is surprisingly tasty. The maple doesn't overwhelm the vanilla...it's kind of like what you'd imagine vanilla waffles would taste like, in a soda. Also oddly reminiscent of French Toast Crunch cereal, a short-lived spinoff of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. If you live in LA, the sandwich shop "All About The Brea" next to Pink's Hot Dogs packs this stuff, and I recommend it.
That's not what I'm blogging about today, though. I'm here in my makeshift editing suite, rough cut standing at T=70:46. The last two minutes I've edited are backed by a single song without cuts, the longest music cue in the movie to date. For the most part I haven't used music under dialogue, but in some situations it works.
My thoughts on how to use music in Diamond Bar have changed as I've edited. Many sections I thought would go great with a certain song are now music-free, and some stretches I assumed would be nearly silent are full of music. Before I started, I had a whole playlist of 20 songs, and I assumed I know exactly where I wanted each of those songs to go. I worked for a long time on that playlist, too. I've been a music guy for much longer than a movie guy, and I had very strong ironclad opinions on how each of these lovingly chosen songs would fit in my project, and I've had to revise those opinions many times.
For one thing, putting music in a scene often forces you to lengthen it, sometimes disrupting how quickly you want to flow from one moment to the next. Either that, or put two bars of music in, which just feels weird. Other times the music I picked out was so strange as to be distracting. I don't want to be that guy who fills his indie film soundtrack with slow, strummy, earnest indie tunes, but it's so much easier to achieve a certain tone by using a simple, emotionally direct song. It's hard to match OOIOO or Mount Eerie to a scene in a sensical way, when it's easy to throw anything on top of The Shins or Band Of Horses and make it full of feeling.
Finally, and I've known this from the beginning, I don't have the budget to use 20 established songs in a movie, even from fairly underground artists. I've been talking to friends who are musicians about replacing some of the music cues I've chosen with original music that's similar in tone. It's cost-effective, and in a lot of situations having original cues tailored to the movie feels much more natural.
Still, in other situations I need the real thing. For one thing, the climax of Diamond Bar turns on a specific song that's referenced in the script. Even beyond that, sometimes the benefits of having a known, great song are more subtle. My two-minute cue is "Middle Cyclone" by Neko Case. It's singer-songwriter, girl-with-guitar indie of a type I've tried to avoid, and I could probably get a friend to make a reasonable fascimile of it. But I doubt the sequence will work as well with any other song. Neko's clear, ringing bellow, the warm reverb of the chorus, the vivid imagery, it all fits DB perfectly. There'll be parts of the movie with weirder music, and original music, and no music at all, but I'm convinced she's the right choice for this moment.
Listening to: Neko Case, Middle Cyclone (Natch.)
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Rollin' just to keep on rollin'...
And ripplin' just to keep on ripplin', slidin' just to keep on slidin', etc.
Oh oh, what's going on here? Dayum you're sexy people, Chelsea and Nick.
This still is from 48:15 into my rough cut, which means we're a little more than halfway. I had to take a few days off for a comedy boxing match with my sister in front of 1000 fans in Las Vegas (my day job is a weird one), but now I'm back on the grind, for some of the trickiest scenes in DB. I just finished editing a scene we shot on the fly in secret in a bar in Hollywood, in very low light. It looks quite cool actually, very stylized, though most of the sound will have to be redubbed. But we only had a bare minimum of footage to work with, obviously not ideal now that I've put on my editing hat. Even trickier was the first in-moving-car dialogue. We didn't set up any special rigs or anything, we just shot while driving with a couple artfully placed lights around the interior. Again, cool shots, but continuity is a bitch; when some takes are in motion and others are stopped at a traffic light, stitching it together is no mean feat.
And now there's a love scene, one of two in the film, thorny for a whole different set of reasons. This isn't a straightforward romantic love scene, either, there's a lot of emotional ambiguity for both characters. How do I keep that subtext without being entirely unerotic? Lots of shots or a single take? What sort of music, if any? Is slow motion cheesy or involving? Most crucial, how much to I want to test a viewer's comfort level?
This is on my mind in particular because I just, finally, watched "The Room", which lived up to my very high expectations. What a hilarious and sad movie. Nearly every shot in the movie evinces the question "What the fuck was Tommy Wiseau thinking?", but in the four soft-focus, very long, entirely inappropriate sex scenes, you get at least part of the reason; Dude think's he's a stud, and wants to show the world. It's a lesson in why you shouldn't star in your own movie, but also in the dangers of letting the audience become really, really uncomfortable, particularly not even three minutes into the movie. At the same time, allowing a little squirming will get people talking, and thinking, and curious what these characters will do next, and really, isn't that all you want as a storyteller?
There are a lot of lessons in the Room. Among them: If everyone were nice to each other, life would be a lot better. Also, don't do drugs, don't betray your best friend, and don't announce that you're pregnant just because you want to make things interesting. That really isn't a good enough reason.
Back to work. I can't wait for y'all to see this. This summer, people. Be ready.
Listening to: Mark Lanegan Band, Methamphetamine Blues (And I DON'T WANNA LEAVE THIS HEAVEN SO SOON)
Oh oh, what's going on here? Dayum you're sexy people, Chelsea and Nick.
This still is from 48:15 into my rough cut, which means we're a little more than halfway. I had to take a few days off for a comedy boxing match with my sister in front of 1000 fans in Las Vegas (my day job is a weird one), but now I'm back on the grind, for some of the trickiest scenes in DB. I just finished editing a scene we shot on the fly in secret in a bar in Hollywood, in very low light. It looks quite cool actually, very stylized, though most of the sound will have to be redubbed. But we only had a bare minimum of footage to work with, obviously not ideal now that I've put on my editing hat. Even trickier was the first in-moving-car dialogue. We didn't set up any special rigs or anything, we just shot while driving with a couple artfully placed lights around the interior. Again, cool shots, but continuity is a bitch; when some takes are in motion and others are stopped at a traffic light, stitching it together is no mean feat.
And now there's a love scene, one of two in the film, thorny for a whole different set of reasons. This isn't a straightforward romantic love scene, either, there's a lot of emotional ambiguity for both characters. How do I keep that subtext without being entirely unerotic? Lots of shots or a single take? What sort of music, if any? Is slow motion cheesy or involving? Most crucial, how much to I want to test a viewer's comfort level?
This is on my mind in particular because I just, finally, watched "The Room", which lived up to my very high expectations. What a hilarious and sad movie. Nearly every shot in the movie evinces the question "What the fuck was Tommy Wiseau thinking?", but in the four soft-focus, very long, entirely inappropriate sex scenes, you get at least part of the reason; Dude think's he's a stud, and wants to show the world. It's a lesson in why you shouldn't star in your own movie, but also in the dangers of letting the audience become really, really uncomfortable, particularly not even three minutes into the movie. At the same time, allowing a little squirming will get people talking, and thinking, and curious what these characters will do next, and really, isn't that all you want as a storyteller?
There are a lot of lessons in the Room. Among them: If everyone were nice to each other, life would be a lot better. Also, don't do drugs, don't betray your best friend, and don't announce that you're pregnant just because you want to make things interesting. That really isn't a good enough reason.
Back to work. I can't wait for y'all to see this. This summer, people. Be ready.
Listening to: Mark Lanegan Band, Methamphetamine Blues (And I DON'T WANNA LEAVE THIS HEAVEN SO SOON)
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