Fallow Green entered stage #2 of postproduction

A quick post to announce that I am finally done with the shooting and image editing of Fallow Green. Time to work on sound, voice over and music.
I am so exhausted that I am not even in the mood for celebrating. Seriously? How long have I been working on this film? Am I blasé or what? ;P



The Children's Dreams : A painted wall from the refugees center "Centre des Tattes" in Vernier

Shooting cut-ins plus a quick hands-on review of Nikon D700

I rented the Nikon D700 this week at Bureau Culturel to shoot cut-ins and add them to my editing. No doubt, I am lucky. A 175 CHF charge a week is a bargain, compared to professional shop rates.



I had no time for thorough testing but everything went fine despite all the wind and dust around on location. I am having little reservation though about the fixed 50mm lens. The guy at the Bureau Culturel front desk warned me that some costumers complained about "pixel smudging". He was right. I got weird artifacts when I set the aperture high with manual focus. Ben always told me : no matter the camera, it is all about lenses. I now understand why he spent 4000 CHF on his. Anyways. I ended using no manual, only presets, and I liked the results. I am content... :)

That song in my head since March...

Unfortunately, it hasn't helped solving my blank page phobia and writing problems but this David-Lynchy-Badalamenti-flavored song from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds has been obsessing me too much lately not to post and share.
"He's a god, he's a man, he's a ghost, he's a gu-ru. You're one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan, designed and directed by his red right hand..."
Uh-huh.

Nick Cave - Red Right Hand
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Gah. Blank page phobia, slight return... :/

One more sneak pic from the upcoming documentary "Fallow Green", just to give me courage and to vent a lil' bit about how difficult is the writing of its voice-over text. I have to say this is possibly the hardest thing I ever had to do, creatively speaking. But I am hanging on in there.

Eva Gene

Created a new blog today, or should I say, prepared ground for a new one by setting a title and a layout, and posting them on Blogger. It's called "Eva Gene" and it's gonna be about sports.

Sports, unrelated to this blog and my activity? I don't think so and I will explain why eventually. That, and the title too. All I can say is that I've been wanting to do this for quite a while. Just wondering what took me so long.

Thought of the day

You hit the bottom. Now go, move yourself up and break the surface for some fresh air!

I haven't forgotten about you, Alaska

Close friends who are following might wonder what happened to my feature film script set in the wild lands of Alaska, "Sourdough". It's been quite a while since I talked about it to anyone or worked on it. Let's say that my mind had been busying itself with other stuff lately. But it's still there, somewhere, dormant and waiting for Prince Imagination's kiss to wake it up again. In the meantime, I thought of sharing some stuff. Old piccies from the Nome and Klondike Gold Rush were my main inspiration from the start for the project. And 70's British band Groundhogs's music. Their moody bluesy prog rock tracks have been on my A-playlist since I was a teenager. Here is flavor of the week, Bog Roll Blues and some dirty Groundhog riff. Courtesy of YouTube (even though YouTube - and the Google machine behind it - is anything but courteous). Hope you like it.

EDIT, May 30th, 2012 : Found recently this vibrant accoustic cover version performed by rapperfrgman. Awesome!

Of the third person

Writing your own promotional material is a weird exercise. If you're truly serious about it, which you sort of have to in a way, you need to be ready to take a good retrospective look in the mirror. So much yes, how disturbing to talk about yourself and your past, and especially in the third person, that you pick because you don't people to believe you're a clueless tourist. Using the third person is like listening to your own voice recorded on tape. Weird, really...

A little nudge from South of France

Cannes Festival will close this week-end. I have to admit its magic spell got me one more time...

It only took me a short glimpse at the film selection (Audiard's latest is seriously a tease) to boost me up and remind me of the goal I would like to achieve: finally becoming a director who is not afraid to say she is one, meaning, who can make a decent living out of it.

I am still not sure I belong to this world of glamour and rhinestones that the event has been promoting since its very beginning, but what I am certain about is that filmmaking hasn't ceased to obsess me yet, despite the ups and downs of my self-confidence. Girl, keep bustin'!

:D

Am I wasting a post only to announce that I replaced my rather depressing former default layout with the much classier Hemingway template tonite? And that it makes me want to squee because I spent a ridiculous afternoon restlessly surfing and right-clicking, searching for a download that worked? Yes!

Ugh.

Like I said previously, I am currently working on the new version of the Susu-prod website, and honest, the problems I get are slowly but surely starting to get to me.
Damn! Why does it have to be so complicated???

I've been there already and promised myself to pass it over to a pro if I ever had to build a website again. But with no money to offer, well, here I am, doing the job all by myself. Positive thing about it though, I realize I am not as bad as I thought with it. It's just that I am losing patience with the little details at times. Like today for instance...

Can't store my visuals on YouTube, Google or Vimeo because of copyright violation issues. And given the amount of time it takes to understand how settings function in ImageReady or Dreamweaver, I made the decision to skip Flash embedding right now. So, this means sacrificing online videos for the moment and posting caps instead, if I want to finish this whole thing on time... at the end of the month, that is... Ugh.

Once We Were Queens and Kings

As I updated my profile and list of favorite films yesterday, I bumped into this picture on the web.

Say hello to "Apu the King", lead character of Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali, a movie I heart deeply.

I've been trying to come up with words to describe what I felt when I first watched it.
Some motion pictures just work in mysterious ways and lift you to very high levels of consciousness. I remember a friend telling me one day that most of us had dormant memories of humanity's glorious past, when we all were queens and kings regardless of our age or origins. Whatever that means, Pather Panchali definitely triggered off some weird nostalgic feeling of déjà vu in me...

News and another sneak preview from the upcoming movie

I know. I know. It took me ages to repost. 6 months, according to internet standards amounts to a two-thumbs-down. I am such a slow trigger sometimes. Haha... ;) Some people told me I shouldn't only use a blog but build a website of my own too, like a portfolio or something, to show my past films and briefly describe my work. I was reluctant at first but they managed to convince me. So, I've gathered stuff and worked on a layout. Everything will be on-line soon, hopefully at the end of the month. As for the upcoming documentary I mentioned in my previous post, here is another sneak ...

Photo from documentary "Parcelle 4198" (Fallow Green) © Benoît De Kimpe

... a genuine Swiss cow, courtesy of contemporary artist and photographer Benoît De Kimpe, my fellow teammate for this project. I heart this one pic for numerous reasons, the first being that we didn't plan it at all. We were so lucky with animals - our "actors" - during the whole shooting. They would just strike the perfect pose at the perfect moment without even being asked. True fact, nature is generous if you welcome it patiently with open arms.