Blog post.

Quiet week really. The team went down to the quarry to get some VFX plates and Brandon has finished a few designs so the animators can get started on VFX now.
Myself, Adam and Seth took another look at a scene between Kristana and Bray and decided it needed a bit more of a punch, so we've adjusted the edit for that scene.

Apart from that, just been working on my individual project. Not much to say about it at the moment. Don't really know where it's going yet. Watch this space I suppose.

Only the finest ingredients are selected...

Been editing (edit assisting anyway) over the course of the last few weeks, working with the footage we've got back from the Bones of Essimer shoot.

Suppose the trickiest part of it has been editing with the greenscreen footage. I haven't worked with greenscreen footage before so editing with it was strange. Hard to really see if what you're cutting is any good with a bright green background jumping out at you, it's really quite distracting and it colours (no pun intended) how you perceive the performances. But hopefully once all the vfx elements are in place it will come together. And sound as well - that's another big thing, difficult to tell how the end product will look because sound and music play an important part in how the cinematic is interpreted. But we've done what we think is right at this stage and now we have plenty of work on the vfx side of things to get us ready for the premiere and for Armageddon Auckland on Oct 24th.

We've had feedback from a few people on the edit, and they've given some useful advice, but I think we may need more outsider opinions to gauge how an audience who has no knowledge of Essimer would respond. Because we've been "living" in the Essimer world for so long, it's easy to fall into the trap of assuming the audience knows as much as us about the story, when obviously they don't.

Still have to organise pick-up shoots as well, then onto the task of packing things down, returning props, costumes etc.

Will post some screengrabs soon.

Don't quarry about it

It's been a bit quieter over the last week while art department finishes building the sets. We should be able to get back into shooting again next weekend if all goes to plan.

We did do a decent amount of prep work though. A group of us went to a quarry and dug up four trailer-loads of dirt to lay out on the tarp in front of the greenscreen. This will essentially be our stage. Glad we chose to film on greenscreen because the weather here in Southland has been pretty wild over the last few days with wind, rain, hail, lightning and snow.

Again, apologies about the image quality of these photos, the camera on my phone is pretty bung. I've just noticed I can add captions under the photos though, so that's exciting... 

The groundforce team

Everyday I'm shovelin'

Today myself, Steve, Lee and Brandon took some of the set pieces out to the soundstage in preperation for next weekend as well as to clear space in the tin shed so art department can keep building sets.

Brandon strikes a pose

Myself, carrying a post

Our SITmobile still going strong, although the wild weather out at the quarry almost cost us the door on the passengers side!

Myself stacking some crates

It's not easy being green.

It has been crazily busy over the last few weeks, so I'm playing catch up with the blog posts at the moment. We really had to hustle to get ready for the shoot due to much of our crew being involved in shooting for another short film the week before we were due to shoot. As well as this, some of the crew were sick or absent during the term break. But we have some footage in the can now so that's something to celebrate.

I'm actually just going to blog about the last couple of weeks then I'll do a separate catch-up post regarding the previous few weeks I missed. A bit of non-linear blogging, post-modernism at it's best.

The last couple of weeks have been all about finding a soundstage. There's a story behind that, but I'll leave that for the next blog post. #suspense #applyingscreenwritingtechniquestoeverydaysituations.

It has taken what feels like an eternity to find a suitable place to use as a soundstage. I didn't think it would be that hard to find somewhere as there are hundreds of empty/unused spaces in Invercargill. However, we did have a very specific set of requirements which has to be met and the main problem has been finding somewhere that has ticked ALL of the boxes.

We needed to find a place that...
1. Could accommodate our greenscreen which is 10m wide and 8m wide (although only using 5m width would have been fine as well).
2. Had power connected (and enough sources for us to draw from since lighting the greenscreen and the actors will require a lot of power).
3. Had enough space for us to separate our actors and sets from the greenscreen so we can do a proper key in post-production.
4. Had a dirt floor or a concrete floor we could cover with tarps and put a dirt layer on to - this was important as it's very difficult to do pull off a greenscreened floor. The actors tend to look like they are floating.
5. We needed a place that would also allow us to keep our sets and greenscreen set up for a few weeks and to allow us to film weekday evenings and weekends, otherwise the logistics would have been a nightmare.

In hindsight, considering the checklist of things we needed to cover, maybe it's not such a big surprise that it took so long to find something. The problem wasn't so much that we couldn't find places big enough, it was that most of the places had rafters or beams that came down to a much lower level than the roof. Either that, or the buildings were already being used for storage, or the shape of the building made it impossible to hang the greenscreen flat.

Here are a few of the places which didn't quite work out for us:

After a while it became clear we would need a bigger team of scouts to cover all of the places on the list: (apologies for the quality of the image!).

But we did eventually find a woolshed that very graciously allowed us to use a unoccupied space. Here are some pics of the place we scouted.

Also this week, I've been trying to promote our PledgeMe campaign a bit more since we only have a few more days left to go. We have hit our target (which is great news!) but we any extra funds we get will allow us to make a better film (and compensate some people who have done us some massive favours!).

Show Busy-ness

Very close to shooting now, there has been a hive of activity going on at our workshop getting everything ready for shoot. Casting has now been finalized so we've been getting in touch with everyone who was successful in getting a role and we've been getting them in for costume fittings. Sets are being constructed, weapons and props are being built and costumes are being made.

I've been very busy on the producing side. here's an abridged version of what I've been up to:

- Materials sourcing (went to loads of builders, engineers, recycle centers, second hand shops, farming suppliers etc), finding wood, pallets, sheet metal, steel drums, clothes and other misc things.

- Finding out crew/cast availability

- Adding people to the mailing list/Trello

- Finding additional crew members (for things like hair, makeup, catering, fight choreography

- Working out our PledgeMe budget (in coordination with Lee)

- Looking into booking locations

- Buying thank you tokens for the people who have helped us out

- Tweaking the script

- Organising blocking sessions with actors and the fight choreographers

- Organising the BTS crew

- Sorting out transport for the crew and gear

- Assigning crew roles for on set

- Arranging to book out gear / looking for places we can hire/borrow gear from

- Writing up a credits and thank-you's document

- Misc other things...

Best I get some sleep, still plenty to do this week!

Finding Kristana

We've been stretched pretty thin over the last couple of weeks in particular with assignments and also the Rialto 48 Hour Film Competition that almost everyone in the team has been involved with. I was co-writing, co-directing and co-editing for our team entry 'The Rough Patch' - the goal for our team this year was really just to have fun and not take it too seriously - so I think we achieved that! We ended up writing something quite ambitious cast-wise and location-wise, and we had to re-write some things on the second day due to some of the material being too inappropriate for younger members of the cast that got brought in (it was a very 'Superbad' style of film. The film we ended up making was more of a fun romp kind of thing, but we were quite happy with the results considering we accidentally forgot to film a part of one of the scenes! We still managed to make it work in editing though. These things happen in 48 hours especially when no one has had much sleep!). I was originally meant to be directing it by myself but I think Richie and Doug ended up co-directing it because I was a little brain-fried from writing (and the many late nights leading up to R48!) - I'm not someone who likes to direct without having a precise plan as well - improv directing isn't really my cup of tea.

For games trailer, I've been part of the team that was running auditions. To be honest, I think there were problems with the way these auditions were organised (there needed to be more time given to advertising them - it was all a bit last minute. That said, we really are pushed for time now and a few more corners are having to be cut - much more than we would like). Something that has popped up as an issue as well was the fact that our script doesn't have a huge amount of dialogue, so we haven't got a lot of material to audition people with - we've mainly been working with one scene, trying to see if the people auditioning have understood the rest of the script and generally seeing how they have interpreted the characters. An important aspect of our lead character, Kristana, is that she needs to be able to convincingly convey a complex and often contradictory set of emotions/motivations that are consistent with her backstory. Also, she needs to have the physicality and athleticism to be able to perform the fight sequences. That has affected the way we have gone about casting the role. I had the idea of going to martial arts studios and gyms in order to advertise the casting call so we would be getting to see people of the right age and physical appearance. 

We will be running some more auditions next week in order to pin down the roles.

Also over the last week, we attended a workshop by one of the SIT arts tutors, Karl Hart. He ran us through the process of working with bone as a material and gave us some valuable advise on how to go about sourcing certain materials we will need for costumes, props and set building. Much of this week we will be focusing on sourcing, while the art department make a start on the materials we currently have.

Forging ahead

It has been a chaotic week so i'm a little late off the mark for this post. Anyway, we've finally got a script greenlit so we can begin preparing to shoot. There is a collosal amount of work to be done before shooting so I'm taking off my writers hat and putting on my producers hat now (or putting my writers hat aside for now at least - I'll have to tweak some dialogue later).

A few things have helped getting the script finished have been going back to classical genre structures. I found that even though the game/film is set in the future, in a post apocalyptic world, the structure was more like a western. Using, or adapting, the conventions used in a traditional western made it easier for me to gain some clarity on the motivations for certain characters. To be honest, I didn't really have much knowledge on the western genre before I started this project - I've seen a few, but it's not a genre I would normally seek out - although I might now because I've enjoyed finding out more about them. That said, some of my favourite films recently have been westerns: the superb '3:10 to Yuma' with Christian Bale and Russell Crowe and the brilliant 'True Grit' from the Cohen brothers. I really enjoyed the behind the scenes footage from 'True Grit' as well, especially for the insights into costume and art direction.

'True Grit' BTS Featurette

I found a few links that gave me a good summary on the Western genre:

Western Genre (Wikipedia)

Western Genre Lecture

Genre: The Western

Our main character in our game trailer is female, which is not especially common for westerns, but she fit a lot of the conventions of a western protagonist (or one variation of it at least: The western hero walks alone; the hero is reluctant; the hero can be morally ambiguous - usually has a personal moral code he/she adheres to).

In many ways, the post-apocalyptic world elements fit nicely into the genre conventions of a western: Civilization vs the Wild.

Anyway, don't want to give too much away at this point. We will be focusing on art direction and casting next, as well as preparing for the actual shoot which is only two and a half weeks away.

Mind the plot-holes: The bumpy road to success

The games trailer project is beginning to ramp up. We've finally pinned down the story for our games trailer - for which we now have a name: 

(*drum roll*)

'The Bones of Essimer'

I have to be careful about what project info I can release at this stage but I'm sure I will end up leaking a few snippets here and there.

It's good to have a story figured out because it's pretty much impossible to cut a trailer together without knowing what the story really is. Your trailer is all about hinting at what the story is, so if you don't know what it is, how can you communicate effectively to sell it to the masses?

One of the more challenging aspects of the writing side has been the logic testing process. Quite often you'll come across plot holes that need fixing and it comes down to a decision on whether to continue writing and try to fix it later, or whether you need to fix it right there and then before you proceed. You'll find that everyone wants to add their two cents as well with coming up with suggestions - which is great - but a lot of the time you find that those solutions have plot holes themselves, or they create plot holes elsewhere in the script. You end up having to balance a ton of variables. It's like trying to solve an algebra Rubik cube. Not only that, but some people get attached to those ideas and maybe don't understand why they can't be used. When you have to keep finding fixes for fixes for fixes you start to stretch the credibility of the story. 

Suffice to say, there have been a lot of changes. I know that's difficult for the rest of the team because it ruins their flow and sometimes it means their work might be unusable or need to be adapted. I feel their frustration. It's frustrating for me too - I think I'm on my third or forth script now and I've lost a lot of things that were originally scripted. But then I sat down and thought about it - that's not that unusual, scripts generally go through multiple drafts, sometimes dozens or hundreds of drafts. Some films have writers on set writing new things for a film that's being shot in front of them. It's probably best not to think of that as wasted material, but rather think of it as just a part of the process.

So far I've got an overview of the story, the next stage will be taking that and turning it into a beat sheet, then from there I can start crafting a proper script. 

Having said all that, we are only a few weeks out from shooting and I'm keen to finish this script so I can pull up my sleeves and start helping the rest of the team out. It'll be good to be doing something physical because everything so far has been very cerebral. Over the last few months, I've been helping out as an Art Direction intern on a short film called 'The Ballad of Maddog Quinn' which has just finished shooting. It has been really good to be doing things with my hands, painting, assembling, disassembling etc - it's actually quite cathartic to be doing stuff like that for a change.

Also over the last few days we have been running a casting call. This is something we do every year just to bring in as many people as we can - it's always helpful to have a database of various people we can look through for casting various roles and extra parts. The games trailer will potentially need a lot of extras so this has been a useful process. The next stage in this process will be reviewing all the casting call performances and doing call backs for the main roles, but we will also be looking to advertise more auditions for specific parts so we're getting a chance to see actors from other parts of the country as well.

We're also looking at expanding our team heading into shooting - I've been in touch with the Beauty Therapy students and the Hairdressing students to see if we can get them on board because these are two area's that will feature prominently.

Much to do - must be off.

Do the write thing

The games trailer is proving to be a difficult beast to pin down. I've had to go back to the drawing board writing page quite a few times now. Our original brief was to create an opening cinematic which led into a playable part of the game. The brief has since evolved then. 

The problem with the opening cinematic is that it doesn't give enough of an indication of what the game is about. The concept we have has quite a complex set of character and world elements in play and the cinematic would only have touched on a couple of them - e.g. we have a morally gray protagonist whose back-story is important to understand in order to be relatable, but we also need to explain what their 'hero's journey' will encompass. We had plotted out a three act structure for the game, but when I sat down to write the opening sequence, I found I was only writing the very beginning, the setup to the first act. On one hand, it's possible to say interesting things about plot and character in three minutes, but you're also balancing out the fact that you don't really want to hit the first turning point that early on in the game. It feels too rushed and you miss a lot of important character development. You could cram a lot of exposition into the opening but it wouldn't make for a good cinematic and you don't want to overload your audience. Games are all about exploring and finding things out for yourself during the game, so it would be a waste to do too much with the opening cinematic - and as I said earlier, this game's particular complexities don't make it easy to convey what needs to be conveyed within one opening scene.

So, we've had to change tack and aim for a different format. I'm no longer writing an opening cinematic, I'm writing something closer to an actual trailer - more of a mashup, highlight of some the key story elements and  a showcase of the visual elements. This approach comes with it's own problems and complications. Writing a trailer sounds easy in theory - we've seen thousands of trailers in our time, we know exactly what they look like, surely it should be easier than writing a short film or feature? Those were my thoughts - how wrong I was! The big problem I've encountered here is that I'm trying to completely reverse-engineer everything. In a normal environment for film or games, you already have a product (a game or film), so the trailer is really the editor's job of taking some key moments and using them to give an impression of what that film or game is about. However, we don't actually have a final product, nor do we even have a full script of the game, so we've had to try to imagine the full game, those key moments, key pieces of dialogue and try to figure out how they might arise. The difficulty in this is trying to maintain the sense of authenticity while manufacturing those moments. For example, having  a soundbite of dialogue that sounds like a natural product of the script is not easy without knowing the circumstances to how that dialogue would arise - who is speaking, who are they speaking to, where are they, what is their context? All of those questions are important when dealing with authenticity. It's hard to manufacture those moments without it sounding too 'on the nose'.

The other big issue I've had to contend with is that the world we've created has a lot of complexities that we haven't been able to fully pin down yet. We just don't have time to write a full script. A project of this complexity would take a lot of writing and re-writing to fully pin down. Without even a first draft we're jumping into the deep end in a big way. Imagine trying to create a trailer for 'Inception' without knowing exactly know how that world operates (and not even having the first draft as a guide!).  

The other danger of this is that once the trailer is made, there may be the feeling we'll be locked into the story in certain ways which would be difficult to change without making the trailer an obsolete relic. But, I'm trying not to think of it that way, I've had to come to accept that this is a pioneering venture and that a certain amount of malleability needs to be expected. 

However, now that I know what the problems are, I can start fixing them. I had a few eureka moments this morning actually. I think the way to I'm going to have to approach this is by anchoring on to (believable) key dialogue and things that just hint at turning points and character dilemmas. Hint is the key word there - I still think that "show, don't tell" applies. I'll also need to build the trailer through tiny snippets and try to get ideas across in extremely concise fragments, in unison with overlapping dialogue. In essence, I'm going to have to channel my writing and editing skills simultaneously. That will make up about two thirds of the trailer, leaving the last third to focus on the visual aspects - this will be where we get to bring out the inner Michael Bay and just throw our most explosive shots out there, remembering the fact that the point of trailers are to sell.

I've highlighted a lot of problems and difficulties in this post, not to complain or make excuses, but to show how much it has challenged my expectations. These were all problems I hadn't actually anticipated - it sounded much easier than it has been! I've very much had to learn through trial and error because no one else has done this before, and any advice/guidance I receive has to be taken with a pinch of salt as I know those people haven't been through this process either. Those are the joys of being a pioneer. Hopefully, with any luck, we'll survive and we can pass our knowledge along to all those who follow us.

 

One Flu Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Big week. I think. It's hard to tell, can barely remember it. I got wiped out by the flu on Thursday afternoon through til Saturday, but beginning to turn the corner on it now (Sunday). But here's what I can recall of the week... (in no particular order, other than the order I remember it in).

Meetings. Meetings. Meetings.
What were those meetings about? Mostly about meetings: the need for meetings, the running of meetings, the frequency of meetings, who needs to be involved in the meetings, rescheduling meetings.

Speaking of meetings... we had a nice meeting with the Co-Founder of Pledge-me, Anna Guenther. She was in Invercargill catching up with some people who have had successful Pledge-me campaigns in the area and dropped in to give us some advice. Really useful stuff that we'll take into our crowdfunding campaign for the games trailer. We should be getting that up and running soon. I think her most important points were really about making your crowdfunding campaign personal and take people on a journey - giving updates on where you're at, selling your vision, having interesting rewards that are not always physical items (e.g. having 'indirect rewards' - she gave us an example of one campaign where the reward was having someone jump into a freezing lake shouting your name to camera). She has a TED talk here.

Coming out of some of those meetings we've knocked out a rough schedule that we can refine a bit more this week. We're also looking ahead to doing casting calls and auditions in the next few weeks, which means we need posters and promotional things up and running yesterday.

We've also had more script meetings. I'll have to be honest here - I would do things differently if given another chance.
We've all heard great things about democracy, but sometimes it doesn't work, sometimes it does but it's an extremely slow and unwieldy process. Usually within that process and within the goal of pleasing everyone, you end up pleasing almost no one.

Our format this year has gone something like this:
- Brainstorm ideas in small groups
- Refine ideas down to a pitch within small groups
- Team vote on the two "best" pitches (and hope that the writer can connect with either or both ideas)
- Script team brainstorm ways of combining these idea's (somehow)
- Hope that something cohesive forms out of the mix
- Hope that the wider team get on board with the hybrid idea

That's one way of doing it, and I'm not saying it can't work, I just feel that it's probably not the best approach. It's slow, energy-sapping and extremely frustrating. Scriptwriting by comity is a hard slog.
However, hindsight is 20/20.

Possibly a more efficient way of doing it might have been:
- Brainstorm ideas in small groups
- Bring those idea's back to the writer as possible inspiration
- The writer goes away and writes X amount of pitches which may or may not have anything to do with the original ideas
- The team votes on their favourite one.

This way, you know that the writer is already has a connection with it. The writer more than anyone else in the team needs to connect with the idea. I think it's easier for the team to get on board with a well thought out story written by a good writer, than it is for a writer to get on board with two concepts that they may not connect with. In the same way that you don't want the painters voting on how a house should be built, I don't think you want the accountants voting on how a script should be written.

Hell, maybe there is no "easy" way of doing it, maybe it was always destined to be difficult.

Having said all that however, I think we do (miraculously) have an idea that we can proceed with and something the rest of the team will like.
And that's my current mission: writing a draft script, by tomorrow. Which means no more blogging tonight...

It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time to say anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to.

It's only the third post in so it might be too early to call, but I have a feeling that may be the longest post title I'm likely to write. Possibly the longest that anyone is likely to write. But I feel that it encapsulates the past week quite accurately.

We pitched our games trailer concepts at the beginning of the week - I wouldn't say we have a concept yet, in fact I would be highly surprised if the final product looks anything like what was originally pitched. There is still a large degree of metamorphosis yet to occur. We've narrowed down the field, but there was no great eureka moment of "that's it! That's our concept!". If anything, I'd say we had discovered which direction to take by figuring out which directions we didn't want to take. We have the foundation for which something can be built, but we don't quite know what we're building yet.

I think the team feels slightly restless and anxious at the moment - everyone is keen to start working on their own corner of the project, which is understandable. We've had a few weeks of brainstorming so it's natural to feel a little frustrated that we don't have anything concrete yet. We would like to be moving a bit quicker, although as I alluded to in the title, my feeling is that this is the most important phase of the project and we shouldn't rush it unnecessarily. Don't do it unless you're going to do it right. 

Unfortunately for most of the crew, this phase is more producer/writer heavy and there won't be a huge amount for them to get stuck into yet. This is very much the calm before the storm.

In the Producers Realm, Lee has been getting the social media aspects off the ground and ready for some shameless self promotion (I will post links to these a little later). Meanwhile, I have organised headshots for the crew (that's photographs, not executions...) that will appear on our website, which is due to be built soon. One of our incredibly talented friends in the Bachelor of Applied Media Arts course, kindly donated her Friday morning to us for the headshots (and she can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/FeliciaGoffinCreative). Thank you, Felicia, you rock!

First positions

This has been a week of foundations and beginnings. After a long and surprisingly arduous process (stretching back as far as the mid 2013) we have now settled on a name for our production company. Henceforth, we shall be known as 'Physical Realm Studio'. I'm very pleased we finally have a banner to rally around (although I still don't see what was wrong with 'Radioactive Latino Penguins' mutter mutter...).

Anyway, here is our fancy-pants logo, courtesy of Jade, our project Art Director.

We've also had our roles allocated (mostly). I have picked up the role of 'Internal Producer', which means I'll be taking charge of logistics, budgets, scheduling and general crew management,that sort of thing. I'm also the writer for the game trailer, which is very exciting, but at the same time I do feel a little wary of it. I haven't written anything resembling a game or a game trailer before so this will be a new challenge. Sounds easy, but there are whole new elements, structures and mechanics to consider, especially as we will be making a playable pilot with the possibility for further development. Still, it's a good opportunity and I'm sure I will learn a lot from the process. As well as producing and writing, I may possibly (read: probably) pick up some additional roles heading into production and post.

To keep track of things on the producing side, I've set up a Trello page. Trello is a neat little online app and it's an absolute godsend for collaborative projects. It's sort of like an online post-it board where you have tasks on 'cards' that you can move around and assign different people to. It's really handy so I'll be using it throughout the year as the main organisation hub for the games trailer and for all the other projects I've got going.

We've had a couple of brainstorming meetings this week - some interesting ideas coming out. We've also had to renew our student ID's and the film guys have started on first aid training so that has eaten into our meeting times a bit, and scheduling around everyone's different timetables is tricky to say the least. Having to schedule meetings at the end of the week (and after 2 hours of research class) isn't ideal but sometimes it has to be done.

Our BTS crew - which is currently a one man operation but will be expanding soon - is finishing off the edit on the first of the weblogs. I did a few behind-the-scenes interviews earlier this week so hopefully it shouldn't be too long until it goes online and we can show you some of the inner workings of the madcap crew at Physical Realm Studio.

So it begins...

Hello and welcome to 'Riot on set'.

This being the first post, I'll try to keep it short lest I wear out my welcome in a bloated, rambling introduction. Firstly, a little context: I have just entered my third and final year of study in the Bachelor of Digital Media, at the Southern Institute of Technology. To put it in simple terms, I am a film student.

My film/animation classmates and I have each set up our own blogs for the purpose of tracking our individual progress, focusing firstly on our 3rd year collaborative project.
Traditionally, the 3rd year film and animation project has been in the form of a short film such as Charlie Floyd's Visionarium created by our friends at Electric Shoelace Productions.
'Charlie Floyd's Visionarium' Teaser

Several of this year's team had a hand in making CFV (myself included - in fact, if you watch the behind-the-scenes you might spot my, uh... small cameo role. NB: There's a story behind that, but perhaps I'll leave that for another time!).
BTS 'Charlie Floyd's Visionarium'

This year marks a departure from the short film collaboration - in it's place we will be aiming to create a cinematic for a video game. In addition to the cinematic, we are also planning to develop a "playable pilot" of the game - the exact nature and scale of this will be a decision for a later date. This is something which has not been attempted, as far as we know, by any other educational institution in the country. It's fair to say that many of us were a little uneasy about breaking from convention. It will no doubt prove to be a worthy challenge, however our initial trepidation is rapidly giving way to mounting excitement. As with any pioneering venture, there are bound to be many pitfalls ahead, but with a willing and able crew, the rewards of a job well done are a prospect worth savoring.

Game on!