A certain cache has just been linked to by a certain screenwriter. Go. Enjoy. And give thanks.
“To’ona’i” Audio Post
Yep, it’s been a year since the last update – running out of money will do that – and so it was only last month that I caught up with sound designer Nathan Rea who has been quietly and patiently cleaning up the audio.
REA STUDIOS – NIGHT
Credits roll on a MONITOR as NATHAN and our WRITER sit back in their seats.
NATHAN
What’d you think?
WRITER
... I have some questions.
Before I get to those questions, let me just say what a phenomenal job Mr Rea has done: it all sounded natural. That might be a bit of a queer thing to say – and you well-know what a phillistine I am about a lot of the film-making technical craft – but everything sounded perfect*.
My questions – I only had three – were to do with his use of composer Nestor Opetaia‘s score:
- Why was there music at the beginning?
- Why had the music been changed in this middle?
- Why was there music at the end, before the credits?
Nathan’s answers were simple:
- As a bookend to the music at the end.
- No, the music had not been changed.
- In search of a place for the end music to play over the credits, the only way to avoid crashing it in at the end was to introduce it under the final scene.
Quite a bit of discussion followed where we discussed and agreed to try:
- Removing the opening music because, with a running time of twelve minutes, a bookend wasn’t all that essential.
- Nathan played the pre-audio-post cut of the film and nope, he hadn’t changed the music.
- The introduction of the music under the final scene was one of those happy, serendipitous accidents where the finished film moment became much more than the sum of its parts.
Nathan made the changes and we watched the film through again.
REA STUDIO – LATER
Credits roll on monitor as Nathan and our Writer listen intently to the soundtrack.
WRITER
What’d you think?
NATHAN
(nods)
... Yeah.
WRITER
Yeah, but what did you think?
NATHAN
It’s your movie, man.
I signed off audio post.
* There’s a sequence in the film where the location audio was so riven with kicked drink cans and circling streetracers that some ADR was considered. Mr Rea cleaned it up so thoroughly that it completely slipped my mind for another five viewings. Nathan – you the bomb.
POSTSCRIPT: I’m in the latter stages of colour grading at the moment, which I’ll post about hopefully maybe soon.
Box Watch – Battlestar Galactica Seasons 1-4
Yeah, it took me a good fortnight to catch up to some people but some people don’t have a menagerie to compete with for The Goddess’ time.
I thought it ended in grand fashion: personal stakes, of course, were high; characters made decisions where I truly cared whether they lived or died; and there was a cool space battle with ultra-high-risk tactical gambits and shit blowing up.
And then as various farewells were worked through, I felt a twitch in the back of my throat*: we’d been with these characters for over 80+ hours of television, spread over four years. It was okay to blink and swallow manfully, grateful that The Goddess’s back was to me.
As the camera pulled back, and pulled back, and pulled back, I sighed with contentment… and then there was a title card… and an epilogue which I thought totally and utterly naff. Which brought up unwelcome questions like:
- So who – or what – is Starbuck?
- Who – or what – is Gaius Baltar if, as the opening credits showed every ep, he was caught in a thermonuclear blast on Caprica?
- What happened to all the mythology/religious/destiny/determinism schtick that really pulled the first two seasons together?
Aw… whatevs.
It was great television. It went places, and I’m not meaning geographically. It told stories, a lot of them familiar, and told them well. And I cared.
Thank you, Mr Moore.
* A twitch that was definitely absent during the dutiful but interminable farewells in The Return of the King.
Plug
Goodness gracious: Radio New Zealand will be broadcasting a little something I adapted for radio last year, and which was recorded earlier this year.
So if you’ve an hour to spare this Sunday 5 April, between 3pm and 4pm, try out some Kiwi-made drama.
Thanks again to producer Jason Te Kare who was very patient with all my ummm‘s and ahhh‘s to his questions, engineer Phil Benge who put up with my exclamations of I keep expecting someone to run in there between takes and polish the mike!, voice actors Jerome Leota, Sopa Enari, Shadon Meredith, Natano Keni, Rob Lloyd and Eteuati Ete who made the recording day a hoot to watch hear, and big ups to the House of Ash and Fi who very kindly put me up for a couple of nights whilst I was in Wellington.
Point & Click
A bit of a backlog of a collection, attributions for which I can’t remember, sorry – though a pretty good bet would be the sidebar, but.
- Billy Mernit makes a good case for bad screenwriting.
- There are such things as happy endings for screenwriters in Hollywood – just ask Robert Mark Kamen.
- Salman Rushdie writes about adaptation.
- Thanks, I suspect, to Nick Grant of Onfilm, I have discovered The A.V. Club‘s excellent The New Cult Canon series, in particular this article about the commentary between The Limey’s writer Lem Dobbs and director Steven Soderbergh.
- Oh, is nothing sacred, Mr Rogers?
- Another Kiwi screenwriting blog! Lyse Beck gives us Birds With Nuts. There’s a nice thread about Watchmen here.
And speaking of the Minutemen, after all my build–up, The Goddess and I went to see Watchmen a week or so ago. She enjoyed it; I hankered for some interpretation rather than faithful replication. Thanks to Mr Slevin I’ve read people who can say what I’m thinking much better than I could here, here and here. (And no one’s mentioned it’s been two whole decades since Tim Burton gave us Michael Keaton as Batman – didn’t that kickstart the mainstreaming of comic-book adaptations?)
Dem Wires
Hah made you look: I’m not posting about The Wire.
The other day I had to connect a video camera to a television. The end-user wanted to be able to record some actors he was working with, with live feed or playback on a nice big screen. It looked straightforward enough: a 29-inch television and VCR, both around five years old, each with external AV inputs out front. They worked, and they talked to each other. The camera’s battery was fully charged and I got a picture in the eye-piece. I’ve connected dozens of handycams and digital cameras to TVs in my time. How hard could it be?
Connecting the camera to the television gave no signal. It didn’t matter if I used the AV inputs out front or in the back (all four sets).
Connecting the camera to the VCR, with AV cables from the VCR to the TV, gave no signal. The VCR had three AV inputs in total. I worked through all possible combinations between the TV and VCR’s inputs.
I took a breath. Maybe… I tested the cables I was using: the VCR sent pictures and sound from both television and VHS-tape sources flawlessly to the TV. Not the cable.
Half an hour had passed. Time flies when you’re having fun.
I spotted a quaint coaxial cable lying around. What if -? I wondered, not that it really mattered: I was desperate.
I set up the camera as follows:
video camera to VCR with AV cable
VCR to TV with coaxial cable
I didn’t stand back in triumph. I was grumpy. It should never have taken that long.
But sometimes a script won’t go the way you want it to, no matter how much you curse and pray and cheat and steal. It works the way it works because it just does.
Take the win.
Lateral Thinking Instance #215
EXT. BACKYARD – SOMETIME LAST YEAR
THE GODDESS and our WRITER look at the fence separating the backyard from THE CHICKENS’ MEADOW. Even though the gate to the meadow is closed, The Chickens are on the wrong side of the fence, and are buck-bucking through The Goddess’ GARDEN.
THE GODDESS
Either I increase the height of the fence or...
The Writer considers the fence: it’s about waist-high. A height he can no longer consider vaulting at his age and weight, but a height that is obviously no obstacle to the fowl nearby.
WRITER
Or?
THE GODDESS
Or I’m going to have to clip some wings.
He looks at Her, knowing how loathe She is to tamper with nature.
WRITER
You could glue some broken glass and bent nails along the top of the fence.
She looks at him.
Off Her look, he goes inside the house.
Sometimes a little lateral thinking just isn’t welcome.
Box Watch – Blue Murder (UK)
After Men Behaving Badly and, in particular, Life Begins, I’ll watch almost anything Caroline Quentin appears in.
Blue Murder follows the work and life of newly promoted DCI Janine Lewis (Quentin) as she juggles the fallout from her recent marriage break-up with the full-on investigation of a brutal murder. The Goddess and I watched the first season (all of 2x60min eps) earlier in the week.
INT. LOUNGE – NIGHT
Credits scroll upwards on a TELEVISION, WRITER and THE GODDESS on the COUCH stretching and remembering forgotten cups of tea.
WRITER
Um. What’d you think?
THE GODDESS
It was a bit... pedestrian.
BEAT as our writer tries a long gulp of long-cooled english breakfast.
THE GODDESS
And what did you think?
WRITER
Eye-wateringly boring.
That’s one of the many things I treasure about my relationship with The Goddess: she’s compassionate, polite and humane while I am just intolerant.
Intolerant of things like —
— our detective heroine being given 48 hours to clear the case or else be replaced —
— our detective heroine and her team being the only cops available to respond to dramatic turns in the investigation —
— and the grinding exposition, absolutely stultifying with sequences like:
INT. INTERVIEW ROOM, POLICE STATION – DAY
DETECTIVE HEROINE and NERVOUS SUSPECT have a silent, tense moment.
DETECTIVE HEROINE
Why don’t you just let it all out so we can have tea and kippers?
Suspect makes pained expression.
NERVOUS SUSPECT
Oh, alright: I’ve been holding out on you all this time.
(licks lips)
The gardener did it.
DETECTIVE HEROINE
The gardener. Right. With the electric carving knife.
NERVOUS SUSPECT
Yeah. To throw you off the scent.
INT. CORRIDOR, POLICE STATION – SOON AFTER
Detective Heroine and her MALE CHAUVINIST BOSS travel down the CORRIDOR –
MALE CHAUVINIST BOSS
You have forty-eight hours –
DETECTIVE HEROINE
Yes, you said.
MALE CHAUVINIST BOSS
– so you better have something to show for it.
DETECTIVE HEROINE
Well, actually, I just came out of an interview with Nervous Suspect.
MALE CHAUVINIST BOSS
Yes?
DETECTIVE HEROINE
And she dobbed in the gardener.
MALE CHAUVINIST BOSS
But an electric carving knife was used.
DETECTIVE HEROINE
Yes. It was to throw us off the scent.
Besides mentally screaming at the screen, I’m like, Whoa – I’m the audience and I was there: you think I forgot already?
I certainly appreciated the portrayal of Quentin’s character trying to balance work and family. There were some moments between her team-members that entertained and spoke volumes about their personalities.
Maybe I should approach this as more of a relationship drama than a procedural. Maybe things tighten up in subsequent seasons (it’s up to season five).
And maybe I should get around to trying some Prime Suspect.
Quis Custodiet – One Sleep to Go
Oh alright. Despite whatever I said before, I’m in a… high state of anticipation.
Lynden Barber‘s whip ’round of reviews, along with the L.A. Times‘ Patrick Goldstein‘s post, have lowered expectations somewhat. Roger Ebert has given it four stars and a review that saw past the “cerulean genitalia” and picked up on a whole lot of the original comic‘s subtext (and I don’t think he’s read it).
I must note, however, that Mr Ebert gave each Hellboy film three and a half stars. After reading Guillermo del Toro‘s script prior to seeing the first one, I was rather… crestfallen at the finished product. The Goddess has never forgiven me for choosing Hellboy on one of our precious nights out. I’ve already asked Her to accompany me to Watchmen but the 163-minute running time is worrisome. Should I push my well-thumbed trade paperback on Her in preparation? Hurm.
The possibility of watching Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons‘ creation on the big screen is high this weekend next week this month.
(Comic)bookhunter
Decades’ of comic-reading made me pick up 500 Essential Graphic Novels the other day. Two hundred, I thought to myself, I bet I’ve read two hundred easy.
I barely managed ninety*.
And that was by including characters I knew I’d read but couldn’t exactly recall if I’d read the title listed in the book. I definitely remember reading Lucky Luke and A.B.C. Warriors but I can’t recall specifically chuckling over A Lucky Luke Adventure: Billy the Kid or acting-out mek-carnage from A.B.C. Warriors: The Black Hole.
Meantime, I plan to work my way through a list that includes –
- Bryan Talbot‘s Alice in Sunderland<,/li>
- Dave Sim‘s towering Cerebus,
- Frank Stack‘s The New Adventures of Jesus: Second Coming,
- Keiji Nakazawa‘s Barefoot Gen series,
- Roberta Gregory‘s Life’s a Bitch: The Bitchy Bitch Chronicles,
- Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch‘s The Ultimates,
– and, based on its premise and the cover art, Jason Shiga‘s Bookhunter:
The year is 1973. A priceless book has been stolen from the Oakland Public Library. A crack team of Bookhunters (aka. library police) have less than three days to recover the stolen item. It’s a race against the clock as our heroes use every tool in their arsenal of library equipment to find the book and the mastermind who stole it.
* Eighteen lousy percent. At least I did better with the IMDb top 250 list, making 67.6% (though I suspect if that list went to 500, my batting average would drop significantly). (Film Addict link courtesy of Dan Slevin.)