barrington - Bass
Cameron Norton - Drums
Brian Young - Guitar

Trailer

Just want to make sure if you haven't seen the trailer for Dry Rain yet, go to the StraighEIGHT Films website and check it out.

What Writers do on Set

Do you ever wonder what writers do on set? You know, their work is done, they've written the script, time to sit back and watch it all happen right? Wrong. If you are Pete Fromm, you sit back every now and then. Sometimes you get after the director, sometimes you hassle the talent. Sometimes, you even teach the crew how to throw rocks and then get them all to do it at once. Hmmm.... maybe we should start a new crew position for a guy like Pete: Set Jester. He was so good at keep everyone entertained!

Ok, he did some writing right before we started shooting. He earned his keep. And, the addition of having his two sons on set was great. They became indespensable for standing in and working and being body doubles. What a deal.

Christine shot these stelthy photos of Pete behind the scenes. She captured the essence of the writer in his element.

Looking Back - Thanks Vitamin Water!

I was looking back at photos from the shoot. There were so many cameras on set, it is no surprise that I keep seeing new pics all the time. This series of images gives you a little insight to the crazyness and boredom that can make the crew go sideways. Of course, there was very little time for being bored! Our creative team of photographers managed to find some interesting subject matter and a little time to actually snap a shot or two.
This particular set is from my fiance, Christine McBride. (oh yes, fiance...that's another story) She was out to portray our sponsor, Vitamin Water, in a realistic fasion on set. She tried to show it in all the different settings she could find.A big shout out to Virginia LaForte for her support of Dry Rain through the donation of Vitamin water for the cast and crew. The thing I love about Virginia is she is a make it happen kind of woman. She saw a need and just called us up and said where can I drop ship a bunch of Vitamin Water. She just did it and took charge. Thanks for helping us out Virginia. And, btw, Vitamin Water was a big hit on set!