May 21st, 2001

May 21st

Have talked to Evan a couple times. We went through some bits he’d put together. He’d been trying to put together a “sound”, like a small tune that when you heard it, you’d identify it with “Hunting Humans”.

He played me two that were okay, but just didn’t fit the mood for me. Then he played the third, which was very cool. Very dangerous, mysterious.

I tell him to go with that. Play it with strings, with horns. Over a couple of nights he refines it. I’m getting excited. I’m hearing it over the crappy phone speakers and I’m getting excited.

The new problem seems to be how to get timecode that he can put his score to, so when I get it back, I can put it to the movie so it’s timed perfectly.

There doesn’t seem to be a way to do it from my end. Evan’s familiar with people who have the equipment to stripe timecode in the spare audio channel.

I’m not one of those people. I can’t even get visual timecode on, as Adobe Premiere doesn’t seem to be capable of writing it. It can read it, but not write it.

Evan wants me to export Quicktime files that he can import on his computer. This will take quite some time. I’m trying to finish up putting sounds in, revising the movie so I can begin digitally-fixing scratches in the film.

I’ve experimented, and the results are amazing. The key to not paint over the scratches, but to use the “Clone” tool in Photopaint. If you paint or draw, the film grain isn’t there, so it’s pretty apparent where you painted(which is just as bad a scratch). But if you clone another area around the scratch, it looks great.

It’s VERY time-consuming, but worth it.

The deadline is killing me though. I’ve told Evan I need the score back from him by July 8th. I want to have the movie finished by the end of July. I’m hoping to rent the screening room at Jillian’s and play the movie on the giant television screen there. Have the cast and crew there. Get drunk, see what everybody thinks.