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7.09.08 Casondra

Updates:

We got some $!  Not including the "Seneca Fund" jar at costume fittings and meetings, I raised $540 from friends and family, mostly donations of $18.48 with some bigger checks thrown in.  This is on top of the $500 Puffin grant.  And a project for a national historic park seems an appropriate investment of my "tax stimulus check" of $600.  So  $1600 covers  some equipment costs, and  the jar nearly covered costume costs.  In all, we amassed about $1800-$1900, and the total budget for equipment, costumes, travel, etc. is about $9000. So we made a good DENT in that.   Thank you to all who contributed!!!   (The rest comes out of my savings account, unless another grant comes through. That's totally ok, as this is a career investment, like grad school, which I managed to finish debt freeeeeeee from workin' hard.)

A Bay Area/private gallery version of the sound is done. I layered both the tide sounds and the cable car turn around sounds, so it really sounds like "the City by the Bay."  Some bits of  voice may need to be edited for the park still, since it is a federaly funded, public space.  Content must be appropriate for all ages, and and appropriate for a federally funded space.  I am pretty sure we will be ok with what we have; there are just a couple lines that would not raise an eyebrow in the Bay Area, but---we live in a bubble.  The rangers are going to take a listen and offer their expertise based on knowledge of their audiences.

The first (test) projector came, after 3 order attempts from 3 places.  (This model kept selling out.)  It is 3000 lumens, and it looks GREAT!  I did test projections on the brown shingled wall of our house. Crisp and bright.

On the down side, Lubov has been unable to remove the raiths of green around the actors in shoot 3 (the audience). This is left over from the green screen.  Final Cut Pro can't get rid of it all--Marin and I knew that would be the case--and Lubov offered to try to get the remnants out in Keylight/AfterEffects.  She has tried several approaches, and they have all been problematic.  The main issue is incompatability between my mac files and her pc programs.  We tried loading it up to a server and back down, but that didn't work, either. So if anyone has any thoughts on that, do let me know.

If we are stuck with the green raiths, it is not the end of the world, it's just not ideal.  My thinking is I will just keep trying to refine the color and density of them to get them closer to blue-white, even if this means throwing off skin tones. Worst case scenario, I can make this group a series of stills--which can be very visually anchoring with 3 projections going-- and hand-alter/rotoscope each frame.  (I am not rotoscoping 10 min at 29 frames per second! No way!)  Some glow around the characters is GOOD.  For one, they are ghosts, and the colors read as other-worldly auras. Second, costume colors are close to brick/ wall colors, and the raiths help to pop the characters off the surface.  Without this effect, the bodies melt INTO the wall and are not so distinct. 

The shoot with Amelia Bloomer, Sojourner Truth, and the other 2 characters is done, I believe.  I am really really happy with it. The movement and gestures are perfect, the glow is a diffuse white, the energy is superb. 

The shoot with the 5 signers is acceptable, but I am still open to ways to make it a little snazzier.  10 minutes of the characters talking in stillness is a nice backdrop to the soundtrack, and at times it looks like modern voices are coming out of these historical figures.  It is a time-spanning effect that I like.  --but it could be more creative.  It's is SO straightforward it borders on bland, at least without the sound.  I don't want to OVER-do it on effects, speed changes, and trying to make it jazzy; it is supposed to have a meditative quality, and for that the audience needs time to sink/sync in and focus.  A middle ground would be ideal.  The raith around them is pale blue, which is a healing color in energy work thought systems.  So that adds to the "witchy" component.  I'm still tooling around with the width and density of that raith.  Right now it feels a little too defined still.  I created a "witchy" ending, whereby the women "poof" into pure light and disappear.  Very Salem.  Maybe some floating words would add something.  Or maybe it would look corny.

If anyone wants to offer a fresh set of eyes on this clip, let's meet in my yard very soon! I could definitely use some feedback.

I am hoping to finish the video in the next 2 weeks so I can submit this to the Berkeley International Small Film Festival.  They often display video installations during the day, then show the made-for-screen works at night.  I do not know where things stand with Mission 17 Gallery.  No one has contacted me from there to date.  So after I complete editing, I will call them and touch base.  I would like to contact the Museum of Women in the Arts in Washngton, D.C., as this is right up their alley. If anyone has additional ideas of places to show this, please let me know in SEPTEMBER.  (I can't really follow up until then.)  Georgia suggested Mills Gallery.  That would be very cool.

I will contact our ranger this weekend and confirm exact dates.  IF ANYONE IS PLANNING ON GOING TO THE DEBUT (most likely Labor Day weekend) PLEASE LET ME KNOW ASAP!!!  I have 3 projectors (6 lbs. each), 3 small DVD players, and my laptop+harddrive (in case of last-minute editing changes needed) to get there, and my video camera for documenting.  At this point, I have only 2 sets of arms to carry it all!  The plan as of now is to UPS mail most of the equipment, but if other arms are available, I would much prefer carrying it all there and back.

More soon!

6.11.08  Casondra

Wow! Time is flying!  We are in the home stretch!

I will be handing off color corrected video for Lubov to do some compositing in After Effects.  She will get rid of the green raiths around people left from the green screen.

I am still working on sound capture and have been editing as I go along.  Further rounds of editing will be necessary as I get more material, but the hardest part is done.

We have small donations from several friends and family members. (5, with a couple more pledged)

Thursday, June 12, I will be having a phone meeting with the NPS about PR, specific dates for the installation, and a few content questions.  Keeping in mind that the whole US is not the Bay Area, I want to run a few interview sentences by our park liaison to make sure they seem audience appropriate.

I don't think there is much that is controversial in there; people were aware that this is a public piece for a national park and they spoke diplomatically. However, not even *doctors* have free speech rights in the US on things like reproductive rights anymore--which is something that came up in interviews--and since a national park gets federal funding, we may need to be careful to work around their funding stipulations.  My guess is, no one in the administation THOUGHT to include National Parks in the Gag Rule.  But I could be wrong.  [My dad says the Grand Canyon is no longer "alowed" to speak freely about geology, since that contradicts the bible. OY VEY!!!  But is that just a rumour?  Yosemite rangers went into great detail about geology. I felt a bubble of safety. Yes, rocks older than 6000 years--they said it, and no one carted them away.]

Projector #1 is on order, but it's taking a long time--they were out of stock.  If it's not shipped soon, I may cancel it and reorder from Circuit City, even though it is $100 more.

Any experts on DVD Studio Pro out there?  I had been using VERSION 2 still--works fine!  But a later version--I think 6?--came with Final Cut Studio Pro.  The interface is very different. Where is the darn box to check for looping a DVD?

****

3.30.08 by Casondra

I spoke with the NPS at Seneca Falls this weekend. Our piece will now go up LABOR DAY WEEKEND rather than Indigenous People's Day weekend, as originally planned. This is to call attention to the major renovation project the park is undertaking. THEN we will likely show the piece a second time at the completion of the renovation. Dates TBA. The Park Service will do local and national PR for the events.

3.23.08 by Casondra

Please stay tuned for information on the cast "Exhale Party," where we can let down our hair and toast to an exhausting job well done! That will be in late April (at Marcie's house?). We can see rough footage. Then we can get together again at the end of the summer and see edited footage before it goes off to NY.

3.23.08 by Casondra

BIG THANK YOU TO ALL THE CAST AND CREW for all of your energy and talent!!!! Thank you to Andrew at Ex'Pression Center for New Media and to Matt at the Academy of Art College for providing us access to green screens! Thank you to Marin for making some really incredible costumes, for lending her furniture to the production, for opening her apartment to all of us for production and cast meetings, for her visual design, make-up artistry, co-research, etc etc etc! Thanks to Matt, additionally, for carting lots of us--plus props and costumes-- around in his car.

We have completed shoots 1, 2 and 3. The footage for shoots 1 and 2 looks great. I have had some capture glitches with footage from shoot 3. Hopefully this will be resolved soon...

Something is going on with Final Cut Pro Express. It keeps reporting dropped frames at the same point in every take--about 5 minutes in. When I captured 10-15 minute takes from the first 2 shoots, FCP created a "head" and a "tail" to the files, and with this footage, for some reason, it is not doing that. My deduction is that I am getting frozen/dropped frames at the point where FCP looses its capacity to capture in one piece successfully. Ie, without the 2-part file, "head" and "tail." Why the program is behaving so differently now than a week ago, I don't know. I have been editing for 7 years, and never have had this glitch.

So if anyone has thought on how to resolve that, do let me know. Worst case scenario, I capture in smaller pieces and "glue" them back together in Final Cut. --just more time consuming.

I am planning on upgrading to Final Cut 6, too, so that may help...