The Sound of Music

We had already discussed the music a little. As I've said, we have a friend who is a musical genius who can help us out. I was discussing the music with another friend who is essentially Rob Gordon from High Fidelity and he wasn't so sure that the soundtrack was by Mancini.

I looked at the end credits and it says:

Music Score

Billy Goldenberg



Theme

Henry Mancini

What does that mean exactly? This got me really curious about the music, so last night (after the failed supper) I went through the whole movie and extracted 13 scenes with music. I sent the music to my Rob Gordon friend for some closer inspection.

I love this project, because people have been so helpful and encouraging. Friends are the best!

No-Shows

In our pursuit for a cabin on the water, a friend-of-a-friend said we could probably use her parent's cabin which is on a large pond. The parents were a little bit nervous about it, as the cabin had been broken into not long ago. I can understand that. Our house was robbed when I was a kid and I still sometimes have a nightmare about it.

So to hopefully make them feel better and to just generally get the hellos out of the way, we decided to meet for supper before the shoot (scheduled for October 16th). Then the parents couldn't make it because they were going to be out of town, but still we pressed on. The daughter was to act as the delegate and check us out.

Last night we were supposed to meet at 6:00pm. About 5 minutes prior, the daughter called and had a flat tire. AAA was going to take about an hour to get there, so we cancelled. Crap.

Now we need to make an alternative plan. We still might go with this cabin, but if all else fails we'll just rent a cabin somewhere for a weekend. Whatever we do needs to happen pretty fast, because that water is going to be cold real soon.

Decisions, Decisions

There are a few things we've decided:

1. I'm not going to impersonate Columbo per se. I wll attempt to copy his mannerisms, but nobody wants to hear my crappy impersonation.


2. We are going to rent the police uniforms. The fun part about this is that there are 3 different scenes where we need them (maybe 4) and we're cheap, so trying to film all the cop scenes in one day will be a trick.


3. We're gonna hunt for the original score by Mancini. If we can't find it, the amazing Nick Franceschina will make us something similar.


4. This is not a period piece. We just don't have the funds. We will stick to the script where possible, but a couple of minor changes will have to be made. Also everyone will not be dressing like it's 1972.


5. For the "yelling in the theatre" scene, we're going to mime the yelling and go back and do voiceovers later. We'll try to shoot the scene in a real theatre lobby without attracting too much attention.

Props to my Peeps

Today I went to a flea market and a thrift store. The hunt yielded a rotating light for the police boat and Columbo's overcoat. I'm $20 poorer and pretty relieved to have found such a cheap light. I wasn't as worried about the coat, because I'm not going to try to duplicate the exact coat.

Also we have been working on the script. We have about the first 20 minutes finished. It's not bad, we get together and one person types while the other works the DVD player and confirms what has been said. My favorite line so far is this:

LASANKA: MY PLANETS MUST BE IN ALL THE RIGHT HOUSES TODAY
KEN: NOT ONLY THAT, BUT THEY'RE WORKING OVERTIME

Carl vaguely remembered something about the planets/houses thing from astrology. Google tells us that it was popular in the 70's. I would have never figured that out by myself.

The first shoot is October 16th. A friend of a friend is letting us use their pond for the boating scene. Now I just have to finish making the boom for the mic (which arrived on Friday) and scrounge up a rowboat somewhere...

First Purchase

I made the first real purchase for the project today. I got this mic from this place based on some comments on Usenet.

I Believe in Signs

On Saturday Carl and I watched the movie again, compiling a list of scenes and locations. Nothing too scary (that I'm not already scared about) but there are little things that are going to be insane. Cop uniforms and cars. The scene where the camera sits behind the light on a police boat. A pay phone in a hallway. And the sign pictured above which is only there for a few seconds, but it's during a transition which sets the location.

So I bought some wood at Home Depot this weekend and I guess I have to make a sign.

Also I've been looking at microphones and they are expensive. The lighting you can fake, the cameras are cheap these days, I have plenty of computing power for editing, but you can't really cut corners on audio. People can forgive poor lighting (I've noticed that this Columbo is poorly lit in places) and crappy sets (hey, it's "campy"!) but they get frustrated with bad audio.

I was already thinking about splurging on a Sennheiser, and then I ran across a blurb about Kubrick having good luck with them on A Clockwork Orange, so that seals the deal for me.