Practicing for the "Normalsville" score.

Yesterday all the mayhem began: I returned from my well deserved vacation in Luxemburg, and in the evening I was at my new school: The Veenlanden College Locatie Mijdrecht (since the VLC vinkeveen does not provide HAVO grade 4 & 5 I had to move - difficult story) to attend the first practice with the choir for Normalsville.
The boys choir.

Seriously - a 72 piece boy choir (which I shall refer as the "Studio Voices") assembled after a sort of a "in school" casting call for boys who'd like to sing.

I thought we'd end up with seven or nine boys, since most of 'em are very shy...
But look: we got 72 boys!

So, one would ask why these boys are crazy enough to come to school during their vacation, to record some a capella vocal pieces?

I honestly don't know it either... They're just nice boys... Just nice boys...

Yesterday evening we rehearsed most of the 20 (!) cues we have to record with them, 20 cues which is equivalent to 50 mins of a capella music, approx. 120 GB's of hard disk space, and a *lot* of score sheets... 

Today, we continued the rehearsal with the last 5 cues, and next week we'll spend five days recording the boys, split up in two sections of 36, the full 72 piece choir, and overlay those pieces to give a 144 piece feel! 

Sounds easy, but it isn't. That's why it takes us approx. 7 days to record everything. If we split the 20 "complete" cues up in the parts recorded loose, we have 237 cues to record, most of them 20 to 30 seconds, rises & "ooooo's". And finally, we'll ad the 72 piece choir for the lyrics. 

Aren't they cute? :-) 

Now yer curious about *what* exactly will be recorded.

I can't say everything about it, but I *can* say that we'll have lots of OOOOO'S and AAAA'S, some lyric-songs, and also some backing vocals for the horror-pieces, which run throughout the series. 

Of Course, all compositions are Ralf Wienrich & Tobias Marberger, 

Gotta go now, the crew and I are off having a dinner with 'em :-)

More soon!

in Luxembourg

on the terrace of the Hilton, with the free wifi "HOTCITY" network, enjoying my vacation.

More soon!

I'm ill.

Yes folks. I am. 

No lies. I'm ill. 

It's the worst thing that could happen to a creative person. It's the worst thing that could happen to a creative person in possession of a macbook running final draft & Pages during summer break. 

It's a writers block. A mild one. 

I feel this... terrible need to write, but once I've opened a blank page in pages or final draft, no thing in the world (not even Jasper) gets my creative juices flowing... 

So, that's why I decided to take a little time off from fiction writing. 

Since I have some of the greatest friends a man can wish, they took this very serious (I'm not me when I'm not writing - their words) so they decided to take me on a small trip to "our" Island, where we would have a "comfortable stay" at our luxurious, three person tent. Ofcourse, one could imagine that four friends in a three-person capable tent could be a problem.

We can't

Of course, one could imagine that four friends in a three person capable tent with only two beds to sleep on, could be a problem.

We can't.

So, there we went with the boat out to the "great open", the Vinkeveense Plassen. After a short 40-minute trip, we arrived and set up our campsite. 

It already started to get pretty late, so we decided to take some sleep. 

But then the problem came up: two beds, four people. And one couple.

So, Andy & Nina (the couple) shared a bed, and I, the lonesome dude with the writer's block was forced to share the sheets with... 

The desperate homosexual; Maikel. 

He's a great dude, and one of my best friends since kindergarten, but, for me, not the ideal person (and gender) to share a bed with. 

I was kinda lying pressed against the wall under the waaaaaaaaay to small pink blanket we even had to SHARE (just like the pillow) and tried to get some sleep. 

Then Andy decided to play pokemon on the GameBoy with the sound turned on and waked me up at like 2 AM because of the stupid musical underscore of the game... And I didn't get pretty much sleep, at all.

And so I was distracted from writing issues a little bit. And it helped. 

A bit.

At least I can say that I've had a taste of Campinglife and my writer's block is getting less worde and worse....

I'll keep you guys updated. 

Happy Birthday, Zero Hour!

Today, it's one year ago that I finished something that'll be with me my entire life: Zero Hour. Two years in the making, and much criticized because of its "Micael-Bay-ish" style of scripting and tempo, Zero Hour has been praised and acclaimed for its "breathtaking visual effects for a student movie" and by my friend & fellow blogger/filmmaker/writer/Transformers-the-score fanatic Chris Knight, for being "defined by its own cinematography" and its "number of great special effects." because of its epic trailer, it won the price for the most original act on the 2007 VLC Talenthunt, and received many good feedback from fellow students & friends. 

Now, it's one year after the mayhem of making this movie ended. And today, it feels so funny to think that I was working aroun

d the clock trying to finish Zero Hour last year... (and that I'm doing that 

now to get F=NV2 in production) until this day. 

And it has been a friggin long journey for me. From its origin in 2005, till

 the day we filmed with 30 degrees Celcius on the roof, till the last shooting day I've spent with Ralph in the airduct (which was shot on July 7, 2007 - the original release date).  

And I can't honor Zero Hour without looking back at the scene in the vent on July 7. 

I've never been so desperate to find 

a location to shoot, seriously. We first wanted to build it up in the gym, but that hall was unavailable a the time so we went on searching, finally ending up in the Science classroom, where Mrs. Cohen offered Ralph and me a bag of crisps while we were laying in (let's name it) uncomfortable positions in the foam-built airduct. We shot the scene, wapped principal photography and went back into the edit suite, where I spent 6 days to fine tune, edit and complete Zero Hour. 

Earlier that year, in June (don't know the exact date anymore) we were honored to be granted the opportunity to shoot on the roof of the school. And 

that will go down as the coolest location I've ever shot on. Stan

ding there, two stories high on the roof of my school... Damn, not much kids get that opportunity in their life. 

But I'll never do something like Zero Hour again, no. I felt like making an action movie when I was in my freshman year, and continued w

ith it in my 2nd year. Now, with F=NV2 (with thanks to Stefan van Vliet I know now that it means Fosfor=Nitrogen+ divanadium) I've found my turn. My favorite genres and styles: Thriller, Drama & comedy. Though Zero Hour had some dark humor in the part of the vent, not much funny and lauughable parts came by on screen. I can tell you, in my original *final* draft, (written two days before 7 July - the day principal photography wrapped) that was totally different. But seen the nature of the movie (action) I didn't wanted to turn it into some sort of weirdish Mr. Bean movie and decided to cut it all out. Which I now consider the best thing I did on the edit table.  But, one thing that MUST be noted: without the help of the many fantastic young actors, this project would've been nothing. They're the ones who did it. They're the ones you should be praising.

 And I don't know any better way to end this tribute with the following line and clip:

"Congrats, ZH, I've had a wonderful time making & watching you"

House MD: "Games"

It was a pretty good episode. It didn't air here in the Netherlands yet, but with many thanks to a friend in the States I got to see it, anyway. 

In this episode, House is forced by Cuddy to decide which two doctors will form his new diagnostic medicine team. Ofcourse, House plans a lot more "games" to decide who'll be the lucky bastard. Wilson misdiagnoses a patient, and by telling him the right diagnosis, screws up his life. 

The game House plays exists of a drug-addicted rockstar, who's body can only have one test at the time, therefore, the trophy which allows you to run a test is: a fake eyeball (which gets demolished by Kutner later on). The Bitch gets fired and has a brief section of developement with the patient. The most emotional piece of this episode. 

All with all: the writers over at Fox have done a good job on this one. The tension build of both the main storylines "game" & "the patient" goes up steadily, and the humoristic line of Wilson misdiagnosing a patient gives it the thing what made me *Love* House MD in the first place: the humor. 

Not so much character development happens, though Cuddy and House have their same old arguments, and the Bitch tries to pull all kinds of nasty and bitchy tricks (and gets fired because of that, DUHH) 

And as usual, the cinematography and the original score were just fine. 

I'd give it a solid 4 and a half out of 5.

The MPAA Mayhem continues

As I reported earlier; my project, F=NV2 is being classified by the MPAA standards as if it is a NC-17 project. 

Why can't it be R?

(I got response from the nice MPAA lady)

"Dear Marco, if your project would be officially MPAA rated, your Project wouldn't be eligible for an R rating, since, as I stated in my previous email (and in your responses confirmed by you) it includes Child abuse, violence, and pervasively strong language - Okay, hold.

On what do they base that? The pervasively strong language part - IT'S DUTCH! so how come they tell me that there is pervasively strong language if it's in dutch? (okay, I've sent the lady the pilot episode screenplay translated in English), but still, we just say "fuck" twice! And it's not like we are cursing each other throughout the entire series... (CONT'D) and therefore can't apply for the R rating. If, however you decide to remove two or more of these points featured in the project, R can be applied.

Yours Truly,

MPAA Lady"

And then, to show off how nice they are - she gave me a present. 

I still think that was just too nice. It wasn't even my birthday!

Why I love the MPAA & NC-17

Look at the picture: what do you see at the right bottom?

Okay, so my "project" (to which I shall refer as "F=NV2" until the official title is released later on at this blog) hasn't even gone public yet and already received some harsh ratings from the MPAA, but the kijkwijzer here over in the Netherlands was nice: they rated it 13. 

So, why NC-17?  BECAUSE WE KILL A KID. 

No. Seriously. The MPAA lady (who will remain anonymous to prevent civil punishment) told me that "a movie would be rated NC-17 if a minor is abused/tortured/or killed by a character portraying an adult." (her words). Okay. Fine. So there is this one 15 second sequence in "the Project", in which a minor falls down a stairwell and breaks his neck very nasty (believe me - it's disgusting to see), and after that his head gets bashed in by the outrageous kiddie-killer. 

15 SECONDS MAKE IT NC-17!!!!

I cite the MPAA:

"The rating simply signals that the content is appropriate only for an adult audience. An NC-17 rating can be based on violence, sex, aberrational behavior, drug abuse or any other element that most parents would consider too strong and therefore off-limits for viewing by their children."

Ideocracy. This rating is too strict. I mean, c'mon! I don't film the f*cking kid totally NUDE! You just see him faking how he breaks his neck and how his blood sprays out of his head against the walls of the house like if he starred in darn Saw III. 

But that's not the problem; "NC-17 NO ONE 17 OR UNDER ALLOWED" looks pretty neat on a poster... 

The real problem is: how can the minor, who is 12 years of age, SEE THE PROJECT WHEN IT'S RATED NC-17??? Or, how can I, the creator - 15 years of age - WATCH MY OWN PROJECT? 

Or, how will people react to this rating? Will they think; "It's NC-17: PORN PORN PORN! NOT MY KIDS!" Or: "Hey, a kid on the poster and NC-17? Hmm.... we could try it, though!". Unfortunately, I think (and know) that the first sentence will be the one most parents choose and shout out. People in these days only seem to use ratings as a goddamn law or something. Because if the MPAA tells you NC-17, MY CHILD WON'T SEE IT! But, if the rest of the film is f*cking Bambi and there's only ONCE sequence in which you see a kid DIE ON A BRUTALLY HARSH way, why wouldn't you go and watch it?

DECIDE FOR YOURSELF PEOPLE - DON'T LET THE MPAA OR ANY OTHER ORGANISATION DECIDE WHAT TO WATCH OR NOT! (use it as a guide - not a law)

The system is OLD. Too OLD! It, to me, actually states that I, a 15 year old filmmaker can't kill any of my friends in MY OWN movies - since the MPAA tells child murder is NC-17... 

I'm gonna watch Bambi now... need to cool down.