"Love Song to Super-8" - blog09 - completion

Movie completed and submitted by post to the NZ Film Festival. Editing co-incided with high pressure in the day job and the computer moonlighting job so it was not much sleep for me. Editing ran so late that I used up the week the musicians were available and completed a fine cut on the night of the 19 April, with the fest entry deadline being the next day. I checked the fest website and behold! a 10 day extension - yay! But what to do about music?

I had another muso wanting to help, but he was in a small rural town. I posted him the stuff and it got lost in the post. I did however have a Plan B going and that moved into full swing. I had chosen "Danse Macabre" by Camille Saint-Saens as a piece I wanted to use and I started searching for versions of it on the internet and writing to the arrangers and/or publishers asking permission. After about 8 unanswered emails over a week I finally made a friendly contact. Terry Smythe belongs to the "International Association of Mechanical Music Preservationists" whose members have invented scanners which read the player piano rolls of the early 20th century into computer "MIDI" files. Terry kindly gave me clearance to use his publication of a Liszt arrangement of Danse Macabre. On loading it into my MIDI software, "Powertools Pro", I found I was able to split the left and right hand sets of notes into separate "channels" and give them different instruments. I kept the right channel as a piano but added an asian "koto" voice. The left hand notes became a "string ensemble" and an "oboe".

I have great admiration for Franz Liszt now! It was amazing how well this piece fits with the movie, IMHO because of the way it moves off the melody into atmospheric variations.

For the courtroom scene I wanted another piece by Saint-Saens - the "Fossils" from "Carnival of the Animals". I especially like Tony Matthew's midi sequencing of it which IMO delivers an especially good computer simulation of an orchestra. Tony gave me permission to modify his work for the film. I repeated some sections with changed instrument voices - mostly percussion to go well with the courtroom typewriter as the silent-movie-voice of the characters and something of a character in its own right. I found the "tinkle bell", "celeste", "shamizen" and "koto" worked well. I found that these simulated instruments sound realistic only over a narrow range of notes but I got into making them sound quite different by assigning them well out of their "realistic" range. My favourite experiment was where I assigned some low notes to the "tinkle bell" and it became a woodblock-like drum-percussion track very suggestive of a typewriter.

Recommended Article

Just read an interesting article
Moving to HD Cameras. A filmmaker’s case study by independent film-maker David Basulto, published on the website "Creative Mac". Successful low-budget film-maker gives a good level of detail about how he works.

Entered 48 Hours as "Team MITCIT"

I have done the entry for the 48 Hours Competition as Team MITCIT. So we're now on the rollercoaster ride peaking with that mad weekend 18-20 May. I'm going for technical rehearsal and team workout Tues 15 May 5pm to about 7pm.

"Love Song to Super-8" - blog08 - progress

The last 3 rolls of film are back from processing. I can report success with the experimental modification of the Chinon Pacific camera - see details below. Gate registration is much better. More evidence for my theory that Super-8 cartridges work best with minimum take-up tension. Pressure is on - I am editing this weekend and I need to get it to our musicians in time for them to get a soundtrack together before a film festival deadline April 20th.

Richmond Rd Short Film Festival

I saw the Richmond Rd Short Film Festival last Sat 24 March. Nicely done event. Outdoor screening so I hauled along my cushion, jackets and rugs but on getting there I find that this one has seats! Yay! The films were:

"A Very Nice Honeymoon" by Jeff and Phill Simmonds. Ironic title. About the film-makers' great grandparents' experience of a shipwreck. Animated film in something of the same technical style and production values that you would see in commercial cartoons on TV, but turned to a quite different genre and purpose, and very effective because of that. Its documentary approach leads the audience by degrees to an amazing and emotionally poignant final interview. IMO this film well deserved its audience choice award.

"Brown Peril - The Tim Porch Story" - dir Jarrod Holt and Nigel McCulloch. This was the winner of last year's NZ 48 Hours so I've seen it a lot, but I am always amazed by the number of comedy elements that these people have piled on in layers. The main story is a goodie in itself yet it seems that in every moment they can heap on more and more outrageous and eccentric detail. This won lots of awards at this show and there should be another award for an acceptance speech that was in itself a high energy comedy performance.

"Oh Deer" by Chung Min Moon. Animated fantasy film in an east Asian style. I thought the artwork was good but the rather minimal very computer-animated movement needed something like the human touch of Len Lye's movies. To be fair to the film-makers I'll admit I was seeing this only a few days after the Auckland Festival Len Lye screening so they had a hard act to follow. With my head even more full of Len Lye than usual, "Oh Deer" was like "Tusalava" without the "zizz".

"Night Vision" dir Zoe MacIntosh. An documentary which I found effective because of a sense of the film-maker's empathy with her subjects.

"The Customer is Always Trite" dir Greydon Little. Humourous observation of the passing parade of supermarket customers from the point of view of a checkout operator.

"Rope" dir Adam Luxton and Jeremy Dumble. An brief incident of attempted suicide gives some narrative structure to what is mainly an exercise in art direction, lighting, photography, and intense acting performance.

"Life after Death" by Guy Capper and Jemaine Clement. Pub philosophers mouthing off with the great original touch that these are animated plasticene sheep. A little like the Aardman productions. Stacks up well in comparison to "Creature Comforts".

"Uso" dir Miki Magasiva. Effective comedy of 2 young men hanging out by a phone box. Great character performances. I nominate "Uso" as the local answer to "Waiting for Godot".

"The Speaker" dir, prod, writ. Tearepa, Savage, Quinton Hita. Slice of life story of a politically motivated tagger and his Maori activist peer group achieves in-depth portrayal of characters who came across to me as struggling in a remarkably real way with their conflicting loyalties and the peer pressure to be "staunch".

"The Knock" dir Miles Murphy, prod Simon Ranginui, writ. Nick Ward. Very stylish horror movie from the NZ Film Commission initiative to make shorts with high production values. Effective intense performances and a surprise ending about which I could say "what I would expect for this genre" but I can only say that in retrospect. Winner of "Best Film" in this competition.

"Chop Off" dir Grant Lahood. Some of the slapstick elements of classic silent comedy grace this strange but original piece about a wood-chopping contest. The logline says "epic battle between young and old" and I felt afterwards that more could have been done to show that. IMO the visual comedy was built more around the competition equipment than around the theme.

A good show giving a great snapshot of short film-making. I came away with the encouraging feeling that IAFILM is operating at an equal level. There seems to be a common element of quirky plot surprises echoed by visual elements running through these. If I read that right our current production "Love Song to Super-8" should stack up well in this kind of company.

"Love Song to Super-8" - blog07 - first looks

First look - first impressions - it is working out well. To me the EK64 stock does look grainier than Kodachrome but that gives it a retro look that will work well for this project. I am not sure yet about how much I want to use it on future films.
Frame scans are posted on another site because of display space.
You can see them here ...
IAFILM Current Projects - Love Song to Super-8

The Canon 814E looks more and more like the number 1 camera. One surprise behaviour we have uncovered. We noticed that we got slightly different settings focussing by eye compared to measuring distance with a measuring tape. We went with the measuring tape but the close-ups show that the focussing by eye was the one giving the true and accurate settings. We have some close-ups to re-shoot Monday night:(

"Love Song to Super-8" - blog06 - film is processed!

The package of Ektachrome films has just arrived back from Spectra Lab, Hollywood, USA. Turnaround time was 14 days from New Zealand. I have unreeled the first few cm of one and I can see it has nicely exposed pictures on it. Tonight I can start running the films through my home-made scan-into-computer machine.