A few weeks back I heard the media training organisation London's Learning and Point Blank Learning were holding workshops and masterclasses in filmmaking.
Attending the masterclass was dependant on you doing a workshop first. So a couple of weeks ago, I spent the evening with a group of complete strangers learning how to make a film, in the most practical way possible.
The workshop started at 6.30pm on a Wednesday evening. We were given an extract from an article discussing what the world would be like if electricity supplies suddenly ceased to exist, a boom mic, and a high-definition miniDV camcorder, and we were told to write, shoot and edit a film by 10pm that evening.
And that's what myself and five strangers did.
We spent about an hour discussing what exactly we should film, another hour shooting the footage around Finsbury Park in London, and another hour editing it.
And we delivered an actual short film.
Now for me the best thing about the night was that I received a crash course in using the video editing software Final Cut Pro. It was literally a crash course as I managed to break FCP three times in the space of an hour. Not only did I break it, I broke it in way the tutors had never seen before.
Here's the film me and my team made. Featuring me and my team.
(You can now see why I prefer to remain behind the camera.)
Wednesday, 24 February 2010
Monday, 25 January 2010
ANNOUNCMENT: Facebook fan page
Goodbye now has a Facebook page.
You can get there by using this link http://snipurl.com/fbgoodbyefilm.
Please visit and become a fan.
Thanks.
You can get there by using this link http://snipurl.com/fbgoodbyefilm.
Please visit and become a fan.
Thanks.
Sunday, 24 January 2010
Storyboards v2.0
Well my storyboards have taken a quantum leap forward. They've gone from looking like this:
To looking like this:
I was able to this through two useful pieces of software: CeltX and Moviestorm.
CeltX is a full-fledged pre-production suite. It packs screenwriting software, production scheduling, character and prop databases, as well as a storyboard creator. And it allows you to share projects with other CeltX users in your production team, and packs in a live chat function.
So far the only downside I've found to CeltX is that it's a bit buggy - when I printed the storyboard some of the text and pictures were split onto different pages. This meant a trip into Adobe Acrobat was needed to get everything on the right pages. Which is, quite frankly, a pain.
But then again, CeltX is free. Pre-production software suites are usually expensive, so I shouldn't complain about a few bugs.
Now Moviestorm is a 3D animation program designed to make movies. It provides various models of people, furniture, props, and locations. You design the sets, tell the virtual actors what to do - whether that's walk to a certain mark, or just sit down and cry - then pick out camera angles, add sound and dialogue, then edit the film together and render it into a finished piece. It even helps you upload the video to YouTube.
Theoretically, Moviestorm is great for pre-vis work. You can plot out scenes, decide on camera angles, and see your film come to life. In practice, Moviestorm is unintuitive, slow, buggy (the longer I left it on the slower my Mac became), and is that hellspawn - nagwear.
Occasionally when you open a menu you'll be greated with a big, colourful splash screen asking you to subscribe to Moviestorm. Subscribing gives you access to more packs of actors, props and scenes, as well as third-party add-ons, but isn't necessary.
Once you've put in the practice Moviestorm turns out into a surprising powerful and useful piece of kit. But for every "That's handy" moment it delivers, it also gives a "What the f--?". For instance, if you want a character to begin a scene sat on a chair, you can't. They can stood near one and be told to sit, but they can't start out sat. Similarly, actors can walk backwards. They'll turn 180° once they hit their mark though.
Likewise with the "Gesturizer" - a utility to design a character's body language, moment by moment. It allows you to do things like have an actor do a sexy model-like hand-on-hip pose. It doesn't let you make her stand up straight again however.
Anyway, because of these two bits of free software, I know have a working storyboard, and a better idea of how Goodbye is going to work.
Next big jobs are finding the crew and doing the auditions next week.
This moviemaking thing is hard work.
To looking like this:
I was able to this through two useful pieces of software: CeltX and Moviestorm.
CeltX is a full-fledged pre-production suite. It packs screenwriting software, production scheduling, character and prop databases, as well as a storyboard creator. And it allows you to share projects with other CeltX users in your production team, and packs in a live chat function.
So far the only downside I've found to CeltX is that it's a bit buggy - when I printed the storyboard some of the text and pictures were split onto different pages. This meant a trip into Adobe Acrobat was needed to get everything on the right pages. Which is, quite frankly, a pain.
But then again, CeltX is free. Pre-production software suites are usually expensive, so I shouldn't complain about a few bugs.
Now Moviestorm is a 3D animation program designed to make movies. It provides various models of people, furniture, props, and locations. You design the sets, tell the virtual actors what to do - whether that's walk to a certain mark, or just sit down and cry - then pick out camera angles, add sound and dialogue, then edit the film together and render it into a finished piece. It even helps you upload the video to YouTube.
Theoretically, Moviestorm is great for pre-vis work. You can plot out scenes, decide on camera angles, and see your film come to life. In practice, Moviestorm is unintuitive, slow, buggy (the longer I left it on the slower my Mac became), and is that hellspawn - nagwear.
Occasionally when you open a menu you'll be greated with a big, colourful splash screen asking you to subscribe to Moviestorm. Subscribing gives you access to more packs of actors, props and scenes, as well as third-party add-ons, but isn't necessary.
Once you've put in the practice Moviestorm turns out into a surprising powerful and useful piece of kit. But for every "That's handy" moment it delivers, it also gives a "What the f--?". For instance, if you want a character to begin a scene sat on a chair, you can't. They can stood near one and be told to sit, but they can't start out sat. Similarly, actors can walk backwards. They'll turn 180° once they hit their mark though.
Likewise with the "Gesturizer" - a utility to design a character's body language, moment by moment. It allows you to do things like have an actor do a sexy model-like hand-on-hip pose. It doesn't let you make her stand up straight again however.
Anyway, because of these two bits of free software, I know have a working storyboard, and a better idea of how Goodbye is going to work.
Next big jobs are finding the crew and doing the auditions next week.
This moviemaking thing is hard work.
Friday, 15 January 2010
Casting call and actor flood
On Monday I put out casting calls for the three roles in Goodbye on some filmmaking websites: Shooting People, Mandy, Talent Circle, and Casting Call Pro.
Due to the extremely limited budget I have to fund 'Goodbye' it's being made on a collaborative basis - in other words the cast and crew can't be paid anything apart from expenses. So I was expecting to get just a handful of applications.
I underestimated drastically. Within hours of the first call going online I'd received over 300 applications. As of today, they exceeded 560. And more applications are coming in every hour.
That's 560+ actors who are willing to work on a short film, where they won't be paid for their time.
As a theatre director I know told me on Wednesday: "You know what the problem is? There are just too many actors who want to work."
The sad truth was that I didn't have the time to give every applicant the attention each deserved.
Many applications were new to the profession looking to gain experience in front of a camera, and the vast majority were skilled, talented and experienced performers. Yet I'm sure each one of these actors would do an fine job.
Yet to cut the applications to an amount that I could handle, I had to narrow the field down in bulk. Despite some choices being logical and easy to make (for instance passing on actors who lived in other countries, or who didn't send their CVs and headshots) this culling felt, and still feels, a cruel and arbitrary process.
Even so, by the end I was still left with over 200 applicants. This led me to spend a day viewing their CVs and showreels, to bring the 200 to form a long list of potential auditionees.
I know some of the actors who applied have been following this blog. So I would like to thank them for reading and taking the time to apply.
The auditions will be held later this month. This means all I have to do is to secure a crew.
Due to the extremely limited budget I have to fund 'Goodbye' it's being made on a collaborative basis - in other words the cast and crew can't be paid anything apart from expenses. So I was expecting to get just a handful of applications.
I underestimated drastically. Within hours of the first call going online I'd received over 300 applications. As of today, they exceeded 560. And more applications are coming in every hour.
That's 560+ actors who are willing to work on a short film, where they won't be paid for their time.
As a theatre director I know told me on Wednesday: "You know what the problem is? There are just too many actors who want to work."
The sad truth was that I didn't have the time to give every applicant the attention each deserved.
Many applications were new to the profession looking to gain experience in front of a camera, and the vast majority were skilled, talented and experienced performers. Yet I'm sure each one of these actors would do an fine job.
Yet to cut the applications to an amount that I could handle, I had to narrow the field down in bulk. Despite some choices being logical and easy to make (for instance passing on actors who lived in other countries, or who didn't send their CVs and headshots) this culling felt, and still feels, a cruel and arbitrary process.
Even so, by the end I was still left with over 200 applicants. This led me to spend a day viewing their CVs and showreels, to bring the 200 to form a long list of potential auditionees.
I know some of the actors who applied have been following this blog. So I would like to thank them for reading and taking the time to apply.
The auditions will be held later this month. This means all I have to do is to secure a crew.
Saturday, 9 January 2010
Location Scouting
The other job I was able to get on with over the past month was finding locations for the outdoor scenes in Goodbye.
My requirements are simple: a green field, cheap parking, and close proximity to the second location (my flat).
Usefully there are two communal gardens within five minutes walk of my home. One offers everything Goodbye needs: With the added bonuses of continual traffic noise and trains running past one end every 10 minutes.
This meant travelling out of Camden and into Islington. This is where I found the perfect location in a large park.
The field was very large, parking was available outside the entrance, it was near to my home, there was little traffic noise, and there were long paths - useful in case of rain on the day, as Goodbye's actress could run along them instead of the path.
The downside is that the land is Council property, and so I'd need to get a permit to film there.
Like many areas in London, Islington is covered by the film liason company The FiLM Office. The Office proved extremely helpful, offering a permit for a four-hour shoot for £250. But a complete unwillingness to negotiate, and the requirement for taking our £5 million worth of insurance for the shoot.
As a backup I checked with Camden Council's film office (Camden - one of the largest boroughs in London - isn't covered by The FiLM Office). Their representatives wouldn't give me a firm figure, however that office's website said filming would cost is "From £125 per hour". Plus an administration fee. And insurance.
As you can tell, making a no-budget film can be somewhat expensive.
Thankfully, there may be a cheaper option - a local church, which has a picturesque garden. If you can crop out the building works. The downside is the land is part-owned by the council.
If the church grounds are unobtainable, shooting Goodbye will cost means either finding someone who can loan me a very large garden, doing it guerilla style, or running lots of rehearsals before shooting begins. I'm leaning towards the final option.
And that means finding somewhere I can rehearse with the actors and DoP, that's not going to wipe out my meagre budget.
My requirements are simple: a green field, cheap parking, and close proximity to the second location (my flat).
Usefully there are two communal gardens within five minutes walk of my home. One offers everything Goodbye needs: With the added bonuses of continual traffic noise and trains running past one end every 10 minutes.
This meant travelling out of Camden and into Islington. This is where I found the perfect location in a large park.
| Caledonian Park, Islington |
| This could be the best location for Goodbye. Pity about the cost. |
The field was very large, parking was available outside the entrance, it was near to my home, there was little traffic noise, and there were long paths - useful in case of rain on the day, as Goodbye's actress could run along them instead of the path.
The downside is that the land is Council property, and so I'd need to get a permit to film there.
Like many areas in London, Islington is covered by the film liason company The FiLM Office. The Office proved extremely helpful, offering a permit for a four-hour shoot for £250. But a complete unwillingness to negotiate, and the requirement for taking our £5 million worth of insurance for the shoot.
As a backup I checked with Camden Council's film office (Camden - one of the largest boroughs in London - isn't covered by The FiLM Office). Their representatives wouldn't give me a firm figure, however that office's website said filming would cost is "From £125 per hour". Plus an administration fee. And insurance.
As you can tell, making a no-budget film can be somewhat expensive.
Thankfully, there may be a cheaper option - a local church, which has a picturesque garden. If you can crop out the building works. The downside is the land is part-owned by the council.
| Church grounds |
| If you ignore the graves and the cheap fence, it's really rather lovely here. |
If the church grounds are unobtainable, shooting Goodbye will cost means either finding someone who can loan me a very large garden, doing it guerilla style, or running lots of rehearsals before shooting begins. I'm leaning towards the final option.
And that means finding somewhere I can rehearse with the actors and DoP, that's not going to wipe out my meagre budget.
Tuesday, 5 January 2010
Storyboarding and sound
The reason this blog has been been quiet was down to December being a bit of a busy month. I work full time on a monthly magazine. My team and have four weeks to get an issue out. But due to the Christmas holidays, we began work on our last issue on 7 December and had to finish it on Christmas Eve. That meant late evenings and weekends stuck in the office. And after that a lack of internet access over the Christmas holiday itself meant blogging was a bit difficult.
Despite that work continued on my short, Goodbye, as I storyboarded it.
Given the short's format - three minutes long, and simple shots - storyboarding it isn't vital. But sketching out the shots helped definitely helped to develop my visualisation of the film. But, somewhat bizarrely, aurally.
As I drew (well as you can see below, "scrawled" would be a better description) the shots, I began paying close attention to what sounds would be needed.
As a viewer I focus my attention on dialogue, rather than a film's music or sound effects has caused me to pay little thought to sound in my scripts, handing control over to the director. This time I am the director, so ignoring sound effects would be dangerous.
So alongside series of shots on my storyboards, I added notes about what background noises would be required. And what microphones would be needed. If I hadn't have begun sketching out the shots, I'm not sure when I would have thought about the audio side of this film. Perhaps when filming was just about to start and someone asked me where the microphones were.
Storyboarding also made me realise there are two films I have to shoot: Goodbye and the home movie a character watches during it. Fortunately the home movie won't require much work. Relatively speaking.
EDIT - 23 Jan 10: Corrected typos.
Despite that work continued on my short, Goodbye, as I storyboarded it.
Given the short's format - three minutes long, and simple shots - storyboarding it isn't vital. But sketching out the shots helped definitely helped to develop my visualisation of the film. But, somewhat bizarrely, aurally.
As I drew (well as you can see below, "scrawled" would be a better description) the shots, I began paying close attention to what sounds would be needed.
| Goodbye storyboard |
 |
| On the left are sketches of shots, with notes to the right. In the left are details of the audio needed for each shot. The diagrams in the middle are camera plans. |
As a viewer I focus my attention on dialogue, rather than a film's music or sound effects has caused me to pay little thought to sound in my scripts, handing control over to the director. This time I am the director, so ignoring sound effects would be dangerous.
So alongside series of shots on my storyboards, I added notes about what background noises would be required. And what microphones would be needed. If I hadn't have begun sketching out the shots, I'm not sure when I would have thought about the audio side of this film. Perhaps when filming was just about to start and someone asked me where the microphones were.
Storyboarding also made me realise there are two films I have to shoot: Goodbye and the home movie a character watches during it. Fortunately the home movie won't require much work. Relatively speaking.
EDIT - 23 Jan 10: Corrected typos.
Monday, 7 December 2009
Script Tank script reading
Script Tank script reading
For the past year I've been a regular at a writers' group called Script Tank.
I'll post about Script Tank at a later date. All you have to know is that this group differs from other writers' circles in that its members are all experienced, professional screenwriters, playwrights and script editors. And many also act, produce and direct.
I have gone to many writers' circles. Each time I found myself surrounded by amateur writers. Occasionally one was supportive and well-meaning and helpful, but often they came across as bitter, aggressive, critical, and jealous. (Especially when they found that I'm a journalist. Encountering someone who writes for a living seem to pour acid in the seeping wounds that were their egos.)
In short, rather than pushing other writers to higher level, the people in these groups did the best to pull people down.
Script Tank does the opposite. I have learnt more attending these meetings than I have from reading countless books, blog posts, and articles on screenwriting.
A few weeks ago I wrote a short film, and was lucky enough to have it read out at Script Tank.
The piece was three minutes long, and was written so it could be made for a no-budget production (roughly, under £500). It used two locations, three actors, and maybe four lines of dialogue.
It got a round of applause. A long one. And a series of wonderful comments - both praising and critiquing the work.
Having my script be that well-received by experience professional writers, was a sorely needed confidence booster.
Afterwards I felt secure that the script was good enough to rehearse at an acting workshop that weekend. And that I was right when I'd decided to make the film myself.
So now I'm starting on putting the film together. First stop is to figure out how much this'll all cost. And that means getting a location sorted out, and putting a team together to make it.
EDIT
7 Dec 09: Corrected title, Script Tank link and formatting.
6 Jan 10: Added labels. Corrected formatting.
For the past year I've been a regular at a writers' group called Script Tank.
I'll post about Script Tank at a later date. All you have to know is that this group differs from other writers' circles in that its members are all experienced, professional screenwriters, playwrights and script editors. And many also act, produce and direct.
I have gone to many writers' circles. Each time I found myself surrounded by amateur writers. Occasionally one was supportive and well-meaning and helpful, but often they came across as bitter, aggressive, critical, and jealous. (Especially when they found that I'm a journalist. Encountering someone who writes for a living seem to pour acid in the seeping wounds that were their egos.)
In short, rather than pushing other writers to higher level, the people in these groups did the best to pull people down.
Script Tank does the opposite. I have learnt more attending these meetings than I have from reading countless books, blog posts, and articles on screenwriting.
A few weeks ago I wrote a short film, and was lucky enough to have it read out at Script Tank.
The piece was three minutes long, and was written so it could be made for a no-budget production (roughly, under £500). It used two locations, three actors, and maybe four lines of dialogue.
It got a round of applause. A long one. And a series of wonderful comments - both praising and critiquing the work.
Having my script be that well-received by experience professional writers, was a sorely needed confidence booster.
Afterwards I felt secure that the script was good enough to rehearse at an acting workshop that weekend. And that I was right when I'd decided to make the film myself.
So now I'm starting on putting the film together. First stop is to figure out how much this'll all cost. And that means getting a location sorted out, and putting a team together to make it.
EDIT
7 Dec 09: Corrected title, Script Tank link and formatting.
6 Jan 10: Added labels. Corrected formatting.
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