Support the completion of The Greater meaning of Water

[CEngelbrecht]

Ok, looking at Sky's detailed budget leaves a target of $25.6k. That suddenly looks much better than $36k.

I have considered that maybe Sky (or one of his associates) should assume the PayPal collection in stead of me. This is partly to avoid paying a 4.5% PayPal fee twice on donations, but also to let the donations reach Sky and Amorgen Pics directly. I also fear that some are holding back donations because of the 'who the heck is this Engelbrecht fella?' factor.

My one concern is if Sky et al are ready to take that extra work. Not that I spend hours a day doing this (so far I've only written an Excel file), but I'm sure Sky is a busy man. Also, it'd be good for DB users and the momentum of this raise to keep seeing the progress posted here, and I don't know if Sky would be up to posting that on a regular basis.

[Wireheadsfx]

Hey guys,

My name is Justin Williford, I am the lead actor in "The Greater Meaning of Water", and I wanted to tell you how much all of your contributions mean to Sky and I.

I just flew to Seattle on the 2nd of July and have been working here with Sky over the last couple of days planning the work we are going to be getting done this month. We will be writting out a plan for the month and i will be posting daily on this thread to let you all know what we have completed and what is next in the process over the next month.

What Sky and I are trying to accomplish while I am here in Seattle for the month is as follows:

-Setting up a small sound room to do scratch recordings of the Voice Over work.
-laying the Scratch tracks down on the film and fine cutting the film to make the voice over work fit correctly.
-Add some existing footage to the film to add exposition to the film we found was missing after responses from test screenings.

Once I got here to Seattle I purchaced the rest of the monitoring and sound equiptment we need to do accurate sound and foley recordings so we should be able to set up the editor and sound booth today.

As Far as Sky and I taking over the donation pool, we want to speak more directly with Christian before we decide and make sure we are going to have the time to take on such a task. I am sure we will, we just need to work out the details. Reguardless, we will be in contact with Christian.



Just to add some hilarity to the adventure, I decided to go play some pickup basketball inthe first day I got to Seattle because the weather was so nice and not 3 plays into the game recieved the worst black eye I have ever had in my life. I was actually concerned for my vision for the first few minutes after it happend as my right eye was seeing in a sort of yellow hue.



Anyhow, Just wanted to share the story and a pic to let you know Sky and I are not letting anything stop the creative process this month.

Thanks so much everybody for your contributions!!!

please mail me or post here if you have any questions.

JFW

[shoutatthesky]

Great to see you here on Deeperblue Justin. Well done on what I have seen on the movie so far. Your voice overs will add so much to the overall feeling of the film. I see can see the faces of the viewers now- walking out of the theatre with a feeling of serenity and a big smile on their face.

B.T.W - I love that scene with you in the training centre pool, people swimming above you, and you just playing around blowing bubbles and finning around. It makes me want to swim all day!

Good luck, and no more fighting with the producer over creative differences

[Wireheadsfx]

Hey Shouttastic,

Thanks for the props onthe film. We are exited to ad the voiceover to the film as well. We are hoping it will help explain some of the current plot holes and help internalize the characters struggle while making his story more understandable to the nonfreediver.

We are currently looking at setting up a sponsorship link on the GMW website but for the time being we will just be making Chris the goto guy for donations.

I was only a freediver for the durration of the film, but I cannot shake the feeling I get when I look at a deep chasm of clear blue water. I am drawn to it. It never leaves you.

[Wireheadsfx]

Hey All,

Just wanted to give another update on the current post production of GMW.

Sky and I spent all of last night until 3am going over the film on a scene by scene basis and breaking down what about the film needs reworking and what needs to be added. We spent all day today getting the editing machine back up to scratch, we will have to reinstall the OS on his machine tomorrow as we are getting the latest version of Pro Studio 2 installed which will allow us to edit all of the HDV footage in a native fromat. (meaning no rendering times) Faster working for us, but today he and I have been spending all day looking through the 36+hours of footage, (yes theres that much) finding the inserts and footage we want to work in to really help explain the esoteric parts of freediving to those who have not experienced flow in its full splendor.

I will give another update tomorrow on our progress after all the new software is loaded.

Sky and I are spending every other day in the swimming pool as well, really trying to get our minds back into that state, we think it will help our timing with the film as there is a dynamic reached on many levels when you are in that state of mind.

I hope everyone is spending as much time in the water as is possible.

JFW out

[shoutatthesky]

hey great progress guys.

Spending some time in the water will I'm sure aid in the creative process. Good thinking.

Keep up the good work, and thanks heaps for your updates Justin.

[Wireheadsfx]

Wanted to continue the updates for our daily progress on the GMW project.

Sky and I spent all day trying to track down the latest version of the editiing software we need, but we will have to wait till monday to get it afterall. Today he and I scanned more footage and made a handwritten list and bin range numbers for all the footage we would like to include or amend in the new version of the film. But the most important thing I got done today was the microphone set up. I purchase and Okatava mic as they are the best for foley and Voice over, the offer deep rich sound and pick up subtle nuances in sounds and voices. I actually spent the money on this bad boy and he and I split the cost of the cables, stand, and headphones. I made a simple yet efficient pop filter out of a coat wire, old panty hose, and an old light clamp.



The pop filter will keep the wind from the voice actor (me) from hitting the diaphram of the mic and splashing or hissing out the sounds. Very macguyver, but it works. He and I are reloading his editor and getting ready to watch and catalog the rest of the footage tonight. I will have another update for you all tomorrow.

[shoutatthesky]

Great work Justin and Sky.

Justin you have a great timbre to your voice. I can't explain it's particular qualities but you couldn't have found a better voice for this project from anywhere.

How is the fundraising going? (Chris?)

[Wireheadsfx]

We have not spoken to Chris yet on this as we are extremely busy trying to get our hardware up and running. As of thismorining, we reinstalled our OS, but our main drive with 280gb of video on it is corrupt and the drive will not mount so we have to get a deck and recapture about 20 hours of footage, but we cannot recapture till we have the drive and new software so we are scrambling today to get this all taken care of.

As far as the fundraising, we trust Chris and for now we are going to set up our website to link to the thread on deeper blue or to Chirs' donation page. We will inform you all when the link is active.

Hopefully this hardware issue will only set us back a day or two, we are crossing our fingers.

[Wireheadsfx]

Hey All,

Just wanted to give a quick update on the film.

After a gutwrenching day of worry, we discoverd that we could infact rebuilt the drive with the old souce material. The original hard drive was corrupted, but after running around town all day, finding a new drive, renting a HDV deck, reinstalling the new FCP 6 software, and formatting the new hard drive, we are sooooo pleased to see that FCP is loading all of the footage into the old Timeline we created so we can access it. The downside is that we have to recapture 25 hours of tapes and turn the deck back in before we get a late fee. So needless to say, Sky and I will take turns tonight, waking up and switching the tapes and recapturing. This hardware issue put us about 2 days behind schedule, but nothing we cannot make up with a few extra midnight oil burns. I am cataloging footage and making an edit decision list as we watch the footage and capture it. This will give us a good look at what we want to start changing, so we can hit the ground running as soon as the batch captures are finished.

I hope you all are well. Keep the faith!
(fingers crossed)
JFW

[Wireheadsfx]

Hey All,

In for another daily update on the Greater Meaning of Water. Sky and I have been taking shifts recapturing footage. I crashed on his couch last night and set my watch to wake me up every hour and change out the HDV tapes in the deck for recapture. We are on hour 16 now, once we hit hour 25 we will be finished with recapture.

Sky and I took a break today to go have a swim while we were between tapes, so we had about an hour to go kick around in the pool. He and I were just sitting around on the bottom blowing bubbles when we saw an instructor with of the youngest students I have ever seen get into the pool for her first swimming lessons. Sky and I surfaced and watched as this little tadpool begin her addictions with the medium we all love so much. No styrofoam floaters, no fins, she was just sporting a pair of bright pink goggles. We watched her for about 10 minutes as she listened and did everything her instructor showed and told her to do, she was amazing in the water. She had no fear, no anxiety, no regrets. She just dove in and let go. Our instincts thrive in the water. We just have to let go.

Sky and I will start the re edit tomorrow. I will post more pics soon.

thanks againf or all the support guys!

[Wireheadsfx]

Hey Guys,

It has been a couple days since I updated you all on the film progress, we have made some excellent progress and I wanted to share it with you all.

For any of you who saw the rough cut we screened in San Diego in April of last year we expanded on the good stuff. The film now includes a scene from stingray city in Grand Cayman that makes me want to buy a plane ticket right now and fly out there again. The voice over work is going well and will add a much more full feeling to the film, bridging alot of plot gaps and helping the viewer to get into the lead characters head space. I am rendering the video right now for the final dive as I write this.

Sky and his wife and I all went out to the movies a couple nights ago to get away from editing for a couple hours. We saw TRANSFORMERS, now, before you start verbally abusing my for seeing a film like that when we are editing a film that moves in a totally different direction, hear me out... I realized something very interesting while watching it. The reason I went to see the film was to watch giant robots in a battle royale, crushing buildings, cars, and the occasional pedestrian. And that is what i got. I wanted giant robots tearing eachother appart. And they delivered.

So, as a result we are trying to deliver the same things with our film. You are going in to see a freediving film, so we are going to squeeze as much diving, pool, and fish footage as we can into the film. And we have made the above water line stuff as much talk about the water as is possible.

Well, the rendering is finished so I am going back to it.

I hope you all are as exited about the completion as we are.

JFW out

[wes]

Hey guys,

If you need a break feel free to come down for the Oregon Freedive Palooza Aug 10-12 at Lost Lake Oregon. It will be pretty casual with a dozen or so freedivers from the west coast and Canada and is only about a 4 hour drive from Seattle. It will be cheap too, just camping out no fees or anything, just for fun. Details are at this DB thread.

Oregon Freedive Palooza Aug 10-12

Cheers Wes

[Wireheadsfx]

Hey Wes,

Thank you so much for the invite. You have no Idea how much I want to head that way, I have buddies in Hillsboro, but I will be heading back to Colorado Aug 1st, plus all my freediving gear is back at my place. I didnt figure I would have any time for diving while here. Just kicking around the pool a little bit. But again, thank you for the invite, Sky and I really appreciate the offer.

I do have a bit more news on the film as well, we had a crazy day yesterday and didnt get a whole lot done other than some narrative writting for the Voice Over, but we did build a sound "booth" in a corner of Sky's house so we can get clean Audio for our finished mix. Now, i may freak you all out a little with the photo of our booth, but trust me, it works amazingly. It seals off all sound and keeps all reflective noises away as well. I call it the sound coffin rather than the booth. Better known as the cusion coffin as it is made out of cushions from the couch.






As of this morning, all of the Voice over work is done. We stayed up till about 4am getting good sound while the city is quiet. Today is an all edit day. Will give you another update tomorrow on progress


JFW out

[Jorg]

Thanks for the update! Really looking forward seeing the movie. And good luck finishing/budgeting it!