Auditions Lesson - learn to txt!

Events around 02 Aug (writeup catch-up). "Askar" is our 106 minute script for an ambitious fantasy epic movie. We are moving on developing it by test-filming about 5 mins of it. I have just read "Five Things I Hate About Microbudget Movies"by "Film Flap":
http://filmflap.blogspot.com/2007/05/five-things-i-hate-about-microbudget.html
and Thing Three is:
"Terrible Acting .. You'd be surprised how many talented actors are out there hungry for work. They will do anything (including work for free) to pad their resume, so use them ...Hold auditions and good people will show up."
This inspires me to step outside my usual network and advertise auditions, bracing myself to cope with the flood of hungry actors. Notices on the walls at a drama school and on the internet discussion boards of the local indie scene and the LARPers. Well, Mr Film Flap, only about 4 responses and zero end result from that! Our cast and crew all came via our own network eg our email newsletter and work colleagues getting the word out to their students and rellies. But a lesson here! I am guessing that as a crusty old last-century-indie-relic, I made a mistake in not understanding how important cellphone "txt-ing" is for communicating with the New Generation. I left lots of voice messages then someone explained to me that they don't get picked up because many people can't afford the cellphone call charge to listen to them and you need to use txt to get people together. I'll try that next time and see if that makes a difference. And Mr Film Flap, if you can read this, do tell what strange and wonderful place you live in with all these surplus talented actors floating around - methinks I should go there to make a movie!
In the meantime I am getting into txt with my cast and crew.

48 Hours Competition - "Dancing with the Pollies"

This year in the "48 Hours Furious Film-making" competition we decided to go with modelling clay animation - that's like the "Wallace and Grommit" movies. We drew the "Romance" genre which led us to parodying "Dancing with the Stars". Follow the link to the iafilm home website for the full "making of" article with photos and video clips. All is revealed on how we got modelling clay characters to talk.

http://island.manukau.ac.nz/iafilm/shell.aspx?tint=2&mainDir=Content&areaDir=Public&subdir=1.%20Current%20and%20Recent%20Projects&file=48%20Hours%202007.htm

Crash Recovery Success

I was shooting to memory card with a Canon MVX25i, which is the PAL version of the Optura 40. I had a "low battery" warning but I kept going in the hope of completing a shot. The battery died on me. I assumed that the camera would do a graceful shutdown in that event but I discovered that is not the case!
I now had 34 minutes of event filming as a file of length "0". The file recovery was long and difficult. I have written it up as an article in the hope that if this happens to anyone else the information may be useful. I regard myself as an I.T. expert but this would have to be one of the most difficult problem-solving challenges I have faced in a long time. Moral of the story, if you see that battery warning then STOP. It is also a good idea when using Memory Card to stop and restart often so you do not build up a large at-risk file.

The article:
http://island.manukau.ac.nz/iafilm/shell.aspx?tint=3&mainDir=Content&areaDir=Public&subdir=2.%20Articles&file=AVI_Recovery.htm

The rescued movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtCqySVKcT0

"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.