It seems a lifetime, rather than a half-year ago that I sat in the first MAF class. Our goal throughout the year was to make a short film, write an original script, and to keep a blog - for which this will be the last entry.
So what is a short film? Hurbis-Cherrier defines short films in Voice & Vision as being “thirty minutes or less...tight, simple and efficient...usually revolv[ing] around a single, simple idea, recognizable characters, and a sharp turning point to make one moment resonate.” For the module, our films were to be five to eight minutes long.
Early lectures involved learning the basics; loglines, outlines, shooting scripts and later in October, storyboards. Loglines are a one sentence summary of the film designed to intrigue the viewer. Outlines differ from the logline in that in an outline the full story is summarized, culminating with the ending; nothing is held back, whereas the log-line ends with an implicit question - what happens next?
I was already concerned even at this early stage-- I'm much less comfortable with new technology than younger students who have already worked with similar equipment, and the effort of mastering the technology and trying to learn the principles was considerable, given the other demands on our time. In future older (but inexperienced) students might be advised when they select the module that there is a range of specialist equipment to master, and that they should arrange extra tuition.
In late October, we scouted Bath for locations- filming was scheduled for the third week of November, and we made a trial film using the script of The Eager Student. Most of November’s posts were taken up with pre -and post- production; I only managed one during the actual weekend, on the second day. I also laid hold (via Megan) of a copy of one of the previous year’s entries, which showed me the level that we had to aim for.
By late November I had
posted initial reflections on the first film, such as the desirability of casting Performing Arts students (rather than amateur actors) for their greater professionalism. We received feedback on our initial blog entries. I now realize that my earlier blogs were too short, lacked an upsum, and had few links to technical terms or sources of information. I did consider rewriting earlier posts to benefit from the feedback, but felt that that would distort the narrative of my progress. On a lighter note, I posted the behind-the-scenes footage from the set...
In the run up to Christmas we spent several weeks revisiting scriptwriting, which took me back into a comparative comfort zone. I exchanged lengthy correspondence with Mike Alexander, an American writer of science- fiction short stories, in which we discussed my adapting his short story “Ware of the Worlds” under a Creative Commons Licence as an entry for the second film. However, it quickly became clear that although Mike wanted a less student-y orientation for the second film, a screenplay that called for a post-apocalyptic Bath, a survivalist protagonist who drove a humvee and lived in an isolated log cabin wasn’t going to be viable without changes so drastic as to make it unrecognizable. Also in December we reviewed all seven different versions of Choices, which we renamed Doorways to differentiate it from the other versions
Over Christmas, we each had to think of ideas, so –on the principle expounded in the class on idea generation that only one idea in every three will go anywhere- when we reassembled in the New Year to swap ideas, I floated the post-apocalyptic storyline, and a rather silly idea of magic sweets that make people invisible as my disposable ideas. I also brought my one serious idea (which I finally wrote as my script), The Other Woman. This was the story of a wife leaping to conclusions when she sees her husband with another woman, with laughable results. It featured older characters, with may have deterred the other groups.
To choose our script for the second film, each of our team listed their three favourite films from those available; we ended up with five films, of which two were common to almost everyone. They were Silent Disco, and Heads or Tails. In the end, we probably played safe in choosing Heads or Tails, our concern with the other film beiing that we would be reliant on finding someone who knew sign language (I suspect that most of the groups who chose Silent Disco had someone in their group or knew someone who could sign). Daniel volunteered to adapt the script –we had decided to be much less reverential of the source material, after witnessing how freely other groups adapted the script for the first film. By the end of January we were ready to start working on it.
We had a slightly different team from Doorways; Daniel had replaced Teagan and Megan -who was very good with the camera, so Julia and I agreed to share the cameraman role. I pre -and post- produced with her assistance, while Jaeeun directed, and Baylea was sound person. Following a lecture on editing, we agreed that Daniel not attend shooting except in emergencies, to maintain a Walter Murch-inspired detachment between the process and the end footage.
We were determined to learn from our experiences on Doorways, and to start work as quickly as possible on finding locations, casting, and getting permissions from interested parties such as Bath Film Council and the University; up until about two weeks before filming –which was scheduled for the 26th
and 27th of February—everything seemed to be in hand. With hindsight, we should have taken that as an omen....
One of the things that I learned from Doorways was to always have a Plan B. If the leading man is late for filming, revise the shooting schedule. If the preferred location is suddenly no longer available, have an alternative location. When we were working on Heads or Tails, we tried to cover every contingency; so for each part when we were auditioning, we had a back-up actor under consideration, we looked at fall-back sites, alternative music, even back-up crew. However, when our entire cast withdrew in the space of 24 hours because we were competing with a rival –and for our primarily 3rd year cast mandatory- production, we learned that there are some blows so catastrophic that no amount of Plan Bs, Cs -even Zs- will cover them; at such times it’s necessary to change the entire game plan.
We agreed with our lecturer that we would film on Friday and Monday, the 25th and 28th of February, with a smaller cast and the crew filling bit parts. Since both those days effectively fell during Reading Week, we would have an empty lecture room, so we agreed with Mike that we would film one scene on
Monday the 21st, after the guest speaker he had booked. But because my request was unclear (learning; if you need access to facilities, be specific about what you want, and when you want it) we still had to finish the lecture scene the following Monday. Apart from that hiccough, the actual filming went remarkably smoothly, perhaps because we had all worked together before, and had confidence in each other. Unlike the filming of Doorways we made sure that we got plenty of spare footage, we finished within schedule, and almost everything seemed to be in focus. But the words “It’s a wrap!” still came as considerable relief....
I deliberately limited my involvement in the post-production phase to that of completing the production folder and the PASC document, although I was happy to offer opinions and/or suggestions to Jaeeun and Daniel, who did an excellent job in editing. Simple pragmatism dictated that risking precious time was an indulgence we could hardly afford, given that the film is worth almost a fifth of our entire marks for the year across all subjects. And Daniel and Jaeeun proved more than adept at editing (I’ve learned there is only so much than one person can do, and any team must use their strengths). Even as we shot the film I felt that we had much better performances from the actors to work with, and the music added to the sense of 'mood' that we were trying to create. Once again, this film was all about decision making, but this time the narrative arc -I felt- was much clearer.
When we came to preview the rough assemblies in early April, we were surprised at how difficult the audience found it to grasp points that were obvious to us, though. One key scene involved the toss of a coin and the protagonist’s call, and caused the audience serious problems understanding the film's outcome and theme.
Also, despite shooting plenty of footage we found that we’d failed to include any external shots of the Hobgoblin to create a scene break. To rectify the confusion I travelled into Bath and took some extra shots. Both points show how over-familiarity with the script can blind those involved to flaws that are obvious to outsiders.
It seems a lifetime ago that I sat in that first class. I’ve learned how crucial teamwork is to filming, that any group is only as good as its weakest member, to have back-up plans, and communication is vital (even things that are ‘common sense’ -such as listing everyone’s phone numbers listed- may not be obvious to everyone). I’ve also learned that at heart I’m less of a film-maker than a scriptwriter, and I’m less of a scriptwriter than a novelist. It’s been fascinating and while I’m never going to be the next Roman Polanski, I feel proud of our team and our achievement
So what is a short film? Hurbis-Cherrier defines short films in Voice & Vision as being “thirty minutes or less...tight, simple and efficient...usually revolv[ing] around a single, simple idea, recognizable characters, and a sharp turning point to make one moment resonate.” For the module, our films were to be five to eight minutes long.
Early lectures involved learning the basics; loglines, outlines, shooting scripts and later in October, storyboards. Loglines are a one sentence summary of the film designed to intrigue the viewer. Outlines differ from the logline in that in an outline the full story is summarized, culminating with the ending; nothing is held back, whereas the log-line ends with an implicit question - what happens next?
I was already concerned even at this early stage-- I'm much less comfortable with new technology than younger students who have already worked with similar equipment, and the effort of mastering the technology and trying to learn the principles was considerable, given the other demands on our time. In future older (but inexperienced) students might be advised when they select the module that there is a range of specialist equipment to master, and that they should arrange extra tuition.
In late October, we scouted Bath for locations- filming was scheduled for the third week of November, and we made a trial film using the script of The Eager Student. Most of November’s posts were taken up with pre -and post- production; I only managed one during the actual weekend, on the second day. I also laid hold (via Megan) of a copy of one of the previous year’s entries, which showed me the level that we had to aim for.
By late November I had
posted initial reflections on the first film, such as the desirability of casting Performing Arts students (rather than amateur actors) for their greater professionalism. We received feedback on our initial blog entries. I now realize that my earlier blogs were too short, lacked an upsum, and had few links to technical terms or sources of information. I did consider rewriting earlier posts to benefit from the feedback, but felt that that would distort the narrative of my progress. On a lighter note, I posted the behind-the-scenes footage from the set...In the run up to Christmas we spent several weeks revisiting scriptwriting, which took me back into a comparative comfort zone. I exchanged lengthy correspondence with Mike Alexander, an American writer of science- fiction short stories, in which we discussed my adapting his short story “Ware of the Worlds” under a Creative Commons Licence as an entry for the second film. However, it quickly became clear that although Mike wanted a less student-y orientation for the second film, a screenplay that called for a post-apocalyptic Bath, a survivalist protagonist who drove a humvee and lived in an isolated log cabin wasn’t going to be viable without changes so drastic as to make it unrecognizable. Also in December we reviewed all seven different versions of Choices, which we renamed Doorways to differentiate it from the other versions
Over Christmas, we each had to think of ideas, so –on the principle expounded in the class on idea generation that only one idea in every three will go anywhere- when we reassembled in the New Year to swap ideas, I floated the post-apocalyptic storyline, and a rather silly idea of magic sweets that make people invisible as my disposable ideas. I also brought my one serious idea (which I finally wrote as my script), The Other Woman. This was the story of a wife leaping to conclusions when she sees her husband with another woman, with laughable results. It featured older characters, with may have deterred the other groups.
To choose our script for the second film, each of our team listed their three favourite films from those available; we ended up with five films, of which two were common to almost everyone. They were Silent Disco, and Heads or Tails. In the end, we probably played safe in choosing Heads or Tails, our concern with the other film beiing that we would be reliant on finding someone who knew sign language (I suspect that most of the groups who chose Silent Disco had someone in their group or knew someone who could sign). Daniel volunteered to adapt the script –we had decided to be much less reverential of the source material, after witnessing how freely other groups adapted the script for the first film. By the end of January we were ready to start working on it.
We had a slightly different team from Doorways; Daniel had replaced Teagan and Megan -who was very good with the camera, so Julia and I agreed to share the cameraman role. I pre -and post- produced with her assistance, while Jaeeun directed, and Baylea was sound person. Following a lecture on editing, we agreed that Daniel not attend shooting except in emergencies, to maintain a Walter Murch-inspired detachment between the process and the end footage.
We were determined to learn from our experiences on Doorways, and to start work as quickly as possible on finding locations, casting, and getting permissions from interested parties such as Bath Film Council and the University; up until about two weeks before filming –which was scheduled for the 26th
and 27th of February—everything seemed to be in hand. With hindsight, we should have taken that as an omen....One of the things that I learned from Doorways was to always have a Plan B. If the leading man is late for filming, revise the shooting schedule. If the preferred location is suddenly no longer available, have an alternative location. When we were working on Heads or Tails, we tried to cover every contingency; so for each part when we were auditioning, we had a back-up actor under consideration, we looked at fall-back sites, alternative music, even back-up crew. However, when our entire cast withdrew in the space of 24 hours because we were competing with a rival –and for our primarily 3rd year cast mandatory- production, we learned that there are some blows so catastrophic that no amount of Plan Bs, Cs -even Zs- will cover them; at such times it’s necessary to change the entire game plan.
We agreed with our lecturer that we would film on Friday and Monday, the 25th and 28th of February, with a smaller cast and the crew filling bit parts. Since both those days effectively fell during Reading Week, we would have an empty lecture room, so we agreed with Mike that we would film one scene on
Monday the 21st, after the guest speaker he had booked. But because my request was unclear (learning; if you need access to facilities, be specific about what you want, and when you want it) we still had to finish the lecture scene the following Monday. Apart from that hiccough, the actual filming went remarkably smoothly, perhaps because we had all worked together before, and had confidence in each other. Unlike the filming of Doorways we made sure that we got plenty of spare footage, we finished within schedule, and almost everything seemed to be in focus. But the words “It’s a wrap!” still came as considerable relief....I deliberately limited my involvement in the post-production phase to that of completing the production folder and the PASC document, although I was happy to offer opinions and/or suggestions to Jaeeun and Daniel, who did an excellent job in editing. Simple pragmatism dictated that risking precious time was an indulgence we could hardly afford, given that the film is worth almost a fifth of our entire marks for the year across all subjects. And Daniel and Jaeeun proved more than adept at editing (I’ve learned there is only so much than one person can do, and any team must use their strengths). Even as we shot the film I felt that we had much better performances from the actors to work with, and the music added to the sense of 'mood' that we were trying to create. Once again, this film was all about decision making, but this time the narrative arc -I felt- was much clearer.
When we came to preview the rough assemblies in early April, we were surprised at how difficult the audience found it to grasp points that were obvious to us, though. One key scene involved the toss of a coin and the protagonist’s call, and caused the audience serious problems understanding the film's outcome and theme.
Also, despite shooting plenty of footage we found that we’d failed to include any external shots of the Hobgoblin to create a scene break. To rectify the confusion I travelled into Bath and took some extra shots. Both points show how over-familiarity with the script can blind those involved to flaws that are obvious to outsiders.
It seems a lifetime ago that I sat in that first class. I’ve learned how crucial teamwork is to filming, that any group is only as good as its weakest member, to have back-up plans, and communication is vital (even things that are ‘common sense’ -such as listing everyone’s phone numbers listed- may not be obvious to everyone). I’ve also learned that at heart I’m less of a film-maker than a scriptwriter, and I’m less of a scriptwriter than a novelist. It’s been fascinating and while I’m never going to be the next Roman Polanski, I feel proud of our team and our achievement
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