about time too...
Posted in Casting Call Contest on Oct 26, 2007 at 9:08 PM
by God Help The Girl
Current mood: decisive
Hi folks
Are you still there? I feel kind of funny, because I don’t think I’ve ever really awarded a prize before, at least one that was anticipated. I remember getting butterflies waiting to see how I did at music festivals and the like when I was young, and it’s strange to think that I’m on the other side this time. I apologise if the wait has been on the long side!
Boys, at this moment we are going to postpone your result until the New Year. We need to devote ourselves to the ladies at present. We will have a better idea where the males fit in, in the New Year.
As I’ve said before, the competition was of a very high standard. Crucially, there was also a wide range of interpretations of the songs. Now, we didn’t know exactly what we wanted before the competition started (hence the competition!) but I think we came closer to knowing at the listening stage, and the decision was influenced by that.
Just to clarify our intentions; we are going to have two singers over to Glasgow for five days or so. They will practice with the group, and go on to record demos of some the film songs in our studio. This is part of the ongoing process to prepare the songs for final recording.
In the meantime, we will have a great chance to see what the singers are made of, and judge their abilities and talents, with a view to further participation.
Like I said before, I think the way the ‘God Help The Girl’ Forum took off was terrific. I hope the involvement doesn’t end here. By putting your voice and your personality up on line, you’ve become a pool that we will look to during this long process. I just wished you lived around the corner! That would be easier.
Already I’ve been in touch with a few of you to do some ‘reading’. It’s possible at a later stage that we might have a few more people over to Glasgow to follow up on that as the drama aspect of the project comes to light.
But at the minute, there is the music! With around 240 female entries (including video), if you were invited to sing again by myself or John, you were very close to being picked. The two singers that were picked were chosen for pitch and tone, for their flexibility, for the style they displayed, for the strength of the voice and for the potential we saw in them.
They are Brittany Stallings and Dina Bankole.
thanks
stuart
another wee 'hello'
Posted in Casting Call Contest on Oct 11, 2007 at 5:49 PM
by God Help The Girl
Current mood: reflective
hey kiddos
just hanging out here in glasgow. it's overcast and autumnal. i'm listening to status quo and jackson browne and the beat, but just as a short break from listening to you.
i'm feeling you, I'm feeling your online presence. we're not deliberately taking a long time, but we are deliberating. the consultation process made it's way south of the river this afternoon, when I was in the presence of Judge Jackson and QC Bob Kildea.
I’m sorry if I have left the guys rather on their own over this one. I’ve been concentrating on the ladies. Your due time is creeping up, fellahs! (and the numbers of you who are entering.)
I’m still going to need a bit of time, I hope you don’t mind. I may have to do a ‘tiny’ bit more setting of tasks, but not much.
In the meantime, hope you are feeling good, whoever you are, wherever you are...
stuart
hi folks, specifically the ladies
today is the last day for entries to the singing competition. we will retire for a while and consider all you have done.
i must say that I've come to enjoy the process, and the spirit in which it has taken place has been very homely. to me it felt like the beginning of the book 'charlie and the chocolate factory', with people checking in from all round the world. if i'd been any good i would have had a huge map of the world with little flags to show where you all posted from.
we will have a good think, and further listens, and we may ask some of you to sing the song you didn't already sing, so that we may hear more of your range and style. (this may take a little while, before we get some
of you over to Glasgow!)
A couple of other things...
Be assured that we have been listening to the entries sent by email, even though correspondence may not have been entered into.
Also, that those in faraway time zones were allowed to post during October 1st, their time!
Also, please note, that although the 'media' record for the 'God Help The Girl' group might show that our listening habits were sporadic, we were in fact scouring the entries through a series of pseudonyms! Nothing was missed...
If we contact you it will only be from 'God Help The Girl' though, or a 'banchory.net' email address.
in the meantime, thank you for taking part, and thank you for reading!
stuart
Hi folks,
Just in case you thought we had abandoned you, we are still pouring over your efforts keenly! The standard has reached quite a shocking level - consistently high! I am amazed and surprised. I can only guess at how hard this is to do, coming cold to a track, having no say in the pitch or arrangement or tempo. But you really are doing a great job.
We are enjoying the videos also. It may have taken extra balls to get on camera, but it does help us pick up on your personalities, so the extra effort is worth it. It’s a friendly little move!
Don’t be perturbed if you think your track doesn’t reach ‘hi-fi’ quality. We can pretty much tell what kind of job you’re doing whatever you are recording on, though it’s been pleasant listening to the array of ‘smooth production jobs’ that have been presented so far. It is flattering that you have gone to the trouble of making such a nice noise!
There have been some technical, and otherwise, questions asked. In the forum, John will go through some of the most common ones - but may I answer one first?
Ok fellahs, we’re hearing you. We were going to leave this till later, but your interest has inspired us. We have a work in progress version of one of the songs, called ‘Perfection as a Hipster’. Gary Olson, from Brooklyn’s Ladybug Transistor is this week’s guest professional.
Gary has very kindly laid down a vocal on the track, along with our own Catherine Ireton. Have a listen on the audio player here, and if you’re up for it, download the instrumental here and plug yourself in. The lyrics can be found here.
I know you’re only getting one track to work at, but somehow I think you’ll manage o.k..
If you’re wondering about your motivation for singing (and hey, this is musical drama after all!) you are the custodian of a a charity clothes shop. You are leaning on the counter on a sleepy Tuesday when in works Girl 1.
A little unkempt, but still obviously something pretty special, you watch her move round the isles of clothing in a catlike way. Not only do you get to dress her up in the best things your boutique can offer, but you have to scrape her off the ground and revive her when she passes out in the changing room; the hero momentarily; her adventures that morning must have proved too much.
She recovers, leaving as quickly as she arrived, though better dressed. She’s off down the street, while you desperately try to negotiate the morning off with your old-lady co-workers. They just don’t understand your hurry!
You have until October 12th, men. Good luck.
I've been enjoying your little 'auditions' tremendously. It's fun seeing where you are all coming from. We've had entries from some faraway places - South Korea, Beirut, Russia, Quebec and a lot from the States. The standard has been really good, and I'm not just saying that. It has been a genuine pleasure to listen to your interpretations.
I must admit at having a giggle at the last note of "The Psychiatrist Is In." It is rather low. But I think it will accompany a rather humorous moment in the film, so don't worry if you can't quite nail it, or if you fall over! It's all part of the fun. And I like to hear your personalities coming through sometimes.
We've been reading your comments too and we'll try to address some of them individually, especially if you are having trouble uploading, or any other part of the process.
We've also had a lot of mail from fellahs asking when their turn will be. Well, sometime, I'd say. I think we'll give you your own song to sing and a separate deadline, so don't think that you are missing out, because you're not at the moment.
I'll be in touch soon to tell you how rehearsals and everything else are going. You never know, we might get in touch with you sooner rather than later just to give you a try out in the rehearsal room. If you can handle that. We're a very relaxed bunch . . .
Here’s what you have to do to help Stuart find the voices he requires for the record.
Here’s how to enter:
- Sign up to iMeem and create an account profile for yourself here
- Listen to the original versions of “Funny Little Frog” and “The Psychiatrist Is In” in the media player before you start recording your entry.
- Download the instrumentals and the lyrics for the songs using the links below.
- Then you can record one of the songs (audio or video of yourself singing the songs using the assets that are provided. You can record the song anyway you like - it is only to give an idea of your voice and your feel for the songs.
- For the instrumental version of “Funny Little Frog”, Click here
- For the instrumental version of “The Psychiatrist is in”, Click here
- For the lyrics for these songs, Click here
To upload an audio submission, Click here and reply to the thread
To upload a video submission, Click here and reply to the thread
To upload a photograph, Click here and reply to the thread
Don’t forget you can also listen to, rate, and comment on all of the other submissions!
The contest will run from August 27th, until October 1st.
Stuart will review all of these entries and the best ones will win the chance to be flown to Glasgow, Scotland to audition for a part in the film. All expenses for the trip will be paid, and if you end up being cast in the movie, you will be paid for that as well!!
We’re very excited to see and hear all of your entries. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity!
Please contact us here if you have any queries about the requirements.
Good luck!
So I should really tell you what I’ve been up to the last while. Well I just ate this brownie that was so thick and buttery, with the ground up coffee beans, that my heart is having to beat quite hard to deal with it all. So I might as well use the extra beats to tell you what I was thinking.
It’s been a fantastically cold summer in Glasgow so far. There has been no real delineation between the spring and the summer except for the leaves creeping out sheepishly. I don’t mind so much. I’ve been staying in and doing jigsaws a lot. Every now and again I reach over to the arm on the record player and put it back to the beginning of Sealed With A Kiss by Brian Hyland. “It’s going to be a cool lonely summer”, he sings. As long as Brian’s around to chum me I don’t mind it so much.
I don’t mind so much because I’m trying to piece together the story of a better summer, or at least a summer when something happened. It happened to a boy and a girl and a girl, in a city roughly the same size and population of Glasgow. Perhaps the canals were a bit grimier, the high rise buildings taller. The streets emptier when you needed
them to be, and the beat clubs busier than the ones around here. But on the whole the city was this one.
That’s what I wanted to tell you about. They had such a nice summer one year. It was quite unexpected, the way that nice things quite often are. Girl 1 arrived in town. She looked around for a while, and played in a ladies football league. She ran into The Boy as he was closing up the local swimming pool.
So she ended up getting the bedsit next door to him. And they met Girl 2 when Girl 1 decided that the Boy wasn’t getting out enough. The Boy was kind of flexible on account of the fact that nobody had paid much interest to him for a while. For quite a few years actually. So he went along, prepared to teach Girl 2 all he knew about the steel strung acoustic guitar that he cradled. Girl 2 wanted to learn, but more than that she wanted to sing to somebody, and tell somebody about what was happening. So she attached herself to Girl 1and the Boy, and there you have it.
As I mentioned, they were a musical bunch, though none had ever been told that, and none would ever proclaim it. But that summer had a way of chipping the music out of them. They rubbed against each other in such a way that songs would come. They would come at quiet times of the night when they were ontheir own, and they would arrive suddenly when the other two were around. It was just that kind of a summer.
So it presents me with a problem. I’ve got the city. I can see it from here, and it’s free.
I’ve got the city, but I’m looking for the people. I’m looking for the girl and the girl and the boy. In fact, I’m looking for all the various characters that pepper the scene. (They come along and say what they have to say in an unusually musical way, and then move on.) I’m looking for them too.
So that’s where I thought you might be able to help me. You’ve read this far. Somehow you’ve found your way to this place, so I figure that makes you about a thousand times more qualified to help me than the average person in the street. Maybe ten thousand.You could probably help me, or perhaps you know someone who could help.
If you were interested in getting involved, or if you knew someone who might be good for it, all you or they would have to do is to go here, and try your luck at singing. We’ve tried to make it easy for you. We’ve put in a Belle and Sebastian tune, Funny Little Frog,demonstrated by Catherine Ireton, or you could listen to a new tune, called The Psychiatrist Is In, which is also sung by Catherine, and which will be sung by Girl 1 in the finished recorded version….
…because we’re making a record of all the songs the kids wrote that summer, and we’re looking for people to sing them. Right this minute we’re looking for the girls,but the boys may follow.
We’re making a record, because that’s what we do. But when the time and the mood are right, the record will become a film. A MOVIE!
So we’d like you to send a picture of yourself with your recording, and perhaps a little bit of information about yourself. If you’ve done this kind of thing before, for instance, or if you can tango, or play the banjo. (and if you haven’t, just as good! we just want people who can sing nice!)
It might be an idea if you are interested and fancy yourself as a bit of a mover, to get a picture etc, to us anyway because at some point we will be looking for people to be extras and dancers and just basically beatniks for hire. So if you want to get a jump on the rest, send something now. But bear in mind it will be filmed in Glasgow, and not for a quite some time yet…
