Editing Myself, Though Apparently Not Well Because I Have Too Many Pictures In This

You know, the amount of time that I spent this past week and a half looking at my face, scrutinizing my voice, judging the movements of my hands, and squinting perplexedly at my words would really seem to indicate that I'm floating in the direction of extreme narcissism.

Fortunately for anyone who has to spend extended amounts of time with me, though, it's not quite that bad. I've just been working on a bunch of projects, and they all happen to involve me more directly than my other projects have.

My face, voice, and arms all come into play with the two short films that I shot on February 4th and 5th. For the film on the 5th, Dad and I wrote, directed, and performed in our first ever full puppet production, "Stuffed with Love: a Short Puppet Valentine."

I drew the logo photo in about three minutes. And yes, I'm sure you can tell.

I've been consistently badgering Dad into collaborating for my weird projects (actually, I spend a lot of time badgering a lot of people to do collaboration with me to varying levels of success), and so on Sunday morning, he and I wrote the script, made the little set in a corner of the dining room area, and took turns directing each other and our puppet friends.

Bird!

O'!

Lucinda!

NOTE TO SELF - STOP MAKING SUCH HUGE PUPPETS. THEY ARE UNGAINLY.

Seriously. Lucinda in particular is gigantic.

Anyway.

We also decided that Lucinda needs a little more going on in her life than just being a militant snake rights activist who eats humans on principle (see: “Faer Play”). We decided, especially given that I have an idea for her and a project called "The Creationists" where, just maybe, she would interview people who make cool things, that it would be a fun idea to have her think that she's some kind of "documentarian". 

And thus, “Carpooling with St. Pat” was born.

Nothing says "Saint Patrick" like raking your yard in February while wearing a green beer hat.

Side note – Dad and I are really going to make this for St. Patrick's Day. Currently he's trying to convince me that I should ask Glenda to dub over everything he says so that St. Patrick has an Irish accent (this idea is, shockingly, still being debated).   

St. Patrick doesn't have time for your nonsense.

The overall cut for this short was a bit tricky, as Dad's story line for O' wound up being almost too coherent for the clip show idea we were going for. I did about five edits and sent them back and forth with Dad before finally we settled on the version we uploaded. I think it makes sense! Kind of! Close enough, dammit. I also spent a lot of time going back and forth over audio files and takes, determining if any of the audio in certain shots was better than others, or certain movements were better, and then debating if I wanted to switch anything up (which you can do with puppets – it's a lot harder with human beings!). 

A puppet and a human being.

That editing of myself actually wasn't so bad because I don't sound like myself (much), and I don't have to see my own face. Even when I did the voice of the camera girl O' mind-bends, I went with a voice-over that sounded purposefully different. I'm not that thrown by my voice anymore anyway – editing multiple episodes of your own podcast will kick that out of you. So while I was critiquing myself, it didn't feel as weird.

Not until I got to our American Mary Swede film contest entry for the Soska Sisters!

Why yes, we DID do a freeze frame ending. DON'T JUDGE US.

A Swede film is when you recreate a movie entirely from memory and only using props that you already own. Jen and Sylvia Soska set this up as an official contest to celebrate their film American Mary's fourth birthday, and Ramona and I knew immediately that we had to give it a shot - we love them. Originally I'd decided to do this blog post now because the winner was slated to be announced February 14, but due to late submissions and some viewing problems, the Soskas have set the date back. However, I asked and was informed we won't be disqualified for sharing pictures or talking about the film, so let me tell you how goddamn weird it was to have to look at my own face.

BUT WHICH ONE AM I?

This was nerve-wracking for me because it was my first time in front of the camera without having a giant snake over my head. I was actually originally meant to play Beatriss too, but when Maggie was able to join us and happened to arrive right before filming began, I asked if she'd mind taking on the role. Considering that she just thought she was coming over to celebrate Ramona's birthday at the end of filming, it was really nice of her to just put on a random costume I thrust at her. And also considering that she had never seen the film before and learned the body movements and voice in the span of about three minutes from a YouTube clip, it's even more frigging amazing! Maggie's great, guys.

Beatriss dramatically enters the room.

She told me afterward that she had a nightmare about this mask. I'll buy you one to own, Maggie!

Beatriss and Mary examine Mary's suspicious text messages.

Dave's photo of Maggie thoroughly enjoying the mask!

This meant that, with the role of Beatriss out of the way, I only had to play Demon Twin 2, with Ramona as Demon Twin 1. True fact – I screwed up the very first line on the first take. 

Me leaning out of shot in shame while Ramona laughs at me.

Luckily Ramona is not a screwup like me, and she basically carried the scene. I was glad I did my first acting attempt with her – completely in sync! - because Ramona knows what she's doing and didn't actually judge me for screwing up my line and shouting a bad word immediately. I don't really think I've got a whole lot of acting in my future, but hey. It was an experience! 

Twiiiiins! We made the Demon Twins blue haired despite the fact that, in the film, the Soska's have black hair. These just happened to be the only wigs we had that remotely matched!

Scene cut for time. The Demon Twins arrive.

Ramona completely knocked it out of the park as Mary (can I tell you how weird it was to write this particular script? Even though it was a parody, I still felt SUPER narcissistic every time I wrote “Mary does ___, Mary says ____”). She was hilarious. She got the inflection down, the disaffected nature of everything (wait for the “your dad is dead” scene), and some of the body language she used with her character responses killed me. I tried to screencap them, but they all came out blurry. Have these pics instead!

Ramona patiently waiting for the director to get her shit together.

Dave's pic! Ramona posing with her sewn up pizza slice!

BOOM. American(er) Mary!

Dave and Ramona prepare for the party scene. 

Me directing Ramona in how far she could come into the room before her head cut out of the frame. Note that I was still wearing Beatriss' clothing at this point. Maggie came in right before we filmed this scene and saved me!

I was glad she was slaying at being Mary instead of actually slaying Mary considering I did things like make her dance in her underwear right after we all ate our body weight in pizza. Granted, I think Ramona could eat 47 pizzas and still look amazing, but I still totally get why there was a moment of “MARY, WHY” when I announced what scene was next. It was on her birthday, too – oops! 

See? She looks amazing. My scene scheduling is fine. FINE.

Dave also agreed to come out to join us for filming and nobly took on two parts regardless of the fact that I didn't even have a script for him until two days before filming, and he hadn't seen the movie either until the night before. Naturally, he stole the show because that is what Dave does. Tina – who recorded all the sound for this – and I nearly ruined several takes because the second Dave started talking, or moving, or breathing, we just lost it. Dave is excellent at being a creep. There are a few moments where he glides in and out of shot, and it's magical. 

Rehearsing for The Glide

Dr. Walsh makes Mary an offer that she really should have refused.

Dave as Billy. He's laughing at me because I'd just ruined his take by laughing at him.

Just imagine slow jazz playing in the background.

I'd compliment Dave more, except he and Noah decided to take some sarcastic photos of when I utilized one of the pizza boxes to help get the shot I wanted. I think I'll just keep killing Dave in the rest of my productions. 

Noah's photo. Setting up the kitchen scene with my PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE CAMERA ACCESSORY.

Dave documents the moment. Screw you, Dave.

Speaking of people who will be forced to appear in more of my projects, I was super glad Noah wanted to join in, too! I felt bad because last time when we shot “That's a Wrap!”, we basically took over Ramona and Noah's house. Noah got stuck spending a lot of time hiding out of shot. This time, though, we made up for it by asking him to basically rearrange the entire house, and then we assigned him to play one of the worst characters in entire movie. Yaaay!!

Dr. Grant lectures to Mary and Mia, a totally normal canine classmate (out of shot).

Dr. Grant lays the creep out on Mary.

We had a completely terrible time shooting this thing, can't you tell?

I reshot this scene so many times, and Noah kept having to try and re-find the exact same page out of the whole textbook. Here he is using special psychic powers to commit the page to memory. Or something.

To make up for Noah having to play the worst character, we also gave him the best character, Lance. Soooo.....even?

He also came up with our ending, which was quite nice of him since mine was bad!

Noah was completely hilarious and a ridiculously good sport. Unfortunately for him, that definitely means he's stuck being in future film projects of mine – sorry, Noah! Also, sorry that the fake blood stained your hands!!

If I'm never invited over to their house again, the reasons why will not be a mystery. 

Just kidding. Here we all are, still getting along!

So that was our crazy weekend. I spent the following week working on the edits for “American Mary Squared”, as Ramona and I decided to call it, submitted it on February 10, and then moved on to the edits for “Stuffed with Love”. Dad sent over music that he recorded for “Stuffed”, so any piano you hear in there is his! I also used good old Steve Combs again, since he has so many great songs up for use on the Free Music Archive, but for the American Mary project we were allowed to use the music from the movie. That was pretty cool! Naturally I did a cut where I wound up sticking the theme song from the Jim Henson Hour at the end just for kicks, but I didn't send the Soskas that one – I figured that the “copyright doesn't matter” argument only extended as far as their own stuff! 

The part I like starts at :22. It's my ringtone!

I also finally began doing more edits on my second book, Nothing That is Not. I'd originally had this great plan to have all the edits ready by the time Michele returned home from Europe, but clearly that did not happen. So, in addition to editing my face, editing my voice, and editing my hand acting, I also was editing my story and working on new scripts, too (while, of course, doing stuff for work). I'm liking this level of productivity. 

....I figure it'll stop in about 7 hours. I'd better get moving!