Can you hear me? Belladonna calling

Greetings! Part 2 Sound

I recently read an article by Walter Murch a wonderfully talented film and sound Editor, I think of him as a poet able to group ideas feelings into succinct lines of thoughts. He talked about the mind set of the director when on set,who has to live in 3 different spaces, the past the present and the future. You really realise how true that is when you're in post production.
The PAST: Any creative, financial, practical decision you make has a profound effect on the way the shooting of the film goes and beyond that, what ramification it will have in the editing process and post production. What seems like a short cut often comes and bites you later!!!

THE PRESENT: When your're on set you have to be present with the actors and crew to feel what they need on that day, that hour and how best to help them.
THE FUTURE: ANY DECISION that's made, is made pretty much made forever. Unless there is a budget for re shoots and major pick up's it is pretty much it. So as we were sitting on the sound stage working with Kacper and Marcin all the decisions that you wish were made differently you see or hear over and over again. You see the shirt that you wish you could change, or the shot you wished you could have improved, the dynamics, colour on and on..on!! But at the end of the day, art, whether its film, theatre or architecture evolves, it would be easy to fall under the spell of perfectionism rather then learning and engaging those lessons in the next project. and the one after. One of the major learning curves with sound was that when we were shooting the Polish Part of the film because of the remote location and other colourful reasons we were not able to watch the rushes or hear the sound. Can you imagine our surprise, horror when we review the footage and realised that some of the scenes had almost no sound!! (This is I think every directors/Producers nightmare) So thank God that we could do ADR with Daryl who plays Jan here in Australia and Kasia and Pawel when we arrived in Poland. Part 3 coming up!!!


Below is what happens when the people in the Kindgom go a bit MAD!!

Annika talks with Kasia ( this is a beautiful scene in the film)

Belladonna's fabulous sound design

Part One:

The moment we finished colour grading the picture we moved straight onto sound. Over the years I have heard people talk about the tendency of producers and filmmakers in general to lean their budget towards the picture, the look, the feel the executing and let the sound somehow “take care of itself” I must admit that I made this mistake with one of my short films and vowed never to repeat it. So Malgosia Corvalan (Co -producer) and I went with a company called Dream sound in Warsaw, their quote was much higher then many of the other ones but as it turned out absolutely worth every penny. I never expected to learn from this process as much as I did. Not only the really technical aspects about sound but also about collaboration. I think the most important aspects about art or any collaboration is as I call it ’ The care factor’. You can’t make somebody care, and I think in fact you can’t pay somebody to care. Caring for a project is to make a personal investment in it to take pride in your work and try to really achieve the best result. and that is definitely what happened with Tomek, Marcin, and Kacper. Caring also translates into moment by moment decisions. Its like building a house of cards each move depends of the previous one, that every decision is the ground work for the next. If you make 'poor cutting corner choices' that will eventually influence the whole process. (I digress).
Having invested really an enormous amount of everything in Belladonna it was such a relief to know that the sound was in great hands, from the recording of few of the key music tracks, to the music mix, to sound mixing, and foley. I knew this was going to be the case from the moment we arrived and meet the boys at WFDIF a Warsaw version of Hollywood. They were working on foley and wanted us to approve their sounds. At this stage we had just finished editing the film and the idea of watching the film in detail AGAIN was almost overwhelming, kind of like torture, I had to get over myself pretty quickly. (We have shot some footage for behind the scenes for the making of Belladonna, it is really funny a little like the world of Being John Malkovich)

Let there be Colour

So we started colour grading! Wow the film is re born for my eyes again. Having spent so much time looking at the film over and over the colour grade is making the film look new for a moment. It is stating the obvious, but colour determines the way you feel...and in a way asking exactly the same sort of questions as when we first startedproject. 'what is this scene about, what is the intention, the mood.' After hours of staring at the screen you cease to see the actual picture. ( is a bit like life) you loose perspective, and no longer can say if something really does look too yellow or too green.There is a word for it being 'metamesmorised.' I guess you can be metamesmorised by too much information, by living in thesame city for your whole life and no longer really being able to 'see it' So our colour grading answer is to look at white walls or to go outside to reset the eye, or more precisely the brain.
Here is a little bit of really interesting information about colour perception.

' The objects that we see usually reflect/emit a very wide spectrum of light, with different frequencies emitting at different intensities. Essentially, our take on the colour of the object is done with a three-point sample. We miss a lot of the complexity of the true “colour”.
What this means, is that you can have two objects that reflect wildly different spectra, that will, none the less, appear as exactly the same colour to us because of the sampling errors of our eyes. This is called metamerism. It’s only really a factor when you create a representation of that colour - for example, a painting, a photo, or an image on a screen. To us, it looks like a good representation of the original object, but in fact, it’s lousy - it would look ridiculously wrong to someone who had, say, four or five colour receptors in their eyes (even if their colour sensors didn’t extend into UV or IR) instead of the three we have.'

So as we spend days sitting in the dark, yesterday Marcus made a funny comment and said it was like being in a casino. You sit in a dark room, with no perception of time spending large amounts of money. The unfortunate effect is that I want to colour grade my dreams, maybe lift the highlights, make the sky a little bluer, make a vigniette around the face. Likely we are working great people at PAY a post production company in Poland and a fabulous colour grader who drives the Quantel and machine with ease and great skill. See photos below.
Annika

What time(code) is it ?

Long time no Blog . No sleep till Warsaw.
Well the last month in Australia before we relocated to Poland for Post production was mad.Mountains of things to render and a fixed departure date.
It's always interesting how the ramifications of simple descisions ripple through something as complex as digital post. In this case its all about shooting at 25 fps instead of the regular 24 fps.
Since we have shot in two Pal countries where digital post is really easy in 25 frames per second we have had a really straightforward time editing , synching etc the offline edit. The path for the HDACM footage we shot in Poland has been simple. The problem we ran into has been with the footage from the red camera. The RED one produces files in a raw format that you then process using RED supplied software, in our case REDCINE into files that can be colourgraded. Well since everything with RED is still in development the current REDCINE software has a small bug in it that makes it uncertain if it is writing the correct 25 fps timecode into the DPX files. (DPX files are 10 bit ,to allow maximum use of the red footages amazing grading latitude ie you can do some pretty extreme colour corrections and it still holds up without banding.)
So without the certainly that each frame of the film has the right timecode embedded in it , it is pretty scary to relocate the 8 500 gig hard drives of files to Poland to Conform ( reassemble digitally the hi res version of the film ) not knowing if the offline edit will match the assembled hi res online.This was a problem that had to be solved
This is where the excitement of bleeding edge post production occurs. Using the REDUSER.net resource we found two pieces of software that solved the problem. These are CRIMSON workflow and GLUETOOLS . These two programs are developed by what appears to be one man shows. Both solve problems beautifully and are at the moment indispensible. Both also are in development continuously. The of the guys behind these solutions offer a level of support that I have never seen before, I was just emailing them sometimes daily with questions and they patiently responded, night day , weekends. Updates arrive as they write them. great stuff. Our film is only ,say 4 months behind the first features shot on RED so its pretty exciting ( sometimes puzzling/stressful ) to be working in a complex emerging workflow situation that you have to get right.
Any way the timecode is now right and later this week we do the conform at PAY studios in Warsaw on their Quantel Pablo. Then 2 weeks of colour grading , one of my favourite parts of the whole film making process.

BACK IN POLAND FOR BELLADONNA POST

Here we are again a year later back in Warsaw, Poland this time for post production. So far it has been a heddy mix of jet lag miracles and lots of cigarette smoke.
Our apartment is close to the centre of Warsaw and judging by the furniture and the general personal touches must belong to a middle aged lady, layers soft toys on tops of cupboards (maybe she has a grandaughter) probably by this stage you're wondering why I'm mentioning these details. You see as we ran out of time in Australia and didn't finish mixing the music tracks we needed to buy a keyboard with a midi input to make it work (not really a standard piece of equipment) As we begin to unpack Marcus opens one of the cupboards and there stands a 4 octive keyboard a MIRACLE!!! How, why does this woman have this particular keyboard?
Traveling with terrabites of information stacked on an enormous amount of drives was certainly interesting, and ultimately successful, as the drives have been tested and are all OK. It's a scary process as our whole project lives as information, its not like a physical print you literally carry and feel like your last 2 years can be attached to something tangible, with the RED camera its just data, information in boxes. We transported the drives (as they are very sensitive to bumping and static) as hand luggage. Our first obstacle at Melbourne airport. Our carry on suitcase was weighed almost at immigration and was over the limit, so the kind chaps told us to just remove the drives, camera, computer, from the bag and carry them in our shoulder bags. It seemed odd but it worked. Phwee!!! We decided to wrap the drives in bubble wrap and ribbon, pink to be exact, which proved to be a very handy trick as the luggage inspectors thought we were carrying layers of cake, and it seems that all you have to say is "its a Movie please be careful". So far we have had a couple of meeting with the Sound designer and the Colour Grading Company and are about to do few test prints from the Quantal to 35 mm film. Photos are coming up. Annika

MOVIE BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ

Wow! I have to say that I have fully recovered from the shoot which really was a miraculous process not in that 'everything is so peaceful and lovely' but wow we're doing this...this is what we have dreamed about and there is just so much pressure to capture the vision the 'ambiance' of the movie.
So where are we now? well... 1. We have started cutting the film and the footage looks fabulous... 2. W are also re designing our website adding the images the 21st Century 3. The music for the film is being written... we are integrating some classical music with really cool contemporary creations from Bobby Flynn, Lamplight and many more exciting new artist. 4. Marcus is really pioneering a new 'Post pathway'... using the red camera has been an educational experience and we are literally on the cutting edge of this new technology. 5.Now that my days are mostly spent in a dark room, I plan to write much more to keep you posted on how we're going and introduce to you our wonderful cast. 6. We will be completing post production in Poland in Warsaw and Lodz in the not too distant future. 7. Ohh yes I have also started cutting the making off Belladonna, which is really interesting, all the days events the dramas, expectations, interviews with the cast from all over the world. We are eventually going to host it on the Belladonna site for a free download....stay tuned!! I think that's it for now...Annika

Up the Post production Path

Post Production is a world of decisions. From the frame for each edit to the colour of the sky. Currently we are at the point where we have to decide the exact path the digital image files will take. Essentially the choice we have is between 2K dpx files and HD (10 bit uncompressed Quicktimes). Th 2k dpx files have more resolution and colour grading flexibility but come at the cost of Larger file sizes and more convoluted work flow. The HD files are easier
to work with and are better suited to getting things done on a tighter budget, also only one Master has to be created as essentially the same master files can be used for the Printing to film as the masters for Broadcast and DVD's.
The question is really how much better is the result using the 2k dpx files. In a week or so the first film out tests
from Artlogic in Warsaw should be back and a decision can be made.

Red reflections 1

So principal photography is done and it's time to reflect upon the red cameras performance. The first thing I noticed about using the camera is how quickly you become used to things, how yesterdays innovation becomes the norm and the question of how things ever got done without it arises.
Little things like shooting and then transferring the files straight into the computer for syncing. We were shooting without a slate, relying on a lockit timecode box on the camera to jamsync to the audio recorders timecode ( time of day code). This worked flawlessly. To sync up at the end of the day we just loaded the files
( each time you press record it starts a new file) from the camera, and then the audio from a CF card straight from the audio recorder (onto duplicate and seperated raid arrays), popped them into Final cut using the redcode proxies of the picture, arranged them into scene folders , ordered the clips by start time and bingo the picture and sound pairs arrange themselves in order and merged clips are swiftly made. Synced double system sound in minutes.
The camera , despite being in the early group that have all been sent back to be reworked , was pretty trouble free. Only twice did we encounter it not booting up on start up, which was cured by the pumping of the on off switch with the battery removed, why this works is a mystery to me. The red drive arrived halfway through the shoot and proved indispensible. Unfortunately most of the scenes involving long takes had already been done, these were pretty tricky when working on the 4.5 minute restriction of the CF cards.
So how does the picture look. It's not film and it's not video , its something else. It's also extremely gradeable with pretty amazing shadow detail.
I'll post some grabs soon.
Marcus

Thank You to the Cast and Crew

Well, its is really hard to believe how much time has passed since our last communication but at thesame time it is also amazing how many things have been achieved. Yes we have finished shooting Belladonna. And yes we did have a wrap party but unfortunately after half a glass of champagne on an exhausted empty stomach I was unable to make the thank you speech that really should have been made, so here it is: Belladonna has been with me for almost 3 years now, and each stage of its conception has given me the opportunity to not only learn practical skills but also to live with the question of what it is that life means to me? and how do I make it count? This question sat quietly beside me during the solitary writing stage. The quite moments, of wondering what the character will say next, while having a cup of tea and being delighted by the silence. The preproduction part although a little different because of the huge responsibility of making that vision come to life through practical application of money, people, deals, time, was still a pretty solitary time as Marcus and I did most of the planning. Then comes the production where that solo vision that has meant everything is handed over to the collective ie cast and crew. It is incredibly scary because it means so much but also incredibly exhilirating because it means so much. And in a way the film makes itself. No matter how much control and ultimate planning comes into play the momentum takes over and the skills of all the people involved come together to make the work. I really understand why Hitchcock was so obsessive about shot lists and left nothing to chance, as wonderful as the idea of that ultimate control sounds to me the magic moments are the once that are not planned, that slip between the lines of conventions. It is that space between breaths, where there is that gap. That delicious gap that transforms the daily lives we bring to set into the moment where action is called, and the image is forever created by that exact moment. And just like in an orchestra where every instrument is equally important, where the violin being slightly out of tune has such a profound effect on the music or the timpany player suddenly increases the tempo of the piece. I think film making is the most beautiful and painful experience one can have. I feel eternally grateful to all the cast,crew, support team and the extras who came on this journey with us .Who dedicated their time, effort and especially intention to make this film. It really is the highest and finest quality that we as humans have and my faith in the ultimate goodness in humans has once again been demonstrated. This experience is deeply etched in my being and gives me the energy and passion to continue to bring together 'families' of people who want to make something together. To participate in the field of creativity where there is freedom to imprint maybe just very 'very softly' a new way of doing things and thinking about life.
Annika

seeing Red

The relationship between the virtual and the real is at the heart of contemporary life. We believe things we see in the media, it persuades us to believe things of which we have no personal experience. If seeing is believing then on what level do we accept the things we see on TV and on the net as real. With this in mind after reading hundreds of online pages about the revolutionary Red camera it was interesting to see and test one first hand.
It actually is pretty much as has been described, a digital camera with a computer welded to it. It appears rugged and a little stockier than I expected with avery un arri easthetic of its own.
After dynamic range testing using widely varying exposures on a gray card adjacent to a black and white card I have come to the conclusion that the ISO is 320 as stated. Using the old Ansel Adams zone system things fits beautifully. With middle gray at zone V at 320, the last tone with detail is zone IX with zone X being pure with ( actually zone IX 1/2 seems to be pure white too) . Interestingly zone O is the last shadow exposure with tonal difference from black, however I'm going to say It's zone I and allow a little latitude.
Actually I'd be pretty happy shooting at 640 iso giving you detail from zone I to X with acceptable grain. This would be great with night scenes allowing a little more highlight detail in lights in frame etc.
This was tested under tungsten light fully corrected with an 80A (blue filter), actually slightly more than corrected as the native sensor setting is 5000K not the standard 5500K. I additionally tested it without the 80A to see how this affected noise. Well without the filter the blacks are definitly noisier as the blue channel ( the traditionally noisiest channel) obviously needs to be driven up out of being underexposed to regain neutral gray. This produces a non organic yellow / green digital shadow grain not fatal but not great. This issue isn't widely discussed because you generally need more exposure when shooting under tungsten and no one wants to loose 2 stops with an 80a. My compromise that I tested is to use an 82c which is closer to 2/3 of a stop and seems to be pretty close to the shadow grain of the fully corrected version. Now this is on a first generation camera number 65? from the farsighted and helpful Lemac in Melbourne, I'm guessing I'll have to test speed, noise and dynamic range with the new version of the camera which may or may not arrive while we are shooting. Any way the camera we have is pretty great.
My only current reservation is with the record times on the CF cards, a whole 4 1/2 minutes each. this is pretty hard to get used to after 45mins per tape on HDCAM or DVCAM or even 10 mins on a 400ft 16mm mag. When we are out on location we are going to back up onto a pair of Nexto Ultra back up units. These are basically laptop drives in a tiny case with a CF card reader 3 line screen and one button to backup and verify.
Actually there is another odd thing about the camera , when shooting the fan runs down to very quiet, but not silent, also the LCD monitor emits a quiet high pitched whistle , stangely onto from its back , I'm interested to hear the opinion of Chris Roland our sound recordist.
The camera is actually pretty easy to use , the menus are not like the labrynthine Sony Hdcam menus, with much of the image decision making occuring in post, it really means the camera just has the basic essentials,
speed, shutter timecode playback formatting etc. For the money nothing comes close.
The best part about comprehensive testing is that once its done you don't have to think about the science of things so much, just start looking at how things actually look, which situations create those intangibly better or more interesting looking images. More testing next week. Then shooting in 2 weeks. Busy times.
Marcus

WONDER TWINS POWER - Activate

You might have been wondering, where have they been? we have they been up to.? So I thought I might start by saying that this is an amazing, thrilling scary, adventure where all the parts of the process have to come together for those unique 4 weeks in January 2008 called the shoot. We are literally in the thick of it all. At the moment we are who will embody LUKE? the voice of BELLADONNA.
So because so many things are happening its almost hard to know where to start.
So here is my last weeks to do list.

• Write a confirmation letter to the church (one of our our locations) letting them know when we will be shooting
• Write another confirmation letter to the Naturopath for their location and negotiate the rate
• Find where we're going to shoot the hypnotherapist room
• Find the hypnotherapist
  
• Cast Mrs Jones
• Organise the schedule
• Find the extras
• Arrange all the details for them, where to go, and for how long, what to wear etc
• Calculate and discuss contracts with actors agents
• Have meetings with Make up department, with costume and production department.
• Find a bar and an Chinese restaurant, negotiate the fee
• Re do the budget so all things balance
• Ask my wonderful friend for the use of her car
• Walk though all the locations to see what the look like at the time of day where we are going to be shooting
• Make sure there is enough parking for everyone, at all locations
• Organise food, where, who, how, when...dairy free.? vegetarians?
  
• Project that it might be 37 degrees when we shoot and what impact will that have on actors crew equipment.
• Drive through all the driving scenes and see what can come up, eg. The road is too busy... looks bad at certain times of the day... get day passes if the road is a paid road.
• Call all the actors that are not suited for role.
• Say thank you to all the lovely souls that are helping.

Marcus has also been very busy building his steady cam and vest, which is looking mighty fine...he almost agreed for me to film him so stay tuned to see him being fabulous. Will be back very shortly. Cherio

CREATING A NEW WAY

I guess when you start a project, whether it's making a cake or painting a house, you expect a certain result, and the real surprise is what you find along the way. The swatch may not match your final colour, the eggs are a little smaller and so final product becomes something slightly different, a surprise. Part of the wonder that is creativity is to trust the process. It is driven by the intention for the highest, ie. you have to put in the hard yards but there is a great amount of divine, universal influence over the adventure. There is no room for rigid outlook, creativity can't be moulded into a pre-conceived notions of what it 'should' be.
So, things at BELLADONNA central are really heating up... casting, location hunting negotiating, but more importantly we are setting up new structures for the way we would like to work at GLASS KINGDOM and BELLADONNA is our 'seed' project where we have the chance to use tools and philosophies that Marcus and I have collected along the way.
Making a film is a collaborative process, you need someone at the helm who will guide it but ultimately its about people working together, respecting each others energy and not using
'its not my department' as an excuse not to work together.We are collecting the most fabulous group of people both crew and actors whose intention and energy is just wonderful.
A couple of years ago Marcus and I happened to be in Copenhagen at (Lars Von Triers) company for a 9am production meeting which they have every week. Firstly we were warmly greeted by the companies director Peter Aalbaek... he then proceeded to join two other men sitting at the piano and the double bass in the middle of this warehouse space. Later we found out that it was the companies lawyer, on the piano and the director on the drums. Within half an hour the room was almost full and everyone opened their Danish hymn books and started singing together. Marcus and I sat and couldn't believe our eyes, there was a sense of community beyond separation and desperation for funds and fame. Then they proceeded to discuss all the things they have achieved that week,what they wanted to eat for Christmas dinner and where their common vision was heading. A couple of 17 year olds who were supported by Zentropa to make some films stood up to let everyone know about their premiere and after applauding Peter gave then a glass of champagne to celebrate.
Lars and Peter have created this most amazing company, which has made films like Dancer in the Dark, Breaking the Waves, Zentropa. They worked completely outside the system of funding bodies sourcing funds from around Europe to build a community where filmmakers, could have a voice. Now they have programs from internships where you get to work in all areas of production over 3 years, all the way to creating your own company at 'filmtown' and films. This is exactly where we are heading with Glass Kingdom. Building new structures, from financing all the to the way to the way we work on set, this is both exciting and challenging. We are meeting some opposition (more on that later) from pockets of the film world that may see a new way as the 'wrong' because the pathway has always been followed must always stay thesame. But in my opinion something is not working, Australia is producing film that the rest of the world doesn't want to see, and most of the seem to look and be practically about thesame topic.( more on that later )
W have started with a very strong foundation a great accountant, and lawyer some very high ideals and years of practical experience.
If the cells in the human body which are all so different can co-exist and work in harmony to provide life why can't we? So this adventure continues to unfold in amazing and surprising ways. I look forward to sharing more of the ins and outs when we are out of production.
For us onwards and upwards.!!!


Some of the places and times where Marcus and I have talked about our vision for creating Glass Kindgom and Belladonna.(Poland)

DANCING STAR

"One Must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star"
Frederich Nietzsche

The shoot in Poland Part One.

So the Poland story continues!!
We had 5 days to shoot the whole 15th century and no contingency days. The budget didn't allow for more as all the crew, equipment trucks etc. had to travel to the very south of Poland and be accommodated for that period of time. We thought that 5 days would be OK until the realisation dawned on us that we had no contingency days. What would happen if it rained and the trucks were not able to travel up the muddy road to the location of the forest, what if in the "sad forest" it was sunny - what if we just didn't get the shots? A deep cold shiver ran up all our spines. As we were refining the schedule making sure that there was a 12 hour turn around, and heard all other limitation that came with that it all stated looking rather grim. We came to Poland to get the beautiful shots and now were in a situation where the machine of the production was OK ie everyone was going to be employed accommodated and fed but the shots and the actual film was going to be potentially compromised. When you have alot of people working on the film ie. 30 something, it takes much longer to feed them and to move all the trucks from one location to the other... if we were to shoot at the speed we needed to, in order to make a great film it had to be fast ... that was our main concern. The day before Daryl Marcus and I were leaving for the location (allowing us a day before everyone else arrived), we had a crisis meeting.
This is the sort of meeting that you have to have at least once...as far as the production was concerned they were happy because all the boxes were ticked but nobody at the end of the day remembers the problems, they just see the final product. Either it works or not... our shooting schedule was not going to work. This was mainly because we had a very tricky descending and ascending camera shot and also needed dawns and dusk's which meant not enough turn around hours. we all sat in silence look at the schedule and hoping something would just jump out as a solution. On a film shoot there are people for whom its just a job they get paid for and leave, for others they extend their concern for the process, vision and the whole, and this was the moment where the seas parted. Suddenly Marta (the production wiz 2nd assistant director) who was under a tremendous amount of pressure, came up with an alternative shooting schedule. She understood our point of view and the need to the creative process to be followed through and also making sure that the production machine was still working well. Hallelujah!!!
Next day, after not much sleep we left Warsaw and travelled to Krakow and then to Sanok, not knowing that this was going to be one of the most difficult days on the production.

The Dreaded Mud as some of the crew are using plastic bags on their feet before entering the car.



Looking for the magic schedule answer. Sometimes the answers are on the floor.

Full steam ahead at Glass Kingdom

So things in the 21st Century part of the film are moving forward very quickly.
The other day I realised that there is a finite amount of things to do before we shoot in January - here is a brief update of where we're up to.

• Isadora Suite and Matthiou Pollier who are working with me on the production design and costumes are currently negotiating with Australian Fashion Designers to dress our 21st Century stars. This is wonderful and very exciting.
  
• The initial casting is on the way, and just as we did the main character in Poland we are going to do here, we will cast LUKE first, and then match the other 2 main women around him. It's an interesting alchemical process, I have a very strong feeling about what Luke's energy might be like, but someone quite opposite might turn up and be perfect for the role.
  
• Clearing copyright, and licencing for some of the music in the film. Although most of it will be written especially for the film there are some tracks which we will be buying, and at this stage we can't reveal who that might be but its very exciting!!
• Final tweaking of the script is taking place, and also am writing down notes for the cut aways that might be important in the gluing of the scenes together. There are a couple of aspects that get left behind when the heat of the moment during shooting takes over, these are stills (ie photos for and of the film) and cutaways.
  
• Location hunting. Sounds ease doesn't it. Just get into the car and look for locations. There are about 30 locations in Belladonna, and while some locations may be perfect they might not be perfect for shooting or lighting. Interiors always need to be bigger then they appear in the film. All that chunky film equipment takes so much space. This is going to be a challenge especially for the scenes at the Naturopaths office. (They tends to be rather small)
• We are also starting to round up the crew and all the people who could help us, luckily I am surrounded by wonderful friends with abundant heart.
  

This whole adventure really is an astonishing process. Belladonna is the Glass Kingdoms first feature and although along the way we have collected many of the skills required, now is our opportunity to use all of them together and gather a bunch of new ones.
You certainly have to nerves of steel and learn to trust. Because we are also Co - Producers on this movie so many legal aspects have to be tied and finalised before we shoot. It allows me to really refine my left and right brain skills and realise that all things are equally important.
www.glasskingdom.com.au