The Ancient Art of Ti-Ming
I love my brain, we’ve got a great relationship (purely platonic), because the older I get and the more I develope my production methods, the more Present-Tyler can rely on the fact that Past-Tyler’s decisions won’t upset Future-Tyler. For instance, with this real-time playback storyboard I’ve been creating entering its third week of development I’ve been getting a little impatient; begun second guessing myself… But then I remembered that Past-Tyler wouldn’t set me up to waste my time; that there must be a reason I’m spending so much pre-production on this storyboard when in all likelyhood I’ll just be making a lot of it up as I go when it comes down to shooting. Then my brain reminded me what I was up to:
See I’m illustrating storyboard frames and then lining them up in Final Cut Express to give me a real-time playback of the movie I plan on shooting. The reason I decided I needed a real-time playback version of a storyboard instead of a binder of static images is because of the music.
See The Great Big Emptiness (I am so going to change that title) has a large musical component. Not Sound of Music “musical” but musical in the sense that music will be playing a more prominent role in the movie than simply being relegated to the score. Music will actually be performed by the performers… Which raised a lot of questions in my mind about recording, editing and timing. So I decided that a playback storyboard would be helpful in figuring out a lot of that stuff before shooting. Since we (Vidya Lutchman - musician and the movie’s lead actress) need to write music that will be specific to scenes before we’ve actually shot the scenes - music in fact that will have to be performed before the camera as well as carry over other scenes like a score would - the more we know about how those scenes are going to flow the better.
Confused?
Yeah, my head hurts. But I just have to trust in whaterver moment of clarity Past-Tyler was experiencing when he send me on this errand. It’s good to have plan. I can’t stress that enough. A plan is like creating a reflex in your mind; so later when you’re in the middle of chaos you don’t have to think, you can just react.
T
