New Blog/Website

Part of my attempt to start putting a decent "portfolio" tomorrow has lead me to migrate my blog over to a work-in-progress website, 'www.patmonger.co.uk'.

I'm going to attempt to put it together over the summer, but my web design skills are lacking so it will probably take until I can get some help in September.

Rosemary's Videos update

A lot's been done on my project with Rosie over the last few weeks of term. I've edited 5 of the 8 songs from her performance, all of which can be found at my Vimeo channel. We've also finished recording her 5-track EP and (with Grant on-hand filming) we're now commencing editing videos for 4 of the tracks. I've managed to do a rough-mix of all the songs, and then a rough-cut of one of the videos before I had to pack up all my things for the summer, Rosie's given me notes on the tracks and once I'm set up back in Chichester I'll begin working on finishing them again.

I've never recorded or mixed anything this dense, with as many layers of tracks and instrumentation so it's a learning curve for me in the mixing process, making sure it's clear and smooth and uncluttered - will be interesting, and hopefully won't take too long.

Here's the first and last song from the performance filmed on two Canon 550D's and one 60D, with Grant and (the much sought-after) John Howe, and unfortunately the audio is just from one of the cameras as the audio from the sound-desk was no good.

Editing these was useful, because it allowed me to work with Adobe Premiere CS5's multi-camera editing mode for the first time, which simulates a live vision-mixer.

Rosie's band will be referred to as Volander, from now on.

I want some Bill Murray in my life

Or at least in a hypothetical production of my new screenplay.

Ever since finding out that one of our projects next year can be a feature-length screenplay, and that we don't have to go through to ache of attempting to produce it, I've been attempting to give it a go. I've never written a feature-length, I've attempted it before but become too easily distracted by another, "better" concept – as always. I still have a lack of faith in the strength of any concept or plot I come up with by myself, but I have a vague idea that seems to be coming together as I attempt to run with it.

My desire is to produce a sort of 'whimsical misery' (as a friend of mine put it). As most of the writing that interests me is very raw, stripped back drama, it can often be very depressing, and that's what I'm often prone to coming out with – depressing material. But looking towards the sort of dramatic comedy that interests me, thanks to my recent, growing affection for Wes Anderson films, I've realised that, rather than sad films with funny lines and a warm heart (such as 'Little Miss Sunshine'), humorous films with a sad, dramatic core can be much more touching and relatable. I'm also interested in the (much criticised) on-the-nose, deadpan or obscure humour and behaviour that plagues such films.

I've spent a lot of my recent time watching around Wes Anderson and his footprints in film (which is maybe something I shouldn't admit, in case of any coincidental similarities in my writing to his, especially as I've found myself imagining Anderson's signature actor, Bill Murray, delivering the lines of one of my characters).

The in-progress draft of my script is about the relationship between a father and son, and how the father's advice has unwittingly obscured the son's view of his surroundings. When the son is thrust into the spotlight of popularity at school, he tries his best to devise a way to reverse this status.

The actions and behaviours of each character are backed up by their surrounding environments that react metaphorically to the events. This is most prominent with the house that they live in, which is just as dysfunctional as the family themselves.

Not that I see this script-writing as any more than an exercise, I'm struggling to think of a name and a face that would be able to deliver these lines as well as a (younger) Murray, without sounding morbid:

FATHER (CONT'D)
Your mother's in love with a dead person, you just need to give her some time.

TIMOTHY
Are you ok?

FATHER
I'm a little bit lonely and sad.

Timelapse test

Standard amateur time-lapse test with my new 550d, from my housemate's bedroom window. Made by compiling 1,868 photos taken over just more than 3 hours, in Windows Movie Maker...

Rosemary Recording Sessions - Update

We've now had two more half-day sessions with Rosie and Ant in the recording studio. These two, although time-consuming, have gone a lot smoother and been a lot more productive. There's still an issue with the input signals (that I can't believe no one before me had noticed), but as I'm not recording drums or using over 8 microphones at any point this didn't effect me.

I'm a lot more comfortable using Control Room 1 now, with a much better handle on the D-Command mixing-desk.

We've now completed the drums, guitar and bass for four songs, I'd like to revisit the piano tracks if we get a chance and I've only recorded Rosie's vocals for two of the tracks. All that's left now is the lead vocals for the other two tracks and the two backing-vocal tracks from Emily and Tabz.

Grant's been with me on each of the days filming the progress and we've compiled a lot of footage to edit together videos to go along with the tracks. We also attended Rosie and the band's final assessed performance for her degree and filmed the whole thing, along with John Howe, who was kind enough to help out. This was my first proper use of filming with my 550D, and was good practise with photography (and lots of colour-correction in Photoshop) too.

We got the recording of the gig from the sound desk, but the quality wasn't great, so rather than edit the footage together as a separate project, we'll probably incorporate it into the EP recording documentation.

Extract from ‘Six Different Ways’

"I find it odd that his office resembles a living room yet his hallway resembles a young offender's institute and I tell him this. He asks me if I think she should be here and I tell him immediately that I absolutely do not deserve to be here, but that it was better than an anger management course – which was my mother's initial suggestion.

    I ask him what he is. Is he a therapist? A psychologist? A counsellor? A shrink? A psychoanalyst?

    He tells me he's somebody to talk to, somebody with which I can unleash with no consequences. He tells me to get angry, be rude, aggressive and that here and only here it's ok, that it's safe. He tells me to think of this room as a room without judgement and without repercussions and I tell him that if there're no repercussions then he certainly is wasting my time – even though I know this isn't what he meant. He sighs a little and I decide to loosen up on him. I tell him I've never needed anyone to talk to.

    He pauses for a second here. He leans forward and puts both his hands together, elbows to his knees and thumbs to his chin, leaning into himself. His two index fingers are stretched out together. He speaks more softly now.

    "Is it that you've never needed anyone to talk to, or that you've never had anyone to talk to?"

    I can feel the pressure against my temples. I can feel it boiling underneath my skin. But I don't disrespect him, so I keep it at bay."

"She's a good shell"

"If you shake a blown lightbulb close enough to your ear it sounds like sleighbells. Yesterday I saw a cat.

She's a good shell but that's all she is, nothing worth holding. I've had to build my reasoning from scratch -I had it all figured out but now I've lost it. I'm not cold anymore but I'm not sure where the warmth is coming from. I think it's the fact that the rejection came before the proclamation and that isn't what bothers me. I'm not even sure why I did it, I should have waited a few hours for it all to come down but I did it anyway and now the whole world's at a loss. I miss the days when I felt cold, calm - I felt metallic - but I'm on my way. I'm drinking fucking panda blood. I have no strings.

I'm breathing water still I reach for the surface, hoping that I'll like what's up there."

Canon EOS 550D

So I'm now the proud owner of a Canon 550D DSLR, and slightly out of my depth with it. I've just got to learn how to use the thing and practise with it. Hopefully put together some sort of filming. Our entire course seem to be converting to the use of DSLR for filming, as the colour and depth of field is far superior to anything the Media Centre offers.

Grant and I want to shoot a short film over the next four weeks entirely on green-screen. Something stylised and over-the-top so we can experiment with effects and backdrops. So we need to come up with an actual concept some time soon.

'Open Till Late' Hand-in

This Tuesday is the presentation and hand-in of our finished short film. I saw a rough cut two days ago and, honestly, I'm not sure how proud of it I am. I don't know how much of it is panic, but I know we could have done a better job between us.

Tomorrow we add the audio mix, which I'm also worried about the quality of and put it all together then burn it to DVD - finished.

I'm also in charge of compiling the production folder. All the pre-production research and planning, shot-lists and storyboards, schedules, contracts right through to promo material (which I've had a stab at, but my Photoshop skills aren't exactly great). So it's a mad rush now with everything needed to be complete by tomorrow afternoon, then we need to plan a ten minute presentation to be followed by a screening for our tutors.

In the evening there's been a party organised in a pub in Penryn to screen all the films along with the cast, the rest of the course, the tutors and some other guests. I'm a little bit nervous about that, and whether I want to share the finished film. Hopefully will make up my mind seeing it all in place tomorrow.

Rosemary Recording Sessions - Day 1

Last Thursday was our first day in the new recording studios recording Rosie and her band.

It did not go smoothly.

Firstly I was just not used to the set up, working with the patch bay and routing the paths of all the microphones and wires for a project this big. It was also my first time in Control Room 1 (without a proper induction). This control room has a large D-Command digital mixing desk that, in essence, works in the same way as the Control 24 desk from the Tremough Studio, but everything seems to be in nonsensical and overcomplicated places - but that's almost definitely just because I'm used to something different.

When I could only get half the microphones to come through to the desk I started to get quite frustrated. When seven people are waiting around for you to set-up and start getting on with the recording and there's nothing anyone else can do it can be very stressful and embarrassing if things go wrong. Even if it's a smooth set-up the process is still long and dull for anyone waiting.

It turned out that there was a problem with one of the 192 pre-amps and that half the microphones wouldn't come through. This meant sacrificing a couple of the drums microphones and the ability to record drums, bass and guitar at the same time.

So, after wasting nearly three hours, I had to record drums (not having the time to take the care to get as good a sound as I'd liked) with a guide guitar and guide vocal in the control room. Then begin laying down the bass and piano separately - a much longer process. And, because we hadn't pre-booked a decent guitar amp we have to wait until next week for that.

Despite all this, things went well once we did get started - and the songs started to sound pretty good. We got the rough tracks down for five songs and next Thursday (starting at 9am and finishing at 10pm) we have guitar, piano, more drums then more bass and piano and then vocals to lay down. Hopefully things will go a lot more smoothly then.

We're also taking more care as to which members of the band come in at what time to minimise the amount of waiting and boredom.

The filming went well though, although I felt especially guilty making Grant and Josh wait around more than anyone. Apparently they got some good footage and hopefully that will be worth it in the end.

Pro Tools 9

I was having issues running Pro Tools at home with the Original Mbox that I needed to run it through not working properly with my computer or monitors, so I decided to upgrade to Pro Tools 9, which runs straight through my PC – and far more stably. This makes me feel a lot better about having my ridiculously over-sized and expensive monitors functioning properly. Two of these pretty much dominate my room now.

I also decided to purchase a Faderport, making mixing in my bedroom easier. Although, despite the manufacturers promising me otherwise, it's not entirely compatible with Pro Tools 9 (yet), which is great. It was a nice idea though, emulating a larger mixer so I don't have to use a mouse (which doesn't work well at all when automating volume or effects in comparison to a fader).

'the Fall'

After re-reading Camus' 'the Outsider', which I often refer to as one of my favourite novels, I decided to read a few more of his books. I bought 'the Fall' and 'the First Man' (his unfinished last novel), but I'm still kind of hesitant to tackle any more of his essays after the density of 'the Myth of Sisyphus' - no matter how interesting it was.

I started reading 'the Fall' and, even though the language isn't as easily accessible as 'the Outsider', it's still pretty good. There's more on the surface of this story and just as much underneath. Essentially it's a 100 page monologue about guilt, hypocrisy and the loss of innocence - a series of one-way conversations between two strangers in an Amsterdam bar.

This passage stood out from the early pages:

"There was one man who gave twenty years of his life to a scatter-brained woman, sacrificing everything in his life for her - friends, work, even respectability - only to acknowledge one evening that he had never loved her. He was bored, that was all, bored, like most people; so he created from scratch a life of complications and drama for himself. Something's got to happen - that's the explanation for most human undertakings. Something's got to happen, even if it's slavery without love, or war, or death."

Rehearsal Extract

Here's an extract of the rehearsal Grant filmed last week in prep for the recording.

Recording Studio Documentary

Today I went to one of Rosemary's rehearsals. It was the first time I've heard her play with her band and I really liked the sound of what they've put together. They played the full version of Hieroglyphs (which I recorded an acoustic version of and shared in a previous post) as well as two other complete songs and a few that are still works in progress and I'm really excited to get started on producing them.

We booked the studio for a week today and I've started making notes on my microphone choices and how to structure the recordings. It's a big project, with drums, guitars, bass, piano and four vocal parts, and the band were keen to record live. However, I'm less keen on that, with bleeding between instruments making it difficult to control the mix of the recordings as well as being limited to 16-tracks/microphones with the analogue mixing desk, when I tend to use around 15 on just the drums.

So I'm trying to figure out a way to make the band perform as comfortably as they would in a live environment but with the same result of multi-track recordings. Ideally, I'll get the drums, guitar and bass to play together in the live room but route the guitar and bass through to the amps in the two isolation booths. I'll have Rosie in the control room singing a guide vocal at the same time. Then record the piano and vocal tracks separately afterwards.

Grant - the editor and assistant cameraman on our current project - asked me if he could take some photos or do some filming so I approached Rosie with the idea of making a mini documentary/making-of to edit together. She seemed enthusiastic so I asked my friend Alex - also on our course and good with his DSLR and interesting in music production - whether he'd be interested in helping out too, which he was.

The idea is to make it into something useful for Rosie as well as ourselves for our PDP work.

'The Lion in Winter'

(admittedly, discovered through references in 'the West Wing')

Geoffrey: 'You fool! As if it matters how a man falls down.'

Richard the Lionheart: 'When the fall's all that's left, it matters a great deal.'

Extracts from other things

“He sings about me in Latin. He writes about me in Greek. If you want to earn me, you have to do something.” And all of a sudden it knocks me to the floor. The culmination of her words and my flaws, and the weakness in my left ventricle, it’s hit me like a hard left-hook and I fall to the ground in front of her. She looks at me as if I’m mad, but I’m not female.

--------------

“Girls, one day – if it hasn’t happened already, mind you – one day a man will tell you he loves you.

It will be a lie.

Especially if he’s Italian.”

--------------

I wrote our history on a napkin and then I threw it at your face. It was one of those posh napkins, the reusable ones, not the disposable type. I guess that makes it better. You picked it up and read it and you laughed. Everything summed up in to four or five sentences - that’s the way you like it, and that’s the reason I hated you so much. I smiled and you grasped my knee under the table.

We speak quickly and honestly and simultaneously.

“I love you.”

“You wear me out.”

Looking Back

Just looking back on a few posts here and noticed the post where I declared my intention to write something more uplifting and less cynical... I guess that didn't happen.

The most recent thing I've been working on is a short story about a girl juggling a relationship with an abusive boyfriend and a heroin-addicted best friend, but isn't as dreary as that makes it sound, I hope. It links slightly to my last piece, and at the moment I've got about 6,000 words. I was aiming for around 10,000 but at the moment there's not really any plot or structure and I'm trying to figure out how to deal with it as a story.

“You’ll never understand the ways you’ve helped me.” He tells me. “You’ve released me. You’ll never believe the state I was in before I met you.”

The look in his eyes tells me he’s being a soft and sincere and affectionate romantic. The grip with which his hand takes my arm tells me I should be afraid of him, of what he could be capable of.

“Jay...” I begin the question before I’m even sure what I’m about to confront. I take a moment and he looks at me and smiles a smile that would have made my heart melt a month ago. He’s become this sweet and loving and genuine male out of nowhere, and he tells me that this is my influence – I’ve drawn the sweetness out of him and into the forefront of his character.

The silence has lasted too long now and I realise it’s no longer appropriate to ask him whether he did, in fact, murder his brother, so instead I place both of my hands, softly, on either side of his face and give him a delicate kiss, hoping he mistakes delicacy for affection.

'Open Till Late' Filming

This week we finished the bulk of our shoot for our short film. After finding our feet on the first day it was quite a smooth process and we managed to work productively as a group. The actors were great, very patient, enthusiastic and happy to help out. Because we had to wait for the shop to close, we couldn't start setting up until 8 and usually ended up finishing around 3am. We now have just one short scene in another location and some green-screen footage to film.

We suffered from two significant set-backs, however. One that was resolved before it had any actual impact on the project, another that's irreversible we're all very unhappy with and we'll have to continue to deal with.

Firstly, after a month of pre-planning and organisation, we arrived at the shop and unloaded our three cars worth of equipment when security turned up and announced our filming had been cancelled by health and safety, and that we'd have to leave. It turns out the shop's manager, who okayed the shoot and organised our supervision with her staff, didn't have the authority to allow us and our kit in the shop after closing. It turned out that everyone was informed of its cancellation four-days prior apart from us, who weren't informed of any issues at all.

Luckily, after a long conversation with security and phoning the shop manager and head of health and safety, we were given the clearance to go ahead and film again, despite issues with our risk assessment and preparation. Thankfully, this was resolved pretty quickly, before our actors arrived and we could quickly move past it.

The second issue was that the JVC's we used to film on (which are usually reserved just for third years) suffer from an defect that, after they've warmed up, causes them to produce "hot"/dead pixels. So the majority of our shots are now decorated with 4 or 5 red and green dots. We didn't notice this until we uploaded the footage in an edit suite, and there's not really any way we could have prevented it without prior warning.

From the tutors point of view (after being convinced it wasn't us being negligent) is that we can't be marked down for it, but no one is happy about it at all. Our tutors wanted us to re-shoot all the affected scenes, and so did we - with the knowledge that we'd benefit from doing a better production job a second time round, but it didn't seem feasible with the deadline/budget/actors availability. The other, significant issue, is that it will probably be difficult for any film festivals to take the finished work seriously - which is a requirement of the brief. The larger the image is shown, the more prominent the pixels will become.

My main worry now is the quality of the audio, as all sound is diegetic and dialogue-heavy, and all the atmos noise (such as the fridges and freezers) is very apparent, and the levels tend to peak and distort during the argument scene. I really want to avoid having to do ADR (dragging the actors into a recording studio to re-record and sync their lines.)

We aim to have a first rough-edit in place by Wednesday, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it comes together.

'Open Till Late' rehearsals

Today we had our first (and last) rehearsal for our short film; 'Open Till Late'. Despite being behind schedule and not having much time left it all went quite well. It was the first time we had all three actors together in the same room, and the improvement from the first run-through and the final one was really impressive.

I think we all gained a lot of confidence, most of the pressure is now off the actors (providing their lines are learnt) and back on us and how professional and productive we are during the shoot.

Because we're filming in a shop, we can't start setting up until closing time (6pm on Sunday and 8pm Monday and Wednesday). The intention is to film through until 1am and then pack-down the equipment, even though the member of staff we're paying to supervise the shoot thinks he's finishing at 12. We want to trying and complete filming within two nights so we don't have to use the Wednesday, and then we have just under 3 weeks for post-production and the filming of a short scene in a separate location.

During post, I also have to put together all the documents for the hand in, including promo material and evidence of entrance into the film festivals. Along with:

– Evidence of group research

– Feasibility study

– Script drafts & camera script. Character bibles.

– Strategy documents for Direction, Camera, Sound, Edit, Art department, Production management.

– Production management documentation including contracts, release forms, location recces &

permissions, schedules, shot lists, storyboard, call‐ sheets, budgets, prop & wardrobe lists,

meeting agendas & minutes.

– Individual 2000 word creative reflection documents

– 4 X assessed Exercises (from earlier last term)

– Copy of festival entry form and your production’s promotional material

– Copy of film on DVD & Vimeo address for online version.

Luckily, it's my role as Producer that puts me in charge of all that.

'The Tree of Life'

I've become obsessed with the trailer for Terrance Malick's latest film. I keep coming back to it, not even in anticipation for the film, just for the trailer as a work of its own.

Random cuts of imagery that depict early stages of the birth of earth and the rest of the universe (saving the rumoured dinosaurs for the final film) are cut together with scenes of a young boy raised in the 50's by a soulful and nurturant mother, who teaches 'the way of love and mercy', and a hard father (Brad Pitt - a part originally meant for Heath Ledger) who tries to teach 'the world’s way of putting oneself first. Each parent contends for his allegiance, and Jack must reconcile their claims. The picture darkens as he has his first glimpses of sickness, suffering and death. The world, once a thing of glory, becomes a labyrinth.'

The trailer then moves to the adult (Sean Penn) in modern times, who believes he's witnessed the loss of innocence after struggling and failing to find a path satisfying to the way of either parent.

I think part of the reason the story grabbed me was due to its similarity to a treatment our group produced as a potential short film earlier last term. Our story followed a young adult who was essentially beginning to suffer cold feet before his wedding. It explored his disconnection with society and hesitation to embrace life that stemmed from the weight of childhood fears and expectations, as well as the relationship of (and with) his parents.

I'm hoping the amount of times I've seen the trailer hasn't created unreasonable expectations for the film. Malick has earned himself a reputation as one of the most enigmatic film-makers alive, keeping an unheard of level of secrecy surrounding both his film productions and private life. A Harvard graduate and MIT Philosophy lecturer, he's directed only four films so far in his 40-year career and is famed for lengthy film-making processes, unconventional visuals and narrative structures, and is often referred to as a visionary and his films as masterpieces.

'Six Feet Under'

This is one of my favourite scenes from Six Feet Under. Again, it's the writing and acting that makes it what it is. With the stripped back production values making it so realistic - one of the most realistic fight scenes I've seen in television drama. Reducing the characters down to being instinctively desperate, weak and immature, it feels really authentic, which in my opinion, is very rare, even for Six Feet Under.

It also makes me wonder how Alan Ball went from producing this, to True Blood.

'Open Till Late'

Things finally seem to be coming together for our current project, after going wrong so many times.

We've been set the task of producing a 10 minute short film to enter into two of the UK's best film festivals Raindance, and Exposures (which is solely for students).

We're in groups of 6 and each have our specific roles - my role is as the Producer. At first we held many group production meetings, where everybody had an input in developing our concept and, afterwards, our script. After all pitching various ideas, we began developing an idea that Nick (our chosen Director) put forward and once we had a layout we were all happy with, Nick and I began writing multiple drafts of the script. I really enjoyed the collaborative effort, even with all the arguments, disagreements and the moments of awkward tension that came with them. After about 8 drafts we had a script we were all happy with and, already far behind schedule, we began moving forward with the pre-production process.

Finding actors was a frustrating process, mostly as it moved slowly and not a lot of progress could be made until we were settled. Both the 2nd and 3rd years of both the Broadcasting and Film courses were casting for films at the same time, and it was difficult to get responses from Dartington actors, so we had to be a little more creative in where to find others. Eventually we found an actor suited to each of the three parts and by then we were ahead of schedule and getting quite confident about our situation.

We should have foreseen bad luck in the shape of scheduling conflicts with two of (who we thought were) our ideal actors, causing them to have to step back from their commitment to us. It was now approaching the end of term and the majority of the group were going home for up to a month, we were under pressure to find new actors and schedule auditions and rehearsals in time to film the first week back.

Although difficult, we ended up finding actors we were happy with and were free to work around our (delayed) production dates. However, the actors we ended up with are younger than our original cast and script characters, so a few adjustments had to be made to the script.

We only found the last actor at the end of last week. So we now have our first full rehearsal next Wednesday, another rehearsal scheduled for the following Wednesday and then we're (hopefully) set that weekend to film - two more weeks behind schedule and dependent on plans working out with the campus shop (our location). In the meantime we have to organise test shoots with fake cigarettes/CGI smoke, gather costumes and a large amount of props (including producing fake newspapers and CCTV cameras), begin the sound and CGI design, film and edit a fake TV news-report and find a second location and build a green-screen window there.

Although paperwork and planning has never been my strong-suit, I am enjoying the role of Producer. Being able to be heavily involved with the creative aspects of the production as well as shepherding its progress through contact with the group and its individual members is something I'm both enjoying and learning from. Although keeping the entire group in contact with each other and up to date the whole time is more of a difficult task than it seems, being in charge of the organisation and scheduling isn't as bad as I initially thought it would be.

It's also been useful and almost enjoyable being in charge of correspondence with locations as well as searching for actors and organising casting auditions and rehearsals, contacting local theatre groups and organisations and responding to all the replies as the main contact of the group.

Mostly, I've enjoyed the scriptwriting process. From the workshops to working collaboratively with Nick and the rest of the group to develop a concept into a strong script has been both informative and enjoyable, as writing and the technique involved is something that really interests me. I feel proud of what we've ended up with.

Now to just make the thing...

Killers are hitting on me.

"He’s apathetic and self-involved, misanthropic and completely alluring. I’m fascinated by him."


"She’s lying on her bed on her right side. Her left leg is hanging over the mattress and her foot touches the floor. I can’t see her face for all of the hair that drapes over her and as I approach, slowly and reluctantly, I notice her pillow is covered in what looks like some sort of light green foam. The smell of fish and vomit wafts over me and makes me retch. I turn her over and it hits me like a wall. I fall to my knees.
I don’t panic or rush my movements or call for help, but move the hair away from her face and open her eyes. They don’t respond. I use my little finger as a hook to pull out the remaining foam from the back of her throat and I sit her up a little. I place my palms on both sides of her face and use my thumbs to stretch the skin of her cheeks – I don’t know why. I let go and her head lolls.
By the side of the bed is an open bottle of water – not for drinking. I pour some of it into her mouth. She chokes a bit and her eyes begin to move a little. She’s breathing again and her legs twitch. The water splutters back out of her mouth a different texture and colour than it was before. I hold her by the back of her head, fingers locked into the knots of her hair and she looks up at me. I look down immediately, so as to not make eye contact, and notice I’m kneeling on one of her needles. Freshly used, it presses its tip into my leg. I shuffle away slightly before I look back towards her. I think she’s trying to smile at me. My face stays blank. It takes all of my willpower not to stand up at this moment and walk away, now she’s awake and safe. I guess I should be with her now, for comfort, but I don’t have any words. Nothing is spoken, nothing said, the only thing thought is that I shouldn’t be here. Her hand reaches for me three or four times but never makes it. I realise now that I’m afraid, and what I’m afraid of is not being able to remove my hand, of being forever tangled in the knots of her hair."

Rosemary

I've been recording and mixing two songs with my first Dartington artist in the new studios this week.

Rosemary is a 4th year Music student who writes songs along with her boyfriend Ant, just about to enter the final term of her degree. We recorded two songs in the session, one actually had to be finished being written during the process which was actually more interesting than frustrating, although it took a long time.

It was the first time I've really been enthusiastic about the songs or the artist I'm recording, which was very refreshing. It was also the first time I properly recorded a piano part (which for this song was the main instrument) and I they also trusted my say in the progression and arrangements of both songs.

Rosie even encourage me to experiment with the sound of the mixes rather than just accommodate what she was expecting - which is usually the case. We've booked another session for this Friday, before I go home for Easter, and she's also asked me to record the band she's putting together for her final performances.

Here's one of the songs we recorded, called Hieroglyphs:

New Recording Studio practise

I've finally gotten around to using the new Dartington recording studios in Falmouth's £15 million Performance Centre that opened this year. I've only been inducted in two of the four control rooms so far, and it's the first time I've been using an analogue mixing desk by myself, but it didn't take as long as I thought to get used to.

I think I'd still prefer to use the digital control desks - I've gotten used to being able to mix as I record - but it's just what I'm used to. It's also because this control room is on the upper floor, so the only real visual communication I can have with the live room is through the TV's and CCTV (the novelty of which wears off very quickly).

I began work on an EP with a third artist called Simon, and I'm working with my first Dartington student and her band tomorrow.

Extract from Nothing

“Do you want this?” She asks me.

How am I meant to know if I want this? How am I meant to know what’s right in these situations?

“It’s not about what’s right, it’s about what’s good.” She says, reading the look on my face. I look her up and down.

“There’s nothing about this that’s good.”

“Not morally. Fuck morals, fuck ethics.” She commands, her voice is stern but her face relaxed. “I mean good for you.” She smiles when she says this, her lip curls and she’s gorgeous and, just to top it off, when it’s done curling she bites down on it, and looks up at me through her eyelashes. “Why deny yourself something you want so badly?”

I don’t think there’s an answer to that question, if there is I definitely don’t understand enough about anything to be able to answer it – not even myself.

I take what she’s offering – how can I not? I put it in my pocket, and that’s that.

Before this I’d never stolen, and before this I’d never done anything under the influence of anyone else, but she had a flower in her hair.

'Collapse Into Now'

R.E.M. have just released their fifteenth album and Michael Stipe is back to writing poetry like he used to. Much more of a personal album than a political one this time around, it doesn't quite have the grip of Automatic for the People or New Adventures in Hi-Fi, but amongst the lulls in pace are some stand-out tracks.

Here's an excerpt from the closing track, 'Blue', that I think still represents his mind at his best.

"I am made by my times

I am a creation of now
Shaken with the cracks and crevices
I'm not giving up easy
I will not fold
I don't have much
But what I have is gold

I sing in platinum
I dress in brass
I eat in zinc
Let it pass

I like you, love you, every coast of you.
I've seen your eddies and tides and hurricanes and cyclones.
Low ebb tide and high, full moon.
Up close and distant.
I read you.
Look, the sky, the sea, the ocean, the sun, the moon.
Blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue blue, blue, blue, blue, blue.
Naked and blue.

Breathing with you. Touch. Change. Shift. Allow air. Window open. Drift. Drift away. Into now.

I want Whitman proud. Patti Lee proud. My brothers proud. My sisters proud. I want me. I want it all. I want sensational. Irresistible.

This is my time and I am thrilled to be alive.

Living. Blessed. I understand.

Twentieth century:
Collapse Into Now"

'Why would you deny yourself something you want so badly?'

I meant to write about my reaction to this question, but I don't think I understand anything well enough to tackle it - not even myself. I also wanted to write something a little less cynical and a little more uplifting this time, a bit of a departure.

My aim now is to just keep writing short stories of around 10,000 words in hope that one will be good. I've got two complete now, as well as Six Different Ways (at around 59,000 - although I really don't like it) and I'm now playing with a third.

I nearly let someone read one recently, but surely that defeats the point of writing?

I've got an end to a story

I'm just missing a few sections in the beginning and middle and towards the end. But at least I have a beginning, a middle and an ending - of sorts. For now. Until I decide to delete or rip it apart.

I've already deleted a lot, deciding I didn't like it, even though I said I'd leave everything at first. I'm now on 9,000 words-ish.

"I come back into my room with his bottle of beer and see he’s eating a packet of crisps. He tells me he found them in a bag under my bed and that he hopes it’s alright. The funny thing is I don’t even remember picking up the fruit bowl and hitting him round the head with it several times until it shatters into pieces and the bowl breaks too."

"This is the first thing I have ever understood."

So I decided to change some details and settings for my blog and ended up loosing the majority of my posts in a long while, so I'm attempting to start again for this term.

For the last 8 weeks we've been looking at documentary form, the unconscious identity and the concept of self-reflexivity. The first four weeks were research based and I took this opportunity to incorporate my interest in philosophy and the fact that I was already reading some Nietzsche when looking into theories around "truth".

The concept behind the documentary, which was our practical unit for the second four weeks, was that it was meant to explore technology's effect on social change, and how it plays into the way we construct our identity.

I decided to focus this topic on musicians. As I thought it would be interesting to delve into how bands and artists construct their identity, especially as music is already such a significant interest of mine. I also thought this would be an effective way to implement my idea of building a showcase website for bands (that I've briefly discussed before) in some way or another. I decided to make short films focusing on each individual band I met as a test run for my website idea, as well as making the documentary project, which, I believed, would all work well together and accompany the website effectively.

However, I think I may have been a little over-ambitious here and that my focus on the website may have detracted my attention from making the documentary solid as a stand alone piece.

I decided - rather ambitiously and stubbornly - to work by myself this term, rather than in a group. This was mostly due to poor experiences in groups in the past, but also because my role has tended to be mostly technical in recent projects. I've been focusing on realising other peoples ideas or at least co-producing concepts, and not giving enough input to the core concepts myself, so I wanted to put the pressure on myself this time to produce something entirely of my own.

It turns out this wasn't exactly the best idea. Traipsing to and around London by myself with all my camera and sound equipment, a laptop, notepad and two hard-drives, wasn't exactly easy, especially when it came to getting quality video and decent sound and lighting.

I also decided not to involve any friends that are musicians - not at this stage anyway - to not use any contacts I already had and to try my best to get in touch with as many decent bands as possible. I ended up with three, very talented bands, an independent record store, a recording studio/band manager and a guy called David Balfe, an extremely successful musician/producer/manager/record label/A&R man/rights publisher/music video director - just about every aspect of the industry you could name.

I was attempting to get in touch with a musician called Derek Meins (aka the Agitator) and accidentally got the attention of David, who contacted me and kindly offered to be involved with the doc. He very modestly told me to Wikipedia his name and see if I thought his opinion would be of any value to me. I was sort of in shock when I found out he was a musician in the 80's, playing in the Teardrop Explodes and (one of my favourite bands) Echo and the Bunnymen. He also managed both bands and started his own record label to release them though - producing 'Crocodiles' (an album that I highly regard as a huge influence on me and the entire Alt Rock music scene spanning the last few decades) along the way.

He later went on to sign Blur - his biggest success - as well as convincing them to change their name from Seymour and managing them until he decided to retire into a very big house in the country, inspiring Blur to pen the Battle-of-Brit-Pop-defining song 'Country House'.

David was kind enough to agree to an interview, and even drove me out to his home (the same country house), made me sandwiches and allowed me to interview him in his kitchen. This was a hugely valuable experience for me, definitely making the whole project worth it, if for no other reason. He was an extremely generous, enthusiastic and passionate person, and had very interesting opinions and insights into the industry.

I spent two weeks filming and interviewing people and then came back to Falmouth for the final week and a half to edit.

The first cut of the doc I was relatively happy with, it was structured in three sections, one introducing each character and beginning to explore what they saw as the 'philosophy' behind music, then delving into their own opinions of how bands build an identity and image - both consciously and subconsciously - and finally discussing how the advent of new digital technologies (with particular focus on Myspace and Facebook has changed this for the better or worse). This cut, however, was twenty-one minutes long, eleven minutes over the specified limit.

Cutting it down to time was a struggle, the end result was a flat and relatively dull documentary that didn't have much of an exploration. It also meant I'd cut out most of the illustrative, cutaway footage of the bands (the most visually pleasing parts), and was left with a lot of 'talking heads' style interviews - something which I'd specifically claimed I would avoid at all costs during pre-production.

I showed the cut to my lecturers two days before the deadline and they weren't particularly impressed, suggesting I have a think and attempt to begin the edit again from a more radical perspective, putting more of myself and my opinions and bias into the piece rather than attempting to be purely observational and letting the characters speak for themselves. They wanted me to highlight, utilise and explore the contradictions and paradoxical elements behind a musician claiming to be natural and unmoved by fashion or image-consciousness when clearly they are entirely built on an image - be it an unconscious one of whether they are fully aware of it.

And the frustrating part is that I didn't disagree with what my tutors were saying. I'd attempted to tackle the documentary as something that coincides with the brief, but also as something that accompanies the website that I wanted to start, and I think those two motivations conflicted. I ended up shooting footage that was too much to do with my concept for the website, that when editing together a documentary for my degree I did end up with something flat and uninteresting as a stand alone piece. I also struggled with taking advantage of the trust these people had invested in me in order to basically mock them - this felt uncomfortable, but was a more entertaining result than the original version.

I ended up struggling to re-edit it and resulted in handing in two unfinished versions, with the intention of the original being my final hand-in if I had to choose. Ultimately, I was pretty frustrated and dissatisfied with this.

In terms of for the site, I'm still reasonably confident I can re-edit the footage into several shorter clips, including all the cut footage that I liked myself, but was irrelevant to the brief for the course, in order to make several short and more focused videos.

As for the website itself, I'm putting a lot of effort into learning the basics behind the layout and design of the site. I'm still not exactly understanding everything that goes on with the coding, but I'm getting a better grasp over it with time and I'm starting to do more simple things myself, like adding a comments section to the artists page so visitors can leave messages, and repositioning all the images. It's all up and running online, but I'm still yet to edit the videos for the three bands that I've shot and there's a lot more work to do on the site before I want to start spreading it properly. At the moment there's only rough-cut videos up for the sake of a prototype.

I'm also still unsure about the name. Taking influence from a solo artist I've been working with in the studio here in Tremough, I thought 'Music and Money' would be suitable for a site that attempts to explore the motivation behind music - after one of his songs we recorded with two mics, an old 3/4 size guitar and in one take. But 'Music and Money' was already taken, so I settled with 'Music or Money', a different implication altogether, but relevant nonetheless. So this is the site URL for now:

www.musicormoney.co.uk

I haven't been using the recording studio as much as I'd like to this term, the work load in the second year is definitely a contrast and I've found myself with a lot less free time. Hopefully I'll be doing some sessions with at least one artist before the holidays, and I'm determined to find myself some Dartington students to start working with at the beginning of next year.

I've also been working on a framework for a short story to pass time occasionally. I've come up with something I think I like, a sort of beginning, middle and end, and I'm starting to build on it when I get a chance. At the moment it's about 8,500 words long and I'm aiming to get a complete narrative of between 10 and 15,000 words - mainly because I never actually finish anything. I've decided if I don't worry about length, and just focus on a finished structure of a story. I can decide to leave it or build on it as I please.

The first line is: "This is the first thing I have ever understood."

'Inception'

I literally can't remember the last time I saw a decent film at the cinema, let alone the last time I looked forward to seeing one. I've been following the production of 'Inception' since its very early stages, as I've followed the career of Christopher Nolan closely after loving both 'Memento' and 'Batman Begins'. He went on the make 'the Prestige' and, obviously, 'the Dark Knight', giving him - in both my opinion and near-undisputed fact - one of the most impressive track records of directors in recent film history. Not one of his seven films has failed to impress, both critically and commercially, and even his remake of the Norwegian film 'Insomnia' - his weakest film yet - was a strong effort.

His films all display the many attributes of his rare talent. He's worked on all his films with his wife Emma Thomas and Wally Pfister acting as Producer and Director of Photography, respectfully, and often collaborates with his brother, Jonathon Nolan on his scripts. He displays a knack for post-modern narrative, effective ensemble casting of huge talent, and the ability to pull the best performances out of his actors.

After the success of 'the Dark Knight', Warner practically gave him free roam with a $200 million budget to develop a script he'd been working on for over 12 years. He put together an incredible ensemble cast and filmed in over 7 different countries in order to make his genre-bending "heist" film 'Inception', "set within the architecture of the mind".

But, aside from all the details and the fact that Nolan has become one of my favourite directors in his relatively short career, the hype around this film can mainly come the fact that this is the first big summer blockbuster (I can think of) in years that is not a sequel/remake/reboot/adaptation, but instead a truly original script.

Dublin

I haven't used my blog in nearly a month now that term's finished, but I don't think this is due to lack of motivation since I went home for summer, it's due to lack of inspiration. For some reason I keep forgetting how dull and uninspiring Chichester can be as a home town, especially being here for a stretch as long as 3 months. I'm quite fortunate to have friends in Brighton I can escape to frequently and my dad's place in London that often stops me from going mad. But this week I grew increasingly frustrated at home and decided to escape for a bit. So, at around 3am after a (quite dull) night out, I booked a ticket to Dublin by myself to return in five days.

I've been here three days now it it's turned out to be the best decision I've made in a very long time. Being part Irish and never having been to Dublin I felt it was the obvious choice in destination - granted, I didn't quite realise just how expensive it can be, 5 euro for a pint being a cheap deal. It's a great city full of really interesting buildings and structures and I've managed to start reading and writing a lot again (of which I was doing nothing at home), meet lots of new people and just feel more relaxed in general. I'm staying in a hostel right in the centre of town and spent the last two nights on pub crawls with a group of 30-year old, ultra-conservative American frat-brothers from Ohio and New Mexico who are on a reunion.

I've been reading two books, one a background to British Politics and the other called 'the Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable', a theory put forward by Nassim Nicholas Taleb about the logic behind randomness and uncertainty and how we deal with events. I really like his ideas about things becoming 'predictable' only after they occur, and his thoughts about man's great ability/determination to apply logic to rare, unpredictable events afterwards in order to make it seem as if they could have been easily foreseen. I will write more about this once I've finished the book.

'West Wing'

Watching one two minute clip of 'the West Wing' only makes me want to re-watch the entire 112 hours. My favourite TV series ever, combining intelligence, comedy, brilliant acting and writing and amazing direction of photography. Every single character of the quite large ensemble cast is amazing. Here's one clip demonstrating this.

Future Ideas

Coming towards the end of term and the end of my first year of this degree, I've been thinking a lot about what I want to do in the future. I've been uncertain about what career I may want to eventually enter into for a very long time and I still maintain this uncertainty. My interest in music production is starting to become more of a fascination and a passion, the hours of effort I dedicate to learning about it and practising it don't feel like work and it doesn't feel like a hobby and I'm starting to think it could possibly start developing into a skill - although I'll be very hard on myself before I reach that point.

However, I still maintain my passion for film and my interest in writing. I don't feel ready to concentrate all my creative thoughts onto one specialism and I also don't think it's necessary. Although I have decided that, for now, I want to integrate music, in one form or another, into as much of my degree work as possible. And I've been thinking about things I want to attempt next year.

I know one of the modules next year involves documentary, so I'm attempting to put together plans to create a music documentary and see how feasible this idea will be. Hopefully I'll know more before the summer and can plan it properly then. I have an accessible band in mind who would make an interesting subject and I would be able to get access and interviews with quite a few industry professionals and other, established bands if it worked out. However, all this rests on what my course dictates in terms of whether I'd be able to take on a project by myself or in a small group rather than a group of 4 or 5 and whether it's possible for me to travel to Brighton and London for a period of time to complete the bulk of the filming and production.

I'm also thinking more seriously about creating a website for artists to showcase videos of their songs, but with a few "obstructions" (taking influence from the work in our second term based on Lars von Trier's method of obstructing the creative process with various rules). These rules would be something along the lines of; the song must be a 'live' performance and not be pre-recorded and must be performed in an area not accustomed to musical performances - interpreted as you wish. This could mean filmed in HD or on a handycam, or even on a mobile phone anywhere from in a kitchen to on a bus or in a lift (inspired by Vincent Moon and the previously mentioned Blogotheque, and the concept of 'Guerilla perfomances'.) This is something I really want to have a stab at.

The main problem here - I know nothing about web-design. So this week I've got myself a copy of Dreamweaver CS4, a copy of 'Dreamweaver CS4 for Dummies' and some time with a Technical Instructor at Uni next week to start showing me the basics.

I want to do this!

I've recently come across a foreign website called: Blogotheque. The basic concept is there're dozens (maybe hundreds) of well established musicians/bands/songwriters, an amazing selection, that all have videos made where they're asked/made to perform songs in unusual and/or uncomfortable places. Like on top of railway bridges, squashed in a lift, or whilst walking down a busy street. They call these 'Take-Away Shows" and they're all filmed cheaply and quickly and mostly in one take, proper guerrilla style.

I was happy to find out that the mastermind behind the idea was Vincent Moon, a name I was familiar with from a music-documentary of Arcade Fire called 'Miroir Noir', a very unusual and inspiring documentary following the band through both the recording and touring process. Moon shoots and directs lots of independent music-based films as well as lots of music videos for a lot of bands I love from the Alt. Rock ("Indie" - in its true sense) genre.

I've been trying to come up with a solid idea of a project to set myself this summer. Initially I was leaning towards a straightforward documentary following my friends band that are doing fairly well for themselves at the moment. But I've always been drawn to the concept of both guerrilla filming and guerrilla gigs and I'm really keen to take influence from this and make use of the massive quantities of quality musicians I know back home in Brighton and maybe create a digital network incorporating loads of mini videos. Perhaps beginning by making them myself and then allowing people to add their own.

'Outliers'

For my birthday my dad bought me three books. The first I've already started reading, is the latest from Malcolm Gladwell. I enjoyed 'Blink' so much I'd go straight onto this one before the work of another author.

'Blink' went on to discuss the mechanics of emotion and how the muscles of the face's reaction to a feeling, displaying emotion, is linked to the bodies reaction and how if a person manipulates those muscles, effectively recreating the combination of movements that form the facial expression displaying anger, the body will react as if the person is actually angry, ie. their heart rate will increase and palms will sweat, the person will grow disorientated and find it harder to think rationally. Similarly, if a person watches a comedy with a pencil between their teeth, prohibiting their muscles from forming a smile, the person will react differently to normal, finding it less funny.

It also discussed the workings of Autistic minds, "mind-reading" (forming and reading facial expressions) and the theory of the state of 'arousal'. Using policemen as examples, Gladwell talks about the rush of adrenaline in vital situations when your heart rate increases, causing your brain to shut down and block out what it deems unnecessary information. During this state of arousal, a police officer can block out surrounding noise/gunfire, focus onto people or objects with enhanced vision and experience a slow-down of time. However, if the arousal increases, so does the heart-rate and brain's reaction, which can shut down so many parts of your brain that you can become effectively useless, even to the point of having no control over your body, unintentionally voiding your bowels and not being able to move or act.

His next book, 'Outliers', tackles the circumstances of success, "changing the way we think about what makes us unique". The first few chapters are dedicated to introducing how he's going to achieve this, beginning with 'proving' how what month you're born in proves vital to your success as an sportsman. Gladwell claimes that this 'evidence' "tells us that our notion that it is the best and the brightest who effortlessly rise to the top is much too simplistic."

Again, it's a very innovative and original idea, using other peoples work, theory and discoveries to build on and strengthen his own.

I particularly like a quote from 'the Times' on the back of this book. "He is the best kind of writer - the kind who makes you feel like you're a genius, rather than that he's a genius."

More Recording Studio Practise

Last week I recorded the drums for the Audio track we're using in our Music Video project, which I need to finish mixing this week. I also recorded two acoustic artists, also students at Falmouth in the hour I had spare. I've uploaded the audio for two of the tracks (rough-mixes) with a picture of my drum set-up as it's easier to upload video than audio.

Both recordings are intended as demo's so the artist can then work on what they want out of the track, so I can then experiment with different microphones/sounds to suit their ideas as well as working on multi-tracking and harmonies and maybe some extra instrumentation, in a full session in the next few weeks.

Simon Boult - 'Blood'



Aimee Wright

Writing Excerpts

“I haven’t been dreaming lately.”

“What do you think that means?”

I tell her I don't know, but I think I do.

************

None of this shakes me like it used to, not even the hand on my knee – it’s not even there. None of this seems like it matters anymore. What does any of this achieve? The room is dark and dusty and the sofa I sit on is of little comfort. The place is crowded and people drift past me, I don’t even hear the clunk of their shoes and their stumbling across the floorboards. They travel awkwardly and loudly but it doesn’t phase me, not as long as this hand is upon me.

I feel like I feel when there’s nothing left.

One hand holding but the other does nothing.

************

“I don’t know.” I say monotonously, dully, unanimated, lifeless. “I don’t know,” I mumble, and again; “I don’t know.”

Inside I’m screaming. Inside I’m crying. Inside I’m apologising. Begging her. Praying.

************

It doesn’t actually take an apology to keep Liz happy, but instead something much worse. When I see her next she embraces me and doesn’t let go for what feels like an age, and she cries. She grips my back and I do my best to return the favour with equal force but I feel like I’m holding onto nothing. And when I kiss her, her lips seem solid and cold and taste of nothing but skin, only more bitter. And when I wake up with her loving arms around me, I wake up alone.

“I wish we could just stay in bed forever.” She tells me and then sighs, pathetically.

What do I wish for? A shorter tomorrow.

************

I look towards Pat. He says nothing. I just want him to notice. My eyes are red and swollen, my cheeks are wet and my hands are shaking, but this is just as visible to him as the blood running down my leg underneath my jeans. He says nothing.