Get ready for some Updates

Well, well, well... It's been awhile since the last post, That means I've been really busy... well it should mean that.

I've got loads to update you on, I could do it all in this one post, but you'd get very bored and it would be unfortunately long. This post will be like a contents page, I'm just telling you what to expect over the next week or so.

There is a few things to tell you about the current productions, we've finished shooting. Jon and I have taken loads of photos, which I'll upload. I've almost finished the foley sound for the torture scene and I will be starting the suspense sound on monday. I filmed myself doing it, which I'll edit together for your viewing. I'll have probably done the edit and colour by the end of next week too.

I've started the Major Project, new blog, practice shorts, making of videos. Lots of interesting stuff there to tell you of.

The Eighties Club, a web series I've been working on about 80s cinema.

Starting up the social networking sites again. Towards the end of my 2nd year I started doing the social network sites, trying to get my work viewed. Over the summer I lost interest in it, mainly down to the fact I didn't have a lot of work to shout about. Anyway, I'll save it for the post.

I think thats about it, the current production and the Major Project will take up a few posts. So get ready to do some reading!

Major Project...part 2

So the saga continues...

I left off on the Casino shoot, but i'll move on from that.

Editing is something I really enjoy, but before we could start chopping we had to get on with filing. Well, Mark did the filing, i'm personally a bit of a messy worker, but i'm learning. Once we named and filed all the footage Mark started the editing process. Editing is a area i'm really keen on, but I decided to stand back and let Mark use me when he needed. What I mean is, if Mark is stuck on a edit he can ask me for advice and I might be able to suggest something, a bit like a editors assistant. Or maybe thats what a director would do, i'm not too sure. In future productions I'd like to edit the film, not because I think I can do better, I enjoy doing it.

Throughout this production I have been looking at what I may want to do as a career. I enjoy all the areas which makes it hard to decide. For a longtime i've always fancied myself as a director, but I don't think I did that much of a great job on this production. People wasn't sure what they were doing, pressure got to other crew members because the shoot was under planned.

Don't get me wrong I am unbelievably pleased with what we have achieved, the script, the locations, the cast, the extras, the equipment, the lot. But, i'm not pleased with my contribution on set. I feel I am more of a film maker than a director. I don't want to just direct, I want to make the whole thing... that isn't good, because there is too much work for one man, as i've learnt.

Anyway, on with the edit,
What we thought was a good work flow has now shot us down. The file sizes, due to the export setting are too big. Which means final cut keeps crashing and this is not good for colour correcting/editing. We may need to go back to a earlier version and leave the cropping and animating till last. Luckily we scheduled well enough that we have time to do some back tracking. We wanted everything done by Mon/ Tue so that we could start collecting the work together to hand in... never mind...

This set back does mean we'll have to jeopardise something for the hand in date. I imagine this will be the sound. The dialogue needs a lot of treatment, It may even need re-doing. This can be done by getting the actors to dub their voices. It sound silly, but most film do it.

The sound recording is a area I cannot get my head round, I have recently bought a book that covers all areas of sound design from set, to foley, to ambiance, everything. Hopefully this will help me understand the best ways of recording on set sound. The special feature on the blu ray of Australia have a really good, but short insightful documentary on sound, which taught me a lot.

There is still more to come.
TO BE CONTINUED...

Major Project...part 1

This maybe one hell of a blog! I've been pretty tardy (slow/delayed, not slang for retard) with blogs for the major project. I started off well with my videos blogs, but once the project got more intense I began forgetting to blog. Has a group we have been working really hard starting at 10 am and not finishing till 8 pm, by the time I've got the bus home it's usually near 9 pm and I'm too tired to stare at a screen.

So, this is kind of back blogging... I'll probably forget something, thats the problem with not documenting that same day, your brain starts to drop the less important parts.

Anyway i'll try picking up where I left off. I think we'd just finished doing the rehearsals. Since then it's been hectic.

After the rehearsals we did some location scouting. We have been lucky enough to get the ALEA casino to agree to let us film the majority of the short there. The Alea is a bit too glam for what we originally wanted, but at the same time we would be fools to turn it down. For the sake of changing the script to fit casino it's worth doing.

Luck hasn't been on our side with casting the character of Kath. Graeme convinced his friend to play the part, although she wasn't what we originally wanted (much like the Alea) we had to adapt the script to fit. She also didn't want to do the naughty parts. However, a couple of days before shoot she caught flu, or something. We had to set the Kath schedule back, which we really didn't want to do, but instead of rushing it I said to the other two "let's get throught the shoot, get some order to the footage, start editing, break for the weekend and pick up on monday when we're refreshed" Also because Leeds Utd we're playing in the playoffs at the weekend, I was nervous about that never mind thinking about the project. I put the project to one side, but Graeme hadn't. We met on the Saturday to watch Leeds and he had re-written the scene with a man (Kev) instead of Kath. We have had too much trouble trying to cast a women in this role, so we decided it maybe better to make it a man. Again this didn't fit the story we originally wanted to tell, but we had to adapt for the situation we were in. We we're already behind half a week to the original schedule and couldn't wait. We thought it would be much quicker and easier to cast a menacing male. When Graeme put the call out he Advertised it as Kev/Kath and to our surprise we got a lot of interest from both male and female. A fellow student Jim Dunford recommended Helen from one of his previous shoots and before we could contact her she had already applied for the part. FADE. She was happy enough to come in the same day for a chat and a quick read through. We weren't really prepared for it, but what the hell we got her in anyway. Helen turned out great and was up for a quick shoot and was free on the day we wanted to film.

I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. Back a bit.
I'll miss out all the Kath problems and go straight on with the shoot.

On the morning of the shoot I surprisingly got up on time, which was becoming an issue, but I pulled my act together. However, our first problem came straight away when we got to college the equipment we had booked was not there, which turned our faces red! We had been planning the shoot for weeks, spent our whole easter break practicing with the equipment to make sure we could set up quick and get on with the shoot. Graeme had booked the equipment a week in advance and kept on asking and emailing to the day. We eventually got our equipment, but we were 45 minutes behind. When we got to the Alea and there were most of the actors there and some of the extras. That added some pressure to the start of the day and we all had to chill out quickly and get on with the job. Then we couldn't figure out the sound device, which took a good 20 minutes to get working.

Loads of extras turned up, about 15, which were great, felt amazing. After around an hour and half of fannying about we finally got the first shot set up. You could see that people were already beginning to get bored, so Graeme was doing his best to get around and talk to the extras he had brought and I was doing the same with mine, whilst we set up the shot. I left the camera stuff to Mark, which I think added to his pressure and possibly pissed him off. But that couldn't be helped. I quickly realised that doing a shoot of that size with that many people and lots of equipment needed more than three of us. We recruited friends to help with the boom mic and monitering the sound, but that didn't mean I hasn't thinking about it. I probably thought about it more because I wasn't directly doing it.

I ended up setting the lights up for the first shot, and I can honestly say lighting is not my strong point. This started it get to me when I couldn't get it right. I think the amount of time we were taking added pressure to Mark, because we hadn't filmed anything yet and you could see the actors getting bored and unsettled. I think he just wanted to start filming, but I wasn't going to start anything till I got it looking right, Once I stressed this to Mark, he and my step dad started helping me with the lights. We were massively behind and this was the busy day, with the most to do.

I don't think people will believe me when I say that was the hardest days work in my life. The next day our fatigue was low. We could barely walk. The second day shoot was nowhere near has intense. However, only 5-7 extras turned up. This made the shots extremely hard to get. We had to reuse people over and over again. It'll be funny watching it back, you'll be able to see the same extra lots of times in different places in the same sequence. Hopefully no-one will see.


More to come...
TO BE CONTINUED...

mmm... major project.

Oh dear, i'm getting a little lazy with this blogging stuff.

It's been that busy the last few weeks! ... Anyway, whats been going on?

We've pretty much cast the whole thing, found our location. Had a read through and rehearsed the film. Some how we've managed to get the Alea casino as a location. The place looks really impressive, it's a bit too fancy for what we had in mind. However it looks good and they are giving us much more creative direction and time than anywhere else. For the sake of altering the script slightly it's well worth it. It also has two other location we needed and were struggling to find, massive bonus!

The actors seems to be getting really into it and are involving themselves much more than I expected. Either they really like the script or haven't got anything better to do. As long has they are committed i'm not fussed. They all performed very well in the rehearsals which calmed my nerves.

There isn't much more pre-production now. We need to re-work the theme song (which i'm doing on sunday), we need to find the props (thats monday) and make a shots list and thats about it.

I'll try putting another video blog together. I have the footage, but need the time to edit it.

Yey!

VIDEO BLOG 2

OH! This is a little late ... again, but here it is anyhow.

Not as interesting this time, just a lot of me on the phone talking to the screen ... which you may or may not like.

Didn't film a lot of the good stuff, like looking at locations and whatnot. People tend to not like a camera in there face ... shame.



I've got some good footage of us doing auditions (which will be this weeks blog, so it'll be uploaded next week), not sure if the people that don't get the part will be too happy about being on it, but what they don't know won't hurt eh...

The project is going strong, were pretty much on schedule, just can't seem to cast KATH! It's a hard part to send a call out for, the breakdown is a horrible sweaty fat woman, I mean how do you make that sound nice ... Oh you can't ... And nobody will look at it and think "eyup i'm ideal for that part"

Beside's Kath the other problem is locations, if you've watched the Vid you'll know it looks like the subculture either don't want us doing it there or have forgot (i've emailed them again today), but its easy for a venue to say "yeah sure" but once you start talking about times and dates and how cast and crew they go a little quite. I think they really want to help out, but if anything goes wrong, like a crew member trips up over a wire and dies, the venue doesn't want to be responsible. Plus we aren't paying them, so we can't expect them to go out of there way for us. A simple yes or no would be nice though.

What else ...
I've been reading the Watchmen novel, it's quite amazing. Didn't think it would be as good as the hype, but it is ... wish i'd have read it before the movie chaos, then I could have been one of those moaners that say things like "its not as good as the book" and "it's too complacts to fit in just one movie" or "your only read the novel now because the films come out, jumping on the band wagon?"

Good times,

I've surprising not watched a great deal recently ... too busy reading! However, there has been the odd thing. I've discovered Flight of the Conchords, which is quite frankly one of the funniest things i've ever seen. Please, please get a copy and laugh hard. On the funny side i'm glad the Inbetweeners as started again, the first episode was really good, second one was alright too. I watched Waltz and Bashir ... Fantastic, a must see. There been some others too, but nothing worth rising my voice about.

Last bit,

This is what happens when I don't blog for a few days ... my thoughts mount up into one unfortunate read.

So, last bit (hopefully)

I'll probably right this into its own blog, but briefly ... My G.I JOE's came this week. The good man (Gio) that runs the G.I Joe festival sent me a small collection of 3.5 inch joe's to make a stop motion animation. Which cost him $54 to ship them to me!!!!!! that puts the pressure on to make something good.

I think i'm going to start a complete new blog for that and again keep a video diary. I'll keep the project posted on this one too.

...

I wonder if anybody actually read this ... If you do send a comment, make me feel good!

Cheers.

VIDEO BLOG 1

This is the first Video blog for the major project.



Video blogging is a strange thing, it's hard to get the tempo right and decide what you thing think other people want to listen to. At first I set up a camera in front of me and I started yapping on about the project. I soon realised that I'd been chatting away for 12 minutes, I only wanted the blog to last 3!

I made the decision to only use the particle footage I filmed.

I've started work on week 2, we play around with the crane (jib) and I'm on the phone.

Glad I don't have to listen to myself speak on a daily basis

Oh my, haven't blogged for awhile so this might be a long one.

First off!

Last week I went to Guerrilla Shorts at Hyde Park picture house. It was really good. Nice to see other shorts and how they are put together. What I took from it was that short films don't try to tell a full story, but a section from a story. Like a couple of scene pulled out of a feature. It's a bi-monthly event so keep your eyes peeled for it because it needs the support. They also take submissions visit there myspace.

Righto

I've been reading loads of books about short film making, digital film making, well, anything and everything about film making and how you can achieve good cinema on the cheap. I think that's what I really want to do with my career, make good films with super low budgets. I like finding cheapo ways of doing stuff. MAKING SHORT FILMS was a good read with some nice tips and there is a couple of copies in the college library. Digital Film making by Mike Figgis is great, bought that on play.com for £7. Also, I've reading a load of scripts. its really helped me write one.

Anyway

Major project. WOW, its going great. We've really hit the floor running. We need to be though because were aiming really high. I've been playing the role of writer and producer so far. Were taking little steps at a time. I finished the screenplay today and Graeme as tidied up my appalling spelling and grammer, plus added and changed some of the action and dialogue for the better. I think we've made a really good team and work hard at it. We was on Skype all weekend mainly arguing or taken the piss, but we also sorted a lot out. The wonders of technology saving me bus fairs. If only we could get it set up in college! I wouldn't have to leave my bedroom.

I went to see a location on Monday, not sure if it'll work, but I was on the phone to Kieran the manager of Subculture (night club in Leeds) this evening and he seemed ok for us to film there, which would work. So all being well that is one location down!

What else

I tried doing a video blog on the weekend for this major project, but its harder than I thought. I'm not that pleasing to listen to, glad I don't have to listen to myself speak on a daily basis, sorry friends! Would still really like to do a Video Diary, so i'll stick at it.

Not sure if there is anything else I've done that I should report. ermmmm...

No thats it.

I'm sure I won't be the only person looking forward to seeing the back of it.

I'm really excited about this major project. Me, Graeme and Mark are teaming up again and I think we might need another body in the group. We are really going to push the boat out this time and make something great. Seeing what Tom, Rory, Jim, Moody and Harry's group have achieved this time has been a real inspiration.

The three of us started writing a short idea over Christmas and I think we will develop that. The idea is really ambitious and will need planning by the minute. My enthusiasm is through the roof at the moment and I need to keep this momentum.

The problem with the Black Hole brief is it's got the better of all of us and I'm sure I won't be the only person looking forward to seeing the back of it.

However, filming Tim yesterday was a good laugh and I'm pleased with the footage. Tim is going to read for a part in our major project. I'd really like to use actors in their late 20's to mid 30's, because they take the project more seriously. I think sometimes young actors care more about themselves than the project and want themselves to come across looking good even if that's not apart of the storyline.

Anyway...
That's a ramble for another day.