The Dag Journal

I know I keep yapping on about my film Flair, but the good news is that it's nearly finished. I have all the material in my hot little hands (footage, music and sound) and all I have to do now is mix the sound and the music together.

BUT is that all there is to it?

Now I could easily get the dialogue track and the music track and just stick them into the timeline then that would be it, alas there is one area of the sound mix I do focus some time on ... silence.

Being the absolute stickler for detail that I am, I thought I'd share with you a task that I perform when dealing with silence on a film.

Flair is a dialogue piece between two people, by its very nature there will be moments when neither character is speaking and we won't hear anything except the natural background - this is called ambient silence. On top of this there are times where I've included a shot of a character who isn't speaking and as a result the silence in that shot is "true silence", in other words there's nothing there at all, not even ambient sound.

Now you wouldn't believe this, but human ears CAN pickup the difference between true silence and ambient silence, especially when no other sounds (ie music) are present. This becomes apparent in films when there is a quiet scene and as soon as someone starts speaking you hear background noises behind their speech, in effect the audio mixers have just deleted the "silence" in between the speech points hoping no one notices.

So what's the fix for this?

When a film is being shot on a set, at some point the whole cast and crew will be told not to move or make any noise for between 1 or 2 minutes as the background or natural sound is recorded. The result of this is ambient silence.

So with my ambient silence track in hand, I had to play Flair through and just pinpoint moments of true silence (which occured during the editing process) so I could insert ambient silence - in some cases we're talking about half a second duration. Now true silence can be avoided during editing by copying ambient silence from another part of the film and just pasting it in - something I do a lot - but there are occasions where I will tackle it after fact, which is what occured this weekend.

The irony here is that Flair doesn't have any "true" silent moments as there is an ongoing fireplace sound effect playing in the background throughout most of the film so what I did was effectively unnecessary but to me it's a must do task and is all part of paying attention to detail ... even if you don't hear it    LOL

As an aside to this story, when we recorded ambient silence on location for my film ALONE, all the flies kept buzzing around the microphone which I thought ruined the recording, but in fact the fly noises were a constant factor throughout the story (especially as we saw them flying about) and as such were a bonus not a hinderance.


 

You things are looking up when your other half (Lynne in this case), puts her notice in to leave her current job of three years at the end of November and within a week after leaving she'll be working in a new place.

CADBURY!

Yep can ya believe it! She has a gig at the greatest chocky making place in the universe!

To confirm this, she was there yesterday going through the motions of getting things organised for her new employment and discovered just how cheap it is to buy their products (we're talking about 250g blocks on sale for $1 and that's WITHOUT staff discount!).

She came home last night with some goodies in hand as proof of how good this new job will be is so I had just one question "when do you start???"   : )

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I've kinda covered this off once before in a post, but I'm now seeing it from a different angle.

I watched The Breakfast Club again last night and noted that Vernon the school teacher has a real concern that when he's old the kids who he despises will be running the country.

Well the film was made in 1985 which was 24 years ago (cough) and the ages of the main characters in the film is probably within the 16-18 mark (so we'll say 17 for this discussion). This means they would now be around 41 which suggests they they could in fact be in politics and other positions of social importance.

So based on that theory, it does make you wonder if TBC had a sequel made right now using the same characters (preferably the same actors - despite the fact that in real life most of the cast were older than 18), how would it look. The kids would be in their 40s and Vernon would be in his 70s so it'd be interesting to see how they grew up and whether Vernon's opinion had changed.

To be fair though, Vernon's concern about the kids running the country was quite unjustified as none of them in the film (bar Bender) were delinquents, so in effect his assessment of them was quite off the mark.

Curiously though, I'd love to know what kids of today think of TBC and whether they relate to it.

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Continuing the thought of kids becoming adults, just refer back to the David Bowie song Changes which makes a point of saying that the "children that you spit on as they try to change their world ... are aware of what they're going through", well all those kids who were around when that song came out are now all adults so it makes you wonder if THEY themselves are now spitting on kids who are trying to change THEIR world.

Talk about food for thought!
 

Just thought I'd toss in a couple of quick Daggy updates to fill people in on the life of their favourite Dag.

As you know my latest short film flair has been on the go for a while, well the wheels have gained a lot of momentum in the past week as my colour grading was finished and delivered which was good and my music arrived from the US which was a bonus.

Now when it comes to having music made for a psychological thriller don't expect anything akin to the Sound of Music, far from it. This is very industrial and dark and probably borders more on being just "sound" rather than music as there is no tune or melody to speak of. In any event I was rapt to have it turn up even though I requested some changes to a couple of tunes and my composer said I should have the redone versions by next week.

On top of this my Sound Designer said that the audio for the film should also be completed by next week so it definately looks like the film should be finished by the end of October or early November. This is kinda funny considering The Psychology of Killing was in post producton for 15 months, whereas Flair will be finished within 5 months which is 4 months ahead of the planned schedule. Not a bad turn around at all.

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Saw a number plate on a car the other day WIZARD.

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Went to the Armageddon expo on the weekend and believe it or not, it was the first time I only went for a single day and that only lasted ... four hours.

Yep, with no guests of interest to me and with Star Walking not even having a table there for me to sit at, I actually found I was ready to jump ship not longer after arriving - there was even a distinct number of usual suspect friends absent from this event as well. I guess you can only walk around the dealers stalls so many times before it's time to do something more productive so I left early - a Dag first believe me.

Based on this event I'd have to say the great success stories of Armageddon events are already behind it.

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Got the letter from the finance people saying The Darth has been paid off so now it's official! The next thing to pay off is the credit card ($600) so that will be next month and then The Dags can get back into saving some dosh for home improvements next year - yes the focus now is the FRONT landscaping!

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Anyone watch the Don Lane tribute last night? Wasn't it great! Didn't it make you want to watch those eps all over again, especially when seeing your favourite celebs in their prime and looking great (Kirk Douglas, Liza Minnelli, Sammy Davis Jnr, Mohammed Ali just to name a few).

I had a chat to Lynne about this and mentioned that if it wasn't for the Vietnam War, the 70s might've been regarded as a fantastic decade for the world, however, that title probably went to the 80s as there was a distinct absence of global based conflicts involving us here in Oz. So you can see why the 80s are remembered by many so fondly, though in my case it's because I was a teenager discovering SF fandom which in turn led to whole new social existance which I still have today.

I found when watching portions of the Don Lane tribute we were reminded of this era which brought back many good memories and what really was a good time to be growing up.

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These days when it comes to birthday bashes most of the ones I'm invited to are 40ths as that's the average age of the people I know (I have one next week funnily enough and just attended another only two weeks ago) . So imagine how bizzaro it feels being invited to a 21st. Yep a mate's daughter turns 21 next week and boy am I going to feel like an oldie at THAT event!   LOL

Last Saturday's weather was really nice, it was sunny and very pleasant outside - totally uncharacteristic for a Winter's Day in August.

So what did The Dags do to saviour this natural loveliness? Yep, locked himself in a friend's house for 12 hours with the curtains closed playing Xbox with 5 other dudes. Honestly, how is it that we pick the worst day for this type of event. Alas fear not as there was much killin' to be had by all.   : )

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Both my sound designer and my music composer have their respective copies of Flair, so now I can sit back while they start to weave their magic.

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How much would you pay for a dinner at a restaurant? Well last Friday night I got the joy of going to a restaurant in Berwick for a birthday celebration where the cost was ... $90 Per head WITHOUT drinks. Yep, the $90 was JUST for the food. Was it worth it? I think so though one couldn't eat there very often as the sheer volume of chow on offer would not be good for the waistline. The good news is that their chocky mousse (with cream  : ) was top notch.

The real bummer though is that I missed the Geelong/Carlton match on TV ... where Carlton WON!

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Tonight sees the premiere of a new feature horror film at ACMI made by a mate of mine. For myself the interesting thing about this screening is that I was part of the crew for nearly all of it (even took two weeks off work to be involved) and since I never got to read the screenplay it'll be interesting to see how it has all come together especially as it's been in post production for over two years.

It'll definately be a big night tonight that's for sure, if anything it'll be good to see the cast and other crew members again.

BTW, if anyone saw Today Tonight last night where the dude and the woman had a musical stage show for their wedding, well the groom in that segment was the co producer of this film.


 

I just thought I'd toss in a quick update on my comings and goings as it's been a while.

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Saturday night saw Beky's big party bash and was, in my view at least, a MUST attend event. Unfortunately these days you don't get many large costumed parties so it was great that so many people turned up in theme for it. My vote for best costume went to PJ who was totally unrecognisable with the mo and afro hairdo, loved it.

The other great thing about the night was seeing people I haven't seen in ages. Funnily enough I think the last time I saw most of them was at another Beky and H party   LOL

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Saturday saw our film making group create a film for the 1515 film competition - the idea being that you have to make a film upto 15 minutes long within a 15 hour timeframe (starting at 8am and finishing at 11pm). As we found out, the 15 hour concept isn't strictly correct as you can write and prepare a whole stack of things in advance. All that's required on the day is the actual filming and editing of the production, along with a signature item and phrase to be included into the film to prove it was done on the day in question.

This particular production was about a zombie attack on a dude's house who's locked inside, naturally once zombies are introduced into a story then it can only be a stack of fun. Unfortunately filming was delayed for well over an hour as crew members were on set at the right time standing around doing nothing. For whatever reason we were missing an actor (there was only one in this film so effectively the whole cast was absent), a director and even a DoP. Needless to say without these key people productivity was kinda non existant which made us wonder why we got to the set so early in the morning.

Anyway things finally kicked off and once filming was completed it was in the hands of post production of which my job was sound designer/sound mixer. It took a few hours to get all done and completed, but I think the final result came out rather well - definately a good team effort.

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This weekend will see me screen Flair to a preview audience - essentially a couple of my film making buddies. 

Honestly this screening can't come around quick enough as I cannot tell for the life of me if the film is working or not. I've seen it so many times now that sometimes I look at it and think it's good and other times I look at it and think it's crap. Until I get some feedback from the guys on what they think, I'm really in a jam. Even if the responses are all negative it'll at least give me a starting point on knowing where to fix things up.

Once the screening is over, I can spend time fixing it all up before locking the edit and preparing for the next phase of post production which is sound and music. This will effectively put me two months ahead of schedule allowing for a possible 2009 completion date.

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Remember my long running saga with the noisy roller door? Well a new one has been ordered and we're now arranging a time to have it installed. It'll be nice to have a quiet door again as we effectively broadcast to the street whenever we are coming and going from the house, so keeping it quiet again will be good, but at the same time it's an expense I could've done without.

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Thanks for all the positive comments about Oneself. The film has kinda done the rounds and I'm glad people have enjoyed it. Ironically the funniest comment I get from people is "we thought one Dags was bad enough, but SIX of them!"   LOLOL