Shameless self promotion

After a long and incorrigibly confusing day, we have finally selected our crew roles, and I'm rather pleased with them. I'm a part of 4 production teams (including my own), which means four presentations in December. FOUR! I can feel my hair turning grey already. I'm really glad we're working on a variety of projects though, the spice of life and all... Niall and I have also been privileged with a five star crew for our own production, and best of all, we get to boss them around =D

So the first film I opted into was Lesley-Ann and Adam's drama, Who's The Mother? as their sound guy. I wanted to work on this one because it seemed like a lot of fun, though I originally opted for AD or set designer, but I'm happy to do what I'm best at. I'd imagine the role will involve mostly on set dialogue recording, I'll probably have to be careful not to shake the boom pole around because I'm trying to hold back my laughter.

Another role that I'm really excited to do sound for is in James and Shane Davidson's Isolation. I've been wanting to get my teeth into this since the idea was conceived, and I was almost heartbroken when the role was stolen out from under me because I got the timing wrong for the meeting, but I'm back working on it fortunately. It'll be a lot of atmospheric sounds and foley work, and maybe a little ambient soundtrack, for which I will take full advantage of this:

My own slice of studio right at home. I've been gathering the equipment for this bad boy over the past couple of years, and I'll finally get to use it to its full potential!

The other production role I've laid my grubby hands on is camera man for Answering the Call, David and Steve's documentary on trainee priests in the seminary. I may need to borrow the camera for a bit of practice beforehand, I haven't done any video recording in a while so I may be a little rusty. I'm pretty handy with a stills camera though, so I think I can manage this. I'm a little nervous, but they say that's a good thing.

Double barrel post-gun...

...or something, not a very good title this time around, but ya can't win 'em all. Okay so I didn't really try, but at least it's informative, this is indeed a double post, covering 2 whole weeks of class, and maybe more! So, here we go, in chronological order (the best order):

Last Tuesday, Conor Barry came in to tell us all about the wonders of producing! You could tell right off the bat he was good at what he does, he was organised in thought but conversational in tone, he used lots of analogies and stories to aid his presentation, and gave a great many useful tips. I'm glad I was taking notes. He gave us mostly practical information and didn't go on too much about his own films, although I could tell he was excited about them. Among his words of wisdom were some keywords for the producer: Resources, control (of resources) and responsibility (and trusting those in your employ). The other two were more concepts, subjectivity and objectivity, or proving your claims of talent with evidence of experience. Conor also instilled in us the importance of marketing and distribution as the most important thing for a producer to focus on; if the film isn't going to reach an audience, why make it?

Vanessa Gildea gave us a workshop the following Tuesday, dealing with her work as a director and producer. Her talk was less informative, but more motivational and engaging than Conor's, and she takes a more creative approach to production by the looks of it, though I wouldn't say either is more effective. She told us about her role as 'creative producer' and how it's slightly more involved, and allows you to offer your opinion on the film a lot more, which appealed to me quite a bit. She also showed us her 'look book', which was brilliant, I'd almost consider making one just for the fun of it, so I'm sure it'll be a useful thing to add to our arsenal in future, especially if we make feature length films. She gave us a really nice piece of advice about documentary filmmaking too: The subject should set the tone of the film, if the subject is a person, the camera, lighting, soundtrack and overall style should match their personality.

Besides that, Niall and I decided our production company's name should be N&N's productions, and that will steal the M&M's logo... Genius! We've also been working on the script, I've got some character biographies made to help me with this. We've procured some possible actors too, but we're still deciding on our location, it's looking like we'll be making a set somewhere practical for the interiors. Right now it feels like we're on top of things, which is always a good sign, hopefully I'll be in the same mindset for my next post!

You have made a selection

The final decisions have been made regarding (some of) our film ideas, and it's time to get collaboratin'. Having been drafted for James and Shane's production, Isolation before they were even sure they were going ahead with it, I felt somewhat privileged, especially considering that particular film was the most sought after of the ten. I had also offered to work on sound for Answering the Call, thinking I could go whole hog and do sound on two productions, but it wasn't to be. So for my second choice, I'd like to work as either AD or production designer for either Heaven/Hell or Man Baby, because I really like the ideas (I think all of the ideas are brilliant), and think I could add to them. After Eleanor's workshop last week, Production design definitely seems like something I might enjoy, whereas I hadn't really considered it before.

I'm looking forward to the final crew meetings, and it seems our idea has attracted much interest, we have a selection of candidates, which is always nice. I'm especially excited for soundscaping Isolation though, audio is my passion, and I've got the know how to do a good job. I'm also nearly finished setting up my little home recording studio, so pictures to come in my next post.

Time to get Kraken

Sorry about that, bad pun, but cool picture... I just had to do it. Is it just me or is this blog becoming less formal with every post? Is that really such a bad thing? Save the formal writing skills for cover letters, I say, this feels much less like work.

So anyway, Niall and I gave our pitch on Tuesday (totally unprepared by the way, I'm pretty sure most of the class only realised the groups would be pitching together on the day), and I think it went okay. I've never been much good at selling my ideas. I know the trick is to make them seem much more exciting than they are at that point in time, with the hope that they'll live up to the pitch by the time they're fully developed, but I just can't grasp how to actually do that. Maybe I'll Google some pointers, isn't the internet great? My first idea, which we actually went with, came across well, partially because I'd had some practice the previous week. The second was just trying to shove the plot into 5 minutes, but I do think it's a good plot, but it needs more work. Maybe some time in the future.

Next on the agenda then, the full script and trailer for The Ghost Recordist. Not sure if that's actually a good title, it does the job as far as I'm concerned, but I may have to ask for some opinions. The script, I think I'll enjoy writing, but, well, I'm not a fan of trailers. I don't like revealing anything I'm doing until it's a finished product, all neatly polished and ready to be taken for what it is, but I know that's just not realistic. So I'm a little nervous about it, I have no idea how to go about making a marketing trailer, but I guess that's what the workshop on Tuesday is about. I'd better start gathering cast, crew and locations asap!

Oh, and I watched the aforementioned Berberian Sound Studio, which I really enjoyed, and took a look at a few horror shorts I hadn't seen before:
   8 Butterflies was creepy and atmospheric for the most part, some of the scenes were a bit cliché, the story was fairly convoluted, but on the whole it gave me the heebie jeebies.
   The French Doors had an absolutely brilliant premise, and good execution. The soundtrack was an odd choice though, like they got their "Horror Movie" and "Cheesy Spy Movie" tapes mixed up.
   There Are Monsters shows how some simple video editing and sound effects can make you jump out of your skin if you're not expecting it, the end could have been much better though.

A blog with me in it

So we had Production Designer Eleanor Wood in yesterday, who told us all about the various roles of a PD,  told us all about how she got into the business, and gave us some useful pointers. Until yesterday I was quite unclear as to what a production designer actually did, I thought it was much closer to the organisational role of Producer, but in reality it's much closer to Art Director, which Eleanor worked as for a number of films. Among the most universal pieces of advice she bestowed upon us were: Stay away from unions if you can help it, electricians are the bane of the filmmaker and stick to your creative ideas no matter how much opposition you come up against from your crew. All in all, it was an informative visit, and entertaining too, I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for A Thousand Times Goodnight, the trailer was fantastic.

Among everything though, she confirmed my suspicion that Dylan Moran is a legend.

I was also asked to act as sound guy on another group's film already, so it appears I'm in high demand! I really can't wait to get started with production, on other films and my own.

Not another dissertation!

So I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting another dissertation so soon, due in at Christmas? Oh god, the pressure is on. I am very glad I have my experience from last year to draw on however, I know to keep my workload spread evenly and it'll all be okay (I'm panicking on the inside).

I know I want to base my study on sound and music in horror films, but I'm not sure of a specific title yet. Perhaps something to do with clichés, and how they detract from the value, and scariness of the film, I find myself looking at Film Sound's list of cliches, and giggling and nodding at each one, so it could be a good avenue to explore. Before I nail it down though it's a good idea to research as much as I can about the topic, so here's a few of the sites I'm checking out at the moment:

http://filmsound.org/ the obligatory source for film sound, a hub of sorts.

http://designingsound.org/tag/horror/ - A good few articles on here, though not exclusively dealing with film.

http://www.soundandmusic.org/projects/sound-fear-musical-universe-horror - Some very informative videos about sound in horror films.

http://www.filmmusicmag.com/?p=11755 - A detailed interview with a fairly prominent horror composer.

http://www.lma.cnrs-mrs.fr/~kronland/Sense_of_Sound/49690139.pdf - A very detailed scientific article on how sound affects people.

Plenty of reading material there to last me, this is definitely the most import part of my secondary research. I'll update with more sources for the other parts of my secondary research, as well as anything else useful I find.

So it begins...

The year is off to a flying start. We've been assigned our partners for the year and are all ready to get our projects moving forwards. Before we start driving though, we need a vehicle, so we spent yesterday's class discussing some ideas and getting feedback, sort of like a test pitch, except I was completely unprepared and had unwittingly volunteered to go first. Oh boy. It went well though, and when it comes to pitching next week I think I'll be prepared. I've got my ideas together and fairly well developed, ready to write up, and spent some time discussing Niall's ideas with him. He's not what you'd call an idea man, but we talked about some short stories we liked, stuff from classic writers such as Edgar Allen Poe, and websites like Creepy Pasta , we had agreed to go the horror route, as you may have guessed.

As far as my ideas go, well, I have many, but two that are particularly plausible, and well developed. One of which I pitched in class, and it was quite well received. It's about a quirky sound recordist who discovers a way to communicate directly with spirits via recording equipment, but it all goes to hell... Literally. It's to be shot in a documentary style, and I was referred to a film called Berberian Sound Studio, which I plan to view forthwith. My other idea came to me in the night a number of weeks ago: A 20-something college student sits alone in his room, when his friend starts sending him unusual messages over Facebook. This turns from slightly strange to terrifyingly bizarre when he realises he can trust nobody outside of his room. The plot of this one is kind of harder to fit into a tagline, so hopefully a good treatment and pitch will do it justice.

Needless to say, I'm really looking forward to getting started on our project, and I heard some great ideas yesterday that I'll be very excited to help out with and see finished.