The Struggle for Music and Singing Blades

Greetings, one and all! Well... for my part, the first half of the week was troubleshooting tech issues for the people who are looking into the music question. In short, can we make any ourselves, or no? While none of us have the complete background to do the job, several of us have pieces. Thus we find ourselves meshing two very different generations of tech, though maybe “mashing together” is a more apt term. Granted, we don't know if this is possible, but as our music budget has shrunk due to the rest of life interfering, it's worth the time investment to at least find out. After all, the movie has been done for months, and it can't wait forever.

The second half of the week was finally making a breakthrough in the challenging fulcrum point of the script. Though, given how this is a story of plots and schemes, getting the timing of everything right is a bit of a challenge. Thus, progress is slow, but consistent, and we're now about a quarter of the way through the first draft. 

Lastly, the stunt team met again, and this time ran an old exercise, with some new skills. In short, each pairing choreographs a section of the fight, with each member of the pairing playing the same characters as their partner in the other group. In this case, one pair choreographed the start of the fight, and the other choreographed the end. They agreed on weapons, narrative, and the ending move of the first pairing that would be the starting point of the second.

The end result, a highly energetic fight that runs for twice as long, while only taking half the time to create. All in all, a fairly successful exercise.

Well, that's about all for this week. Until next time!

Of Song and Blades

Greetings, one and all! Well, that was a mentally taxing week. As is to be expected, we started off with some more writing. But, much like the first script, this covered a bit of a fulcrum point, where subtle shifts could radically change the course of the narrative, and so multiple versions of this section have been written, with more still in process.

Next up, we ran some experiments with the prop materials we’d acquired, and also turned our minds back toward drumming up support for our work. But then came a new wave of research for the music of The Nine Isles project, which took up a fair amount of bandwidth for a non-musician.

Lastly, the stunt team met again, and this time engaged in an exercise that focuses on blade work, over their more common urge to close to grappling range…

The fights started with a lot of energy, but unfortunately this wore out our already very tired stunt people, which meant that they pretty much skidded across the proverbial finish line. Still, kudos to the team for their determination and creativity. Thanks to them, the fights looked great.  

Well, that’s about all for this week. Until next time!

Varied Vectors

Greetings, one and all! This week saw a wide variety of efforts, starting with some props preparation. In this case that was mostly cleaning the secondhand elements we’d acquired so that they will be ready to apply other details, followed by priming and painting.
Next up, there was a bit of inspirational how-to and behind the scenes binging, where I learned how others have done or made various things in the past, fueling my own creative endeavor. This was then followed by a bit of writing and script revision, followed by some audio cleanup for the Nine Isles BTS edit.

Lastly, the stunt team met on Sunday, and tinkered with a few exercises. The first was 3v1 sparring, the latter was a short and sweet choreography session.

The sparring was highly educational, and highlighted the methods and proclivities of each of the fighters, while the choreography dipped recently absent members back into the pool of stunt work again.

Well, that’s about all for this week. Until next time!

Designing Places and Fights

Greetings, one and all! This week saw a lot of technical fiddling with logistics for the next script, as well as some research for current and future projects, specifically in the sound and music department. The latter is boring and fairly technical, but the former had a highlight in sketching out scenes from the movie and drawing rough plans for the sets, so we can figure out how to economize on construction costs and time spent.

On Sunday the team met to pick up where they left off last week, focusing on the second phase of the fight.

This is the part where the battlelines have more or less thinned out into smaller skirmishes. Some of the ideas the stunties came up with were quite dramatic, so all in all a good day of work.

Well, that's about all for this week. Until next time!