The Year in Preview

So, it's the start of the academic year - time to find focus again. I've had a few months to consider which direction to take for this year and beyond. In last year's collaborative project I ended up with writing, producing, sound and edit assist credits. I'm looking to narrow my focus a little more this year.

My goal will be to focus on sound recording and editing as these are two areas I could realistically pursue after I graduate. It's possible I may end up producing as well, mainly for practical reasons, as myself and Lee have already undergone that baptism of fire and are hopefully a little wiser for it.

For several reasons, I've switched away from writing as a focus. Although I enjoy the theory and mechanics of writing, I find writing itself, with the pressure of looming deadlines, enormously stressful. I have my doubts that tying my fate to professional writing career would be a particularly healthy decision long term. I think I need to be a bit more pragmatic and look towards more tradable/bankable skills.
It's also possible I've been hindered by hype - that fact is, i'm probably not as talented a writer as some believed I was - nor am I as talented a writer as i'd like to believe I was. I feel that I can recognise and appreciate the genius in other's work more easily than I can create it myself.
In terms of this years upcoming film/animation project, it's probably a good idea to split up the roles of writer and producer. In hindsight, i think that's one area where we went wrong last year. Attempting to wear both hats simultaneously hindered our pre-production, particularly as the concept didn't originate with the writer, and time is not a luxury we have.

However, I will continue to write as an outside interest when inspiration strikes. Ultimately, any time practicing storytelling can only be a positive. I remember hearing from an established screenwriter (although I don't remember exactly who that was), that it takes at least ten years to become a decent writer, so it could be that I've still got a few more years to go. Time will tell.

Battening down the hatches.

New Year, new beginning.
Not really.
Apart from having to awkwardly morph a '4' in to the shape of a '5' for a couple of months when filling out forms, it's business as usual. Resume transmission.

I had written up a full post, full of elegant flourishes and fancy metaphors to help describe the kind of year that 2014 was, but then I thought "screw it" and erased it all with a single keystroke. This really doesn't feel like the year for elegance. It feels like the year for blunt instruments. For black on white. For miners with worn pick-axes, hacking away at the earth's tough hide.
And bluntly, last year was a proper four letter word.
Another four letter word - 'hope' - will not form a part of my vocabulary this year. I have no expectations, other than that it could be (and I will be on guard for it to be) just as, if not more difficult than the last.

In saying that, I am aware there are a lot of things that I can't prepare for. I don't have all the answers. Not much I can do about that other than to remain vigilant and be ready to adapt.

Cut it, print it.

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!