We’ve come out the other side of the worst of it. Jen and I (mostly Jen, let’s face it) filmed last week. Thanks to the miracle of Savers and an incredible historical home in Jen’s family (it truly felt like passing through a time warp at the front door, in the best possible way) we created a really beautiful historical piece – and managed to hide a modern powerpoint behind a box, so well done all round. Jen’s editing that and I have no doubt that it’s going to come out as a thing of beauty. It better, since I had to fiddle around with the cartilage piercings our actor had in his upper ear and it was pretty supremely gross.

As for me, I recorded my audio the day before and had mixed results. Don’t get me wrong, it’ll all come out well; I’m nearly through with editing and it’s made a big difference – but editing’s easy when your voice actor’s biggest problem is the huge pauses they take between sentences. The voice actor who filled the role of Emilie Christie was a pro and brought the warmth and joie de vivre I hoped she would. Also, it really interested me that most of the actors who were so so keen and enthusiastic and interested in our project never bothered to reply to the messages I left them. I know it’s not a paid job so it probably wasn’t a high priority to them, but I guess I’m just old-fashioned. I was leaving voicemails, after all.

The only major task I really have left is figuring out how to frame my audio. Something definitely needs to go underneath it, if only to combat the echo. I’m tossing up between a simple, classical piece of music and situational background audio – horse hooves clopping, city bustle, gunshots, “hey you!”s, etc. But… that might come off a little “Orson Welles presents… the War of the Worlds”. Both of these things are available at archive.org so legality isn’t a deciding factor. I suppose I’ll throw it all at the wall and see what sticks.