L2T Continued
STATUS SO FAR:
Day 1: Kicked the Rebel song in the ass – finally named it “Injustice!” I was waiting to find a part of the song that worked. Once I found it I built up the chorus around that moment and that word. It worked really well. I’m 90% done but that last 10% is a little tricky.
Creative Time: 60mins, in the early morning (Have to work whenever I have a window of time.)
Day 2: Wow! Rebel song is actually done and I spent the morning combing through every song and the script up to the “Amendment to the Finale” moment. I had no excuse now but to actually work on this song.
Creative Time: 120mins, in the crazy super uber early morning; 20mins, to work; 60mins, during lunch; 30mins train from work 20mins, before work; 20 mins, after work
Day 3: While my son was playing this morning before breakfast I managed to write out a few notes. Then I managed to work on the train for a solid stretch. All of that is on the Amendment to the finale song. I have some interesting rhymes and melodies but they are all very inconsistent so I want to create consistency. I continued this during my lunch break. I spent lunch time mostly trying to figure out how to turn the existing content into the rhyme scheme that I like the most from this song, but its difficult. Also, I don’t really have a chorus I have for this song. It needs that and I need to organize my thoughts in order for that to work. In the evening I went through the final song and worked on parts of the verse structure but mostly figured out a chorus I like. I’m still not 100% but I think it’s a good starting point and once I reorganize the song and clean up all the chaos, I will be able to see if it works or not.
Creative Time: 10mins, before breakfast; 20mins, on the train; 45mins during lunch; 20mins on the train home; 90mins, late at night
Day 4: This morning I quickly completed two important tasks: First, I zipped through the set of songs once more to finally, and as definitively as I could be, decide on the few minor outstanding lyrical issues or issues with song structure. By making those decisions, I really have no excuse to do anything but finish the final pair of songs and dialogue in them. Due to that, the second big task I did was officially organize the remaining sections of the Amendment to the Finale song. I also made a point of highlighting which content really needed to find its way into the song, whether in the form of lyrics or the form of dialogue. During lunch, I combined the chorus that I started working on the other day into the music file. I also made some quick formatting changes to a few songs on the set list that still have shorthand character names like sec 2 instead of Secretary 2. Usually when I am working quickly I will not write out all the names or format everything properly. That’s also part of the reason for writing in a program like Word or OpenOffice before I switch over to Celtx.
I find similarities between my architecture design strategies and the ways in which I write or create in general. When designing a building, I always prefer to have a physical sketch or even a loose digital model without construction type constraints and concerns before I model within a complex program like Revit. I’ve said it occasionally on this blog, but I think that iterative process between mediums forces me to before aware of different things. It allows me a lack of structure in the one medium that lets ideas flow without hit some logistical wall. Then the structure of the other media forces me to make decisions and streamline.
I worked on revisions to the stage directions in and around the Amendment to the Finale
After work, I spent a little time in the evening still working out the outstanding notes for the songs.
Creative Time: 30mins, early in the am; 20mins, on the train; 60mins, during lunch break; 20mins, on return train; 60mins, in the evening
Day 5: In the morning, I spent my time on making sure the structure of the amendment song was how I wanted it. It took a lot of moving and juggling but I finally feel like its in a good place but now I'm in the position of trying to fix and change existing content and ideas to match the correct rhyme scheme and then working on the dialogue. Those are all my goals. During lunch I managed to work on the Amendment song and picking up a few technical formatting issues throughout all the songs. After everyone went to bed tonight, I managed to start working on the hardest part of the Amendment song. I started around 10:30pm and worked straight through until 3:00am. Crazy! But I finally finished all the lyrics and melodies in every single song in my show. The look good on and paper and they feel song out loud. Some of the more complex rhyme schemes, particularly the first verse just after the first chorus is really hard. I wanted to match the earlier scheme and I did. I'm very happy about that. Then I also still had enough motivation to finish the Out in Your World Remix. This was a fairly straightforward song that uses a few previous elements but with some changes and more power. But I also wanted to soften the very end to be hopeful and I think I have a song that does that. We shall see if I'm right. I flipped the deny song and undefined in the music list but not in the script yet. Lyrics are so much more difficult than scenes. I think I will make light work of that switch, especially because I know what I want to say. Same goes for the short chunk of dialogue that will be added to the Amendment to the Finale song. I will pick those up tomorrow and hopefully start integrating the new lyrics and stage directions into the CELTX file, so everything will finally be in one place.
Creative Time: 20mins, on the train; 60mins, during lunch break; 20mins, on return train. 270Mins, crazy late
Day 6: Still on a high about last night's work push! Though I did have a hard time waking up. But on the train ride I accomplished the song flip in the script and the changes to the scene's dialogue. I still need to write out the amendment dialogue. I spent so much time on that song last night that I didn't want to look at that this morning. During my lunch break I made some holistic changes to the songs and their stage directions in preparation for the transfer to the program I'm using. Unfortunately, I've discovered that the CELTX script formatting that I haven't really though much about is in line with the us or international standards as far as I can tell. And now, CELTX has an online version you use for free or you can pay for a membership. I might have to reformat the script though and I need to think about how that will look. For now, I am putting this together for the musician and changing the formatting is tedious, so I will save that for another time. I will format the music to the correct way so when I bring it into the script, there are no issues and I copied all my content from CELTX out into a word processor just in case I have to go the microsoft word route. On my train home, I finished removing all unnecessary stage directions related to the music that will be apparent when listening to the music or by reading the score. I also finished converting all the song text to ALL CAPS. The purpose of this is to easily distinguish it from dialogue in the script without the need for too many stage directions about speaking or singing. That's why I remove all those notes too. Cleaning it up made my life easier doing the transition.
Creative Time: 20mins, on the train; 60mins, during lunch break; 20mins, on return train. 60mins, late-late
Day 7: I have several trees in my backyard that needed to be taken down, so unfortunately, I was helping my cousin, who owns a tree removal company, do some of the work. We are trying to speed things up because this tree issue is linked to sewer line problems that need to be fixed. Either way, I focused on that for much of the day but I managed to find time to do the handful of things I still needed to do. I managed to finish integrating the songs into final Celtx script today. I wanted to have time to print and triple check the latest work but I didn’t get to do that yet. I have some ideas I’m still on the fence about. With the new songs, I may be a tad bit too heavy on the anti-lord 2 songs, but maybe not. I’ll have to get outside opinion or wait a while and come back to that to know for sure. I also am still debating whether or not I should get rid of Drunk 2 and Hobo 2 altogether and take any of their story driving lines and put them into the voices of Guard 2 and Gatekeeper 2. Those two serve multiple purposes throughout the story and so it seems appropriate. Drunk 2 and Hobo 2 are really just exposition realized. Like an old school Greek chorus, which is not too popular these days. I’ve considered this option before when I was looking at turning this script into a screenplay and there were only a few places where the lines couldn’t go to Guard 2 or Gatekeeper 2 and other people would have to be used but I think that would be okay. For the most part it would work. I originally held off from this move because some of my friends who are familiar with the show said they liked the characters and for musicals, having a bigger cast is usually a good thing. Since I’ve revised the script this last time, I’ve elevated the status of several secondary characters to become leads and as such it seems less critical to have Drunk 2 and Hobo 2. Also Drunk 2 is probably not the kind of character that audiences would want in an otherwise kid-friendly show. Anyway, aside from those issues, which I have time to fix, I also sent emails out to 2 musician friends to see how they react to this idea and the general game plan. I have 1 more I want to also reach out to very soon and they I can get moving on the composition.
Creative Time: 60mins, early; 60mins during lunchtime; 90mins in the evening.
CONCEPT UPDATES/CHANGES: This is the culmination of all the edits I’ve made since that Scientist 2 new story arc idea that I had back in October/November of last year. I’m very satisfied with how it turned out and it has also been wonderful completing all the random outstanding loose end edits that were long overdue. This will truly allow me to finally move forward with this script, once the musical score is completed. That will certainly take time but it will be very nice when I’m at the point of being able to submit this to festivals/theaters/production companies/etc.
PICTURES/NOTES: I should put a PDF of the latest script here soon.
THIS WEEK RUNNING TIME: 24.08 hours (CRAZY!)
FINAL RUNNING TIME: 60.5 hours (Over 5 weeks, not 4, but still DAMN!)