300 hours and counting

Taken in the lighting test, when we also tested the powder and its density in the air.

I'm writing this whilst in rehearsal - this is how much time I don't have

Today we had our final presentation before sign off, I handed over most of my production pack (minus location permissions) and got to work in the studio for lighting tests before the start of production which is only a week away and that's terrifying because days are so short and there's so much to do still and now I need to take a break but I can't and now I'm here. Editing. Usual really.

In the studio we got the basic lighting plans down for the opening scene and final scene, the scene with the powder was a lot of fun to play around with - messy but fun. I had my camera with me and with a makeshift slider (aka Ethan's skateboard) I had a lot of fun playing with cameras which is something as a pre/post-production person isn't something I get to do often.

I've also been working on sound, I had a meeting with James were he just gave me loads of examples such as The Necks, Brian Eno, Stars of Lid to name a few. I've been listening to them on a casual basis (whilst working, doing life things) because it's easier for me to take in music like that rather than sitting down and analysing it from scratch. I did a very quick re-time last night at around midnight to stretch it to meet the new time constraints of the rehearsal footage. However after looking at it I still need to fix the middle which is proving to be more complicated than I originally thought.

I'll be looking at how to fix that soon, I have changed the drum beat to a loop that's built into Protools just because I needed to get an idea of beat/tempo. As I don't want to change the overall tempo of the piece just for the middle section because tempo changes in music are very hard and often don't give the effect that you desire. Whilst the drums are truly awful (Sorry AVID why do you provide people with this?) but I shall keep the tempo and find a drummer to make a better version of it than I can. I've also been looking into making it more 'weird' and less melodic, whilst keeping it in a melodic scale. When speaking to Pi, our dancer, she mentioned that imagines the dance to have a 'nosey' tone to it, like that of TV static. I'm also trying to find a way to work that into the piece, whilst it doesn't fit as it stands the track will be changing soon so maybe it will then. I haven't yet found the right tonal centre, this may be it.

Whilst I refuse to share the whole track online as it currently stands I did use the track for the end scene to make our fundraiser video - I'd like to point out that when we added the video a company donated £125, I like to think the video had something to with it.

In this video you have the music from the actual dance video, animated storyboards drawn by the lovely Ben Murray who offered to help us out, powder tests from our day in the studio and of course the link to the Indiegogo.  

We are currently at £426 plus £90  from our fundraiser and an extra £50 we're waiting on that's a £566 total - only £136 to go to get our goal and it seems more reachable now than ever.

Since beginning this post in rehearsal we have since had to postpone filming due to not being able to get the location we wanted, we are now shooting the first week of April which gives up an extra 10 days to raise the rest of the money. It also gives us enough time to re-group and get everything signed, confirmed, paid and just simply done before we all go off on Easter Break.

We got this.

Although it seems more like 450 hours than 300 at this point.

And that doesn't include post either.