8 Fest comes down with a pleasant case of Hungry Bones

I received word sometime late last year that Hungry Bones was set to play at the amazing 8 Fest in January.

This particular festival only plays celluloid, or, basically, original master Super 8mm prints. This means that most of the time the audio is played on a separate sound system, like a CD-player or digital media player. In the projection booth they would have the track list and play the appropriate .wav file at the cue (usually just after the leader celluloid, right at the beginning of the actual film).

The problem was that I did not really know how to go about getting a proper length of audio… See, Super 8 cartridges are generally three minutes and twenty seconds, so when I originally created the audio portion for the film, I had timed out certain audio cues and sound effects to that time. Unfortunately, during the film processing stage, an unknown number of feet were removed from the beginning of the film. I never got an explanation as to why this happened from the processing lab, but it really screwed things up in my head. I know I had a longer shot at the beginning of the film; I had actually taken meticulous notes on how many seconds each shot was for the sole purpose of laying out an audio track that would align well with the visuals. See, when the film was first shown, it was shown without any post-production (no edits). I did not even get to see the film before it was screened, as that’s part of the rules of the One Take Super 8 Event… and I knew I wanted to make a soundtrack that felt like it was created with the beats of the film in mind.

So, with unknown timing to deal with, I came to a bit of a block. Frame rate also had to be considered. Was the film going to play at the traditional 18 frames per second? How accurate was the timing of the motor on their projector? This could affect how long the film ultimately plays.

I was pretty good about getting the physical film reel to them back in December, after it was scanned/transferred to 2K at Frame Discreet. The audio file, however, just seemed really daunting, and I only got it to them in the last week of January, even though the soundscape has been created for almost six months. I felt pretty bad about, since it just causes stress on their part, and they are the ones nice enough to present my work…

A co-presentation between the8fest and the Toronto Animated Image Society (TAIS)

If you happen to be around Toronto on Saturday, January 31 at  9pm, check out the Cut Paste and Animate program. Here’s a description from TAIS:

For the8fest’s 2015 edition, the festival decided to echo its 2012 programme Adventures in Animationland.  Cut Paste Animate focuses on animation and collage ─ bringing life to still images, playing with what can only be represented by abstracting shapes and bodies or  using hands and eyes to explore tensions between what is static and what must be kinetic. In addition to works received as submissions, the8fest has commissioned new animated works by visual artists already conversant with film and visual artists whose bodies of work have seriously implied sequences of moving pictures.