Cinefest 2016

I am really pleased to say that 'Tales From the Other Side' is now an award winning production. Yesterday Cinefest in Middlesborough was held and we had been shortlisted to win in two categories, including; Screenplay and Short Drama. I was extremely happy to even be considered for these awards and never thought we would win one, but against the odds 'Tales From the Other Side' won an Award for Best Screenplay. The script that was entered was for 'The Babysitter' which to be fair is probably our best script as we had the longest time to work into it. I would like to say that the majority of the credit for this award goes to our Screenwriter Mikey Barker. However the script was not crafted to what it is today without mine, Johns and even Diane's involvement because both me and Di wrote multiple annotated versions of the script which are up on the VLE. It was nice to see Maxy again as he was one of the judges for the awards.
With this module coming to a close it was a great way to end and I only hope we have as much success at these awards moving forward. I would like to extend my congratulations to all the members of our Crew.

Combining the Shorts

Now that we've came to the stage of having rough edits of each one of our shorts, the time has come to finally combine them. I've been looking forward to this because I've always felt that this film would work at its best with all of it's pieces in place. When figuring out the time-line for the whole piece we realised that it wouldn't make sense to have our ending of 'The Lights', which takes place the next morning in the middle of our piece. I made the decision to tag it at the end of 'The Babysitter' so that it made sense within the time-line.
A big problem we found is that 'The Babysitter' was shot progressive and both 'The Hook Man' and 'The Lights' were shot interlaced which is a really annoying problem. As the interlaced footage is often leaving lines across the screen, depending on what device you watch it on. I'm disappointed Abby missed such a little thing because for the most part she's been a good camera op. I just hope we have time to fix it so it doesn't look so rough at the Vue Screening.
With all of the shorts in place we had a runtime of around 15 minutes which I was happy with. We thought originally it may end up being around 11, so it was initial surprise to find out it was running at 15. I feel there is still work to be done in the edit room to just put the finishing touches and polish off our final piece.

First Cut of 'Aren't you Glad you Didn't turn on the Lights'

Today I sat down with Chloe to watch our first cut of 'The Lights'. I was pleasantly surprised with how the piece is turning out so far. However I do think it needs a lot of work, This is the one Chloe will probably have the least amount of time with so we want to make some useful changes. I had noticed that a shot I had got on set of Jack arriving at the door wasn't in the edit and this is a really nice shot so I want to see if we are able to slip that in. Also there are some small audio glitches that need fixing.
Saying this though, I felt we were in a good position to polish off these edits because we were the only group to have everything shot at least two weeks before deadline. So I felt confident  about our editing time, but Chloe tells me that because of all the other level deadlines and our level rushing last minute in the edit that there was barely any time for us to get booked in. Which I feel isn't really fair at all, we were the only group to think ahead and be prepared for the edit but because of others bad time management we are going to get about the same amount of time to edit 'The lights' as others who are still shooting NOW.
I just think we actually used our time well during the module, but yet haven't really experienced the benefits because of others.

'Aren't you Glad you Didn't turn on the Light' Shoot

After the pre-production we did on 'Lights' over the easter break, we came back after easter ready to finish it. We had everything in place, me, John and Mikey went out the day before and bought everything we needed, including; Bed sheets, Costume and ingredients for fake blood.
On the shoot day we all met at Church square, we had decided to use Lime Crescent as our student accommodation. Dan Whalen was so kind to let us use him room. Which came in handy as our actor for the role of Sam wasn't responding to the call sheet which we sent out, so we decided to use Dan as easy fix. Even though I would prefer not to cast students in our films, Dan was actually quite a good fit for what the character required.
Once all of the cast and crew were ready at church square we moved to our location. Me and John had purchased some black card to black out Dan's windows for the scenes which we were attempting to make look like night. I think this worked reasonably well but if you were looking for it, you may be able to spot it. We set up and I began to work with the actors and run some lines with them. At first I began to get worried as Dan was taking a lot of time to familiarise himself with the lines, I thought we were going to be trying to get this scene all day, but after we practised a few times, he picked it up rather quickly.
After we got the main dialogue scene, we moved onto the scene where Danny finds Sam the next morning. We had cast Gary Davison as Danny, I had worked with him briefly on 'Ya Think'. I was extremely impressed with the amount of research he had done for the character. He had a notebook filled with information about the character, which made my job a lot easier. He really went for it with every take, I would happily work with Gary again.
Next we did what we've done on every shoot for these shorts. Waited for the sun to go down. We needed the cover of darkness for our Exterior shots. Once it was dark we shot a few shots of Danny leaving and arriving from his night out. We got a two shot of Danny and Jack, when Danny lets Jack in and I was a fan of the look Jack gave back to Danny when he thanks him. I look forward to seeing it in the edit. We got a few things on the shoulder rig, this included shots of Danny walking threw the corridors of lime Crescent, I instructed Abby to follow Gary quite wobbly to emphasise his drunken state. We also did another version of this shot where we follow Jack into the building, now this version I asked for Abby to hold it a steady and as straight as possible to really show the contrasts between the two characters.
We also got a shot from the other side of Dans door showing Jack arriving, you could only see his silhouette threw the window, but it made for quite a striking image. At the end of the shoot, when we sent the majority or cast and crew home. Me, Jack and John took the shoulder rig out and shot a few pickups for 'The Hook Man', one was just Jack entering a takeaways and collecting a pizza and the other was the blood splatter on my windscreen for the end of 'The Hook Man'. This shot was fairly difficult, I operated the camera while I told Jack to splatter the blood across the window. On the camera it didn't have the effect I was looking for, So i just simply asked John to pour the rest of the blood all over the front of the car. This looked ten times better, I just hope it works in the edit.  Overall I was pretty happy with the shoot for 'Lights'. I do feel like it may be one of the least interesting shorts, but I think it'll be a nice break and bridge between 'Hook Man' and 'The Babysitter'.

Storyboards for 'Aren't you Glad you Didn't turn on the Lights'

Over the Easter Break I've worked on my storyboards for 'The Lights'. I started with a copy of our most recent script and worked from there. For the opening conversation between Sam and Danny I've kept this quite simple, just a back and forth camera cutting. For the takeaway sequence this whole part may just get condensed into one shot to save time. 

 I decided to bring over the idea I had while filming 'The Hook Man' to let the camera movements represent the characters, so again when Jack enters the student accommodation I wanted the camera to follow him as he walks through the building to really build tension. I want the camera to be really still, to represent how calm the character of Jack is during this moment.

 Ive carried this technique over into when Danny arrives back at the accommodation. To contrast Jacks, I thought it would be nice to follow Danny the same way as he enters the building, But this will be to show how intoxicated Danny is. This will be shown by following Danny with some erratic movement on the shoulder rig.

This final sequence was quite simple to visualise. I think the main concerns here are about how good we can get that blood to look on the wall and also the position of this piece in the full timeline. Because this takes place the next morning and 'The Babysitter' is still on the evening so when we put all of the pieces into one, we may have to add the scene to the very end, maybe as a post-credits.

Meeting with Maxy

Recently I met with Maxy Neil Bianco to discuss my report for Professional Studies. The meeting we had was really interesting because I met him while he was editing in his studio. We discussed at length about the industry and making a start within it. I was really thankful of Maxy for allowing me an hour of his time. I got a chance to look over some of the work we did together back in January. The footage looked really nice and I really like Maxy's style of people and place, and the relationship between the two. Maxy pared with Michael's writing create a really strong connection between the two.
He gave me some really nice tips about diversifying yourself within the industry. He told me "Make something only you could make" and I think that is really important as so many people make things which don't really resonate with an audience or even themselves.

Casting for 'The Lights'

Here are some recent casting announcements for our upcoming short named 'The Lights'. We have cast our newest role of Danny. 

Gary Davison has been cast as the role of Danny. Danny is a mature student who likes to relax with a good couple of drinks. Danny would rather have night out than a night revising compared to his roommate Sam. Gary seemed right for the role because of his friendly personality and likability. I worked briefly with Gary on 'Ya Think' and was always keen to work with him in the future.