Blog Archives
Mr. Blood’s Movie Reviews and Game Ideas
My friend and business partner, Steve “Blood” Baldwin has started a new feature on his “Blood Work” blog. He’s reviewing horror films, new and old, and then talking about things in those films that a Game Master might take away for use in a role-playing game setting.
Check out his reviews of Case 39 and My Soul To Take. Starting next week, he’ll be tackling some classic monster movies as well!
Return of the Bag Witch
I’ve written here before about “The Bag Witch Project,” the short film we made in 1999 as a marketing gimmick, that went on to be unexpectedly successful for us. And I’ve told you about the follow-up, 2000’s “Curse of the Bag Witch,” which was based on the TV special “Curse of the Blair Witch,” which was part of the marketing push for “The Blair Witch Project.”
Since this is the tenth anniversary of the release of “Curse,” and since we’ve had more than a couple of requests for it, we’re releasing “Curse of the Bag Witch” as a downloadable iPod-compatible movie. Featuring guest appearances by frequent Toxic Bag cohorts Alan Vuchichevich, Dan Hitzemann and Heidi Miller, as well as cameos by the “Bag Witch” cast and clips from the original movie, “Curse” is available from our website for about a buck and a half.
"Curse" VHS cover
The blurb from the original VHS tape:
The Unnecessary Investigation
That Takes Over Where the Parody Left Off!This shocking mockumentary, created by the producers of the parody sensation “The Bag Witch Project,” further examines the odd legacy of stupidity that has occasionally bothered the gaming community of Milwaukee for the last three decades. Tracing the history of events that make up the legend, this silly story chronicles the origin of the Bag Witch, the embarrassing Harrison Barker junk food “massacre” of 1988, and the final, confused days of the three role-playing gamers who disappeared while looking for the legendary game tournament in 1998. This wholly unneeded investigation includes additional interviews with friends, authorities and experts involved in the case that were not seen in the original parody film. Before you see the hilarious “Bag Witch Project,” find out the ridiculous history of events that just might be the CURSE OF THE BAG WITCH!
Advertising poster for "Curse"
The Bag Witch: still alive somewhere
I’ve spent many hours reading through the fantastic TVtropes.org. I never thought I’d find myself there. On their “Evil is Deathly Cold” trope page, they refer to a scene from our 1999 Blair Witch parody, The Bag Witch Project. Scroll down to the “Film” section.
I gotta say, I’m pretty geeked about this.
If I had it all to do over again…
And, as it turns out, I do.
I’ve been doing sound design for theatre in and around Chicago for about seven years. It’s a little strange that in that time I’ve never had to design the same show more than once (I have re-mounted shows, but that’s different). I know lots of designers who have done multiple productions of the same show over their career. I almost had two back-to-back productions of Shakespeare’s Measure For Measure last year, but the director of the second production changed his mind and put up As You Like It instead. At the time I was actually looking forward to the challenge of doing one show, then immediately tossing out everything I’d just come up with and starting again from scratch. For good or ill, it didn’t go down that way.
This summer, though, I’ll finally be re-visiting a show I’ve done once before: Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth. I did sound design and music (with a little help from Beethoven) for Oakton Community College’s Macbeth in 2008, and now Moraine Valley Community College is putting it up for their summer show. Not quite back to back, but it will still be a new challenge.
The upside is, I already know the show pretty well. The downside, of course, is that I still have associations that tie my previous design to the show. I generally avoid looking at other versions of a show (or filmed versions) when I’m working on it, to avoid stealing. Maybe this time I should watch a couple of movie versions of Macbeth, just to cleanse my palate.
One thing I know is going to be different is that on this show I am going to explore Tonehammer’s new Waterphone sample library to create the music for the show. That will definitely give this production a different sound and I’m pretty excited about it.
Designers and directors, please chime in: how do you approach a second –or a third or fourth—production of the same script? Do you worry about repeating yourself? Do you embrace the possibility of trying stuff you wish you had before? Do you ever deliberately recycle?
A Wonderful Shot, Shooting
The latest installment of the Michael Brownlee Short Film Series has been completed and is up on our YouTube channel. We taped “He’s A Wonderful Shot” back in June and have spent the last few months in post-production (around and in-between other projects, as usual!).
We’ve also released the song from the film, “Jesus’ Birthday,” on iTunes. It’s available now, along with the b-side “Santa’s Boots.” Both songs were written and performed by The Crusty Jugglers. The band was asked by director Steve Baldwin and writer Michael Brownlee to create “the stupidest, most annoying holiday songs ever written,” and we think they came pretty close! And just to make the whole thing even sillier, we’ve made “Jesus’ Birthday” into a ringtone–go to Audiosparx.com and search for “Jesus Birthday Ringtone”–it’ll pop right up.
We hope you enjoy the film and music! Happy Holidays!
As the year winds down…
Happy Thanksgiving! Me? I’m thankful that I’m not in tech with this flu.
Thoughts, based on recent events in Toxic Bag Land. Names have been changed or excluded to protect…well, me, really.
• Being sick during tech week sucks.
• A no-budget film shoot can be great fun, wrap early and yield fantastic results if the director is prepared and the actors have rehearsed and come in knowing their lines.
• When a director doesn’t listen to his/her designers, it can lead to a really hellish tech week, or an entire scene backed against a wall at the last minute, or an actor getting injured. You hire the specialists for a reason, folks.
• Dragging in “volunteer” voice talent to save money on hiring a pro, and then spending hours beating that volunteer up doing take after take does not actually save you any money, nor does it often result in a product you can be proud of.
• If you’re going to not pay attention when I show you how to set up the gear, don’t just immediately look at me blankly and ask what my “backup plan” is when you hook it up wrong and fry the computer on opening night. My “backup plan” was for you to not destroy the rig, dumbass.
• Sound designers and costume designers really need to work together where microphones are going to be involved. This applies to theater and to film. The collaboration worked out pretty well on one production this year, not so well on another.
• You can’t ADR live theater. See above point.
• Collaborating over the internet can work really well, but there’s nothing like sitting in a room with another human being and just cranking stuff out. Horace and Jasper of the experimental band Phil Who Just Adores Backgammon got most of an album done over a long weekend last month (I told you I’d changed the names).
• At some point, a project will be less about how good your stuff sounds, and more about how quickly you can crank out something that sounds good. Which is a great reason to learn those computer shortcuts and make sure your studio is set up in an efficient and ergonomic way.
Fall Update
1. Do the Necronomicon
I’ve just wrapped up doing sound design for Evil Dead: The Musical at Moraine Valley Community College. Thanks to Tommy, Mark, Amanda, Lee, Glenn and the rest of the team at MVCC; the show was a blast. For those of you keeping track at home, condoms have better sound transmission than latex surgical gloves, so if you’re trying to protect your wireless mics from gallons of fake blood, Trojan Man to the rescue!
2. Projects the First
The past few weeks we also worked on sound design for Sidenote Pictures’ romantic comedy Darren & Abbey, directed by Michael Noens, as well as continuing to do ADR work and sound design consulting for Sigsaly Entertainment’s Green Hornet web series.
3. Projects the Second
We’re almost finished mixing the second Michael Brownlee short, “He’s a Wonderful Shot.” It should be up on our YouTube channel very soon.
Thoughts on a slow Friday
• I’m reading William Whittington’s excellent book “Sound Design and Science Fiction” and plan to re-watch as many of the films he covers as I can while I’m reading the book. So, I re-watched George Lucas’ THX-1138 the other night. Walter Murch’s “sound montage” work is absolutely stunning, but I had a distressing thought. The DVD I have is a “Director’s Cut” version, where Lucas went back and inserted modern CGI effects sequences to replace the original 1970s effects shots. Did Murch go back in and re-mix the audio, or replace sound effects with new, re-designed ones? I really hope not. I don’t see Murch being as obsessed with “fixing” his early work as Lucas is. Perhaps the groundbreaking sound design survives intact.
Next up, the first three Star Wars films. I still have the pre-Special Edition versions on VHS…I may watch those instead of the “Greedo Shoots First” cuts.
• When do the guys on Supernatural take the time to give every local sheriff and hot-townie-of-the-week their celphone numbers? Every episode, they have one conversation with a local, and after the first commercial break that person has them on speed-dial.
• Yes, I did just admit to watching Supernatural.
• Sometimes, radio stations make some pretty silly decisions when it comes to music.
What I meant was…
how to communicate with the director during the design process?
“…judge by results, not intentions.” – Cicero
Directors, designers, help me out here. I have questions. First I’ll tell some stories.
1) I was cutting footsteps for a film where the main character is kept in the dark, off balance, isn’t sure what’s happening. I “walked” the character tentatively, avoiding heavy, deliberate, determined footfalls, thinking I was serving the character by doing so. The director looked at the scene.
“He sounds like he has really tiny feet.”
Somewhat defensively, I explained why I had cut the feet the way I did, talked about the character, the feel I was going for.
“Yeah. He sounds like he has really tiny feet.”
In retrospect he was right; I’d gotten a little carried away with the thematic approach and went too far. It was an experiment that didn’t work out. We went with heavier footsteps. More realism, less film-student thematics.
If I’d told the director in advance, “I cut the feet this way because blah blah,” would he—having my intention in mind as he watched—have been more likely to let the original, wrong footsteps stay in?
B) I was reading about the sound design for Watchmen, and how the film’s sound guys decided that they’d already mixed two big fight scenes in a row with huge up-front effects, and that for contrast and to give the film some dynamics, they’d favor the music for the third fight sequence, and turn the effects down. Director Zack Snyder saw the cut and his response was: where are the effects? The sound crew explained their intention, and Snyder’s response was, “well, we’ll just have to undo that.”
When I read that I first thought, well, there’s an example of a director not trusting or listening to his sound team, going for the obvious cliché choice to have big thwack-y punch sounds like every other fight sequence in every other action movie.
Then I started to wonder: what would have happened if the Watchmen sound team had set Snyder up for it in advance?
“Here, Zack, we thought we’d do something different in this sequence. We’ve gone ‘big-effects’ on the last 2 fights, why don’t we make this one a little more oh-I-dunno-balletic-or-abstract-or-whatever and favor the music in the mix instead?”
“Huh, interesting idea,” Snyder might say. “Lemme see it.” …roll the scene. Snyder watches.
Now, he can either say, “yeah, you know what? That works; let’s do it that way.” Or he can say, “No, I really wanted the big punch and kick sounds, bring the effects back in.”
Which way would things have gone?
iii) I’m about to start working on a short film where the two main characters fall in love over the course of the movie. I want to draw the audience’s focus tighter on the couple as the story progresses, partly by stripping away the ambient sound over the course of the film: as they get more into each other, the rest of the world falls away. Not in a Bergman-abrupt-dropoff way, not playing scenes with no ambience or diegetic effects, just subtly turning stuff down over time. But I envision playing that mix for the director and hearing “why is the fireplace not louder here?” Should I explain in advance what I intend to do? Will that bias his reaction to my choices in favor of them, when those choices may not be the right ones? Will playing the mix without any explanation cause him to over-react to those choices?
Part of this, of course, is: maybe if the sound designer is making big thematic design decisions, he should discuss them with the director before putting a bunch of time into developing them. In theatre design we talk much of this stuff out in pre-production meetings, and the tech process is such that you really can’t position the director as “first-time audience member” and surprise him/her the way you can with a film mix. But without making the director approve every one of hundreds if not thousands of individual effects…I mean, at a certain point in the process the director has to be able to trust you to go off and do your job for awhile, right?
Is it reasonable to assume that if a particular design choice takes the director out of the film, the audience will react the same way? Or is the director’s perception different because of the nature of the job?
So my questions:
Designers: how do you present your ideas? More specifically, when you have a design element prepared, and are ready to show it…do you set the director up for it or just hit play and see how s/he reacts?
Directors: how do you want design ideas presented to you? Do you want to know up-front what the intention and approach are, or do you want to see the moment as the audience will see it, with no preamble and no explanation? Are you perhaps never in the position to ever see anything as the audience will see it, since you are the director?
And of course, the flip side, the unnerving, insecure question: as the designer, am I prone to be more in favor of a design choice because I thought of it, and I know what my intention was? Will I fight for a bad idea simply because it is mine?
Chime in, please.
Toxic Bag Productions 