The Six Bullets trailer is off to a great start.  We've had more than 600 downloads in the last 12 hours.  If you haven't had a chance to check it out, do it now!

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The Six Bullets Trailer is here!  Go check it out.  And then talk about it on the Six Bullets Messageboards!

Thanks for supporting indie film.

With your help, we did it.  The director of "Six Bullets", Graham Killeen, was voted  Shepherd Express' Best of Milwaukee 2006 in the Best Local Filmmaker category.  Thanks for your support and go check it out!  Here's a quote:

"A fantasy-edged Western Called Six Bullets may be the earliest buzzworthy submission to the 2007 edition of the Milwaukee International Film Festival."

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Graham and I were involved in a crazy accident last night.  Fortunately we're both okay, but this marks the third time his car has been in an accident while working on the movie.  We were one of about six cars involved in various related collisions on highway 45 near highway 60, while we were returning from the Best of Milwaukee awards ceremony.  Hopefully we'll have some pictures  from the event to post soon.

Lots of things are changing in the world of Six Bullets lately.  We're changing things around a bit, and I'll be doing this blog entry.  I'm Jon, the director of photography and webmaster for the film.

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There's been some shake-up of the crew involved.  Jason Bott is no longer on marketing.  We've recruited Chase Brandau to do foley, sound effects, and mixdown.  You may have already heard some of his work in the independent short film Jona/Tomberry, which won an award at Cannes last year.  He will replace Nick Mitchell, who will still be composing the score with his group Endless Blue. 

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The text and titiling will be completed on Sunday, 11-27.  At that point, visually, the film is set.  The only changes that will be made are color and sound.  We're very excited to be at this point after spending a full year editing and compiling special effects.  The final sound mixdown will probably happen the third week in January in Minneapolis.

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There may be some big press for Graham in the coming weeks.  Thanks to your support he's a contender for the Shepherd-Express best of Milwaukee - Best Local Filmmaker award.  Last years award-winner was Howie Goldklang, who has also been nominated this year.  Graham's been invited to the awards dinner on December 5th.  We'll be sure to keep you updated (and might even do a video blog from the event).  We also expect an article about him in next week's Filmmaking Focus.  We'll let you know more as news develops!

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The plans for a trailer.... are coming very soon.  Sorry to keep putting everyone on hold, but of course, the movie has to come first.  We will be picking a date in the very near future.  We'll need everyone's help to promote it.  You can blog about it, talk about it, put a link up on your pages, email your friends, anything to help out will be much appreciated.  My personal goal is 20,000 downloads in the first day.  It sounds a little far-fetched, but something that popular could get a lot of attention in the independent film circles.

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I'll still make Graham do his updates, but to get them, you're going to have to sign up for them via e-mail.  You can do this from the Six Bullets website.  Just put your email address in the box on the left and submit.  We've only sent out five or six this year, so we can promise we won't spam you with junk.  There may be a special offer in the next email, hint hint, that will get you into an event we can't talk about yet.

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Thanks for supporting Six Bullets!  Right now the best thing you can do for us is put a link up on any of your webpages.  You can get instructions at www.sixbulletsmovie.com/link.htm.

Note from the Director - 9/11/06

And then you wake up one morning after so many months of looking forward, to find yourself looking back.  I have officially finished editing "Six Bullets", and I couldn't be more pleased with the final results.  I feel we have truly succeeded in bringing the western genre into bold new territory, visually and narratively.  Rest assured, you will all see the fruits of your labors sometime soon.  Remember though, "Six Bullets" is a short film, and as such we were forced to leave quite a bit of footage on the cutting room floor.  We worked on the project for more than three years (photography alone took 40 days!), and the final cut runs less than 30 minutes.  The good news is that almost all of the actors (even supporting roles) ended up with some screen time.  I hope to get the chance to watch "Six Bullets" with each of you at an event to be announced in the near future.

 
The Autumn brings winds of change, and true to form, we've seen a lot recently.  Now most of our attention has turned to promotional artwork, film festival deadlines, finishing FX touches, and of course the soundtrack.  ..>..>It has been a matter of months since I have seen many of you (perhaps a year already), but I've rarely gone a day without seeing your faces as I've edited the movie.  It has been a summer of some hardship regarding my surgery, and a mostly disastrous experience directing community theater, but continuing to collaborate with all of you through editing the footage we shot together, has helped me get through it.  It has been great to hear from several of you.

 
So I'm writing to say thank you all again.  And it won't be long until the wait is over.  Meanwhile, keep checking the website for trailers, news, and other goodies.  And if you were still planning on giving me a best local filmmaker vote online or through the mail with The Shepherd Express,please remember to also include a vote for 76 Juliet (Paul's Band) as the best cover band, and Amanda Shalhoub as best radio personality.

 --Graham Killeen
    Director
   "Six Bullets" 

Prepping an actor for ADR is something like telling a football quarterback that his game-winning touchdown-pass only counts if he can recreate the exact same play from memory a year later.  How do you coach someone to run on instinct?  How do you tell someone not to think?  ADR is the process of rerecording dialogue, necessary due to adverse conditions on set.  Like a gas generator running.  Or waves crashing.  Or wind blowing on the mic.  The truth is, we were expecting so much of this that ADR was part of the plan from the very beginning.  Movies like the new Star Wars do about 90% ADR anyway.  It takes a lot of patience, time, and dedication to get it to work.  So much of that effort comes from Nick and Laura, who graciously let us use their recording studio, and have devoted so much time to Six Bullets (Their band Endless Blue is composing all of our music.  Check out endlessbluemusic.com, if you havent already!).  Well, we're almost done.  It seems like we should wrap up this tedious process in one more studio session.  Its turned out to be incredibly helpful in that it allows me to make last minute revisions to the script.  I've been telling people lately that the very last step in finishing a film is writing the script  After ADR were on to test screenings, which Im really excited about.  All of us at Signal Fire can't wait!  Then we'll start talking about an official date for the trailers release...>..>  More later-

 

Graham Killeen, director 5-15-06