The Power of Walking Your Dog

Ladies and gentlemen, do I have some things to share with you! Firstly, I'd like to open this post by saying I am not the best lyricist. When I was younger I was much better at that part of the creative song writing process, but as I've grown older the cliche sayings in my writing have made it exceedingly difficult to enjoy the writing process. Despite that, as I begin writing this post I feel the need to inform you, dear reader, that I'm doING MY BEST.

Since melodies often float in and out of my head, it was not difficult for my noggin to spew out a random combination of notes and rhythms. I was sitting in my room, fan on low, rabbit begging for attention (did I mention I have a rabbit? yeah, he's wonderful.), when I realized that I needed to get into my character's mindset in order to write something truthful. To do that, I had to decide exactly how I wanted my film to open.

That was the hard part.

I'm a creative person, and like most creative people, as soon as I have one idea, my brain automatically jumps onto another. Because of this, it was hard to decide which idea to settle on, but once I saw the vision I couldn't take it back. The first thing I saw was a younger version of my character, probably around the age of 7 or 8, looking back at the camera and running into a forest. First she would be seen in an establishing shot, her face towards the woods, her back towards the camera. The long shot would establish her as young on account of how short she is, the dress she's in almost swallowing her whole. The camera would then show a close up of her face from the side, looking towards the forest, before switching to a mid shot of the back of her that we saw earlier as she glances back before showing another close up of her face, more visible but her full face not completely seen. This would allow her emotions to be represented clearly, indecision and anxiety evident on her face. During this time there might be a slow zoom into her face. The zoom would stop abruptly as soon as her decision was made, her face determined. The shot would then go back to the side of her face as she looks towards the woods with a small grin on her face before going back to the establishing shot from before as she runs inside.

Below you will find a mini storyboard for this opening sequence, during which you would see credits including the names of the actors in my film and anything else I might elect to include. (PS: This is kinda the first storyboard I myself have created! I know that the next time I do this I have to be less wordy but I worked really hard and it's okay because I will produce a cleaner outline later as this was a 15 minute draft. Also I'm not an artist but we've already covered that.)

I hope that makes my vision clear for you, dear reader! Anyways, it was then that I realized in order to write these lyrics, I needed to be outside of my house. Fortunately for me, it was at that moment that my mom came and asked me to walk the dog. With my trusty phone and it's voice memo application, I set out of my house, pink leash in hand, image in my mind.

Here's the best description I could offer of this experience:

0:10 - 10 seconds in and my dog is walking faster than usual today. No idea why.
0:30 - She has slowed down and the weather is treating me well. I am pleased.
1:20 - Silence.
3:40 - I begin questioning the silence.
5:15 - Still silent and stressed, I dial my poetic pal Jackie's number to ask for assistance.
5:16 - No answer. Brilliant. This is going great.
5:17 to 6:01 - Arguing with myself extremely sarcastically and avoiding another dog walker because I look insane.

Around 7 minutes in, I kinda started recording whatever came to mind. As soon as I relaxed and looked around at the area I was in (which happened to look like a teeny tiny forest), the lyrics just started to flow naturally. While I initially aspired to used mature language in this, I realized that since in the very beginning she's a young girl, I could use my typical song lyric lexicon. Here's what I came up with:

"I can feel it

there’s a pulse inside me

even if I can’t see it

I know it’s there

I can hear it

like a thund’ring drum

and somehow now I’ve come

to embrace it

it calls me

begging to break the dawn

it beckons

me from the road I’m on

and when it calls I struggle to resist

but when the wind rushes past me

my whole world starts to spin

I can’t breathe

but I feel

something real reels me in

something real

pulls me from within"

So yeah, that's what I've got so far. It only took me about two hours of walking aimlessly to figure it out but I didn't mind because I actually enjoyed it. After that I sat at my laptop for a total of four hours and seventeen minutes in an attempt to translate what I wrote into sheet music and add the instruments I wanted to hear. This is what I've got thus far! Also, I figured out how to embed a slideshow into my blog post! This way, I was able to transfer all of the images of my sheet music into a slideshow and make it a lot easier for you, dear reader. This is especially helpful at this particular moment in time because I currently have 12 pages of sheet music. While this may not sound like a lot, first, it took me multiple hours, and second, you do not want to scroll through that.

This is the video I used to guide this process! PS: I elected to have my width set at 500 for the purpose of fitting into my blog post's width. Works great for Google Blogger!

Anyways, here's my sheet music and the tune itself! You may notice a few changes in lyrics as I had to fit the rhythms I wanted in. The guitar represents the voice of Charlotte :)

In my upcoming posts I'll talk more in depth about the decisions I made and why I decided to do certain things, but that is a tale for another time.

See y'all later!

How to insert a slideshow of photos into your blog post. (2014, July 04). Retrieved March 23, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH4jCdcfqyc