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.

Editing, music, etc...

It's been a jam packed week of editing, I have personally been between the castle walls for 5-6 hours spread over any free periods I've had- Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Jaeeun has done similarly. I took a back seat for most of the time we were editing together, as she has more previous experience on Adobe Premiere Pro, and I was more than happy to watch; I feel I have learnt a lot from working this way.

My role in editing was firstly creative adviser. I would tell Jaeeun how I thought a sequence should run, she would express her opinion (we would normally come to a similar conclusion) and she would organise the shots and do all the fiddly technical bits. I also did a bit of editing, making sure everyone was featured in the credits and that all the titles were grammatically correct.

My main role in the editing process was editing in the music, which I found a lot harder than I initially had thought.

I had collected the songs I thought would work a month or so before we started filming. The songs I decided on were two tracks by my housemate Barney and his band Casitas and also three tracks by a DJ I knew from Cornwall called Bucklemunki. Both were more than happy for me to use their songs.

The problems started when trying to fit them together. I had two quite different styles of music -, because the film has two quite different feels (one being the harsh reality, the other being the cheesy and happy daydream sequences) and I wanted the music to suit them both. I found when trying to put the two styles together they clashed. Because of this I ended up putting a lot less music in than I had originally planned.

I found through the music editing process how difficult fitting songs into a fairly unflexable time line is. What I mean is, without being able to move shots around or edit the lengths, it was very difficult to keep the beats of the song in time with the film, to make it flow together. I am very aware of the songs, the points where they come in and, I fear it may be slightly distracting from the film.

If I was to do the music for a film again I would edit the film around a piece of music or alternatively, find someone to compose music especially for the film.

Our film weekend

After filming all our Friday scenes in the relative comfort and quite of the Student Union we arrived on the streets of Bath at 9.30 on the Saturday. After a few delays - Joe (Greg) not arriving until 11ish - we got started.

I took these (I'm not even a professional photographer)

By the time we got filming, queen street started to fill with curious pedestrians and the occasional car. So my first piece of advice would be don't film on a busy street. The second being, if you do, make sure you start early enough to avoid a high stream of traffic.

Baylea on busy location

Third piece of advice: make sure your actors know their lines. Though we had a lot of fun with our actors, there was a lot of wasted time and shots due to our actors forgetting lines. The problem for our film; Matt only got his script on the Friday and Joe is not a trained actor. Because of this I think they did really well.

The Cast - Joe and Matt

One of the things I struggled with over the weekend (as I mentioned in my last post) was shooting roles. Because my two main roles for the film was casting, all done before shooting, and music, all done after shooting, I found it difficult to place myself. My main jobs over the weekend were: looking after bags, carrying equipment, documenting events with Megan's camera and motivating the actors. This said on the Saturday I did spend quite a bit of the time in front of the camera, which kept me going and made me feel a bit more needed. I think to an extent Colin felt similarly; the role of producer is also weighted heavily towards pre-production.

Colin looking after bags

First Day of Filming.

I think I should start with an update. Since my last post we lost Andy (our Dan) to work commitments, which obviously was a massive blow. Fortunately Matt (one of our no shows for auditions) agreed to play the part at short notice - only receiving a script yesterday.

After a couple of minor hiccups, getting the cast together for the scheduled time of 2pm, we started filming around 3.30 with all the cast apart from Emily (Olivia) who we could afford to cut out the scenes we were shooting.

After a slightly slow start with plenty of practise runs and not much film consumed I think we all started to get into the flow of things. By the end we were getting complex shots down in no time at all.



The hardest thing for me today has definitely been keeping myself from butting in and trying to control things. I constantly had to stop myself saying "We should shoot it like this" and "Why don't you stand here and say it like this...". It is difficult because I don't feel I have much of a job during the filming. I seem to fallen into the role of runner and also 'the guy who does all the parts we don't have actors for'. 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. As that is not my given role in this film, I am trying my best to sit back and am happy to take orders. For my own future reference I will make an effort to go for a more creative role in the future.

3 PA's, a musician and I

Today, Baylea, Julia and I held auditions for our cast.

First up was Emily auditioning for Olivia. I read along with her as Dan for the (tentatively dubbed) 'cheesy scene'. In which Dan and Olivia express their new found love for each other. I was slightly embarrassed and awkward but Emily was really professional, effortlessly acting out this lovey-dovey scene without a cringe. With her as our Olivia maybe we should re-name it the not so cheesy scene.

After about an hour and no sign of any more auditionees, I took it upon myself to find some actors from the mass of students in the refectory. My first find was Joe, who stands out as a Greg potential with a bright green Mohawk (definitely not pushover Dan). Joe had said he had done a bit of acting before but is a Commercial Music student. His audition was fair, especially for someone who had not seen the script and had little idea of the character.

The next find of the day was Hannah, who I work with, I approached primarily to ask if she knew anyone we could audition for the part of Dan. We ended up having her as our Rosie which is a very small role, but an important one in establishing Dan's character.

Finally after a few hours of no shows Andy turned up. It wasn't until he was leaving when we noticed him. I ran up to him and asked whether he was a PA or Drama student and what his name was, not knowing whether it was him. He wanted to audition for the part of Greg but we asked him if he minded going for Dan (it was getting late and we were all feeling we had to find a Dan). So he read the office scene with me as Greg and it was really good. He seemed like a really nice guy and like he would be able to add something to the character. As a third year PA student he has a bit more experience at this sort of ting than the rest of us.


As cringe as it is (for me) here is a video of the (hopefully) final cast auditions.

The final part of Olivia's boyfriend is... drum roll... ME. I have offered my services as the budding young actor I am.

If I was to do the casting again I would have probably held auditions a week ago - we can’t afford to be picky at this stage. I am happy with our cast but there’s always room for improvement (excuse the cliché). I would of also set up a more formal audition process, a big problem was the fact we'd arranged to meet the potential actors in Morton and as it is a big place with a few exits some actors may of turned up and we may of missed them.

Locations...

On Friday we had possibly our most successful group meeting. All six members of our group met at the Hobgoblin at one to check out the cellar for filming and discuss any other matters of importance. The landlord Darren was very helpful and friendly and we moved on to the second possible location The Raven with the collective feeling we had already found our cellar.

When we arrived at The Raven we felt a little bit like the staff didn't have time for us. But after some food and a pint, Rod (the landlord) turned up and was enthused about showing us around.

Me and Colin acting

The set up was good but the selling point was in the CCTV set-up. Rod pointed this out and said we were fine to use it and it would be relatively easy to grab it straight off their computer. On top of this brilliant news he has offered us The Raven's office to film our office scene.

I am going to be playing the roll of Olivia's attacker - got a bit carried away with Baylea

All in all a very productive day.

Pictures taken by Megan.

Stoyboarding

This week our group made a storyboard of the short screenplay 'The Eager Student'. Here is a section of it.

It was good fun and very useful. I'd drawn storyboards before but never used photos. It allows you to see how a shot would actually be set up, so it forces you to use only attainable shots.

First Post

For the last three weeks we have been discovering and exploring short films. Here are a few of my favourites.

Bored office worker is given a gift. Will greed get the better of him?

Dj with a magical set of decks is sent to stop a tragic event.

We had a go writing our own loglines for the short films we watched. Mine are under the embedded videos.

We have now moved on to planning and making the script "Choices" written by a girl on the course last year. This is my logline for it:

When one door closes another opens. Will Dan choose the right door?