I'm back with an update on the project!
It's still really early on in the whole process. We've got this fantastic story that's growing and a mountain of reference materials to sort through and absorb. The cool bit is the location I chose. I am going with an actual city and going back to the mid-to-late 1800s to mix in the steampunk look with the local culture. It's a fantastic process and I don't think there is anything like it out there. And what city is it, you ask? I've settled on Braşov, România. It's one of the largest cities in the country and about 150 years ago, it's exactly what I'm looking for. The population is just about right. The factories and war-time mentality fits. In the mid 1800's, Romania wasn't even an established country yet. It was still split into various small principalities/kingdoms -- Moldavia (Romanian: Moldova) and Wallachia (Romanian: Valahia). By the end of World War I, Transylvania and a few others joined the growing nation.
Within this country, there are several languages and base cultures to work with. The dominant ones of course are Hungarian, Romanian, and German. French, Spanish, Italian, and English are taught in schools and millions of people speak these languages. As you can see, I've been doing some homework. The history of this city is rich and reaches back as far as 100 BC. Plus, Prince Vlad the Impaler! (Dracula!?!?) The fun part of all this is going to be melding the Romanian culture, clothing, and customs into the gears, leather, brass, and contraptions of the ideal steampunk world. The "Victorian Era" for Romania was full of colorful clothing, beautiful architectural masterpieces, and a coming-together of long separated peoples to build a new nation. There is so much to work with!
Goals: We plan to focus our efforts on finishing a draft (if not a finished product) of the Introduction and Part I. That's roughly 7 minutes worth to work on. With this we may look for outside help to finish the film. Hopefully extra knowledgeable animators. But for now we are ironing out details and beginning to explore what the characters will look like.
More to come, as always...
--dave
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Origin and Mutation
A few of you have already heard how this project came about, but for those of you just joining us, here's the back story of the And It Hurts project.
In 2004 I was unemployed and uninspired for the most port. But one evening, I had a bolt out of the blue find me and I started writing a song. As I wrote the parts I would record them and edit as I went. 12 hours later I had (what I thought at the time was) this amazing, epic piece. It was almost 7 minutes long and had three distinct movements. After a while, I decided I didn't care for the recording and the whole song was shelved.
Now jump forward to 2009. The 'demo for the solo listener' EP was in the final stages before I started making copies to the CD release show. A glitch in my audio software had slowed down one of the tracks, Come See, making the mp3 about 26 1/2 minutes long instead of 4. When I listened to the track, what I heard was fascinating. Rattling. Rumbling. Groaning. Clanking. It sounded like a demon detuning the bass strings of a piano. An alarm immediately went off in my head. I need to sample these sounds!
The samples started to form this mechanical rhythm and I knew exactly what to do with it. I started recording guitar parts and vocals from the '04 AIH track and quickly realized this was going to be longer and more complex. It turned into three movements and had this rich underlying emotional drive. The same emotions I felt when writing the song but amplified and expanded to 15 minutes and more instruments.
Parts 1 and 2 came together pretty quickly but Part 3 was eluding me for some reason, so sometime in the fall last year I put the project aside to work on a live album. Now it's 2010 and about a week ago I decided to get back into this music. After three days and 10 or so hours of work, I was about 80% finished with the track. But the software crashed and erased every shred of audio in Part 3. Luckily I had exported an mp3 of what I'd done so far right before this. So I'm in a tough spot as far as that goes. It's either start over trying to rebuild and recall everything I'd done so far, start from scratch completely, or work with what I've got and add to the mp3 to complete the track.
Since I started this up in 2009, I've felt the need to do some sort of videos for these tracks. From there it seemed to want to be one continuous, short film. Animation seemed like a good way to go. Now, I'm not going to give hints about plot or anything yet but the style is going to be steampunk. If you have heard of it yet, check out that wiki link. The music will be the soundtrack to the film. There won't be spoken dialogue, but there will be sound for sure. I'm shooting for somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes long.
Ok so that's the history of the project. More to come, soon as there's something to post up!
In 2004 I was unemployed and uninspired for the most port. But one evening, I had a bolt out of the blue find me and I started writing a song. As I wrote the parts I would record them and edit as I went. 12 hours later I had (what I thought at the time was) this amazing, epic piece. It was almost 7 minutes long and had three distinct movements. After a while, I decided I didn't care for the recording and the whole song was shelved.
Now jump forward to 2009. The 'demo for the solo listener' EP was in the final stages before I started making copies to the CD release show. A glitch in my audio software had slowed down one of the tracks, Come See, making the mp3 about 26 1/2 minutes long instead of 4. When I listened to the track, what I heard was fascinating. Rattling. Rumbling. Groaning. Clanking. It sounded like a demon detuning the bass strings of a piano. An alarm immediately went off in my head. I need to sample these sounds!
The samples started to form this mechanical rhythm and I knew exactly what to do with it. I started recording guitar parts and vocals from the '04 AIH track and quickly realized this was going to be longer and more complex. It turned into three movements and had this rich underlying emotional drive. The same emotions I felt when writing the song but amplified and expanded to 15 minutes and more instruments.
Parts 1 and 2 came together pretty quickly but Part 3 was eluding me for some reason, so sometime in the fall last year I put the project aside to work on a live album. Now it's 2010 and about a week ago I decided to get back into this music. After three days and 10 or so hours of work, I was about 80% finished with the track. But the software crashed and erased every shred of audio in Part 3. Luckily I had exported an mp3 of what I'd done so far right before this. So I'm in a tough spot as far as that goes. It's either start over trying to rebuild and recall everything I'd done so far, start from scratch completely, or work with what I've got and add to the mp3 to complete the track.
Since I started this up in 2009, I've felt the need to do some sort of videos for these tracks. From there it seemed to want to be one continuous, short film. Animation seemed like a good way to go. Now, I'm not going to give hints about plot or anything yet but the style is going to be steampunk. If you have heard of it yet, check out that wiki link. The music will be the soundtrack to the film. There won't be spoken dialogue, but there will be sound for sure. I'm shooting for somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes long.
Ok so that's the history of the project. More to come, soon as there's something to post up!
First thing's first...
Welcome to the new blog for the brand new film project I've started! I will be posting updates about the progress and process. Since it's new territory for me I enlisted the help of my brother Mike whose an animator and artist. I also asked my siblings John and Theresa (Architect/Writer and Poet/Artist/Dancer respectively,) to help along the way. So it's a family affair, but it will most likely grow beyond that if need-be.
Thanks to the wonders of Google Wave (still in beta/invite only mode) I have been able to get the ball rolling with the others with full-on discussions and brainstorming for design, setting, and the over all look and feel. Some great ideas have come about in just a couple different conversations so I can't wait to see what comes next!
In the next post, I will talk about the origins of the project; how it started at a 7 minute song and found its way to being involved with a short film.
Thanks to the wonders of Google Wave (still in beta/invite only mode) I have been able to get the ball rolling with the others with full-on discussions and brainstorming for design, setting, and the over all look and feel. Some great ideas have come about in just a couple different conversations so I can't wait to see what comes next!
In the next post, I will talk about the origins of the project; how it started at a 7 minute song and found its way to being involved with a short film.
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