| Interests / Hobbies: | Computers, Creating Music, IT, Movies, Programming, Second Life, Technology |
| Favorite Movies: | Back To The Future, Frequency, The Island, The Shawshank Redemption |
| Favorite Music: | Anything Trance / Techno, Pink Floyd |
| Favorite Books: | Reference Manuals |
| Favorite TV Shows: | House, Law And Order, Mythbusters |
| Favorite Foods: | Hawaiian Pizza, Steak |
| Favorite Drinks: | Crystal Light, Root Beer, Simply Orange, V8 Fusion |
| Favorite Sports: | Skiing, Soccer, Swimming |
| Favorite Places: | Home |
| Favorite Celebrities: | Dennis Quaid, Ewan Mcgregor, Jack Nicholson, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jim Caviezel, Julia Roberts, Kate Beckinsale, Robert De Niro, Tobey Maguire, Tom Hanks |
| Ethnicity: | Caucasian |
| Hair color: | Brown |
| Eye color: | Green |
| Body type: | 5'10", 175lbs, Average |
| Orientation: | Straight |
| Marital status: | Married |
| Occupation: | Internet/New Media |
| Religion: | Other |
| Income: | Not enough |
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Mark Barrett's First Life
I’m a web developer and am having a blast with Second Life.
Hope you like this site. So far it’s been fun. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions, I’d love to hear from you!
Mark Barrett's Second Life
When I don’t dabble with scripting or building I like to explore. Although lately there’s been little time for that. Most of my time is spent working on various aspects of SLBuzz.
Mark Barrett's Second Life Statistics
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August 22nd, 2006 at 4:51 pm
Hey man! :P Whts up?
November 28th, 2006 at 8:35 pm
Thanks for the comment on my “other” blog, Mark! This is a great service and I’m very quickly becoming hooked. Thanks for the heads up! Please check out my music podcast if you ever get a chance: Audio Gumshoe at www.audiogumshoe.com.
Also, I’m an Ohioan, as well. LOL
December 14th, 2006 at 5:12 pm
Mark,
If you can spread the word about our film, that would be almost as kick-ass as SLBuzz already is!
Voting ends this weekend!
Film name: PLASTIC FLOWERS
Here are the webaddresses:
http://www.scifi.com/exposure/
http://www.sundancechannel.com/exposure/
Here’s the blog post from Paul (the writer’s) page, since I couldn’t have summed it up better myself:
Sci-Fi Exposure Contest- Please Read
Current mood: accomplished
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities
This is where the music kick in. This is where the freeze-frame high-five would take place.This is where the movie would kick into a the frentic paced
montage of rapid success would happen. That is how it would work in the movies. The first ounce of success would lead on to bigger and better things.
I don’t have the rush yet. That feeling of ‘Hellz McYeah! We did it.’ I hope that will come in time… for now, I am in a state of shock and disbelief, it doesn’t feel like anything has happened.
Where should I start? This is not just my story, I can only share viewpoint on what has happened and be thankful for everyone who has been involved and/or fully supported this project. It is their story, our story. All of them would be involved in the above mentioned freeze-frame high-five.
In early October, we learned about a short film contest being held by the Sci-Fi channel and Sundance Channel. The Exposure contest was looking for short 2-8 minute films that could be sci-fi, horror, or fantasy. They had to be original works and had to be in by November 6th. For a while now myself and some of my friends had been wanting to make a short film to screen for
potential investors in hopes of getting some interest (AKA MONEY) in making a feature length movie. The contest fell in line with our desire to make the short, and we all knew we functioned better as a whole when a deadline was involved. A decision was made to make this short for the Exposure
contest. Best case scenrio: we get the film shot and we become one of the selected films for internet voting. Worst case scenrio: We make the film we wanted to make anyway, but miss the deadline for the contest submission. It was a win-win situation and we decided to shoot for the moon.
So we needed an idea and a script, a location, actors, equipment and crew. and post production capabilities. Oh, and for the submission deadline, we needed to have this all arranged and done within 3 weeks.
First the idea. We had some ideas for other short films, but most of those were a longer in time, and more difficult to produce in the amount of time we had to shoot which was just the weekend of Halloween. My first thought is that no matter what we shoot, it has to have a punch-line to it. Even with a very short amount of time, there has to be a reason to watch the film we make. A pay-off, no matter how small, had to be given to the viewer. Could we tell a complete story in 8 minutes? I stated brainstorming outloud during a car ride with one of my roommates, Tory. One of my ideas made her laugh pretty hard, so I kept it in mind as I started doing some research.
Who was the master of short-form science fiction story telling? I started reading up on the Twilight Zone. Rod Serling had a knack for telling a really off-kilter sci-fi tale most every week while keeping the characters real and letting their dialogue tell most of the story. And he had to tell those stories in about 22 minutes. Yeah, that is about 3 times longer than we had for our film, but the point still stands: You use what time you have to tell the story you need to.
After pitching my idea to the rest of the guys, I find out that the film stock that we were going to shoot on was black and white. How perfect is that? A Twilight Zone inspired approach and we get to follow through by shooting it on black and white film. I took this as a good sign we were heading in the right direction.
I didn’t know where to start with the script, but I had great motivation. Patrick, the guy with the film stock and the camera equipment to film with, started calling people and having them clear out their schedules for Halloween weekend. This scared the hell out of me. Yeah, I knew we were going to film a short… but it didn’t become real to me until I knew that other people were changing their schedules, their lives, to make this film… so I better damn well come up with a script. And fast. So I hammered out the script in two days, and after a couple of passovers from everyone else involved (and here I want to throw out a special thank you to Scott… he is just a friend who loves movies as much as I do, who read the first draft and asked two questions that became very important to the final product), we moved forward with it.
While I was trying to scout out a location for shooting, Patrick lined up
an actress for the female part, Kathlene, while he took on the role of the male part. And he enlisted the aid of a kick ass make-up artist, Jara. We also got a director in the middle of all this. Jason stepped up huge for this project considering his already hectic schedule and the VERY short amount of time he had with the script and the location we were to use. I honestly don’t know what we would have done without his effort.
The location I had scouted for shooting fell through only a few days before shooting. We then had to re-set the location at Pat’s house. A big thank you to his family for letting us make a mess and in the process, a movie, there.
So the two days of shooting were upon us. Our crew was small, very small. So we all did a lot of jobs. Pat acted, loaded film, and set up the lights. Jason directed, ran camera, and worked out the storyboarding while we were shooting. Mary ran slate, took camera reports, and made sure we ate well… VERY WELL. I ran sound, held the boom mic, and kept it sexy. Okay I made that last job up. It is important to note that while Howard was there the first day, he pointed out a very important issue regarding eye lines and the shooting axis. To put it simply: we all did what we needed to do get this thing shot.
It was a long couple of days. I will not lie and say it was all weiner dogs and roses. There were a few times there that I wanted to pull my own head off and punt it, and I know I wasn’t alone. But we knew we couldn’t stop. We had a deadline and we only had so much time to shoot it all. Towards the end we started losing lights, and had to start improvising lighting sources. We eventually got it all in the can by 3 AM Monday morning. I was happy we were done, but I just really wanted to sleep and be happy the next day while I was awake.
I will say this about the shoot though: It was surreal as hell to see people acting out things you typed. Crazy to hear the words you wrote being spoken out loud. Amazing to see all of these people working on this idea that you started with in your head. I still can’t believe that it actually happened that I wrote something that was filmed.
So we sent the film out to Hollywood to get processed and put on a digital format. This took longer than what was originally quoted, and we would have missed the November 6th deadline. Turns out that Sci-fi extended the contest till the 20th. When we got the film back, we had less than 8 days to edit, dub sound, add foley, and write music for the film. More like 6 because of the weekend before the deadline. 6 days to get a short film in fighting shape for the contest. We were cutting it close, no doubt.
This is the part in the story where I totally fade from view. I had very little to do with this part of the process. I knew when it was time to get out of the way and let Howard work his magic. A film can be made or broken in the editing process. What Howard was able to do with the film we had is nothing short of amazing. We had basically had shot just enough to cover everything we needed. Not much else was there, but Howard was able to pull pieces from what was first believed to be the scraps, and make them work seamlessly. There were a few technical hiccups, but when I saw what was to be the final visual cut of the film, I was impressed.
Then it came time to add sound effects and music. Jason and Howard worked on this aspect, not to mention the effort from Pat and Kathlene to get their dialogue re-dubbed, and time was running out. Howard and Jason stayed up all Thursday night to make sure they had it ready to be mailed
out the Friday before the deadline. They spent the night beating leather jackets, punching frozen chickens, and cracking celery for all the desired sound effects. Howard also produced the original music for the film (with additional input from Tory) and got it all put together.
I saw the ‘final’ prodcut, the film that was submitted to Sci-Fi channel, and I was happy with the over all finished version. We knew the sound and dialogue wasn’t 100 percent perfect, but with the time constraints and various techinal obstacales we had to face, we were content with the film we sent Sci-Fi. We knew we had all the time in the world now to add the finishing touches to the film and Howard has since redone all the audio and it sounds delicious!
So in less than 6 weeks we wrote, shot, edited, and submittied a short film… I would say that is a pretty damn good feat. We already crossed the finish line in our minds. I have said time and time again that I didn’t think we would win the contest, but I would consider it a true victory if our film actually made it on the Sci-Fi channel website for voting. That would mean to me that someone in New York independantly thought our work was good enough to display for their contest.
So for the few weeks after we submitted our film, we checked the new submissions from week to week, hoping to see ours. And it never happened. We kept seeing all sorts of shorts that varied from pretty good to downright horrible, but not a hint of ours. I even checked this past Sunday and Monday
morning to see if we made the cut for the final week of the contest. Nothing. Zip. Zilch.
So that was it. We tried to make it into this contest and we didn’t do it. We do have a film we are pretty happy with in the meantime, and we met some personal goals, right?
Well this evening, close to 2 am, we get a phone call from Pat. He informs us in the message that we made it onto the Sci-Fi site, and why didn’t we call him if we already knew about it? I thought he was messing with us, so I checked the site.. and what the hell? WE ARE THERE! I go downstairs and inform Howard and Tory that, ‘Hellz McYeah! We made it!’ We proceeded to watch it on the site and the read the rules of how we can vote (don’t want disqualify ourselves for voting for ourselves) and then continue to stare in disbelief that we made it.
So I ask you guys, anyone who happens to read this entry this week, to vote for our short film, “Plastic Flowers.” You can vote once for it once on the Sci-Fi website, and once on the Sundance Channel website. I encourage everyone to please tell everyone you know to do the same thing. I know it
is a pain sometimes to fill out information for a simple internet vote, but I would truly appreciate it. If we win the voting this week, we will then move onto a final round of voting, and the winner of that would then get a chance to pitch a movie idea to the Sci-Fi Channel. How cool is that?
Film name: Plastic Flowers
Here are the webaddresses:
http://www.scifi.com/exposure/
http://www.sundancechannel.com/exposure/
Thanks again everyone. I will keep everyone informed of how
the voting turns out. In the meantime,
be well and vote, vote, VOTE!
Fade to black.
May 27th, 2008 at 11:10 am
*WAVES*
How’s it going?