Sabotage & Dialogue Productions

Salutations from the perpetual grey oh fellow lovers of small industrial towns,

Sit down, darlings, have a cup of coffee with me. I need another one after a late night of editing.

Steeling myself against mid afternoon exhaustion

The basement offices of Sabotage and Dialogue Productions are in a right whirl these days.  There is much talk of the upcoming acquisition of a proper editing system as well as what is known as a shotgun mic for the Canon GL2.  But there is more than talk going on, we’re about to edit the second Homemade Jam Film using the rather ineffectual but still functioning version of Final Cut Express that we have on the laptop computer.

The Homemade Jam films are not intended to be professional level shorts, rather they are experimental films intended to expand our skill sets and allow us to adapt to the new stock of equipment that we’re acquiring this year.

Originally I’d hoped that I’d have a new Homemade Jam film almost every week.  I’m beginning to realize that “weekly but no fewer than two a month” is a more attainable goal.  As most of my background is in feature film development and the creative production side, I’m facing a steep learning curve when it comes to the more technical aspects of independent film making.  

This weekend we shot the second Homemade Jam Film titled “Bad Sensei.”  Fred Ogden is a sensei in the Tacoma area.  He teaches at Ipon Dojo in Tacoma.  Ipon Dojo is known in the judo community for its solid kids judo program.  We set out to make a simple introductory film for children who wish to start judo that outlines some basic safety and etiquette.  At first, the location appears to be a dream setting.  It is a small, private dojo set on five acres owned by Fred Ogden and used for summer judo camps.  The dojo has good natural lighting and a huge, two story roll up door and a loft.

The first, unanticipated problem, was sound.  There is a country road that goes past the farm that apparently gets a lot more traffic on a weekend Sunday than we’d originally noticed in our first scout.  The second was the children.  Because the location butts up against a hillside, even when outside the dojo and a reasonable distance from the building we could still pick up the sounds of them playing.  I also am dreading the editing.  Usually I love editing but Final Cut Express lacks timecode.  Editing a film without timecode is like editing a book without page numbers.  You can do fine if the original work is only twelve pages long.  But once you get over a certain point, it becomes very frustrating.  Due to the multiple takes (working with children is an adventure and apparently duct taping their mouths shut is not considered professional) we have over an hour’s worth of footage for a very simple film.

The first Homemade Jam film was simply about breaking ground. This one, I suspect, will be about adventures in sound and editing.  

Wish me luck.

She who longs for a shotgun mic,

Kat