In Darkness We Trust

Holà good people!
Hm, I did chose Sunday/Monday for updating this blog as those where the days I am most likely to have the least to do. Hopefully that will turn true again in the near future...
Anyway, the last one and a half week has been good indeed! Other than my and Anette's usual balcony story- and scene-discussion-sessions, and the steady progress in the editing, I've now began recording the first real tests of my new Foley-locations and props! Armed with heavy boots ranging from everything between Doctor Martens, Gettagrip and Underground, to old sneakers and practically every kind of shoe I own, to creaky leather, heavy cloth and chains, I am now seriously putting my new locations to the test!
I'd like to say "Gee, whoever could have imagined that his movements would sound like this!"...but quite frankly, the bodily movement-sounds where actually the only things I actually had a fully developed concept of the very second I pushed "Record" the very first time, and unlike absolutely everything else it actually hasn't changed at all since then! Sure, the balance of things will change a lot as the movie calls for it, but the basic design for the sound of the protagonist is all based in my concept of the most interesting personal Foley I could imagine.
I seriously fucking love creaks and heavy textures!!!

Men Without Scripts (Unsafety Dance)

Davs good people!
Right now I'm sitting here waiting for the batteries to recharge, looking forward to tonight's recording sessions at some long since forgotten and heavily decayed bombshelters and stuff! During the week I and Anette has spent a lot of time sitting on the balcony in the summer heat, smoking like chimneys, and discussing scenes, monsters, and timeline frantically.
Not rarely it follows this pattern: I tell idea. She doesn't like. I disagree. She explains. I agree.
The longer version: Proudly I tell her the idea for a scene I just made up. She doesn't like something in it and suggest I ditch it, or certain aspects of it. I disagree and consider going along with the original plan, thinking it's just a matter of taste. She explains her reasons after giving it a little further thought. I agree fully and rebuilds the scene from scratch, but with the bad parts removed and solved by other means.
This thing is by no means new to me. Before Anette proved her tremendous talent in listening and understanding stories, I checked ideas I wasn't sure about by making temporal edits using existing footage and temp-recordings of dialogue I recorded myself in the livingroom to get a feel of the scene. Took hours, and I had to sleep on it to know for sure how I actually felt about it. With Anette it takes minutes: I get an idea, or tells her one I've been thinking of lately. She disses it. I find a new idea that really truly works. Much rejoice. All within 5-10 minutes.

Mother Of Invention - Darkworld Rises

Howdy people!
It has taken well over two months, and it was just a few days ago someone figured out it MIGHT be due to a system bug at my provider that could easily be remedied by a simple fucking restart of their software, but now I finally have Internet again!!!
Well, I'm pissed off, and this isn't the only thing they've completely dropped the ball on as the connection has been unreliable and tired for quite some time now.You get what you pay for I guess. First thing tomorrow now that I'm not bound to them anymore will be to cancel my internet subscription and order the same one my girlfriend has and loves. 100/100 fiber connection no less! Hopefully that will help me keeping my weekly Sunday nite/Monday morning-updates for now on.

Anyhoo, though I didn't have an online connection, surfing the web and updating the blog was more or less the only thing related to this movie I couldn't do, so we've been working every bit as hard as before. If not harder! The last week has seen the greatest revision and leap forward for the project since it first changed from a two minute short only intended to promote me as a sound designer to a full length feature film!
When I said "we", that includes my beloved girlfriend who now functions as my trusty sounding board!

Frankly, over the years I've had great difficulty finding good sounding boards when it comes to story for numerous reasons. Don't get me wrong, I do have a lot of people around me that I know for a fact I can trust and rely upon, highly creative and professional people indeed. I often get invaluable feedback and input from both actors, cinematographers, directors and producer to name but a few, input that has been of tremendous help for me, but those are mainly technical aspects. When it comes to story, Anette has a (for me) unique way of seeing things that I've never thought of before, resulting in among other things the ending getting heavily revised and improved!
I will not at this time say what her perspective was as it would hint too much at important plot-points, but it will probably be pretty apparent during the movie.

Living Jelly