The Dead can’t, uh, do anything
OK, so something had to give, and it was my body. I could feel a cold or something just trying to gnaw its way in, and I kept fighting it off with vitamins, herbs and supplements, but some general nastiness is settling in now. It’s not as bad it could be, ’cause I’m still popping pills and potions like crazy, but it has slowed me down considerably. At least my throat isn’t sore anymore.
We didn’t get to get the radio announcer stuff over the weekend as I had hoped, due to some conflicts, but we’ll hopefully reschedule for this weekend, perhaps.
I did, though, get some “blood splatters” done on Saturday (basically me just throwing red paint around) and that was a blast. I want to use this stuff in the main title design, which I have spent a lot of time on in the past couple of days, when I am lucid enough to sit at my computer and not be bleary-eyed (which seems like the case all the time lately, anyway).
The title design is going well, and I had been looking forward to doing it. But I’m not quite happy with it, so I tore it up last night to rework it, did, then hated what I reworked. So I tore it up again, which means I’ve pretty much backed up a couple of steps. But I’m a perfectionist and I want it to be cool. I time and again visit the Art of the Title Sequence blog for inspiration. Cool stuff.
What’s really great about working on the title sequence for “The Dead Can’t Dance” is the duality with my motion type design program, LiveType, which works pretty hand-in-hand with Final Cut Pro. If you make a change in LiveType, you save it there and the change pops up over in FCP. But the downside is FCP has to render any changes you make each time, and while FCP’s rendering time is light years ahead of what it used to be, working with type and effects takes rendering time — about 3-4 minutes with every change in LiveType, not to mention if you move anything just a smidgen on the FCP timeline. But I’m finding that I’m still liking working on the cross platform rather than wholly in LiveType, which is possible, but a little clunky, especially since you can import video but no audio — crucial for timing.
Sorry to get so technical, but it has its frustrating parts and that’s what’s actually eating into a lot of the time spent. But, like I said, I’m really enjoying this part, and I’ll get it to where I’m happy (enough) with it soon, and move on. I can’t afford to spend too much more time on it right now.
I have a looming feeling that we’re not going to make our Dec. 3 festival submission deadline since THAT IS NEXT WEEK!! Whew! But, so what? It would be great to play this festival, but us and thousands of others submit each year, so the odds are pretty slim that we’d get in.
Still, if I can swing it and get a rough cut I’m happy enough to send in, this festival also has a “last-minute deadline,” but the submission fee jumps to $100. Ouch. (The late Dec. 3 submission fee itself is $60, so it seems kind of silly to just be throwing this money away. But I’ve been through all this before — oy.)
OK, I’ll quit writing around it, the festival is SXSW in Austin. Not that it’s a big deal to keep it hush-hush, because like I said, we probably won’t get in, anyway, but something new at the festival this year is a title design competition that I also (or, at least) want to enter. That deadline is also Dec. 11 (only $10 — hey!). But if it looks like we’re just not going to finish a rough cut in time to submit, I will turn some energy back to the title design, because just that, like I said, could eat up a lot of time, and I would want it to be worthy of submission.
Otherwise, still waiting on the powwow music, which I should get this week hopefully very, very soon, to edit those sequences.
And I need to sit down and watch the film as I have it now (even with the gaps) from start to finish, which I haven’t done yet, just to get an initial idea of flow and pacing. Maybe I’ll do that tonight before picking a sequence to fine-tune.
And then comes audio. Argh. Really not looking forward to it. Anyone know a good film sound designer who works for cheap? As in really cheap?
But have a great holiday week everyone!
-r.
