Transport Problems - 3rd September 2007
This is my bike. It gets me into town. Almost everyday I ride into Soho (where Hawk is being finished) on this bike. It's about 4 miles there and 4 miles back. It's keeping me fit.
This is my bag. I like my bag.
Today I was cycling back to my house when I felt something give on the shoulder strap. That's not good I thought as I was carrying a rather important Hard drive. You see we have over 50 CGI shots in Hawk and over 60 2D com positing shots. Thus we are constantly transferring Tiff sequences and full-res QuickTime's made from our HD rushes. We are constantly ferrying around media that our brilliant small team of compositors and CGI artist work on, everyday shots are completed and new ones being dished out. We have 2 Hard drives for all this moving around business. It's only with massive storage like this that we are able to make Hawk happen.
With it we can move around digitised 25 fps Full Res Tiff sequences taken from our original footage and get it to our compositing and CGI artist's personal computer equipment, negating the need for expensive HDCam player hire costs and the worry that goes with your original rushes being moved around all over the place.
These drives are seriously important. They are serving us well. Which is why I was so worried when the strap seemed to give. It was about 9.30pm in Camden , after another full day of the joys of file transferring!!! My shoulder felt the strap do something funny. Something not-good-funny. I yanked on the breaks almost getting hit by a Number 29 bus, my laptop power supply is hanging out of the side of my bag. The drive box is poking out behind it. Yes, I have a hole in my bag. Not a hole – a sheer weight of wear and tear rip. It's not that I over-filled the bag. I've done this trip hundreds of times with this much stuff in it. It's just that there is only so much a bag can take. The drive had nearly 400GB of files. Four hundred. I spent the remaining 2 miles free wheeling down to Holloway, cradling the drive in my hands. It seemed a bit illegal.
I think once this film is done we'll have moved around over 2 Terrabytes of data around London and beyond.
I need a new bag.
Matt Jones
Producer
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Recording the Choir for the Soundtrack - 17th July 2007
My first involvement with Hawk was when I was approached at a concert my choir ‘Serendipity' put on in the London Welsh Centre. Although I was initially sceptical about two strange men who claimed to be making a film, (my mother always warned me of such things..) I was soon warmed by Mac's heartfelt passion for the project and by Stuart's enthusiasm also.
Our conductor Tim was similarly moved, (although I think he still has his heart set on a long weekend in Cannes... ) and we soon agreed to get involved.
The choir had quite a hectic couple of weeks before the recording date. This meant that we only managed to squeeze in one quick rehearsal for the project, in a hotel in Mold four hours before a performance on the Llangollen Eisteddfod stage with Jose Carreras! Stuart had used some fantastic words from the song of Taliesen (ca. 14 th century) in his atmospheric score.
These were proving a bit of a mouthful even to the many Welsh speakers in the choir. Luckily one of our choristers father had studied ancient Welsh, and helped us out here.
Our debut album was recorded in St German's church, Cardiff , and had been engineered by Hywel Wigley, so it seemed logical to combine these elements again for the recording. We all arrived, had a quick run through with the composer at a battered upright piano, and started to record.
The session progressed smoothly, stopped occasionally by the loudest motorbike in the world outside, and sometimes even by errors from the choir!
We had a pitstop when Mac & Matt very kindly bought 20 bags of chips for the choir (I bet the man in the Clifton Road chippy still hasn't recovered from that on a Tuesday!) and they even made us all a nice cup of tea! We finished the choral parts some time around 11:30pm, just leaving Sylvia and Kirsten two of our sopranos to record some solo bits, finishing in the early hours.
It was certainly an exciting project for us to be involved in, the music was great fun to sing. Stuart's score really mirrors the inspirational scenery and imagery of the film, I for one am looking forward greatly to seeing the finished movie.
Andy Mulligan
Serendipity Choir Administrator
