Yesterday I deleted all of the Mongoose Movies work in progress, bar Cormorant Close. These were mostly very personal pieces, and I know I'll never have the heart to see them through. I did think of putting the scripts and treatments up for anyone else to finish, but I don't think I actually want to see anyone else complete them either, at least not in their current form. I may revisit some of them some day, but if I do, I'll just pick up the original idea and rewrite them from scratch.
I do intend to finish Cormorant Close some day, partly because it's so close to completion and needs almost nothing from me, and partly out of respect for the other people who worked on it for nothing and who don't deserve to have their hard work trashed. And hey, I promised Zuckerman that I'd put Zuckerman's Diner into my next film, and CC is it.
I was quite surprised to see how much I had created in the last 18 months or so. Here's what was in the pre-production bin.
Mummer's Cliff
A short film in the Cthulhu mythos, based largely on Shadow of the Steeple, but updated and set in a North Somerset coastal village. A man goes to investigate the death of his friend, and discovers the inevitable ancient forces at work. I was never happy with the bit just before the end; it started well, moved along nicely, and I really liked the closing sequence (very cheesy 1970s type Hammer ending, but just what was needed), but couldn't quite get there smoothly enough. I did like the character of the occult researcher though: instead of a library full of dusty old books, all he had was a laptop and a net connection. Everything's online these days, even the Necronomicon! I spent a fair amount of time playing with how to create various VFX in Moviestorm and Premiere, as I wanted one scene to take place in a thunderstorm, and there needed to be a sequence where we saw someone change their face, and another where a statue appears to come to life. Since I did those pieces of test footage about a year ago, other Moviestormers have done the same thing.
Length: 12-15 mins
Status: Script complete, technical and visual FX tests complete, sets & characters designed
Due Diligence
A mid-length thriller in the Michael Crichton (RIP) mould. A young man working for a venture capital firm realises that one of the companies they are investing in is developing ways to transmit bird flu to humans so that they can sell their vaccine. Shelved when I realised how many other people had done the same thing already.
Length: 30-40 mins
Status: Outline complete, script about 25% complete, prose version about 75% complete
Hackers
One-off episode, or possibly a pilot for a high-tech thriller series along the lines of BUGS and Spooks. One of the earliest things we came up with when thinking about Moviestorm a few years ago, I dusted this off and started work on it again not so long ago. A computer security firm is blackmailed by a secret government agency into conducting covert cyberwar against the Russian mafia. But all is not as it seems, and they begin to ask who they are actually working for and why. I enjoyed writing this, but never quite got the characters to be more than stereotypes.
Length: 15-25 mins
Status: outline complete, script about 50% complete
Custodiet
A Philip K Dick-ish near future SF story about a goverment agent who finds his name thrown up by the computers in an anti-terrorist operation. He knows he's innocent, but the system he's always believed in says he's a suspect. It was all based on taking current surveillance technology and current anti-terrorist legislation (here and in the US) and asking what kind of world this would create. The challenge here was making it not too much like Minority Report.
Length: 15-25 mins
Status: outline complete, script about 50% complete
Stalker
An SF short about an old man who's following a beautiful young woman who turns out to be an alien. It ended with a great fight sequence in a nightclub, inspired by Dusk Till Dawn.
Length: 5 mins
Status: Script complete, rough dialogue recorded, pre-vis version shot. Needed to be redone with the latest version of Moviestorm.
Confidential Report
A full-length noir-ish movie inspired by the Orson Welles film of the same name. An ex-con is forced to commit a robbery, and is caught, and is then embroiled in a conspiracy to bring down an international arms dealer. This was a very complex film, with a lot of plot twists and character development, and really pushed my writing to the limit. The current draft of the script was too wordy, and the next stage was to start shooting a rough version and work out how much of the story I could carry with sound and visuals instead of dialogue. I wrote this with a voice-over, which was a lot of fun. I also spent time working on filters in Premiere to give me a suitably grainy, washed-out look rather than the slightly garish colours you get out of Moviestorm. I would have liked to get Ricky Grove as the lead role on this one, and it was very much written with his voice in mind. For the lead female character, I wanted Abigail Rokison, and I had many of the other parts cast in my head from the students I was working with a few months ago.
Length: 70-80 mins
Status: script complete, technical and VFX tests complete
St Francis
A highly successful CEO of a major company tries to explain to his family why he is quitting his well-paid corporate job to go and live a life of solitude and contemplation. This was a commentary on the clash between capitalist values and personal morals, and was written in anticipation of the day the global banking system collapsed. I wrote several versions of this, but never quite got the story to come out right. I tried it as a scene between him and his wife, I tried just telling it as a story of him quitting his job and starting over, I tried it as him as an older man talking to a "disciple", but was never really happy with any of them. It kept on coming out too political in some versions, which wasn't what I intended - it's supposed to be a moral piece about someone who realises what ruthless corporate greed means to the people on the wrong end of it, and has to question whether he is prepared to take responsibility for inflicting that. This is one I probably will revisit at some point.
Length: who knows
Status: bah
A is for Angel
A sentimental modern day fairy tale inspired by The Fisher King, It's A Wonderful Life, and Citizen Kane. A down and out meets a mysterious woman who turns his life around: once he becomes a successful children's author, he spends the rest of his life searching for her, and wondering whether she was real or just a figment of his imagination. The entire thing is shot in flashback on his deathbed. I really rather liked this film, especially the sequence where she shows him a vision of two people dancing on her outstretched palm, which took a fair amount of green-screening to create. I think it has my best scriptwriting to date in it, apart from one thing. I could never decide whether it took place in England or New York, and the dialogue kept slipping between the two locations.
Length: 12-15 mins
Status: script complete, visual FX tests complete
The Muse Bar
This was an idea for a scene in the Fas Ferox world. I imagined a bar in some otherworld where all the Muses gather to share their experiences of the people they inspire, and talking about what a pain it is working with artistic people. It's one of the few bits of comedy I've written, and it never quite came out right when I tried to move it from a prose sketch to a screenplay.
Length: 5 mins or less
Status: never quite got off the drawing board
I'm not sure what I'll do next. I should probably focus on shorter, more achievable pieces. Working full-time on Moviestorm really gets in the way of actually making movies. After a long day in the office, the last thing I want to do most evenings and weekends is to fire up Moviestorm for another few hours. I'd usually rather play my guitar, make a nice meal, read a book, watch a DVD, or relax with some friends. I very much enjoy scriptwriting, and I love doing voice recording sessions, but I find it really hard to convince myself that using Moviestorm isn't work.
However, we now have a shiny new dedicated Moviestorm computer at home for Johnnie and I to play with, and I'm determined to make use of it once he's finished assembling it.
Showing posts with label mongoose movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mongoose movies. Show all posts
Friday, November 7, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Creative feedback loop
How machinima has helped me write prose fiction
About 40 years ago, I decided I wanted to be a writer. All through school I wrote short stories, and came to the conclusion that I was a lousy playwright and a worse poet. But I still dreamt of being a novelist, until I was about 17 or 18. I used to show my juvenile works to a guy I knew who was a writer. Not a particularly good one, and certainly not famous, but he was at least a professional who would give me the time of day. One day, after critiquing some points of style, he launched into me in a way that stopped me dead in my tracks.
"What makes you think you have a damn thing to say that anybody would want to listen to? What have you done in your life that makes you think you know anything at all about people? Have you ever experienced love? Loss? Triumph? Why don't you wait until you have something to say, and then maybe you'll write something worth reading?"
Ouch. Harsh, but fair. So I set out to find those things.
In many ways, even though I haven't written that novel yet, I've been a writer ever since. I was a journalist for ages, writing about subjects as diverse as African politics, cookery, music, motorsport, technology, film, and computer games. I've written material for RPGs, wargames, computer games, and history magazines. I've written more Web site copy than I can recall. I write business plans, presentations, contracts, user documentation and software specifications. I've written song lyrics, haiku, CD cover notes. (And I did that machinima book.) It wasn't always exciting stuff, but it helped me develop clarity, economy, and the understanding of how to write for different audiences in different voices - and I got paid for nearly all of it. And, perhaps most importantly from the point of view of being a professional writer, how to write fast and hit a deadline.
And recently, I've started to write screenplays, purely so that I could film them for my own pleasure. The biggest breakthrough for me was reading William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade. (If you're into films and haven't read it, do. Seriously.) His technique for writing scripts changed the way I approached everything. Screenplays aren't about the dialogue. They're about describing to the director what the audience sees on the screen, and how they feel about what they see, and how they interpret what they see. When you read a Goldman script, you can already see the film in your head. It's like reading a well-written comic script, where we writer describes each panel in detail. At one point I was quite friendly with various of the 2000AD scriptwriters, and it was interesting to compare the different styles in which they communicated their ideas to the artists.
As I started to apply Goldman's methods to my screenwriting, I started to detect an interesting synergy between the filming and the writing. As a writer, I'd begun to think like a director. I was thinking visually, about how things would look on the screen, about how the camera moved, how the edits worked, and I was putting that into my screenplays. As a director, I'd begun to understand the relationship between the way stories are carried through both spoken and non-spoken elements. I've had to think about where I want to focus my audience's attention, and how to convey emotion without resorting to simply saying how people feel. Doing voice production has made me think about how people talk, and how the same words can carry so many different subtexts through subtle emphasis and inflection. Doing sound design has made me think about the way that music can completely change the feeling of a scene.
Through machinima, I've had to understand that stories aren't about the plot, or the words people say to each other, they're about how making the audience feel that they're actually there, and that they care about what the characters are going through. Yes, it's Creative Writing 101, but knowing it, understanding it, and being able to do it are different stages of the process.
And then, this weekend, I sat down and wrote a short story for the first time in about twenty years. With some trepidation I sent it to various people for their criticisms. The comment that pleased me most was this:
"You have a knack for painting a scene, for manipulating words to the point I feel as though I just watched a movie when it's over."
What I seem to have here is a very positive creative feedback loop. Making machinima, even just unpublished test pieces, has got me thinking about a whole new way of telling stories using sound and moving images. That, in turn, has made me develop my screenwriting skills so that I could express those sounds and images through words. And now, I've taken that back into prose fiction, and am learning how to write so that my readers can see and hear what I'd want them to see and hear if they were watching a film. Which, in turn, will help me write better screenplays, and make better movies - I hope!
I don't claim to be a good writer yet. I know how good I want to be. And I know I'm still a long way from being the director I want to be. But I'm fascinated by the way that making machinima has made a real difference to the way I write stories as well as screenplays. Perhaps it's something that more writers could learn from. Perhaps it's another of those roles that machinima will one day slip into.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to read my story and tell me exactly what they thought of it. It's all appreciated, especially the tough love.
About 40 years ago, I decided I wanted to be a writer. All through school I wrote short stories, and came to the conclusion that I was a lousy playwright and a worse poet. But I still dreamt of being a novelist, until I was about 17 or 18. I used to show my juvenile works to a guy I knew who was a writer. Not a particularly good one, and certainly not famous, but he was at least a professional who would give me the time of day. One day, after critiquing some points of style, he launched into me in a way that stopped me dead in my tracks.
"What makes you think you have a damn thing to say that anybody would want to listen to? What have you done in your life that makes you think you know anything at all about people? Have you ever experienced love? Loss? Triumph? Why don't you wait until you have something to say, and then maybe you'll write something worth reading?"
Ouch. Harsh, but fair. So I set out to find those things.
In many ways, even though I haven't written that novel yet, I've been a writer ever since. I was a journalist for ages, writing about subjects as diverse as African politics, cookery, music, motorsport, technology, film, and computer games. I've written material for RPGs, wargames, computer games, and history magazines. I've written more Web site copy than I can recall. I write business plans, presentations, contracts, user documentation and software specifications. I've written song lyrics, haiku, CD cover notes. (And I did that machinima book.) It wasn't always exciting stuff, but it helped me develop clarity, economy, and the understanding of how to write for different audiences in different voices - and I got paid for nearly all of it. And, perhaps most importantly from the point of view of being a professional writer, how to write fast and hit a deadline.
And recently, I've started to write screenplays, purely so that I could film them for my own pleasure. The biggest breakthrough for me was reading William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade. (If you're into films and haven't read it, do. Seriously.) His technique for writing scripts changed the way I approached everything. Screenplays aren't about the dialogue. They're about describing to the director what the audience sees on the screen, and how they feel about what they see, and how they interpret what they see. When you read a Goldman script, you can already see the film in your head. It's like reading a well-written comic script, where we writer describes each panel in detail. At one point I was quite friendly with various of the 2000AD scriptwriters, and it was interesting to compare the different styles in which they communicated their ideas to the artists.
As I started to apply Goldman's methods to my screenwriting, I started to detect an interesting synergy between the filming and the writing. As a writer, I'd begun to think like a director. I was thinking visually, about how things would look on the screen, about how the camera moved, how the edits worked, and I was putting that into my screenplays. As a director, I'd begun to understand the relationship between the way stories are carried through both spoken and non-spoken elements. I've had to think about where I want to focus my audience's attention, and how to convey emotion without resorting to simply saying how people feel. Doing voice production has made me think about how people talk, and how the same words can carry so many different subtexts through subtle emphasis and inflection. Doing sound design has made me think about the way that music can completely change the feeling of a scene.
Through machinima, I've had to understand that stories aren't about the plot, or the words people say to each other, they're about how making the audience feel that they're actually there, and that they care about what the characters are going through. Yes, it's Creative Writing 101, but knowing it, understanding it, and being able to do it are different stages of the process.
And then, this weekend, I sat down and wrote a short story for the first time in about twenty years. With some trepidation I sent it to various people for their criticisms. The comment that pleased me most was this:
"You have a knack for painting a scene, for manipulating words to the point I feel as though I just watched a movie when it's over."
What I seem to have here is a very positive creative feedback loop. Making machinima, even just unpublished test pieces, has got me thinking about a whole new way of telling stories using sound and moving images. That, in turn, has made me develop my screenwriting skills so that I could express those sounds and images through words. And now, I've taken that back into prose fiction, and am learning how to write so that my readers can see and hear what I'd want them to see and hear if they were watching a film. Which, in turn, will help me write better screenplays, and make better movies - I hope!
I don't claim to be a good writer yet. I know how good I want to be. And I know I'm still a long way from being the director I want to be. But I'm fascinated by the way that making machinima has made a real difference to the way I write stories as well as screenplays. Perhaps it's something that more writers could learn from. Perhaps it's another of those roles that machinima will one day slip into.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to read my story and tell me exactly what they thought of it. It's all appreciated, especially the tough love.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Cormorant Close revives
After several days of watching everyone else's festival submissions (for Dragon*Con and Cambridge), I finally got off my butt and decided it was time to get something of my own into a festival once again. With deadlines for New York & Montreal looming, I felt the need to get Cormorant Close done. So today was one marathon eleven-hour stint in front of Moviestorm.
I treated the previous cut as pre-viz and completely re-shot and re-edited the entire thing from scratch using Moviestorm 1.1. No dev code, and just one piece of custom content (which I did in Photoshop and didn't require Modder's Workshop). Editing was done in Premiere, but apart from that, there's nothing in it that the ordinary Moviestorm user couldn't do.
It would be nice to report complete success, but honesty forces me to confess that when I checked the final render, I spotted three minor glitches which I'd noticed earlier but was too damn tired to remember to fix. So I'll sort them out tomorrow and send the final cut off to Tash for the music, and with luck we'll get it finished in plenty of time to submit.
Who says festivals don't motivate people?
I treated the previous cut as pre-viz and completely re-shot and re-edited the entire thing from scratch using Moviestorm 1.1. No dev code, and just one piece of custom content (which I did in Photoshop and didn't require Modder's Workshop). Editing was done in Premiere, but apart from that, there's nothing in it that the ordinary Moviestorm user couldn't do.
It would be nice to report complete success, but honesty forces me to confess that when I checked the final render, I spotted three minor glitches which I'd noticed earlier but was too damn tired to remember to fix. So I'll sort them out tomorrow and send the final cut off to Tash for the music, and with luck we'll get it finished in plenty of time to submit.
Who says festivals don't motivate people?
Friday, June 27, 2008
It was all a dream...
I dreamt I was about to release a movie, and then I woke up.
In a strangely self-referential approach to machinima, I decided yesterday to treat the rough cut of Cormorant Close as a pre-viz exercise, and reshoot the whole thing from scratch. I was going to have to redo so many little things that it was looking like it would be quicker to start all over again. The movie is constructed out of several scenes using the same set, so I was having to make the same changes to each copy of the set, and try and match them. (And nope, turning it into a stock set doesn't work, because of some quirks of the Moviestorm architecture.) And there's a load of other stuff like that.
I was looking forward to getting this out and moving onto Stalker, dammit!
This time, though, I should know exactly what I'm doing. I know precisely what will be on screen, so I won't be wasting effort on building gestures or set dressing that will never be shown, or framing up cameras that won't be used. I know exactly how many cameras I need in each sequence, and I have a nice little shot list and full shooting script that tells me exactly what I have to shoot. Doing it this way means it should be much easier to light each shot separately, pull some tricks with props, and get frame-level precision by doing much more of my editing in Premiere.
It also means I can use this as an interesting test case for the next version of Moviestorm. Cormorant Close is made entirely with the release version, and just one tiny mod (which doesn't need the modder's workshop), so there's nothing in there that couldn't be done by anyone else. But then I plan to reshoot it, shot for shot, with the newest version and see what difference that makes to both the shooting time and the finished film.
When I'm done, I plan to release not just the finished movie (in both versions of MS), but also the pre-vis version, the Celtx project, the screenplay, and the shooting script if anyone would be interested. And, perhaps, the original voice recordings, with all the retakes and bloopers.
In a strangely self-referential approach to machinima, I decided yesterday to treat the rough cut of Cormorant Close as a pre-viz exercise, and reshoot the whole thing from scratch. I was going to have to redo so many little things that it was looking like it would be quicker to start all over again. The movie is constructed out of several scenes using the same set, so I was having to make the same changes to each copy of the set, and try and match them. (And nope, turning it into a stock set doesn't work, because of some quirks of the Moviestorm architecture.) And there's a load of other stuff like that.
I was looking forward to getting this out and moving onto Stalker, dammit!
This time, though, I should know exactly what I'm doing. I know precisely what will be on screen, so I won't be wasting effort on building gestures or set dressing that will never be shown, or framing up cameras that won't be used. I know exactly how many cameras I need in each sequence, and I have a nice little shot list and full shooting script that tells me exactly what I have to shoot. Doing it this way means it should be much easier to light each shot separately, pull some tricks with props, and get frame-level precision by doing much more of my editing in Premiere.
It also means I can use this as an interesting test case for the next version of Moviestorm. Cormorant Close is made entirely with the release version, and just one tiny mod (which doesn't need the modder's workshop), so there's nothing in there that couldn't be done by anyone else. But then I plan to reshoot it, shot for shot, with the newest version and see what difference that makes to both the shooting time and the finished film.
When I'm done, I plan to release not just the finished movie (in both versions of MS), but also the pre-vis version, the Celtx project, the screenplay, and the shooting script if anyone would be interested. And, perhaps, the original voice recordings, with all the retakes and bloopers.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Cormorant Close - the first trailer
OK, 26 minutes later, here it is. It's still rough and ready, but it's the first trailer for Cormorant Close.
(I really must sort out that blasted teddy bear!)
(I really must sort out that blasted teddy bear!)
Cheezy!
Just got the first draft of the intro music for CC through from Tash, and it's perfect. Real daytime soap fare. I'm all excited now!
If I have time before I leave work, I'll cut a quick trailer together.
If I have time before I leave work, I'll cut a quick trailer together.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Reshoots
I started re-editing bits of Cormorant Close yesterday. There's one weak bit early in the scene which just has too much waffle. So I cut out a few lines, but now the conversation doesn't flow right. For the first time, I've hit one of the limitations of RealFilm, and it's come as quite a shock after being used to the luxury of machinima and endless reshoots. I need to re-record one line of dialogue. Just one. But David, the actor, is away for the rest of the summer, so I'm stuck with what I've got.
I can rebuild and reshoot every other damn thing in the movie: I've already replaced the original characters, redesigned the set, reblocked the whole scene (twice), added in whole new shots and tried several different edit patterns to give different emphasis to the scene. I've switched lines around, I've cut lines, and I've experimented with various different takes of each line. But the one thing I absolutely cannot do is change "I grabbed a pie and chips on the way home" to "I have." It's a tiny change, but the new line neatly segues into the next sequence and hides the fact that there's about half minute of dialogue missing. (Incidentally, the original dialogue worked fine when we did the piece in the style of a stage play, and when we did it as a radio play, just doesn't work on film. It's too much of a digression, and we need to get to the meat of the scene quicker.)
Hmm. Some creative editing will be needed.
I can rebuild and reshoot every other damn thing in the movie: I've already replaced the original characters, redesigned the set, reblocked the whole scene (twice), added in whole new shots and tried several different edit patterns to give different emphasis to the scene. I've switched lines around, I've cut lines, and I've experimented with various different takes of each line. But the one thing I absolutely cannot do is change "I grabbed a pie and chips on the way home" to "I have." It's a tiny change, but the new line neatly segues into the next sequence and hides the fact that there's about half minute of dialogue missing. (Incidentally, the original dialogue worked fine when we did the piece in the style of a stage play, and when we did it as a radio play, just doesn't work on film. It's too much of a digression, and we need to get to the meat of the scene quicker.)
Hmm. Some creative editing will be needed.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Woo! Music!
The first draft of the music for Cormorant Close arrived last night. It's certainly got a lot of promise. We're getting together tomorrow afternoon to go through and really hammer the sound and music design into shape.
And the crew is growing, little by little: Tash dragged in a friend of hers, James, to play some guitar. It's all good - the more skills we can bring in, the better, as long as we keep things moving and don't get bogged down in too many ideas, endless discussions, and logistical nightmares.
Somehow I need to find the time to reshoot a few bits, work around some of the glitches, and tighten up the first cut of the editing. And, ideally, relight the whole scene. Oh, and, of course, redo the credits and add more people in... Not sure when I'm going to fit that in, though, as the next week or so is seriously hectic.
And the crew is growing, little by little: Tash dragged in a friend of hers, James, to play some guitar. It's all good - the more skills we can bring in, the better, as long as we keep things moving and don't get bogged down in too many ideas, endless discussions, and logistical nightmares.
Somehow I need to find the time to reshoot a few bits, work around some of the glitches, and tighten up the first cut of the editing. And, ideally, relight the whole scene. Oh, and, of course, redo the credits and add more people in... Not sure when I'm going to fit that in, though, as the next week or so is seriously hectic.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Credits and titles
I finally got the movie shot and edited at about lunchtime, then started putting on the credits and title sequences. For some reason, these seemed to take far longer second for second than the actual movie.
But anyway, it's done, and on its way to the composer.
Fingers crossed for a release in a week or so!
But anyway, it's done, and on its way to the composer.
Fingers crossed for a release in a week or so!
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Cormorant Closer
Cormorant Close is finally getting there. The main sequence is done, and I have a rough edit. I just have to make a few insert shots, and the roughs of the two credits sequences, and then it'll be ready to go over to Tash for music & sound tomorrow.
John and Louise hear the shocking news about Kevin and Amy
Cormorant Close, starring Kiran Gill as Louise, and David Brown as John
While she's doing that, I can mess with the final lighting, put the rest of the set dressing on, make final costume decisions, and so on, and I aim to have the final edit ready next week.
Meanwhile, it's time to think about casting Stalker, and set up the recording for that before everyone disappears for their summer holidays.
John and Louise hear the shocking news about Kevin and AmyCormorant Close, starring Kiran Gill as Louise, and David Brown as John
While she's doing that, I can mess with the final lighting, put the rest of the set dressing on, make final costume decisions, and so on, and I aim to have the final edit ready next week.
Meanwhile, it's time to think about casting Stalker, and set up the recording for that before everyone disappears for their summer holidays.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
End of day one. Behind schedule already.
Today I managed to get all the dialogue in, the entire movie blocked out, and the camerawork and detailed choreography for the first half sorted. Then I got distracted by roasting a chicken and watching the Canadian GP, so I didn't get round to finishing the choreography and camerawork, let alone putting together a rough edit, credits or titles. Mañana.
I also got distracted by watching Pathfinder, which was a big mistake, cos it was utter dross. Imagine a mish-mash of Apocalypto, Rambo, The Thirteenth Warrior, Black Robe, and Conan The Barbarian, shot by a music video director who wishes he was Ridley Scott. It's solid action, with an interesting premise (Vikings vs Native Americans), and yet it completely failed to engage me on any level. OK, the sound engineering was damn good. But that wasn't a good enough reason to get all the way through it.
I also got distracted by watching Pathfinder, which was a big mistake, cos it was utter dross. Imagine a mish-mash of Apocalypto, Rambo, The Thirteenth Warrior, Black Robe, and Conan The Barbarian, shot by a music video director who wishes he was Ridley Scott. It's solid action, with an interesting premise (Vikings vs Native Americans), and yet it completely failed to engage me on any level. OK, the sound engineering was damn good. But that wasn't a good enough reason to get all the way through it.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Audio joy
Last night's dialogue recording on Cormorant Close went really well, with none of the audio problems I had feared. We started with several takes with all the cast speaking into a single mic, as if it was a radio play. This worked really well to get the dynamics of the scene and the rhythms of the individual lines into context, and helped the actors work together effectively. Over the course of the evening, we changed the interpretation several times, and ended up with something much more edgy, and with more implied dark undertones.
As the evening went on, the actors also learnt to give each other a little space at the end of each line, so as to make it easier for me to pick out the individual bits later. (They also learned to stop moving their heads around so much, which kept the levels constant!) We then did a few pickups of individual lines with one actor at the mic, to catch those few lines where they did run together, but not as many as I'd expected.
Of course, the great advantage of recording this way is that the ambience, tone, and mic sound is identical for everyone: I don't suffer from one person sounding a bit tinnier, or having a different reverb, which is pretty well inevitable when you record over the Net or in several different sessions in different places with different kit.
Today's job is to go through everything I recorded, catalogue the lines into individual files, and pick out the best takes of each one. I'm hoping that's going to be relatively easy - there's one great take of the first half, and one great take of the second half, so I'll use the lines from those takes as far as possible, and then hunt down the pickups for the rest.
Using real actors instead of recording all the lines myself is an absolute pleasure. Working on a film becomes a totally different experience. Hearing my script come to life is fun, especially when the cast deliver an interpretation I wasn't expecting. Even if I don't go with their way of saying the line, it forces me to think about other ways of seeing the scene. (I'll blog later about some more aspects of voice recording and how to get the performance you want. Then Ricky can tell me why I'm doing it all wrong.) It's also left me re-thinking about how to shoot some bits; during the session, everyone came up with a lot of ideas about the characters and how we should view them, and I'm now considering how to bring those out in the camerawork and choreography.
As the evening went on, the actors also learnt to give each other a little space at the end of each line, so as to make it easier for me to pick out the individual bits later. (They also learned to stop moving their heads around so much, which kept the levels constant!) We then did a few pickups of individual lines with one actor at the mic, to catch those few lines where they did run together, but not as many as I'd expected.
Of course, the great advantage of recording this way is that the ambience, tone, and mic sound is identical for everyone: I don't suffer from one person sounding a bit tinnier, or having a different reverb, which is pretty well inevitable when you record over the Net or in several different sessions in different places with different kit.
Today's job is to go through everything I recorded, catalogue the lines into individual files, and pick out the best takes of each one. I'm hoping that's going to be relatively easy - there's one great take of the first half, and one great take of the second half, so I'll use the lines from those takes as far as possible, and then hunt down the pickups for the rest.
Using real actors instead of recording all the lines myself is an absolute pleasure. Working on a film becomes a totally different experience. Hearing my script come to life is fun, especially when the cast deliver an interpretation I wasn't expecting. Even if I don't go with their way of saying the line, it forces me to think about other ways of seeing the scene. (I'll blog later about some more aspects of voice recording and how to get the performance you want. Then Ricky can tell me why I'm doing it all wrong.) It's also left me re-thinking about how to shoot some bits; during the session, everyone came up with a lot of ideas about the characters and how we should view them, and I'm now considering how to bring those out in the camerawork and choreography.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Audio woes
Despite Julian's best efforts, we couldn't get the sound recording set up the way we wanted for tomorrow night's session. Let me share a few painful lessons with you.Samson C01U USB microphones are great for recording podcasts, or when there's just one of you. Really nice. But trying to connect two of them at the same time, so you can record two people having a conversation onto separate vocal tracks, is a total bitch. Don't do it. At least not under XP. (And don't even think about it with Vista or Linux. You may have more luck with a Mac.)
For a start, the audio recording software has to be able to cope with two inputs. Audacity can't, so we install an old version of Sonar LE, which came with the mics. (Sonar 4 - the current version is Sonar 7.) I'm not a big fan of Sonar, but hey, you go with what you have, right? Well, it takes Julian about an hour of frigging around before he gets both mics to input simultaneously. At all. But even when we have both inputs, one mic is really loud, and one is really quiet. Actually, that's not quite true. One appears quite loud, but when we record it and play it back, it's also really quiet. That's partly an issue with using USB mics, they just don't have the power going through them.
So we install the Samson SoftPre pre-amp software to boost the mics a bit. This comes with a somewhat ambiguous warning that basically means it doesn't work under XP if you have two mics connected at the same time; it can only cope with one mic. (In my experience, I couldn't even make it work right with one mic, but we had to try.) However, with even more frigging around in the bowels of Windows drivers, SoftPre and Sonar, Julian eventually persuades both mics to input at a reasonable level. His audio ninja skills are strong.
So now we have a stereo stream coming off each mic. This isn't what we want for voice recording, we want two mono streams. More messing about, but eventually, we get there. At this point we discover something interesting. The mic input is completely different depending on what USB socket it's plugged into. Plug it into the top back one, and it's detected as a "Samson mic". In the lower back, it's an "Unknown mic". And in either of the two sides, it's a "Samson C01U". And the input volume is different on each port. Aargh!
Now we only have one problem left. The mics have too much range, so my mic is picking up Johnnie in the background, and his is picking up my voice. We try gating the recording, but that doesn't work. So we try gating the input, and that doesn't work either. It just clips things off. Basically, the C01U is a condenser mic, and that's just the way it works. We'd need to build isolation booths.
Finally, after his third cup of tea, Julian delivers his professional opinion.
- Buy different mics, not condensers and not USB.
- Get some different audio software, not an old version of Sonar.
- Don't try recording on a laptop.
- And don't expect decent audio quality if you're recording in the dining room.
Oh well, I'll have to see what I can set up later in the summer. For now, I'm going to fall back on the tried (and mostly trusted) system of using Audacity and a single C01U mic, hope I don't get too many bits with two people speaking at once, and re-record individual lines when I do.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Don't stop me now!
All my actors have accepted their roles in Cormorant Close, and my first choice composer is on board too, so I can't back out now. The final draft script went out at the weekend, and the voice recording session is booked for Friday.
Meanwhile, Julian, one of the Moviestorm programmers, has revealed that in addition to moonlighting as a lighting engineer, he knows his way round a sound deck too, so I have an audio engineer to set everything up and press buttons, leaving me to concentrate on getting the performances I'm after. It almost feels like we're doing this job properly!
All being well, the rough cut will go to the composer next Sunday, and I can then start casting the next one, Stalker. I finished the script for that last weekend, but I'm waiting to hear the next two batches of actors before casting it.
And in the meantime, I'm waiting with bated breath for Overman's new movie, which is due out shortly. He's promised me a sneak preview in the next day or so.
Meanwhile, Julian, one of the Moviestorm programmers, has revealed that in addition to moonlighting as a lighting engineer, he knows his way round a sound deck too, so I have an audio engineer to set everything up and press buttons, leaving me to concentrate on getting the performances I'm after. It almost feels like we're doing this job properly!
All being well, the rough cut will go to the composer next Sunday, and I can then start casting the next one, Stalker. I finished the script for that last weekend, but I'm waiting to hear the next two batches of actors before casting it.
And in the meantime, I'm waiting with bated breath for Overman's new movie, which is due out shortly. He's promised me a sneak preview in the next day or so.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Miscasting voice parts is easy
Last week I released a short piece called My Voices, which was designed to show voice actors how they could show themselves voicing a range of different characters. Part of the reason for doing this piece was that voice actors often find themselves cast for their looks, rather than their voice, and this gives them a way to hide behind a character who looks completely different.
This week, I cast three actors for a short with the working title of Cormorant Close. After doing my auditions last week, I had a pretty good idea who I wanted for the two leads. Their demo piece had a lot in common with Cormorant Close, they worked well together, they sounded good, they were fantastic actors, and I was sure they'd be perfect. But then I listened to all the voice samples again, with my eyes shut, and without looking at the names.
Suddenly, among the female voices, I heard one who was absolutely perfect, and when I looked up who it was, it wasn't who I expected. Then I listened to the men again, and knew that to complement that female voice, one of the other actors would be much better than the guy I had originally thought of. It's no disrespect to my original choices. I'm sure they would have done a good job, and in fact, I have other parts in mind for them and hope to work with them later in the summer.
Without realising it - in fact, even though I was consciously trying to avoid doing so - I had based my original casting on the personalities and appearance of the actors, not on the sound of their voices. And, more subtly, I was perhaps thinking of their natural voices, not of the other voices that they could portray.
Now I'm just hoping they're free next week for a recording session and I can find out whether I've made the right call! Oh, and I suppose I'd better get round to building the recording studio as well. And finish the final, final, really final draft of the script in time for them to read it in advance...
This week, I cast three actors for a short with the working title of Cormorant Close. After doing my auditions last week, I had a pretty good idea who I wanted for the two leads. Their demo piece had a lot in common with Cormorant Close, they worked well together, they sounded good, they were fantastic actors, and I was sure they'd be perfect. But then I listened to all the voice samples again, with my eyes shut, and without looking at the names.
Suddenly, among the female voices, I heard one who was absolutely perfect, and when I looked up who it was, it wasn't who I expected. Then I listened to the men again, and knew that to complement that female voice, one of the other actors would be much better than the guy I had originally thought of. It's no disrespect to my original choices. I'm sure they would have done a good job, and in fact, I have other parts in mind for them and hope to work with them later in the summer.
Without realising it - in fact, even though I was consciously trying to avoid doing so - I had based my original casting on the personalities and appearance of the actors, not on the sound of their voices. And, more subtly, I was perhaps thinking of their natural voices, not of the other voices that they could portray.
Now I'm just hoping they're free next week for a recording session and I can find out whether I've made the right call! Oh, and I suppose I'd better get round to building the recording studio as well. And finish the final, final, really final draft of the script in time for them to read it in advance...
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Rewriting – everything!
Mongoose Movies is looking like a going concern once again. I’ve had about half a dozen scripts on the go for months now, but none of them seem to make it out of Celtx and into Moviestorm. I’ve done some test footage for several scenes, but the only things that have got done are the few teasers and demos I’ve done for the company. Part of the reason for this is that I just haven’t had the actors and actresses I want, so I’ve been doing all the voices myself. While I can do a few different voices, this has been enormously limiting, and I haven’t been at all happy with the results.
However, in the last week, I’ve acquired a huge crew of students from Homerton College, Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin University (the other university in Cambridge). Yesterday I auditioned about a dozen drama students, who between them can give me an enormous range of different voices, both male and female. Very few of them have done voice acting before, and they’re really keen to get the experience. I’ve also hooked up with a few student sound designers and composers, which more or less fills in the last bit of the movie-making process I can’t do myself. Again, they’re really keen to get the experience of working on films; during their course, they do a little bit of film work, but they want to move from re-scoring existing films to helping to create films.
The talent in that group is quite overwhelming. I was genuinely surprised by the quality of some of what I heard. They’re all enormously enthusiastic, which is hugely inspiring.
I thoroughly recommend this approach to other machinimators – it’s a win/win situation. You get a first-class crew; they’re desperate to work on “real” projects and get material to put in their portfolios or showreels. All it took was an email to a few heads of department; they were, without exception, totally supportive, and told their students via email or blogs, or they put up posters, and I started getting replies within – literally – minutes. And still more are coming in every day.
So, starting today, I’m going back to all of my scripts, and polishing them up, ready to start dialogue recording in June. I’m going to ruthlessly rewrite anything and everything, now that I know what voices I have available. I can put in the extra characters I originally wanted, use more female characters, and rethink some of the characterisation now that I have specific actors and actresses in mind. I can also start to re-imagine some of the music and atmospheric sequences to fit with the styles that my new composers can give me.
It’s a lot of work, but having new, talented, and exciting people to work with has given me the drive to get back to turning my dreams into reality.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Help - I need a logo!
I need to be able, for obvious reasons, to distinguish between films I do for work, and those I'm making off my own bat, in my spare time, and which I don't want to have associated with Short Fuze. (And which Short Fuze would probably need to distance itself from anyway, for all sorts of reasons.) So the next personal film I do will be released under the Mongoose Movies banner.
(I tried the following, but they're all taken already: Mongoose Studios, Mongoose Productions, Mongoose Films and Kelland Productions.)
Anyways, MM needs a logo. I know exactly what I want, but I'm not a graphic artist and I can't draw it myself. I'm after a really simple line drawing of a mongoose rearing up and twisting around. Ideally, it should be really stylised, a bit like a Chinese brush painting, using as few lines as possible to convey the shape. Something like this, for example, but with even fewer brush strokes if that can be done ...
I'm after a pose a bit like this tiger, with the head turned back, the mouth open, and the body curved sinuously, and the impression of intense energy. What's most important is the shape and the feeling, it doesn't have to be instantly recognisable as a mongoose - if it could equally well be a ferret or a weasel, so be it.
I'm thinking probably black and white, but maybe it would be good to be able to do it inverse, so I can use the logo on black backgrounds (which I seem to be doing more and more).
Any artists out there who can help out?
(I tried the following, but they're all taken already: Mongoose Studios, Mongoose Productions, Mongoose Films and Kelland Productions.)
Anyways, MM needs a logo. I know exactly what I want, but I'm not a graphic artist and I can't draw it myself. I'm after a really simple line drawing of a mongoose rearing up and twisting around. Ideally, it should be really stylised, a bit like a Chinese brush painting, using as few lines as possible to convey the shape. Something like this, for example, but with even fewer brush strokes if that can be done ...
I'm after a pose a bit like this tiger, with the head turned back, the mouth open, and the body curved sinuously, and the impression of intense energy. What's most important is the shape and the feeling, it doesn't have to be instantly recognisable as a mongoose - if it could equally well be a ferret or a weasel, so be it.
I'm thinking probably black and white, but maybe it would be good to be able to do it inverse, so I can use the logo on black backgrounds (which I seem to be doing more and more). Any artists out there who can help out?
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