BELLADONNA more then just a Movie

Dearest All

The trailer for BELLADONNA is almost ready hooray!!! it has been somewhat tricky (as I have mentioned before) Marcus is colour grading it and and is doing a fabulous job! As I have been reflecting on the last 2 years I came across this lecture which I wanted to share with you(below) because it dares to ask a really interesting question. What would you give your last lecture on?( I know 'tiss a season to be jolly' but stay with me) because I think ultimately refining the really important impulses in our lives is what brings focus joy and purpose. So I asked myself Annika what would your last lecture be about? It would be about the utter goodness of humans, courage,and the personal and social contract that we all are a part of.
The Making of BELLADONNA really was an experiment, in what humans can do together. The film is shot on a modest budget and alot of what you'll see on the screen is literally given in form of creativity, knowledge, time, effort and skills. So much intensely hard work went into this project and it was a collective effort. A truly collective effort filled with goodness. Yes at the end of the day we have a beautiful film but what an honour having experienced it first hand.

BELLADONNA what's in a name?

Greetings friends!!

People often ask me about the name BELLADONNA why? what does it mean where did it come from? Well once upon a time in a land far far away..(or at least 2 years ago) I was refining thescreenplay in which the 16th Century lead character Jadwiga,is a herbalist, and back then it wasn't so easy to be one as they were considered to be witches. So I researched the commonly used herbs back in the 16th Century and here are just a few:
Butterfly weed, Lady’s Mantle, St. John's Wort, Foxglove, Belladonna, Dwarf Iris
Evening Primrose and many more....
Can you imagine a film called "Dwarf Iris"? or Lady's Mantle? or St. John's Wort? (that could be a nice dark sort of children's fairytale about St John)so I did come to the conclusion that BELLADONNA was pretty good... Lily of the Valley was the second favourite.

In the past, it was believed that witches used a mixture of belladonna, opium poppy, and other plants, typically poisonous (such as monkshood and poison hemlock) in flying ointment they applied to help them fly to gatherings with other witches... Ohh dear imagination and all that fear.. and all those women who were drowned and burnt because of their relationships with nature.

The common name BELLADONNA originates from its historic use by women - Bella Donna is Italian for beautiful lady. Drops prepared from the belladonna plant were used to dilate women's pupils, an effect considered attractive, but also incredibly dangerous as the dose between beauty and death was unknown.

Belladonna is one of the most toxic plants found in the Western hemisphere. All parts of the plant contain tropane alkaloids. When we arrived in Poland in April to shoot the 16th Century part we wanted to find the actual plant with flowers as it is fareasier easier to use the real instead of making each flower individually. We missed the flowering season my 6 weeks, and had to make each individual flower by hand. The Production Designer and the Art department made them out of rose petals..(as they had to be eatable) hand painting every flower with purple food dye.
Have a look some of the photos below.


Annika

P.S Belladonna the movie is now on FACEBOOK, and if you are a fan here please join us there we are new and would love some company.

Katia Mazurek who plays Jadwiga was incredibly wonderful this day.. as most of the day she had to sit in the cold ditch eating the flowers..this shot was particularly tricky as it involved a descending camera, snow and perfect timing of all action.

BELLADONNA bee hive

Greetings friends!!

You may be asking what's happening now at the Belladonna Beehive?
Well lots and lots..

1. We are in the middle of cutting the trailer
2. Editing our webisodes for UTUBE
3. Planning the Strategies for World Release
4. Creating a campaign the AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE.
And doing lots of reading and listening to Podcasts about film distribution. From people who work for the Hollywood Studios to Sales Agents, distributors and film makers... so so interesting!!
5 And much much more which will all be revealed very soon.

Have a look at this add... I think it's great...somehow appropriate for any venture that requires everything.

Cherio Annika

The world has changed

Greetings again so soon!!

I found a great link which I wanted to share with you, because I believe things have shifted towards a better world, more conscious kind and wise. Truly wonderful and deeply miraculous!!

HOW TO BE A BELLADONNA SPY

Greetings friends!! As promised part 3 to sound design. A most of you know this is our first feature film and never before having followed the process to the end of post production many of the steps literally brand new. I think perhaps the "sound boys' very a little surprised when they realised that we did not in fact have a post production sound supervisor, and they'd have to deal director and cinematographer. Luckily Marcus had the technical know how and in our down time would teach me the finer points and " boys tech talk" . FUNNY LIFE FUNNY MOMENTS DURING SOUND POST PRODUCTION.
1. Our first meeting with the Sound designer..."What sort of sound would you like there" Annika answers "For it to sound like the subconscious" (there was a good reason for it as Luke gets hypnotised) a blank look ... ohh subconsicous ......then off we went to deep discussion about film that just get made for the film festivals versus films that are made for people!! (more on that later).
2. One sunny afternoon Annika discovers a strange lump on her behind.... what could it be? A TICK... yes a tick not just any but a special stream of Polish tick....which meant I had to get tested in Poland... see if limes disease was on the cards... and then another 3 weeks to get the results (all clear!!) just another test... as I have a paralytic fear of blood tests!!
3. Sound mixing is a pretty intense expensive step in the process. During that particular period we worked from 6pm to midnight.... no buses after midnight..."what about taxis I hear you say" not so easy... because a taxi is not a taxi is not a taxi... and how many ways can one get shafted? well many really.. so a few times Marcus and I resorted to walking home in the middle of the night or catching the really really bad bus... the broken people with broken dreams bus... avec police!!
4. Then the trip home... we knew the owner of the apartment where we had been living had the keys....and knew that she had been visiting the apartment when we were at work. So Marcus drew on his best tricks form HOW TO BE A SPY book and we would insert clear pieces of plastic in the front door to see if we had visitors. This might sound rather paranoid but at this stage, almost at the end of the 3 months we had 16 500 gig drives with the complete film, all the files. music, camera, equipment, computers...our whole 18 months of work.

BELLADONNA NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

Ohh yes some what embarrassing!!! How long has it been? where is part 3 you may ask?

Well we have been literally around the world in the last month. We had a wonderful screening of BELLADONNA in Krakow which is a stunning city where 18th Century architecture and 21st Century life meet with total grace, I don't mean to sound like a travel agent but it's so worth visiting.
So much has happened that hard to know where to start.
Firstly it was really amazing to sit amongst an audience watching the movie. Previously we had 6 test screenings of the film but somehow this was different. It is a fine line between absolute ecstasy and total pain. I read somewhere when G. Lucas first screened Star Wars he was so nervous that he spent his time in the bathroom vomiting. It really is a heightened experience. All that time effort and great among of work converge into this moment. After the screening we had a question and answer session which was great then a couple of TV interviews one for Canal + a french TV station and the other for a Polish TV station. There was lots of wonderful conversations with friends, family, industry people and the Polish actors.
After Krakow we travelled to Warsaw where we orgenised a photo shoot with Kasia Mazurek for the poster.
During ourprevious post production time in Warsaw we took some photos which have a lovely 'light feel' as an alternative we decided to take thesame sort of photo, this time in Autumn.
The image is only half the poster as we plan to shoot the other half in Australia soon. I'll post the photos soon.

and yes part 3 is coming up!!
Cherio

AnnikaMalgosia Corvalan Belladonna's Polish Producer with actor Pawel Smagala (who plays Pawel in Belladonna) and actress/director Lauma

My interview for canal +

above:
Marcus doing an interview
below:
Annika Marcus Di and Lucille in Krakow

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