Of Shark and Man Update!

A very good bit of editing trickery

Its been a while since the last blog, I had three weeks in Mallorca then came back to a mountain of things needing to be put in place so I could crack on again with Of Shark and Man and as I am now at that point, I felt an update was long overdue but first...

That video all over Facebook of the dude jumping into the harbour in Manly, it's a fake, a very clever and creative one but a fake nonetheless. The big cut is not the one at 59secs, it's the one at 38secs, it's been uploaded at 480p almost certainly to hide the cuts, the water in which we see the shark is clearly open ocean, not least because the shark is accompanied by pelagic fish species which would not be found in a harbour environment and also, the main source of the video initially was SourceFeed, which is a "Discovery Channel Digital Network" and what do we have just around the corner? Yep it wouldn't surprise me if this was another (admittedly brilliant) viral by Discovery who are quickly becoming the masters of this type of advertising. Shout out as well to the editor, a very skillful piece of cutting!

Okay, on to more pressing and very real matters!

Where is progress with "Of Shark and Man" at the moment? 

The other night, the final section of the voice over went into the edit which is a major step towards completion of the first cut. Basically, the whole thing was cut together to a "rhythm" I had in mind which I felt would work best, the script for the voice over was then finalised and slight changes made to the edit so it all fit together as closely as possible. A couple of weeks ago I went to the Banter Media studios to record the voice over with Adam Steel who was brilliant, the whole thing was done in about five hours and sounds absolutely superb and that's without any eq'ing being done yet.

Bad sound will kill your film, it doesn't matter how great it looks, sucky sound screams out "I'm an amateur" and you lose your audience so the voice over for this film has to sound good and I'm very confident it does. I won't lie though, I'm not a fan of recording them, I certainly don't speak "Queen's English" (I detest that term) and I swear a lot so ensuring people like Americans can actually understand what I'm saying whilst also sounding like me is easier said than done. It's accurate to say the end result sounds like I'm meeting a new girlfriend's mum for the first time and I can live with that.

Recording the Voiceover

Putting the voice over into the edit has really helped as it has streamlined everything and also highlighted where any changes needed to be made, all of which have been done so as of tonight, the process of sending everything off to David Lawrie will begin so he can complete the sound design.

Sound Design has already started and sounds amazing, David and I have been in regular contact where I have been explaining exactly what I want. It is very complex and ridiculously ambitious but then, hasn't this project always been this way? As I said to David the other day, everything these days is so safe and derivative, let's do something completely different, we're not just making "another shark film."

The intro title sequence is currently under construction as well and I am really excited to see what Dave Whittle has done with it, the guy is one of the best graphics guys out there in the UK right now and I am beyond stoked to have him be a part of this film!

The process of sound tracking the film is in it's early stages but will pick up momentum likely next week so currently, we have the final sound design to be completed, the title sequence to finish, the music and next week the colour correction and grading will begin. In short, we are very very close to a finished first cut!

As I have enlisted the help of external experts, I obviously have to wait until they have done what they need to do and at no point will I be rushing them but I would like to say a first cut will be finished and ready for industry screenings by the end of August, start of September and that is allowing plenty of time for the soundtrack to be completed.

So, when each section has gone to David Lawrie and every single clip of audio split into its own track (the most mind numbingly tedious thing ever) the grade will start, whilst at the same time music is being composed and recorded and the title sequence finished... We're almost there folks!

Sorry for the radio silence once again, I'll try to find time for more regular updates in the coming weeks!

"Of Shark and Man" Pogress, Something New and Something Very Cool!

 Going back to the sun for a bit!

Sorry for the silence lately, it's unusual for me to neglect the blog for so long but there is a very good reason for it. In the last couple of months I have been absolutely swamped with work, both for "Of Shark and Man" and for the day job, although Scarlet View Media isn't something I'd consider a day job, more a passion which allows me to survive through doing something I genuinely love to do. Since starting the company I have always focused on doing commercial work of the highest quality to earn a living and grow the brand's reputation and the last twelve months has seen more interest in what we do, more work and a growth I'm really happy with, plus the feedback from our clients is nothing short of exceptional.

Wanting to build the company is twofold, firstly, I have to eat and have bills to pay and even more importantly, so does the little sharkboy Lucas and secondly, when I come to release Of Shark and Man it will be through Scarlet View Media as our first feature length film and I want the platform to be as strong as possible.

As well as completing a hugely time consuming commercial project, a music video and pitching for some very exciting and big jobs, the Of Shark and Man juggernaut continues to roll. We have started the "Making Of" featurette and I did my first interview a couple of weeks ago along with getting some of the footage together.

Sound Design is coming along very nicely, it's amazing the difference a proper layering of sound can make to the footage, it's not merely background sound however, every single element is carefully thought out, constructed and mixed to really bring everything to life and aid the storytelling in the film. I am approaching this in the same way big budget features are put together, it is of course way more time consuming but will provide a far more satisfactory experience for you the viewer, essentially, absolutely everything you see must come alive and put you in a position where you feel a part of the action.

The system for doing this is that I am cutting the whole film into sections, the sound design I created as a guide has been separated into dozens of different tracks, some of those tracks featuring only maybe two seconds of a particular sound. If you can imagine doing that for a two hour first cut, you might be able to imagine just how mind numbingly tedious a job this is, definitely worth it, but tedious nonetheless. These sections are then sent over to David Lawrie in the States and he works his magic and sends them back over to place back into the edit.

Work has also started on the title sequence, this is something I am really excited about. In a weird sense of serendipity, one of my best mates from school, just so happened to become one of the UK's leading graphic animation artists for film and TV, doing a lot of work for the BBC alongside the band Gorrillaz. Just before Xmas, he got in touch to say he'd seen the trailers and wanted to offer his services, I was absolutely over the moon to say the least! I can't say too much about what we have planned but as with everything else in the film, it will stand apart from everything else going on at the moment and given his stupendous talent, I am sure it's going to be incredible.

As it stands, until I get the go ahead from the studio on recording the voice over, I am now in a position of farming out the work I can't do, to the talented people who can.

The timing is pretty handy as well as I fly out on the 22nd to do a short commercial job in the Med but not only that, I am using the time over there to finally get around to shooting a project I have been working on for the last two years, if you are a regular reader, you watch my stuff and you've been following the journey, you don't need to be a genius to figure out what it might be and to say I'm excited is an understatement! I am away from the 22nd of April for two and a half weeks and to be quite frank, for reasons I won't be going into here, I need a break and some time away, it's not a holiday, it's work, but if I had two weeks doing nothing but spending time in my own mind, I would most likely end up in the puzzle factory, as such, it's a much needed break with close friends, an awesome project to get my teeth into and some sun on my back and salt in my gills.

I've spent the last month burning the candle at both ends to get all the pieces in place so I can go away and have work being done on Of Shark and Man whilst I'm out of the UK and when I come back, come back to completed Sound Design sections, a closer idea of the title sequence and a date to record the voice over. I really need this but not only that it's also another project out there in the smaller and more niche festivals whilst the main event takes on the gauntlet of screenings, big festival submissions and yes, distribution (hopefully).

So that's where we are with everything at the moment, completion of Of Shark and Man is now something which is going to happen in the short term future for the first time and it's a pretty incredible feeling to have made it here!

As I leave you here until the next blog which won't be as long coming as this one, I promised you something cool. You may well have seen the promo video for "Gimme Chocolate" on social media, but I wanted to share this as this just blew me away when I heard it for the first time. Regular readers know I love my music, especially Metal and *bold statement alert* BabyMetal are the only band I can think of other than Gojira who have made me sit up and say "wow!!" (in a good way) in quite some time, years in fact, yes it's manufactured, yes it's probably highly cynical, yes it's really, really weird, but who gives a shit, I think it's really fucking cool.

Yes seriously, I think this is one of the coolest things I've heard in a long time.

Enjoy.

 

Of Shark and Man Update - Sound Design Has Begun!

 The almighty task begins...David Lawrie hard at work

Today was a bit of a milestone in the production for Of Shark and Man, in fact, so was Tuesday because on Tuesday, the final clips went into the timeline of the first edit, in simple terms, for the first time ever, I can watch the film start to finish without any gaps! Pick up shots were filmed last week (thanks for your help Olli!) and I received the small handful of stock clips I need to accompany a small part of the film we simply couldn't shoot in Fiji (thanks Duncan and Jillian!) All this means that "editing" now makes way for the part of post production I really enjoy the most, making that edit come alive!

So, back to today, well, today saw the first day of active work on the sound design of the film.

What is Sound Design I hear you ask? "Sound Design" is the process of creating what the film sounds like, from ambient, environmental sounds, to recreating incidental sounds which can't be recorded in the moment, mixing the films audio, cleaning everything up so it hits that "broadcast" standard and as I said above, ensuring what you see is augmented and brought to life by what you hear.

The Sound Design is enormously important in a film but is something which in modern times has been largely ignored, or at least treated as an afterthought by factual "documentary" based film-makers, of course there are sounds and sound effects but the artistry in creating an audio landscape which tells a story in itself seems to be a rare commodity in factual film, outside of the BBC and the theatrical IMAX releases of course. It's not a criticism that it's not there, it's just not really seen as a necessity outside of the fictional realm which is fine but from the outset, I always wanted Of Shark and Man to have a ridiculously ambitious and detailed audio identity, it would be another aspect of ensuring this entire project is as good as it deserves to be and if your film looks great, sounds great and has a great story, then you stand a much better chance of it being a success but primarily, the motivation has been to approach the crafting of the film in the traditional sense in that it should be treated lovingly, respected and allowed to grow, almost organically into the film it deserves to be. I appreciate how pretentious and wanky that sounds but it is what it is, the art of film-making, like music, fine art, architecture, cuisine etc is a craft which deserves to be respected.

I recommend you take ten minutes to watch this brilliant little look at the sound design on "Monsters University" as it gives an insight into the kind of sound design I am talking about, layer upon layer of sound that fills the areas around the viewer to create the world in which I am asking you to join me, the idea being a truly immersive experience that is not just a visual feast but one which envelops all your senses.

The idea is create the kind of sound design that the big budget productions have, there's no point setting your sights low after all and given my almost OCD level of obsession for every single tiny little detail, that is a huge task and not a task I can do to the level I want so, enter the incredibly talented David Lawrie. David is a professional musician, artist and producer with a serious level of ability in this field and I am absolutely delighted to have him on board.

We spent most of today going through the concepts for the sound design I have in my head, some of which are very specific and quite avant garde and what really gave me a buzz was that he is on exactly the same page, even making some sounds on the spot for me which I had tried my best to articulate, but far exceeded what I had in mind. I am of the belief that every texture of each sound has to have a reason for being what it is, it must be descriptive and emotive but mustn't become overbearing. The art of sound design is complex and distinct in that it relies on the obsessive attention to every detail in each shot and the themes of the film, not only that, but also the underlying sub-text and depth that creates the subconscious bind between film-maker and audience.

I'm starting to sound like a bit of a chin stroker I'm aware of that but I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's really important to me that all of you who watch the film get the absolute maximum bang for your buck and to feel like you are right there with me on this journey every step of the way. The single thing which lets low budget films down more than anything, is bad sound. Muffled voice overs, badly edited audio tracks and no environmental ambiance. The sound on the cut as is, is already pretty good but with David on board, I know it's going to go through the roof quality-wise.

I'm not going to give away any secrets or any conceptual elements but the sound design will be featured in detail in the "making of" documentary so you will get a really in-depth and detailed look at the process. What I heard today though makes me confident it is going to be pretty incredible. You will get your first glimpse into the completed sound design and look of the film when the official trailer is released sometime in the next couple of months.

Once again I am reminded how lucky I am to have so many talented friends and people who believe in this project. When I started out all that time ago, I could never have imagined where this film would take me on my own creative journey and right now, I have never been more excited.