The post post

Into editing now. I didn't have a chance to get much done for hand-in last week since I finished filming late with problems delaying my shoot. It was pretty much just a rough cut with a little bit of my audio polished up as much as I could in one night. I don't think a lot will change going into my final cut, it's mostly done but just needs to be tightened up some more. There are quite a few shots I can't use due to continuity problems, so I've had to run the wides out quite long in some cases (although, I think that actually works ok in a few areas). Adding muic is going to make a big difference and should make it glide a lot more - at the moment it drags a bit. Then i'll need to colour correct once i've learned how to do that. Some of the exterior shots are a bit dark due to us having to shoot quickly with time constraints and bad weather, but hopefully I can grade it up. My raw sound is mostly good (except for the driving scenes), Kyle (mixer) and Kate (boom op) have done well. Unfortunately the lapel mics didn't work as well as I would have liked and most of that is unusable, but the stuff on boom was a lot better.

Unfortunately I forgot to save the original cut before I imported my sound from ProTools so
now I'm going to have to add it all back in again so I can continue editing. Doh.

Editing the streetside scene.

The rush to the finish line

First post back since shooting my film The last two weeks have been intense. Where to start?

I was very fortunate to be able to finalise my cast a few days before shooting. Their enthusiasm was a big boost to me as it had been a while since I'd had some positive news. Ultimately, the thing I really want from my cast is positivity and cooperation - people who want the film to succeed as much as I do.

I'm not going to lie - I did find Sparks difficult to film. It took a while to implement some of the feedback i'd been given about simplifying the script. I'm glad I did as it was difficult enough just shooting in two locations and with four main cast members. But even during shooting I was still ammending the script as I wasn't entirely happy with some aspects of it. That obviously made it harder as it meant, in some cases, having to scramble to find extra cast members and props at short notice, which was stressful. One thing I regret, to a certain extent, was not having a seperate art director and/or producer. On set, I ended up spending a decent chunk of time on the phone arranging things (e.g. phoning the police communications dept to let them know we were filming with police lights). Although, I think that  would have bee less of a problem if I had shot the previous week as planned. Having to push my shoot dates meant sharing gear with Lana's shoot which meant it was a bit more work to sort out the gear. Having a few extra people around would have made it easier for me to focus on my job of directing the actors. To be fair though, I had originally lined up some of the first year students to help with some of this but they were signed up to be on Lana's shoot so I lost a few crew members there, and the remaining third year students were too busy to help. But the crew I did have did a fantastic job.

Another big challenge was that all of my film takes place at night and because daylight saving just started it doesn't get dark now until 9pm. We managed to get the interior scenes without too much trouble (by blacking out windows), but the exterior stuff was much more tricky. Stormy weather on the first two nights meant we had to finish shooting early and pushed a few scenes to the following day. Then there was a bit of protest from key persons about shooting past 10.30pm which meant I couldn't get everything I needed shot, and the stuff I did get was more rushed than I would have liked. On one hand, it was frustrating, but on the other I understand that people have work and other commitments and they are doing me a favour by helping me, so my options are limited. 

The next day we were scheduled to shoot all of the streetside scenes and car rig stuff but one of my cast was sick so we had to settle with just doing the car rigs. However, just as we were about ready to shoot, I discovered that I had misplaced the police lights I'd rigged up with the help of my flatmate! We hunted around for a while before conceeding that we were going to have to go without. Luckily, Ben (lead actor) saved the day by coming up with a great idea to use a cellphone app that simulates police lights - this actually ended up working reletively well.

I've started work on my edit but I'm not far enough into it to be able to comment too much at this stage. I still have one scene left to film tonight which means I won't get picture lock until Tuesday morning at the earliest, which leaves me one day to do all of my sound and grading. Gonna need a hellavalot of caffiene.

I would post some pics of my shoot, except my laptop screen died last night. It has been on the blink (literally) for some time, just hoped it would have survived another week or so. I'm typing this on my tablet and I don't know how to upload photos from here so I'll do that from tech when I get a free moment (hah! Free time? Yeahright!).

But all in all, got the main stuff in the can. I'm just hoping it will all cut alright considering I had to rush a lot of it. Regardless of the results, I'm very proud of my team and all of this year's filmies for pulling together to help each other out.

PICS UPDATE:

The sound team (Kyle and Kate) prepped for action.

Blocking out a scene in the hallway.

A bit of a peeping Ash shot as we review a take.

Dan - Guardian of the Light. 

Setting up for a dolly shot. It was originally going to be a jib shot but I felt the dolly
worked just as well and was much quicker to set up.

Ash's impressive car rig. I would have been much more
nervous about this kind of set up without Ash's expertise.

And here's the product of the car rig. 

Where do I even begin? Or end? Or do that bit in the middle?

About 5 more days before I start filming my short - before I have to start filming. Hitting all sort of roadblocks, so I can't guarantee a abundance of quality. I've been getting feedback on my last version of the script and most of it has confirmed issues that I had with it myself. The really serious problem I have is attracting cast to play the roles. I have one, maybe two days (max) to find some solutions. I need to simplify my script right down, somehow. I admire people who manage to write efficiently. To be able to balance character motivation and conflict, concisely, and then have it pay off in a meaningful ending takes real talent. It's something I haven't been able to grasp despite devoting a wealth of concentrated time trying to learn more about writing effectively, analyzing professional scripts (the one's I've been reading lately are Aliens, The Social Network and Collateral) and analyzing my own script. What's really frustrating is that there a few things I think work quite well, but I can't the pieces to fit together. So just remove some pieces? Sure, but then no one knows what character A's goal is any more, or why character B reacts the way they do at the end. Yeah, but then you can just fix that with *major deus ex machina*.

Script, casting and scheduling issues are also distracting me from being able to sort out my art department and are robbing me of pre-pro time with my DOP. Trying to speak to then police about using uniforms but I haven't been able to reach the person in charge of this.

Was hoping to use uniforms similar to this but I think I may just go without the vest and the hat - haven't been able to find anything that doesn't look blatantly costume shop.

There's a scene where I need to use fake blood on the ground so I've been researching fake blood recipes that don't stain the floor.

People on the site were saying how great it looked. Why does mine look like raspberry syrup!!

I got Johanna to attempt a batch so I can test it, but this recipe has turned out looking more like smooth raspberry syrup than blood. I doubt I'll have time/money to solve this problem before the shoot.

I've also been boom operating for Dan Delaet's film Rash. That's been good. Fun group of people working on a fun script. Footage is looking good.

Booming on Rash

More booming on Rash, at the boxing ring

Detours

I feel like I'm on the edge of a cliff with an untested hang glider, and with one step I could be soaring high - or I could fall to my death on the jagged rocks below.

I had to make a big call today - a vital cog in the system failed and left me with little choice but to postpone my shoot to a later date. Strictly speaking, it wouldn't have impossible to shoot, but it threatened to make the rest of the shoot a thousand times harder because of the ripple through the schedule. More importantly, the sacrifice in quality was something I couldn't bring myself to accept. Ultimately, it was too big a risk and the last thing I want is to be boxed in to bad decisions, and have a potentially good film fall flat on it's face.

But that's life in film, and life in general. Now, having literally bought myself some more time (having hired my DOP for an extra week) I have to make the most of it. I certainly won't turn down a little more time in pre-production. It will probably mean a few days less in post, but if it means I'll capture better raw footage, that's a long term trade-off I'm willing to accept.

I have been on a few other different shoots over the break. I was doing sound for Aman's film, Delicious cakes. Few tricky things going on with the mixer meaning I could only record through one mic - that was frustrating but hopefully it's all good. Also did a day of boom op on Sarah's shoot, but luckily Kyle is back from Byron Bay and took over as mixer to give me a bit more time to prep for my film.

Here are a few sneaky snaps I took on Delicious Cakes

Ol' Steve CakeBeard

Josh getting to grips with C-stands

A bit of blocking action with the director and actors. Vince is proud of has job with the C-stand.

Aman blocking with Nicola and Taylor

Aman and Taylor. 

Nicola reading through the script for the next scene

Getting a beat down...

Don't know that I've really got much to say this week...

I've been trying a few variations of my script to see if I can get it to work better, but I end up running into roadblocks or having a story that blows out into something well beyond the fifteen page limit. More crucially, I need something that ties the whole film together so it isn't just a series of things that happen. I'd like it to have some kind of meaning, but to be honest, at this stage I'd settle for something that just makes narrative sense. It seems like it's going to be a very long time before I become a decent writer, so if I can just get some things right at least that will be a step in the right direction.
Over the last few years I've had people come to me asking for feedback on their scripts, and up until this year I've been happy to help with it. I'm not so sure I'm in any position to do that any more. It's sort of a case of the emperor's new clothes.

I've tried to map out my story with Blake Snyder's beat breakdown, but that hasn't really helped all that much. I don't know how much of that actually applies to a short film. Also, I'm not a massive fan of "template" film's but hey, if it's a way of getting back to the basics and making something coherent, that's probably a small price to pay.

Working on a Blake Snyder orientated beat sheet. 

I am running out of time though, so I think I basically need to have made a final decision on the script by Tuesday night at the latest so I can get on to prepping for the shoot. My shoot dates are locked in and immovable, and if I want to have anything resembling a polished film, I'm going to have start locking things in very soon.

The short film marathon begins

We are now officially into production on our individual projects. Ten thirds years films and one second year film shot back to back over approximately forty days.  It can be quite a slog to get to the end of it, it is quite tiring physically and mentally but I think we are a bit more prepared for it this time around. We have drawn up a schedule and had meetings on when each person will be shooting and who will be doing what on everybody's film. We've also said that we should schedule a few breaks as well so that we don't wear ourselves out or get too far behind on prepping for our own shoots. It's a very delicate logistal feat which doesn't leave much room for unexpected circumstances and general bad luck but we have to roll with it, those are the cards we are dealt.

Lee was first to shoot. On Sunday, the cast and crew went to dinner at Lee's place which was great - gave everyone a chance to mentally prepare ourselves and enjoy each other's company before our marathon of filming began. It's always a bit daunting being first up to film, so good on Lee for going first. There were a few issues which resulted in having to quickly change to another location, and change the shooting schedule. Lee was a bit stressed about that, but everyone rallied around and assured Lee that these are things that can happen on shoots, even the big professional ones, so not to worry too much and just roll with it.
I was the soundie on the shoot. I had a few of my own things to deal with as well. The Zaxcom mixer that I had planned to use had problems from the beginning - the card wouldn't format, and then I tried to reset it and it crashed so I couldn't turn it on. So I ended up switching to a Sony mixer instead (which I had never used before - in fact I didn't even know we had a Sony mixer in the equipment room!). It's a bit different from the Zaxcom in that it doesn't record seperately, so you have to plug in to the audio inputs on the camera. That can be a bit annoying as it limits your freedom to move around. Howevcr, it will save some time for us in post if we don't have to sync up sound. Also, the pre-amps seemed to be great, there's hardly any hiss when you increase the gain and levels.
I did have a bit of a problem on some of the days as I couldn't work out why the sound on the camera was recording so low when it was coming through loud and clear on the mixer. I looked at all the settings on the camera and changed a couple of things, and got it to change from limiting at -20 db to -10 db but for some reason I couldn't get it to go any higher. That was frustrating, but I managed to work around that mostly.

Doing a sound check on 'Suspicion', Lee's film.

Kim's shoot was right after Lee's. I was a soundie on that as well and really enjoyed it. We shot over three days mainly out as Seeward Bush, but we also shot at Lana's place and St Mary's Basilica (was good to see inside there - it's a really impressive building from the outside so I've always wondered what it's like inside). We got a mixture of different weather conditions over the three days, but since Kim is filming a trailer and not actually a full film, that shouldn't be so much of a problem in terms of continuity.
I think I have managed to get more used to the mixer now, the sound that I checked out has been good so far. There were a few planes and a bit of traffic at our Seeward Bush location but the directional mic seems to have done a decent job of minimising that.

Everyone had a turn with Cyrin's hat.

Checking my levels. Or possibly my shoe...

Setting up my directional mic

Getting my Sony mixer tethered to the camera

On the set of 'Ko's World'

In other news: I have now booked flights for my DOP, Adam Joseph Brown, to travel down from Napier. I was hoping to tie in travel with cast/crew coming in from other parts of the country as well to make it all a bit cheaper, but that was going to be a logistical nightmare in terms of timing flights, buses and having stopover accommodation. I came to the conclusion that it wasn't going to save a huge amount of money and it would end up being more trouble and more risky than it's worth. Also, it wouldn't have made economical sense for Adam as it would have meant taking more time off work to spend an extra few days traveling here. In the end, it was best just to get the flight down here -  better to strike while the iron is hot and we could still get relatively cheap flights instead of waiting for the stars to align (the film stars in this case. Badum-tish).

I've worked with Adam on many different shoots and he is an excellent DOP so I'm really looking forward to having him on board for my film. I had the pleasure of co-editing his film 'Still is the Night' last year and really enjoyed the collaboration.

P.S. I've added some updates to my last blog post.

P.P.S. Thanks to Iris for the pics on set otherwise I wouldn't have any to add to my blog! Being a soundie means phones are off, so good to have someone around who can grab some BTS stills in quiet moments.

Indirectly and directly about directing

Forgot all about my blog! Just about to head off on set so I'll need to fill in the particulars a bit later, but for now I can say that we have been focusing on aspect of directing leading into our shoots for our individual project. (  Updates added - read on! :)  )

I've been reading various books about this:

Directing: Film Techniques and Aesthetics is a great book I've been reading lately, not only for tips on directing, but it has really insightful points on writing and interpreting scripts as well. I mentioned on an earlier blog post that sometimes it's difficult to figure out how much of your character backstory and development needs to be "written in" to your script, There is a good passage in the book that addresses this by saying:

 

"A character, after all, is like the proverbial iceberg - four-fifths out of sight. What is visible (that is, in the script) allows the actor to infer and develop what is below the "water-line" (the character's biography, motives, volition, fears, ambitions, vulnerabilities, and so on). The givens serve as the foundations determining everything else. Much is left deliberately and wisely left unspecified, such as the movements and physical nature of the characters and the treatment to be given the story in camerawork, sound and editing". 

I found this helpful because something I've found myself doing quite often in scripts is writing too much in a literary form instead of a visual form. I still think that can  be done in small doses throughout the script if you really need something to be crystal clear, but in general terms it's best to keep it visual. 'Inferences' is the key word. Also, a lot of the character development work is stuff that can be done behind the scenes with your actors - it allows them to bring their own expertise to the film. 

Cinematic Storytelling is another book I've been flicking through lately. This is really half about directing and half about cinematography. It is full of examples from various major films which show how specific camera placements, techniques and movements were used for effect. I think this is really the core of filmmaking: using the power of the image to tell the story. I think that's something that takes a lot of experience to master, but it's something for every film to aspire to. I'll be reading much more of this book looking for inspiration when it's time for me to start pinning down the visuals.

In class, we've also been discussing the key roles of the director on set. The key things being that the director is the navigator of a film. They are responsible for the film as a whole, tying all of the elements together, the performance, the lighting, the costumes, the sound, the cinematography - everything. They set the course, but also need to give each of the crew the freedom to contribute their expertise. Another major aspect of directing is looking after your crew - you need to be someone who your crew can trust.

Directing 101 (in BDM 331)