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If you ask me what Amygdala is about, I’d have to answer “It’s about a lot of things.” On the surface it might be about a man and a woman caught in the tangles of their own private hell. If you look deeper you might see that this is not the entire truth. Like in life we only see fragments of truth from our unique views. Noone can see the world through our eyes. That renders each and every one of us truly and utterly alone. The mechanismes we utilize to overcome the anguish and fear of this one constant truth and the loneliness that follows with it are many and diverse. But chief among them is the act of planting seeds of fear in one another. Amygdala started out with this thought. This idea. It fast grew into a script… or rather the first draft of one. Five or six pages of very abstract scenes written as an attempt to convey this thought. One of those scenes just begged to be shot. The scene where the clock stops and a man attacks a woman. The scene turned out so well that I decided to throw out the script I’d already written and start from scratch, but keep this one scene and build the rest of the film around it. The original title for the film was “sæd” or “seeds” in english, derived from the idea of planting the seeds of fear in eachother. The day we were going to shoot that first scene I talked about earlier, things happened as a result of me being a terrible planner. I had not prepared much except the script, actors and equipment and hardly even that. So, when it was time to head over to the set I realized I had no seeds to plant. Looking through the kitchen cabinets I found a small pack of almonds. I grabbed them and took off thinking I would replace the almonds in post-production with something a little more fitting to the idea. After the scene was done, I had a lot of ideas for a more elaborate storyline. But the pieces just didn’t fit together properly yet. So, I went online looking for the answers to what this film was about and how to patch things together. Learning about a small part of our brain called Amygdala was a revelation. It seems plays a great role in the processing of our primal feelings and mainly our fear. And guess what… it’s shaped like an almond, and that’s also what it’s greek name means. Now, things swiflty fell into place. And I knew this project was meant to be- there was no need to replace the almonds. Amygdala is our first film making endevour and we hope to make many more.

PRODUCTION BLOG

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August 06, 2009.

Spent most of the day refining the script. Added a couple of short scenes. With the location in mind, I planned (roughly) how to set up the lighting. Don’t have much to work with, but with some cunning placement of the light sources I’m confident it will work nicely. The biggest problem will be indoor scenes shot during daytime, because of the enormous windows present at the location. The reason this is a problem is that while the camera will be white-balanced for indoor light temperature, light from outside will appear blue because it’s of a different color temperature. That’s not necessarily what we are looking for. Could be a nice effect, but then again it could ruin the scene. We also had this problem on the dream sequence we shot earlier this year. We did not have enough curtains to cover up the entire window. It’s out of frame and the blue hue is hardly visible there, but this is a different story all together. And the windows will most likely be visible in the frame, given the angles I want, so we can’t cover them up. I don’t have any gels, and no money to get them. It is natural for these particular scenes to play out during the day, so a rewrite is also out of the question. What to do… what to do… ? Perhaps we could cover them with something white and simulate very bright light coming in, washing out the outside view?

A welcome addition to the team today; Hege. She will play an important role in the film. Nice to have her onboard.

August 27, 2009

We’ve finished two days of shooting. The actors’ performances were absolutely spectacular. We have a great deal of footage to go through, and I’ve already finished a raw cut of a pivotal scene that I’m quite happy with. A few things still need to be adjusted, but we are definetly on our way.

A few mistakes were made by yours truly- I dropped the camera on one occation. It had some trouble with the auto-focusing after that, but I think we still managed to capture some nice images.

I’m not extremely happy with the lighting. I’ve no proffesional kit, and certainly lack the knowledge and experience of lighting a set as needed. But for a first attempt at film production I think it turned out well.

I had intended to get some camera motion this time, but poor planning and preparation resulted in a mostly stationary camera with a few handheld shots.

I’m going back to cutting and pasting now. I’ll see you soon

August 29, 2009

Still editing while waiting for the chance to shoot the remaining scenes. I’ve listened to the sound recordings, and I’m not happy with it at all. Seems we need a heavy of dose of overdubbing and foley. A setback for sure, but it is needed.

New ideas are still popping up. Maybe there will be additional scenes to shoot.

September 6, 2009

The editing process of current footage is going nicely. I have great faith in the future end result. There have been no mistakes that we’re unable to fix. Of course, there are things I would have done differently had I gotten the chance. I would have raised the worklamp off the floor at certain points, but I must say I sort of like the ominous shadows we’re getting by having it at ground level. I would have liked more angles to choose from. I would have liked to have to have a stable dolly shot at certain points.

I should not have set the camera display to black and white as it made it near impossible to identify foreign objects that were not supposed to be in the frame. As it is now I had to write an additional scene to explain the clutter that sometimes appear in the shot.

Next week, we will star shooting some of the remaining scenes. I can’t wait.

September 11, 2009

Bakks emailed me some drafts of his music. They are very good, and I allready have my mind on a couple of scenes where they might be suited. Bakks is a very gifted and talented musician, his music will surely raise the quality of the project conciderably.

October 15, 2009

Hi! Look at that, been over a month since the last update. Things are going smoothly allthough not as rapidly as I’d hoped. But I still think everything should be done and ready by the end of this year. According to my notes only three scenes are left to shoot. One of them, however, is broken up into several sequences, and as such should perhaps also be refered to as multiple scenes.

I’ve decided to go for the black and white approach. I love black and white. And I think black and white removes some of the excess detail in the image. Something I feel is useful when not having the ability to fiddle with depth of field and various other tricks available with more professional equipment. Plus, it’s time saving since I don’t have to color correct, just adjust the contrast a little. Yeah, ok… I’m lazy too.

I have one big concern, though. I fear a lot of the film will be too dark and despressive for a lot of people. I did not think about that when writing the script. Too many scenes move at a slow pace and there’s not a lot of cheer and laughter. There’s is one scene, however, which shows hope and joy. And it is desperatly needed. I was not satisfied with how this scene turned out. We might have to reshoot it, since it is so important. But I don’t think it will be too much of a problem to shoot it again. But autumn is swiftly turning into winter around here, so it will have to be done very soon if it’s going to fit in with the rest of the outdoor scenes.

We’ve scheduled this weekend for another outdoor scene, and I think we will try to do the cheerful scene again then. Wish us luck:)

october 26, 2009

Hit a monumental bump in the road! My editing workstation has expired. It is dead. No more. And I don’t know what to do. Lacking the funds to replace it at the moment, but I’m hoping for a financial miracle in the near future. I’ll keep you posted.

october 30, 2009

No change in status. I’ll try to repair the thing during the weekend. But it’s an almost six year old Dell that’s more than served its duty. I was just waiting for this to happen really. But I must say that this is quite frustrating. I need to get a rawcut together fast to see if everything’s working okay. And I really don’t think my laptop’s up to the task.

november 7, 2009

Placed an order for a new system from Dell. A quad core system that I think suits my needs perfectly. It will arrive around the 18th of this month. Can’t wait.

november 17, 2009

The machine is up and running and the editing process is continuing… Great!!!

december 4, 2009

I’m really feeling the pressure now. I had to restart editing from scratch, all the finished work perished along with the computer crash. And I’m still working to keep the deadline of january. Might be stupid, but I am also stubborn. Things are moving along very slowly. At least that’s how I feel. And I’m the only person working on it. The loneliness is a killer sometimes. It pays to have a team at your back. I guess that’s the most important thing this project has learned me. One person just can’t do it all and make things great. I’ve included my wife in the editing and sound design process, she has alot of interesting input that I appreciate. In fact she came up with a great idea yesterday, that I hadn’t thought of. I think I have to realize the fact that january is no longer a realistic goal. But I am not setting a new one at this point. Have to finish most of the work before I do that.