Folie à Deux | Sponsume

We now have a campaign up and running on Sponsume to get Folie finished:

Folie à Deux | Sponsume

The amount now needed is only about £1,000, due to monies coming in, which I am very relieved about and can postpone my own suicide attempt. Please help if you can.

I would very much like to become risk averse once this project is done. I'm tired of taking risks. I'm tired of all my money - what there is of it - going into the black hole of filmmaking. I want to be... a lumberjack!

IndieGoGo

At the suggestion of a fellow filmmaker, I have started a campaign on IndieGoGo to get the remaining money, as it seems I will now be a pauper for the forseeable future. You can read more and even donate here.

95% finished, and another funding crisis

The film is now almost finished, and it looks like we are about to fall at the last hurdle. Some investment I was expecting has suddenly not materialised, leaving us high and dry. We only actually need about £1400 (yes, fourteen hundred, not fourteen thousand) to get Folie finished and out there into the world at last. (A bit more would be helpful, to pay for marketing materials and film festival entry fees, to be honest.)

I had been expecting all of this to come from some documentary editing work I've been doing for a new age loony, but she has now announced that she is not going to pay me. Totally unbelievable. (I'm also on strike - that's the problem with rich amateurs - they have no conception of how much work is required to make a film, and think that it's a privelege to work for them.) So if anybody feels like going to the cash machine to help us out, please let me know. Right now, I'm going for a long walk.

ADR Completed

Yesterday, during one of the worst downpours I've ever seen in Edinburgh, we completed ADR with the inestimable Chris Dunne, who plays Ogilvy, the slightly mad, pyschogeographer priest in the film. As with all the other ADR sessions we've had, it was hard, finicky work, but it has improved the film immeasurably. Now ADR'd dialogue outweighs the original, live dialogue. I think if I had my way on the next film - if there is one - I would ADR everything. Anyway, I shall leave pipe dreams well alone for the time being, and get on with finishing the film at long last. The end is nigh.... or call me Harold Camping.

The Joys of ADR

Yesterday we did ADR with Steve Dineen, who plays Paul, an itinerant tie-monger. OK, "Top Regional Sales Consultant, Southwestern Region". As with all ADR sessions - a few weeks ago with Adam Napier, today with Sally Scott - the pleasure of all this hard work is when the actors can contribute a slightly fuller intonation than in the original. It means that not only is the sound naturally greatly improved, but the emotional content of a scene is, too. You start to see your own script in a slightly different light, realising how even the simplest of words can carry hidden weight. Even the line quoted below!

"We've got a website. Under construction. My tie's on the homepage!"

ADR finally begins

ADR finally begins this week. We have about 15 pages of script to re-do with 4 actors, which isn't too bad. Hopefully it should all be done by the end of next month, cash flow permitting. I was greatly cheered today to read about how John Cassavetes made Faces. Basically, he plodded on, much as we have done. They had a lot of bad sound, and at one point he was advised to give up. But he didn't, even if it meant spending over 3 years in post. I knew his first film, Shadows, had taken a long time to make (well over two years, including a lot of reshooting and recutting), but I never knew about the problems Faces had. Just goes to show the old adage is true "quitters never win, winners never quit". Or maybe more realistically it should simply be "quitters never finish their films".

Adam Napier in Dr Who

Our very own Adam Napier - Lucas from Folie - appears alongside Matt Smith et al in the new series of Dr Who, which begins this Saturday, 23 April. Adam appears as Captain Simmons in the first two episodes, "The Impossible Astronaut" and "The Day of the Moon" (broadcast on 30 April). More info can be found at the official Dr Who site.

Congrats to Adam - let's hope his character doesn't die horribly! Saturday is also St George's Day, so we shall be celebrating with morris dancing and copious real ales...

Come Together

Some good news at last - the mix and sound design are really coming together. At times the film is positively eerie. We are doing ADR next month finally and then we'll be ready to get it out to the sales agent and also to film festivals. More anon.

More s****** in the news

It just went social.

Our film "in the news" again

Another story in the news that seems sadly apposite to our film. Actually it was my Mother who brought this to my attention by sending me a clipping from the Daily Telegraph. Perhaps her way of reminding me that it's high time this film was finished. And here it is, brought to you by those nice morally upright bigots at the Daily Mail.

BBC E-mail: The stigma of Japan's suicide apartments

Just noticed this on the Beeb website. Apt for this film, and also extremely sad:

** The stigma of Japan's suicide apartments**
Few in Japan will rent an apartment where a previous occupant committed suicide, so a death is frequently followed by a demand for money, reports the BBC's Roland Buerk.
< http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/news/world-asia-pacific-12397216 >

** Disclaimer **
The BBC is getting far too right wing and is not responsible for the content of this e-mail, and anything written in this e-mail does not necessarily reflect the BBC's views or opinions. Sieg Heil!

Is the End in Sight?

I don't want to get ahead of things here, but we may at long last be close to finishing the film. Julien and Jake are working on the sound, recording foley and incidental music, and cleaning up the mysterious hiss that makes somes scenes sound like they were shot on a cross-channel ferry.

It amazes - and horrifies me, to be honest - that I started this blog five years ago, thinking the film would only take about eighteen months to make whilst we looked for cash to make The Gulf Breeze project. How wrong could we be? It's turned out a better film than I'd anticipated, but still, the endless delays have, I fear, had an adverse affect on me. I mean, do I really want to make another film? Do I want to go through this again? Wouldn't I be better off just throwing molotov cocktails at Tories and bankers? (Hang on, maybe that ought to be my next film...)

Joanne Lee suicide pact: the comfort of strangers | News & Politics | News & Comment | The First Post

Joanne Lee suicide pact: the comfort of strangers | News & Politics | News & Comment | The First Post

Silent Movie

We have now recommenced postproduction, with a new sound team, after 18 months of delays and general silliness. (Certain people have pins in their voodoo dolls, shall we say.) This is in itself a minor miracle, as I had been feeling that the film would either not be finished at all, or would emerge as a posthumous work. It looked at one point like we had a silent film on our hands, as all our Avid sound files have disappeared from the drive, which is very strange. The audio risked being lost from the onlined version of the film altogether, but we noticed in that the drive also contained an AAF file, which saved the day. This is an occupational hazard when you have such a long gap between the online and the sound design and mix. I must write a book about how not to put together a workflow... The upshot of this is that we will be spending the next few months on the sound, possibly getting the actors in to do some ADR, and then we will HAVE FINISHED THE FILM. (Cue cheering, clapping, general delirium and heavy drinking.)

Location Destroyed by Fire

The arsonists have returned to one of our locations, the Royal Pier Hotel, and completely destoyed it. An insurance job, natch. It's very sad - always been one of my favourite buildings in Weston, elevated to Holy status by the fact that the Beatles stayed there. They started demolishing it today. More info here.

Newsworthy Farm

A rather uncannily 'on topic' news story has just broken. Go here to read.

Final Push into the Ardennes

"We are now at war with Germany." Ah, yes, the good old days of '39... Not much point in beating Hitler, really, as Nazis do indeed run the world these days.

But I digress. I am posting to announce progress. I did not find a rich auntie with a grand and a half to spare (what Mel Brooks calls 'Little Old Lady Land' in The Producers). I have instead been working as a cameraman/director on a series of documentaries tentatively entitled The Lost Science. Should be out on DVD and the web in time for a tie-in conference in Amsterdam next June.

This means that, schedules permitting, we can resume work on Folie and get it finished before then. Hopefully within the next few months. I can't say more than that at the moment. I feel so out of the loop with this film that I almost can't now be bothered to finish it at all. But if it does get finished, and screens at festivals, I plan on becoming insufferable in an 'I always knew we'd do it' kind of way, and not miss an opportunity to slag off people who have got in our way. (I can think of at least 4 or 5 people who I'd like to publicly humiliate...)

Anyway, money is flowing in, so I'd better spend it on Folie before I spend it somewhere else, or dash off to the bookies and put everything on the 3.30 at Doncaster.

First Fruits

Well, after starting a search for a sound designer and mixer, we have had our first offer from a two-person team. This has led me to feel that the project is happening once more, rather than languishing in a limbo of someone- other-than-me's making. (Unless of course it is all my fault, in a perverse, subconscious sort of way; something I've actually considered. Must get some Jungian therapy!)

For this final bit of work, I need to find another £1500. Anyone have a rich auntie who happens to like arthouse films about suicde pacts? Let me know:-)

Plan B

We've decided to divide the remaining sound work up between two people, sound design and sound mix. That may make the film easier to finish, and give the prospective sound maetros less of a headache. I think it's more usual to have sound design and mix being done by two separate people, anyway. Nowt else to report at this hour, other than it's time to go to bed and catch up on my reading. (Which is currently The Fanatic by James Robertson.)

It Ain't Over Till the Fat Lady Sings

... and she's currently not booked to do any gigs for the forseeable future.

 We are now back to square one on the sound design and mix. The last 12 months have been spent at the mercy of two sound designers, neither of whom completed the job. So, 3rd time lucky? I hope so.I keep having to remind myself not to give up, and that it took David Lynch 7 years to complete Eraserhead, Martin Scorsese 5 for Who's That Knocking at My Door etc. We are not the first filmmakers to spend forever in post, and we certainly won't be the last. But even so, it feels like a never-ending nightmare.