Archive for September 2011

Basis Weekly Update 9/16/2011

Before I begin I must ask that any of our Kickstarter pledgers out there should check their email for a survey. Most of you have responded, but there are a couple of hold outs. If you pledged at the $5+ level and didn’t receive a survey please send me an email at basisproductions@gmail.com.

So what’s up this week? Audio. Film festivals. Deadlines.

Audio: The last of the music is being scored. What’s been produced so far is terrific. I’m hoping that we might be able to sneak a little peak at it soon. Last weekend we recorded two more of our actors for dialogue dubbing, and this weekend we’ll be recording two more. Audio is probably my least favorite aspect of filmmaking at the moment.

Film festivals: Spirit’s Requiem has been submitted as a work-in-progress to a few film festivals, most notably Sundance and Slamdance. As a poster in one of my middle school classrooms once said, “Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you’ll land among the stars.” I’ve always interpreted that statement to mean that if you miss your landing on the moon you’ll be lost in space and eventually die once your ship’s life support systems fail. We’ll hear back from most of the festivals by early December. Cross your fingers.

Deadlines: Foiled again. It seems like every time I set a deadline something goes amiss and we can no longer meet it. Such is the trouble with projects of this nature. I am currently predicting a release date of late October, just in time for Halloween. Also just in time for Halloween – Spirit’s Requiem costumes. Dress up as your favorite character!

Basis Weekly Update 9/9/2011

When they said that I’d better “lock that down,” I thought they were referring to my girlfriend. Turns out they were referring to the movie.

The picture has been locked in. No more cuts, no more additions, no more changes.* The movie as I see it now will be the same movie that you see. Except that I still haven’t added the credits. Our crew continues to grow even as we approach the end, meaning our credits continue to grow longer. No use putting the credits together if I’ll just have to go back and add someone else (and move the other names around and render it all again).

The first ADR session took place on Wednesday, and it went much better than I thought it would. For those of you who aren’t familiar with ADR, it is automated dialogue replacement, often called dubbing. Actors rerecord their lines in post-production while  having to sync their vocal performance with the performance they gave on set. It is commonly used when the audio captured on location is unusable due to poor quality or unwanted background noises. We filmed with a shotgun mic attached to the camera, which picked up other sounds besides the actors (and often instead of the actors). Chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp.

Elizabeth (the Great Spirit) came in and re-dubbed all of her lines, taking only 90 minutes to do so. It is an odd experience to have to sync your voice with an onscreen performance, or so I have heard. I found it strange to sit there watching the mouth move in the movie while hearing Elizabeth speak the words right next to me. It’s a little disorienting. The rest of the actors will be coming in for ADR over the next week or two. Here’s hoping that they’re all just as quick and painless as this first session. However, Elyse (Shade) has 7 pages of script to record, as opposed to about 2 pages for Elizabeth and the rest of the cast. That one could be painful. Why does she have to talk so much?

This week we have some new photos uploaded to our Flickr account. About a month ago we had a photo shoot to take some pictures for our press kit. These are the ones that didn’t make it into the kit. They’re still pretty good, though.

Next week we’ll have more news concerning our upcoming fire sale. Take it away, Tobias:

*Unless deemed absolutely necessary as decided by a panel consisting of three men and a rubber duckie.