SOUND

The prozac scene has been changed to valium as Gary told me that prozac didnt exist in the 1960's! Also the Cog. behavioral ther. is just behavioral therapy now because that too came later. Im not sure if pole dancing existed but that's tough because i can't change that! I need to get after effects to finish that so i can't do anything visually until that is ready.
Gary came over and i showed him my film without sound. He said it has a 1970's kid's tv show feel to it!! I think the beginning does, I wanted it to be like Bagpuss so I must be succeeding. We recorded a rough voice over in Logic, using a headset and mic i bought, so he could get an idea of the rhythm. I had to cut a few things out of the narration to get a better fit with my editing. I had written it before the film was made and Gary pointed out a few grammatic errors!
I went through each scene and told Gary ideas for the sound and gave him the scenes I wanted him to do sound for. The opening titles are going to be little 'pops' to fit with the animation. When 'tormenture' comes up I want a 'Hitchcock' thriller type of sound. Gary will do the dream sequence. I asked him to include paranoia, clumps of laughter and whispers, and weird sounds to reflect the surrealism of dreams.
I am doing sound effects such as bed sheets moving, stamping feet on bed and any sounds that will add to the reality of the film. I am recording V.O at conservatoire to get a good sound and quality.
Gary may do the contemporary dance scenes, I want drum beats for the Graham and experimental sounds for Cunningham. He is going to research these choreographers to get ideas....I also mentioned John Cage. The pole dance will have an existing track like I chose for the LSD scene. Maybe some Jefferson airplane...'plastic fantastic lover'!
The credits at the end will have me singing a Zombies song (Greg will hate it I expect) it's called 'The way I feel inside' and fits perfectly with my theme. I will just sing one verse in mono.

LAST VISUAL TOUCHES

Well now that everything is in FCP I now have to tweak, just to get transitions and effects looking good, as well as making sure the edits are as near to perfect as an amateur filmmaker can get! The dream sequence effects....whirlpool, was repeated on the edges so that there was no hard edge, it looks great.
The final clip of the movie was swapped around a bit. The first clip of it had some footage on that I didn't want to fade into so I put it at the end of the last clip and shuffled then a bit until they looked good. I placed a soft focus effect on the 'mirror' clips of me and Sindy as well as adjusting the contrast so they looked similar.
I have realised that you learn how to film more effectively through editing. You have to make sure you have more footage on the beginning and ends of clips so that you can add transitions. I never knew before (it seems obvious now) that you could not fade between 2 clips if you only had the footage that was there and you had not cut any off. So I had to cut off a few frames either side of the 2 clips to place the transition on. It reads 'insufficient content' when there is not enough footage or the transition shows up as really small and does nothing...that's when you realise.
So, the finishing touches have been added now. I chose to place a kaleidoscope effect on the prozac scene, going into the 60's club to reference the era. I imported a cd track from 'The Zombies' for the club scene. It is an instrumental and fits well with the dancing. I opened the track with i tunes at first and tried importing them from there into FCP but they wouldn't let you choose them. I then just dragged them from the cd onto the desk top and they were already an Aiff file so I could import them.
I tried exporting the whole film as a movie file again to play on my pc but an error kept coming up. Nick changed the settings which then caused the film to be rendered again. It still wouldn't export it, saying error...disk space so I think the film is taking up a lot of room now! I just hope I can export it ok to put on to dvd.
Now I have to sort out the rest of the sound for the film. Friday I an meeting Gary to go back into Logic audio to do the dream sequence music. I need to book the studio to record the animation, which Nicola said she could be in the desk room as I am in the other speaking into the mic.
Now my essay is out of the way, the next month will be spent on the sound.

FINISHED

Well the last of the filming has been done I think! I filmed 11 Sindys each holding a letter I had written on a piece of paper in fancy font to spell my name. The backdrop was a lovely piece of retro fabric. I filmed both in colour and black and white to see which looks best when editing.
Today I also made some outfits from paper and black bin bags to re-create Allen Jones' 'women as furniture' to include 'Hatstand' 'Table' and 'Chair' from 1969. This was firstly for my essay, to put into my picture book but I will use the pics maybe for the cover of the DVD. I have been editing all of my footage and putting it in the correct order. The MAC was annoying me today because it said that there wasn't enough render space and to free up the disk! It still wasn't playing as well as it should so I will have to check it out to see my footage clearly. A few of the clips won't allow me to add transitions so I need to sort that too.
I put some nice kaleidoscope effects on a few of the clips: 3 on the prozac scene and 1 on the titles. I want to add some effects to the mirror scene where I am in it, it looks a bit raw at the moment. The pole dance needs a background, all of the sound has to be recorded too!
The longest job today was to change the clips where I had cropped them. I had to zoom them all to match and then crop the same so each clip ran smoothly into the next. I had to compromise with the chill out scene; I had cropped on the left by 10 but to zoom it in that much would lose a lot of the edges of the scene so I cropped to 5 and will have to put up with the bit of sindy stand in shot!

LAST SCENE DONE

I have just filmed the last scene! Again in black and white, I have gone back to the first scene of Sindy in bed. The whole film is about Sindy contemplating about her life and thoughts so each scene is about her thinking about what she has done and why, so the final scene goes back to her being in bed, after she had the bad dream.
I have animated her stamping her feet, shaking her head, pulling the blanket back over her to flop back into bed because she doesn't feel like getting out of bed to face the day and she's become so deluded that she now questions which one out of awake and sleep is the reality and how much should she have faith in either.
I have done close up shots of her head and the poster together as well as zooming out to see more of the scene. I will now play around with the sindys holding letters spelling my name and then that should be all for the filming.

ME ON SCENE!

Today I have filmed Sindy looking in the mirror at herself, her body image, showing how looks are important to her. I am looking back from the mirror. First I set the scene. My bedroom has blank walls and a white shelf at the back of my bed so I used this as it is neutral to build onto. I placed a large picture of Hitchcock's 'The Birds' (1963) at the back for a reference of the decade the film is set in. A Vespa calendar is on the wall and some shelves with various books. There is also a pic of marilyn monroe and a phallic shaped cactus plant!
I placed a small pic frame over the lens, which is not on the photo, to look as though I am looking in a mirror when I look in the camera. I wore an original 1960's mod dress, a blonde wig and lots of make-up with huge false eyelashes. I did several takes of me
looking in the viewer and camera, putting on lipstick and just generally checking hair and dress, etc. I was going to have Sindy approaching the mirror and then a backshot of her with me looking back at her but decided to film her looking into the camera, and I will blur the image to fade into my face. The last scene to do is the end where she gets back into her bed. I can then focus on the editing and sound.

PLAYING WITH PROZAC

With the title animation scenes, I sped them up and reversed them to how I wanted them to spell. I had to crop and zoom in in final cut, where the cam had picked up more than I could see through the viewer. I captured the prozac footage in 3 stages. The spin, animation and cut ins. I cut out all footage of my fingers spinning the cushion and also cropped and zoomed. I used dissolve transitions on the cuts i made, which gave it a real dizzy, 'out of focus/mind' look. After messing with the speeds I was really pleased with how the shoot had worked out. The animation with the pills worked well.
I also rotated the last clip of the dream sequence and put a ripple transition on it to go into the next scene. I didn't need a spinning effect after all! I cut the Graham clip as I had looped it to play again but the join was not right.
Tomorrow I am filming Sindy looking at me in the mirror, so I better get my false eyelashes and rouge out!

MONDAY MONDAY

Firstly, I am annoyed because I just wrote my blog and then highlighted it all and pressed return. So there it went! I am now starting again! Idiot!
Having 3 more scenes left to film I decided to do the prozac scene. After speaking to someone who had been on it for depression i learnt that suicide attempts and inertia are common when taking the drug so kept those ideas in mind when creating the set. The scene is part of the story when Sindy has tried various things to distract her endless negativity. I decided to film in black and white for a classic and sombre feel so chose the props to work accordingly. Sindy was in a lemon, lace nightie and gown called 'Dreamy Lace 1976. To the right is a newspaper reading '...the ups and downs' from 'Shopping in the rain' 1963. To the left is a glass on it's side and some pills (sweeteners). The scene shows how Sindy is in a state of inertia and deliriousness after taking her prozac and I have tried to show how she is feeling. I lay her on a 60's style cushion with her hand to head on her side. She remains still throughout. It is the cushion that moves. I slowly turned it, first the focus on the head, then we see the glass and pills, her legs and then the paper. The scene keeps going round, it looks like a suicide, which reflects one of the biggest side-affects of the drug. I then dropped some sweeteners onto her and animated them to swirl around the pattern of the cushion for a surreal element. The glass 'hoovers' them up and stands up in the centre of the flower. The pills have become the pollen, (sindy is the flower and the prozac is her centre) metaphotically speaking. I cut in to her head, paper and glass shot.
I have also animated the opening titles today. The first is 'A film by' and i used Sindy accessories such as parasols, shoes, hats, bouquets, coat hangers and many more. They will randomly appear to spell out the words. For the title, which I have decided to call 'Tormenture' inspired from the 'torment' poster I placed in Sindy's bedroom scene, is also animated, but using clothes. The title is a combination of the words torment, torture and men so it reflects perfectly how she is feeling and it fits with the themes I am using. It took ages to rummage through the endless bags of Sindy clothes I have to find the most maliable! Each letter will appear 1 by 1, first to spell torture and the 'men' will appear altogether, in red.
I tried different ways of writing my name to go after 'a film by' but animating it by hand writing was too hard for the time I have to do it. I even squirted ketchup to spell it but it looked a mess. I think I will have Sindys holding a letter each.