I Love Luci

One post in over a month.  Neglectful to say the least.  Sorry.

What progress do I have to report.  In truth, not a great deal.  Things have slowed to an unbearable pace as we jockey for position in ever-increasingly congested schedules at post-facilities.  The future is bright however, I am pleased to say.

The next step, subtitling parts of the film, is underway and following this we only have the title sequence to do before we are home and dry.

I have never done subtitling before so I am keen to see how the process unfolds.  Unsurprisingly, we start with a transcription of the film.  I decided to do this myself rather than allow anyone else to do it.  I'm sure I'll have to do some tidying up but I want the dialogue to be as faithfully represented as possible.  I'm sure I'll run into some timing issues but that bridge can be crossed as and when.  For now it's transcription, that leaves room for change later on.

What next?

I am looking for exceptional short scripts as well as being in the throes of writing another short myself.  If there is a salutary lesson to have been gained from this experience it is this: have your next project as close to 'go' as possible when you are getting ready to go into production.  It takes a long time to set things up so the more projects you can have in a reasonable position to put into production the better.

It is now 8 months since I stood in the production office prepping I Love Luci and I have not been behind a camera since then.  This is a difficult position to be in and I am still looking for my next project.  For those of you following a similar path to mine that is the only warning I have - at this point!

On another note entirely I would like to say a big CONGRATULATIONS to David Mackenzie for SPREAD (Ashton Kutcher, Anne Heche) a funny, sexy, confident, stylish and daring portrait of a peculiar and all too believable Los Angeles scene.  Unmissable.  Top work sir.

The Vue chain of cinemas are trying an interesting approach to marketing their new release.  They're not telling you what it is.  No poster, no spiel, no clue.  Just an invitation to buy a ticket to the cinema for a surprise they guarantee will entertain.



I thought this sounded like a refreshing idea so I'm going to go along and see for myself.  I'll let you know of it was worth not having the hype.

Tickets for all the performances can be purchased at www.myvue.com/mysterymovies/.  They take place on the 5th of May across the UK.

"I Love Luci" is getting closer and closer to completion.

We are currently working on the titles and credits, plus a couple of other experiments, before embarking on the final part of the process: going to print.

All the cards are approved so we just need to get a timing for the credits so that the sound for the end roller can be finished off.  After that we will have very nearly completed the film.

In the meantime, here's an example of one of the title cards:

...first fall.

There is no love for Luci at this years Oberhausen .  This is, of course, disappointing.  However, it's not all doom and gloom round theses parts as the fantastic Plane Days, directed and shot by Ben Kracun (DP on I Love Luci) & Ewan McNicol, is in competition there so we are very pleased that a close friend has secured a place.

If you would like to see Plane Days it is screening at the London International Documentary Festival (LIDF) on 29th March. 

I recommend it, it's a gem:

I am once again looking for help.

Top of the agenda at the moment is the title sequence for I Love Luci and I am trying to find out what the font used on prescription labels is.

Here's a photo of a label.  If anyone can tell me what the font is I would be most grateful:

Big Ideas (don't get any)

The blog is looking a bit messy at the moment because I'm tinkering with it to get it to look semi-decent and be halfway navigable.  Please bear with me while I continue to ferret around in the site's engine room, breaking things and then trying to mend them again.

I have appealed for help in this area before.  If there are any experts out there who would like to answer some questions or could spare a moment to share some coding tips with me then please feel free to leave a comment and I'll get in touch immediately.

Trying to fathom this stuff myself is getting tiresome and I make very slow progress on my own - trial and error has never been the quickest route to getting results in my experience.

Pardon the mess.

We are very near the end of the mix and it is a beautiful sounding thing indeed. 

All that's left to do is make the track at the end sit nice and loud and clear and give everyone the feeling we want them to have as they leave the cinema.

We have the wonderful King Creosote and Domino Records to thank for our final track, I won't tell you which one it is suffice to say you should go out and buy everything KC have ever published.  I am a fan for sure.

Their latest oeuvre is available via all the usual portals and some sample listening to treat your lugs to can be found on Myspace.

   Click here to buy the album on iTunes
 

Here is an amusing thing, the nominees for the music video award at the weekend have been written up by a TV channel in LA with We Are The Physics topping the bill. 

I am currently in Savalas doing the foley for I Love Luci.  So I thought I'd do a live blog to cover the event a there is quite a bit of sitting about and just watching for me in this process.

I am away from my on computer so you'll have to do without photos for now I'm afraid.  I'll try and describe what's going on:

I'm sitting in a booth with the sound recordist watching little snippets of the final cut pop up on the screen.  We watch it back and forth and the foley artist decides on what kind of implement is best to match the sound of the picture.

Our booth has a huge window looking on to the foley artist in a studio that is not too dissimilar to most sound studios, but, it has pits in the floor with different types of road surface, floor surface and anything else you might find underfoot. There is a back room with bikes, cutlery, pots, different kinds of shoes, cloth, glass, metals etc etc.  All necessary for replicating the rich tapestry of sounds that surround us every day as we wonder through the world, and of course for making sounds from other worlds too.

We will be spending the next few hours shaking old bike frames, rattling tea spoons and rubbing bits of leather against and an old shirt.  We even have a dog we can record of necessary.

"We use the three beeps system here at Savalas...", Iain's opening gambit to the start of each ADR session with an actor begins with a brief explanation of what they will hear in their 'cans'.  Three beeps and then they begin talking, hopefully in sync with the picture on the screen.

Yesterday we had 3 of our cast in to re-do and in some cases re-invent some of their lines.  We started with Sanjeev Kohli, a very well known Scottish actor and ADR veteran judging by the way things went. 

As with all the cast we got some real gems but they didn't happen where I was expecting them.

Colin Harris was next up, followed by Camilla Rutherford.  In both cases the covering of the original lines was a technical pursuit, trying to recreate the performance from the shoot and while interesting wasn't nearly as fun as discovering the stuff that we could add to enhance the shape of the film.  This largely came in the form of laughs, breaths, sighs, coughs, audible shrugs and other minutae.  This stuff was great fun to do and it was a real pleasure to be afforded the opportunity to do this level of detailed work.

Many thanks to all involved:

Cast:
Colin Harris, Sanjeev Kohli and Camilla Rutherford.

Technical:
Recordist: Iain Anderson; Sound Designer: Douglas MacDougall; Voice Coach: Ros Stein

The last person I would like to thank is Joe, the night security guard at Film City Glasgow, who very kindly allowed us to interrupt his rounds to come and do a line that I hadn't put in the script.  The line covers a security guard at the end of the film - a nice authentic touch we thought, and a great voice.

NB There will be a few crap photos to follow, I promise.

...or ADR or whatever term you like to use is happening today.

We will be in Savalas all day and night trying to get tiny little bits of dialogue just right to match with location sound and in some cases alter the performance to fit the now slightly different story.  The process is covered in the comprehensive little video below courtesy of the encyclopeaodic blog from King Kong.

This is very exciting, my first time doing proper ADR and also being reunited with the cast after all this time. 

Of course, it also means that we are nearing the end of the making of I Love Luci.  Which I'm pretty glad of too, I can't wait to see a finished film and we're getting very close.

Here's the wee vid of them re-recording the dialogue on King Kong...

I Love Luci has been mentioned on the Scottish Screen website and their latest press release regarding short films coming out of Scotland this year.

"I Love Luci is a witty, tender tale of missing teeth, unrequited love and one dog's potential to shape the fortunes of a couple destined never to be together.  The film is written and directed by Colin Kennedy and produced by Brian Coffey for Sigma Films, one of the most exciting production companies in Scotland. "

Scottish Screen Feb 2009

Brian and myself went along to a screening of a number of the films yesterday.  It's great to be alongside such a talented bunch and some very good short films coming out of Scotland at the moment.

It's probably not a good idea to talk about favourites but I'm going to anyway. 

On the program yesterday were two stand out bits of work: The Bedfords by Henry Coombes,  a brilliantly surreal film about Sir Edwin Landseer, the painter, and an affair he's said to have had with the Duchess of Bedford; and a very touching documentary about Alzheimers called Irene by Lindsay Goodall.

Another fantastic film not shown yesterday but due to be finished any moment now is Believe by Paul Wright (Advance Party II).

"Believe is a compassionate and poignant portrait of one man's grief and desperation following the death of his wife. Paul Wright, highlighted as an exciting new talent by Screen International's Star of Tomorrow programme. He has already won fans and a BAFTA Best Short Film Award with his student film Hikikomori. Believe is produced by Rhianna Andrews of Young Films."

Scottish Screen, Feb 2009

All I have to do now is finish I Love Luci and then people can start seeing it!

PS Thanks to Sue Upton for mentioning Luci on her blog.  If anyone else wants to link here please feel free to do so.

The awards are on Friday the 13th.  I think I'll wear my whistle with Friday the 13th embroidered inside.  Maybe it'll bring Brian and I some luck. 

We'll just have to wait and see...

These are bloody great.



In preparation for our trip to Berlin (NB Luci is not screening at the Berlinale) I thought it would be a good idea to have a business card - all very stuffy and old school I know but it is still a thing that makes sense and is a little something for someone to take home - just ask Hugh about the virtues of business cards.

A couple of years ago moo cards were all the rage so I thought I'd take a look and see if they are still around.  And they are.  This is so simple, so cool and so perfect in its conception it's irresistible.  So for those of you as slow on the take up as me I recommend getting yourself some of these if you need a business card.  What's more, it's cheap enough to get them for something specific and then get a new design for the next thing you're going to.

In the absence of having anything that I can really talk about freely at the moment and the constant promises to update these pages I thought I'd share some of the stuff I did to prep for the shoot.

First up is this tiny snippet of video of a doll lying in a compromising position on the grass in my garden.



I had planned to shoot a drunken sequence for the film with a continuously revolving camera to try and enhance its drunken/romance/dreamlike qualities, but it's a minefield when it comes to editing - trying to work out of the usual rules.

Although this particular little bit of vid is a perfect example of how not to do something it was just enough to help me realise that I could use a revolving camera if I wanted to, without too much fear of what I might have to work with in the edit.

In the end time and stock got the better of me though and I just had to think on my feet for another way to shoot the scene.  It worked out just as well as my original idea and only took 40 minutes to shoot.  There's a lesson to be learned in there somewhere.

We got a brief and totally inaccurate mention in the Telegraph online today because Camilla (Rutherford) is working in Monaco this weekend:

The decorous actress has just forsaken the rainy streets of Glasgow, where she had been making a grimy film about heroin addiction, for sunny Monaco, where she is to be the president of the jury of the Angel Film Awards at the Monaco International Film Festival this weekend.

Telegraph.co.uk

Our film is not 'grimy' or about heroin addiction.  It does star Camilla though so they got that right.  Hopefully next time they'll mention the title...

Monday heralded the arrival of our editor, Jake Roberts. 

Jake and I have been friends for many years, starting out on the filmmaking trail at pretty much the same time.  I met Jake while he was editing for David Mackenzie and we have all been friends since then.

A bit of trivia for those interested: Jake and I both served time as hopeless assistants to David, Jake on Asylum and me Hallam Foe.

Jake has spent the last couple of days sorting out teething problems with the Avid and syncing up the rushes (uncut footage).  Last night myself, Jake and Brian Coffey (Producer) watched the lot from start to finish and I'm pleased to say feel that we have everything necessary to make the film.  This sounds like it would be an obvious thing, but, in the heat of the moment and under the pressure of the schedule, light and stock it can become very easy to find yourself in a situation where you don't have enough coverage (alternative shots to cut together) to make the best of a scene. 

We have our tricky bits to deal with but all in all I am pleased with what we have and would like to pass on a message of sincere thanks to everyone on the cast and crew.  All have done a superb job and I hope we will go on to make a wonderful little film.

The other good thing about the editing process is that I should have a little more time to write the blog and fill you in with details from the shoot so hopefully the normally intermittent service will be a little more frequent for the next short while.

We are editing at Film City Glasgow for the offline stage.  The DI will be done at Pepper Post and the sound will be done with the mighty Savalas.

I have loads of stuff to put here on the blog but I've been rushed off my feet in the last couple of weeks.  Normal intermittent service will resume tomorrow when we have wrapped our film. 

Today is the last day of the shoot for I Love Luci.  It's been a blast so far but we have arguably our hardest stuff to do in the middle of the night tonight so it's very far from over.  I am happy so far but we have a way to go.

Here's a wee snap of our fantastic focus puller, Derrick Peters, checking the gate.  For those of you unfamiliar with film we check the gate (the little window where the film is exposed to the light from the lens) after each take to see if there is any crap in there that could have interfered with the quality of the image we're trying to get.  This is one of the focus pullers jobs.

I am looking for musicians / composers from the West Midlands.  If that applies to you or someone you know please feel free to get in touch.

clyderidesagain@googlemail.com

We have had some very helpful responses to the Tattoo post so maybe people might be interested in the music side of things too.

ADDENDUM:
After a little digging last night I came across a magazine called Bearded, it's looks quite interesting.  You can download it here in pdf form:

issue4.pdf