There are no marbles to be had in Monterey. Not at Target, Walmart, Dollar Tree, Michael's. Granted, I didn't venture into the independent toy stores, figuring I wouldn't want to spend what they were asking, assuming they were even asking. I wanted some inexpensive ones for practice during auditions. To see how many I would want.
As it turned out, most of the actors I wanted to
audition flaked out, so I cancelled aforementioned auditions. I'm going
to use actors I know and trust and who will have fun on this project.
Finding
yellow marbles wasn't as simple as I had imagined, either. Google
"yellow marbles" and you get marbles with yellow in them, but not
necessarily solid yellow ones, and they might be vintage marbles that
cost more than I want to spend.
I've ordered a few individual marbles from Marbles Marbles! and several bags from MegaGlass. In both cases shipping is (a good deal) more than the cost of the actual products.
And, because I can, I'm including this link to absolutely gorgeous images of marbles, nay, glass art by PyreXions.
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!
If I'd had this as a child, I would've been a kick-ass filmmaker by now? No, well, perhaps if I recreate this now, I'll become a kick-ass filmmaker. I'm all about Yoda!
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.
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.
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!
Part of my creative process is my daily sanity walk, rain or shine, to and along the beach. Fresh air, the different moods and colors of the ocean and sky, and the power of my feet and legs pushing off the ground help me think. Ideas come to me. Or old ones replay in a loop. Or I release extra energy ranging from frustration and anger to happiness and excitement.
Tonight there were dolphins really, really close to the beach. Jumping into the air and dropping back, nose first, or rising out of the ocean, three together, nose up. Magical.
One evening when it was not just low tide but minus tide AND fires were raging in nearby Big Sur, sending lots of smoke, I handed my phone to a man taking photos nearby and asked that he take my photo. The photo above was the result.
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?
Today I attended a webinar at the Museum of Monterey called "The Future of Museums Conference." This public viewing in Monterey was sponsored by the Arts Council of Monterey and the Monterey History and Art Association. My goals were to a) get an intellectual fix and b) meet new creatives for potential collaboration or simply to form connections for the pleasure of it. Both would enhance my creative life.
The hashtag for the event was #museums14
The lecture I heard from beginning to end (except when I was playing 15 Coins (holy *!#$% that game is addictive) was about how museums have evolved from places you'd go to learn things in a passive way (looking at things behind glass), to places where you'd often participate in creating content (write about your experience and your story would be put on a board for all to see), to the new model, where you're not a visitor to, but a user of museums. You're provided a semi-private place to learn by trying and making mistakes, but not in front of everyone else, for example, or provided a space with interesting-looking things where you can just hang out and enjoy the environment. An interesting point that the fabulous speaker, Lath Carlson, mentioned but didn't dwell on, was that since museums are non-commercial places, the role of the gift store is a topic of discussion. Hmmm.
Here's one Twitter person's observation, which I love:
I got a bit distracted by the chairs on the podium in the space where we were watching the webinar, especially the shadows, plus I was thinking I wanted to stock up on postal stamps:
Finally, I did indeed meet some interesting people. A painter, an animation teacher, a guy who makes . . . uhm, too complicated for me to explain. In short: both missions (meet creatives, get intellectual fix) accomplished. Yes!
I filmed musician Dave Holodiloff three days ago and edited a profile of him: interview and samples of the different styles of music he plays. Bluegrass, gypsy jazz, traditional Italian . . . even music from Star Wars!
I then uploaded to a group of peers on Facebook and got mostly positive feedback. I'll be posting more there because . . .
I've always felt isolated, like other video producers were either much more advanced than I, or less experienced, but never in that sweet spot in between. I'm looking forward to interacting with these fine folks. I also like the fact that the group has been changed from "closed" to "secret." Hahaha. Great! I belong to a secret group on Facebook!
I have only one camera, so I asked Dave to play the same piece of music twice and just hoped that he would play it at the same speed both times. The first one was for shooting a steady, wide shot. I moved around during the second one, shooting from different angles. I don't particularly care for editing the two versions together, but I do like the way it looks. It does help that I'm a musician, too. Phew!
I've just realized that the screen shot above shows him wearing two different shirts. Don't worry; those two shots won't be edited together!
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.
