Well here it is...if I make it through this.....my first actual say on the Crepitus page... First off I think Tom needs a huge round of applause for his incredible work on the entire Bloody Fun site..... I cannot say how impressive it is to know that he went in to the digital end with no prior training ......just plain bought a computer and trained himself.... and this is where he ends up...!! Wow.

Ok ... where do I begin? There's so many layers of madness, frustration, problems, glitches, starving, delusional skizto disorders behind the making of my little movie....that I have no idea where to begin... and where to end for that matter. So I guess I'll have to write a little ditty and then another later when something comes up... This being the reason it's taken me a while to sit down and actually write this....
I've been intimidated....I'll admit.

Well, the movie started as a project at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.... A small film class... the project was to be up to 5 or 6 minutes in length... I begged the instructor to give me the permission to make my movie length as long as it could possibly be.... He said it could be 20 minutes or so..... My goal then was to keep pushing it until it was full length... So I did...over the rest of my time in school...and then when my time was over there I continued to work on it.... I had 6 months after I graduated to use the schools equipment....So I did nothing but work on it..... Writing new scenes working them in and constantly reworking the movie into a newer movie.... It always improved...

The plan was to have everything filmed by the end of the first 3 months and then edit at the beginning of the new quarter..(we were only supposed to have access to the equip. the first half of the two quarters...) ....and then as the editing progressed I could work on the sound outside of the school when I couldn't be at the school... It sounded like a good plan.. Almost to good to be true, well all good plans on an indy level never go as planned.....

Well, first off......after I graduated I didn't actually have a home in Pittsburgh. Everything I owned was 2 hours away in a small town called Titusville.... So this made things interesting for starters. I had some friends still in school so I camped out with them..... I filmed a bunch of stuff.... it was nearing completion.....I was waiting on a little scene to edit any further than the first 6 minutes....and I was almost ready to have all the necessary stuff done to edit the entire thing..... I had been depending on an old camera to shoot the footage on..... Well that was a very bad thing..... the camera died....as well as 8 hours of raw footage.... You see the tapes would only play in that camera..... It was now the end of the period of the first quarter that I could use the equipment.....and I was out three months of work and already near the period of the next quarter for it's use..... I had a few weeks ...if ..... I could do something.... The first period of time that I could use the schools equipment had passed and I totally didn't use it all!!!

So I end up back in Titusville...away from any of the characters I had been developing for all that time....and without a camera....or any of the new footage.....braindead and looking for quick answers.... I had just got the last paycheck from the haunted boat that I had worked on in Pittsburgh...and figured I'd be able to afford a cheap VHS camera or something.....anything to shoot something on to at least finish this movie..... I ended up lucking out and discovering that Digital 8 cameras were affordable....just enough.... I actually had just enough money to get the camera...I'm talking to the penny!
Talk about fate.......

Now with a camera in hand.... I started to rewrite... One of the main actors that I thought would be limited to the scenes I had shot while at school with the schools cameras months before...actually was available again.. Eric James (he plays Dr. Beck) had left and gone to England for an unquestionable amount of time and just when I got the camera he arrived! It's crazy how things work.... So now with the availability of one of the characters I really wanted to elaborate on more to begin with was now back! He also really helped motivate me back in to gear... So it was easy to create all this new stuff with Eric being available....

Tom as well came in and helped out. I had trouble coming up with his character.... Because I had lost so many already developed ideas..... But when I came up with his character "Roger" it quickly became one of my favorites... It remains one of my favorites... I love his scenes... one impeticulor still creeps me out....

Rich came in to the picture as a god send, he let us use his place as a set as well as all kinds of other support.

There are plenty of others that were involved and in other entries I will try to go through and mention all. But for the sake of this entry these three guys needed mentioned first because they are still strongly a part of our little team. There are others in the past but they have... kinda went their own ways. But like I said I won't fail to give them credit where credit is due. All help is appreciated and without it....it wouldn't be the same product that you see.

So anyway we filmed like mad....and when I would've normally been sleeping I was recording bulk music that I could later use as source material......as well as reworking the story constantly working it and melding it together in my head.....
to the finished thing.

We finally got to a point and had say ok that is enough I have to get to the school and hope I can get in there long enough to edit this together. It was now the middle of the last quarter that I am able to use this equipment....I was no longer allowed to use the stuff! My time was up! But I had to try.....I wasn't able to get a hold of a friend in time to see if I had a place to stay or not....So one of my friends brought me to Pittsburgh and dropped me off.....homeless....with all this heavy equipment (tapes and more tapes, camera, 4-track and a couple of clothes) Well.....I went straight in to the school..... directly on to an editor.... somehow.... I then edited 20 minutes or something of footage like a madman..... Called around and eventually found a friend or they found me I don't remember.....but somehow I found a place to stay.... I then spent a week over the time that the school opened (8) in the morning and (10) at night I camped out in the editing room....once I was there in the morning I didn't leave the room. I risked being kicked off at any moment because I wasn't a current student...... Somehow the whole thing came together in a week..... It had to or else it wouldn't have been finished. Then the next few weeks were spent working on sound..... Whenever I had another scenes sound done I would wait in the editing room for a vacant editor and I would dump the sound on the master as fast as I could and then I'd be booted off by someone.......

Wow I just panned up to skim what I'd written, SORRY I didn't mean to write a novel. I just thought it'd be a good place to start by an overview of the life of My Crepitus....from its initial start and completion..... Obviously it was a huge rollercoaster.....
hardly any of it was mentioned......

Well..... I continued to do this...... in the most horrible living conditions possible....half the time my daily diet consisted of a dollar.....and of course if I had a completed scene of sound I'd need that towards bus fair..... after all where I ended up in this part of the journey was a good half hour ride away from the school....... Just cutting it close to the last week of the quarter.... I found out my Great Grandmother had passed away in Texas.....so the fam and I set out for a weeks journey to drive there for the funeral...... I got back with two or three days to complete everything!!! I was lucky that the quarter didn't end normal....it landed in the middle of the week..... Like I said earlier, fate can really kick you when you think the impossible isn't possible but indeed it is....... Obviously it somehow worked out and the movie is done.....or is it?

Yes after all that hell..... I question it's completion.... You'd think that the last thing I'd want to do is bring this all back in to my life...... Well we are all perfectionists aren't we? A chance to do things the way you could've, had things been a lot different. Well....even though this is just a brief journey through the creation of a no budget film..... it isn't over...... and I have yet to go in to details of the series of events surrounding it.... I think someday ..... if I ever end up in the position to do so that I'd like to make a film about the making of this movie.....it would be a hit.... Better than the movie itself? Well for now .... I am working on the re-edited version.....with new footage.....I now own my own editing equipment!.....I still have yet to fathom that...... Anyway .......
It's been real...I will see you next time.

luv and Death,
Michael (mikey Maggot) T. Schneider