Bukowski

Final Blog Post.

Before I started the module I was an avid follower of Future Shorts and had been to a couple of their events to watch the best short films coming from around the UK. I've always been interested in film making but never had the equipment to do it. This is what first attracted me to the module; the opportunity to make films rather than just analyse or write scripts for films - which was all I had done up until last year.

In November last year the class was put into groups of four or five. These groups over the next month would develop the script ‘Choices’. I remember not being very impressed by the script but as my role within the group was casting and music, I wasn’t in a position to make improvements. This was my first major issue with the film – not being happy with the script and also having very rigid roles.

During filming, because my jobs were pre-production and post-production, I felt a bit of a spare part. Mostly what I did was carry around equipment and act in the film, as I highlighted in my fifth and sixth blog post.

We had a few minor incidents during filming, one of our actors didn’t turn up until about two hours after he should have and we found shooting on a busy street very time consuming. But other than that it all went very well. I say very well in that we got all the shots we had planned to, aside from the fact they were boring and lacked any sort of creativity... it went very well.

During post-production I spent quite a lot of time in the editing room with Jaeeun overseeing her editing and putting music, that I had got hold of from various friends, on to the edit. I found it quite difficult to put music over the already edited film for reasons I explained in my post ‘Editing, music, etc...’

When I came to watch the finished film, the first thing I noticed was the music volume had been changed, which meant the intro lost a bit of the gravitas I had worked for. There were also a few sound issues and one shot went on a bit long, but mainly it was alright. We had all the shots we wanted and they had been fitted together very well. There was a bit of confusion caused by the subplot of Greg being an imaginary friend, most people who weren’t in my group didn’t get it. I have to say the best part of the film was the titles at the end which Jaeeun had done brilliantly.


Here is the final product for the first film I was involved in...

I dedicated my eighth blog post ‘Things learnt by watching finished films’ to exactly that. The most important thing I think I took from the first films is this:

“Step back from the script. A lot of the films took for granted that the viewer would know the story, this meant they left out important plot devises. For example, one of the films didn't make a point of showing the first 'teleport' in a clear way. For an outside viewer who had not read the script, there's no way they could understood what was supposed to happen - making the rest of the film null and void.

So my point of the year is: to avoid making nonsensical films, make sure you are not too close to the script.”

I believe the second film we made at the end of March was so much clearer because we had this in mind and didn’t try to overcomplicate the plot, like we did with the highly pointless Fight Club twist at the end of 'Doorways'.

For the second and last film I made I decided to switch groups; I wasn’t entirely happy working in the group I had previously worked with. I chose the group on the basis I really enjoyed the film they made last year. I describe more of the reasons in the blog post 'New Film - New Group'. 

Because my new group 'Domin-8' had already developed a group dynamic, I had to slot in somewhere because none of them (understandably) wanted to give up their previous roles. I ended up being put in charge of props and costume, which wouldn’t have been a very big job if it was my last film, but the new script required a lot of difficult props and costumes. I describe the difficulties finding items in my tenth blog ‘Pre-Production Retroactively’.

The script we chose for the new film was ‘Run Rabbit Run’ - ‘A childhood adventure gone wrong. Harry and Charlie find more than rabbits in the woods.’ This was the tagline we settled on.

The filming went fairly well the first day, but the second was disastrous. We lost too much light because of starting late and the boom mic left a crackle on a lot of the tape. Because I was doing a lot of the sound I noticed the crackle and me and Chaz spent a little while checking if it was in the headphones or actually recording on to the tape. Unfortunately it was the latter. My thoughts after the weekend of filming can be found in my eleventh post 'Filming':

“The filming experience was a lot different with Team Domin-8 to my last team. It was a lot more of a creative environment where we could all bounce ideas off each other. Larry welcomed my input on what shots should be taken and from where, asking my advice on several occasions. Though not everything went to plan, we got a lot of good shots and if Laurence can't make it into a film... no one can.”

Laurence did decide we hadn’t got all the shots we needed so there was a reshoot scheduled. Unfortunately I couldn’t be around for the reshoot; I went down to Cornwall for my Dad’s wedding and couldn’t get back to bath in time. I’ve been told it went a lot better and after seeing the rough cut I could agree. They even got a few new shots which almost make the film, for instance when Harry wades into the lake to wash the blood off his shirt and hands.

As I explained in my eleventh blog post I felt I had more creative input being in a group more open to suggestion from all sides of the table, but I still felt a little hesitant being the new guy. I didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes. I said this in my fifth post:

“I feel I would be more comfortable in the role of director or even director of photography/cameraman, a job where I can be creative.”

...and I’ll say it again. Though it was a step up from basically just being a runner, I would like to take on a meatier role and I think the only way to do this would be to start my own group as director. I have recently started a production group with a few friends where I will have the chance to direct, edit and have a big creative input in every film we do.

Though 'Run Rabbit Run' had problems from the start, it was disorganized through every production stage I think the outcome is far superior to the 2010 film. We had a laugh making it, we all got on very well, everything, always got everything done in the end and we had a brilliant editor to put all the pieces together.

One of my favourite quotes which I think relates well to our film is a Kubrick one: 

“A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.”

I think, more than just following the story, we tried to create a mood with our film, we didn’t let the plot get overcomplicate with subplots or unnecessary scenes, which meant we could create more emotion and generally a tighter more streamlined end product.


This being said, after seeing the final problem I noticed a couple of glaring omissions. The pivotal point in the script is when the mother decides to cover up the murder of her son by her other son. This is unfortunately missed in the reshoot. I think this was mainly down to the absence of a rabbits foot and also the actress playing the mother wasn't directed into portraying this difficult decision (the decision to protect her son despite knowing what he had done). I think this could have been avoided by having a more in depth shot list and/or story board.

Here is the finished product...

Script writing (better late than never).

I've realised I have said nothing about my script or the writing process, so here is a little walkthrough.

I find the brainstorming thing quite difficult a lot of the time. It's so hard for me to think of an idea if I'm trying to... think of an idea. My usual way of 'idea making' is waiting for it to jump out on me. This normally happens while I'm doing my shopping or watching Morse (I've never watched Morse but you get the idea). For these occasions I have a little notepad which I whip out and scribble in. Unfortunately I had no suitable ideas in my notepad at the time. Instead my idea came from my inability to think of an idea for a script. All I had on the page was:

"INT. DAY. MY ROOM.

I'm sitting in my room waiting for an idea to fall into my head."

Then my house mate Georgia came in so I wrote:

"Georgia enters the room."

And the idea evolved from there, into the story of a student who can control his surroundings by what he types into this screenplay on his computer.

My main aim when writing the screenplay was to keep it within the parameters set. So that meant writing a script which could be easily filmed by students. And so that is what I did.

I discovered after getting the mark back and looking at the scripts short listed that simplicity to film wasn't all Mike was looking for. The short listed scripts included a film involving a room full of naked students, a film involving two children killing and cutting up a rabbit (the script I ended up doing) and a script in which a room flips over. The most difficult aspect of my film was a short rewind sequence. In retrospect, knowing what I know now, I would have written something more adventures. Next time maybe I will pitch a film about the infant Adolf Hitler's accent from hell. Hopefully the sheer audacity would out weight how impossible it would be for a university film group to film.

Filming.

So, we had two days of filming and here is how they panned out...

Day 1: Eight AM start, ring Edem (our policeman) and see if he's up. Get all the Costumes and props together. Get the bus in to uni for ten. Turned out there was a slight lapse in communication and the rest of the team and actors didn't arrive until twelve. Me and Edem used the time constructively getting him dressed and in the mind set of a policeman on the scene of an accident/incident/MURDER...

When the others arrived it took a while to get the whole signed in thing sorted (we had to sign in at the university gates for security reasons), but once that was done we could head down to the lake (our set for the day).

There were a few slight technical issues with the camera but we had Chaz and Mike on scene to sort it.

We were down by the lake for around six hours filming around four or five minutes of footage and it was a very cold day. I didn't envy Michael or Joe who I had made incredibly short shorts for. During this time we were able to capture a lot of footage of swans and ducks on the lake, which will work brilliantly cut in to the rest of the footage.

Handling the rabbit was greatly improved by the fact Michael was happy to cut off its foot himself. I wasn't particularly looking forward to doing it myself. Seeing the animal on camera reassured me about the decision to find a real one, as it brings something more real and dark to the film, which has a few 'silly' aspects to it.

The biggest problem with the shoot was, Michael didn't turn up until later on in the shoot so we decided to film the couple of shots where Charlie is cradling her dead sun (Joe). Unwittingly by doing this shot first we set ourselves up for a retroactive shoot, which is a lot harder for continuity reasons. For instance Joe got blood on his shirt which of course he couldn't have for earlier shots. Luckily I brought a spare shirt and we were just extra carfull for the next shots. At the end of the day we got all the shots we needed, and we all felt the day was a success.

Day 2: A very disastrous day. Again, there were problems with cast members which meant we didn't start filming until three, though many of us had been at Charli's house since eleven. So this caused the first major problem, which was we ran out of light. Which also meant we rushed a lot of the filming.

The second major issue was the boom mic started crackling and it was picked up on the recording. I don't know how much tape was unusable, we tried to work through it hoping enough would be salvageable. We even used Laurence's digital camcorder, but it felt a little like it was all in vain.

The filming experience was a lot different with Team Domin-8 to my last team. It was a lot more of a creative environment where we could all bounce ideas off each other. Larry welcomed my input on what shots should be taken and from where, asking my advice on several occasions. Though not everything went to plan, we got a lot of good shots and if Laurence can't make it into a film... no one can.

Pre-production Retroactively

After much deliberation we decided the two central roles (Harry and Charlie) would be played by adults, as child actors would be very hard to get hold of and the script would also be very demanding for any child actor.

My first role as 'Production Designer' was to create the (comical) illusion that the two actors were children. We decided to dress them up as school boys. I found it difficult to procure the right sort of costumes, I wanted them to be slightly old fashioned public school boys (Just William style). After going to a few uniform shops and finding nothing I decided to try charity shops. Matching shirts and ties were relatively easy to get hold of what I had the most trouble with is the shorts, and they are the most integral part of the costume, for comedy value as well as stylistically. After searching countless shops for the illusive items, I decided to buy a couple of pairs of sandy beige (perfect colour to match maroon ties) trousers, cut them to the right length and then hemmed them. I have to say Michael and Joe dressed in their school boy costumes was pretty... breathtaking.

The main difficulty in my role was finding a dead rabbit. We talked for a while about whether we should use a real rabbit or a stuffed one. Using a stuffed one would give the film a bit of a Monty Python surrealist feel, whereas a real dead rabbit would make it a lot more dark and visceral. My first port of call was local butchers. I rang up a couple and they both said they weren't able to sell me a rabbit with the skin on and they also said no other butchers in Bath would. I ended up ringing up a farm on the outskirts of town and spoke to the farmer who said he had just delivered a load to Bartlett & Sons in the centre. So the next day I went down there and was promptly given a lovely frozen rabbit for the reasonable price of four pounds.

I'm going to avoid scripts that involve dead animals in the future; it was so difficult to get hold of and to handle (it started smelling after a couple of days).

New film - New group.

I felt for the first film I didn’t have as much creative input as I would have liked, and though I had no qualms with individuals in my group I felt I didn’t slot in very well. Because of this I decided to change to another group. The group I changed to is Domin-8, which is: Larry, Laurence, Chaz and Charli’s who made the cleverly titled 'Choices (8)' last year. Which was my favourite from the 2010 selection because it was a lot of fun and very much my type of comedy.

Here it is for anyone yet to see it.



I settled in to the group dynamic very quickly and together we decided on the script ‘Run Rabbit Run’ which is definitely one of the harder scripts to film, but we all agreed was the most complete and well written script.

Because the group wanted to retain roles that they had become familiar with Larry (director), Laurence (Editor), Charli (Producer) and Chaz (Cameraman) I was slotted in as stage manager and (because the film requires quite a lot of props, costumes and other visual properties) I was given the job of a sort of Production Designer - this is a title that, I think, best fits my role.

Things learnt by watching finished films.

1. Keep the swearing to a minimum. There was a group who's film was riddled with F words and there was a C word in there too (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI22EnkgP3Q). Don't get me wrong I'm a big fan of F'ing and blinding generally speaking, but in a film where it's not necessary, it can be fairly distracting.

2. Take care when letting actors improvise. They have a tendency to spell out the story, this is the directors job to keep the actors from being overly obvious.

2.1. Little is often more. The best films were those that used dialogue sparingly or not at all (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDuS24TlCXI). We are making films not radio plays - we have pictures to explain the story not just dialogue.

3. Be careful with comedy. There was one group who made a hilarious film (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SUrjXk2fPM), but it came off very studenty and some people thought it was a little distasteful.

4. (and possibly the most important point to take from this learning curve) Step back from the script. A lot of the films took for granted that the viewer would know the story, this meant they left out important plot devises. For example, one of the films didn't make a point of showing the first 'teleport' in a clear way. For an outside viewer who had not read the script, there's no way they could understood what was supposed to happen - making the rest of the film null and void.

So my point of the year is: to avoid making nonsensical films, make sure you are not too close to the script.

And here it is.