The CIVIL WRATH Diaries: Part 4
By Mother Brain

February 10, 2014

After picking up Karl from the gas station next to my hotel, we went over to John’s house to finally see the ‘dailies’ of yesterday’s shoot. While the picture quality of the cameras did not exactly match, most of what we needed was there. The performances felt natural, our costumes and makeup fit the period and the setting, etc. Even Don and Darrell looked like two racist hicks that the audience wants to see get shot dead. Every action was well covered by the four cameras. Of course there were flubs and some unnecessary camera shaking and zooming. But now most of the real work will have to be handled in editing.

That morning, John spoke to Nancy Kennedy of the Citrus County Chronicle over the phone. She had been on set the day before and John made sure to plug my past work as well as his books. Hope to see a copy of the article this coming Sunday. All the attention and the hype around this shoot really lifted John’s spirits. Now we’re starting to discuss shooting another intense chapter from the book in the very near future.

After dinner, I returned to John’s house so I could pick up the audio files from Charlie. As it turned out, he only had the last half of the audio due to the previous files not being saved when the generator failed. So we may have to handle ADR once we have a finished cut of the film that we’re happy with. All that was needed before I leave back for New York was the music. John had the idea of him and Joseph whistling to the tune of “Johnny Comes Marching Home” to use for the beginning and end. It would be somewhat of a homage to Ennio Morricone’s scores from the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns. John and Joseph performed the whistling together so beautifully that you’d almost believe we recorded someone playing the flute.

With all the pieces in place, I felt very positive about the entire project and where we go from here. It will still take serious effort to make this as solid of a short film as possible; however, I found these past few days to be a good time to regain my focus as a filmmaker. I needed that feeling of my career moving forward and for John to get the recognition he has long deserved.

Keep following all updates on the post-production progress of Civil Wrath at the AJ Epyx Productions Facebook and Twitter pages as well as the official blogspot page at http://ajepyx.blogspot.com/