Feedback On Doorways

Feedback from Mike our tutor, together with some initial thoughts, including the danger of not looking carefully at the background, and finding it unexpectedly intruding into our story.

Our group has feedback from Mike (our tutor), and I thought it might be interesting to share it with you together with commentary -- not because I want to argue with Mike or to score points, but because his feedback may well change how you watch the video (or indeed, reinforce how you already feel) and my comments back will -hopefully- explain how we ended up in that situation in the first place, and maybe how we prevent a recurrence.

For example, it never occured to us that the Beatle shot might look as if Dan is morphing into a fifth member of the group. It was just a poster on the wall, a rather innocent looking poster...now watch the film again... and we'll look more carefully at background walls, etcetera in future. Unless we actually want to create an effect, it may be that we'll default to blank walls wherever possible.

Mike commented that we needed some tension if Dan and Greg are actually robbing something, and asked what shots would have created this. The answer is that while I knocked on the door once, we should really have repeated the knock --perhaps more urgently—and then cut to Dan or Greg’s face and showed some fear to raise the tension.

Mike commented that the story opens with an office scene, then there's dialogue, then Dan comes through the door. None of this immediately signposts the story. Where is the door from? Does a new viewer know that the dialogue has just happened and that the robbery is ‘now’ and this is now a flashback?

The answer in short, is no. Greater clarity is needed. I know that Mike doesn't like captions like 'ten minutes later,' etc, but in this case if we were to use just one caption, it would be just as the voiceover argument kicks in.

Mike commented that the garden scene looks great but how might it be interpreted? The music said ‘creepy’ the light said ‘Police’? The music changes to more of a ‘police action theme’ and Dan hangs around in the garden for 50 seconds.

He’s right – we collectively fell in love with the scene, whereas we should have cut 30 seconds from the film. I'd never even thought of a blue light signifying police. I feel as if there are great chunks of film symbolism that I'm missing at the moment!

Mike said that the cut transition back is not obvious. We needed to establish the ‘device’ to make the story understandable to the audience, within the logic of the film. We see a ‘footfall’ then you cut to a CU of Dan’s face for the ‘realisation’ beat. ("Careful there’s a laugh here, possibly unintentional, when it looks like he’s joined the Beatles! We need to be aware here that 3 minutes into the film we don’t want to take the audience ‘out’ of the film.")

Oh Gawd, we never even thought that it might be taken that way...just goes to show what unintentional consequences come out of being too close to the film.

Mike said that the scenes in the SU needed better planning. It was very static and since the coverage is all quite wide the actors’ performance seemed rather stop/start.

Unfortunately that was all the footage we had. That scene was the first shooting that we did, and if we’d had our time over I’d probably have suggested that we shot it again. Hey ho; one always has 20/20 vision with hindsight.

The city centre scene is confusing initially since [the narrative] cut to an empty frame and Dan and Greg walk into shot. Don’t they need to step in? The previous 2 transitions the foot fell into shot. "It’s your device but you need to be consistent with it to aid audience comprehension."

He’s right. If you look at the step in on the street scene it’s different from the others.

Mike asked, "Why use the caption ‘The next day’. Why not straightaway? Maybe because Dan has a jacket on now? Maybe because they have swapped positions? Either way it weakens the cut. If you had a close up and then cut to the wide it’s unlikely anyone would have noticed."

The caption was to show that time had elapsed to have the idea. I’d never thought of that particular shot transition.

Mike commented, "If Olivia and Teagan were playing ‘maltesers’ in the same position as the fantasy, you could have visually made the same point without the lines “I’m so glad you saved me the other night.” This is really ‘on-the-nose’ dialogue, narration. "

Good point. For the rest, again it was the first afternoon’s shooting. It shows how much one can learn in just two days.

Mike commented that in the office scene Greg disappears and Dan says “ Greg, Where are you?” Mike notes that it’s a small office, and asked how we might have shown the “where are you Greg beat” without dialogue?

Panned around the office, of course. Easy to say now.

Mike concluded with "The film is a good group effort and a positive start of the module."

Nice to know, and the group have tried to learn as much as possible from the outing.

Doorways Now Online

Finishing off the films at last and moving onto new ideas for scripts for the next film.

This morning's lecture covered two main areas. The first was finishing off Doorways, our short film. The mark doesn't count towards the overall assessment, and Mike admitted that he'd marked us hard, but I must admit that 58% is a frustrating mark, just short of a 2:1 -- but better than I'd feared.



There were a lot of positives to come out of the feedback, which I hope to be able to post on the blog. But in the meantime, here's the actual film:

I've also posted links to the other two films made by our group, Choices(2) and Exit.

The second part involved us floating ideas for the next film. Of the five of us in our group, every member had at least one good idea, so it will be fascinating to see how these ideas develop.

Miscellaneous Friday Post

Should I blog about Let The Right One In here --or elsewhere? Meanwhile, I've learned a few more things about filming this week, especially the role of producer and paperwork.

Last night's core lecture, a screening of the original Swedish version of Let the Right One In, throws up an interesting dilemma. Do I discuss it here? This is -after all-- a blog about film-making. But it was a core lecture, and I'm keeping a journal so I'll do that.

But here's a link to the trailer:


Meanwhile, I've learned a few more things about filming this week.

One of them is that the next time I fill in a PasC (Project as Completed) form, I need to do it on my own machine, rather than one of the uni ones. It's a summary that takes about half an hour to an hour to complete, with lots of detailed information. It's mandatory for completion. And I lost the damned thing, through saving it into the editing suite in error.

On the subject of paperwork which I'm now starting to link inextricably with film-making, the last couple of weeks have taught me a lot about the role of producer, about how hard it is to complete (seemingly-)tedious documentation when the cast and crew are in full creative flow. No wonder the great studio bosses were all complete bastards. But it's hard to say, "Hold on, let me tick this one off the list before you go onto the next shot."

Another learning was that we need to allow more time next time for each scene. And to road-test the next film as a screening.

Next time, I'll finally move onto scripts.

Watching Choices

We watched seven different vesrions of Choices, five of which kept the name. We changed our version's name to Doorways. Modesty aside, I thought that ours was about the third best, behind one called Exit, and Team Awesome's Choices. But there were learnings to come from all of them.

Yesterday we watched screenings of the seven different short films made using Abi Green's script Choices.

With stunning lack of originality, five of the films were called Choices; only two of the groups actually changed the title. The first group called theirs Exit, while we changed ours to Doorways.

We opened with Exit, which was one of the best films, largely because they dispensed with much of the admittedly clunky plot devices, and concentrated instead on exploring the emotional effects of finding oneself able to jaunt. (I've deliberately used [the pictured] Bester's term for teleportation, because it carries within it the emotional consequences) Exit was also very well edited, used a whole load of locations, and was comparatively under-acted compared to later offerings. Against that, the ending was a little murky -- I got the impression that there was some kind of emotional equilibrium achieved, but I'm not sure exactly what the girl had to do with it.

Almost as good was Team Awesome's (So modest!) Choices. The acting was better than most -- the killer apart-- although the default reliance on swearing rather weakened it. The denouement was well worked out and was probably the best and most positive outcome. My only criticism of that was it should simply have ended when Dan and Olivia appeared, rather than the 15 or 20 seconds of Greg afterwards, which was unnecessary, and rather weakened the effect.

There was also an intermittently funny comedy version which unfortunately misfired badly at times. Parts of it were hilarious, parts of it not so.

And then there was ours, which yes, did spend too long on the night scene but had superb end credits, both courtesy of Jaeeun, who did a brilliant job, and Teagan. No one commented on the music, but I thought ours worked well, and the actors generally managed not to overact or swear. There were valid comments that it was unclear whose voice the v/o belonged to.

There were three others that weren't so good, but I'd rather accentuate the positives, and pass over the others. What came out of it was that we all needed someone to take a look at the next film we make prior to screening, to ensure that we've explained plot points adequately, and that we all need to exert stronger control over the cast -- although I thought we worked ours fairly well.

Hopefully at some point we will be able to post links, so people outside the class can take a look.

You Should Be Dancing...

Christmas is coming, time to show one of the very best ads of the year, even though I can't quite put my finger on what it is that makes such a very good film - be it characterization, music, or just...fun.



It's Christmas, a time for (self-)indulgence. After all I've been faithfully linking to short student films all term -- now it's time for some me-time...and this is a short film...even if it's shorter than usual and has about a million times the budget of most of the films I've profiled this term.



Purely as an ad, the M&S campaign is brilliant, and shows what can be done if one has almost unlimited resources. But more than that, on a personal level I can't help but smile when this comes on the tv. And last night I tracked the ad down in it's entirety....





I'm still trying to work out why it's such a good ad. Part of it is the nostalgia that any track from the summer of 76 evokes, let alone a landmark disco track; part of it is the embedded conflict between Peter Kay's character and Twiggy. Part of it is the sheer fun that everyone seems to be having.

Time and Motion

Throughout November I kept notes on the number of hours that I worked each day, and what I was spending that time on. Unsurprisingly, Making A Film took up a lot of time. What surprised me was how much time two of my subjects took up.

As I've mentioned both here and on my main blog and at Suite101, throughout November I kept detailed notes on the number of hours that I worked each day, and what I work I was spending that time on.

The shortest day I worked was a three and a half hour day, when I was ill. That was almost entirely taken up with reading and networking, which can be done from bed. Four of the six longest days were -unsurprisingly- Mondays, when I'm in uni from nine until four or six o'clock.

The baseline is that of the two hundred and forty hours that I worked, ninety-six were spent solely on university work, plus the twenty-eight hours of reading. I counted this journal separately from blogging, since it's for a specific purpose.

Excluding reading, a whopping 43% of my uni hours are spent on this subject, for what is 33% of my marks. Including reading, it drops to a third, which is about right...except that we are supposed to read for this subject as well. Perhaps I should shave off the reading for this subject? No. I thought not; it's sub-divided enough already.

It isn't just me that feels that Making A Film is a colossal time-sink. Almost every one of my group has expressed similar sentiments this term. (And like me, they were probably most forcibly expressed when we were cold, tired, or otherwise stressed)

There is a alternative view to this. The two subjects which take up most of my time -this and Feature Journalism account for almost two-thirds of my uni time- are the two that I'm least familiar with. I can dash off a thousand words of fiction for Core or Genre in a little over a day. But I'm familiar with them.

So maybe it's appropriate that this and Journalism are time sinks, since if I don't spend most of my time on them, I won't learn.

Writing For Films

Our latest lecture covered writing from a film-maker's perspective, which includes some themes that are unique, but also some that are universal. One in three ideas will be good, another (maybe) worth persevering with.

This morning our Film Making lecture covered writing for films. Although it was presented from a film-maker's perspective, there were themes that were universal.

From a film-maker's perspective, one in three scripts will be good, one will be so-so, and one will be not worth persevering with. That rule of thumb seems to apply across the board, so it's generally worth outlining three ideas simultaneously.

Very little in film is truly original, so there's no need to add pressure to oneself by looking for originality at the expense of characterization or other key elements. That's not to say that genuine innovation is bad, merely that it's not the be-all and end-all of scriptwriting. The key elements in filmic writing -certainly in Hollywood- are Character, Desire, Obstacle and Goal.

In terms of Character, we are given a character with whom we can identify. It may be that we are shown a Nice Guy.

What -or whom- does he Desire? It may that he is in love with the girl next door. The Obstacle may be the thug with whom she is going out.

The Goal will be how this inherent conflict is to be resolved. Either our hero gets the girl, or if he is beaten up by the thug, he may walk away from the girl, as the hero of Casablanca walks away from the girl, in the process achieving a new Goal.

One key text in this morning's lecture was James Webb Young's A Technique for Producing Ideas. The author is a former advertising executive hired by a major company to generate ideas, and he has some interesting points to make. I may well come back to this in more detail in a future blog, but Idea Generation is for a separate blog.

Behind The Scenes

Upsum

I've posted a couple of blogs already introducing the team and outlining some of the issues involved in the making of Doorways, our adaptation of Abigail Green's screenplay.

I've now added a behind the scenes film shot (mostly) by Teagan on Megan's camera. By some nifty footwork I managed to stay out of most of the footage (I hate seeing myself on film or hearing myself talk), although the sneaky bugger got everywhere and inevitably he got me. But it'll give you some idea of the chaos involved around people not turning up, and what goes on as people sit around for ages waiting to do thirty second's worth of film.



More in a day or two.

Some Reflections on Filming

Films are geared toward working in clusters of pre-production, production and post-production activities.

Most students want to work on a little of everything, but it seems to me that films are operations much better geared to batch working. So there are the pre-production aspects -- scriptwriting (without which nothing much can happen) casting, obtaining permissions, writing risk assessments, and obtaining initial music selections.

Production involves five main crew parts; the producer (like the one working hard on the right), director, sound engineer and camera-person, with the clapperboard operator an optional fifth in cramped conditions (in cramped conditions there's no reason why the producer couldn't double up.

Post production involves editing and sound editing (the first one involves the actual film).

More thoughts another time.

Meet The Team

A brief introduction to the cast and crew of Doorways, our short film, including who did what.


While we wait for the editing suite to save the first reel of film to the computer, I've got time to start a blog post.

It seems a good point to introduce the people with whom I've spent most of the weekend, from left to right Sound Engineer Jaeeun Jung and Exec Producer Baylea Hart (while off to the right is the unit's director, Julia Hien)

Cameraperson Megan Kelland;


Runner (and part-time actor) Teagan Lucas

And lastly, our three main actors, Joe, Matt & Emily - Joe is a musician who has done some
acting, while Matt and Emily are first year drama students; all of them turned in outstanding performances.

More tomorrow...

Hanging Around

Last night's post held over this morning, due to poster fatigue; hanging around is surprisingly tiring. Instead I'm going to do a small post, and another on Tuesday.




I was originally going to open with: 6pm on Saturday night; we’ve just finished for the day after8 ½ hours on set.


But it's now 9.40 am on Sunday morning, and I've got half an hour before leaving for the today's filming (which I hope is the last day). Fatigue caught up with me last night...so instead of a post last night and another today, I' doing a short post today and another on Tuesday (tomorrow I have a nine-hour day at uni plus travel time, which is not conducive to blogging).


As you have deduced, we got our permissions on Friday. However, the lead actor had a lecture which he couldn't get out of, so we started later than planned on Friday afternoon. The SU team were -as always- incredibly helpful, and having started two hours late, we managed to finish only an hour behind schedule.


Saturday was another story. Started late (the other male lead was late this time) and just got later.

Filming is an incredibly time-consuming and at time time-wasting process. Perhaps film crews get used to being at the mercy of the public, stopping to allow through traffic, smart-alec pedestrians who ‘know their rights’ and delivery vans – lots and lots of delivery vans...or maybe if you're the BBC or Miramax, you just hurl a wodge of money as compensation to all affected, and have the street closed off.

So if you think you’ll need two hours, allow four. Get ready to do it over and over again --one five sentence exchange required thirteen takes, partly because of Joe Public, partly because it was getting toward lunchtime and energy levels really do drop, meaning that people make more mistakes.

Either way, we wasted an awful lot of time, and for those not involved in the shoot, it can actually be more tiring than those doing the filming and acting. Partly because we have to keep focused for when we are needed, or to keep an eye on the bags.

As producer I combined overall responsibility with guarding the bags, keeping hold of the shot list and interveing in the film-making as little as possible. There were times when I felt a second explanation to the actors about how they needed to approach a scene helped, but I did try to minimize it. It's not particularly sexy, but just as every film needs spear carriers, so every crew needs runners. Only time will tell whether it was the right approach....

T Minus 80

An hour and twenty minutes to go. Either we get the equipment released, or we don't -- it's as simple as that. And if we don't, I have no idea what we're going to do.

80 minutes until we meet our Film Lecturer; my conscious brain is saying don't panic, there's no way he's going to fail you on the course, to rob six people of a chance of a BA for want of an e-mail is overkill.

My hindbrain is screaming eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!

I'm not sure which one is winning at the moment. Every few minutes I check my in-box for the missing e-mail; my mouth is dry and I'm likely to fly into a rage with the washing machine or any other inanimate object that baulks me.

The problem is that as producer, it's my role to arrange permissions for our unit over the weekend. So we had to obtain agreement from the Student's Union Bar (which included filling in a risk assessment form), the pub where we'll be filming, the campus authorities and Bath Spa Council. In the case of the latter, they can literally stop a unit filming in the street (it happened to Al Pacino in New York on one occasion).

Because film companies must get written permission to film on both private and public property to cover them against potential legal action, it's mandated for the course as well. So it's understandable that it's a requirement, or the course wouldn't reflect industry practice.

The major problem is one that I didn't even realize was a problem until this morning. The pub, The Raven, has given us verbal permission, but they haven't confirmed it. So, how late are they going to leave it? And what are our chances of walking away with the kit?

It's now T minus 65 and counting down...

Timekeeping

My first ever three-way blog post, covering a detailed analysis of my work patterns, including writing for publication, blogging & reviewing, reading...and my four university subjects.


This will be the first time that I've written a cross-blog post that covers all three blogs --my general one, my specifically SF blog, and this one- but since the exercise that it relates to covers all my activities as a writer, and a creative writing student, it's particularly appropriate. There won't be many occasions though, when my SF blog and this one will overlap.


I've often quoted the hours that I work in broad approximations, but starting on the 1st of November, I started to keep detailed records covering writing (for publication), blogging, reading and 'other,' (ie everything that doesn't fit in those boxes) and of course, my four uni subjects. I've been as honest as I can be, since it's really for my own records.


I'll post up the results at the end of the month when I've correlated them all, but the interim results at the mid-month mark are surprising...perhaps even shocking. But you're just gonna have to wait, aren't you?

Paperwork

We have little time to get all the permits that we need, from permission from the council to film in the street, to written agreement from the pub; fortunately the Student Union bar is a little more media-savvy...

We only have five days until filming is due to begin and we're getting into what Alec Ferguson calls 'Squeaky Bum Time.' Our group has to have all the paperwork in order to be allowed to start filming, and we have very little margin for error.

As producer, responsibility for procuring the paperwork lies with me. Yesterday I learned that some of the salient details had fallen off the application form that I had sent to the Bath Film Office. Without their permission in the form of a permit, we can't film in the city's streets.

Fortunately, they were agreeable to issuing permission, pending us providing them with a risk assessment. They wanted evidence that we had thought about the perils inherent in filming on location.

Meanwhile, I'm still chasing The Raven for their formal agreement; having been taken around the pub by their team, there's no doubting their commitment. But their priority is running a pub, not filling in release forms for a university film crew -- but I shall nag them.

Fortunately, the Student's Union bar is proving more amenable, but they have experience of these events, so filling in permission forms is second nature.

I've left Megan and Julia to get permission from the University, but if the get any problems, I'll help them out.

Last Year's Model

This is what you can do at our level...

As recommended by Megan, here's one of last year's films.


I particularly like the use of music, which really fits well -something that's really hard to do at student level, and the nightmarish way that the perspective keeps shifting; just who is the voyeur? Is it the Claudia? Stuart? The silhouetted man? Or is it each of us that watches it?

If the film has a weakness, it's that the sound on the crucial dialogue is of very poor quality, and that that whole section, when Claudia breaches the fourth wall, is completely out of the blue. They've clearly not heard of foreshadowing -- that, or they felt that it wasn't needed.

And on a lighter note, I recognized that archway through which Stuart ran...we were filming there ourselves ten days ago!

Perfect

A short film featuring the Mighty Marc Warren....


You know how it is when you see that gorgeous girl (or guy)? How envious you feel --even if it's quickly squashed-- of their partner?


Here's Perfect, the ahem, perfect antidote to any such feelings. Because that perfect (wo)man might not be quite so...

Late Submission

Forms and deadlines wait for no man...

Even allowing for my certainty that we had very little time until shooting was due to begin, I've still been on the hop by that oldest of problems -- illness.

With two weeks to go, I should have had the forms asking Bath Spa Council for permission to film in by last Friday; by that time I had already gone down with a viral infection, so I rang the Film Unit in Bath and was reassured that the form didn't need to be in a full two weeks before, that Monday would be acceptable.

The problem was that I wanted to get the others to look the form over first to see if I'd missed anything, or got it wrong, but the virus delayed my getting it out to them until Monday, so it was late Tuesday before I got the form in -- effectively first thing Wednesday.

I can only hope that they'll cut us some slack. Without that bloody permission, we can't film at all. We'll just have to see.

Location, Location, And Once Again...

A good afternoon in all, with a couple of nice surprises thrown in...

We all met at the Hobgoblin in Bath this afternoon at 1pm -- the first time all six of us have made a meeting at the same time. Darren (the landlord) was as helpful and supportive as ever, but we had arranged to look at The Raven so we trooped off there.

Initial signs weren't good -- the bar staff were busy and to be honest we felt a little like interlopers, even when some of us ordered food and drinks. However, when Rod took us all down to the cellar, we noted much more enthusiasm -- even to the extent of his making suggestions.

Out of that came the news that the pub has cctv -- if we can splice that feed into the edit, then we get a win on the editing. And he has an office which he's agreed that we can use.

So we're happy -- we've solved two of our three outstanding location issues.

The Turning Point

In which things change, decidedly for the better...

I mentioned that something very good happened on Monday.

We managed to nail down the script to the point at which it was possible to start storyboarding it, and at that point Julia, Baylea and Jaeeun have stepped up to the plate. As Julia is directing, this makes a lot of sense, and was a welcome respite at a time when I was in serious danger of being overwhelmed by work of one sort or another.

It's a similar situation to the Murder Mystery Evening last year, when Mark similarly took over, and I think it's a very healthy sign. If we can overcome the technical constraints, we should have a pretty good chance of finishing the project.

Move Over, Brad Pitt

A New Star Is Born...

(The main title was ironic, by the way -- as you'll see below...)

I didn't manage to blog yesterday, despite putting in a marathon 12 1/4 hour stint, that finally ended at 8.30 last night. Today won't be quite so long - at least, I hope it won't.

All things considered though, it was a great day.

On the downside, I made my screen debut in a filmed version of The Eager Student. I may have overdone the tired and washed out bit, so that it might have to be retitled The Knackered Old Student. :)

It was genuinely weird, seeing myself as others do. I have a mole on my neck just below my right ear, but I'm used to seeing it below my left. Odd little things like that make everything look a little surreal.

It was slightly unpleasant, if I'm honest. I have fairly low self-esteem which I manage to hide most of the time; maybe if I was used to it, had glammed up, etc, it wouldn't have been so bad...but hey. It's all about the experience.

What I found hardest was not looking at the camera, and having to try and do everything the same from take to take. It's much harder than it looks.

And the upside about yesterday?

Oh no, you don't get all that in one day. I'll post about that tomorrow...

X Marks The Spot....

In which our intrepid scouts head into Bath...

Yesterday afternoon was given over to location scouting. Megan, Jaeeun and I traipsed around the Newton Park offices looking for first-floor offices with sash-opening windows (we need it for the plot) -- but the only ones that might fit the bill aren't open at weekends. So it looks as if I'll be asking around in Bristol to resolve the problem.

But meanwhile, back at the campus Megan and I headed into Bath to check out street and pub locations for another scene. Where possible, it's always a good idea to get more than one location in case it rains or in case something else crops up, so we went to two venues. X might mark the spot on one occasion, but there's no guarantee that it will do so on the big day.

The Hobgoblin is a small pub with bare floorboards that specializes in metal pounding out at high volume. But Darren the barman seemed remarkably unfazed by our request to film in his cellar, even when we mentioned that we needed to simulate a robbery. I bought a pint of Gem to drink while Darren took Megan down to the cellar to take stills. It looks like the cellar may be too narrow, but we have another meeting on Monday to evaluate the stills.

Unfortunately we didn't get any joy out of the second venue, The Raven. It looks a bigger, better venue but Danny the barman couldn't take us down, and the Manager and Manageress were out at the time.

Looks like I'll be going into Bath again next week...

The Eager Student

The results of our groups' storyboarding exercise...

So our mission, intrepid reader, was to take a one or two page script and to work out what camera shots were needed. Then we needed to calculate how many different set-up positions there were for the camera.

Then, to test out the robustness of our calculations, we had to actually shoot stills using a test actor (so we picked Baylea, who hates having her picture taken!).


By folding them into a celtx file, and putting one still per shot, we then have an idea of how many shots are required.

This theory is slightly compromised by needing more than one still per shot for zoom shots. And to be honest, technical glitches mean that some of the text was lost somewhere along the line...but it does show what can be done to flesh out a script into a storyboard using still photography.

Unfortunately, celtx doesn't seem to interact at all with any programs available to Blogger, so after an hour and a half of trying, you'll just have to take my word for it...

Night Thoughts

In which our intrepid hero wakes in the night with a feeling of impending doom...

Awake at 3am aware that I hadn't posted, and mentally started writing this blog post. I'm really, really questioning the wisdom of taking this course.

It's not simply that the work is alien to me and I have to absorb a huge amount, while all the while time is even at more of a premium; finances have forced me back to the BEH at a critical period and I'm worried that Film Studies is becoming such a time sink that it's adversely affecting my other subjects.

But on top of that I'm reliant on five other people whom I've not worked with before, and that's posing an even bigger challenge.

I haven't posted the storyboard yet as I promised on Monday -- I'll try and get to that tomorrow...or Friday, since I'll be on my way back from London tomorrow.

Just Another Mental Monday

Shot Lists, Scene Lists & Storyboards

I worked six hours today without a break, because my lunch break had to be sacrificed for another group meeting. This subject is a bigger time sink than the other three combined -- and I do not exaggerate. I came straight home after my last lecture, and aside from a half-hour dinner break I've worked ever since, and have had to cancel going out tonight.

Grumble over.

We had to work out where we going to shoot each shot in a simple script that we were given, and then take stills from each position. It took us about an hour and several false starts, but we eventually got our pictures. The simple story board that came out of that exercise will be up on here tomorrow.

And in the meeting, we managed to nail down an ending...score!

Sunday the 24th

Only 27 days to go until shooting starts...

The first revision to the script came through this morning; not many changes, but enough there to make it feel for the first time that we're getting somewhere. Kudos to Baylea for that.

Next meeting is at 12 o'clock tomorrow, after the lecture; hopefully we'll get a little bit of time tomorrow to discuss the script.

Friday After the 1st Meeting

Reflections on the opening meeting of the Film Group

As I half-expected, the meeting wasn't as bad as I feared; trying to get the group to
a) focus and
b) to slow down enough to actually write the minutes

was a like herding a bunch of cats.

And we barely reached the point in the script when it went split screen --about 40% of the way through-- BUT we did have one 'win' moment, when we actually made a decision on how to handle that thorny little moment (for the benefit of any readers outside the group, the script has a section where the screen splits, and the audience has to watch two parallel narrative arcs).

So overall, even if we did need almost the whole two hours scheduled for the meeting, it was a start.

I've ordered thingy-Hurbis --the set text-- in the hope that it might start to give me a clue on how many pieces of equipment we'll need to use, and what the processes are. It was an eye-watering thirty pounds (even the Kindle version was twenty-three; wtf? It's an electronic copy!) but if it gets me through it'll have been worth it, I guess.

The Insane

Today's film is the winner of the Best Horror / Suspense Short at the 2008 Comic-con.



'The Insane' is written, produced and edited by David J. Ellison and Mark Cripps, and features the story of vengeful ex-cop John Vincent.







While the lighting, shooting and soundtrack may well be as good as some suggest, I'd venture that it's let down by a woefully cliched script. But then, I prefer my horror psychological, rather than splatterpunk.

But it still seems a good choice for Halloween

Inside

Today's film is Inside, made by Trevor Sands and starring Six Feet Under's Jeremy Sisto.



It's the first short I've seen with (English*) dialogue, and I may have become so conditioned by the dialogue-free shorts that I've been watching that I'm unsure whether I actually prefer my films to be free of jibber-jabber.







* We did actually watch a couple of French talking films with dialogue; one of them had voiceover rather than dialogue, but was so awful it was beyond description, but the other was very good; so I don't think that I'm automatically anti-dialogue. It may be that there were other issues, with the production for example.



That said, it had an original premise -- although I saw the twist coming, and didn't buy into the logic of it.

Thursday's Post

Today's meeting is making me pretty anxious

I have a group meeting this afternoon at 3 o'clock, which I'm a little uneasy about. So far, even getting six people into the same room at the same time has proved beyond us, and today is going to be no exception; to be fair to any absentees, it was arranged at short notice and we're still getting into our stride. Hopefully, any future meetings will be easier to arrange. Maybe we should split into sub-groups?

And having got as many of us together as we can, we then have to work out in detail our task list, and start thrashing out a compromise script; so far, everyone I've talked to has had very firm ideas about the script. The problem is, none of them seem to overlap. Oh well, I'm sure it won't be as bad as I fear.

I'll let you know tomorrow...

Strangers

Upsum = Today's film choice is a(n almost) silent film from Israel

Today's film choice is a(n almost) silent 2004 film from Israel, Strangers. I think that the station is in Haifa, but it's been almost thirty years since I visited the country, so I can't be sure.



I love the moment when the mobile goes off, and the symbolism at the end of the two men standing on separate platforms -- it's nicely underplayed.

She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not...

Still the best damn film I've seen this term...

I'm gradually increasing my film-watching quota, but hands-down still the best damn film I've seen this term (not that there are a lot of them...) is Jamie Rafn's She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not.

I didn't realize that this film was quite as old as it was -- which begs the question, whatever happened to Jamie Rafn?

I just love the music, which really works well with the film, I love the storyline, and I love the feisty heroine. Too many loves? So sue me...

Black Holes and Choices

Film Studies on 18th October 2010 -- Black Holes and Choices

This morning we watched The Black Hole; it was clever enough, but suffered from the usual irritating filmic tendency to ignore the laws of science and re-define just what a black hole is. Watch it below, and you'll see what I mean...



...maybe I should just lighten up about the whole scientific accuracy thing, but it irritates me when film-makers just decide to ignore whatever's inconvenient.

After watching the short, we went through Choices, a short script that we have to film over the weekend of November 20th and 21st. We'll need to do re-writes; there are far too many characters (nine) for such a short film, most of whom contribute one or two lines or less, the character is passive, and --to be frank-- the ending is feeble. We covered the logline (elevator pitch), the short summary of the film

We've had our groups assigned, and I have drifted into the role of Executive Producer, together with Baylea, who is also unit camera-person (she will be filming us filming the script, if this works out).

Next we need to revise the script...

...more later!