And I'm Spent...

Final edit of Little Things is done.

Spent the day in front of the computer. 

Some parts are not as good as I'd have liked, some are better than I could have hoped for. 

Just waiting on my score now and the film will be done, then maybe you can all have a look.

Bolloxed now.

Intro to the guest blog.

Once again I am busy, so once again others are pitching in on the blogging work.

My guest blogger today is part of an odd clash of day job and the world of Little Things. "Alley" works with me in my real job but showed up to be an extra in the pub scene for the shoot (you can just see the back of her head when Leonard enters the pub) but not content to sit in the background also helped with the props, loaded the slate and I think even held the boom once or twice.

As a crew member she got a sneak peak of the rough cut in exchange for writing a post about her experience on the shoot. I can't tell if this is an arse kissing or an accusation of being a fucking liability in my day job.

Thanks "Alley", I think.

PS as you are posting under a pseudonym "Alley" can I assume that you prefer to remain anonymous and don't want a credit in the film ?

Mark

Guest Post (Payback for a sneak peak)

I have known Mark for a number of years now and must admit that it came as no surprise to me that he wasn’t entirely fulfilled by the job that he does. Mark is not a pen pusher. He is not of the 9am-5pm, ‘think before speaking’ business mould. Nope, I think it is safe to say that were it not for his Irish charm and sparkling wit, he’d have been ousted from his position of relative power. As it is I think the illustrious leaders are simply too afraid of the barrage of profanity that a challenge would draw to even consider curtailing his spirit.

Thankfully, the corporate world is not responsible for spotting talent but what it does provide is a reasonable income (that I know of) and regular(ish) hours around which great masterpieces can be created. Not that I am buttering him up of course, after all, *I* still have a copy of the first script Mark wrote. Suffice to say, it ain’t pretty. I have that little beauty filed under ‘My Pension’ and am hoping that true stardom awaits him so that I can retire.

Dodgy early attempts aside, I don’t think anyone who knows him has any doubt that Mark is capable of greatness. He has the chutzpah, the turn of phrase and the absolute disdain for rules and authority required to be successful. From what I have seen of the rough cut, Little Things will be the true first attempt for him to be proud of.

It isn’t hard to admire the tenacity or the force of will that it takes to hold down a job and pursue your dreams. It isn’t difficult to recognise dedication and commitment and be in awe of it. It is kinda tough to realise that the person displaying all these cool traits is a ‘regular joe’ and that you’re therefore no longer entitled to believe that pursuing ones dream is something that only other people do. But having said all of that I also know that it hasn’t been an easy road. I have only been on the outside of some of the toughest years that a person can experience and this only makes me admire him more.

No matter what happens with Little Things, I have no doubt that great things await Mark and I so look forward to the day when I can say ‘I knew him when….’

VP

Itchy Feet and Loglines

I am going through a brief and disconcerting period where I can do nothing on Little Things and have to wait on others to do some work on the picture. Arun Parmar, my sound engineer mate is currently playing with the audio. Cleaning up the dialogue, getting rid of as much background noise as possible, matching the levels from shot to shot, that sort of thing. I've also spoken to Kevin Brew of I Phoenix fame who now has a copy of the rough cut and is working on the score for the film.


Until I have these elements back I'm pretty much at a loose end film-wise. This has been seen by some as an ideal window of opportunity for me to do such chores as tiling the porch. Not nearly as much fun as film making but does give some sense of achievement. 


As I can't do anything with Little Things itself I have taken to do some peripheral bits and pieces that I've been meaning to do for a long time. The first of which is to write a logline for the film.


For those of you who don't know what a logline is, it's a brief statement that outlines what a film is about. It is not the same thing as a tagline. A tagline is what they put under the title on the poster; "In space no one can hear you complain about Fincher's sequel" and the like. A logline is something different. It outlines your plot, main characters, and genre in about 3 sentences, 3 short sentences. It is used when you are trying to pitch your film to people who may do things like, pay for it to be made, accept it into festivals, market it, sell it, buy it, in short get it seen by other people. You know Robert Altman's film "The Player"? You know the "25 words or less" synopsis that Tim Robbins keeps asking for? That's a logline.


I know that the writers among you will be wondering why the hell I haven't done the logline before now. Two reasons. Number 1, because I'm making Little Things myself I haven't had the need to pitch it to anyone else. Number 2, because it's really fucking hard! You've read my stuff. You may not have seen any scripts of mine but you've gotten at least this far down the page of my blog. Do you honestly think that brevity is a strength of mine? It took me weeks to condense Little Things down from 16 pages to 9, now I need to trim it down to a couple of dozen words. Tiling might be easier.


There are hordes of people ready to tell you what good loglines should consist. Many of them, I might add, completely contradict each other. There are some common threads though. And as per usual I've followed the same approach that Grampa Simpson followed to history "I pieced it together , mostly from sugar packets". So based on this scientific approach, I worked under the assumption that a logline should contain references to: protagonist, the protagonist's goal, other significant characters, and the genre. It should do this hopefully peaking the interest of whoever reads it and without giving away the ending. After a couple of dozen rewrites while my wife watched X-Factor and my ears bled, I came up with this


"A world-weary young guy tries to prove that his enigmatic friend does not have a magical ability to change people’s destinies, by meeting up with a girl whose fate has supposedly been altered."

So tell me what you think. If you've written loglines before, tell me how I could do this better? If you know the story and have been involved, does it do what I want it to do? If you don't fall into either category, does it make you want to watch the film?


Your comments would be appreciated...

The Film Look On Video....or... how to give film purists a fucking fit

Something that becomes clear when you start trawling the internet looking for tips on how to give something shot on video a more filmic feel, is that asking film professionals for tips for a film-look on video, is a bit like asking the Jewish community for tips on how to be more like Mel Gibson. The words "rag", "bull" and "red" come screaming to mind in no particular order.   

Wherever there are forums where people ask, "how can I get the film look?" there are people who answer with "Use a fucking film camera!" Consequently it's difficult to get tips on what can be done to "film-up" your footage. 

original video

tweaked by me

Okay first up, let me say. I'm not an infant. I KNOW that you cant take a ten year old Canon Mini-DV camera, shoot your footage and have it turn out like fucking Laurence of Arabia. I know it is video and it will always look like video. I don't have 50 grand's worth of Panavision gear that I can pull out of my arse pocket, and that no matter how much post-production jiggery-pokery is done, it will not look like it was shot 24 frames per second on a strip of plastic covered in light sensitive chemicals. 

original video

tweaked by me

So here's what I'm getting at. I am not trying to make it look like it was shot on film. I'm trying to make it look better. Yes, better in my opinion probably appears a little more like film and less like video. But so be it. 

Original video

tweaked by me

So I have started to try and tweak the footage. As per everything else, I read a little about what it is I'm trying to do and then start fumbling in the dark. Dotted throughout the posts are examples (by no means finished) of the results I have started to achieve. 

What I have done so far is to drop the brightness, up the contrast, drop the colour saturation and tweak the colour levels. There are other tricks and tools that I am going to experiment with as well. 

As I said these aren't finished results but (he takes a deep breath, conscious that he may well have pissed off some film fans) if anyone has any opinions or tips I'd love to hear them....

Rough as a Bears Arse

Those of you that follow me on Facebook and Twitter, which is probably most of you, will know that this weekend I finished the first rough cut of Little Things. There are some bits of tidying up to do and the sound needs an overhaul, but as a rough cut, I'm really proud of the result.

As it stands, the cut is very close to the script. That'll be the result of me being the writer, director and editor. I've had this film made in my head for a long time, writing and storyboarding it were a method of showing other people what the film in my head was. Shooting it, was just collecting the elements of the film together and editing it was just trimming out the bits that weren't needed. So now I have a close representation of the film I've been imagining for about a year and a half. Advantage of this is that "Little Things" will eventually be exactly the film that I wanted to make.

Disadvantage of this is that if "Little Things " is shite, then it's entirely my fault. Scary thought.

Next steps. Firstly, music. As it stands at the moment, the music in the rough cut are Radiohead and Elbow songs. These convey the moods nicely, but I would never get clearance to use them in a public performance in a million years. I've handed a copy to my brother in Dublin who is showing the rough cut to the guys from I Phoenix who are composing the music. While my brother is pestering one audio artist I will be pestering another. I'll be cajoling some time from Arun my sound engineer mate to give the audio a clean up.

I'm also trying to get some people who are involved in the film industry to have a look at the film. Not as self promotion, I just need someone to have a look at the film objectively who can give me some advice about where I can trim fat.

While all this is going on I'm now going to bribe my cast and crew. If you are a member of the cast or crew and would like to see a rough cut, then I would be happy to show it to you....on condition that I procure from you one guest blog post.

I shall continue to stare at my empty inbox....

Channelling Kev'

it took ages to set up all the bottles to film Chris's real -world game of Pac-Man

I'm Back!!

Apologies to you all for my absence of late, that has been largely down to any time in front of a computer being dedicated to editing Little Things. That and it's a difficult time of year, those of you that either know Rach and I personally or read my other blog will understand why. 

I've suffered some setbacks. I was using our old family PC to edit the flick. When the footage was fine, there was no issue, but where I needed to tweak lighting or colour or sound, it fell on its arse. So a new tool was required for the job. Enter Mister Steve Jobs and the mighty iMac. The new machine was ordered a couple of weeks ago and whilst awaiting it's arrival I called a temporary hiatus on editing. So in the meantime I started listening to Kevin Smith's podcasts in the hope that I would become more well informed about the process of producing indie movies on a limited budget. I'm not. I am more will informed about sucking dick.

The editing hiatus has proved to be a sensible decision as now that the iMac is here, no amount of jiggling about with things has allowed me to get the existing edit files to work with the new machine, possibly due to the questionable origin of the editing software. In the absence of an alternative solution, I shouted at the screen a lot. Then I had a decision to make.

Option 1 - go back to the old computer. Well that would defeat the object of getting the new computer and more crucially might cause my wife to murder me.

Optioin 2 - I trawl the internet for solutions to the problem. Well I'm not techie enough to even know what I'm fucking looking for so that could take forever

Option 3 - Start over. Unappealing as that may have sounded, it would probably be less time consuming, that and I could un-fuck some of my early editing mistakes

So I started over. And you'll be happy to hear that because I know a little more about what I'm doing I have now nearly caught up with where I was before my upgrade. 

I have set myself a pretty tight deadline. Early submissions for the Edinburgh Film Festival ends on the 4th of December. I want to get an edit done, in enough time that I can show it to someone who knows more than me and tell me if Little Things is good enough for it to be worth my while entering. So with only a couple of weeks to edit the flick this is probably the last you'll hear from me for a little while. So in order to keep things going I am putting out a request for guest posts. Cast and crew, I know most of you read this so, please, your two cents would be appreciated. Even if you were one of the guys who was only there for part of one of the days, I'm sure the rest of the interweb that read this would love to hear from you.

I will sit and stare at my inbox awaiting responses.

PS - Peter. Not you.

A Little Treat

Hi All


You'll notice that my posts have been conspicuous by their absence lately. To be honest that isn't likely to change any time soon. However I have a little treat for you all. I have taken some time out from the serious editing to...
...well to piss around for an evening. So here for your viewing pleasure is a selection of out-takes from the Little Things shoot.


My cast may not forgive me


Enjoy


Mark

The Opening Sequence

It may be a while before we hear from Mark again, seeing as how every spare minute of his time is now taken up with editing Little Things, so I’m taking up the blogging reins again. A lot of what follows is a second hand account of the editing process, but I think it’s interesting enough to post anyway.

Mark’s been in pretty close contact with me about how the editing is going and thus far it seems mostly positive. The catalyst of today’s post is the completed rough cut for the opening.It’s a montage sequence showing the life of the main character across a couple of days leading up to the beginning of the story. A few scenes of him at home and working late, culminating in him waiting in the park for a friend he’s meeting.

I wasn’t present for the shooting of these scenes as they were done after the manic weekend shoot, so this was all new material for me. Mark filmed these snippets of Leonard’s life with a minimal crew (i.e. just him and Chris the lead actor) and they turned out very well.

Pacing of the film very much came into play however. When Mark first cut the sequence together it came in at about four minutes, which is quite a lot when you consider that eleven minutes is the target maximum for the whole movie. So instead Mark started cutting short ten to twelve second clips out of the scenes and cross fading them over each other, which has worked very well. In under two minutes the main character is introduced, the loneliness of his everyday life is revealed and we see the setup for him meeting his friend in the park.

As a placeholder the sequence has been set to “Mirrorball” by Elbow, which fits the tone of the opening very well, low and melodic but punchy enough to keep pace with the quick cuts. I’ll be showing the clip to Kevin from I Phoenix this week to showcase what Mark has done so far and the tone that he’s hoping for from the score. Hopefully I’ll have more to say about scoring next week.

Overall I’m personally really impressed with what Mark has managed to achieve with meagre resources, finances, sense and sanity. We’ve included some screenshots from the sequence with this post, but because Mark is hoping for eligibility for festivals we can’t post the whole sequence yet. However for those of you in Dublin I have it on my phone so feel free to accost me in the street[1] and demand to see it.

That’s about all for the moment. Check back for some more updates on scoring and editing.

---

[1] Please don’t accost me in the street.

Production day 2, a dogsbody's report.

In many ways the Sunday shoot was much smoother than the Saturday. Mark, in his Producer role, had arranged permission to film in the Y Pentan bar in Mold. I would like to make a special mention of the managers and staff of this establishment. We could not have had more support from friendlier people. In particular I’d like to thank the manager Simon.

Mark and I came to realise just how supportive and enthusiastic people can be when you try to put together an artistic project like this. If you live anywhere near Mold, please patronise this establishment, they deserve all the business this blog can rustle up for them.

As for the bar shoot itself, it was, in many ways, easier than the park. Sound and lighting were far more under our control and our romantic leads offered stunning performances on the day. My role on the Sunday was comprised of looking through the viewfinder and answering the question “Peter does this look good to you?” and panicking about the boom being in the frame. In our three hour shoot we got almost everything we needed from the pub interior, but faced the biggest setback we had all weekend. Our third actor, Richie, was sick and wasn’t sure he could make the shoot. We needed him for two shots outside the bar, but more importantly the pickups from the park shoot. This was, to shamelessly steal lines from Blackadder, “a twelve-story crisis with a magnificent entrance hall, carpeting throughout, 24-hour portage, and an enormous sign on the roof, saying 'This Is a Large Crisis.'" Without the pickups of his lines for editing, all the footage involving him from the previous day would be essentially unusable

To describe the production as low budget would be an insult to every Bruce Campbell movie ever made. This is not a low budget project. This is a zero budget project. The equipment rental and insurance covered the shoot for this weekend and this weekend only. There was no option to reshoot at a later date. It needed to be in the can by Sunday night. With Richie’s health in an uncertain state, the understudy was called for his big break. (Guess who?) I genuinely thought I would have a heart attack. I haven’t acted since amateur productions in college and I wasn’t much good then. I spent ten minutes hyperventilating because I didn’t know the lines (no fun for a smoker I can guarantee) then the dreadful thought occurred; will Mark want me to mask my Irish accent? At this point I had a lie down under the bench. Thankfully for my sanity, health and dignity Richie managed to get himself to the park and we took the reshoots in under an hour.

With regard to the reshoot of my scene as an extra; my wardrobe choice that day was … ill advised. I was wearing black jeans and a black t-shirt (Julian from trailer park boys being my hero) but because I felt this may not look well on camera I borrowed Mark’s shirt (a couple of sizes too big and very light coloured) to wear over the clothes I had on. On camera this give gave the impression that I was wearing a leotard and off to teach a dance class.

We decamped and made our way back to Y Pentan to film Richie’s final scenes. Mark took these in a few takes and shooting on Little Things was wrapped. There is a long way to go before we have a finished product, there are some scenes with Chris[1] as yet unshot that may or may not be scrapped and then there’s the quick and easy editing process. Sorry, did I say quick and easy? I meant the other thing.

Finally on behalf of the cast and crew of Little Things I want to thank Mark from the bottom of our hearts for getting us to be part of his vision and wish him luck with this and all future productions, in which, I for one, wish to be as involved in as I can.

---

[1] Between the time of writing and publication these shots have been completed.

Short blog post today from the dogsbody.

The great thing about any (reasonably) large scale artistic project like “Little Things” is how much people are willing to help out and give of their time. I’ve already gushed about how great the crew and cast of “Little Things” were as well as the helpfulness of the staff and management of Y Pentan in Mold.

A little while ago I was speaking to my friend Kevin Brew, the bass player of the fantastic (and tragically as yet unsigned) I Phoenix. We had a bit of banter about the production of Little Things and he mentioned that they had previously scored a short movie and would be interested in doing the same for “Little Things”. I’ve seen them live a number of times and I know the guys are very talented musicians and song-writers so I was very excited about the prospect of getting them on board.

Armed with a Vimeo link to the movie they previously scored and mp3s from their debut EP “Cause and Effect” I contacted the great director to get his take on the idea. The original plan for the score was to take existing music from other unsigned bands (with permission of course) and trawl the Internet’s collection of Creative Commons music to try and cut together a score post editing[1]. Needless to say the prospect of having some talented musicians write a score specifically for “Little Things” held great appeal for both us. Having listened to their music Mark agreed that they could bring a lot to the project and so an email was drafted to I Phoenix to commission them for the work. I spoke to Kevin this morning and they have agreed to compose and perform the original score for “Little Things”. I’ll be sitting in with them as they do it and although I will have very little input I expect it to be a whole lot of fun.

@Mark, I’m no longer happy with an AD1 credit, after putting this together I want Associate Producer too :)

Come back soon to see the continuing production report and my take on the scoring process for a short movie.

---

[1] Note: There is a surprising amount of excellent free music out there under Creative Commons. If this is something that interests you visit Jamendo.

More From The Young Lad...

HEY ALL.

SEEING AS I AM UP TO UP TO MY FUCKING UVULA IN EDITING AT THE MOMENT I TURN OVER BLOG DUTIES AGAIN TO MY YET UNCREDITED YOUNGER BROTHER

ENJOY.... 

On Saturday the cast and crew met at Broc Glic HQ (also known as Mark and Rachel's house) at 8am.  everyone was dosed on caffeine (and in my case nicotine) and nervous as hell, but also really excited. The best thing about the weekend was how positive everyone felt and how committed they were to making Mark’s vision happen, but by God some of us (by which I mean me) were shit-scared of fucking it up for him. The initial plan was to have me do most of the camera work, but this ended up being scrapped for the sake of expediency (much to my relief in many ways). Saturday’s shoot started very positively, all the technical shots were done in the timeframe allocated and Mark seemed happy with the results. The performance shots on the other hand, were not so easy. Richie and Chris’s performance was top shelf and they had great chemistry on camera. However when viewing the rushes that night it became clear that the combination of improvised dialogue and shooting entire scenes of them together in one take didn’t work out. In the great director’s words, “we have gold and we have shit, often on the same fucking take”. When doing Sunday’s shoot schedule Mark made the decision to shoot tight front on shots of Chris and Richie acting certain of their lines for more cutaway options. It looks like this was successful but the editing process is the time when we’ll know for sure.

Conditions when we arrived at the park were adequate, but certainly not ideal. We had been hoping for a dry overcast day, but what we got was bright sunshine with broken cloud cover. The footage has not been reviewed in detail yet, but it looks like the light source and shadows will annihilate continuity on the park scenes. On the plus side Mark always prioritised performance over continuity and performance is one area where you will see no negativity from this quarter. Scenes involving extras, which required no dialogue, were more straightforward and successful, bar one. In one scene Richie’s character is required to leave the park bench where he is speaking to Chris, and bum a cigarette from a passerby. Despite the wonderful performance from a desperately handsome upcoming young actor with “smoldering Irish eyes” every take was totally unusable.  

MARK - STILL ON ABOUT THE SMOULDERING FUCKING EYES, JESUS, AMY WAS BEING NICE, WHAT SHE WAS TRYING TO SAY WAS THAT YOUR EYES LOOK LIKE PISS HOLES IN SNOW

This scene in particular taught us that for any future shoots we cannot rely on the viewfinder on the XL1 and we will have to get a monitor. In fact allow me to digress on this point The viewfinder on the XL1 is woefully inadequate, particularly for outdoor shoots. In some respects colours that seem subtle and muted can look washed out once the footage is imported, but more importantly as in the scene described above objects in shadow cannot be seen at all on the viewfinder but appear as clear as day once the footage is onscreen Case in point is the scene alluded to above where I appeared as an extra. On every single take not only was the boom pole visible, but so was the fucking soundman. For any burgeoning filmmaker who may be reading this please for the love of God buy, rent, beg borrow or steal a fucking monitor, particularly if you’re shooting outdoors. Also, if you plan to record sound directly to the camera, get a long cable for the cans so the soundman can stand far the fuck away.

After a long morning and afternoon of carrying and frankly standing around in the cold (everyone says this about every movie shoot but by Christ it’s true) the cast and crew got to leave for home with strict instructions to be back bright at early at our second location on Sunday morning. Mark at I retired to Broc Glic Towers to review our footage. Mark was not feeling massively positive due to the aforementioned setbacks about it and another newcomer’s mistake did nothing to dispel these feelings. Here I feel I can impart another piece of advice for new filmmakers. Never, fucking EVER review DV footage in windows media player. We genuinely believed we had nothing usable after seven hours shooting. After using a real piece of software to review the footage we realised that while we would have to visit the park for some pickups, we did have usable takes for the vast majority of the scenes shot on Saturday. That evening Mark and I went back to the drawing board for the Sunday shoot schedule. Knowing we would have to revisit our fist location and that the we had only 3 hours to get the bar scene shot before they opened we were far more ruthless (in truth most of the ruthlessness came from me with Mark’s head getting redder and redder) but a more realistic shoot schedule was written for Sunday at this point, beds beckoned.

Stay tuned for my report on day two of production.

Shameless Promotion

Quick Post just to say, that if you have the requirement to rent gear for a film shoot I highly, highly recommend Hire A Camera. The have great kit. For a weekend shoot they courier it to you on Friday before noon and pick up on Monday. And if you order over the phone on the Thursday, and quote "Fly Away Thursday" they knock 20% off their already reasonable price. I rented a excellent tripod and a boom mic, pole and lead and it only cost about 70 quid all in. Check them out.

Mark out

A different perspective

I'D LIKE TO GIVE A WARM WELCOME TO THE FIRST INVADER TO MY HALLOWED DOMAIN, THE GUEST BLOGGER THAT IS MY BROTHER, PETER. WHAT FOLLOWS IS AN UNEDITED, UNCENSORED AND AN UNBURDENED WITH PUNCTUATION ACCOUNT OF, NOT JUST THE SHIT I'VE BEEN THROUGH, BUT THE SHIT I PUT OTHERS THROUGH THIS WEEKEND ON THE 'LITTLE THINGS' SHOOT.

" Well it was a hectic shoot, but we got it in the can. I should really start by stating my role in the production, and I would if it were at all clear. As the great director said in a previous post the only way to credit this one is with a Venn diagram. I'm lobbying hard for First Assistant Director and Executive Producer, it'll just look better on IMDB." (MARK: YOU'LL TAKE WHATEVER FECKIN' CREDIT YOU'RE GIVEN)

"Now, on to the weekend. I flew in at ridiculous o'clock on Friday morning, having slept somewhere in the region of three hours. This lack of sleep was to become a recurring theme for the weekend for both Mark and myself. Considering the shoot was Saturday and Sunday I expected a leisurely morning in Wales, followed by some light preparation work in the evening. This was my first mistake."

"Being as I am a pessimist there may appear to be some negativity in this post but since this was at least in part a learning experience I see no harm in that."

"Friday was spent hunting down props and catering supplies while my body begged me to have a little nap. When the afternoon came we took delivery of the rented equipment. Although Mark owns the camera (the rather excellent Canon XL1, watch 28 days later if you don’t believe me) there were a number of other pieces of equipment rented by Mark without which the shoot would have been impossible specifically an excellent tripod, condenser mic and boom and cables and adapters to connect the mic to the camera."

"The first, albeit minor setback was the lack of a microphone mount for the boom, although a trip to a local electronics shop and £6 solved this one.
As the evening wore on Mark and I sat down to do the shooting schedule for Saturday and Sunday. Mark had already painstakingly storyboarded the shoot, so we expected this to be a doddle and finished in twenty minutes. Big fucking mistake. After about half an hour of discussing how the hell we were going to do it (note, 10 minutes longer than we expected the whole thing to take) we decided to break up the schedule between technical shots and performance (note we have no idea if these terms are industry recognised, or even make sense to the readers of this blog, but that’s what we called them so I'll run with it now."

"The shots without dialogue seemed the logical place to start so that we could get accustomed to using the camera on location without having to think about sound or keeping the fucking boom out of shot (this proved to be a problem later.). As far as the schedule went the tech shots were easy, Mark knew what he wanted there, we grouped them by setup and got them on paper. The performance shots were... not so easy. From our (admittedly meagre) previous experience we knew that takes that seemed perfect on the day could be completely fucking unusable for reasons of lighting and sound among others. For this reason we initially discussed trying to get four good takes of every shot to provide more editing options. Mark wanted to shoot the dialogue scenes as one long take from different angles. This led to complications both for the schedule and during the shoot (more on this later. ) we worked out that to get four good takes the way he planned we would have to spend an hour and a half shooting these scenes, not including bad takes or setup time. Considering we were shooting outdoors using only natural light in practice we realised this would mean spending th better part of four hours shooting only these scenes, which would not be possible. Thus we compromised and broke up the scenes a little and satisfied ourselves with 3 good takes."

"Three hours after sitting down to our twenty minute task we were done for the night having only managed to write the schedule for day one. Lesson for the future, small simple jobs can balloon very fucking easily."

PETER IS TOO PROLIFIC JUST TO WRITE ONE POST. FUCKING WRITERS. MORE FRON HIM SOON.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

In The Can

clapper board bought as a joke gift. No one's laughing any more

Principal photography on Little Things was done on Saturday and Sunday and I am absolutely fucking knackered. Partly because of the amount of work I had to do and partly from lying in bed each night before shooting with the words "Oh Shit Oh Shit Oh Shit Oh Shit Oh Shit Oh Shit" going round and round in my head. Despite the exhaustion I am really pleased with the results. I am delighted with the amount of hard work that the cast and crew put in for absolutely no reward other than the sandwiches and teas that were supplied by my good lady wife. So before I go on I'd like to do a shout out to all my cast and crew:

• Rachel Moynihan
• Peter Moynihan
• Chris Jones
• Lisa Solari
• Richie Nolan
• Arun Parmar
• Andrew Baker
• Amy Richardson
• Amy's mate John
• Richie's friend Melisa

left to right: Peter, me, Arun, Rach and Chris

Their selfless enthusiasm and devotion to the project will make writing the credits for this movie a total ball-ache. Rach worked collecting agreement signatures, loading the clapperboard, catering, props and based on her script knowledge made performance suggestions. My brother held the boom, worked the camera, was and extra, wrote the shooting schedule with me and made sure I picked up all the shots I needed. Lisa, as well as being in the main cast, loaded the clapperboard and made the tea. Chris, as well as taking the main role, also held up a light reflector for the close ups of others. This is tip of the iceberg stuff. I'm toying with the idea of putting the credits up as a fucking Venn diagram. 

"Excuse me, can you please spare some change?" me, Lisa and Richie

Despite the hard work, and happy results, it wasn't all smooth sailing. For a start the weather was not in my favour. I have officially become one of those miserable bastards who complains that it's too sunny. Sounds mental, but harsh sunshine really made things difficult. It throws harsh, defined shadows that messed with the light balance on the camera and their movement through the day is likely to completely fuck up my continuity. The view finder of the camera was also really poor at picking up how the final picture would look. Colours that looked subdued in the viewfinder were harshly washed out with sunshine on the final picture and it really missed out on what was in the shadows. One shot done on Saturday had to be completely redone on Sunday, Why? Because completely unnoticed by me when I was filming, the boom was completely visible in the shot. This might not be so bad except for the fact that Arun, who was holding the boom at the time, was completely visible as well! Not just his arm! All of him! Just standing there! You'd think I'd have noticed that! I had to make a decision early on. I decided to let the performances carry the movie. My experience so limited with the camera, that photography was always going to be the weak link. As long as the story and characters are compelling, then for my first work I'm prepared to accept less than perfect photography and continuity.

Loads more happened on the shoot and over the next while you will be hearing more and more, not just from me, but hopefully from some guest bloggers from my cast and crew. I can't wait for you all to see the final film. 

Mark out

"My Mamma always said like a box of chocolates..." Andrew and Chris

It's the final countdown, Da Na Na Na, Dana Nana Naa, Dana Na Na Na, Dana Na Na Na Na Naaaa

If you get what the title means, you're old and humming shit eighties rock!

It is the final week before the shoot and my god if I thought I was shitting myself last week, I had no idea. So this and probably any subsequent post this week has the potential to be a combination of my usual South Park ending ("you know, I've learned something today...") and screaming paranoia ("everyone knows, that I have no fucking clue what I'm doing"). In order to counteract that, I think I'm gonna use this blog as my to-do list of stuff that I have to get done pre-shoot.

Things that can be ticked off the list first. I've finished rehearsals with a session with Chris and Richie on Sunday night. Chrsi has taken to the subtlety of screen acting like a duck to water and it just seems to be the most natural thing in the world for Richie. We laid a lot of groundwork about the characters, who they are, how they know each other, where they are in their lives and what makes them tick. I hesitate to use the clichéd word motivation  when it comes to character but we looked at the key points in the scene, what is happening outside of the scene and what is going on inside the heads of Leonard and Weaver, two guys that I made up but are becoming more and more embodied and owned by Chris and Richie as time goes on. It's actually kinda weird to let them go, they're not mine alone any more. As the guys now know the characters we have also been able to have a little fun improvising the characters and additional scenes. Frankly the stuff they came up with is fucking golden and there may be more of that in Little Things than my original dialogue. That's cool, as long as the story is told the best it can be, I'm happy.

So jobs to do this week:

• Legal agreements for everyone involved. Get them finalised and printed
• Equipment, I need a tripod, a boom, a condenser mic, a windjammer, some XLR cable as a minimum
• Shooting schedule. I broadly know what I'm doing, tricky shots first, dialogue scenes with improv after
• Make up. I may or may not have a make up artist on the days, still don't know.
• Lighting is nearly sorted, through Richie I've been in touch with a lighting expert who wants to get involved. I feel like Blanche in Streetcar Named Desire, relying on the kindness of strangers
• Establishing shots with Chris, they may hit the cutting room floor but I still have to schedule and shoot them
• Ambient sound tracks for park and pub, about five minutes of each
• Popping into the pub to make sure everything is still okay for Sunday morning.
• Some final camera and editing tests, specifically around how feasible it is to convert to wide screen in post production or whether it's better to use the pixel stretch on the camera

Tomorrow and Wednesday are days to be dominated by work. You know, the real work that pays the mortgage. After that Thursday and Friday are days off, and devoted to Little Things. Presumable that will be when my head explodes. 

Talk later, and in the meantime I leave you with more pictures from rehearsal.

M

The Director's Tale.

I've been saying for a while that I would talk about the shoot for Grove Park Theatre. As I finally got the chance to see the play that the video was shot for on Friday night, now seems like an appropriate time to talk about the experience.

I've written before about how I cast Little Things by getting in touch with Grove Park theatre. One of the guys who read for the part of Leonard was Rick. I decided to go another way with casting Leonard, but Rick's audition was excellent. Rick though expressed an interest in getting involved in the production irrespective of whether he was cast or not, an offer I gratefully accepted. A couple of weeks after first meeting him Rick contacted me on a different matter. The director of  their latest production, David, wanted a video sequence for one of the segments of their Canterbury Tales. The segment of the Wife of Bath was interpreted as a Jeremy Kyle/ Trisha/ Ricki Lake/ Jerry Springer style talk show and he wanted a small vox-pop, talking heads, sequence shot and showed on a screen. Rick, who does a lot of the technical stuff for the theatre, asked if it was something I was interested in. Wanting to get some experience both of external shooting and editing, my answer was "hell yeah!"  So I met with David the director and had a chat about what he wanted, then we got stuck in.

We shot on a Sunday in Wrexham so as to get streets as empty as possible of what my brother would refer to as "slack-jawed yokels". First thing I learned for future reference, if the weather is not good enough, don't fucking shoot outdoors. The weather was crap so in order to shoot we went under a covered alleyway. Covered alleyway equals echo, echo equals god awful fucking sound, god awful sound means that you spend all your energy on making sure that the sound is right, and as a result the picture suffers.

Second lesson, pick a style and run with it. Don't, for fuck sake, don't shoot the same content in two different ways and try and see what's better later. The camera I'm using, the XL-1 has two shooting modes, video and progressive scan. I will explain the difference for non video heads on the condition that any video heads among you don't shout at me. Video mode has a harsh real life quality to it, progressive scan, tones down some of the quality in a way that makes it look a bit more like film. Davis didn't know which way he wanted to shoot, so he asked me to shoot each vox pop in each mode and then we can choose later which method looks best. Big fucking mistake. Why? Because what I ended up with was some unusable shots in each format, so the final result needed to be a mishmash of both. The final video was projected and was unnoticeable to any of the audience. Except me.

Lesson three. Colour matters. One of the cast was wearing white, she stood in front of a white wall. She looked like a floating fucking head.

Final lesson. This shit takes time. The shoot on the day took about two and a half hours. I got about 45 minutes of footage (which is a pretty good ratio I think). That was edited down to just over a minute. working off those ratios, Little Things will be about 18 hours of shooting, about 6 hours of footage to get an 8 minute movie. That's a lot of stripping down.

Despite massive quantities of self criticism the end result was something I was reasonable happy with. I learned shitloads. I learned how to use editing software, I made my first chunk of schoolboy errors and I got my first credit for film making in the Canterbury Tales program. And context is so important. The footage slotting straight into the show.

Canterbury Tales is playing in Wrexham Grove Park Theatre until Friday and not only can you see my footage but Lisa Solari, from my cast, doing a fantastic turn in the Miller's Tale. Go check it out.

M

Storyboards

Just wanted to write a brief note on storyboards...

...do them!

Told you it was brief.

Seriously, when I started pre-production, depite the fact that the movie only has a couple of short scenes with limited setup, I decided to storyboard it. Not because I thought it would be particularly useful but because I was the "done thing". I didn't really want to do it to be honest but when I started I realised, really really quickly that without storyboards I couldn't come up with a proper shooting schedule (the order in which you film things) AND would have had to do the same set ups over and over again, AND it is incredibly likely I would have missed out on some important shots AND if I didn't plan out some shots in advance I just would have done the same shitty shots over and over AND I wouldn't be able to plan props properly AND I wouldnt have thought about things like camera placement and what was really necessary from locations.

I was put off storyboarding because, well frankly I'd seen storyboards even on amateur stuff that looks like the were done by Frank fucking Miller see exhibit A -

"How the fuck am I supposed to do that?" I thought. Answer: I didn't. I drew little stick figures. See Exhibit B -

This stuff is not going to win any Eisner awards (for the geeks in the room) but that doesn't matter because as long as I know what they mean then who gives a shit.

Another thing storyboarding does, it makes you very aware about how much work you've got to. 8-10 minute film, I drew 136 storyboard panels

In summary, I started storyboarding not because I thought it would be useful but because I felt I should, but by Christ it was useful. Fucking vital if I'm honest.

Two Weeks...

Well weather permitting it is now two weeks tomorrow until the shoot for Little Things, and yes, I am apprehensive. Maybe apprehensive is the wrong word. Fucking Bricking It. Ah yes, the mot juste. Pissing myself as I may be, things are coming together quite nicely. I know I still need to talk about the shooting I did for Grove Park Theatre, and I will, but for this post I'm going to talk about the things that are slotting into place

Equipment first. What kicked off this whole project was me getting my camera. The script for Little Things had been written for a while and I had been toying with the idea of making myself for a while. What really made things happen though was my wife Rach, muse that she is and enabler to a myriad of my insane shit. Rach is a teacher and this summer dedicated a ridiculous amount of time and energy marking A-level papers. The pay that she got for this pretty much entirely went on a second hand Canon XL1. Do me a favour, If you are take
ing the time to read this blog, then take the time to write a small comment at the end saying how awesome my wife is. The Canon XL1 is an old camera, but a good one, and it looks kick ass!

It shoots digital video and was the camera that Danny Boyle used to shoot "28 Days Later". It's not something you could shoot Avatar with but for the purpose of my little movie, it'll be perfect. As well as the camera I've been looking at the other kit I need. I'm going to keep it as simple as possible, so one camera, a boom mike, a tripod and maybe, but only maybe, some lights. I've found a website called Hireacamera.com that hire out all that additional stuff, if you call on the Thursday, they deliver the gear on the Friday, collect on the monday and give a 20% discount! I'm gonna use them for this, if I have a good experience I'll stick a link up.

Second thing that is coming together is locations. Little Things basically only has two scenes. There are a couple of establishing shots but the main story; two scenes. One is in a park, the other a pub. Finding a boozer that looked the part and would be willing to let me shoot in there is something that I was concerned about. Maybe concerned is the wrong word. Convinced That There Was No Way It Would Fucking Happen. Ah yes, the mot juste. As a result I was putting it off, but this week I knew that I had to bite the bullet and start calling places. So I made a list of places to call in order of preference. I called the first one. I asked to speak to the manager. I explained what I was trying to do. "What is the film about?" she asked me. "It's a romantic drama, and there's nothing in it that would show the pub in a negative fashion". "Yeah okay, that'll be fine".

...Really. God that was easy. So I have a pub location which I can reveal as "Y Pentan" in Mold. A lovely little pub with great food and beer and a perfect atmosphere.

Photo courtesy of Garstonian on Flickr

As you can see I am now a whore to corporate advertising. Seriously though I am very, very grateful to them. I still haven't got confirmation on the Park Location, but I have found the location I want, asked for permission and have been asked for more info which would lead me to believe that it should be okay. I'm not going to reveal the location just yet,because I don't want to jinx it,  but here is a little teaser...

The last thing that is falling into place is the cast. I had my first rehearsal with Chris and Lisa on Tuesday and I'm a chuffed with the progress. I think it's fair to say that it was a challenge for all of us. Me because I'd never directed actors before, and for Chris and Lisa, their experience is mostly with theatre which is very different from film. Chris has directed a lot of amateur dramatics and has spent a lot of time saying "they can't see your eyes moving like that in the back row" so me telling him "do it smaller dude, the camera is gonna get everything" is making him fight all of his instincts and experiences. For Lisa it was the first time she had done a character that didn't require an accent and she found it weird to use her natural speaking voice. Both though are really kick-ass actors and amazing at taking direction. By the end of the rehearsal they had the character and performance down. 

Again advice that I can give. If you have luxury of time to rehearse I highly recommend taking it the two hours I spent with Chris and Lisa on Tuesday were absolutely invaluable in getting the performances I wanted so on the day of the shoot I can just worry about the technical stuff. 

More advise, if you have written the script yourself, then be prepared to let it get changed. I know you may have agonised over your precious words, but if they sound weird and unnatural when an actor says them out loud, they're the wrong fucking words. Let actors and directors play with some of the words, as long as the story and the essence is there, it doesn't matter...

...Unless it's a really kick ass line, then fucking shout at them to say it right.

I'm going to leave you with some photos from the rehearsal. If you see a silhouette in the mirror in the background like some sort of fucking Sasquatch that's yours truly. Before I leave I have one further request. There is the option to Follow this blog on the right. I know a load of you read this but not many follow me making me look like a fucking lunatic, babbling to himself on a street corner. Please click on the follow button.

Later all

M

Casting

Having the cast round on Friday night was excellent. It was a great opportunity to get to know everyone and bond. Bond does not mean anything weird. Well, at least, not unless you count Richie's anecdote about his landlady. Sunday I was filming some shots for Grove Park Theatre for their upcoming production of Canterbury Tales and Monday I began to edit their footage. This weekend has put me in the mind to reflect on what I have learned about making this movie recently.

I'll talk about my first experiences with shooting and editing another time but first I'm going to talk about a biggie: Casting

Casting was something that I was really worried about. First of all where do I get my cast from? I knew I didn't want to use my existing mates. I wanted to use people who had acted before and would take directions from me without saying "You're not the boss of me!" or just "Bugger off!". But on the other hand I didn't want to approach professional actors, firstly because I thought it unfair to inflict my inexperience on a professional cast and secondly because, well frankly, I couldn't pay them!

So I hit on a solution. I contacted local amateur dramatic societies. I sent a polite email introducing myself as an aspiring film maker, outlining the project and the roles I needed to cast. I thanked them for their time, included my contact details and waited. I heard nothing from one, but Grove Park Theatre in Wrexham forwarded the mail out to their members and the replies started coming.

Cool thing is; actors know other actors some word got around a bit about what I was doing. In a very short space of time I has gone from "How the fuck am I going to cast this?" to "Holy Shit, I have a choice of cast". This brought it's own problems. Namely how do I choose.

This is how I approached it. It may not be the best way but it worked for me. I sent those interested copies of the script. Explained that this was my first picture and that the budget was somewhere in the region of £3.72. I told them i was more concerned about finding people who were on board with the project than Oscar winning performances, I sent them the script to read and said that if knowing all that they were still interested we would meet up. I'd be lying if I told you everyone replied after that but I was pleasantly surprised to find that the vast majority were still interested. So here begineth the auditioning.

I arranged to meet in a pub. A pub with plenty of space at a time that wasn't busy. A pub is not an ideal spot for an audition but it did have some advantages. Firstly I had nowhere else. Secondly it was a public spot and I was meeting people I didn't know who didn't know me so (for the female actors in particular) this hopefully gave out the message that I wasn't some nutter luring them into a private meeting with promises of stardom. That said, I have never promised stardom, just Starbuck's...

...I have just been informed that I am no longer allowed to refer to myself as a writer thanks to that last pun.

Okay, I know that I am hardly a seasoned pro but here is a piece of advise. Do not bullshit the people you are asking to help you out. If this is the first film you've done, tell them that. If there are going to be no creature comforts on set, let them know and if your expectation is nothing more than YouTube don't fucking tell them that you are expecting a premiere in Cannes. I was honest with everyone about my experience, my expectations and my budget, so now everyone knows what to expect and as a result I have a cast who are 100% on board. Richie told me about a piece that he did where the director didn't know one end of a camera from another. That wasn't the problem, the problem was that he gave everyone involved the impression that he was Stephen feckin Spielberg. Hence everyone was pissed off with him from day one.

So i went for honesty. I told them about my experience. None. I told them about the budget. None. I told them about my aspirations. N...No wait I have some of those. I like the script. Other people like the script. If the finished product is good enough then I'd like to try and show it off on the festival circuit. If it's not then I'll have done something that was a learning experience and the next one will be better. At this point everyone was given a get out of jail free card. Not literally, that'd be weird. I told them that if they weren't interested I understood and would not take offence. Thankfully everyone stayed on board. I also told them about the expected timetable for shooting.

So then the spotlight went on them. I got them to tell me a little about themselves and what they had done before and got them to read from the script for the role they were reading for. Last thing I did was take a picture of each of them. Why? Because I have a memory like a fucking sieve.

So then I had a decision to make. To be honest my first decision was a no-brainer. Richie Nolan as Weaver. He is a talented actor who gave a great audition, he looks the part and as far as being able to work with him, well let me just say that post audition we stayed on for a few pints in the pub together. He's also probably reading this so I've got to say these nice things.

Casting Leonard and Lisa was tougher. First consideration was can I work with this person? I based this on just my own gut instinct from the first meeting. In the overwhelming majority of cases the answer was yes. Thankfully Val Kilmer didn't show up so I really had no issue on anyones personality or willingness to take instruction from me.

Second thing to consider was acting ability. I know this seems like a weird choice for number 2 and that surely it should be number one? Yes, well maybe when I am an experienced director I can put it at number one but I am learning so much at the moment and am going to make so many basic fuck ups that I need people who will be understanding of that. That said the quality of talent that was interested was high and everyone I saw had something I could use.

Third last consideration was look. When I say look, what I mean is how they look as a pair. I had to pair up these actors in my head and think about how they appear as a couple. How do they compare in height and age? Do their acting styles compliment each other? I know that how people appear as a couple isn't important in real life, but for a movie unfortunately it is. I mean I don't expect to see Scarlett Johannsen and Ben Kingsley as a screen couple anytime soon. Both fine actors, but together, I just can't see it working.

After all of that, well I just had to go with my instinct. So I cast Chris Jones and Lisa Solari. They're audition was excellent, probably augmented by the the fact that they did it together. They are excellent actors and genuinely great people.

I was fortunate enough to have plenty of talent to choose from and everyone who auditioned brought brought something really interesting to the table, but I have got a cast that I am chuffed with.

Next stop rehearsals.

Mark out.