PYRITE Blog

Been such a long night here that this "June" update has technically trickled into July! Let's run with it anyway!

I'm not quite sure how it can possibly be July tomorrow, but okay then -- time for an update from the land of Hollywood 27. It feels like I've been all over the place in the past few months, and although it's all been important, I'm glad to be staying home from now until the PYRITE DVD Release hits late this summer. Lots of work to do, and it all happens locally now. So here's what's been going on...

SOUND DESIGN
The peak of the Spring chaos was probably a marathon 14-hour work day at Cobblesound Studios in North Hollywood, on Memorial Day of all days (because holidays are for wimps, LOL). Klint Macro and I pretty much skipped meals after breakfast (because food is also apparently for wimps) and pressed on until about 10pm... but I left Klint's studio with the first take of the 5.1 Dolby Digital mix of PYRITE! I then snagged about 4 hours of sleep (because, ummm, sleep is for wimps?) and then drove back to Phoenix the next morning. And no, I don't really think any of those things are for wimps by the way, but they helped to rationalize!

So after Klint and I ironed out a few glitches and finished some tweaks... and my continued education in Adobe's Creative Suite – specifically Dolby Digital encoders and AC-3 files – I gratefully had a 5.1 PYRITE DVD in hand last week. Klint then put the finishing touches on the mix last night, and we are 100% stamped DONE as of today! That's the main reason I was waiting to give an update – I really wanted the sound design complete so I could check that big milestone off the list. I need to give heartfelt thanks to Klint, Alex Ullrich, and newcomer Matt Russell (IMDB credit as SOUND EDITOR comin' at ya Matt). They all did great work knocking out our final mix, and I'm extremely grateful!

COLOR CORRECTION
A few days later I took the brand spanking new DVD, and passed it off to Matthew Walker, a local Visual Effects Editor in the Phoenix area. You can check out Matt's excellent Demo Reel here:
http://vimeo.com/12223922

As we sat down to discuss the work needed, it was refreshing to hear Matt actually compliment the SOUND of the film, as that's something we never would've heard before with the rough mix. Matt is currently working on cleaning up the color on our green screen shots, then we're meeting to go through the rest of the film in its entirety to see where else he can make improvements. That should be done sometime near the end of July, at which point... PYRITE will be 100% complete!!! No seriously. I mean it this time. Really. Not kidding. No, I promise. Seriously!!

DVD EXTRAS
As for the extras... a couple of weeks ago I sent a 16gb flash drive out to our faithful Director of Photography, RJ Blazen back in Chicago. RJ had located all the external footage for the making of the BLAZEN PLATFORM, one of the DVD Extras that I'm putting together. After some fun with Microsoft Windows, we took care of the transfer, RJ sent the drive back to me, and the last of the video files needed for the DVD Extras are now thankfully in-house here in Phoenix!. The table is set, and I'll be plugging away here nonstop until they are all complete. More details on that in next month's update...

MUSIC
To cap off the good news fest here, I am happy to report that we reached an agreement with EMI/Capitol for the Master Use and Synch licenses for PROUD MARY! That song opens the film and is actually written into the script, as performed by Ike and Tina Turner -- so yeah, we kinda needed to snag that license. Everything went smoothly, and we are clear for both festival use and DVD distribution. I'll be dotting the “I”s and crossing the “T”s on those agreements, and hopefully the other two, by end of July. The other two songs are BIG CALM by Morcheeba, and LORD GIVE ME A SIGN by DMX, for which we are currently in negotiations. That reminds me... Allan Mesia is handling the rights for us, and I've got to say he's been doing a damn fine job! I can't thank him enough for all the work he's done, and as he gets his own firm up and running out in L.A. in the near future, I can't RECOMMEND Allan highly enough to others either. He's been great to work with every step of the way.

And finally... another reason why I saved MUSIC for the final topic this month...
Talk is heating up right now about releasing a PYRITE soundtrack in tandem with the DVD, which, after cataloging all of our songs recently, I must admit I'm starting to think is a good idea. In addition to some outstanding work by Phil Doyle on the score, there are also 3 rap songs produced by Robert Winston at Cabrini Green. Phil's moody saxophone riffs can carry a soundtrack on their own, and with the 3 songs from the heart of Cabrini in the mix as well, I think we might have a pretty tight urban soundtrack to share with everyone. To that extent, I'll be putting some samples of songs from the film up on our Facebook page here and there, starting tonight. Hope you enjoy them!

Okay, I'll wrap it up, sorry for getting a bit lengthy this time around, but it's been a few months!
Happy 4th of July to everyone here in the U.S., and thanks for taking the time to catch up with Hollywood 27. I'll talk to you again in late July as the PYRITE DVD release draws closer.

--Eric