Progress of “a Life in Progress” is, er, progressing and I can report we are almost there. The online edit, where the picture gets a bit of polish and technical problems are sorted out, turned out to be a bit more problematic than was previously thought. Mostly this seems to come from taking material from so many different sources…the past ten years has seen a humungous explosion in formats, and wouldn’t you know it many of them passed through my hands as I documented Alasdair’s work. Much of the online has involved bringing up older formats to current levels. Its been a bit of a shock to see footage I shot ten years ago on a dv camera magically transformed into HD! Thanks to Chas Chalmers for that.
On the sound front, there has been a couple of days dubbing so far with John Cobban at 422 who I have worked with from the days when he ran his enterprise from his front room. As anyone who has worked with John knows, he combines that rare combination of technical flare with real creative input.
Scott has been continuing to build up music tracks as inventively as ever and sent me this pic of the recording of the drum track made, to my delight, with a bike wheel. The track that features was written to work with some rather nifty but simple animation of Alasdair’s Hillhead mural that have been put together by Russ Kyle. We are hoping that the music sessions develop into something else…what I’m not sure.
So there is one more day of dubbing the sound and one more day of grading the pictures and then its off to be made into something that can do the rounds of the festivals as well as bring the work of Alasdair Gray (and me of course!) to new audiences….hopefully.
Kevin Cameron 