Titles. Help. Miracles. Two. Weeks. Left.

Today is/was an epic day. I'm not entirely sure that today is a different day from yesterday... I'm not sure how long you have to sleep for a day to qualify as a new one.

People other than myself have now heard my piece. The first person--my roommate Rachel (who I guess now qualifies as my former roommate as I drove her to the airport for her move to Utah this morning at 5am). The piece is still in rough rough rough cut stages, but she seemed to emotionally connect. The real test came when I played it for my fellow graduate students in my Graduate Sound Design course. Some of my favorite feedback: 

• "I was emotionally invested so I couldn't really listen for technical issues. I can't really give you an adequate critique." 
• "You're all over the place with emotion. One second someone's crying, the next you're all cracking up."
• "That didn't feel like 27 minutes AT ALL."
• "So... what ended up happening with you?"

Yes, I would have liked more technical feedback as that is what I'm having major issues with right now, but I liked to hear that people were emotionally connecting. The negative feedback all centered on form... it doesn't quite gel as well as we would all like and there were some parts that people couldn't follow the narrative (i.e. my "creative way" of implying bouts of infidelity didn't really come off as I hoped, so I may have to be more explicit). I met with John today. He worked with me on the voice-over/narration parts (which, I agree, are totally lacking). I will be re-working all of those. ALL. OF. THOSE. Scary. We also talked about ideas for coming up with a title (which is always difficult for me):

• Sit in the most comfortable place in your house. The place where you do all your good thinking.
• Grab your favorite beverage. A pen. A notebook. 
• Write, write, write. You may write 14 titles that are totally kitschy, but you wouldn't have gotten to that wonderful 15th title without writing those 14. 
• Read poetry.

I just finished this exercise (with a couple departures... I am actually in my office at Emerson. Most professors/students are gone by now [7:15p] and it makes for a nice distraction-less space. I don't have my favorite beverage...). No titles/phrases came to me, so I just started brainstorming words that resonated with me and the piece for different reasons (family, blood, progeny, heirs, inheritance, alliance, lineage, seal, undone, cancellation, defeated, lineage, etc.). Then, I followed John's advice and did the poetry thing. I read at least thirty poems on family and love lost. This all led to a title that really resonates with me, but I am waiting to announce it until I am 100% decided. 

I chatted with Pierre for a bit today, too. We talked about the drama at the audio suites (read previous post) and ways to make my piece gel a bit more. We talked about the sound design in No Country for Old Men and how, like the film, I could potentially come up with something that is just barely audible that operates as a bed throughout the whole piece. I needed to do something like that or record a 30-minute track of room tone to make it possible for poetic silences. So, I am doing the former. I am excited about my idea and I REALLY hope it works. Again, I'll report when things are 100% decided.

There is so much snowballing going on right now (this project and my production book is due to Graduate Studies in TWO WEEKS FROM TODAY), but one of the MOST EXCITING parts of the day... Jared Mooney of Dirty Water Sound & Music agreed to help me with my mastering!!!!!! THIS IS A PRAYER ANSWERED. He is also a Broadcast Recording Technician at WBUR, and his job there is to do just this... help pathetic producers who are great at content but suck at EQ, gain staging, and mastering. I cannot explain the joy this brings to my heart and he deserves some sort of mega-prize. Mooney, my family, and the transcription brigade... I could not have done it without you.

So, like I mentioned. TWO WEEKS FROM TODAY. Voice-over re-write. Voice-over re-record. Start (!!) work on production book. Get session data from Mooney and import into my session. Edit. Add voice-overs to my session. Edit. Final mastering in audio suites at Emerson. Finish production book (this is budgets, reflections, production journal, production schedules, etc.). Get all that crap printed on the special paper with the special margins that Emerson requires. Master some more. Edit some more. Hold on to my piece until the very last moment I can... working on it until the very last moment I can... then turn it in on April 28. Crash.

If you got through all this, you're a champ.