The other day I was coaching one of the crew through their voice over on Skype. He recorded it, rendered it, compressed it, uploaded it, emailed it and then I downloaded it. Once finished, we got to lammenting on how we wished we could do voice overs like Rob Machado before Forrest pondered this question.
"What did we do before all this technology?"
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Sarah and Nico making music in BerlinThings have been a little quiet here of late on the blog front, but that is far from reflective of what's happening behind the scenes. The film is coming along at a great rate of knots. I would say the edit is 90% complete, but with most projects like this, the last 10% takes 90% of the effort.
Extremely talented friends, and friends of friends have been getting on board and are stoked to contribute. A good friend and incredible musician, Sarah Noni Metzner, is working with Nico Schnepf (never met the guy, but he is a legend) on three original tracks for the film, including an animation that Ryan Thibault at Bohaus Design is compiling. Matt Westcott from Dubs Brothers Films is my right hand man, fielding all my questions, handing out criticism and feedback, and applying the final tightener when the time comes. Everybody is spread around the world, from Berlin to Vermont, Ontario to basecamp here in Revelstoke. Being able to get everybody working together over such huge distances makes this an exciting time to exist in the evolution of technology. This film rides on the back of Skype and WeTransfer.com as much as it does on affordable HD video cameras.
So the post production life is sedentary, but productive. Deadlines are approaching and so far we are on track.
Back to it...
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My edit holeMyself, I have holed myself up to edit. It is cool reliving the winter play-by-play as I sift through footage, but my posture has taken a turn for the worse and I think I pulled a hamstring going to get more tea the other day. Things are coming along nicely though. It is all there, we just need to do it justice. Everyone I speak to is excited to see the finished product, and so am I.
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The ash cloud above IcelandWill made it back the USA, not without incident, but of an India nature, while I am stuck here in Europe. Like stuck. Like forced to eat good cheese and smoked meat, left with no other choice but to drink good German beer and fine French wine. Yeah, its tough, and I still have a week of it to go.]]>;)
A Bashir Ahmad Bashir cartoon from the Aftab, 1994Kashmir is behind us and Will and I take off out of Delhi on Monday. Filming wrapped up a few days ago, and when I be honest, it didn't feel as monumental as I perhaps thought it would. I feel confident though that we have everything we need to make a film that we are happy with and does justice to the people and present situation in Kashmir. We have a tonne (a terabyte to be precise) of footage, much of which will not see the lens of a projector, but that which does will hopefully enlighten you a little, or a lot.]]>
Just as I leave Kashmir, I am already planning to come back. Not quite, but with news that the Indian Government is supposedly opening 104 peaks in the Siachen area to climbers, I am almost forced to come back. Siachen is the highest, longest running and most expensive war in history, and said war is staged on the highest alpine glacier in the world. It is, or at least was a pristine environment that can entertain gernerations of climbers.
Check out this news piece from Reuters on the climbing permits.
This is also a great article by Kevin Fedarko on the Siachen battle ground published in Outside magazine; The Coldest War
That is all very interesting, and I am sure more so than my current adventures sweating in Delhi waiting to leave. I'll update soon.
-Anthony
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