"PALO ALTO" Production Blog

Cover Art and Marketing

2008-12-24T23:07:00.000-08:00

So I thought I’d write a blog about some of my experiences on the creative side during the distribution phase. Let me preface by saying that making the film was the easy part… navigating distribution is very much the hard part.

From a creative standpoint distribution has been very interesting because PALO ALTO, CA is a very tricky title to work with. The film is half teen comedy and half indie drama. Fortunately / unfortunately it doesn’t exactly fit into either category which means that it’s a wild card for distributors. After months of searching for the right distribution deal we finally found our home with Image Entertainment. Image is a pretty cool company because they do a lot of diverse stuff all the way from playboy TV to the Criterion Collection.

After the deal was the task of devising how to market PALO ALTO, CA. Most of the promotion that we did for the film in festivals and random screens was targeting the young indie filmgoer with a cool indie film, kind of a realistic cinema verita feel, made by kids, for kids. This is the poster we made and used:

Image was very happy with the grassroots following that we established through our little marketing efforts, but when they took over the angle changed. This is the poster that Image made with a bunch of photoshop from images that we took at a photo shoot:

Mind you, it’s the same film being sold with both of these posters although it very much doesn’t look that way… Our old poster is much more in line with the tone of the film but we’re told that the new one is going to sell more copies… aw yes the artists dilemma. Well actually this one wasn’t too much of a dilemma for me because I didn’t get much of a say. Image being the distributor handles the marketing and does what they want. As much as I disagree with their direction it’s hard for me to argue with their track record. We’ll see how it plays out. In conclusion if you like either poster please buy the film, you’ll probably like it and we’ll like you for watching it.

-Brad Leong

PALO ALTO Release!

2008-12-23T16:47:00.000-08:00

Happy holidays!

Thanks for following the progress of 'Palo Alto.' Sorry we have been out of touch and our online updates have been limited to non-existent. We have been very busy over the last year planning for the release of the film. Going into this project we thought getting the movie made was going to be the hardest part, but it turns out distribution is an even bigger challenge.

The website will be updated over the next week with all of our plans, but in the meantime we wanted to give you a brief breakdown. 'Palo Alto, CA' (the title was changed for distribution) will be receiving worldwide distribution through Image Entertainment domestically and G-Machine, an international sales agent, for territories outside the U.S. Needless to say, we are very excited to make this announcement.

Through our partnership with Image the 'Palo Alto, CA' DVD will be hitting shelves on February 17, 2009. At first it will be primarily available for rent through Netflix and Blockbuster, but over the proceeding months major retailers will be adding the title to their shelves. For now, it can be pre-ordered on Amazon here. If you are feeling generous this holiday season, we would greatly appreciate it if you pre-ordered the DVD as it will have a meaningful impact on our sales to places like Best Buy.

In addition our home video release we will be screening the film on college campuses. Please send us a message if you would like us to visit your school. We are in talks with several schools around the country. The website will be updated with screening dates so you can attend showing in your area.

As you know this is a small movie so any help you can provide in promotion would mean a lot to us. The possibilities are endless, but a few things that would be particularly helpful would be sending messages about the film to your friends on Facebook (and telling them to join our group), getting friends to attend screenings that are happening near you and helping us to set up showings at your college. Also, saving the film to your Netflix account and giving us positive comments on Netflix, Amazon and IMDB would go a long way.

We've just activated a Facebook Fan page for the film that will be another good resource for updates on the film. Become a fan to make sure you don't miss any information on important events, or screenings of the film in your area.

We are very grateful for your interest in the movie. As young filmmakers, it is absolutely surreal to be announcing we have closed a distribution deal… the film's success moving forward is very much in your hands. We hope you enjoy this labor of love!

Best wishes for the New Year,

The 'Palo Alto, CA' Team

We're Wrapped. No Fake.

2008-07-06T22:44:00.001-07:00

This is the final shot we rolled last week. It was a nice change of pace, Brad and I just sat for two hours as the sun set. Usually we're running around, doing ten things at once, and worrying about eleven. We'll update everyone soon on our release information so don't forget about us.

We've learned a lot about filmmaking and about distribution. Once everything is finally pushed out we'll open the topic up and give what will hopefully be useful information for anyone hoping to follow a similar path.

Finishing the Movie

2008-04-23T11:05:00.000-07:00

We spent the last weekend taking some extra B-Roll for the film… I know what you’re thinking it’s been over a year and we still aren’t done with it. Well we just want it to be as good as it can be when you guys actually do get to see it.

Friday we picked up all the gear including the camera checkout from Panavision, which took the majority of the day.

We drove to Palo Alto from LA on Saturday morning with my car jammed with gear. For such a simple shoot we didn’t think it would be necessary to get a grip truck… turns out it would have been nice but we made do without.

We mostly needed static shots of empty hallways/classroom/lockers/etc so we spent most of our time at a local high school shooting late into the night. It was pretty cool because we got to really focus on setting things up simply for pretty shots without having to deal with actors, sound, or coverage. As the director I didn’t really have to do much. Mostly I just sat around and assisted Rachel (our DP) with whatever she needed.

Saturday during the day we took some more daytime B-Roll all around Palo Alto. The Law family was kind enough to let me fly in their little Cesna plane to try for aerial shots of Palo Alto. A BIG thanks to Mr. Law and Uncle Ron!

I’ve heard that aerial photography out of a little plane doesn’t work so well because of vibration and poor angles of view. But once we got up in the air everything seemed to work perfectly. I was jammed in the backseat with the camera handheld looking out the passenger side window. We were able to get the window fully open so that it wouldn’t obscure our shots. I could lean out the window a little and tilt the camera down to get about 45 degrees and then Ron (the expert pilot) could tilt the plane a little more and we could get around 60-70 degrees which is pretty close to 90 degrees (ie looking straight down).

Rachel didn’t really want to start shooting day B-Roll till the sun got low enough so that the lighting didn’t look toppy - so we sat around until 5ish and then drove around PA until dark, picking up random pretty shots here and there.

All and all a pretty cool weekend.

We’ve got one final re-shoot to do and then, I promise we’ll be done and releasing. Things are in the works… thanks for staying interested!

-Brad

UCLA Screening

2008-01-16T10:38:00.000-08:00

We had an advanced screening on the UCLA campus that was so full people were sitting on the floor. It went very well, and Brad, Ben, and Justin showed up during it so we all decided to do a little Q/A afterwards. I hope everyone enjoyed it, it was definitely fun for us because it was one of our better audiences.

We haven't made any 35mm prints of the film yet so we had to project digitally, which usually makes us nervous if the facility doesn't have top of the line cinema projector. UCLA of course did not, so before the screening we picked up the next best thing, a 1080P HD projector and hdmi DVD player from our favorite rental house, Circuit City. It was a damn good projector though and the picture looked better than some of the professional screening rooms we've been to.

Below is a picture of us on stage, with some shutter lag going on for some reason.

AFM Panel

2007-12-01T14:43:00.000-08:00

SAGINDIE hosted a hosted a seminar at AFM (American Film Market) for the topic of "Do it yourself" filmmaking, and invited us to speak on the panel. The audience asked some pretty interesting questions and overall we had an itelligent discussion about how to make a low budget independent film and work with SAGINDIE. It would have been very educational if we had attended something like this right before going into production and I hope the people that came found it to be worth their time.

Vote for Cody's Film

2007-10-21T20:01:00.000-07:00

Cody Foltz was the boom operator on PALO ALTO, and he just sent us a link to his team's entry in Apple's Insomnia Film Festival. If you want to check it out and vote, click the banner:

From what I can gather, each team had 24 hours to submit a 3 minute film that made use of certain elements (characters, dialogue, locations, etc) that Apple posted at minute one.

15 movies worth a look at AFF

2007-10-11T15:00:00.000-07:00

We were included in Austin360.com's list of 15 movies to check out at AFF this year! Check out the complete list here.

PALO ALTO Update

2007-09-18T18:39:00.000-07:00

We are excited to announce we will be screening at the Austin Film Festival!

Friday, October 12 at 9:15pm.
Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek
13729 Research Blvd. Austin, TX 78750.

This is a very cool festival, and it's right next to UT so we'll hopefully get a young crowd to come out. For more info visit the Austin Film Festival Website. For those of you reading this ON the Austin Film Festival website, our full production blog can be found here, where you'll find stories from throughout the making of PALO ALTO.

Austin marks our first public screening since Tribeca. We'll hopefully play festivals and college campuses over the next few months, ultimately leading up to a major Bay Area premiere in the Spring. We're all anxious to screen in our hometown, but want to make sure we have all our distribution plans firmed up first. Thanks for staying tuned to the project.

-Daniel Engelhardt

PALO ALTO at the Austin Film Festival

2007-09-14T10:33:00.000-07:00

PALO ALTO will be screening at the Austin Film Festival this year. Check back soon for time and location!

Todd Carey's performance with PALO ALTO mention

2007-07-05T11:40:00.000-07:00

One of the very talented young artists on the PALO ALTO soundtrack is Todd Carey. Here is a short video of him performing on of his songs with a brief mention of PALO ALTO in the introduction.

...One Year Later

2007-06-16T12:38:00.000-07:00

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

It has been exactly one year and 2 days since the blog started up and so much has happened! First up is the new blog page which you are reading this on right now. It is google blog software so it is all pretty and easy to browse all the old production posts and you can comment on them now!

The film is complete and right now and we are in the middle of finding a distributor to partner with so that everyone can see the film! For those of you that are anxious and want to see the film earlier, I urge you to keep visiting this blog, the Main Website, the Facebook, and the Myspace pages where we consistently post information about screenings. There have been ten or so public screenings of PALO ALTO in the last 2 months! Since the film isn't released yet there aren't many reviews floating around, but if you want to read more about the film there are a couple reviews on our IMDb Page and there is a great feature posted on The Cinema Source.

In a few weeks we should have more information about distribution and summer screenings.

Tribeca Gallery

2007-05-18T13:35:00.000-07:00

A modest Tribeca Gallery can be found here:

Tribeca Wrap Up

2007-05-17T13:36:00.000-07:00

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

The rest of Tribeca went really well and most of our other screenings were packed. A lot of family and old high school friends were able to see the film that had consumed our lives for over a year. We got a lot of positive feedback from everyone we talked to and overall it was a fantastic experience. The Q/A sessions also became a little more conventional between us and audience once the theaters got smaller and Tom left town.

I wish I had taken more video and pictures but for some reason I didn't. I have to wait until I get a bunch of pictures from all the various people that kept their fingers glued to the shutter all week so I can create a gallery.

We are planning on hosting a few more screenings for the public and, who knows, maybe later this year we'll get some sort of theatrical release. Keep your fingers crossed.

Tribeca Premiere

2007-05-16T13:07:00.000-07:00

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

Our premiere was on April 29th with a packed theater. So packed infact that a bunch of us didn't even get into the theater. The cast and crew arrived only a few minutes before the film was supposed to start and then everyone got held up on the red carpet with photographers and interviews.

Tribeca oversold our premiere by about 20 tickets so by the time we all got to the theater every seat was taken. It was also 30 minutes after the film was supposed to start so there wasn't much time for us to figure out the problem and how to fix it. Some people got really upset that they had to miss the premiere screening but for us we were just glad that the theater was full and were more worried about what people would think.

About halfway through the film we were able to sneak in the the theater and see how it was going. The theater was having a great time and it was the first time we had seen the film projected in HD before and it looked amazing. After the film there was a 20 minute Q/A which allowed for Tom Arnold to take the mic and basically talk for 20 minutes about the experience of working on the film. Not enough people got to ask questions but Tom did a great job at entertaining everyone and praising all our efforts so we didn't mind.

After the premiere we headed accross the street to a local bar where we had the VIP lounge area reserved and an open bar. The film ended at about 6pm and we ended up staying in the bar for a few hours until our open bar dried up and we jumped around the city from bar to bar. By about 1 in the morning most people gave up because we had been celebrating for 6 hours.

Production Videos

2007-04-04T13:58:00.000-07:00

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

I finally got around to sifting through all the random video that were taken during production. I put them all up on a YouTube play list and added the link to the links menu. Go to the YouTube Playlist

Locking Down the Music

2007-03-19T12:16:00.000-07:00

By Dan Engelhardt producer

Brad and I headed over to meet with our sound team last night at 11pm. They have just about finished mixing all the reels (our movie is divided into 5 reels), and are waiting on some music cues to throw in. This sounds simple, but mixing in the music is a huge part so we are delivering any missing pieces tomorrow. This will give them a litte over a week to finalize the sound mix before it has to be delivered to our post house on March 28.

So far I am beyond impressed with the quality of our sound design. It is being mixed in Dolby Surround, and greatly enhances the experience of watching this film. We left hollywood at 2am or so (Thank you so much to Laura and Christian for putting up with our crazy hours!!!), and headed over to USC to meet with Geoffrey Pope who is composing some original music. He played us previews of what we recorded today.

THE RECORDING SESSION

Our composer Geoffrey Pope is a really talented composer from USC, who Brad and I have worked with many times on our shorts and corporate projects. He grew up in Palo Alto so that works out nicely for the film.

This afternoon he recorded an original score for the abandoned house scenes. As usual his work is top notch. Because we are on a limited budget instead of renting a recording studio we utilized a practice room at USC, and a sound engineer Pope knows came with a portable pro tools set. The sound quality is great, and we avoided a massive hourly fee.

The main challenge presented to us in doing this style of recording was controling outside noise. The room we were working in was not sound proof so I had to "secure the perimeter" to make sure that no once raised there voice, played other insturments or used a lawn mower. I ended up succeeding in this effort so we are moving forward with a very clean and professional recording... despite a very giurilla setup.

Thanks Mr. Pope! You're the man!

New York, New York

2007-03-16T12:15:00.000-07:00

By Dan Engelhardt producer

We are so proud and excited to announce our premiere at the 6th Annual Tribeca Film Festival. This is absolutely the perfect venue for us. The festival attracts major distributors as well as other industry professionals, and also represents an amazing chance for us to pack our screenings with the many college and high school age students living in the area.

Locking down a festival premiere is huge milestone for all those involved with PALO ALTO, and I can’t even begin to express the huge sense of gratitude we feel for those who have made this film possible. This production not only had an amazing talented cast and crew, but was also surrounded with a huge amount of enthusiasm from community members in and around Palo Alto, equipment vendors and industry professionals - we are starting to put together our credits, and it is no surprise that the specials thanks section is pages long.

We have to deliver the final cut to Tribeca on April 6th so crunch time has begun. Brad Leong (director), Kevin Gasca (editor, post-supervisor), Eric Robinson (music supervisor), Laura Schmadel (sound supervisor), and Christian Buenaventura (dialogue editor) and I have been pulling all nighters for the last couple weeks to make this deadline. Picture editing and color correction is complete, but we need to lock our soundtrack, and complete our final sound mix. In fact, thanks to the dedication of Laura and Christian, who are truly taking this film to a new level with their sound design, we will be at a sound spotting session most of tonight.

Also, there are some Visual FX to be done. In order to have logos in the movie they have to be cleared, and some of the companies have not approved the use so we are removing them from the picture. There are a total of 53 VFX shots to complete by April 1. On a large production with a team that is working full time this would be an easy accomplishment, but on project of this size it can be quite daunting. We are lucky to have Kevin on the mission, who has brought on two amazingly talented VFX artists.

On the subject of post-production, I wanted to mention that Kevin (Gascanation as we like to refer to him) has truly carried this project through post. He has been our guiding light. Not only has he spent countless hours editing the film, but he single handedly pulled together the entire post-production team as well as the resources needed to get the job done. This also includes locking down locations, crew, and gear for our Los Angeles based pickups. We would be dead in the water without him…

So the count down to Tribeca begins. We have a film to finish, and a massive PR and sales effort to execute on. Like we did during production, we will try to keep you updated on al the major happenings over the next 6 weeks.

Congrats and thanks again to our dedicated cast and crew for helping us land a premiere at the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival.

Editorial Update

2007-02-17T12:14:00.000-08:00

By Kevin Gasca editor

Hello all! Just giving you all an update on how post-production is going for Palo Alto. At the moment the film is in the hands of our sound and music departments, as well as we are currently doing our HD conform. All this probably sounds a lot like confusing “film speak” but I assure you we are actually working for real!

The sound department, lead by our supervising sound editor Laura Schmadel, is currently cutting and mixing the foley, hard effects and ADR (automated dialogue replacement). This is a painstaking process where they literally have to recreate every sound that we either purposefully left out during production, or that would be too expensive for us to use practically. Once Brad has approved all of the sound edit, it is then mixed to finesse the sound to how it will ultimately play in the final.

The music department, consisting of our composer Geoffrey Pope and music supervisor Eric Robinson, is working simultaneously on the film bringing together the music into one cohesive piece that will bring the films emotion to a much higher level. The power of music is incredible; music for film is no different!

Lastly, during these final stages of the post-production process, the film is converted from the standard resolution (SD DVCAM) to the high resolution (HD D5). This is where the film’s images and beauty get to finally come to fruition. This process is highly technical and involves re-digitizing the footage in the uncompressed (1:1) format and reconnecting this new footage with the original avid output of the film. This process is done per reel (in our case 5 times) and then brought together into one final high definition long-play. This long-play is then laid down onto a D5 tape which then is dubbed (“copied”) and then with this new copy, we go through the final color correction process (also known as the “final tape-to-tape”). At this stage, we also create the final titles for the opening credits and the final end crawl.

Once every department is done with the respective tasks all of the pieces are brought together for the final version of the film, which is called the final play master.

Hope this has been interesting and informative! Best wishes!

Color Correction

2007-02-15T12:11:00.000-08:00

By Brad Leong story, director

I’m sitting in the final color correction session as I write this. Everything is looking super great. George (Porgy) dropped by for a surprise visit, which was nice because I haven’t been able to see him much since production. I’ve gotten to know our colorist Steve Peer really well, we’ve spent a few lonely nights together locked in the telecine bay working away till 1 in the morning.

We got the cut D5 online of the film a few weeks ago and have been going through it and working on perfecting the color of every shot. The basic process starts with Rachel, our DP, coming in and scanning through the whole film with Steve color-correcting the wide of every scene under her direction. This sets the tone / color mood of the film as a whole and the specific color feel of the individual scenes. It took about 5 hours to do this.

Using these corrected wide shots as a reference Steve can then go in and correct all the other shots in the scenes around the wides. He makes all the shots conform and cut seamlessly between each other. This took another three nights of work to get through the whole film. While it’s fairly frustrating that it takes so long and you are literally moving though shot by shot our post house gives free meals to clients sitting in on color sessions so I’ve been loving it.

After Steven finishes working through the whole film there is a final session where the entire film is “laid down” meaning it’s actually printed to tape in real time. We are all sitting right now watching the final tape to tape “lay down” making sure everything looks excellentness. If there is a problem Steve can stop recording and we can go back and make changes and then pick up where we left off.

After tonight there are only a few more pictures processes. We still have to overlay opening credits as well as the ending roll. And we also need to do some computer magic to get rid of a few logos that we weren’t able to clear. But after those two things we are pretty much completely done with picture. Love it!

Crane Building

2006-12-25T13:41:00.000-08:00

By Brad Leong

Hey everyone this is Brad, the director of this film. First off let me apologize for not posting anything before this, I’ve been slacking. Production is crazy and I didn’t have much time to do more then focus on the next day ahead. But now that production is over and everything is slowing down a little I’ve got no excuse.

Here is a series of pics of the construction of the crane that I built with Eon Mora our gaffer and friend who I construct a lot of random filmy stuff with. It took us a week or two right before production to get the crane built. Basically I knew I wanted huge arcing crane shots, but we didn’t have the budget to rent any crane gear so we constructed our own. Unfortunately we didn’t have the time or know how to create a remote head so we have to build something big and sturdy so that it could support a 35lb camera plus a 150lb operator.

First we made a bunch of rectangular boxes out of metal square tube.

Then we reinforced the metal rectangles with smaller pieces. Basically the main inspiration for the design was looking at pictures of oldering metal bridges.

From here we then made rectangular boxes out of the piece

Connection points to attach the pieces

Our failed first attempt at a base….

The center axis points. We went to a bearing shop and asked about getting some bearings for these axis points. They quoted us hundreds for them, but luckily we found them at a junkyard for 35 bucks.

It’s getting close

First test run

Cool pic of me

The final product after paint

We're Still Going Strong

2006-12-24T12:03:00.000-08:00

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

It is Christmas Eve and a couple days ago I was at the Engelhardt's home for a private screening of a rough cut of Palo Alto with our families. We didn't have a big 80-foot screen theater so it went down much like all the past screenings of projects we've had with our families since middle school. Although I am sure it was only a matter of minutes before they realized this is nothing like they've seen before.

When the film was finished, Dan, Brad, and I were all buried in praise from our families and friends. We were skeptical at first because positive support is always found in family and friends but it didn't take long for us to recognize it as genuine. I was also reminded that the website hadn't been updated in the longest time so I decided it is probably a good idea for me to bring everyone up to date.

The fall was a very stressful time for our editors who were trying to lock picture as soon as possible while maintaining a full course load at school. We had test screenings once every few weeks that really helped us improve the film and experience audience reactions. The big items still ahead are mostly all in sound. Our sound department has been doing ADR and smoothing out all the scene's audio tracks so they don't sound like a Frankenstein combination of sound bites, we're still working on song selection and obtaining rights, and our composer is trying give some of our scenes more auditory umph.

Completion will hopefully arrive by the end of February. By that time we'll be working on a way for all of you to see it!

Editorial Update

2006-10-26T12:01:00.000-07:00

By Kevin Gasca editor

Hello All. We are currently in the final stages of the picture editing for Palo Alto. This is the point-of-no-return for Danny, my co-editor, and myself to make final changes to the film before we deliver it to our sound, music and visual effects departments. This is pivotal because we are constantly making changes to the cut based on reactions from you, the audience, after the first test screening that we had a couple weeks ago. Once the picture cut is “locked”—within the next two weeks--it cannot change anymore, so we are editing with Brad numerous times a week to get it where we ultimately want it and where it does the story the most justice.

The road to locking picture is long and arduous. We are currently on our 7th or 8th cut of the film and each cut is significantly different from its predecessor. At this point we are fine-tuning and molding the scenes together so that it plays the best it possibly can. This is a big task because there are so many possibilities to explore. This is where my whole crew has been huge in coming through and stepping up to the challenges that the production has confronted us with. My want to express my deepest gratitude to the greatest apprentice editors an editor could ask for: Leigh Cousins, Chelsea Fiske and Katie Kirk. Thank you again for all your hard work. Pretty soon you will all be taking my job!

Once we are done with the picture editorial, the film goes to the sound, music and visual effects department. With this genre of film, the real task for all of these departments is to make the film look and sound the best that it possibly can, while at the same time having the sound and visual effects not call attention to themselves. This is the challenge that we have ahead of us.

Hope this has been informative for those who are interested. See you all when it’s done!!!

Pick-Up Gallery

2006-09-30T19:31:00.000-07:00

The gallery for pick-up filming is here:

Second Week of Pick-Ups

2006-09-29T19:24:00.000-07:00

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

So we had our second weekend of pick-ups last weekend to get rid of the last of the "Scene Missing" title cards that litered throughout the film. We did two car rigs and a scene in a Psychiatric Hospital. This was the official last weekend of shooting, all that is left now is little inserts and B-roll footage - but we do have a film! Here are some pictures from the weekend:

We all thought we'd seen the last of the Tiede-Mobile. Here it is becoming a "drivable" picturecar.

If you were wondering why I put "Drivable" in quotes in the above caption, it is because this is what you see when looking out the windshield. It was a pain in the ass to drive but it got a lot of attention at the gas station.

Kevin our editor played the role of locaiton sound mixer for the weekend. Here he is doing nothing out of the ordinary.

The next morning we did our second rig, this time on a BMW. Notice how all of a sudden we found a bunch of furniture pads to protect the car from the mount - the Tiede-Mobile had no protection. And if we had put furnipads on the Tiede-Mobile it would be used to protect the Mount, not the car.

Hallway. Producer Dan having a cameo in the background.

This is what directing looks like in case you couldn't tell.

Human C-Stand.

There will be a gallery up this weekend with pictures from both pick-up weekends.