Skin Deep – Nineteen Years Later (Post-Production)

That one day of filming with Anthony and Matt was an absolute blast and one of the best days of my life. Matt and I knew we had to shift to our next project, but we didn’t want our footage to go to waste, so we decided to film some extra features and put together a DVD. I made an outtake reel, added music to the final death scene, and Matt and I recorded two commentary tracks. One serious one and one where we acted like the fools that we were.

The commentary tracks were a blast, but Matt held the mic next to his mouth and it made for some muffled dialogue. We also shot introductions for the footage, the outtakes, and whatnot.

I was able to practice editing and also DVD creation through the project, which paid off quite a bit. I learned how to do some sound editing when I tried to clean up the commentary tracks, and enjoyed editing in general. The end product was low quality, but it was great for us to watch and enjoy.

Around eight years ago, my camcorder was on his final legs, so I decided to pull all the raw footage, remaster it the best that I could and put together a better DVD. The sound quality, aspect ratio, and special features were much better. Sadly, I made a copy for both Anthony and Matt, along with myself, but I lost mine during a divorce and Anthony had lost his and Matt didn’t know anything about it. He was deployed at that time, so I’m sure it just got lost in the mix.

I had uploaded bits of the special features and introductions to YouTube, but the actual filmed footage and commentary tracks were never uploaded. Luckily, Matt had the original DVD laying around, so he loaned it to me so I could rip it. The quality is terrible, but at least I have some footage from that shoot.

Matt and I tried to regroup for our next project, but some family issues arose, and I found myself homeless and crashing at my girlfriend’s apartment. A few months later, I moved to North Carolina in an attempt to reset my life.

A year later, I made a trip back to Memphis to visit Matt and we shot some footage for a project he was putting together which was a reimagining of Skin Deep called Repercussion. We recorded an intro for the MySpace page, but sadly that project was never completed either. I do still have the footage from that introduction recording which you’ll see below.

Matt and I still keep in contact, while Anthony and I had a bit of a falling out. I last saw Matt back in 2019 when he took my engagement photos. I’ve had a few trips planned to Memphis over the past few years, but COVID and ironically enough, an ice storm has interrupted those plans.

Our dream of being Mosier/Smith or Grazer/Howard never came to pass. Matt discovered photography and uses his creativity that way. You can see his photos online at Matt Brady Photography.

I get the itch to do film something every few years, but I never do. I had a couple of close starts, but I let people get into my head and shoot me down, and I guess I just never recovered from it. It used to bother me, but I made peace with it a while back and I don’t regret one moment of all the dreaming I did.

Somewhere, in the back of my head, is this story. That in another timeline, the ice storm didn’t come in. We finished our hideous little movie and learned a lot from our mistakes. We re-framed and shot a much smaller and shorter film, and then another, and another. Once we learned our way around the camera and began to pick up the technical skills, we combined them with our creativity, and we were releasing a feature length comedy around the time that YouTube launched in 2006. We got in one the ground floor with shorts, and because we were prepared for the digital age, our films got recognized and it led to a successful career making small movies. We accomplished our goal and lived happily ever after.