Debbie- Fundraising

Whilst all the casting and rehearsals have been going on, we have still been trying to raise money for our film. Laura's workload was getting too much due to the commitments of the film and everything else, so I offered to organise the fundraising.

As well as the indiegogo campaign, and the money we were being generously given by our family and friends, I wanted to organise a bake sale and raffle, as well as organising a night at the SU. We had spoken about doing a Britpop night for a while because of our film's original connections to Jarvis Cocker and the band Pulp. So, I went to find out more about how this would work and what our limitations were.

The following is some conversation I had with Kelly Weston, the bar manager at UCA:

Kelly was incredibly helpful when it came to organising the SU night, but I had to deal with the head of catering when it came to the bake sale, and this included doing quite a few risk assessments and organising with caretakers for tables and such. However, we hosted the bake sale on the 22nd February, and the SU night was on the 29th February. 

We did some advertising for these events on the Farnham UCA Facebook page, as well as on our own Debbie Facebook page. I also made some posters for the events to advertise them more visually. Especially the SU night, with the posters being displayed around the SU:

Our fundraising efforts paid off quite nicely, our night was quite popular and was fun for us to be at as well as helping us raise money for the film. Laura supplied the music for the SU night and I supplied the cakes for the bake sale and the night, as well as organising the raffle. We managed to raise about £100 for the film, which really has helped us out alot.

Feeling For Sound- Graphic Musical Scores

In a tutorial with Kathleen, I expressed my interest in creating a visual element to go alongside my sound piece. She suggested looking at graphical scores and Cornelius Cardew in particular.

Cornelius Cardew is a compose who works with graphical scores such as his famous 'Treatise' which a massive 193 pages long of just graphical score. Graphical scores in general are a musical score which is shown in either just shapes or lines, in any form, or a combination of these things and musical notes. Graphical scores often come with instructions on how they should be played, but some pieces like Treatise is interpretive and the performer must make up their own rules on how to play the piece. I found a couple of interesting examples of this type of thing being played out:

John Teske- Six Graphic Scores

Artikulation- Gyorgy Ligeti

After looking at a few of these kinds of pieces, I have some notes on how I think I want to take this idea:

• Why do the shapes, dots, lines etc. have to represent individual notes? They could represent something like texture, which may allow far more creative freedom in the piece.
• I feel as if the pieces are often played far too literally. Following on from questioning how to interpret individual notes, it feels as if the composers sometimes drew these pieces and then thought, well what would this sound like? This is not the effect I want to create, and so I think the compositions should be far more focused.
• Is it possible to create something that sounds more traditional using this unconventional technique?

I think I should experiment with the sound at first, and then draw some things surrounding how it sounds after. I think it would be far more beneficial to do it that way and that way I can experiment with different ways of showing the sound I have created on paper.

Debbie Updates- Casting and Rehearsals

The last couple of months have been very hectic in terms of Debbie. Straight after Christmas we started casting for our film. We did Skype auditions over a couple of days and finally got our cast together:

I found it really easy to cast the guys as they were both fantastic and it was believable that they were brothers straight away. They really stood out to me and I could not have picked anyone else. I feel like we got very lucky in that regard. The girls I had particular trouble with. We had many fantastic candidates with very different styles, however Kesia stood out in particular to me because of her friendly attitude, and I loved her French accent aswell. That combined with her look really suited the kind of character I wanted her to play, whilst getting very good vibes from her that she would be reliable.

I am really happy with these guys, they are all equally reliable and friendly, as well as being fantastic actors. On Monday 15th February, we had a rehearsal with them to go through the script and play some different actions to see what kind of performances look best, try out different directing techniques, and to get to know my actors in general. 

In terms of directing technique, I have paid particular attention to 'Directing Actors: Creating Memorable Performances for Film and Television' By Judith Weston. 

I went into the rehearsal with an annotated copy of the script, which had lots of notes on how I could get the actors to play the roles and particular lines in different ways:

This book helped me see directing from an actor's perspective and I think has improved my direction on the whole. The book talks about using playable notes rather than result direction, which would be telling an actor you want them to be angry or be sad, rather than giving them something they can act on. I could see quite easily the differences in performance from one direction to another and to me that confirms that I'm succeeding at what I've set out to do. So now I feel prepared for our shoot in that regard!

Organisation wise, since Christmas it's been focused on shot lists and call sheets. Since the script is now finished, what I had to do was go through the script and write all the shots I wanted in there so I had a basic structure I wanted to work to. 

Then I had to write up all these shots into a spreadsheet with all details such as movement, props etc. So Laura could organise these into shooting schedules for each day of shooting:

In general now, I think we are prepared for the shoot. With just a few odd bits and bobs needed to do left. A couple of props here and there to get and we are set for the studio.

Other Sound Design Work- Tom & Shahid

Over the last couple of months I was approached to work on a couple of other sound projects alongside mine, Laura's and D-e3b1e.

Firstly, Shahid asked me to work on a three screen animation he is working on. It surrounds the idea of cyborgs, and focuses on particular body parts of a cyborg. My job is to create some sound design which has essentially three parts: An ambient sound running underneath the whole piece, organic sounds (or sounds of the body), and robotic sounds. What I have done so far is produce a test to get an idea of what Shahid wants it to sound like:

I did this by using raw chicken to create organic sounds, small servo motors to create robotic sounds, and a hugely manipulated sound of an underground train to create the ambient sound. Shahid liked the ambient sound, but said he wanted it louder. He wants the robotic sounds to be less harsh and more steampunk-like, and that the organic sounds should be more subtle. I have an idea of how to do this and spent some time recording things for it in the sound studio.

Secondly, Tom (an animation student) asked me to work on his animation which surrounds the idea of sleep paralysis. I have been working on this project for a while and have done a couple of different sound design tests for it. The first one was very creepy and conceptually was more about how sleep paralysis could make you feel (claustrophobic, trapped, uncertain etc.) and I think that worked quite well:

This was for his initial crit on the idea. Now he is working more towards a progression into that creepiness. So it starts out as pure foley and then works more towards that heavily manipulated and generated sound. For an edit of his animatic, he wanted me to do a bit of sound design for it. It's very rough, and has a long way to go but the pure foley I think is sounding fairly good, I just want to spend a lot longer on the 'inside the dream' side of the work:

Now I have to work towards finalizing what the sound design will be like and cracking on with the work.

Anxiety Dance- The Shoot And Recording Studio

It's been a while since I posted for Anxiety, but the shoot was the Tuesday just gone. It went well, and it was interesting to see a different dancer's response to similar kind of direction as we gave with Parallel last year. I was there for just sound recording though, so I spent most of my day doing other work. However, when it came round to the recording I found I got some really interesting sounds, although the heating was on in the studio at the time and alot of the recordings are noisy, so I do not know how usable the recordings are. I want to try and maintain as much authenticity with the piece as possible, so losing some of those recordings would really make me unhappy.

I've also been in the recording studio recently for other work, but I recorded some sounds for Anxiety too. Laura has told me they want it kind of creepy, slightly uncomfortable to watch. Uneasy, really. So I'm thinking I'll record some foley of branches snapping, moving around etc. and depending on what I do with it I could make the branches seem incredibly menacing.

The next post from me won't be for a while now, not until I am in the edit for anxiety at least.