We'll be streaming live on Thursday!

Thanks to the magic of the internets, even those of you who can't make it to Boulder, CO, will be able to watch the show at The Laughing Goat on Thursday, February 28th at 8pm Mountain Time.

Mark your calendars and make sure your hi-speed's working!

I'll be joined by my good friend Jeff Caylor. I'll probably open up with some acoustic stuff, then Jeff will play some of his tunes, then I plan on playing some louder stuff (perhaps even revisit some old DB3 favorites) and wrap up the whole shebang with the Amplifier "hits."

Or maybe we'll get there and just play whatever feels right. Either way, tune in and see what happens.

You can find the direct linke here:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/dan-beahm-and-the-invisible-three

Or you can come back to this post and watch in this window.




Or you can head over to the good people at Ustream.tv and search for "Dan Beahm."

That's three ways to make sure you see the show, even if you're in Timbuktu! Rock.

For those of you who are actually coming to the show, we'll have the brand new copies of Amplifier available, fresh from the factory. You'll be the first to see them.

See you Thursday!

BAM!! ...down for the count

Well all this non-sleep finally took its toll and I caught the bug that's been going around. Yesterday on the way to the shoot I felt it hit. "Oh, crap," I said to Mo. "Get me to a drugstore, I need Airborne pronto." So he drove me to a CVS, but it was too late. Man, I got hit hard.

Luckily Shive was kind enough to tag me out last night around 10pm, so I took his car back to the appartment for some sleep. I actually got some. The throat is scratchy and the head is groggy from the Nyquill, but hopefully I'm on my way to recovery. We'll see.

Tonight I'm off, as they're shooting the "intimate" scene. I think Mo will be the only crew member on set. He'll just use boom stands to set sound.

So who knows what I'll do today. It sucks to be a thousand miles from home and just lying in bed, but that's probably what I should do. I'd really like to see some people that I don't often get to see, but I don't know if that's the best idea right now. Argh.

Shake, rattle and roll... and wake up

You know what's awesome? They started resurfacing the street out in front of the place I'm staying this morning at 7am. The monster machine that tears up the road actually shakes the whole building like an earth quake.


Last night we shot the kitchen scene. It looks fantastic. Cranes and dollies make camera motion so cool. And the lighting was sublime. Getting the lights of the city through these giant loft window is such a score.

The sun didn't come out yesterday (and evidently will be gone for the rest of the week), so we couldn't get the tights from the couch scene like we were planning. We were going to do the walk-in scene as well, but there's just no way to match light from the earlier sunny day footage. So we shot some stuff that won't get used, and waited for the sun to go down.

The energy was pretty dreary to begin the day. Every one was dead-tired (most of us didn't get more than 5 hours of sleep the night before). That mixed with the fact that Mo and I were the only members of the camera crew present made for low energy and slow going.

But once the dark rolled in, Shive and McClintock showed up, and made moving things around a much more manageable task. Jon (DP) was on a long overdue Valentine's date with his wife, so I was running second camera. Man, I love shooting.

Everything was looking stellar. I can't wait to see all this footage laid together.

The buses are still maddeningly loud. They only run on the hour starting at midnight. We gave thought to shooting from 1 am to 5am, but I think that would kill cast and crew, so we're just going to have to make due. The killer is that from around 5pm to midnight they seem to run by the building every ten or fifteen minutes. Not only that, but firetrucks (sirens and lights a blazin') visited the building across the street THREE TIMES yesterday. And they were at the building on the other side of us when we went out to our cars around 2am. Weird.

Grey day, but the light's still good.

Well, we wrapped after 3am last night and didn't get back to the apartment until after 4. We were back up and at 'em this morning at 9am. That combined with sleeping on a couch and holding my hands above my head all day makes for many an ache and pain. Ugh.

But the footage is GORGEOUS. Last night was the first time we shot with the night city in the background. It's sooooo cool looking. The sunset stuff before that was really nice as well. The light in this loft is just fantastic.

Yesterday my cousins Mikey and Drew lent a hand. It was great seeing them and having them on set. Mikey's a veteran to the industry (after only a couple years of living out here), and Drew got to experience a set for the first time. He's a track coach at Loyala Marymount, but he made a fantastic grip as you can see from the photos.

I can't believe how loud these damn busses are. I realized that there's a stop right in front of our window. That makes for some fun sound situations. We'll see how that goes in post.

We're light on crew today, so I'm moving up from sound guy to camera man (ooooooh!).

Don't forget, you can check the picture updates as I post them over here.

In closing, I'll leave you with a picture of the shirt I wore yesterday. Mo and McClintock each stated: "That is the coolest shirt ever." So this one's for you, Dave (thanks for the shirt!).

3 o'clock wrap

Must... sleep.

Back to the land of the living

Ahhhhh... I finally got some sleep last night... and a shower. Oh, yeah.

So. The building we are shooting in was built in 1908. The loft has been redone, and is really cool looking, but the place still has the original windows; this is great for the look, but awful for sound insulation. It's incredibly loud (street noise). Busses, people talking, carwash sprayers in the surrounding parking lots, a jack hammer (!!! --luckily it's down the street and not right in front of the building), people singing, people yelling, people honking, and on and on and on.

This will be great fun in post. I requested at least 10 seconds of pre and post roll, but I don't think it's happening on each shot. "Why do I need that?" you ask. Think about a line that's delivered over a loud siren or bus, and the shot cuts right after the talking ends but in the middle of that loud sound... how do you make that sound believable, natural, without having it cut abruptly when the camera angle changes? Yes, that's the problem with ambient noise. If you've got extra, you can fade it, fake it, and work with layering to make everything natural, but if the trailing sound isn't long enough, there's nothing to work with. Good luck, Daniel!

Some of the good things:

We're shooting on the seventh floor, and there are windows all around. The sunlight is incredible, and there's a great view of all the city buildings, down the streets, etc... Night time is super cool, and shootin on video allows for unbelievably low-light situations. So we can actually capture all the city lights in shots with the actors. It's really beautiful.

The director has both cameras outfitted with RedRock lense adapters. The footage is just gorgeous. It really does look like film. Jeff tested and tested a long time to finally find something that had the cost of video but the look of film; he's a maniac for "the look," and I think it will be one of the major strong suits of the finished product.

Everybody on set is great to work with, nice and willing to go above and beyond. No attitudes is so nice. You ask the male lead to to mark the shot with the slate, and he doesn't look at you with an "I'm an actor, not a grip" face. Instead, he's simply happy to do it.

Working on an indie set is exciting, because people are on the team, in it together, working toward the finished product, more so than when you're getting paid for your "job," just doing the work... not that I wouldn't enjoy getting paid once in a while. [smile]


more photos from the shoot can be seen here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/RenaissanceBoyRecordings/FebruaryEdenShoot02/

Are you kidding me? This is actual work.

I'm beat, so I'll write more later, but there are new pics online at the Picasa link in the previous post.