Tired Eyes

Background

When assigned to make a documentary at University, writer Alex Jarvis approached Director Joe McStravick and the rest of the production group with a concept for a documentary, based on a question he had been recently asking himself "What do blind people dream about". This was then expanded to "what do blind or partially sighted people dream about?".

Production

A local community care centre for the blind and partially sighted agreed to let the team speak with their residents and to use their faculties for the interviews.

Two members of the crew held the low-key interviews using only a standard mini disc player for recording audio - no cameras were used during the interviews. Seven people - of various age groups, backgrounds and countries gave interviews.

After the interviews had taken place the recording transcript was then used as a basis for further research into the blind, partially sighted people's lives at the Royal National Institute of Blind People. They also looked into dreams and dreaming patterns from various texts and sleep research institutions, like the Sleep Research Lab at Loughborough University, England

Due to the zero budget the crew had to use various types of mini-DV and DV-cam Camera's at various times during 2 months.

Post-production

In post-production it was decided that four of those seven people would be used in the final ten-minute film.

The director approached Composer and Sound Designer Jay Enticknap (aka FM Umlaut) with a final cut. The director wanted a musical theme for each of the four people (interviewee's). For two of them, he wanted "simple" theme's in the vein of old John Carpenter score's like Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween or The Fog. For the other two interviewee's, Jay Enticknap used his own hip hop and funk influences to create score's which reflected their respective Middle Eastern, African and Urban backgrounds.

For the soundtrack Jay Enticknap would carry out all sound department duties himself, form Foley to design, mix and dub.