Tonight, (In a Cat-Piss-Free environment) Colin and I were able to preview the entire locked-down version of Pray For Daylight. We listened to the director's cut with the temp tracks installed, and made notes of the mood for each scene.

Actually, if Colin and I were both killed by ninjas tonight, they could use the royalty-free tracks the director has in place (and the few songs of ours that he used already) and the score would be fine. 'Fine' as in OK. 'Fine' as in Adequate. But I think we can do better.

We decided on a plan of action for the project - instead of progressing linearly through the movie, we will place the largest pieces of music first. The opening credits, the time-lapse montage with Monsters on it, the Wheel of Death scene with Let it Out, and so forth. Then, we will go back and work through the largest remaining sections where there are extended scenes of a constant emotion (fight scenes, reflective scenes, sad scenes...) and try to cover the largest sections first, and proceed in layers, until we reach a point where it seems prudent to take the movie a scene at a time, to completion.

There are two notable items slightly outside the score of the film which we have to deal with. The first is the sound cue for what is being called 'celerity' - that is, the magical ability of the vampires to 'teleport' or move quickly from place to place. The second is the 'freezy-eye' look, when the vampires freeze people in their tracks with fear. Both of these events have sound cueues Tony has put in place, but he told us he is not 100% happy with them, and has invited us to see if we can do better.

J-man came over and helped us put a thin coat of polish over the song 'Not Enough Bullets' and called it Done. Complete. We don't have to retake any tracks, edit any mistakes, or tweak any levels. Done. And we each smoked a cigar. A Middleton's Cherry Blend Cigar, to be exact. A major milestone in both the 'Days From Evil' project, and the scoring.

Later tonight, I may drop 'Bullets' onto the timeline and we will have our first edit. That is what I wanted to accomplish last night, instead of shampooing carpets. So, I can safely say that I feel we are one day behind schedule on our second day into the project. This implies the project will take twice as long as I thought...

What we learned today:

• Middleton's Cherry-Blend Cigars don't taste like Cherries at all.


• Egyptian Musk incense smells W-A-Y better than cat urine.


• Middleton's Cherry-Blend Cigars taste much better on Halloween after 4 or 5 drinks.


• A track is never finished. But, at some point, you must pick a level of 'completedness' you are willing to live with and answer to. (See Zeno's Paradox.)


• Middleton's Cherry-Blend Cigars taste like crap.

Blog on,
-CZ

Labels: Pray For Daylight