Back at the office after a three week trip to china. The reason for traveling to china was partly to do research for possible future feature films. A topic I was particularly interested in is Minghun (spirit weddings), an old Taoist tradition. The name pretty much says it all, as it is a marriage between two deceased people, to ensure a good afterlife. The tradition dates back to the Han Dynasty but is still very much practiced in the northern provinces of Shanxi and Shaanxi. In Datong, the coal mining capital of the north, I met some interesting characters, including a Taoist master of mourning who helps families to arrange ghost weddings for their deceased relatives. I also made sure to do a trip to the great wall, and chose a nice part of the wild wall to camp out on. The crumbling watch towers and steep slopes would be the prefect set for a horror film! Pictures will follow shortly.
Research trip to China
Posted in General
Tagged china, documentary, Editing, Film, ghost weddings, Graphics, great wall, Taoism
Leave a comment
update…
it is friday and pretty quiet in the office. david is away in bonnie scotland doing research on… whiskey! last we heard from him he was at a distillery tasting. i’m sure he is having a good time…
as for us here in london, we have been working on getting the afghan doco to the next stage and we have re-written voice over, which we have done a rough recording of. the main big change is that we went from one voice over to three (!). both david and tahir will now record vo for the film and we chose to bring in a narrator as well, just for the hell of it. the film still needs to be cut down quite a bit so leon will have a go at this over the weekend.
Party like it’s 2552!
ok so as you might or might not know, it is thai new year (songkran) and in london this was celebrated yesterday at the buddhapadipa temple in wimbledon. my experience from celebrating new years in thailand in 2007 was that everyone joined in for massive waterfights in the street, so equipped with waterguns i headed over to wimbledon prepared to get wet and messy.
the 93 bus, which i can imagine to normally be quite empty, was packed with people and the sound of thai filled the top deck. it was as if you had left london behind when stepping on it. when the bus stopped outside the temple everyone got up at the same time and got off, leaving the bus empty as it continued down the road. as we walked in a joined troop towards the temple grounds i was prepared to get a bucket of water thrown over me any second, and i had my finger on the trigger of my watergun, ready for a counter attack. when we got there it was quite different from what i had expected though…
there were no buckets of water being thrown whatsoever, and me and my thai friend felt somewhat silly with our waterguns. but soon the disappointment of the non existing water- figting had been replaced by new excitement as we realized that there was plenty of fun festivities taking place. most of them mainly involved food (probably half of the temple grounds were taken up by food stands) but hey, food is just as good as waterfights if you ask me (or at least almost as good). after having some spicy fish cakes and sticky rice there was traditional thai dancing and everyone gathered to watch the mini miss songkran competition. inside the temple the traditional rituals took place and people queued up to light incense and pour water over the holy buddha statue .
the temple grounds are absolutely amazing. as you walked along the small path leading through a forest area you caught glimpses of shrines made up by small shimmering statues secretly hidden away among the leaves and branches. even though it was absolutely delightful to take part in the new year celebrations at the buddhapadipa temple, i would love to go back on a day when it is less crowded to really be able to take in the serene atmosphere of the temple grounds. in between eating i tried to get some of it on camera and will try and upload a clip shorty…
happy 2552! xx
http://www.buddhapadipa.org/
Posted in General
Tagged 2552, Add new tag, buddhapadipa, Editing, Film, newyear, songkran, temple, thai
Leave a comment
happy monday
so last night david and i had dinner and discussed the afghan film. david has over the weekend started structuring the film and written a rough voice over. today we went through his notes so far and it feels like it’s coming together more and more. tomorrow we will meet up with zak ( our 3d animator master) in shoreditch to discuss the 3d elements in the film. we have some cool ideas of reconstructing cave systems and historical buildings and if zak doensn’t screw it up completely (noo..kidding zak) it could look pretty awesome.
we have also talked about heading out on the streets of london to do some filming, now that we’re not swamped with corporates. sometimes you get too caught up in your own stuff that you forget what a vibrant and exciting city you live in, but just walking down the streets of london you realize that it’s full of interesting people who all have a story to tell. and plan is to get it all on tape!
Posted in General
Tagged Andersson, documentary, edit, Editing, Film, Graphics, sara
Leave a comment
blog it up
since last time i wrote i have been working away with the afghan edit and we now have a first rough cut which is almost in shape. after looking it through, leon, david and i had a quick brainstorm meeting and we came up with some good ideas and themes that we are going to try and weave in. i have been struggling with the edit from time to time as there is tons of material that it is all very good, but it has been a little difficult to get it to hold together and not feel scattered. the brainstorming we did was helpful since it felt like we had a few epiphanies on how to solve the structure and storyline.
david is going to try and write all our thought and ideas that we discussed down on paper tonight and i’ll meet him in shoreditch tomorrow for a quick meeting to go through it once more, but it feels like we can take it to the next level and really start cutting it into shape. we have decided to have quite a few graphic sequences in the film, (mainly because we don’t have any footage of either the prison nor the attack and have to solve this somehow) but have decided to work the graphics to put a unique look and feel to the entire film and i think it’s going to look pretty cool. david was experimenting in after effects today trying to come up with some styles that could work, and salvador (our 2d animator and after effects guru) will probably come in next week to start working on some things.
next week we’ll start digging into the project again and hopefully we will have a new rough cut before too long. i’ll keep you updated x
better late than never…
Thanks for that Adimistrator…
I am now back in London and at Caravan film and I am finally writing my first blog entry…
Today we are snowed in here at the office. David has been in Sweden this week and while he has been away I have been editing on the feature version of the documentary about Afghanistan (Search for the lost treasure of Afghanistan was the name of the TV documentary). I am very excited about this project, since the footage is absolutely amazing and since it’s the first feature that I help edit on.
When I started working here about a year ago I was completely useless at most things that had to do with computers. I only used my own macbook for storing music and photos and didn’t even know how to create a new folder (yes I know), so when David sat me in front of a computer and started giving me heaps of tasks I felt like wasn’t quite sure what I was doing.
Starting as a production assistant doing research and more research I soon felt like I sort of had this whole computer thing under control. (might have had the occasional mess up but more or less…) but just when I started to feel like I was doing something that I actually had a grip on David decided that my research days were over and put me on editing. At first I was a bit freaked out since I had never edited anything, but with a quick crash course in FCP I started editing my first project. (just a short thing of about 5 mins but still) I realized that, even though I found it very difficult, I really enjoyed editing.
Since then I have edited quite a lot here at caravan and even though I don’t have all the technical bits completely down yet I feel fairly confident when I sit down with a batch of material that needs editing. Most of all I think it’s fun.
David was also keen for me to learn After effects as a combination with FCP and a couple of weeks ago I made my first big project in after effects, a presentation for our animated short Marauder. I was working a lot with the after effects camera, which got a bit tricky at times (especially since I had chosen not to listen to Davids golden rule to ALWAYS precomp. Everyting. And therefore ended up with a pretty messy project). At one point, after trying to tame keyframes and basier curves I almost gave up begging david to clean the presentation up and sorting all my mistakes out, but he said I would lean more if I did it myself. Great. I wasn’t too happy at that point when I had to sit myself down in front of the computer again, but afterwards I realized that of course he was right and now it feels pretty cool to know that I did it myself.
So anyway, point is that in one year I have learnt so many new things, and it all thanks to david and leon handing me new tasks. So now I am going to give the Afghan film a go, which will be very exciting and hopefully I wont screw up this edit too much….
To be continued.
This is Sara G. Andersson’s blog @ caravan film
Sara is travelling in Italy at the moment. She’ll be back soon and start blogging promptly about her adventures.
This is the admin writing in her place. Just a moment….
/admin