Showing posts with label AnC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AnC. Show all posts

4.09.2022

What I Might Change About 'Science, Sex, and the Ladies' (the movie) Now All These Years Later



Hello my lady-gasm activist friends. As is the theme for my blogging the last few years, I'm more behind than I would like to be. There are tons of articles on everything from the Female Sexual Dysfunction questionnaire that is most commonly used in studies as well as therapy to assess a woman's, ya know sexual dysfunction to female ejaculation related stuff to post gender confirmation surgery functioning to old strange studies to just about everything - anyway, there are tons of those studies I want to summarize (and dish on if need be) in the ol' A Journal Article I Read series (which are all HERE). There's also tons of TV and movie depictions of lady-gasms or lady-gasm talk, or clits or cunnilingus that I need to review (all the TV ones are HERE and the movie ones are HERE), but to be honest, these are a little lower on my priority list, I'm more vibing with the journal articles right now, but I get the urge to review some shit orgasm depictions from time to time too. All that to say I don't have anything super big, but I wanted to post something, and it just happened that something sparked my need to write here a little.

Last night me and Charlie re-watched Science Sex and the Ladies with a good friend last night, and it was fun, but I was thinking about some things. First, I still like it. I think it's weird and what-the-fuck-enough to continue getting laughs into the future. Second, this was shot 13 years ago and released 8 years ago (it was a lot of post production work and mostly just Charlie doing it....it takes time), and there are is content I would do a little different. I still stand behind it 100%, but I've been continuing the activist work from that movie through this blog since 2009. I have more and deeper insight now. I mean shit's still pretty much the same and the problems are still pretty misunderstood in the same way, but there's been some progression, and the way I talk about some things has changes with more knowledge.  



So, below, I just thought I'd quick mention the updates I'd make, I've written about this in different ways before, but it's fresh for me right now and it's nice to pop it up every now and then. 

1 I'd talk about the idea that the 'inner clit' is responsible for orgasms-from-intercourse (or what people might call vaginal orgasm) and shit all over that fake news like I did the g-spot-as-a-vaginal-orgasm-giver fake news. 
The current progressive, sex positive, sexually educated (often very educated) crowd is big on the idea of the 'inner clit' or the 'clitoral bulbs' or 'clitoral legs'. It's the part of the clitoris that is deeper in the body - more than the clitoral glans that pokes out or the clitoral body you can feel under the skin just above the clit (before it bends down and separates into the larger 'inner' structure of the clit). They tout this 'inner clit' as a previously unknown or misunderstood part of female anatomy that is actually what causes orgasms. It is neither previously unknown/misunderstood, nor is it something that causes 'vaginal orgasms.' However, just like the now out-of-vogue-as-vaginal-orgasm-givers -the vaginal canal itself and the g-spot- the inner clit is a new, hip way experts try to explain why a woman might orgasm from nothing more than getting banged. Truth is there is not physical evidence in all of scientific literature of a an orgasm happening from nothing more than the stimulation of a penis/dildo in the vagina (for real - I explain more HERE), but that doesn't stop the sex research/sexpert world from desperately clinging to some piece of anatomy that might, maybe cause this type of orgasm, that actually doesn't seem to exist except for in faked bedroom activities and answers on surveys. 

This was true when the movie came out and is still just as true. It's just that the scapegoat in pop sexperting has moved from the g-spot to the inner clitoris since then, and so it's not really addressed properly in the movie. I would like to have it in there because I worry contemporary watchers might disregard the whole thing because they think we missed the inner legs info. 

Anyway, more specific info about why the inner clit is not some new discovery and not the cause of 'vaginal orgasms' is HERE.

2 I'd have added some info about male multiple orgasms. 
Most of the details about male and female orgasm and physical arousal in the movie are pulled from Master and Johnson's groundbreaking late 60's research. It's still super relevant on the physical detail level, but there are later papers that confirmed and also expanded on Master and Johnson's work. I would add more of that to modernize some of the terminology, etc. Mainly, that would mean there would be some info about physical evidence of males that can orgasm multiple times, similar to some women, until they ejaculate with their final orgasm. I'd tighten up that physiology of orgasm/arousal section with papers and info I've reviewed and read while writing this blog. Oh - here's an article with the male multiple orgasms. 

Alright - that's the big ones. There's of course some scenes we would tighten up too- I mean sometimes things happen by necessity, and we'd have preferred something a little differnt, but overall, I like that crazy movie. 
 


2.02.2019

Check Out This Music Video, Yo!



Hello all -  it's the first not desperately freezing day in a while here, so I'm gonna celebrate by posting something fun and movie-making related (as opposed to ladygasm/ladybation/clit related) today.

As you may know (since this blog is a supplement to a movie we made), I'm part of a group of movie makers called AnC. Charles Borowicz (aka CBRUV) is part of AnC and the technical visionary of the group. When not working on AnC stuff, he does video and photography full time. Sometimes it's commercial work and sometimes it's his artwork and other times it's his artwork but in some level of collaboration with another type of artist. His most recent work is of the latter - a music video for artist Gwendolyn Dot.

He's also my husband, so I got to watch/comment on the process, hear the song a straight million times, and work with him on some of the shooting. I was mostly on the gems and smoke crew. The crew was me and him. I can turn gems very slow and gently now. The other crews (cloud crew, magical space crew,  water crew, rainbow balloon digiverse crew etc.) were just him, so I guess they weren't really crews.

Anyway, this is some wild trippy, often lovely shit. Enjoy.


Placenta et al from AnC Movies on Vimeo.


2.17.2016

Meet Gregory Partlow (An AnC Movies Aside)



I'll be posting today from the movie-making portion of this blog. You see, we here at AnC Movies made Science, Sex and the Ladies (SSL), but we also do other things too. Well, to be completely honest, we were pretty much bogged the hell down with SSL for many a year, so we haven't been doing as much as we like, but we're getting back into the whole making-and-promoting-something-other-than-SSL thing. We're working on a longer project now, but we want to stay busy and make some creative work, so we're experimenting with some short projects. Most recently, we've whipped up - The Unboxening. It's a little web series we shot around Christmas. We'll be posting a new episode up every 2 weeks HERE.

It's a strange parody of unboxing videos, and if you were like me about a year ago, and you don't really know what unboxing videos are, ask your kids because kids love the hell out of toy unboxings...but I believe it started with tech stuff - and ya know- is still incredibly popular for tech stuff. Basically it's a video of stuff being taken out of the packaging it was bought or mailed in. PEOPLE. LOVE. THAT. SHIT.

Anyway, if you tend towards weird and dry, you might enjoy meeting Gregory Partlow on his Unboxening adventures. Here's his first 2 episodes.






1.22.2016

AnC Th-AnC-s You!!!!!



This is the SSL Blog. It's clearly related to the movie Science, Sex and the the Ladies and surrounding subjects. But...what about the people who made SSL? What about AnC Movies? I don't talk about AnC all that much (and for unexplainable reasons, we do not pronounce it A. n. C. We pronounce it as Aink). A large part of that is because we were entangled in making and promoting SSL for so many years, that there wasn't all that much else to talk about.

We have done some this and that, though. A recent little experimental short called Glorious Boring, for instance. We've done a fair amount of commercial stuff for the ol' paycheck recently too, but we're excited to get back into the groove of movie-making. We're excited for upcoming projects, and we're excited to get back to old-school AnC, which brings me to the subject of this post - the AnC Holiday Card.

We have sent a holiday card to our mailing list most years since 1998. The mailing list in 1998 was pretty much just our families and the mostly high school cast of our very first taped-on-VHS-and-edited-deck-to-deck-VCR movie, Viral Animocule (maybe one day we'll upload that to Vimeo...if you're lucky). It has certainly grown since then, but we still like to keep the card in a particular AnC style.

Charlie, Phil (former yet still loved AnC), me, Alex (former AnC, but the A in AnC), and Barnaby looking sexy as hell circa summer 1999 shooting another classic, When War Was all We Knew. 

So, we sent our holiday card out a few days ago. In true AnC fashion it was a little Christmassy themed, but sent out in mid-January.  The physical card always tells the people what we've been up to, what we are planning, and most importantly there's always a big thAnCs (get it Thanks?) to everyone - and that is the part I want to share with you because you all have been pretty awesome.

I've met a lot of super cool people through this blog, and even though it might not seem like it since I don't get tons of comments, you readers out there have been growing steadily over the approximately 7 years since I started it, which means the orgasm equality movement and other such similar ideologies have been growing steadily too. So, Thank You, and Keep on Keepin' on!

Our AnC Holiday Cards usually are more physically interactive. In the past we've included things like DVDs, paper dolls, and a ring of laminated cards. This year we decided to send a normal(ish) card that pointed people to the web where they could find videos of us giving them 'AnCfirmations'...so all the people who have supported us, repped us, and been good 'ol friends to us over the years get a reminder of how great they really are and how much we here at AnC love them. That means you can enjoy these AnCfirmations too, and you all certainly deserve that!

So, sit back and let Ranch Hand Charlie, Barnaby on the Streets, and Trisha at Home tell you how great you really are.











If you want to know more about ol' AnC Movies, check out our site - HERE.


6.18.2015

Glorious Boring



Here's a quick post that fits in the movie, as opposed to orgasm, portion of this blog. As you may know I am one of 3 who make up AnC Movies, and we're the ones that made Science, Sex and the Ladies. Now, I am way, super duper interested in continuing to dig into the subjects surrounding SSL and I'm way into continuing to do that on this blog and beyond. We made this movie because we all really wanted to do it and felt passionate about it. We're incredibly proud of it, and we learned so much, but we're all really ready to be making something different. It pretty much took up all our time from about 2008 on, and we haven't really had a lot of time to experiment or to pursue other movie ideas.

Before SSL we had only made shorts, and we really like them, especially as a sort of exercise - a way to experiment and learn without having to put in the tons of hours that go into a full length. Before SSL, we actually did a bunch of shorts that we premiered at something we called the Movie Prom - which was exactly as it sounds - a movie screening that was also a full prom with everything from the outfits to the punch to the balloon towers. Anyway, we specifically used those shorts to test out a lot of our ideas, both technical and creative. It was fun, and it really allows you to sorta exercise your craft. Anyway, as we're preparing for our next full length, we're starting to put some shorts out. I'll be posting things here as we do them. This one is called GLORIOUS BORING, and premiered at The White Rabbit Cabaret for a variety show called Ruckus  Enjoy.


12.07.2014

Cats!



I have a hundred different posts I really, really want to hunker down and write, but I'm entangled in all sorts of life stuff that don't involve writing about ladygasms for the undetermined number of people who might be reading this blog, so I feel I'm falling way behind. I want to keep up my pace of 2 to 3 posts a week though, and that means I need to write one today - but I don't have time to write any of the ones I really want to write. So I'm just going to write about my cats.

This is way off course for an SSL blog post - which almost always involves some insight into orgasm or masturbation; maybe cultural understanding of it, writings on it, media depictions of it, you know, all that stuff.  My cats, as far as I know, aren't orgasming much and don't plan to anytime in the near future. They are pretty asexual ladycats as far as I can tell, so I realize they are not a great SSL blog topic. Even if we consider that I sometimes write about indie movies or indie movie-making, my cats still aren't really important to that topic either. However, I will try to quickly relate each of my cats to the subjects of this blog. So enjoy, because this is what is happening now.

Cat background - All 3 of my cats are females and they are all around 5 years old. We got them all at different times though when they just sorta showed up at our house. We have a fantasy that they are all actually sisters from the same litter and just happen to get to us at different times. They might actually be. I can only assume they're related somehow. I mean a cat probably has about 300 first cousins. Charlie believes that this old ass motel that was torn down across the street from us shortly before our first cat arrived was deeply cat infested and that they all originated from there. In the end it's still a mystery. They all have a distaste for indie movies and TV in general.



Ramona
Only one we found as a kitten.
Movie significance: She was found in the engine of an actor's car parked in our driveway. She was from Chicago and staying here on one of the last days of shooting for Science, Sex and the Ladies. It's possible Ramona is a Chicago cat. Also, she's got a bit part in the movie - a reshoot we did at the house. (If you can tell me the scene, I'll give you a prize).
Crew type: She's an edit cat. She got here just in time to be sitting next to the computer for almost all the editing of SSL.
Sexuality/orgasm/masturbation significance: She's very inexperienced and naive.  Her gonads were ripped from her as a young girl, and I assume that besides her litter mates, she didn't even see other members of her species until Tina arrived 2 years later. She's like a pampered, sexless, beauty that's been locked in a castle her whole life.


Tina
She looked like Christina Ricci when we found her, but she's put on some weight and doesn't so much anymore.
Movie significance: Her meow is over the ending title of Science, Sex and the Ladies.
Crew type: She's a production cat. She got here just in time to be involved in several re-shoots and little video bits we did to advertise our Kickstarter for the movie. She likes to smell the equipment.
Sexuality/orgasm/masturbation significance: She might be the only cat to have engaged in the sex. She wasn't spayed when we found her, and her nipples are so long, I thought she might have had babies, but I've since learned that some cats just have long nipples. Knowing that cat dicks are barbed and quite painful for lady cats when pulling out, I understand why she seemed so interested in living indoors.



Eds
I named her Edgar while she was still outside. When we found out she was a girl, we shortened it to Eds.
Movie significance: Before Eds moved in, she showed up one day with about 3 inches of her tail hanging by a thread, and then a few days later she showed up and it was gone. She also had so many worms...so many worms. That has nothing to do with the movie, but it was something weird and gross that happened while we were working on post production.
Crew type: Eds is a watcher cat. She got here about when the post production was finishing up, and we had to watch it a lot for mistakes and for score discussions and for making deeper cuts. Seriously, you can't imagine how many times you have to watch your own movie, carefully from beginning to end, before it's done. anyway, Eds is our only cat who sits on the couch and watched TV with us. She would do it for 1000 hours in a row if she could.
Sexuality/orgasm/masturbation significance: Eds was spayed when we found her, but she was an experienced outside cat, killing birds out of the air and maybe waging war with the groundhogs that lived under our shed. She's probably been around the block once or twice. She very much likes to watch....from a close proximity. It must be soothing because it puts her to sleep.

9.09.2014

Marketing Science, Sex and the Ladies - Press Kits, DVDs, and Festivals, Oh My!



May I just take a moment and give you all out there a little bit of an overview about what is going on here in SSL land. I figure this blog is partially about the experiences and so forth of making this independent movie, so maybe I should catch you up on the background work from time to time.

This is AnC...posed for the camera (on a timer). This was for our 2012 AnC Holiday Card

I would put our current state of affairs squarely in the 'press kit hell' zone...well kinda. I actually like the press kit part. I mean it is time consuming as hell and tedious and it feels like I am never going to get things finished and out in the time frame I was hoping for. That's all true for sure, but I could say that for every single part of the movie making process - it always takes forever, consumes my life, and involves an annoyingly large amount of attention to detail...and I feel like I'm on the brink of failing at every step. It's all terrible, but you know, not really that bad. The whole movie making process is also one where I feel creative and excited, where there's constant fun bullshitting with people I like. I laugh a lot and make new friends and feel like I'm doing something that I want to do. It's very satisfying actually, and the press kit part of the process is really no different. I would say, though, that it has a slight advantage in that at this stage, I know that we've succeeded in making a movie that we are proud of (otherwise we wouldn't be promoting it). So, maybe I should say we're in press kit heaven...or maybe purgatory is a better description...yeah, cause it does feel like I'll be pushing this damn movie for the next quadrillion years. It's gonna be slow process. I'm in for the long game. The way I see it, endurance is the key when promoting a movie by nobodies from nowhere with no one famous in it and about a subject that is not for discussion in polite company.

So, point being we're doing press kits. We had to get some out to Louisville and Minneapolis for the festivals pretty quickly since the turnaround time between finding out you're in and the festival dates are often closer than you think. We didn't get elaborate for this one. We just went with a basic package containing a DVD and a simple color printing on paper - mostly leading people to our more detailed online press kit. We always do snail mailers though for press kits, but have clear direction to easy online content also. We assume people pay more attention to a package, but want their info easily accessible online.

For our Indy premiere in November (details soon btw), however, and for future press kits, we are creating something more elaborate. It's how we do. We like them to be unique, handmade-ish things that almost feel like a weird little piece of art (with clear and pertinent information, of course). These that we're conjuring up now will involve lots of strangely designed business cards, a lovely box (not that kind...although it may be pink...), ribbon, and lots of other surprises. The brainstorming and research that went into this is kinda stupid, although the three of us at AnC are pretty damn good at this kind of shit. In an odd way, we are like a well oiled machine for these things. We price shop, shoot down each other's ideas, make new ones, go through scenarios, and it's long and involved and kinda hard, but we always have a blast doing these. I'll put up some pics when we're done with them.

So, just for some nuts and bolts of our lives here. Here's the stuff that's been on our to-do list the past few weeks.


Pre-work for press kits

  • update online press kit (add festival laurels, ad events, add press quotes and links to reviews)
  • update SSL movie site
  • burn lots of DVDs (we use blank DVDs pre-printed with the SSL logo)
  • create DCP and Blue Ray exhibition copies of SSL
  • investigate possible places to send press kits
  • assemble contact names, email, and mailing addresses

Paper press kits for Minneapolis and Louisville
  • design work for quick paper press kit
  • write copy 
  • investigate possible places to send press kits
  • go to post office and mail them
  • follow up through email with individualized letter a week later

Indianapolis premiere 
  • investigate possible venues / visit venues
  • negotiate details of event with venue
  • create online ticket purchasing site to sell tickets through
  • Send ticket and movie info to venue for their site

Indianapolis Press Kits

  • Investigate pricing for boxes, cards, etc and create budget
  • order all pieces
  • write copy for all pieces of press kit
  • design work for all cards, stickers, etc
  • create individual cover letters for each press kit
  • assembly line for press kits
  • go to post office and mail them
  • follow up through email with individualized letter a week later

Miscellaneous
  • enter 3 festivals (these bitches can get expensive, so we just try to enter a few at a time, but consistently do so)
  • investigate blogs, etc that may have an interest in reviewing SSL and query them (this takes a lot of searching and a lot of writing personalized emails to people you don't know)
  • communication with people hosting small group showings (sending DVDs, following-up, etc)
  • dealing with needs for more data space (cause we made this huge, space eating movie)
  • discuss next script (ya gotta keep moving forward, right?)

5.21.2014

Science, Sex and the Ladies Got a Write-Up!



We got a write up! It's in Entertainment Magazine Online (which was an Arizona Newspaper that went online in the early days of the internet and has since branched out a bit). One of the writers, Madelyn Ritrosky attended a pre-screening of SSL and, well, wrote about it. It seems she's into sexual equality also and has a book and short film coming that also deal with that subject, so I'll be on the look-out for that.



There is also a Q&A with me at the end. The article is called "Science, Sex, and the Ladies, Oh My!" so go check it out!

Here's a quick preview below - oh, and did you like our official movie troupe headshot? We call it our AnC selfie.

We are so used to accepted, traditional notions and images of female and male sexuality – and the enmeshed power dynamics – that most people don’t question much of what they assume is innate biology and gender roles.  Yet when you look closely, socialization and the ideological environment loom large in our cultural “education.”   
As Trisha, Charlie, and Barnaby put it, there is an “orgasm disparity between women and men that is culturally created, harmful, and in no way inevitable.”  Both women and men are responsible, and both need to make changes for progress to be made.  
The filmmakers call the film’s format “a new form of non-fiction cinema, the visual essay.”  While it is thoroughly researched and even puts citations on-screen, like research paper footnotes, they present their case primarily through quirky vignettes and skits.  The filmmakers appear in some of them.  It truly is innovative.  It’s also entertaining.  
Check out the full article and Q&A HERE 

2.14.2014

Cast And Crew Screening!



Well, the cast and crew screening of Science, Sex and the Ladies was last night, so this marks the end of my blog once a day post marathon. I know you'll miss me, but I'll be back 2 or 3 times a week. Also, more good news...the screening went really well. I mean it's cast and crew, so they are a lot of people we know, and they're gonna be at least polite. So, I realize we may not be getting the whole story, but I'll tell you what, people were really excited about it. I got texts and emails from 5 different people on their way home letting me know about ideas they had for more group showings. We are encouraging people to share the movie in small groups anywhere from their own homes to art galleries to meeting halls to bars. Anyway, it looks like we may have some coming up including a "silent screening" and the first SSL Dude screening. So I feel pretty happy about the whole thing. I'll keep you posted about how the small screenings are going. Till we meet again...

AnC right before the SSL cast and crew screening





2.13.2014

I'm So Excited! Tonight's the Cast and Crew Screening!



Today is the cast and crew screening for Science, Sex and the Ladies. I'm so excited, and because of this, I embedded the Pointer Sisters singing the song "I'm So Excited" below. Enjoy it. It really does get ya pumped up. Seriously, though, I really am excited. This will be the first real screening. The cast has been waiting about 5 years to see this thing, and I'm really pumped to see them all again. As we speak, I am at my AnC partner Barnaby's house typing this pout real quick while Barnaby and Charlie load the food and goodie bags into the car. We'll be headed over to the venue in about 5 minutes Holla! I'll put up pictures tomorrow.

p.s. YouTube won't let me embed the actual Pointer Sisters video. :(

2.12.2014

NUVO

 


When you live in the Indianapolis area and you are in the arts. The go to paper to get coverage of your work is NUVO, the alternative paper for Indianapolis. AnC has been in it a few times over the years for our movie making, and we just graced their pages again for SSL. It's a super sweet spread over two pages in Their "Sex" edition. Pretty appropriate if you ask me and timely since we are having our cast and crew and friends screening tomorrow. This is just the start of getting this wild movie off the ground and we like to think a big move on the road to realign the cultural (mis)understandings around female orgasm.  If you want to see the article it's here. Page 18 and 19.

Thanks to Rebecca Berfanger, first, for wanting to write about our little movie, and, second, for writing it up so well.We were also pretty excited that we had more than one picture and in color even, that's a first for our NUVO appearances.

2.09.2014

Assembly line Fun with AnC Movies



Today was a good day. Some family birthday stuff for luch including good pizza and cherry pie. Then some old school AnC assembly line fun. You see, we here at AnC Movies have a long tradition of doing weird holiday cards for our mailing list that are ridiculously hands-on intensive. There's always been a lot of folding, cutting, hooking, signing - one year there was a putting on lipstick and kissing the envelope part of the assembly line. There's always a lot of fun, memories, farts, bitching. It's a good day. The thing is, we've kinda been busy with the movie the last couple years and have neglected our AnC holiday card duties.

We're still neglecting them (although we have one in the plans for the near future), but we are getting ready for our cast and crew screening of the movie this Thursday, so we were assembling goodie bags and also getting all the prizes ready to ship for Kickstarter backers, so it felt a lot like the ol' card makin' days.

We're watching the Olympics too, cause why not? Who doesn't love figure skating and snow boarding competition once a year? No one sane - that's who.

Anyway, enjoy some pics, and I'll be back tomorrow.

Me and B doin' the damn thing

Charlie showing off the pieces of a Kickstarter package

Barney's cat Yancy sleeping on things we need to use



1.11.2014

Science, Sex and the Ladies Doesn't Fit IMDB's Idea of Docs, But Whatevs



Okay, since this blog is about both ladygasms and making movies (particularly making Science, Sex and the Ladies, of course), I'd like to just take a minute and speak about a tiny something I've been dealing with in relation to the movie. It involves IMDB and how Science, Sex and the Ladies just doesn't fit quite right.

Here's the deal. I added SSL to IMDB (check it here) a while ago, and I go in and update it every now and then. Well, one time I was looking around and went to one of the 3 actors in our movie who have their own IMD pages, and found that they were listed under the category "Self" for their part in SSL - as if they were just talking heads giving the audience expert information or something. After more research than I really wanted to do, I learned from another person on the IMDB message/Q&A boards that if a movie is marked as a documentary, then the default is for all people in the cast to be categorized as if they are appearing in the movie as themselves, and the only way to change that is to add the keyword "Reenactment" to your movie. Long story short, I did it, and after about 2 weeks of waiting for approval, it worked. Ellie Church, Bryan Patrick McCulley, and Joshua Ramsey, are all properly listed as Ensemble Cast Members under the Actor section on their pages.

However, I just want to point out that although I added reenactment as a keyword, I only did it to get our actors categorized properly. There are no reenactments in this movie. Honestly, SSL is not like any documentary I've ever seen, and because of that, it doesn't fit into the mold that is created for docs in IMDB or really anywhere. There are no expert talking heads. There are instead citations to back up the things said in the movie, and there's a full bibliography in the credits. The whole movie is completely scripted and the arguments are made within a series of vignettes using on-screen narrators, voice over narrators and actors. We call this style a "Visual Essay." Barnaby's sister Kora came up with that phrase for a short we did in 2005 called "Ladies and Gentleman We Assume." It was a test short for this movie. We thought she was a genius, and we've been using it ever since. Anyway, the whole ordeal was slightly annoying for me, as is most interactions I have with IMDB. However, I thought you might be very slightly interested, and I'm not sure when I last talked about what Science, Sex, and the Ladies is actually like.


10.15.2013

Recording the Score




Did I mention yet that watching a room full of musicians recording our score was crazy amazing? We started out the day with a room full of strings, moved on to wood winds, and then to a room of brass, ending with a sweet ass French Horn solo that will slather its beautiful self all over top of the Science, Sex and the Ladies romance novel segment. Thanks you , thank you, thank you Nathaniel Blume, our good and wise composer, for making this all happen.

Oh and when I say "musicians" played this music, what I meant was Me, Charlie and Barney threw down some hot percussion action, and it was perfect and awesome.


Oh - and see that TV? It actually didn't play our movie while the musicians were playing the score. It normally would, and it could have this time, but alas a strategic decision was made to not distract the musicians too much while playing. Oh musicians - could you not play and watch three large vulvas on the screen at the same time? Now that I think of it, those poor strings had a pretty difficult part right there where the vulvas are. They would have been staring at them a while. And that wild brass crew - oh the jokes that would have been a-flyin'. I can assure you that when the first set of brass was finished, they wouldn't have gone out into the lobby to eat pizza, drink wine, and talk about golf. Oh no, they would have hung in the booth to watch what other crazy shit popped up on that TV - and that's just too many people in the booth probably, so it was a good decision.

Ah, it was a good time. We got to meet some of Nathaniel's friends from back in composer school (I'm just gonna call it that). They manned the booth (boothers I think they call them) and were totally cool and fun. The engineer working the board was also awesome as hell. We even ended the session with a good ol' champagne toast (thanks to Nathaniel and his wife). We'll be missing the recording sessions for voice and for guitar/mandolin/ukulele/bass/etc...etc... that will be happening soon, but our hearts will be with them.

Okay, I'm done talking about our LA trip. Next post will be about something different, promise.

10.11.2013

Pictures from LA



So, I believe I owe you some pictures. I'll keep this pretty simple.

Here's our fearless sound re-recording engineer, Kieth Waggoner, sitting in his red studio in front of  his sweet sound set-up. This was after we watched the movie with the pretty new dialogue that he had cleaned up. It sounded better than we hoped.



We were also able to just brainstorm together and do some good ol' fashioned artistic collaborating about getting or improving some of our original sound effects and about how he would eventually mix the dialogue, sound effects and music together. It was pretty nice, I tell ya. Well, until we got into a huge fight and were threatening to kill each other.




We also got to hang out in LA and be awesome.




Stay tuned. I'll have some more pics of our score recording in the studio adventures soon.

10.08.2013

AnC in LA!




Okay, so I've been kinda off line the since my last post, but it was for good reason. The AnC 3 - me, Barnaby, and Charlie, took ourselves out to LA for the recording of the Science, Sex, and the Ladies score and for some creative collaborating with our sound re-recording mixer. (The name Sound Re-recording Mixer doesn't make much sense, I know. I just say he's the dude that makes all the voice/production recordings sound good and then puts the music, voices and sound effects together in a sweet, sweet beautiful mix, but it's technically called...Sound Re-recording Mixer. It's a carry over from the olden days of movie making.)



Anyway, it was...it was one of the best experiences of my life. Seeing this movie come together in this way after all the years of work that has been put into it up to this point, seeing that music being created...the way it was brought to life by the musicians...I'm not exaggerating when I say it brought tears to our eyes. Seriously, we were all talking later, and the gravity of what was finally happening and the really lovely sounds that were coming from the studio, got us all a bit. I'm not even embarrassed to say it. Our composer, Mr. Nathaniel Blume, not only created a bad ass score, organized everything, ran a tight ship day of, was super calm and nice through it all, but he also hosted us while we were in LA. We couldn't have asked for better accommodations and company from the Blumes. There is still a guitar/Ukulele/mandolin/bass recording happening and a voice recording happening, which would be awesome to see, but alas I have a job to get back to, and we did see the bulk of the score recorded so I'm pretty much on cloud nine.

So the whole score situation was out of this world awesome, but we were also incredibly pleased and excited to hear what Mr. Keith Waggoner had done with the dialogue in the movie so far. It sounds so clean and nice. It's really amazing how much that kind of treatment can up the whole feel of the movie. Honestly, we didn't know what to expect because we'd never gone through this sound post production part before, but I can tell you we were more than pleasantly surprised. The work Keith had done so far was more technical - just cleaning and such, but he'll be getting to the more artful part soon when he's really mixing the soundscape, and we are looking forward to experiencing that.

Ah, it was an amazing, awesome, exciting trip. We also got to see some friends and check out some sites. I couldn't be happier now to be honest. I'm about to get on a plane now, so there will be pictures to come. Also, if the plane goes down, know I died happy. Oh, and someone needs to finish the movie. My dying wish would be for someone to finish it...just so you know.

9.16.2013

Is it really real? Is this movie really getting done?!



It might not be obvious all the time, but this blog all started from a movie; a movie I have been working on in some form or another since about 2003. A movie that has sucked from me a shit-ton of reading...and notetaking...and writing...and rewriting...and AnC group criticisms/discussions...and hard-core group script development...and all colors of pre-production...and wading through piles of goodwill clothes...a pretty crazy-ass 3 months of weekend production...re-shoots...edit crits...random areas of post production help for Charlie (who endured the large majority of editing and the hellishly insane amount graphic creations)...lots of lists...logistical/business/correspondence/promotion...hundreds of hours of just watching the movie to check for errors...and a large amount of worrying and feeling kinda desparate.

One of our promotional posters. That's me taking a rest in one of our few non green screen sets.

It was mostly really fun and rewarding, you know, along with being tedious and agonizing. It is also amazing - can I just stop and say amazing again - to really, truly see that this movie is going to be finished. I'm not just talking about the feeling of hitting a milestone in the process or the feeling of knowing, with time, that this will be a finished product. I'm talking about the actual light at the end of the tunnel. I'm talking about the picture is done. No more changes. No more tweaks. I'm talking about the final sound re-recording mixer guy is on the job as we speak and the score recording sessions are scheduled. I'm talking about we did a Kickstarter campaign so that we could pay people (professional people who can do important sound things that we simply cannot) to take the sound and finish it from here. I'm talking about this shit is about to be done, son.

I love this blog and I love that I have been able to continue thinking about, writing about, and engaging with people about these subjects even after I finished the movie script. I love that I can continue to to do all that long after the movie is done, but right now, I mostly just love the fact that the movie is really, really, for realz gonna be done, and I just had to tell you that.

7.19.2013

A Friday AnC Movie Special: Hansel and Gretel - Don't Eat Children



Hey there - happy Friday! I've been a bit busy lately, but I haven't forgotten about you. I thought it might be fun today to post a movie that we (as in us here at AnC Movies - the ones making Science, Sex and the Ladies) made a while back...actually this was really mostly Charlie making this. It stars our niece and nephew - although from 2 different siblings. The kids aren't brother and sister. You might also see the lower body of me and Charlie, Charlie's oldest little sister, and a picture of a mattress store close to our house.


It was commissioned for a collaborative "Hansel and Gretel" influenced exhibit between the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art and Indianapolis Opera and Indianapolis Public Libraries. I think it's pretty fun. Enjoy
Hansel and Gretel: Don't Eat Children from Charles Borowicz on Vimeo.

7.05.2013

Cuttin The Movie To The Bone, Ya'll!



Were you wondering how we here at AnC spent our 4th of July? I thought you might have been, so I'll tell you. We were cuttin' at the movie like those scissors in old Kroger commercials cut at coupons (thank Barney for that visual). Did it hurt? Yeah - it hurt sometimes. There were a couple things I wish we could keep, but you gotta let things go when they need to go, am I right? There were other cuts that seemed like a divine being shining through a hole in clouds. There were angels singing and shit. I liked doing those cuts. We lost some little awkward moments in the acting or the writing or transitions that I'd been hating for years, and when it suddenly seemed obvious how to get rid of them - like I said - angels and shit.

An excerpt from our Edit Decision List
Now we have, to this point, edited out all kinds of things from this movie. We did it in the writing stage, in the adaption to a screenplay stage, in the original edit, in the 2nd and 3rd edits. However, as Charlie pointed out, we never have cut anything that really hurt, and so it seemed like we weren't quite finished. Well, we did some painful cutting this time. Now, we weren't just willy nilly. We tried and debated each little snip. Some we were all down with from the git-go. Some we had to convince each other about. Although sometimes one of us goes into a cut or decides against a cut more reluctantly than the others, we do always come to a consensus, and honestly there wasn't a lot of bloodshed. It felt pretty good actually. I don't think the movie lost any of the info or style that we're passionate about it in, but it's more concise and less awkward. It's also about 7 minutes shorter.

Meeting notes:  
1 We ate a lot of Twizzlers, small bags of chips and drank many cans of soda/sodapop/pop/coke - whatever you want to call them. It was all leftovers from our last test screening.  
2 Also, we took a break to watch So You Think You Can Dance the first day of edits. That is the most baddest ass of shows, by the way. It's not some bullshit dancing like in Dancing with the Stars. This is insane top tier dancers doing sweet choreography, and it's not a snarky show. It's just fun entertainment, and it will make you feel like you are badly unfit and need to go pump some iron.  
3 I had been eating a lot of peanut butter, and that took its toll occasionally on the aroma of the room.  
4 We all enjoyed some hateful language towards each other. I feel Barnaby and Charlie's creative combo act involving some old kung fu movie style dubbing of harshness towards me was the most memorable.
5 We enjoyed Culver's one night and a summer home cooked meal of chicken breast, corn on the cob and strawberries another night.  
6 After we finished on the 4th of July, we saw The Heat, and it was pretty funny ya'll.

6.16.2013

SSL's First Test Screening!



Hello out there! I'm rather excited to say that last night we showed the movie (Science, Sex and the Ladies - the one that this blog is a companion to) for the first time to a test audience. Now, given that I've been researching for this movie since about 2002, and we've been actively actively producing it since 2009, I'm pretty excited to finally be at this point - to say the least. These were literally the first people to see anything even remotely close to a finished movie besides the 3 of us that made it and our composer...so, I was quite curious to see what kind of response it got.

The fantastic volunteer test audience was a mix of people involved with a reproductive rights task force and members of a Universal Unitarian congregation. They provided us space and even some popcorn and drinks, and then they all took time to answer some questions on paper and then have a short discussion. I'm not gonna lie - I was more nervous than I thought I would be going into this, but they were great - honest, thoughtful, interesting.

We got some good insight that we'll take forward - particularly when it comes to marketing. There was definitely things mentioned that we were very much expecting to hear, and one thing that was a kinda surprising. Truth is - anything could have happened at this test screening, but I felt pretty relieved because many had strongly positive reactions to a variety of aspects of this movie. It's a little surreal, this whole thing, but it's truly exciting. We're working on creating some focus groups made up of a different demographic than what we had at this one. I think we'll do maybe 3 or 4 more and then we'll start really thinking about how to move forward.

I'll keep you up to up to date, but be assured, we're getting really close to a finished movie, people!