A Taste Of Things To Come

Back From The Living, Time To Kick Ass and Chew Bubble Gum Again

I've been having a little break from this project to do some work, and move. First to a new apartment, and before I was even finished with that I had to move my studio as well. I really really hate to move.

Seriously, did this bastard just moon me??

Well, shit happens. My old place is nothing but stems and bare concrete walls nowadays, and though it would had been nice to do some recording there in the dead of night, I've already recorded what I need from another identical building, and this one'll be stuffed with gear anyway. Pretty hard to justify to the viewers why there would be reconstructive machines, power-supplies and general gear in hell...though some might argue that such a place would be a natural habitat for contractors with powertools and a taste for early mornings anyway.


I wasn't happy with this forced break, but truth be told, it was probably exactly what I needed! If not to charge the batteries so to say, after all the last two months have been among the most stressful ones in years, so to get a healthy distance to the project.
Sure, even more truth be told, it meant some seriously painful realizations when I looked through the entire project again like it was the first time (a very useful aspect of ADHD I can tell you. And I'm not kidding), after all this was originally recorded with a really crappy camera, bordering to being useful at all.
Previously, as I went, I concentrated on the different sequences to make them consistent and fluent. That is indeed a good thing, but frankly I forgot about all the less then impressive parts. I had no clue what to do with them - should I process them in any way, or discard them in favor of improved recordings of the same thing altogether? Frankly, that last choice was in far too many cases not even possible, the places I've visited was in almost all cases lost forever, some of them even razed or in other ways obliterated as soon as the very next day after I was there, so...no. I had to make use of the scenes or do something else completely.

Art In The Unexpected - Basics of Sound Design

Yebo!
I often get the question what differs sound design from sound editing, and truth be told, there are different answers to that question depending on who you ask. Which regretfully is the reason why we can't win any Oscar as sound designers, only as sound editors and such.
My definition follows a pretty common opinion - it's the art of using both form and function to reach a desired goal by creating what's needed in respect for what it's intended for right there, right then. Where a sound editor might figure this nifty library door-handle sound might suit this here scene just fine, a designed approach to this could very well be based on the anxiety of the lead, striding nervously through the house, grabbing the handle with fear of what might be on the other side, meaning a careful grab of the handle with a slight grinding noise as it frictions against the un-lubed escutcheon plate, a snarling metallic yet discrete creak as it slowly turns the internal mechanism, and a firm, yet threatful, dark "clack" as the latch unlocks from the door-frame. All within approx 2 to 5 seconds, yet telling more in this time than words would ever do.

From Starlight (Mattias Titus Paar, 2011)

Sound design can also be an over-all approach. I often gets assignments where I'm to design entire soundscapes for entire feature length movies, and in these cases ambiance is a very key element for the very same reasons - a scene beginning very calmly, for example, with two friends walking through a fairly calm yet noisy midsummer urban surrounding, might very well begin with nothing but distant traffic and happy birds. Maybe some crickets or grasshoppers (I like crickets and they are most definitely found even in most urban settings with at least some kind of green areas). As the scene progresses, the two friends beginning to grind, and eventually annoyance turns into hostility.
Without even the audience noticing, I've snuck in dissonant ambient sounds gradually, replacing the happy birds and grasshoppers with crow-birds, dissonant metallic sounds, and droning aging fans. Completely changing the tone of the scene without anyone realizing, a feat almost impossible to do with music as we're extremely good at interpreting musical material instantly.

Brothers In Grime

Joy! I'm just back after a short but VERY rewarding filming with Brother Henrik! This is actually the first time we've ever worked together, but not the last! He did extremely well, and honour the production with a really really creepy Apparition. Dunnu where to put him yet, but that's a later problem.
I, and, occasionally my team, have been to several really nasty locations during this one and a half year this movie has been active, but this place took the cake. Not only that it was in danger of crumpling and collapsing with us in it - it was a very small long-since abandoned shed, probably once a summer house I guess - or that the floor was about to give under our feet. Because it did anyway. Every singe step we took. Good thing it was only one floor and no cellar. What made this even more unpleasant was that the place was stuffed with age-old rusty and decaying crap and signs of past visitations.
We kept the few scenes we shot outside and in the only safe place in the entire house. There were no way in hell we'd walk around there without armored shoes and combat gear. Or with. What we did get was totally awesome though!

/CvanC

Beauty in Grime

Yebo!
Today will be a hallelujah-moment for me! For months, I have prepared my kitchen, especially the stove, for a few seconds of film in the final movie. It looks seriously nasty, but today will be the big day.
I've put my new gear on some serious tests - first I willfully violated the "keep away"-sign on the roadworks outside my window (they can kiss my hairy ass, they woke me up at 7am today with a fucking oversized caterpillar feet machine-mounted rivet-gun at full blast) (may they all burn in hell), then two days ago a respectful visit at some kind of...I have no clue what it once was, either an abandoned and heavily decayed warehouse or some kind of factory perhaps, and now an ancient (abandoned) factory this night. Also heavily decayed. And the new equipment worked wonders!
I've let every single pot I ever used during this time overflow while cooking, meaning I've got a good crust on the surface, but it will not truly take the cake 'till I put the final touch on it - a slimy mixture including the result of lots of chicken-wings deep-fried in what once was corn-oil. I now have twice as much oil as I had when I first started, and it's mixed with several other secret ingredients to get that just right look which will look so good smeared all over my poor stove!
This will be painful to clean up tonight....
The things one does for art :-)

/CvanC

Life, The Universe, And Everything

I originally wrote this on Facebook after some rather frustrating events, but I publish it here as well as it is, as part of my personal philosophy, also therefore somewhat part of my movie.

Hm...life is weird and repetitive...
I the beginning, we never were.
Then we gets ripped into existence, eating , screaming, pooping, having no clue who or where we are. And we need help eating, we're talking incomprehensive, and wear diapers.
Next, we're convinced we know everything, and do our best to tell everyone else how wrong they are.
In out 30's/40's most of us realize we really do not know anything in comparison to the shear fucking vastness of reality and truth, and just tries our best to do the best of the situation and our lives. Especially the career.
Next, we know for sure we knows best, and everyone else is full of shit. I mean, with a life of experiences, how could we be wrong?
Then, we have no clue who or where we are, just eating, ranting, pooping. Yet again we need help eating, we're talking incomprehensive, and wear diapers.
Finally, ripped from existence, we are no more.

/CvanC

Under The Stairs - The Cutting of A Broken Line

Yebo good people!
Piece by piece, cut by cut, everything is steadily falling into place. Over the past year this movie has seen several revisions, including some really heavy ones, with the most notable advance being between first and second version as I changed the format completely for both picture quality, ambition, and length altogether. Sound has always been intended to be top-notch though, no change there.
As a mainly improvised movie, any new idea, technical advancement or notable location gave new ways to proceed the story, sometimes pushing the entire movie to take a new direction even I couldn't had predicted before that. I was fully aware, even from the very beginning, what my choice in style would mean in technical terms, and that there would often be no way that I could predict exactly how the material would end up in the final movie. That meant that I, already from the very first shot, had to make sure everything was shot in a way that it could be assembled into a serious movie intended for an actual release without ever compromising with the scenes, and never letting it appear static or staged. The camera is always in motion and there isn't any (visible) cuts at all, yet, I'm proud to say that I never had to revise the original method as it never failed me in any way. It was indeed never revised, but it was eventually exchanged though as I found new and vastly improved ways of shooting this movie.
That also meant everything I had recorded for about two months ultimately had to be scrapped.

Not exactly health-food, but good for the morale.

The original methods wasn't discarded altogether though, many of the original tricks and techniques traded well to the new format, and gave me several new ways of splicing the movie together. But where the original photo, due to the limitations of my then equally limited recording-equipment, called for a pretty limited form of processing, the new photage did not. I not only managed to reach a dark, gritty, unforgiving photo I'm actually proud of, in the process I managed to untie the limitations something tremendously and opening up doors I though was practically welded shut! In a figure of speech, of course.

Happiness In Simplicity - The visual effects of A Broken Line

By returning to basics, you can actually make remarkable visual effects with virtually no means! Sure, you can't make a new Transformers using too much legacy stuff, there's a reason the technological advancements is called "progression" and not "recession", but letting old cafts fall into oblivion just because they're old is as stupid as rejecting new technology just because it scares you!

If anyone had told me a year ago "Soon you are going to make your debut movie as a director using no script, no CGI, using a cellphone as a camera...and by the way (and mind you, my normal work is sound designer and soundie, I spend my days preaching the importance of good location sound) - you will not have as much as a single sample of location sound in the entire final film." (a sample being 1/96000th of a 96KHz digital sound) I would say "You're nuts, noone is that stupid. Whatever you're smoking, kick it, you have lost enough braincells."

Yet, I will not write an actual script, I could never afford CGI of high enough quality to make it worthwhile even if I wanted to, my camera is my old iPhone (but using an app called Filmic Pro instead of the nauseating built-in ditto)...and I will not have a single sample of location audio in the final mix. And I'm very happy with it for this movie!
Still, over time, visual effects did become more and more important as the simple flick evolved into a real movie intended for international release.

What has occupied my thoughts the most last week is quite frankly the effects. I have edited a lot of material, and I now have a very clear view of what I have, what I need, and where it's going. Right now it's mostly different locations roamed by the protagonists, as well as the collection of monsters I have already made (still mostly using my crude but effective animatronics, mechanical effects, and found stuff, though now also with the first real actors, for example The Lisa Ghost (called Lumaphobe as it's invisible in light, topmost picture), meaning the most important pieces of this humongous jigsaw-puzzle is practically all there for me to get a very good overview indeed.

The first cut of the sprawling but dead district called Machineworld is more or less done already, as is the Hellish and decaying Inferno Halls. It was some of the first districts I ever made, meaning I have had a lot of time thinking about it. In the world of the dead, an area being dead itself shouldn't necessarily be confused with it being neither inactive nor unpopulated. On the contrary, the echoes of the past leaves remnants in the present that will never fade.

This is quite frankly not really an action-movie - The protagonist, as a carnal being, has no ways of defending himself against ethereal creatures, and the hostile environments leave little to no shelter against hazards. Even with the help of his companion, he must avoid confrontation at all cost and shun all light as far as possible. With that said, the beings is a very important part of the film, and must be treated accordingly.

Courtesy Of The Skinner

I'm back online again. Summer has come to its end, and I can finally shoot new scenes again. Living in the lower subarctic means there are no night at summer, dusk just changes into dawn without passing an actual night in between, leaving approximately one hour of at least enough darkness for me to be able to compensate with low exposure.
With that said, there has still been a lot made during these two months since I last updated this blog. Maybe not as much as I could have hoped for, I had an extreme allergic reaction to what I, after far too long, found out was due to mold from a silently leaky sink, making me very sick and wondering what the hell was wrong with me, but though I was far too tired to write any coherent blog-post , I've spent a lot of lime developing the soundscape and editing the footage. Which actually are becoming very impressive in both quantity and, considering it being recorded with a rather unimpressive cellphone, quality!
For a long time I had some difficulty finding a way to reconcile with the rather limited photage, but as I found a new program to replace the horrible built-in app, I learned to use its normally negative aspects as valuable tools for my new style, a style with absolutely no influence from other movies, but based all in what can be done here and now! I absolutely love working this way, you never know what you'll get!!!

We have such sights to show you

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!!!