Location Location Location

Haven't got a huge amount to report this week as I've been away on another shoot since Thursday, but at the start of the week I was location scouting with some of the other crew. We were checking out some sites for the forest scenes, so we had a look at Seaward Bush and also down at Sandy Point. Found some good areas we could use - while others had been looking at the locations in terms of how it fitted with the visuals (and sound - we had Kyle with us checking things out on the sound side), I was more concerned with how they would fit with logistics: access/parking, potential hazards, toilet facilities, nearby kitchen facilities, areas for unit/catering to set up, distance from town etc.
As I'm away until Saturday, the decision on what locations we will be using will fall to the other producers and the director.
I have some snaps here...

I also have a bit of video footage as well - not sure what the rules are about posting video content on blogs, and whether I would need releases from the crew appearing in it?... In any case, I'll hold off on posting it until I've spoken to them, just as a courtesy.

Shifting in to the next gear

Been rather busy this week, organising various parts of the production. Hard to know where to begin, so I'll just jump in wherever I see fit:

I finished the script I was working on (well, "finished" - there are still things I would like to fix up if I get time). 

We had a couple of meetings at the start of the week to decide which script we should work on. So we now have a script that we are working to. My script wasn't chosen, but that's okay, I'll put 100% into the script that was chosen.

I felt like our meetings didn't run especially well this week, and I don't think they were as efficient or effective as they should have been. I decided we would need to change the way we ran them. 

Firstly, I think full team meetings are fine in small doses - but we don't need them all the time. We're going to try to limit those so that people can just get on with their work and not get pulled into meetings just for the sake of it. Their time is better spent concentrating on the job. We seem to have a motivated team this year and we've seen a lot of people using their initiative and getting on with things so pulling them into too many meetings is counter-productive. We've decided that we will try just running HOD meetings for the most part, then having one (or maybe two) full team meetings a week just to update everyone on the overall progress and display what everyone has been working on. I also felt that last year the producers ended up running around after everyone and micro-managing. For the benefit of my sanity, I don't want to do that this year. I thought about it and came to the conclusion that what we need to do is to just manage the HODs, and let them manage their teams (after all, that's really the point of them being an HOD). It will save having to communicate with every member of the team individually if we can pass the info through the HODs. I really want that chain of command established by the time we get into shooting.

I also did some research on running meetings themselves to try to speed things up, and communicate more effectively so that everyone knows what they are doing and stays motivated.

Here are a few of the videos I watched on how to run meetings. It wasn't the most fun thing to do, and the production quality is pretty shocking generally, but they had good content:

Effective Meetings

Running effective meetings

How to be a master minute taker

Chairing a meeting

These all had some good tips, but I found this one was the most useful: Project management:How to run team meetings

I also adjusted the format of the meeting minutes so that it was clearer what actions needed to be taken, the due date and who would be responsible. 

Again, coming back to the chain of command, I found a few great documents online which explain all the crew roles on a film set (including pre and post production), and the production hierarchy, so I emailed/facebooked that out to everyone (some people mentioned a week or two ago that they weren't sure what some of the roles were, so I thought this would be a good guide). 

I've also had a few logistical things to sort out. Firstly, the greenscreen we will be using needed to be cleaned as it was pretty dusty (and had some bird crap on from when it was used on the last group project). Lee managed to speak to someone who knows more about greenscreens than us, and he mentioned that spot cleaning it with a damp rag should be fine. I emailed Kathryn to get permission to use the basement to roll out the greenscreen, and myself, Lee, Sarah and Iris did some cleaning. It wasn't as dirty as I thought it would be so it didn't end up taking us too long thankfully.

 

 The art team also needed to move some things from the Tin Shed to the basement and G3, so I organised the SIT van and managed to get keys for the basement and G3 so they could do this over the weekend.





I also sent out an email to organise an HOD meeting for Monday, and to organise the pipeline test (also for Monday).



Lee and I also sat down to work on scheduling. Lee has put a Gant chart online which shows the whole production timeline, so we had to make a few alterations to that.

And yesterday we also sat down to work on the production budget. It's pretty much just an estimate at this stage as we don't have an of the breakdowns done yet, and that's probably not going to happen for a week or so. However, we know things like this can take a while to get approved, so we're trying to sort this as soon as possible. We're only three weeks from the shoot, so we'll need to start sourcing materials soon. 

Another thing we have to sort soon are locations. Last year it took weeks to find a place that could accommodate the greenscreen, the ground covering, the crew, the cast and all of the gear. We've organised a location recce for Tuesday afternoon but that will mainly be for the forest locations - but the greenscreen shed is the thing that I really want to nail down as soon as possible. I've been trawling through the property sections of the Southland Express and I've actually found a number of places that could be suitable.

 

 

 

 

 

 In the last two pics (above) I spotted a big shed in the background that definitely looks big enough for our needs - I'd just need to find out exactly where it is. It is right next to a railway though, so that could be a problem (unless it isn't used very much). We will probably have to do a lot of ADR anyway so that might not be a big deal.

Anyways, this might be the last time I can post for a while as I'm off on a film shoot for a couple of weeks. I'll try to blog again before I go if I have time.

Crafting and casting

Most of this week has been devoted to developing the script and the casting call (which we have just wrapped on).

The script team has pretty much narrowed down the choices to two scripts. Although the scripts have turned out to be quite different from each other, and go in different directions, there are some areas where they share common elements. This is good because it means the art team have a few areas they can begin doing some design research on. 

I'm working on incorporating the feedback I received on my last draft into the latest script (I think it will make the script stronger). Something I like about the script I'm working on is that I feel it has room for development - I can picture the end product for the group project being in a webseries format i.e. the first episode of a serial webseries as opposed to an episodic. In otherwords, the story in a serial has an arc over the whole season (as opposed to an episodic, where each episode can be a standalone, and it doesn't really matter if you miss any episodes. So it's like the difference between 'True Detective' where you had to watch every episode to follow the story, versus 'CSI' where each episode is about solving a new crime).

Oh god, what am I doing in Celtx again?! Least I got further than the last time I sat down to write.

 

The thing I like about the script I'm writing is that it has room for growth and development - it has a wider story outside of the first episode. Don't get me wrong, there are some great episodic things out there, but I've noticed that these tend to be comedies. In fact, the only webseries I've really been engaged enough to follow is 'Mid-Morning Matters' (which features the character Alan Partridge and has been adapted from radio and TV before becoming a webseries. Brilliant writing, genuinely laugh out loud funny in parts).

On to the casting call:

Lana did a fantastic job of organising it this year. Actually, I think everyone involved in the casting call did an excellent job.

My main job was sourcing scripts to use in the auditions, but I also thought it was important to impart some of the knowledge we learned (the hard way!) last year. So I ended up giving out quite a lot of advice - mainly simple things that actually make a big different: having all of the admin/photos done before the actors entered the audition room; making sure we all made an effort to break the ice with people before they started reading the scripts; keeping the cameras rolling through the whole audition; choosing scripts that allowed the actors to show their range; allowing the actors to read a script before they auditioned so they would be a bit more relaxed - things like that.

'Scripts I've gone n found' 

I also organised folders for offloading and backing up the footage so that it's going to be a lot easier to compile the database later (I believe Corey and Tyler will be setting up an online database this year which will be incredibly handy!).

Casting Call: Writing audition notes.... ... ... or screenplay for 'Whiplash 2: A good day to Whiplash Harder'...

Casting Call: down-time at Downtown

I think we only really made a couple of mistakes in the auditions themselves - at one point we tried doing an improv with someone but I don't think we explained the situation very well, so it was a bit awkward and didn't really go anywhere. But it wasn't a big deal.

One thing I was trying to find out before the casting call was whether the big print (scene description) was edited out of the scripts first (so that the actors just read the dialogue), or whether they keep the scripts exactly as they appear (I never actually found the answer to that question). What I ended up doing was reading through everything including the big print on the first read, then just playing out the dialogue in subsequent readings. 

Anyway, that's all the news for now.

P.S. My work this year isn't really visually focused (unlike art department or DOP), so my blog posts aren't going to be especially pretty in terms of fancy pictures - it's mostly just going to be screengrabs and random production photos from whoever else is around at the time, so I hope that's all good.

Gathering no moss

Things for the group project are trucking along. There is good energy and motivation from the crew so that is helping to keep things moving forward.

Having the experience from last year's project has been very useful. It fair to say that everyone involved learned a lot. We found a lot of areas that needed improvement.

Despite my best efforts, I've found myself in the script development team - as well as the producing team. Mixing the two roles is something I've previously said should probably be avoided...

"So now you've noticed how much time he
 spends doing things he says never to do".

However, having learned what didn't work last year, it puts me in a better place to guide the script team this year. I think the key to this year will be keeping the team motivated and consistently moving forwards. Time is our number one enemy, and it's a resource we will need to use effectively.

The team discuss one of the concepts that was pitched.

From my point of view, I don't care how we come up with the script (hopefully a good one!) or who "the writer" is, the number one priority is getting the thing made - on time and on budget. One thing I've noticed about writing teams are that the meetings often descend into endless discussions on options; "we could do X, or another option is to Y. Alternatively, if we switched out A and B and added C..." . There comes a point when you have to say "yes, we could do all those things, but what are we going to do".
Last year we got stuck in development hell, going in circles for weeks, and it's arguable whether we came out with a script which was any better than the original. Ultimately, that took it's toll on the team's patience, slowed down the momentum, and pushed us for time.

We had a script meeting over the weekend, and we agreed that the concept we had needed to be shortened to fit within two minutes, but there were various opinions on how best to cut it. I really want to avoid us getting too bogged down in  an endless development stage, so I decided it was best to start writing up each of the scenarios into scripts to see how they all play out.

I also decided a good idea would be to have the scripts tested for practicality - on Monday we will read though the scripts with the HODs so they can do a feasibility analysis. Basically, this will be a breakdown of the script, trying to assess how difficult or time consuming each script would be to produce. Once this is done, the full team can vote on the script they think will be best for us to pursue. In that way, the whole team has ownership on the decision of how best to proceed, and it should give us a rough indication of how much work is ahead.

I really want to improve our team communication and organisation this year. I've been writing the agendas and transcribing the minutes for each of our meetings, and making sure they get to everyone in the crew via email and our group page.

I've put a bit of effort into making them look profession instead of just the bog standard lists - makes them a bit more pleasant and easy to read. 

I've also been doing a bit more research into casting calls. Although last years casting call turned out okay, I think there were some areas to improve on. Casting calls don't sound too difficult to run, but I think there are some traps. For example, I think we probably could have used some better scripts - some of the scripts we used required us to explain a lot of the film's story so the person auditioning could understand the context for the scene. For the person auditioning, trying to absorb that much information can't be particularly comfortable, especially when they are already likely to be nervous. Doing casting calls, I think one of the most important things to be aware of is trying to make the experience as pleasant for the people auditioning as possible. Also, choosing scripts that require a lot of explanation isn't a very time-efficient way of running an audition, so it's probably best to chose scenes which can be summed up concisely. 

I found this video which was pretty handy and gave me a few tips on running casting calls.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDjTx-BCL-I

I also had a look at some professional auditions to see how they were being run. This is Evangeline Lilly's audition tape for 'Lost'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Koj93Api_4

From Basecamp

Heading into week 3 of the semester - realistically, this means we will need to nail down the concept for the group project within the next few days so work can begin on the script. With the shoot dates locked in for the middle of April we're going to have to work very quickly to be ready in time. In the meantime a casting call is being organised to take place soon.
Nothing much more to be said at this stage.