Two Week Update

Hey, friends!

We are continuing a pretty productive streak. Last weekend we took another chunk out of the ending with some gory effects. They didn't work as well as I would have liked but we can always try again. Who knows, maybe it will look alright on camera and still be usable. We didn't get as much done as we set out to do last week but we did add a new scene to the ending which I like a lot. It helps you see how much of a bad guy Dy-Lan Badi is and where his head is at during this part of the movie. It's a cool scene.

This morning we did another section of the ending. It was an interesting shoot because it involved pacing for suspense, special effects, and a few camera tricks. Rich did a very good job portraying a coke head on the run from our deadly hero. Plus, he shaved his beard into a scummy, Lemmy-esque mustache. John did a really cool prosthetic effect for the scene using gelatin and fake blood. This afternoon might be scrapped due to the weather, but at least we got some stuff done this morning.

Thanks to Rich and Owen for coming out and helping us out. And thanks to you for reading!

-Tommy

Progress and hold ups

Hey, all you White Heat addicts!

Yesterday John, Barry, and Egan shot a lot of good stuff for a montage that will be in the movie. The Chief walking his beat and looking cool while on the trail of Dy-Lan Badi (that's not a sentence). I had to work so I missed most of the montage stuff, but we planned on doing another part of the end scene after I got out. It fell through, unfortunately, since the actor we needed for the scene was nowhere to be found. Hopefully he's alright wherever he is. You know, so we can find him and kill him (in the movie, not in reality).

Next weekend is a pretty elaborate scene involving a ninja and some gross blood and guts that will hopefully get done. If that doesn't happen we do have some contingency plans on hand. We're working at a pretty good pace nowadays and it's exciting. This movie's going to be sweet!

Thanks for reading
-Tommy

Today's Lawson Fun Fact: Lawson has killed 11 people in the past two weeks.

Another Successful Shoot

Happy Mother's day to all you mothers out there. Yesterday we started early and worked into the late night putting together a great scene. We built a pretty convincing set, in my opinion, between the scenery and the costumes. There was a drug lab of sorts that appeared to be bad guy quality control. It looked sexy. There were a few scientists and of course a few ski-masked scumbags that end up having a run in with Lawson. Thanks to Tim, Evan, Jesse, and everyone else who came and helped, sacrificing a Saturday to help us get this movie finished.

In addition to being in the scene, Tim was taking some "on set" pictures that should be surfacing soon. They look really cool. The scene had a little bit of everything that you would want from an action movie: guns and assorted weapons, bloody special effects, hilariously vulgar trash talk, interesting camera shots, and more. Aside from bare breasts and explosions, this scene covers some serious action movie bases.

I'd go into more detail about the effects, but for now I don't want to give away many of the gags you'll see in the finished movie. Just know that bad guy lives were ended fantastically and brutally. Justice was served. Served hard.

Yesterday was also Egan's birthday. So if you see the Chief in your travels be sure to wish him a happy (belated) birthday.

I'm probably forgetting a bunch of things I wanted to write. I'm tired and it's late. Remember to call your mother. I'm trying to think of something clever to write about mothers or mother's day to end this but all I can think of is the scene in Death Wish where Kersey's wife gets murdered. "Mother's getting the shit kicked out of her . . . "

Good enough.

Thanks for reading!
-Tommy

LAWSON FUN FACT: Lawson recommends hollow point bullets as a fine gift for Mom.

Checking In

Since this blog is always dead, I try to give updates every so often.

We have made significant progress since I last posted. I am pretty excited about where we are at, even though we are at a minor crossroads as the equipment we've been borrowing is going in for routine cleaning and crap.

Egan and myself got together last night to plan the next action sequence and story board it out. We are pretty happy and pretty excited about it. Should be pretty cool. We filled Tommy in on the action and he liked it. Pretty exciting stuff.

Been editing some more stuff, trying to catch up on what has been shot already. Been busy with classes and writing, but it's over now so I can get back to business and edit some crap.

Looking good though, looking good.

These Boxes Are For Action Packing

Hey there.

We just spent the morning shooting some fun stuff. The ending is underway and Lawson is going after the bad guys in a maze of boxes full of drugs. I don't want to say too much about the scene, but it was a fun time and it feels good to be moving forward. We are probably shooting some more tonight. Definitely looking forward to it.

Here's a picture from after we finished shooting and I was out of costume:



Pretty sweet! I just had a chance to watch the footage that left me in that state and it's awesome. I am really happy with it.

That's it for now. Maybe one of us will update with some of today's details after we do more tonight.

Thanks for reading!

-Tommy


TODAY'S LAWSON FUN FACT:Lawson is a blood fueled killing machine.

Hey yo!

We had a meeting last night, and we scheduled a good amount of crap to be done in the next 2 weeks or so. If all goes planned, we will have eliminated 2 rooms of the finale in 2 weeks time. I am very excited at the prospects of this as it brings us a few steps closer to our ultimate goal, finishing this movie FINALLY for a Summer Screening. I personally can't wait for this, as we have been working on this since October 2006, so we are coming up on a year and a half in a few days.

In other news, the editing front is coming along slowly at the moment. I just recently got a new computer for my birthday, and I have been swapping programs to it and being distracted by a few other things (finishing my script for a class), but since I am able to have some time now, I hope to have some new stuff to be shown pretty soon.

I am also buying a portable keyboard, and a MAC drum machine program so I can get busy on doing some more music for the movie. Needless to say, there is still plenty to do, but we are still so close to being finished. While I am here, I will post this joke video that has multiple Egans in it. This was to see if I could do this kind of thing, and while not perfect, it is pretty good.

Poster Art Update!

Hi!

The other day Andy Amato sent us a picture of his drawing for the poster. This drawing shows us the format of what his upcoming painting will be. I'm pretty excited about it and I can't wait to see the painting. I was debating whether or not to post the drawing here because I want the painting to be a nice surprise that we can unveil to you all when it's finished. But I couldn't resist giving you just a little taste . . . a little tease . . . a little Coffeestache . . .



So cool.

This weekend we are hopefully shooting some of the ending stuff. I am pretty excited about it. I had felt a little creatively burnt out for awhile but lately I am feeling rejuvenated and inspired. This movie will knock your socks off!

Today's Lawson Fun Fact: Lawson has put more men underground than shovels.

Thanks for reading!

-Tommy

New Artwork

Hi friends!

We're still hard at work on making this movie the best it can be. Should be pretty sweet! Making movies isn't just pointing a camera at some folks and having them say a few things. Sure those are the basics, but there are also alot of other thing which go into a movie that are taken for granted. Things like music and advertising artwork are as much an important part of the process as the rest. A movie that is well done but has inapproiate music or a terrible poster won't float (especially a low budget indie movie that won't be shoved down your throat by a bombardment of TV and billboard ads, regardless of what it is about). Think of how different The Texas Chainsaw Massacre would have been with if the soundtrack was old ragtime piano. How successful would the Lord of the Rings movies have been if the poster was a fat geek reading a copy of Return of the King while eating a meatball sub?

Basically my point is that other elements go into a movie that help represent it as much as the script and the footage itself. The music in the trailers has helped set the tone for the movie and the posters help give you an impression of the movie before you even get to see it. First impressions are important. Which is why you notice (hopefully) that our poster is cool.

So after all of this babble I'll get to my next point, the main reason I'm writing this. In addition to the cool poster made by Sarah, Boston artist Andy Amato has agreed to work on a painted movie poster. Everyone who is helping us out along the way is putting in a lot of hard work and I get pretty excited with each new picture, poster, rough cut scene, and piece of music we encounter. Mr. Amato sent me these two sketches that he was "messing around with:"




I can only imagine how cool the end result will be. And you know what this means? A painting of Chief Coffeestache is on the way!

So we'll have Sarah's poster, representing the modern sleek action movie look, and Mr. Amato's poster, representing the old-fashioned traditional movie poster of the actioners we grew up on. It's the pairing of these elements that makes Lawson: White Heat what it is.

Thanks for reading!
-Tommy


Today's Lawson Fun Fact:
Lawson is a work of art!

Screen Shots

Here are a few of the screen shots from this weekend. There are more pictures loaded onto the myspace page.

Myspace.com/lawsonwhiteheat

Weekend Update

Where to start. The other night 2 sneak peak clips were posted on youtube. Threw a couple bulletins up on myspace just so people know they are there. Didn't want to over do it and send a bulletin every ten minutes, so it was just a few the whole weekend. The feedback has been all positive. People saying they knew it'd be good, but it far exceeded expectations. It looks like a real movie. Impressed with the angles and all that stuff. Needless to say, it made us all feel pretty good. Thanks to everybody that watched, liked or disliked, and gave us feeback on the movie.

Yesterday we had a day of shooting. We had three things on our schedule, but due to a time issue in meeting with the second crew of actors, we got two done. Thankfully we got the harder of the three done, as the other will take about twenty minutes and we can do it any night of the week.

What we shot yesterday was a sweet police briefing and a disturbance call for the cops to check out. I will post some screen shots later tonight after I have digitized the footage. It was a lot of fun, and it was the most people we've had in one day to help with the movie if I remember correctly.

Special thanks to Al Ravage and Eli, Debruyn, Doug, Bill "Flanigan", Abdi, Jerry, William, and John, in addition to us buttheads. It was a very productive day, and hopefully all that shit comes out good. We are pretty sure we got everything we need, but I just have the tendency to worry that we missed something, mainly because we don't have storyboards and we shoot on the fly. This is all such a good learning experience and tool for us, that we already know the do's and dont's when we work on our next movie when the Lawson period is through.

Check back later tonight and we will have some caps up.

Barry

New Screenshots

This past weekend we shot an add-on scene for the movie (I swear the add on scenes are longer than the original movie). This was our first test to see how the basement location looks as far as warehouse space. Using movie magic, camera trickery, and different props, we intend to get as much mileage as we can out of the couple basements we are using. We had a very productive weekend and got a good scene done in short time.


Here are some pictures from the shoot:








This upcoming weekend we have a solid days worth of shooting. We have three important scenes to shoot, and once they're finished, literally we are in the home stretch, FINALLY!

It's going to take a little more time, but you can literally taste the finish, and see some light at the end of the tunnel. All this hard work and stress is going to be so worth it once we premier the movie. Can't wait!

Barry

First Poster

This poster for the movie was done by our good friend Sara. I personally think its pretty damn cool seeing a poster for what we've been working on for a while. I love it, cant wait to get a nice copy of it for my wall and stuff. There might be alternate posters on the way too cause some other folks offered to try it out as well, so people will be able to have Lawson posters to wallpaper their rooms.

AH YAH!

Barry

HAHAAAA!!!

Barry here, giving an update from the editing aspect of the movie. I just finally finished one of the most tedious parts of the movie. The scene involves a crime scene investigation, which is an integral part of our story, and it is a funny one. The only problem is, it was so hard to put together smoothly due to certain factors out of our control (bad location audio, and certain consistency flubs), but all in all it came out pretty good all things considered. I dont know why it was such a pain in the ass, but something about it took me forever to finish it.





I've gone back over some older scenes that are finished and color corrected, and audio corrected them to make em look and sound premium. I am not in the midst of piecing together two more finished scenes, then I have to go back and voice over and put music to a TV watching part in the movie. All in all things are finally back on track and going well.

I sent Egan a ton of screen caps (which you can also see on the myspace page), so he can work on putting them on the website. I have seen the layout and have given my input and agreed on the less is more aspect for the site, and from what I have seen, I am pretty happy about it.

I know we have said this a million times before, but we really are closer and closer to finishing this movie with each passing day. Although the process has been tedious, time consuming and at times very frustrating, it has all been worth it. One motivating factor for me personally at the moment is the school film festival. Last year we won for best trailer with the short teaser, and theres nothing more that I would like, than to have the movie finished for this years and try to win more shit.

I believe the deadline for submissions is sometime in late march/early april, so theres a goal we can TRY to reach. Doesnt mean it is going to happen, because as I've learned from shooting this thing, obstacles do appear, and theres nothing you can do about it. It'd be fantastic to be able to submit it and see what happens, but if it doesn't, at least its a motivational factor to kick ass on this bitch the next two months.

More soon.

BARRY

The site + more.

Over the last two weeks or so, I have been working on designs for the Lawson: White Heat website. We decided to scrap the other site for a couple reasons, one of which was I was not happy with the way it was starting to look. I felt it was generic, and cluttered at the same time, without any real sort of good content. This time I took a new approach to designing the pages. I went simplistic, but attractive. The designs I have so far look good, but you aren't bogged down with too many images, or just to much random shit on each page like before.

I have the designs for the top level page(Which I will post a preview for soon), the First tier of content pages, and some of the second tier. The site isn't going to go beyond 3 tiers of pages(homepage, first tier, second tier) All the content, and then some, can fit perfectly into that structure. I created a Photoshop file of each page first. Once I am done with my last two pages, I am going to turn them into HTML. I am still yet to decide on a switch board system yet. I am thinking most likely(without getting to technical) all the pages will run through a central file that will pull the content files for that page, I will then use something to make the page URLs look nice, instead of URL parameters floating around everywhere. I don't think this site is complex enough to require any sort of database content management system, even a light one, that I write myself. No need to spend the time on it if that is the case.

I've spoke with a friend from work and he is going to alter a flash player we have, and I am going to use that for all the videos on the site. I feel it looks a bit more professional to have your own media player, or one not branded by another company. I know other people are fine with using Youtube, and I would be, if getting a new media player wasn't so easy. Also, that way, we can embed the videos into Myspace, other pages, just like before, instead of linking to Youtube, it can link to a page on the Lawson site, generating more traffic back to the Lawson site.

Barry is getting some screen caps for me over the next couple weeks, and the site will feature various screen caps from the movie. You can see your favorite people in action(by favorite people, I mean the Chief, of course). Each major character will have their own page, which will have in-action screen caps, photos from the photoshoot, and potentially a little video, with either them in-action, or partaking in some funny antics that is not in the movie.

Overall, I think the site is going to look good, it will also become a great landing place for people looking for information about the movie. Currently, we have this blog, which sure, it's got good information, but it's all in post form, and stuff moves below the fold and to archive pages pretty quickly. The site will have all the information anyone would need right there, and it would not be hard to find. Unfortunately, I don't have an estimated release date for it, but I can tell you this, it will be done before the movie for sure.

Speaking of the movie, I can't wait to get it done. Recently, the anticipation has been building again, and I'm just at the point where I want to get it done so everyone can see it. I hope people haven't been getting frustrated with the fact we aren't done yet. Though, I am sure everyone working on the movie will tell you two things, It is hard fucking work making this movie, and we haven't forgotten or given up on it. If you were once excited for the movie, get excited again. If you are still excited, thank you for your patience. The movie will be coming soon. I truly believe it will meet, if not surpass your expectations. At least I know it has already surpassed mine. We have some shoots set up, as well as some prep work for the big finale. With all the set backs we have had over the last six or so months we have really come a long way, and are ready to get this done.

I'm also excited to see the poster when it is done, hopefully soon, so we can plaster them everywhere in Boston, hopefully. I know we have been looking into getting postcards to hand out(kinda like club promoters, right Barry?). I really want to spread the word of the movie. I truly think people are going to enjoy it. Overall, I just want people to see it. I personally don't care if we make a dime off of it, it would be nice, but if we don't, I had a great time making a great movie, and that alone is worth doing it.

Lawson is a Goddamn Hero

Hi, friends.

Lawson has been recognized as a "GODDAMN HERO" by the Bay Area band Arnocorps! They really know their shit. Check them out here:

http://www.myspace.com/arnocorps

A picture of Lawson is featured in the photo album of "GODDAMN HEROES." Pretty cool.

Well, we better get back to finishing this bastard. More updates to come!

Thanks for reading!
-Tommy

The New Teaser!

Another late night shoot

Hey, folks.

Saturday night we were able to shoot in an interesting new location. We were up late, so thanks to everyone who helped. The scene we were doing was one we had already done with the previous "Badi's Woman" but now had to be redone since the part was recast since then. It is interesting to be able to go back and redo a scene. Barry retooled and rewrote the scene (I'll try to stop using "re-" prefixes) to bulk it up with a little more development of the character's relationships within the "bad guy" organization. The scene serves the same purpose it did before as far as progressing the plot, but in my opinion feels more fleshed out. What was previously a short conversation between Reese and Badi now shows more interaction between Reese, Badi, and Badi's woman.

Badi is a prick to a stranger in both versions of the scene, but the new version is more elaborate, due in great part to Beele (Bile? Bilay? Sorry for totally butchering the spelling of your name, man!) who added alot with his performance. In the first version, this aspect of the scene was like a punchline punctuation that ended the scene. Now it is woven into the action as a more natural part of the scene.

Another difference this time around was the location, which I mentioned earlier. The first time we did the scene, it was outdoors and in a place previously used in the movie. The new location (Badi's lounge) looks sexier and, considering the weather, was luckily indoors (thanks to Mohamed for setting us up with such a sweet place to use!). I think different and interesting locations add alot in the long run, and this one not only looks cool but also adds to Badi's character. I think there is only one other scene where we see Badi in his casual, non-business environment, so it will be a real treat for you Dylan Badi enthusiasts. Some personal insight not available on the trading card.

Another cool thing about the weekend's shoot was that I got to see some of the movie on a sleek, big, flat-screen tv. I think I can get so used to seeing clips on youtube that I forget how sexy the movie actually looks. And seeing it on a big tv is always exciting. I can't wait to actually see it on a theater screen. That will be sweet. When we watched the trailer at the Brattle, we all basically fudruckered our jeans (as C-Note would say). So I can only imaging how cool it will be to see the whole movie on the big screen.

Well, I should probably stop rambling. The new teaser will be up tomorrow, probably. I'll leave you with a Lawson: White Heat fun fact:

-Although Chief Coffeestache didn't pioneer the "penis-in-the-popcorn" trick, he perfected it during a 1971 screening of The French Connection to the grateful applause of the world.

Thanks for reading!

Tommy

Not Cool Man!

So over the weekend I was working hard on editing two scenes. I had to capture a few hours of footage, and then sort through it all to find the clips I wanted, needed, and could use. I got a good solid three minutes edited in the timeline in Final Cut and was pretty excited. I know three minutes probably doesnt sound like too much, when in reality thats a LOT of work. So, point of the story is this. After I saved the project, made sure everything was cool, somehow the folder got screwed up and all that work I did is lost forever (until I do it again). Frustrated? You bet!

New Screen Shot

I am working on throwing together a quick little clip, something new, so people can see other shit going on in the movie. I have two big things to edit in the next week and a half or so, so I am going to be busy, and will probably have another bloopers reel I can put together too.

Either way, he is a hilarious screen shot of Chief Coffeestache answering questions from reporters about the White Heat epidemic. The text at the bottom is blurry because its supposed to scroll by, and it says (when asked to comment his reply was, "I'm fucking Steve Guttenburg!") Tons of fun!

State of the Lawson Address

It has been just over a year since shooting started on our first "feature length movie" LAWSON: White Heat. In the first few weeks/months of shooting, everything was going so smoothly, and we were breezing through scenes with ease. As the scenes grew progressively more complex, obviously things start to get harder. Some of the things we needed to do were out of our control until the weather got better in the spring again.

We took a small break, and once the weather was favorable, we started back up. Over the Spring/Summer, we made leaps and bounds as far as the progress of the movie goes. We were once again smooth sailing, and although we obviously weren't going to get the movie done for Spring/Summer of 2007 (an unrealistic goal to begin with), we were sure of ourselves that we'd be done shooting by the end of the Summer.

Day after day, week after week, people who know we are making a movie will ask the same question over and over and over and over. "When is the movie going to be finished?" Believe me, if we could have a solid date and know exactly when it would be finished, we'd tell every single person we could, so they can come see what we've been working so hard on for the past year. Unfortunately though, unforseen roadblocks once again stalled our progress on finishing the movie. As frustrating as it must be for people who want to see the damn thing, imagine how frustrating things have been for us. Here we are, busting our asses, shooting on weird schedules late at night (finding times to work together is nearly impossible when everybody has jobs, bills to pay, and we arent getting any money to do this), and doing everything we possibly can to finish this thing, and shit falls apart.

We were set up in three or four different places at different times during the summer, where we'd be able to go in on weekends, shoot our crazy finale on all day shoots, which wouldve taken maybe a month or so, and you know what happens? We fall onto hard times and bad luck, and every place we had, fell through due to unforseeable events taking place. I.E., thanks but no thanks, take your stupid movie and go somewhere else.

This is really not as easy as people think. We arent just a bunch of shithead kids anymore wasting our nights with unprepared, uninspired, stupid little skits we made with a bogus cheap camcorder. This is as close to a real movie as we can get with ZERO BUDGET, ZERO CREW, ZERO LOCATIONS, and basically nothing but us working on it. We've had a ton of help in finding places from my uncle, who I owe a huge amount of thanks to for all of his help and hard work, but other than that, any money spent is from our own empty pockets. We don't have jobs where our accounts are over flowing with extra money to blow on making a crazy action/comedy movie here.

As fun as it sounds to "play dress up", get soaked in fake blood, run around with a camera and pretend to shoot each other, there is so much more to what we are doing, and what we have done thus far. From the writing of the entire movie, to the shooting, acting, editing, music, effects, its all us. We've borrowed equipment, and asked for help with some poster designs and stuff like that, but the actual production of the movie is 5 dudes who had an idea, and we are busting our asses to get this thing done.

So please, bear with us for a little more time. If you've lost interest in everything we have done thus far, thats okay. Thanks for your interest in the first place, and if you are still waiting on the edge of your seats to see what a bunch of meat heads like us can do if we put our hard work into something, hopefully you'll have as much fun watching the finished product as we will.

We've figured out a solution to our negative warehouse space, and we are going to start shooting the very end of the movie shortly. While this is taking place, I will get back on my chair in front of the computer, and puzzle together everything we have finished as we take the time to finish this thing. It's almost over, I swear.

Thanks for reading, keep supporting us and understand that we want this done as much as you!

-Barry