It's done: Nine Sisters!

It really is done!  Or as done as it'll be for a while!  

This was my first short film shot on a DSLR, in a studio, and with more than two actors speaking. It's riddled with mistakes, but I think people, certainly normal people (non-filmmakers, hahah!) can still enjoy it and think about inspiration and how far we'll go to find it!  I'm exhausted and happy, and grateful to everyone who helped, supported, and encouraged me.

In all its glory:

Inspiration, the Short Film

After editing this version of "Nine Sisters" and beginning the dubbing process, I realized that I had cut out all references to the Nine Muses, the Sisters, so I needed a different title.  Muses bring inspiration, right?  So that's what I chose as the title for this, the Spanish-language version of "Nine Sisters.  In all its glory . . .

Finding Voice-Over Talent

My go-to place to search for talent is Fiverr.com, where people are willing to do the damnedest things for $5.  Many are doing so for portfolio-building purposes.  So I searched for voice-over artists.

Some were non-professionals.  They had only the microphones built into their computers (I wanted better quality).  Some promised to read my text "with enthusiasm."  Hmmm.

Others had experience but didn't respond to email or responded very slowly.  

A good number had experience voicing commercials but not playing roles like Shakespeare and Hemingway.  

Some sounded great but were asking for more than $5.  Egad!  They wanted me to pay them what they were worth!  For my no-budget film.

Lastly, some didn't speak Spanish.  

It all sounded so glorious in my head, and I thought it would be interesting to my Spanish interpreter/translator colleagues as well as something to put on my translation résumé.  I wanted Shakespeare and Virginia Woolf to have slight British accents in their Spanish, and I wanted the rest to have accents from different Latin-American countries.

As it turned out, I got only one native Spanish speaker, and she had only two lines as Petrus, the seriously creepy woman at the beginning.  

And as a last resort, I recorded Edna's voice myself.  Wowza!  It's really strange to see actress Penelope Morgan speak but hear my own voice in my odd-sounding Spanish.  Hahaha.

It was frustrating and slow, but exciting when it finally came together in my video-editing software.  Not perfect, but I'm very pleased, and it makes me laugh.  I hope it entertains others as well!

Fake-Mustache Etiquette

I borrowed this fake mustache and beard for the Shakespeare character in "Nine Sisters."  The actor wore it twice, for 3 hours each time.  As I was returning it to my Costume Fairy Godmother, I wondered if I should have bought a replacement set.  It seemed somewhat disgusting to wear facial hair worn by someone else. 

I had bought a package of double-sided tape, cut into strips, specifically made for attaching this faux-cial hair, erm, faux facial hair, and I did give that to the Costume Fairy Godmother.  She said she would clean it, but I got distracted and forgot to ask how and with what.  Rubbing alcohol?

Most of the actors I know are women and have never had to deal with mustaches, so they didn't know.  

I should also mention that I asked how to affix the hair.  That and my research gave me two answers:
1) eyelash glue.  Apparently that isn't good for such a large surface
2) spirit gum.  I'd read online that spirit gum was EVIL.  Hard to remove.  Smelly.

So I was glad the store I went to, Olympia Beauty Supply in Seaside, California, had the double-sided tape!

The actor said the facial hair was very uncomfortable, but I think he really liked it.  Hahaha!

One last thing.  The facial hair cost $30, as I recall.  Oh, rats!  Was it $40?  I don't remember because, again, I borrowed it.  The package of tape was $8.

Disastrous

As a surprise for my cast and the scriptwriter for my current short film, "Nine Sisters," I thought I'd dub the film into Spanish.  I really wanted to work with Chinese or Russian, but I would have no way of evaluating quality.  Since I'm a professional translator, I would be embarrassed if the end-result were absolute crap, so I went with Spanish.

Where was I going to find a translator?  Not the American Translators Association directory, where I could find hundreds of, lovely, qualified, certified translators.  No.  I'd need a budget for that.  So I turned to Fiverr, where people will do the damnedest things for $5.  I found a translator! A native Spanish speaker, someone who worked in an industry requiring precision and who had studied translation, linguistics, and education.  Sounded like a winner to me!  

And then . . .



Que desastre! What a disaster! He didn't read my instructions, so instead of looking at the script I sent him, he listened to the video (in English) and typed in Spanish. I've done hours and hours of this sort of transcription/translation, but no way did I produce the sort of crap he gave me. Very little punctuation, sentences that went on for paragraphs, and he didn't even run a spellchecker. These are very important things in professional translation. And then there were outright meaning errors. The other things can be fixed and perhaps even forgiven, but meaning errors AND all those other things . . .

English: Uhm, I don't know. Maybe a rethink is in order. 
His translation (in Spanish): I don't know. My thoughts aren't in order. 

*facepalm* I know, I know: you get what you pay for, but the other things I'd ordered on Fiverr had been spectacularly good. Ah well. Next time I'll tell you about the voice-over actors.

Wix You Were Here

Instead of simply throwing my 10-minute cinematographic masterpiece on YouTube and moving on, I've decided to give it a home.  I'm creating a site for it using Wix.  Wix is free (one of my favorite f-words) and easy to use, but you have to learn its ways, so I'm stumbling around.  It took a while for me to decide which template I wanted to use only to realize later how much customization is possible.  Wow!  What a gift!

Killing Your Babies

Simply, “Killing Your Babies” refers to having to edit out something you love in order to make the story/book/script better. It utterly, completely sucks. [. . .]  I will repeat: it sucks.  Nobody wants to kill their babies. But in the end, you owe it to your work – your world, your characters – to give it the best presentation you can.

The quote above is from an excellent article on writing by J. M. Frey, but it applies to editing video, too.  Crikey!  I moved mountains to get that shot and now I have to cut it out ENTIRELY?  Boo!

Now that I think about it, the first time I heard that expression was a Kevin Smith podcast and it's something he says a lot.  

Maybe I can squeeze the babies in somewhere else?  Like in the credits?

Martini Shot

According to Wikipedia . . .

Martini Shot is a Hollywood term that describes the final shot set-up of the day. According to Dave Knox, author of the film industry slang guide Strike the Baby and Kill the Blonde,^[1] the Martini Shot was so named because "the next shot is out of a glass", referring to a post-wrap drink.

Given that definition, I should've given this post a different name.  Today was the final shot, period.  Also, the photo below doesn't show the actual last shot set-up, but it's the photo I have to share on this, the 3rd and final day of shooting.  The first two shoots lasted 3 hours each and we filmed 2 pages on each day.  Today we went for 4 hours and shot 3 pages.  I was exhausted.