Howdy! Sorry it’s been a few weeks since my last post but I have been out of town. I traveled to Los Angeles to meet with potential sales agents. Film Sales Agents represent filmmakers who are looking for distribution deals for their films – specifically we were looking for an agent who would be capable of taking Cowboy Smoke to the Cannes market in May and screening our film for potential foreign and domestic buyers. We have settled on a sales agent however are currently working on drafting an agreement that is beneficial to both parties involved so I won’t mention their name yet.

I have posted a couple new videos that might be of interest on youtube. Super Fan was the first short film that Mike Lutz (who plays Joe in Cowboy Smoke) and I work on together. It’s a comedy about two best friends who take a road trip to the girls state volleyball tournament. We wrote the script in about six hours, shot the movie in about five and then it took me a couple days to edit. It’s not much on production value but I think it’s hilarious – check it out:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfBHZPCFtEw

Finally I have posted a new trailer… it’s not actually new other than the footage has been upgraded from miniDV to HDCam. My DP has been begging me to post a trailer with the new footage so here you go:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhXO9×2STEs

I hope you guys enjoy and as always feel free to vote or share your thoughts.

The Band Restaurant, whose song The Future Strikes back is featured in Cowboy Smoke, will be playing several shows during SXSW. Please see below for details:

Tuesday March 11^th at 9pm
Beauty Bar Austin
617 E 7th St
Austin, TX 78701
(512) 391-1943
www.myspace.com/beautybaraustin

Wednesday March 12^th at 2pm
Red 7
611 E 7th St
Austin, TX 78701
(512) 476-8100
www.myspace.com/redsevenaustin

Wednesday March 12^th at 3pm
Red Eyed Fly
715 Red River
Austin, Tx 78701
recordhigh.net/redeyedfly

Wednesday March 12^th at 8pm
Enchanted Forest
1412 W. Oltorf
Austin, TX 78704
austinenchantedforest.com

Saturday March 15^th at 2pm
Black and Tan
405 East 7th Street
Between Trinity and Neches
myspace.com/blackandtanaustin

THE ABOVE TIMES AND VENUES ARE CONFIRMED.

On Monday the 10th we might have a show at:
Mohawk (time TBA)
912 Red River St
Austin, TX 78701
(512) 482-8404
mohawkaustin.com
or
Club DeVille
900 Red River St
Austin, TX 78701
(512) 457-0900
clubdeville.com

If you have seen Cowboy Smoke and enjoyed it - then please don’t forget to vote for us on IMDB. 

It’s a pretty simple process. All you need to do is click on the following link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0795362/  Then vote for Cowboy Smoke on a scale of 1 to 10. You may need to register for IMDB if you have not already done so but this only takes a few seconds – I believe they require an email address and a password – that’s it! Anyway, by voting for Cowboy Smoke you are letting other filmmakers, distributors, sales reps, agents, managers, and the general public know what you (the audience) thinks. This helps us, especially if you vote that you liked Cowboy Smoke – come on, you know you liked it.

The screening this past weekend was a success!

The response we received from the test audience was overwhelmingly positive. It was really cool to read the questionnaires afterwards - mainly because everyone genuinely loved the film. I even had a woman come up to me in tears after the film gushing over how beautiful and touching she thought the movie was. This meant a lot to me because the majority of the audience had nothing to do with producing the film. The audience had been selected at random by local radio stations. 

One last note – Don’t forget to vote for your favorite poster on our message boards – tomorrow is the last day.  

That’s right, you get to pick your favorite Cowboy Smoke poster. Chris Lambright, our graphics artist who is handling all of the art work (DVD cover, posters, blah, blah, blah) has finished some samples for the Cowboy Smoke poster and I wanted to share them with you. Please take a look and feel free to vote for your favorite poster on the production boards - http://www.cowboysmoke.com/cgi-bin/forum/Blah.pl?b-pr/  This poll will run through next Friday and whatever poster receives the most votes will be used to help publicize Cowboy Smoke.  If you wish to vote, you must do so on the production boards. Thanks!  

Grassroots baby! We need to work on building an audience for the film - so whenever you get a chance, tell a friend about the Cowboy Smoke website. The postcards on this site are great way to invite a friend to sign up for the newsletter.
We will be holding one more private screening on Saturday February 16^th at 4pm. If you did not get to attend the first screening please email me at will@bandwagonfilms.com and put in the subject line “WANT TO ATTEND SCREENING”. In addition to this please note in the body of the email the number of guests you would like to bring. I will respond with a confirmation and the location of the screening.
This screening should be fun. We are giving out tickets on the local radio station in order to create a test audience. After the screening those in the test audience, along with any others that would like to stay, will answer questions about the movie.
Questions like:
What did you like about the film? Not like about the film? Who was your favorite character? Least favorite character? Would you tell others about this film? Who would you tell?
Answers to these questions will help us gain a better understanding of who our audience is.
In addition to this I have been compiling a list of distributors I think would do a good job distributing Cowboy Smoke. This is due to the fact that there are literally 100’s of distributors out there and by making a list I will be able to focus on the 30-40 distributors that I fell are a good match.
I have also been working on the DVD itself - the DVD menu, DVD artwork, behind-the-scenes segments, and a new trailer. I really wanted to do a commentary track but I think that might have to come later. Right now I just want to get the DVD ready to ship out – I am planning on sending the final packaged DVD to producer’s reps (basically sales reps), agents, and managers.  These are people that will help us sell the film.

I am glad to say the cast and crew screening was a big hit. We had a packed house and it was amazing to finally see Cowboy Smoke on the big screen with a crowd. People were laughing, having a good time, clapping, cheering… I could not have been happier. I would like to encourage everyone who got to see the film this past weekend to respond to this post with your thoughts. Did you like the movie? Why? Any favorite moments? In addition to this… go to IMDB.com and vote for the film.

In the weeks and months to come my focus will shift to film festivals and online publicity… any and all attention that we can get for Cowboy Smoke on the web is a positive thing.     

Aside from a few sound tweaks here and there the film is finished! It has been a long road to get to this point and I am very proud of the finished film. A quick glance at my production notes reveals that I came up with the original idea for Cowboy Smoke in February 2005. That’s almost three years ago! Over the Christmas break I was able to screen the film for my parents and about 50 other guests. The response I got was amazing and I cannot wait for even more people to watch the finished product. With that said, we are holding a cast and crew screening in Ganado, TX at the Ganado Theatre on Saturday January 12, 2008 at 4pm. The theatre only holds 192 people so we are asking that only cast and crew members attend… and if you do bring guests, please limit the number. What’s next? Through January we will be developing sales and marketing strategy for the film. Our ultimate goal is to sell Cowboy Smoke but we’d also like to generate as much buzz as possible about the film and all those involved and the best way to accomplish this is through film festival screenings.  Stay tuned for me!         

I spent the last two days in Dallas with our DP Steve Acevedo supervising the color correction process. For those who don’t know, Color correction is the process of adjusting the color, contrast, and light of each shot in order to attain a certain look. It’s amazing what the colorist can do and the power that they have. They can pick a single point in a shot and add light to it… or make a sky red, or orange, or blue or green if you so desire. The goal is two-fold here, to make the overall film look good as well as to make sure shot by shot the colors and light match up. 

It looks like we will be done in couple days and I am jacked about it! All that’s left is the sound mix and compositing. I can’t wait… I need a vacation and a lot of sleep.    

With the SXSW deadline looming I’ve been stretched thin and stressed out trying to get Cowboy Smoke completed. Thanksgiving was a much needed break. Prior to leaving for El Paso for the Holiday I spent two and ½ weeks logging keycode for the final transfer. What is keycode you ask?

KEYCODE refers to the latent edge numbers put onto the negative film at the manufacturers. When the film is processed these numbers become visible. They aid the negative cutter in his/her ability to match your film back to A&B rolls from a cut film workprint or video daily. Keycode is made up of a string of number and digits and look like this: FN 63 0799 8319+06 D3 Each clip in the film (1653 to be exact) has an IN and OUT keycode. In addition to this each clip has an IN and an OUT source code which looks like this: 01:02:30;01In addition to logging the source code and keycode IN and OUT points for each clip I had to log clip name, what roll each clip was on, shot number, Timeline IN and OUT points. This was probably the most mind numbing, boring process of the entire film and I ended up hiring six people to work Saturday and Sunday a few weeks back with me to help me. The final list is called an EDL or an Edit Decision List. This is used by the transfer house as a guide when selecting what clips to pull from the 15+ hours of footage. The Film Workers Club in Dallas began transferring the footage to HD on Monday and should be completed no later than today. Once I have received the transferred footage from I will conform the clips. On December 11^th I will be traveling to Dallas for the final color correction. Once this is completed the film will be roughly 99% finished. We will only be waiting on a few cues from Composer Brian Satterwhite. Brian has been busy creating an amazing score and I have been more than happy to give him the time he needs. His notes from his blog read:Whew! What a weekend. After spending a great Thanksgiving day with my family in Houston I came back here to Austin on Friday morning while my wife and son stayed in Houston for the weekend. I took advantage of the empty house for three days and got a lot of work done. I composed four cues for Cowboy Smoke in about three days. Not bad. I wrapped up 3m8 “Cowboy Smoke” which could be one of my favorites of the lot. It’s ambitious and has probably the most tracks of any cue so far in the whole score. I’ve sent a rough mix off to my friend Matt in NYC who is going to lay down a drum part and some guitar as well. As I type this, he’s in the process of uploading the finished tracks to my FTP server. I can’t wait to hear them.I also completed cues 2m2 “Tivoli Motel Raid,” 2m12 “Wesley Takes a Ride,” and 3m2 “Hijacking.” How much do I have left? Honestly I don’t know and I don’t really want to know. I know I’m a good chunk over halfway but I can’t be thinking about how much I have left. I just keep taking it one cue at a time until eventually there won’t be any left.On Tuesday I’m going back into the studio to record Javier’s violin parts for the next round of finished cues. It’ll probably make up a third of the score. We recorded a third already so after this next session I’ll probably just need one more to finish everything up.

More to come!

This past Weekend was my first time to listen to Cowboy Smoke all the way through with the completed sound and I must admit that I was blown away. Aaron Horne, Crystal Farnam, and Ted Scissors over at Four Eyes Studios have done an amazing job. I can honestly say that this film has been elevated to another level by the work they’ve done. Other than cleaning up some muddy dialogue and dropping in a few ambient tracks here and there, they are finished with sound design. Once the music is locked Aaron, myself, Brian (our composer) and Fagan (producer) will meet up for the final mixing of the sound. Aaron will be doing a stereo mix as well as a Dolby surround sound mix and this should all take place at the end of the month. 

Here are some notes from Brian’s online blog: 

Tomorrow morning I head into the studio to record the violin parts for the first batch of cues which comprises about a third or more of the total score. I can’t wait to hear what Javier will do with the parts. I’ve been hearing sampled violin tracks this whole time and honestly they sound halfway decent but when I get my first listen of Javier it’s going to elevate each cue into the stratosphere. Tonight I’ve got one more violin part to transcribe before tomorrow morning. I finished up another cue today which brings the total to eight we’ll record tomorrow. I’m also deep into composing the end credits which I’m really excited about. For the first time in the whole film I’m able to really open up with the main theme. It doesn’t really get the opportunity to shine quite like it will in the closing credit sequence. It’ll have the most tracks and be one of the longer cues in the score. I love going into the studio. It’ll be a short visit but I’ll savor every minute of it.  More to Come!!!