Good art involves fortuitous accidents - when unplanned and serendipitous events are allowed to intrude upon the work. My brother and I found many of these happy accidents in the making of our zombie movie last week at camp.
We began filming the title sequence before we left for camp using some woodcuts from Gustav Doré's illustrations for the bible. And because the pages of the book wouldn't lie flat, our photos had areas of sharp focus and areas that were blurred. We could have flattened the pages; it wouldn't have taken much work, but we like the effect it created, so we kept it.
And again with the Doré illustrations, my brother was adjusting the contrast to make the image sharper when he discovered that by greatly increasing the contrast we could introduce a variety of reds and oranges to the pictures. Again, a happy accident that we liked and we kept.
We found a third fortiutious accident in our music. I had already put together a track of music for the climactic scenes of the movie - but had no melody for it. And independently of that, we recorded our "Accursed Melody" - the one the boys would discover in the woods. It wasn't planned. It wasn't worked out ahead of time... but the two were in the same key and fit nicely together.
And later, when we were ready to place the music into the film, we found that (with only slight edits) it fit perfectly into what we had filmed - timed so that the music fit the action on screen.
There were other accidents in the process of filming and editing the movie. Some were not as fortunate as these, but we made of theme what we could. Good art involves fortuitous accidents.
Here is the Theme from This Accursed Melody
This Accursed Melody by thatjeffcarter was here
It features me on the horn and several sounds from The Freesound Project:
Real Virus 12 – E2
Radiator 2r
Accordion Loop 1
Glitch 06
Real Virus 12 – E5
Trip Hop Driver Beat 4
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