The sight - David Clement Davis

I've started reading this book 'The sight - David Clement Davis', it's awesome. Wolves have been my favorite animal all my life and they still are, this book is told in the point of view of wolves. i think it's amasing how Davis has managed to capture the essence of a wolf pack from the alpha male right down to the pups and even wolves attitudes to wolves outside the pack, at the same time managing to create his own story at the same time. The story follows a wolf pack, that are running from an evil she-wolf named Morgra who turns out to be the drappa's (alpha females) half sister who is after her newly born pups. Most of the pack believe Morgra is trying to fore-fill the prophecy of 'The Sight' which tells of wolves being born with the ability to see through the eyes of birds, the ability to see visions of the past present and future, to be able to summon the wolf god fenris and aalso summon the dead to do it's bidding and the last power (which is the one Morgra is trying to forefill) is the power to look through the eyes of a human and control its will.

i think this book is very exhilarating and Davis has done a spectacular job of keeping the reader nose deep in the book. if i had a choice i wouldn't put it down until i was finished.
one day if it hasn't been done, i will make this book into a film

John Williams

I never actually realised how many films John Williams has composed for until now. It seems that he has composed the theme for every one of my favourite films, all the films i grew up on he was a part of. This man was composed the soundtrack of my entire life. Is it possible to be sub consciously drawn to films that he has composed for?

A quick list of some of my favorites that he’s done:

Star wars 

E.T the extra terrestrial

Jurassic Park

Hook

These 4 films are the reason i got into films in the first place. they are so magical and they have influenced my entire life, how coincidental is it that one man composed the soundtracks for all of them?
 the list doesn't stop there though:

·         Indiana Jones

·         Home alone

·         Schindler’s list

·         The patriot

·         Harry potter

Memoirs of a Geisha
war of the worlds 2005
The Terminal
Catch Me If You Can
Minority Report
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
The Patriot
Saving Private Ryan
Superman
Jaws

I know not all of them are from my childhood but they are all or have been my favorite films at one point or another and have influenced me greatly.
All you have to do is sit, close your eyes and listen to the music, let it fill you up, and you'll feel yourself traveling back to all your greatest memories. feel yourself get inspired like i have from his music, it's because of this type of music, that no matter what can make you, happy, sad, inspired and nostalgic all at the same time that makes me want to make unforgettable films.
and one day John Williams will compose for one of my films.

John Williams is a genius!!!!!!!!!!!!

Finished Editing

Fraser and I have Finished Editing our sense of space project today. We’ve called it “Night Night”. We edited for about 7 hours, so its safe to say we're a bit tired, we finally decided we were going to use an inner voice as though the character was taking to herself. To do this we took some inspiration from a ‘Friends’ episode. As strange as it may sound, In this episode we see a scene of the 6 characters in the coffee shop listening to Ross tell a story. We then hear each of the characters thoughts which are slightly echoed to show that they are thoughts instead of spoken words. This is what we have done to distinguish between the inner voice and the spoken voice. to do this we've used a Platinum Reverb and increased the room size to add the echo effect (see right).

Here is the friends clip we looked at:

We also took inspiration from the legendary film "the exorcist - William Friedkin" there is a scene where the mother walks out of her daughters room and hears a noise coming from above her in the attic. she stands looking up for a moment, then there is another sound as though whatever is in the attic runs across the floor. here there is a pan used to show the sound going from left to right. we have used a similar effect in our 'attic' portion of our sound clip (many thanks to that film for scaring me so much it stuck in my mind haha). unfortunately i couldn't find a clip :-(. to make things sound like they were coming from a different room such as the attic or outside the house. We added a channel E.Q control and lowered the higher frequencies which made them sound 'bassey'. 

here are some more screen shots from the editing process: 

I Remember

The worst thing in the world, the one crime that everyone commits without ever meaning to, without ever wanting to, is the crime of growing up.
It's troubling to think about how much you lose from being a child and growing to become the people we are meant to be for the rest of our lives... empty, robotic shells of human beings. Where did all the magic go? where did our imaginations go? I remember being a child, i remember the days when anything and everything was possible. i remember When you could go from being superman to batman in one afternoon, i remember when climbing a tree was the greatest adventure you could possibly imagine, i remember when you could talk to the stars and they would talk back. I remember the excitement of eating all your vegetables knowing ice cream would follow. I remember learning to fly.....

I remember a time when nothing in the world mattered, there was a time when all you would do was imagine you were someone else, someone magical and heroic when all our dreams came true... a child can be whoever they want to be whenever they want to be them. all we had to do was imagine.
But somewhere in time all of that fades away, until all we have left is a drone, someone that along the way was chosen to be.

we grow older, we grow taller... but why do we have to let the magic that is life and imagination slip through our fingers???

Don't ever let go of your imagination!!! don't ever let go of your childhood!!! because once it's gone, it's the hardest thing to get back. and you'll regret it forever.

Bring the magic back.

sense of space - Project ideas

for this project I'm working with Fraser. we met and started by brainstorming different things we associated with space. which would help us later on when deciding our final idea.

We decided to create a suspenseful piece. We plan to create the story of someone going to bed (by having a voice saying "goodnight" and hearing the mattress squeak and hearing curtains being drawn) at which point they start hearing strange ghostly noises.  

We chose this because the phenomenon of hearing noises while in bed is very common, and although (in most cases) the noises heard are simply regular house hold noises the darkness and fear can create a sense of entrapment and claustrophobia and the noises can very easily be mistaken for something else. Some of the noises we intend to use are:

·         creaking doors

·         wind

·         tapping

·         creaking floorboards

·         bangs

·         scratching

·         muffled voices

·         footsteps

To create the sense of fear within the character we are planning to create the sound of a beating heart and heavy breathing which will speed up during the piece to represent the emotions of the character.

Throughout the three minutes the sounds will become louder and louder eventually building to a crescendo until they suddenly stop.

The aim of this piece is to mimic the regular occurrence of strange noises that can be heard while lying in bed trying to get to sleep and the atmosphere and feeling that creates i.e. claustrophobic, trapped, scared etc.

At the end of the 3 minutes we have the idea of two endings:

1. The sounds slowly ebb away to be replaced with the sounds of birds chirping to represent that morning has come and that everything is fine.

2. The sounds build to a crescendo, there is a loud bang and the character screams. The sounds stop and the only thing that can be heard is the characters racing heartbeat.

After deciding our idea we drew out a time line of sounds.  

We then wrote out a list of the sounds we needed and how we planned to create them and what microphones we would use to record them.