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

But the story is far from the only thing that has leaped forward something extremely lately. Setting clear limitations in not allowing myself to use neither CGI nor After Effects (all effects must be doable directly in Premiere Pro and editing) means I have to find other ways of doing things, mostly in-camera, and that has lead to some truly amazing results! See, a very common problem with CGI is that happy accidents and previously unintended (though kick-ass) results are virtually non-existent the better you get at it, whereas in photo and live audio-recording, anything can happen. Also, it's not as fun.

My new locations are nothing short of pure gold! See that cutie on the picture above? That's called "Living Jelly", and is one of the new creatures that inhabit Darkworld, living in walls, being generally really fucking hazardous to be around. As a kind of Ghost/Spirit/Hellish story, ethereal and daemonic beings might be the first things to come in mind when thinking of something like this, but truth is the whole place is extremely hostile, and everything from holes in the walls to the walls themselves might very well kill you in ways you don't even wanna think of. A thing that my new locations enhance tremendously!

Who's laughing now?

Also, one of the most important things in the entire movie, has finally been solved to my full satisfaction. In a movie mostly based in sound and the darkness, Foley is basically the most important aspect of acting period, and as such, it absolutely MUST be credible and natural sounding. To reach this goal I use a mixture of techniques including "Worldizing" (re-recording sounds through a speaker in a natural setting) and on-location Foley-works. I am however far from the first one using these techniques. For example, the sound of Darth Vader's footsteps was recorded on location in culverts and the Golden Gate Bridge, and the cheering during the fights in Fight Club was recorded using Worldizing studio-recordings.
What has been a very stressful thing for me living in central Gothenburg (noisy city) with no car and few locations to chose from has been finding a place that both sounds good and are completely noise-free. I found it in the most unlikely part of town I could think of, and one of the noisiest areas I've ever been to! Being completely encased in reinforced bomb-proof concrete, heavy air-tight inch-thick steel doors in pairs (the air-pocket between them acts as an effective sound insulation), and with very well designed ventilation, this place proved to be one of the quietest non-studio places I've ever been to.
Happy happy joy joy!!!

/CvanC

Evil. Just look at it.

PS:
"Do or do not, there is no try."
 -Yoda

"Only Siths deals in black and whites."
 -Obi-1 Kenobi

Just saying...
DS.