I've just come back from a stint at the MacDowell Colony, where I was a Fellow in residenc for a month. It gave me a wonderful chance to have ultimate focus and support for working on my film. The nights included some amazing presentations and performances- this picture is from a fabulous night of jazz. |
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TESTING!! I've spent out my RISD Grant doing tests for output from digital to 35mm B+W film. I am waiting to see the results screened at the lab in NY (DuArt.) I also tried the DIY routine. My friend Joey Kolbe helped me use the SMFA oxberry camera to shoot off the surface of my iMac. I made a rig to hold it perfectly horizontally while on the oxberry table. Unfortunately, the shutter seems to have been stuck and the wedge tests came back too dark. But, I also decided that I can make too many mistakes when I'm running frame-by-frame advance by manula control. So, paying lab costs for professional/computerized output wins in the end.But I'll have to get funding to help me afford the final output to film. |
Oh No! EBAY! I am buying some old film prints of cartoons. Fun, but not a way to spend money when you don't have any.... |
The soundtrack is finally mixed. Danny Blume, of Good and Evil, was our engineer. Danny's studio did the original recordings in Brooklyn. This time, we were up in his studio out near Woodstock, NY. The sound is great!! A few things popped up that made me re-think the edit. A few certain instruments come forth that weren't so pronounced before, and they create a different focus. No major changes- just small. Check out Danny Blume's MySpace page, and hear his music! He's a wonderful musician in his own right. Thanks Danny! |
Brian Carpenter is the musical GENIUS behind my film's score. His band, Beat Circus, performed the tracks. Beat Circus is close to releasing their second CD, Dreamland, which is scheduled for a January 2008 release. Expect and don't expect- the music is wild and surreal, seeping with vintage creakings and sideshow hauntings. The melodies are real, though, and the stories buried within are seductive. You can hear music and learn more at their MySpace site.
Dreamland is the first part of Brian's Weird American Gothic trilogy. a 160-page score for 12 musicians and contains macabre narratives loosely based on historical figures from the surreal, turn-of-the-century Coney Island theme park of the same name, which burned in a devastating fire in 1911. |
Betty Boop is a real woman! This drawing proves it. An artist named Michael Paulus did a series of 22 studies of cartoon characters and their assumed skeletal systems. |
Birthday time rolls around and a magical UKULELE showed up. My fab partner Ann was the thoughtful fairy. So I am practicing, and can now play "Little Brown Jug" with only a few glitchy twangs. |
The happyngay.com site launches! While the film still has a way to go, this site gives it a place to grow. I also have my own artist site that you can vist, www.loreleipepi.com. Yay! Two grants have come through! The Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation, and a Rhode Island School of Design Faculty Development Grant. The project has also received funding from the New England LEF Foundation's Moving Image Fund , and from Harvard University's Film Study Center (while I was teaching there.) The Filmmaker's Collaborative of Waltham, MA served as my fiscal sponsor for the LEF grant. The Arch and Bruce Brown Fund is special for this project because it is for arts projects of gay/lesbian focus that are either scripts, writing, or media, focused on depictions of the gay and lesbian lifestyle in a positive manner and be based on, or inspired by, a historic person, culture, event, or work of art. |
6.1.08
11.27.07