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.

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[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.

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[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.

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[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.