STRING DRIVEN THING

It’s two years since we wrapped. How could it take so long to finish a movie?

If you spend six months alone in a small room with a computer cutting sound it’s easy to see how you can miscalculate this piece of string might be. On completion of my task I delivered all my audio elements to Rich, the dialogue editor, and sat down with Jez who will mix the movie only to discover I had entered the Perfect Storm of vacation bookings. I went away for 3 weeks and got back at the same time that Rich went off for a month. When he gets back Jez will leave almost immediately for 3 weeks. Et voila! Another two months are added to the schedule just like that.

I promise it will be over by Christmas…but that’s what they said about the War isn’t it?

DONALD & ME

What has sailing got to do with making a movie?

In 1969 Donald Crowhurst took part in a round-the-world yacht race sponsored by the Sunday Times. Occasional radio messages filtered back to base with the good news of his fortuitous trip around the planet in his boat as he scurried south from Europe, round into the Indian Ocean, across the Pacific and then turned North again towards England with the other competitors. He was making good time and the welcoming committee were putting the Champagne on ice when his boat was found empty and adrift in the middle of the Atlantic.

What had occurred?

It soon emerged that the poor man had perpetrated a hoax and had never ever left the Atlantic. He’d avoided the shipping lanes, had even stepped onto dry land, and then had simply floated around in circles for weeks while he was pretending to be speeding across the Southern Seas, and then waited for the other yachts to catch up with him. Realizing his ruse would be discovered his diaries revealed he’d slowly lost his mind. His body was never found and those bottles of bubbly were returned to the fridge unopened.

Sitting here in my cave cutting sound day after day, on my Jack Jones, I’ve started to wonder if people think I’m a kind of movie-making Crowhurst. Have I been Pro-tools-ing around in circles for weeks while sending out false radio-reports to keep the ajudicators foxed? There are moments where it certainly feels that way to me.

But the other day I glimpsed a view of the end of the tunnel. I didn’t see a line of well-wishers at the quay-side or bottles of celebratory booze but I did see land. Right now it’s disappeared again behind more storm-tossed waves but I’m hopeful that shortly I will stumble upon the shore. I will be dizzy as I get my land-legs back but the sound cutting solo-voyage will, at last, be done.

S.B.D.

I’ll do anything to get this flick done right, I’ll suffer any kind of humiliation.

I’m cutting sound right now and (not to give too much away) there are scenes involving someone farting and pissing. Of course we were too busy recording dialogue on those days in production so, this week, I needed to slug in the appropriate sound effects. I dropped in to Amoeba to see what Sound Effects CD’s they have and, yes, they do have one concentrating on farting and other bathroom noises handily titled RUDE SOUNDS. But why would I want to blow six bucks on a farting & pissing CD when I could record my own bodily functions AND own the rights?

Cut to yours truly drinking vast quantities of water and then squirming in pain to wait till the last available moment before off-loading so I could record a suitably long pee that would work for the scene in the movie. As I was peeing AND monitoring and recording sound all at the same time I was unable to take a pic of myself for the MAKING OF Gallery which, let’s face it, would have been the ultimate humiliation.

Can you find pix on the web of Scorsese taking a leak whilst wearing head-phones, holding a mic in one hand and something else in the other? I think not.

OK. So far, so good. Now about those other noises I needed…

The older I get one thing that it would seem I’m getting spectacularly good at is flatulence. But can I get a good fart recording? When I’m ready to release I’m not ready to record…by the time the tape’s rolling and the levels are right the urge has passed. No question about it, my cat is very confused by my sudden interest in shoving a mic up my butt.

Personally I can’t wait to get past this problem and get to the next reel when all I have to worry about is some footsteps and a few drive bys.

HAPPY NEWS

We’ve locked picture…at last.

Over the holidays Kenny Brant found us a location that would serve both as the exterior to Moe’s digs and also his view across Hollywood. The leaves on the trees look a bit brown and I’ll miss those shots of the Knickerbocker but suddenly Moe has a new home and I’d best get used to it.

Could it really be two years since I sat here and proudly predicted I’d get this venture done? 7 or 8 months I thought. Ha! Yes – two years ago and counting. Jez Colin who will get the movie mixed for us has been very patient while these last few weeks have dragged on – I was trying to get the movie mixed by Christmas and look what happened to that.

And now I’ve got jury-duty on the horizon!

LOCATION LOCATION

After a long wait we finally heard from the Hollywood sign people. To include close-ups of the sign they want a sum of money that would be a significant percentage of our overall budget. For a movie this size we simply can’t afford it. As far as we can establish if the sign appears in the background of a shot that’s OK but close-ups are not acceptable.

Dang.

I’ll have to shoot alternative views that say “Hollywood” or at least say it from Moe’s damaged perspective.

Also the building I chose as an exterior for Moe’s lodgings can’t seem to decide if they want to appear in the movie or not. As the use of exteriors seems to be something of a greay area everyone is telling me to wing it but, having come this far, I feel we should do the right thing and get permission. So now my location scouting hero, Kenny, is on the look-out for a building that will accept my paltry financial offering and become the establishing shot for Moe’s digs.

Until these two issues are resolved we can’t lock picture.

Finished a new tune last week, complete with French lyrics, that will be heard as background music when Vivian meets Jack. Having spent a long night trying to find French words to rhyme with ‘rouge’ I have a new respect for Abba.

REPORT CARD

Only three tracks left to mix, and some small editorial things to sort out and then…

…and then it’s time to do some really hard work and start cutting sound. There’s a reason why most movies have a post-production supervisor and a whole bunch of people working on post. Me pulling 15 hours a week on the movie isn’t cutting it.

I’ve just read my report card for the Summer term from the Callback Headmaster and it goes like this: Could Try Harder.

In other news I bought a cello yesterday and I start French lessons (my next crazy project) tomorrow. A bientot.

THE KING IN TWO STEPS

15th October
You’re right – this is taking a lot longer than I anticipated. I got a gig and flew to London, I came back, I went on holiday for ten days, came home, got sick, did another gig and voila – two moths down the spout.

We’ve found someone who will mix the movie – even better someone who WANTS to mix the movie. The pressure to lock picture is enormous but…it’s just not finished yet. There’s lot of little things that need tweaking. Is this me being a control freak or am I just being a good director or a patient producer? You decide.

Friday the 13th was a good day. I made the aquaintance of a chap called Gary Herbig who came over to play flute on Funky Jones – one of my pieces for the movie. The man’s played with Elvis – what more do you need to know?

Holy cow how did I get so lucky? I’m making a movie soundtrack with guys who’ve played with Dylan and The King.

UP REZ

I could bore you with details about how I broke some kind of record at the dental surgeon’s last week when he removed one of my wisdom teeth (longest extraction of the year apparently) and the endless pain I’ve been in ever since and the grinding lack of sleep I’ve had as a result, but you could give a toss, and who needs the pity? Right?

So, in other, more appropriate news: We finally have a movie filled with completely original music. I’ve written and recorded what amounts to a double album in the last six months and that only covers about 27 of the 64 music cues which have come from a variety of other sources. Last night we completed the mixes on the first 4 of the specially composed for Callback tunes.

All the new footage is in and works fabulously and gives us a much stronger ending. We have a new scene in too and the movie’s still only 92 minutes long. I think we’re closing in on locking picture and today I started up-rezzing the movie; I was tired of seeing all those little pixels dancing around in front of K-Far’s face and had forgotten how great some of the footage looks. That D.P. Quickly was a pain in the arse to work with but it seems that he actually did quite a decent job.

I’m now sending out dubs to try and find someone enthusiastic enough to mix our baby for the paltry sum I have left in the Callback kitty. Please make another wish to the movie Gods and hope they send us someone who will be kind, eager, able and excited.

And now it’s time for another painkiller…

POSTER

We haven’t finished the trailer, we haven’t loaded the new footage into the Avid and we haven’t done any more music…but we do have a poster.

Thank-you Charly Murray. Great job.

HARD. DRIVE.

It seemed like such a good idea at the time. I’d just trot over to Ian Wallace’s pad in the Valley with my external hard drive and let him at my tunes with his drum-sticks. A busy day and a few cups of tea should cover it I thought.

Well first his computer wouldn’t read my hard drive, so I bought another one. Then I imported the wrong files. Then…oh bollocks you don’t need to know the details it’s so frustrating. Now it’s Thursday, four days after we started all of this, and Ian’s drumming is a bunch of dots and zeroes somewhere in the pile of hard drives and Apples that’s sitting in my spare bathroom refusing to talk to each other. I could cry.

Pro Tools sucks! That’s how I feel right now…Obviously it’s been a crap week. Grrr. Bah. Humbug.

P.S. Ian by the way, has been an absolute gent, is a fab drummer and has some great stories – including a new one about some director bloke who told him, “That was too good. Play it worse!” Check him out here.

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