The Opening Sequence

It may be a while before we hear from Mark again, seeing as how every spare minute of his time is now taken up with editing Little Things, so I’m taking up the blogging reins again. A lot of what follows is a second hand account of the editing process, but I think it’s interesting enough to post anyway.

Mark’s been in pretty close contact with me about how the editing is going and thus far it seems mostly positive. The catalyst of today’s post is the completed rough cut for the opening.It’s a montage sequence showing the life of the main character across a couple of days leading up to the beginning of the story. A few scenes of him at home and working late, culminating in him waiting in the park for a friend he’s meeting.

I wasn’t present for the shooting of these scenes as they were done after the manic weekend shoot, so this was all new material for me. Mark filmed these snippets of Leonard’s life with a minimal crew (i.e. just him and Chris the lead actor) and they turned out very well.

Pacing of the film very much came into play however. When Mark first cut the sequence together it came in at about four minutes, which is quite a lot when you consider that eleven minutes is the target maximum for the whole movie. So instead Mark started cutting short ten to twelve second clips out of the scenes and cross fading them over each other, which has worked very well. In under two minutes the main character is introduced, the loneliness of his everyday life is revealed and we see the setup for him meeting his friend in the park.

As a placeholder the sequence has been set to “Mirrorball” by Elbow, which fits the tone of the opening very well, low and melodic but punchy enough to keep pace with the quick cuts. I’ll be showing the clip to Kevin from I Phoenix this week to showcase what Mark has done so far and the tone that he’s hoping for from the score. Hopefully I’ll have more to say about scoring next week.

Overall I’m personally really impressed with what Mark has managed to achieve with meagre resources, finances, sense and sanity. We’ve included some screenshots from the sequence with this post, but because Mark is hoping for eligibility for festivals we can’t post the whole sequence yet. However for those of you in Dublin I have it on my phone so feel free to accost me in the street[1] and demand to see it.

That’s about all for the moment. Check back for some more updates on scoring and editing.

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[1] Please don’t accost me in the street.

Short blog post today from the dogsbody.

The great thing about any (reasonably) large scale artistic project like “Little Things” is how much people are willing to help out and give of their time. I’ve already gushed about how great the crew and cast of “Little Things” were as well as the helpfulness of the staff and management of Y Pentan in Mold.

A little while ago I was speaking to my friend Kevin Brew, the bass player of the fantastic (and tragically as yet unsigned) I Phoenix. We had a bit of banter about the production of Little Things and he mentioned that they had previously scored a short movie and would be interested in doing the same for “Little Things”. I’ve seen them live a number of times and I know the guys are very talented musicians and song-writers so I was very excited about the prospect of getting them on board.

Armed with a Vimeo link to the movie they previously scored and mp3s from their debut EP “Cause and Effect” I contacted the great director to get his take on the idea. The original plan for the score was to take existing music from other unsigned bands (with permission of course) and trawl the Internet’s collection of Creative Commons music to try and cut together a score post editing[1]. Needless to say the prospect of having some talented musicians write a score specifically for “Little Things” held great appeal for both us. Having listened to their music Mark agreed that they could bring a lot to the project and so an email was drafted to I Phoenix to commission them for the work. I spoke to Kevin this morning and they have agreed to compose and perform the original score for “Little Things”. I’ll be sitting in with them as they do it and although I will have very little input I expect it to be a whole lot of fun.

@Mark, I’m no longer happy with an AD1 credit, after putting this together I want Associate Producer too :)

Come back soon to see the continuing production report and my take on the scoring process for a short movie.

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[1] Note: There is a surprising amount of excellent free music out there under Creative Commons. If this is something that interests you visit Jamendo.