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Secret Thoughts of Angels :: Production Notes :: Production Diary

The following are excerpts from my blog that related to the production of Secret Thoughts.... For the latest entries, check out my web site.

- Andy

Listen to Eeyore

Thursday, January 6. 2005

Well, I've finished plotting the new, improved Secret Thoughts of Angels - sticking more rigidly than I intended to to the Dramatica PSR.

I've deliberately erred on the side of caution, because there are a few elements I still need to throw into the mix during the writing phase and I want to ensure that they are put in the right places where they would make most sense.

One thing I started doing with the first draft of Architurus was to drift away from the Dramatica structure too much, to the point where I couldn't identify which scenes related to which aspect of the Dramatica structure, which caused me quite a few problems when I came to rewrite it, and why I had to go right back to the StoryForm before I could start again.

As SToA is a short I probably could have given myself the freedom to make the same mistake without similar worries, but I wanted to see if I could stick closely to the Dramatica structure without compromising story or narrative flow.

So far I've been pleasantly surprised as the structure more or less prompted me to write a very fluid and sensible outline, which bodes well.

The acid test will come later when I take the updated draft 2 structure of Architurus and apply the same rigid set of rules.

One thing for sure is that by sticking closely to the Dramatica structure, I really had to think hard about each element and flesh it out in much greater detail than I had done before. This has produced a much richer story that I feel far more emotionally attached to.

Dramatica, for those that have not used it, is designed to help you write a Grand Argument Story. This involves presenting to your audience all aspects of a situation and/or argument, so that a) they don't think you are trying to propagandise to them and b) that you, as a writer, really have thought through all the angles, and are presenting them with characters that are acting honestly (there's a lot more to it than that, but that's the general gist of it as I understand it).

On the Dramatica mailing list, one of the creators of Dramatica, Chris Huntley, often points out that the software is designed to help you write the stories that you want to write. I think he might be selling himself a bit short, as that is exactly what I did with the first draft of Architurus, but in doing so chose to ignore quite a lot of what Dramatica was telling me because I couldn't be arsed to put the effort into working out all the details. I didn't want to accept that there still might be an even better way. Consequently I ended up with a story that was lacking in soul and severely handicapped in terms of subtext.

Obviously the software can't provide all the answers and there were one or two times in the redraft of SToA that I couldn't relate what the Dramatica structure was suggesting with what I wanted to happen. But at least this time I had a crack at trying (rather than just choosing to ignore it), and most of the time, eventually I came up with an angle that satisfied both me and the Plot Structure and led to a much better story.

At the end of the day, I've learnt that if you want a decent story, you have to put a lot more effort than I ever realised into all the stages of writing; plotting, writing and rewriting.

As the great philosopher Eeyore of Forty Acres Wood once said, "Brains first, then hard work". I'll drink to that!

SToA v2 Complete

Tuesday, January 11. 2005

Yay! Version 2 of Secret Thoughts of Angels hits the old drawer for it's maturation period (I think I'll just give it a week as I want to get on and make it sooner rather than later). And it's bang on twelve pages, which has pleased me no end (I'm sure I can shave that down to ten!).

I'm muchly pleased with it, although I'm full of the warm glow of completion, which does tend to paint the world somewhat rosey.

The only slight concern is I have tried Armando Saldaña Mora's idea that to heighten tension, you can hide one of the four throughlines. In this case it made sense to hide the Impact Character throughline 'til the end, so it has much more punch. Not sure if it'll work or not, it seems to at the moment.

In the meantime, I think I'll crack on with a bit more Architurus, or whatever it's called these days.

Now where's that damned PSR gone...?

Exciting times

Thursday, January 13. 2005

There's a local actor by the name of Kenneth Colley who Star Wars aficionados will recognise as Admiral Piett and Month Python fans will recognise as Jesus from the Life of Brian. More recently he's been seen in Eastenders in an extended bit part (I don't watch it but I understand he was playing a freind of Ian Lavender's character). And apparently he just missed out on a big part in Harry Potter, not sure which though (I suspect Dumbledore).

Anyhow, I seem him often around town and he has always been in the back of my mind to play the part of Mr Widdershins, the Antique Book Shop owner in Secret Thoughts of Angels. Unfortunately while I know roughly where he lives, I don't know anyone who knows him through whom I might be able to contact him.

Well, I just popped down to see my old boss Ken, and he told me how he'd been chatting to his son in laws' brother over Christmas, who had mentioned he was keen to make a film about Hythe (my home town, where I both live and work). Ken, top bloke that he is, jumped in and told them all about my writing, film making abilities. The brother of the son-in-law then said he's be keen to meet me.

Oh, and he's making the film with Ken Colley!

Let's see what happens next...

Dead Wood?

Monday, January 17. 2005

Friday saw further fortunate turns of events. First thing in the morning, I discovered that Nicky, the daughter of Angela the administrative assistant in our office, is now working at our place having just left uni with a degree in Film!

So I rushed downstairs and said to her, 'wanna make a movie?' and she said, 'sure do!'. Very cool, I now have a partner in crime who actually knows what they are doing. I promised her a spruced up version of the SToA script by later this week...

Then in the afternoon, I was talking to my stateside colleague, Mr Bill Smith esq in Keene (home of Jumanji and not much else), and he informed that he had worked in LA for ten years and was good friends with none other than one William Sanderson , who's currently in Deadwood with Ian McShane !

What strange and very small world we live in. Still, I take it that some celestial force is trying to give me the biggest boot up the arse ever, so I'd better take the hint and crack on writing.

I've worked out a new storyform for Beautiful People, based on the pitch (or extended logline) that I wrote last week and now I'm just fleshing it all out. Tedious work, but worthwhile in the long run.

Haven't heard from that chap that Ken mentioned last week yet, but I suspect it'll be a while as I think Ken flew out to Califormia over the weekend...

Project Gertrude is Go!

Friday, January 21. 2005

Well I had my first 'production meeting' with Nicky yesterday. She is very keen to help out with making SToA, and is generally positive about the new draft of the script. She has gone away to attack it with her red pen and come up with some comments.

We've agreed the first stage is to get the script really tight. I'm not sure how much needs doing to it, I think it'll amount to fixing some dodgy dialogue, but that's no hardship. People seem very happy with the structure, which I'm pleased with, and Nicky was impressed at generally how tight the plotting is.

Vicky, who I've speculatively lined up to play the main character Jess, has read it and liked it too, and came up with similar comments to Nicky.

Interestingly, when I wrote the opening scene, which occurs in a library, I had Canterbury University Library in mind (I spent a lot of time there while I was doing my degree). When we were sat there yesterday, Nicky looked up and said, 'you know, when I first started reading this, I thought it was going to be like Harry Potter, with the library and all, but then when I got into it and thought about the opening scene, I pictured Canterbury Uni Library.' Mysterious!

I'll catch up with Nicky early next week, see how she's got on with her red pen, hopefully she's been kind...

I'm not sure how it will work with production roles, as we haven't discussed how we're going to do it, but I hope that I'll direct and she will be either first AD or, more preferably, DOP. I'm not sure what her skill set strengths are at the moment, but I'm keen to let her deal with the technical aspects of shoot, as I'm nervous enough about directing, let alone sorting out a crew as well as a cast.

Darren and Amber are keen to help out, which is the music and production design in the bag. Post-production is also more or less sorted, certainly for editing and sound mixing. We just need to sort out the locations, actors, crew and equipment. Not much then...

I think a trip to Kent Hothouse is in order in the near future, once the script is polished, and perhaps we've storyboarded it.

I give you... Miss Logic

Tuesday, January 25. 2005

Had a second meeting with Nic today. She had been quite lenient with the red pen I felt, all in all.

One critical flaw in the screenplay she did point out was the lack of a 'logic' character - everyone was busy intuitising their way through the story, no one was pointing out that they might all be wrong if they actually sat down and thought about it rationally.

I checked back through my notes from Dramatica and lo and behold, she was right. The character assigned to the reason characteristic had had two scenes cut out, and wasn't physically present in the other two, (only in the subtext - i.e. one of the characters was speaking on his behalf).

So I'm off in a minute to invent a new character, or at least resuscitate one of the characters I'd killed off from the first draft to create a Miss Logic. I think she'll be a flatmate, thus enabling her lots of opportunity to criticies in her logical fashion.

Actors? Oh yeah... Actors

Monday, January 31. 2005

With my thoughts turning to the idea of directing SToA, I suddenly realised that my limited experience of stage directing (gained a long time ago, and long since forgotten) would serve no useful purpose whatsoever. I understand cinematography, I understand basic composition and blocking. But until now I've yet to give direction to a proper actor on a set with cameras and lights pointing at them.

"Panic!" I cry and then pace about for twenty minutes. I know, I'll buy a book!

So off to Amazon I go and track down, Judith Weston's Directing Actors: Creating Memorable Performances for Film and Television .

Duly it arrives, and barely am I twenty pages in when I realise that as a writer I've overlooked a fundamental part of the equation. Some poor sod has to stand there and say these damned words! And I don't have a clue (or at least I didn't) about what is going through these peoples minds while they are trying to 'be in the moment'.

Yes, I've laughed heartily at each retelling of Harrison Ford's quip to George Lucas about his hokey dialogue, and I've even commented myself on the fact that good written dialogue that reads well often comes out a garbled mess when spoken (especially when done with a fake cockney accent). But it had never occurred to me why that might be. Judith Weston, thankfully, has the answer and a whole lot more besides.

I've read some useful books in my time, but nothing as perfectly pertinent as Judith's book has been to me in the past few days. I'll get her other book, The Film Director's Intuition: Script Analysis and Rehearsal Techniques , as soon as I'm nearing the end of this one, which at the present rate will be, um, Thursday...

Four Years?

Saturday, February 12. 2005

"Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhh me head!" said Andy, who had not been heard from since 31st January...*

I've been studying and reading so hard recently. I don't think I worked this hard when I was at college.

Judith Weston's book is an absolute goldmine of information. I keep reading and rereading the pages to suck as much out of them as I can. I'm also deep into Directing Cinematic Motion by Steven Katz, which is also giving me much pause for thought.

I realised that I still hadn't put enough effort into the characters of the short, so I've made a start at planning the first draft of the feature length screenplay that the short is a prequel to. Already I'm seeing layers of depth of character I can add.

I had a period a week or so ago where I suddenly thought, "shit, I'm right out of my depth here... I don't think I can do it." But just studying and thinking things through and planning has helped me a lot, and I already feel a lot more confident about the whole idea of producing this short.

I've got more people excited about the script now, which has gone through several more iterations, but I'm still not happy at all with the ending. I think the goal for this week will be to get that tight.

Also, I still haven't heard anything from Ken's son-in-law's brother, so perhaps that project may not come to pass. I think I can still make the Ken Colley link anyway, so I'm not too fussed. It sounded kinda interesting though...

Oh yeah, I have made a promise to myself that within four years I'll get an invite to the BAFTA's! Big up to Chalie Kaufman for getting best screenwriter, well deserved if you ask me. He's certainly someone whose levels of creativity I aspire to.

And now in true BAFTA Award winning Vera Drake stylee, I'm off for a cuppa... lovely.

* One for all you Rankin fans out there...

Goodbye Windows...

Thursday, February 24. 2005

I've spent the past four nights up 'til the early hours reloading and configuring my PC. But rather than install Windows XP, I'm following my conviction that we can make the short for as little possible, so I investigated the idea of using Linux.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that there is some seriously good editing and effects stuff availble for Linux, namely Cinelerra for editing and compositing and Cinepaint for, well, painting... and they are both free!

So, much to my wife's annoyance, the Windows system is gone forever (well, until I realise there's a bit of Windows software I just can't live without) and we now are the proud owners of a fantastic Fedora Core 3 system.

It's taken some time to get my head back into Linux mode (I've been playing with it on and off for years, but never enough to remember what I did last time), and there are a few bugs with the DV capture which I've spent this evening figuring workarounds for, but beyond that, I'm really pleased with it.

But now they are sorted, I just have to figure out how the hell Cinelerra and Cinepaint work (RTFM would be a good start) and we're flying.

On the screenplay front, Nicola has made some excellent suggestions for improving Secret Thoughts... which I will finish off in the next day or so now I've got the Linux bugs quashed for the time being.

Nicola and I were chatting the other day on the fab Yahoo Groups thing I've set up to help us organise the short, and she suggested that perhaps I was putting too much direction in. At first, when she said this, I balked and thought to myself that she was quite mad. I knew as well as anyone you didn't write directions (even if you are going to be the director).

But when she pointed out what she meant I realised that while I wasn't specifically telling the director how to shoot the film, I'd still fallen into the trap of trying to tell the actors what they are thinking.

This, as Judith Weston would point out, would lead to Result Directing, and makes for a flaccid result lacking in character and depth. Then I remembered something I'd thought when I read the screenplay for Pulp Fiction - that it was all dialogue. At time I didn't think much of it, but now I'm beginning to see the genius of it, and understand some deeper concepts about subtext.

Thing is, now I've got myself all confused about how much detail you should put into a script. I guess the obvious answer is only that which can be seen and heard by the camera. The trick being to convey subtext and internal conflicts and emotions through these actions and dialogue without making it sound like exposition or look dishonest.

I always thought I'd got the concept of 'show, don't tell', looks like I missed the mark somewhat. Suddenly this whole thing just got a whole lot more difficult.

Penguin Panic

Wednesday, March 2. 2005

Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite...

I think I'm going blind!

Still, the good news is that Secret Thoughts of Angels (Draft 2) is more or less done. Think I might send it round to a few trusted colleagues for review now.

Despite reading many mixed reviews about the stability and usefulness of Cinelerra, it seems to be holding together. I put experimentation back a few days when I feared that I might have rushed into things with Fedora Core 3 and decided to try Mandrake Linux 10.1, only to find that things were much more stable with Fedora. So I'm back to square one. Useful learning curve though, even though it meant some very late nights over the weekend.

I've also been looking at DV and HDV cameras in the prosumer range, trying to work out which is the most suitable. There seems to be three contenders, Sony HDV FX1, Canon XL2 and Panasonic DVX100, and I really can't work out which one is the most suitable. At then end of the day, I've got an old Canon XM1 which should do the trick, but it would be nice to go with a new one, perhaps hire one for a few weeks if the budget allows (budget?).

I think Cinelerra will handle HD OK, I've haven't really checked, but for the 'film look', whatever that is, the Panasonic one seems to get the thumbs up.

And then what ratio - 4:3 (and mask the widescreen) or 16:9? Decisions, decisions. As I recall from some guys I met last year, shooting 4:3 and masking gives better results as you aren't streching or compressing the image in any way, and you get a bit of leeway with the vertical framing in post production as well.

Now I've got the editing side sorted and the screenplay into a decent shape, I'm starting to get quite excited about this filmmaking lark.

Now all I need to do is find two more actors, secure some locations, some lights and we're off!

Oh and a DVD writer would probably be useful before long as well...

All change!

Thursday, March 10. 2005

After a week of getting the Linux system tippity toppity and testing, I found out that my friend has a copy of Avid Xpress Pro on a decent PC we can use. D'oh!

So last night it was back to Microsoft Windows land again - I desperately wanted to keep Fedora running as I really like it and it runs so much better on my PC. But it failed at the last hurdle when I got all my Windows software running neatly through the Wine interface, except Movie Magic Screenwriter which it didn't like at all.

Ho hum...

I also saved myself a packet by buying a tape head cleaning kit for my Canon XM1 - hey presto, camera problems solved! (It was getting kinda fuzzy and I thought it was a hardware issue).

I stumbled across a most excellent web site - dvinfo.net - which is packed with great information. I like the way they force people to use their real names on the forum, it adds a great deal of kudos to the site.

Armed with information I gleaned from there, I've been able to create some very 'film' like images with the XM1 using the normal (interlaced) movie mode and tweaking some of the settings. Fabulous! And there's quite a few more tricks in post that will enhance the effect even more.

We've gone for lock down on the screenplay now (more to save my sanity than anything else), and I've started drafting out some storyboard ideas. I'm gonna try to arrange a meeting with people next week to start the ball rolling properly.

To DV or not DV

Thursday, March 10. 2005

I've spent hours bashing my head against the wall that is "what is the best way to shoot DV?"

The answer, it seems, depends on what you want to do with the finished product.

If you are shooting, as I am, DV on a camcorder that has the option of recording PAL in Progressive or Interlace mode, and you simply want to edit and distribute on DV then shoot Movie (Progressive) mode if you can and stick at 25fps. The Movie mode with the shutter speed set at 1/50 will give you a 'film' look. This look can be enhanced by your choices of shot, good lighting and some tweaking of colour and tone in post.

Alternatively, if you are shooting with the intention of transferring to film to distribute, then you should shoot in Normal (Interlace) mode and do nothing to the image to keep it as pristine as possible for the transfer to film.

Transferring to film seems to be slightly trickier for us PAL users than our American cousins. There are two main choices here: use Twixtor or Magic Bullet add ons for Adobe Premiere - quite a costly option, and tricksy insasmuch as the sound needs to be streteched independently of the images, or use DVFilm Maker software from DVFilm.com, though whether any UK houses will support this, I don't know.

Of course, the purists claim that if your aiming to distribute on film you should shoot on film, which is fine if you've actually got a budget.

The question I've got to research now is, what do competitions and film festivals generally accept? Do they all accept DVDs? In which case sod the film option and make it look as nice as possible in PAL (after it's only 1 frame a second extra!). Think I might put a call in to Screen South.

My head hurts.

Happy, happy, joy, joy

Monday, March 21. 2005

Got some seriously positive feedback on the script from a friend of mine in the States, which has given me a serious boost. Just what I needed as I was starting to get a bit down about it all.

Have also made my first purchases - a set of three workman's lights from Aldi's (budget superstore which often have good deals on computer and DIY equipment).

They're 500W halogen and tests prove that they are quite neutral and provide very good fill light, especially if you bounce it off a wall. Not bad for £6 each.

I'm working on the theory of using as much natural light as possible, and only artificial light for fill or night shoots.

I've been busy storyboarding SToA and have learnt loads, which I'll save for another post as I really should crack on with it for now...

All a-storyboard

Tuesday, March 22. 2005

I've spent the past few weeks playing with storyboards, trying out various demos of software as well as drawing them by hand (might as well put that A-level in art to some good use) and discovered that, on the whole, storyboards are completely not what I thought they were. (For that matter they aren't what the manufacturers of the software think they are for either).

I've tried about six or seven different pieces of sofware, ranging from the idiotic to the rocket scientific.

The more complex 3D modelling ones are great if you have three years to learn them, know exactly what your sets are going to be and don't mind pissing off your actors with some outrageous 'result directing'. For effective low budget filmmaking, a complete waste of time.

However some of the simpler ones, (the 2D ones like Storyboard Quick), have a band of gold running through them, which with a little bit of effort provides rich pickings.

My handdrawn storyboards are more than adequate, but way too easy to churn out (and not terribly good either). I could save myself a heap load of money just sticking to these, but for $300, I think getting hold of a copy of something like Storyboard Quick could more than pay for itself in no time.

Agreed, the learning curve is a little irritating and it does take a little while sometimes to set up new scenes and the lack of clipart seems a curse. But these are also blessings, if you're prepared to dig a little deeper into your reserves and hunt for the gold.

These restrictions, I've found, have forced me to get creative, and repeating this process has taught me how to think around problems - the very same problems that will occur on set when I can't get a wide enough angle on the camera and the gun keeps disappearing out of shot because I hired an actor with eight foot arms.

The three important lessons I've learnt from the exercise is that, firstly, the scene you have in your mind will never be the scene that appears on the big screen (most oftentimes, if you get it right it will be infinitely better). Secondly, the scene you create on a story board will not be the scene you shoot on film, if you want to allow you actors the freedom to come up with their best performances.

But the most important lesson I've taken from this exercise is that storyboards, rather than being important planning documents, are a seriously good proving ground for the script. You end up with a set of images that show up inconsistencies in the plot, problems with timing and dodgy dialogue.

They also allow you to play about with ideas of how to handle the shoot in terms basic blocking and cinematography without wasting peoples' time and money on the set. But these ideas should not be locked down and taken as gospel, just kept in the back of your mind to try if the location and time allow.

I'm glad I've put the effort into this, as it's been a real eye opener. It's boosted my confidence that when I'm on set, I'll be able to make the right decisions (or at least know what some of the wrong ones are).

Deadline...

Monday, April 4. 2005

I've just been looking through the Talent Circle e-mail bulletin and found a useful link to the Manhatten Film Festival .

The submission deadline is the 31st July, which gives us approximately three months to make and edit SToA and get it off to the States.

Probably a bit of an unrealistic deadline, but one thing I've learnt from being in a band is we write and play our best when there's a mother of all gigs looming up. The same should apply here, so I'll put a bit of pressure on myself, else I'll still be writing this blog in ten years time and still won't have made a thing.

I'm dusting down the old MS Project and polishing up those project management skills I spent so long learning a few years ago...

One down... One to go

Wednesday, April 6. 2005

I've finally finished reading Judith Weston's first book, 'Directing Actors'. Boy, what a gem that book is.

Now I'm starting on her secong book, the Director's Intuition. She claims to have not repeated anything from the first book, and it's twice as thick! I might finish it by Christmas...

Still, the first book has really given me confidence about working with actors. I've already been trying a few ideas out just talking to people like Vickie at work (who may well play the main lead in SToA).

All top stuff.

How to Make Your Movie...

Monday, April 18. 2005

Bought How to Make Your Movie completely on the off chance the other day, and found it to be very good so far...

As ever I seem to be taking two steps forward and one back at the moment. Still waiting to hear on three locations. The project plan is now complete, and the actor I wanted to target for one of the main parts won a BAFTA last night (hopefully he'll still want to help out a lowly project like this, although I've still yet to contact his agent - I've been putting it off until I had the script finalised, and the headed notepaper and business cards printed).

I need to really get things steaming along now, so I'm gonna arrange some meetings with various folks. I think I've taken it as far as I can on my own, now I need help.

We're off!

Tuesday, April 19. 2005

Have arranged a SToA kick off meeting for next Monday at eight.

Also have hopefully secured the first of the locations, by asking the site director here at work if we can use an office for some of the scenes. He agreed in principle, pending further details from myself about how we were going to go about it and who was involved and that we could assure him the company would in no way be referenced. Might have to do a bit of creative framing on some of the shots but all should be well. Have spoken to the guy whose office we'd like to use and he's happy.

Shut Up... Go Do It...

Sunday, April 24. 2005

So said the guru of independent film making in the UK, Chris Jones, to a group of about forty or so of us who turned up at the Metropole Galleries to listen to him this afternoon.

It was a very inspirational talk he gave, but also a very honest one. I'm sure more than a few people walked away from there having had rude awakenings. He made no apologies for this and from the get go warned us all of the cynicism that we as film makers face.

And he had a point. In fact he had plenty of points and they were all very valuable. The main ones were:

1 ) Get off your arse and make the damn thing - if you lead, others will follow.
2 ) Don't expect anyone to go and see your film. Apathy and cynicism with haunt you wherever you go, learn to ignore it.
3 ) Don't give a monkeys what people think about you or your film - they may be right, they may be wrong, but ultimately it's irrelevant what they think.
4 ) The Film industry is a playground for the rich, don't make inroads without a backup plan, especially if you have a family and mortgage.
5 ) The industry will screw you over unless you have a very good business head on you. The people who make most money from your film are the distributers, and Chris said he's only ever met one with any integrity.
6 ) Make sure you have a market worthy product with a good title that follows the rules of the genre.
7 ) Don't get precious over your film, learn to let it go once it's in the hands of the sales and marketing people and move on

There was plenty more like this, all really good stuff. If you don't have any of his books already - Get It .

Tomorrow is the first SToA meeting, and I'm well excited about it. I've been very busy over the past week planning and preparing for it, working out what we need to discuss.

I've also been busy getting my head around the finer art of sound recording. I bid for a nice microphone on eBay, but lost it at the last moment. Poo. Think I'll give my friend Bill in the States a call tomorrow - see if he can help out on that front...

Now we're cooking!

Tuesday, April 26. 2005

The production meeting last night went exceptionally well. Everyone bought into the idea of the script and was happy (more or less) with their assigned roles, so now we have a full micro-budget film crew.

We've agreed to get together on the 21st/22nd May for a weekend for a 'technical rehearsal' weekend. The main idea being that, whilst three of us have on-set experience, there's still a few newbies (myself included) that will need to find their feet reasonably quickly.

If things go well and we can arrange it, we might even get a couple of Jess/Alice scenes shot. Chris (Gaffer), Nic (DoP) and I will probably have a few get togethers before then to discuss look and feel etc, perhaps even shoot some of the marsh scenes (such as the reporter on the marsh) and Jess driving to Rye.

We sorted a good few more of the location, prop and logistical problems, it's just a case now of hard work to tie everything together.

It's definitely def, that's (hi) def for the deaf heads...*

Wednesday, May 4. 2005

In the last week we've gone from the idea that we'll be making nothing more than a lowly no-budget DV movie to now talking about shooting and editing completelyi in HiDef. There are some risks with this strategy, but it makes sense to future proof ourselves as quickly as possible. If the funding comes through for a HiDef camera, which is look very promising at the moment, we should be on a roll. However, this'll mean the need to beef up my PC for editing, but that shouldn't cost too much. Couple of hundred quid tops I hope.

Meanwhile, I've now completed my script notes, although there's plenty more to add still, I've enough to start talking to the actors we've got lined up already to prepare them. I'm meeting up with Vickie (Jess) this lunchtime to go through the script with her.

We've also secured a location for Jess and Alice's flat, which is a huge relief as I was starting to anic a bit that we wouldn't find any. It almost sounds too good to be true, a flat in Hythe (exactly where we wanted it to be local to the male actors we have in mind), currently ocupied by two women (so no set dressing) who aren't about much at the weekends. Fabulous! We'll be going in next week hopefully for a scout. I'm praying it's OK, although I think it's the best we'rre going to get so we might just have to work around an potential problems.

* Ahhh! Pop Will Eat Itself - those were the days! My first ever proper gig, aged fifteen. And I spent the whole night bouncing around next to Miles and the Bass Thing from the Wonderstuff. Fantastic!

Cutting our coat...

Sunday, May 8. 2005

Met up with Louise and Chris to discuss equipment and budgets this evening.

Chris has been very much for getting a HDV camera, such as the Sony Z1, which I would dearly love to have. But we realised that the funding we have secured so far leaves us with a dilemma. Either we go for the Z1 and skimp on the audio and lighting budget, or stick with our old Canon XM1 but light it and record it as good as we can.

Having spent money on DV Rack to ensure we can get the best possible results from the XM1, I'm pushing for the latter, in the hope that if we make it sound as good as we can and light it properly, we should get away with slightly inferior quality video.

Thankfully, my stateside buddy, Bill Smith, having spent a weekend hanging out on the set of Kris Kristofferson's new movie , with the great man himself and his friend, William Sanderson, managed to get a lot of information about the indie film circuit and film festivals. Apparently we don't need to worry about transferring to film for most film festivals now, which leaves us with the option of shooting with the XM1 in frame mode if we want, which should make for slightly better images as well.

I also went through my thoughts and ideas for Alice with Louise. Louise thought they were the best character notes she's ever received, which was good (thanks Judith!).

I panicked slightly when I realised that time was slipping by and it's only two weeks until our technical rehearsal weekend, and I still haven't worked out a shooting schedule yet. Best get my arse in gear...

The Mightiest Media

Thursday, May 12. 2005

We now have our flat! We went to scout it out this evening, it's perfect, even down to the old computer in the corner of the living room. And as the two girls who live there work in a bookshop, it's full of books everywhere, which only adds to the effect.

One of the girls also works in the pub nearby (a Shepherd Neame one - great!) so I'm wondering whether to shoot some optional extra footage of a pensive Alice waiting for her shift to finish... Not sure, might be worth shooting even if we never use it.

Louise and I are off to the bookshop (which is literally just below the flat) tomorrow afternoon.

Also had another stroke of luck on the equipment locating front. The web development agency we use at work used to be into video and have some old equipment lying about, including a rather nice Sennheiser Mic, which they have let me borrow for the shoot. Fabulous.

Chris isn't having so much fun trying to get lights. He's decided he wants to buy some, but cannot find anyone to sell him some. Loads of places will rent them out, but few want to sell. Very strange...

Let there be light!

Sunday, May 15. 2005

Chris and Louise came round last night with details of the lighting rig they've just brought. Rather sexy it is too. Shame I don't have any money left to buy anything else with!

No news yet from the lady at the book shop, she said she'd read the script over the weekend and get back to us. I do hope she says we can shoot there - the place is perfect. I also spoke to the manager of my Mother-in-Law's shop as they have some rather large safes which could double as Mr Widdershin's back room and he was more than amenable. This might be useful if the lady at the book shop has reservations.

It also struck me that if the lady in the book shop didn't want us to film there, we could use Mother-In-Law's shop for the whole bookshop scene. It would require some dressing, but might add to the fact that it's not a normal bookshop, a strange, specialist bookshop. Hmmm...

I am a director!

Sunday, May 22. 2005

Our first rehearsal day went extremely well yesterday. Talk about a steep learning curve though...

Still, several unknown questions were answered to my satisfaction, proving that I am either a) a natural director, or (more likely) b) a spawny get.

Vickie proved she was more than a capable actress, Nic proved that she has a good cinematographic eye and Chris the gaffer proved that he can light a scene and make it look very professional.

Bloody marvellous!

Even my wife surprised me with hitherto unknown acting abilities, standing in as she did for Dr Crabtree.

There are still areas of improvement we need to work on though; focus seemed to be an issue, especially on wide shots, though we didn't really get stuck into the full functionailty of DV Rack, so I hope that will cure those problems once we use it properly.

We also need to get into the mindset of shooting, whereby, if you're in a scene and you have the lights set up, make sure you don't move on to the next setup before you've finished with the current one. Quite a few times we set up, did a couple of takes, moved, then realised later we'd have to go back to a previous setup.

We're off over to Louise and Chris's a bit later to see what it looks like on their home cinema setup. Then hopefully more work on improving our results.

That's better.

Monday, May 23. 2005

Thanks to the power of DV Rack and some hard lessons learnt on Saturday, yesterdays results were much, much improved and a lot of the problems sorted out.

Chris' lights are a godsend, along with the superb microphone. Instant semi-pro results without even trying. With a bit of thought and diligence, we're achieving results far beyond my expectations.

Only problem now is that I have to make sure I concentrate on directing properly, not trying to play sound man and cinematographer and tea boy all at the same time. It's a shame Nic could be here yesterday, but I can tell her the things she needs to catch up on quite quickly (mainly refinements to using DV Rack), perhaps later this week.

Now I just have to get to grips with editing! Mr Coughlan meet Mr Avid.

Location, location, location

Thursday, May 26. 2005

Went out onto the Romney Marsh at lunchtime scouting round for locations for a couple of scenes in the short. Found a perfect site near Aldington, then realised that Paul O'Grady could see us from his house there, so I might look elsewhere, so as not to upset anyone.

The two scenes I want to shoot this weekend are the news reporter footage that Alice watches when she turns the TV on and the last scene with the Mistress of the Marsh (Gertrude Stumpe as I lovingly call her). It's more second unit type stuff.

Spent a couple of hours researching 18th century make up, to better understand what Gertrude would have looked like. Basically (as was my hunch) she's gonna be very pale skinned (so we need to get the footage in the can this weekend if we can before Vickie sets off next weekend to Turkey next weekend for a week and comes back all tanned!). We also need to make Vickie look older for this part so I need more pointers on ageing make-up techniques.

Apparently 17th and 18th century ladies believed that washing in your own urine was good for the skin. Samuel Pepys' wife tried puppy peepee, though he never reports whether the experiment was a success.

Went round to Darren and Amber's this evening to plan for these shots and fell into a big discussion about the final scene where the Mistress of the Marsh appears in Jess vision (or is it a vision!?). We came up with some really good ideas.

I want the Gertrude scene to be quite scary. I watched The Ring again last night and analysed it, getting more than a few ideas. I love the way the girl moves when she crawls out of the telly. It looks like they just got her to walk forward slowly and then cut out the middle bit just after she starts moving and before she stops, so she slowly accelerates into the jump forwards. I'm gonna try a few experiments with Vickie, getting to walk backwards and forwards to get an unnatural flow to her walk.

The other day Scott Watson asked me what lighting we were using. The best I can say at the moment is they are Dedolights, low voltage ones, but still very bright. Chris the Gaffer brought a kit from some place in London. I'll ask him about it at the weekend and publish a full list of equipment we have at our disposal.

Gertrude Lives!

Tuesday, May 31. 2005

Saturday was quite possibly one of the most exhausting, exhilarating and nerve-wracking experiences of my life. For the first time ever I directed someone and captured them on camera!

I have dreamt about this day ever since I saw a 'making of Star Wars' programme back in 197-something, and thought, 'cool, I want to do that'.

Twenty five years later, I got there.

All respect to Amber for making Vickie look fantastic, and Vickie for making Gertrude better than I ever imagined. The footage came out nicely, but I'm a bit spoilt for choice on what to do with it - I want to mess it up a bit, but I've found three of four ways of doing that I like... Think I'll wait until the rest of it is shot and then see what works best.

We also shot the news report that Jess and Alice watch on the TV. No direction required for this one, Chris just let rip with a tirade of humourous ad-libbing. Will Ferrell's got nothing on the dry northern wit of this guy...

It's taken me three days to get this post up because I've been fighting a really annoying piece of spyware. I thought I was going to have to reload the whole damn thing, but thanks to Microsoft's new Spyware remover, AdAware and some common sense, I finally beat the bugger into submission. Never thought I'd be so grateful to Bill Gates, but he was certainly being toasted this evening!

On top of that, my son and my wife have spent the last two nights awake with nasty sick bugs. Must... sleep... now...

By the Power of Jupiter

Monday, June 6. 2005

Either Jupiter is making it's presence felt or I'm just back on good form after my illness, but today was a very positive day.

First thing this morning I went down to chase Ken about his son-in-law's brother-in-law and was presented immediately with his phone number. His name is David White, stage name Ben Shockley, and he's good buddies with Ken Colley. Apparently they are keen on short movies, so I'm hopeful they'll both be willing to help out. I left a message on David's voicemail and Ken says he'll get his son-in-law to chase him up as well, so fingers crossed.

Spoke to Louise about sorting a new location fo the bookshop scene and suggested that perhaps she could try the second-hand book shop near Active Sport in Folkestone. She then had a moment of menthol clarity and realised that the owner of the shop might be one of the regulars in her dad's cafe, where she is working this week to help cover for the cook. I haven't been in that shop for years (I think I went in there about ten years ago and bought a book on the Knights Templar), but if it's still the same it might even be more suitable than the bookshop in Hythe.

I'd been thinking about filming some extra footage in the Kings Head pub in Hythe (as the land lady has said we can film there if we like) as I'd been a bit concerned that Alice's sudden appearance at the climax of Jess' ritual was a bit clumsy.

So I thought perhaps we could film a scene of Alice working in the pub (full of 'pagans and weirdos'), and have her catch a news item of Jarvis McQuarry reporting from the marsh again at the celebrations. She could put two and two together and realise that there is some kind of link between the fact that Jess has been specifically asked to perform the ritual that evening and the celestial events that the pagans are celebrating.

Hmmm, thinks I, how can we get footage of celebrations on the Marsh without upsetting the locals - bit tricky that. Then I remembered Marshonbury.

Marshonbury is a big party on a farm on the marsh each year (near where we were filming the other week). We played there with the band a few years ago - a top evening out had by all. Caroline, who owns the farm and organises the event works upstairs in Market Intelligence, so off I trotted to find her. She is more than happy for us to turn up with our cameras and film them dancing about, so I think that's a definite addition to the film.

And then to top the day of, we had a splendid band practice, polishing off two new songs.

Up, Up and Away

Tuesday, June 7. 2005

Even better day today!

David White came back to me this morning to say he's definitely interested in helping out, so I'm hoping that's Dr Crabtree sorted. He's a bit younger than I had originally thought for Dr C, but I think that would play better with the idea that he's protecting Jess because he likes her.

I sent David a copy of the script, so hopefully he'll come on board. He wants to meet up next week.

Louise struck gold in Folkestone today. She went up to Marrin's Antique Book Shop and asked if we could film there and they said yes! Marvellous.

Her next task is to source the location for the church scene and we're done.

Amber has been into the flat already and decorated the front room where we'll mainly be filming. It was a lurid kind of yellow before. Hopefully we'll be able to get in there at the weekend and rehearse our techie bits and pieces. I want to make sure Nic is happy with the camera and that we as a team have our routine set and practiced - focus, exposure, slate etc for each shot.

Apparently Chris has bought another light as well, so more bits to work out.

I ordered a cheap clapperboard today. Initially I wasn't going to bother as I couldn't see the point of them when sound is on the same tape as the video. But while I was editing the other day I realised that if for some reason I needed to refer back to the master tapes which we're recording as backups, I'd need to know which ones the shots were on.

Also, I was speaking some actors at the weekend and they felt that the clapperboards served a good psychological focus for cast and crew. They should arrive tomorrow...

Monk-ey Business

Thursday, June 9. 2005

Things have quietened down a bit in the last couple of days after the blistering start to the week. Plans are sorted now for the weekend to go to the flat where we're going to shoot a good portion of the short and I'm off to the Franciscan Study Centre in Canterbury tomorrow to finalise arrangements to film the opening sequence there. I love that place, when I was at college it used to (and hopefully still does) have a really nice vibe to it.

Probably all the monks wandering round. Very chilled.

For all you Dramatica freaks like myself out there, animator extraordinaire, Jim Hull, has started a new Dramatica Blog . Working closely with Chris Huntley, one of the creators of Dramatica, Jim is dishing out some seriously useful insights into the inner workings of what is, in my humblest of opinions, one of the best and most thoughtful pieces of software ever written. Go check it out.

Closer

Sunday, June 12. 2005

Yesterday (Saturday) proved an excellent training day. We set up in the flat and worked through the scenes set there to try and get the lighting right. Chris did a superb job and the results were far better than I hoped for. I'm just glad we went through all the learning curve without the actors there. It should put us in a good position when we start shooting properly.

Speaking of actors, David White came back to me today to say he'd read my script and definitely wants to meet up to discuss it, so we're meeting up tomorrow lunchtime. He also said he'd be able to pass on a copy to Ken Colley, so I really can't ask any more if him. Amazing.

Today we recorded the radio news report in Darren's home studio, where we'll be mixing the sound for the film. This came out really well. Louise read it in a posh english and scottish accent. I can't decide which one I like better.

We also checked out a local churchyard. I wasn't happy that Alice would voluntarily go into a church, despite her backstory of being a lapsed Christian who is rekindling her faith (mainly as a reaction to the dark territory that Jess is exploring). However, walking round a graveyard and looking at statues of Angels would hopefully reflect her more religious mood.

I just need to get permission from the Vicar to film there. Hopefully it'll be OK.

Shock-ing-ley Good

Monday, June 13. 2005

Had a fantastic meeting with David/Ben (his stage name is Ben Shockley , so I'll refer to him as Ben from now on). Ben is very keen to help out and is happy to do it for nothing, which is marvellous.

He seems like a genuinely nice guy, and made a first rate cup of tea, so double winner there. We went through the script and I explained more about Dr Crabtree's back story and what was going on in each scene. He generally seemed very positive about it.

I'm hoping that we'll be able to film his scenes next weekend (25th/26th June) as he's free then. I'm going to try and get him and Vickie together one evening next week to rehearse their scenes.

One thing that made me very pleased was that he seemed impressed with what I'd achieved so far, commenting that "I appeared to know what I was doing".

He's also passed on a copy of the script to Ken Colley this afternoon, with whom he's been making a film at Ken's house here in Hythe, so fingers crossed on that front.

Went round Daz and Amber's this evening to find Amber had made a good start on the book, and Daz has some awesome ideas for the music. Listening to him as he played it, I could really get a clear picture of how I want the finished product to look, and ideas for shots came flooding into my head. I've asked him to whack a load of stuff down on CD for me so I can listen to it before we shoot.

Jingle Jangle

Saturday, June 18. 2005

Tomorrow's the Big Day. Our first proper shoot of scenes with people actually interacting in. My first proper experience of directing (I don't think I can call the one on ones we shot the other day proper directing, can I?).

We're going to shoot what is, in the script, the church scene, but is now going to take place outside in the graveyard. The local vicar gave us permission to film there on Friday morning, which was a bit of a close call.

No news yet on whether Ken Colley is interested in playing Mr W, hopefully Ben should contact me in the next few days with some news. I need to speak to him anyway to arrange some rehearsal time with him and Vickie. I'm a bit nervous about tomorrow as we haven't rehearsed it, although as we have the whole afternoon to to film one scene, I'm hoping Vickie will be back from Lemington (where she's staying overnight) in time to run through it before we head up to the church.

Although, thinking about it, I guess the nature of the scene, where Jess and Alice begin to fall out over her growing obsession with the book, might even benefit from a lack of practice as Jess is meant to be a little uncomfortble with the whole set up anyway, so perhaps it'll play better without it. Who knows!? The whole point of this exercise is to learn.

Whatever, I definitely need Vickie and Ben to get together before next Saturday (proposed shooting day of Dr Crabtree's scenes) as I want there to be a bit more of a rapport between them than the growing hostility between Alice and Jess.

I've been quiet these past few days as I've been deep in Dramatica-land plotting out (again) the story form and structure for the movie which this short is kind of a prequel to.

I've got it all nicely laid out in Story View and it seems to be coming together really well. But, as ever, there is still a lot of detail that needs to be thrashed out. I've outlined the whole Overall Storyline and now I'm going to concentrate on completing the rest of the throughlines act by act, based on the the OS details. Seems like a sensible way to do it.

Blimey...

Sunday, June 19. 2005

And lo, they went forth to a desolate place and recorded footage of such beauty and grace that the director did sayeth unto the crew, 'Jiminy! That was easy.'

Methinks however todays spectacular success will be hard to repeat. I'm well aware of the concept of beginners luck, and I'm sure, once I start to edit the footage together, I'm going to find all sorts of problems (like aircraft noise - I didn't realise our tranquil part of the British Isles was so noisy till I listened to it through a Sennheiser microphone).

Still, overall, I'm giving the crew and myself a big old pat on the back. Apart from the laptop batteries running out eight shots from the end, there were no huge technical problems (by that time Nic and I had got the feel for the cropping and overscan so all but one of the shots came out OK without DV Rack).

I think a lot of the success is down to Vickie and Louise who both pulled out the stops and put in some fab performances. They did eveything I wanted them to (kept eye contact, listened to each other, didn't flap about too much in masters etc. etc.) with very little input from me, so my directorial powers, beyond shouting 'action' and 'cut', remain relatively untested. I'm sure this'll change, but for now, I'm happy.

Daz brought round the new version of Steve's song 'Angels' this evening, which I want to use for the closing credits. He's completely rearranged it for piano and had Steve round for six hours yesterday getting the vocals perfect. It sounds amazing, and that's without the extra string parts he's yet to put in.

If we keep this up, we'll do alright I think.

I just watched THX 1136, which my son got me for father's day. What an amazing movie. I think it was Frank Darabont, I recently read, who was saying how much it had had an effect on him. It's certainly got my mind racing for Architurus.

Blink, blink...

Tuesday, June 21. 2005

I've just finished a rough edit of the footage shot on Sunday. It's shaping up rather nicely. I'm so glad I read Walter Murch's ' In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing ', the core theme is crucial to natural looking cuts and is very well argued. It's helped me immensely (and it must work it he's got Oscars out of it!). The hard part is knowing how long to make the establishing shots, I keep veering about and can never get it quite right.

The other thing I'm worried about is the audio, I never got a really good take all the way through, so there is quite a bit of background noise pitch shifting between cuts, which is irritating. I suppose if the worst comes to the worst we can ADR it. I'm going to have to go out in the back garden and rerecord big chunks of background noise to apply to the whole track, I forgot to do that the other day, although we were quite near a main road, so it probably would have been a bit of a pointless exercise.

Vickie and I went round Ben's at lunchtime for a readthrough of their scenes. It's a strange and wonderful experience hearing people speak words that you've written, putting emotions and inflections you could never dream of and making them come alive.

I keep worrying that I'm not doing enough 'directing', but I'm starting to get the feeling that Dramatica is coming through with another benefit in that, by controlling the flow of the subtext and action during the writing phase, the script analysis is easy to put together and then expand. I've been through my notes with both Ben and Vickie and they more or less got it first attempt.

In fact there was only one line that Vickie read in a way that didn't sit right with me, and then I realised it was my fault for putting an errant question mark in where the line was more of an accusatory statement.

We've been given clearance to film in the offices at work on Saturday, so I've really got to get my skates on and make sure everything is ready for the weekend now. It's going to be a long one.

Lightning Crashes...*

Friday, June 24. 2005

And so it begins, the next step up the big filmmaking ladder. I've spent the whole day preparing for the weekends shoot. I'm totally paranoid something is going to go horribly wrong at the last minute, but so far, it's holding together nicely.

Amber has completed as much of the book as we need for the weekend shoot, and boy does it look good. It's all wrapped up at the second, but once we've unwarpped it again I'll post some pictures up of it, it looks amazing. I feel sorry for Amber, she's put tonnes of work into rehearsals and making the book and dressing the set ready for the shoot, and she's going to miss tomorrows events as she's got to work. What a bugger.

I think we're all prepared now, though. We have book, computers, LCD screens, nametags, scanners, more books, pictures, sheets, CDs, DVDs, crayons, glue, clocks and a hundred other items which we'll need in the next two days. I'm amazed I've been so organised.

I've shown a few people the rough edit of last weeks shoot and generally they are very positive about it and providing me with some very useful feedback (and that's without the soundtrack sorted).

We had a cracking thunderstorm here this evening, so I was out with the Sennheiser recording it to put into the film. I tried to shoot some of the lighting bolts, but realised too late I had the exposure all wrong. Buggrit.


*... an old mother dies... the Angel opens her eyes! - Live

Danger, Jalfrezi!

Saturday, June 25. 2005

It didn't quite go as planned, but on the whole it's been a fantastic day.

Everyone showed up on time and we managed to shoot all of the Dr Crabtree office scenes.

Ben and Vickie gave some splendid performances and Daz, Nic and Chris really started to gel as a team.

Our biggest problem was time. I'm quickly learning that in this game, if you think something is going to take 10 minutes, in reality it'll take half an hour.

We managed to get over to the flat just before six which only gave us enough time to plan the morning's shots before we headed back to our house for a curry.

Unfortunately, Daz managed to get his second mouthful stuck in his throat, and spent the rest of the evening in agony trying to shift it. It was still there two hours later when he and Amber left. Ouch.

After dinner Amber drew up a large copy of the Angel onto an old sheet for the ritual scene while I raided John Dee's books for some appropriate Latin.

Gawd help us, we're going to try some very dodgy special fx tomorrow, heaven knows how it's going to turn out.

Finis et Origo

Sunday, June 26. 2005

We worked faster today and while we managed to get all of Ben's shots done, we still didn't quite finish as much as we'd hoped for.

The ritual scene took up the main bulk of the day after we'd shot the conversation between Jess and Dr Crabtree at the flat.

Chris did an amazing job lighting the ritual scene, it looks superb. I even got to use my cheapo work lights from Aldi's! Nic got some excellent shots as a result.

Our attempts at special FX came out better than I thought thanks to the books natural propensity to shut itself. Simply reverse the footage, add a bump speed effect and hey presto, spooky self opening book (yes, I know it's not in the script - I made it up on set).

During a break I asked Ben what he thought of our little set up, being that he's been on a lot more film sets than I have, and he complimented us on our speed and efficiency. He even hinted that I was an OK-ish director! I was a bit sad when we'd finished his shots as he's a great bloke to have around set.

Still, I pitched a couple of ideas for screenplays at Ben and he seemed enthusiastic about them, so hopefully our paths will cross again in the future.

I think one thing I'm going to find weird if I make it any further with filmmaking is that actors are going to be coming in and out of projects at odd times and bizarre friendships will build up. It struck me that being a jobbing actor must be a bit of a strange life experience, perhaps quite lonely with not having regular working conditions or colleagues. I suppose at least if you're crew you get to see a project through and because of the nature of your work you might tend to form little units that work more regularly together.

The other thing that struck home was the point Chris Jones made the other week, that being a director is perhaps the best and worst job in the industry as actors, DPs, gaffers are always in demand on other peoples projects, so we directors should expect to be lasty off the blocks when it comes to establishing careers.

Now I've got two weeks grace before the next shoot (back at the flat) to edit together the four complete scenes we've got over the weekend. I think the ritual scene will take the most time as we really went to town getting some interesting footage and there is very little dialogue to get in the way.

(Oh, Daz managed to finally shift the bit of chicken lodged in his throat. I guess he'll be liquidising his dinners for the next few days!)

Trust the Actors

Wednesday, June 29. 2005

A few times I've heard people say that all screenwriters should at least attempt to make a short movie. It always sounded like good advice, but until last night I never really understood the significance of why.

I was sat there trying to edit the sequence of Dr Crabtree speaking to Jess on the phone. A simple sequence, so I thought, which I wrote to hint at the backstory idea that Dr Crabtree is protecting Jess, and here he lies to save face at the embarrassment that he's told her she'll never find the book and suddenly it arrives on her doorstep.

Obviously this is no deus ex machina conceit I invented, but a thoroughly developed idea that is more or less completely hidden in the short (mainly because, in Dramatica terms, I've hidden the Impact Character storyline).

When we were shooting the sequence Ben did just three takes, two medium shots and one close up. He did more or less the same thing each time, with some minor variations. Each time it didn't sound quite like I imagined, but trusting Judith Weston's advice to forget my preconceived ideas and trust the actors more, I let it slide. What he was doing still felt right, just not quite what I expected.

So I'm sat there last night thinking, this guy has just found out that the thing that he is trying to protect his young protege from has just been given to her more or less on a silver plate. As I say, the backstory in my mind was that he didn't know it had been sent to her, and knowing that Mr Widdershins is the owner of the book, it could only mean that he'd failed in his bid to protect Jess. Now Mr Widdershins has realised who she possibly is and would be angry with Dr C for hiding her away.

I tried several edits, not hard when I only had four takes and a couple of cutaways to play with, but even so, it just wasn't making sense in my head. Midnight rolled past and I was getting more and more agitated and unhappy.

Then it struck me. The way I had Dr Crabtree in my mind was a little selfish and perhaps a little bit of a coward. The way Ben plays it he becomes much more selfless. He obviously already knows that Jess has been sent the book and perhaps already been torn off a strip by Mr Widdershins, both of which actually make more sense in the flow of the story.

Now his words and actions start to become more selfless. Despite knowing he's in the sh*t, he still tries to protect her the best he can, making his character, in my mind anyway, richer and deeper.

A huge realisation (and I mean mind expanding, whole-world-pivoting-round-to-form-a-new-view-of-reality mental shift) started to dawn on me about just how much a story can warp and change during the production process, and how this can be quite often for the better (although I can see it for the worse as well).

After all, the actors (and director if someone else is directing) are going to come to the script with the same lack of preconception that the audience will have when they see the final film. They will often see the real truth in what you write, even if your confused and befuddled brain has twisted it into something else.

Further to that I began to understand how the warp and weft of the story as it's created and put together and presented on film to an unsuspecting public meshes together with the words we write on the page.

The only way I can describe it is thus: When I think about the script I tend to think with my heart - I care about these characters, I care about the story, I care about the script. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy. But I'd failed to see the story mentally, only understand it logically. Yeah, I'd envisioned each scene as I wrote them and storyboarded them, but I'd failed to fully understand how each scene would play against each other, how each one will have an emotional impact on the viewer, based on what they had already seen. I suppose rather than seeing each scene as it's own little island, I began to fully appreciate the whole story.

Suddenly the world suddenly became a much bigger, better place.

Rewind, Fast Forward...

Friday, July 8. 2005

I forgot to mention the other day that we have now got Mr Widdershins cast, ready for shooting this weekend. As it turns out, it's the manager of the bookshop in which we're filming this Sunday. Double bonus.

To be honest, I kicked myself when I first met John (for 'tis his name), as I'd only just sent the copy of the script to Ken Colley. Had I gone to the bookshop a day earlier I could have save myself a little bit of bother. Nonetheless, Ken Colley it seems is off doing some movie or another and so we were able to approach John who was more than willing to give the part a go.

Vickie and I met up with him on Tuesday lunchtime for a quick read through, and I think he's perfect for the part. He has a very good voice, and being one who seems knowledgeable in more esoteric matters, the part could have been written about him as well as for him.

We're off to the flat to shoot the remainder of the Jess and Alice scenes tomorrow and then on to the Bookshop in Folkestone on Sunday. That'll be interesting as Vickie is only available 'til 11 o' clock, so we'll need to shoot all her stuff first then do the reverse angles when she's gone, which will be interesting.

After that, there are just a few more shots I want to get in and around Hythe next week (we'll do that in out lunch hours, it'll only need me, Nic and Vickie and we all work at the same place).

Speaking of Nic, I hope she keeps going tomorrow, she flew back from New York this morning where she has been holidaying for the past week, so she'll no doubt be jetlagged. With the bombs in London yesterday I was worried whether she'd get back at all, but we Brits are a resilient bunch and everything seems pretty much back to normal today.

Daz got caught up in the awful events slightly yesterday. He was on the tube when the bombs went off and the train stopped short of Mansion House station. He had to walk up the track to the station proper. Scary stuff.

I've got my friend Bill in the States working on the web site to back the film up. I only asked him to do it this afternoon and he's already come back with some awesome concept artwork for the site. Magic.

I panicked a bit as Louise announced to me this afternoon that she's arranged a press interview next week for me. I realised they may well print something in the local paper about the project next thursday, so we'd need to get a basic web site up and running pronto. Watch this space!

On the writing front, I've got my second Architurus draft all StoryViewed up, and ready to develop. The Dramatica storyform has thrown up some interesting propositions which'll take some thinking about... I just can't decide who the bad guys should be - I know what they should do and their reasons for doing it, but for dramatic purposes I don't know whether they should be an external group trying to affect the main characters, or it should be someone from the main group of characters behind their activities. My intuition says the latter, but I can't quite decide who (or if it's a new character, what).

Almost There!

Sunday, July 10. 2005

We've got all the main scenes in the can (well HDD) now, so this week will see a flurry of activity for me, Nic and Vickie in our lunch hours filming some extra bits - exterior establishing shots and the like and then we'll be done with shooting and life can return to comparative normality for a while. I'm really going to miss this filmmaking lark. I hope I can get something new going again soon.

It's been hard work, but I've got to say it's been the most fulfilling experience I've ever commited myself to. I'm amazed at how much time people have been prepared to give up to help get the film made and I'm eternally grateful and honoured that the cast and crew think that highly of me that they're willing to put the effort into it that they have. I just hope I can deliver a finished product worthy of their efforts.

Today we shot in Marrins Antique Book Shop, which was for me perhaps the nirvana of filmmaking. John, depite a few early nerves, came through with some great performances of Mr Widdershins. Accidentally, I saw Sydney Pollacks' advice* to shoot early, before the actors are ready, in full effect today and I've got to say he's right. I think John thought we'd take longer to set up than we did, so we caught him a little by surprise when we said we were ready. He didn't have too much time to sit around intellectualising about the part, we just threw him straight in, (which I actually felt a bit bad about to start with), but I think it paid off as he was well into the role within two or three takes.

It still amazes how you think you can know characters well, and yet not really know them at all. You live with them in your head for months and years and then the Actors breathe life into them and it's like meeting an old friend you haven't seen for ages. You recognise them and feel comfortable with them, but they're unpredictable, like you don't know how the intervening years have changed them. It's quite exhilarating in some respects.

* Moviemakers Master Class - Private Lessons From The World's Foremost Directors, Laurent Tirard. Faber and Faber, 2002. p21.

Calamity (of sorts)

Wednesday, July 13. 2005

Woke up this morning to find my PC had died - once I'd turned on the irritating reboot on failure option I was presented with a lovely Blue Screen of Death.

Luckily Mother-In-Law has come to the rescue and loaned us her PC to retrieve the data, so thankfully I haven't lost anything. Unfortunately early diagnosis hints that it was the Power Supply Unit that failed, causing damage to the motherboard and the hard disk drive...

All of the film footage is stored on my external hard disk drive, it so I'll be able to limp on editing on my old laptop. Can't quite afford that new dream Twin G5 Apple Power Mac and 30" screen just yet... (although any donations would be gratefully received!)

My esteemed Stateside friend Bill is busy working on the SToA web site - of I which I got my first sneak preview of last night and it looks excellent. I'll try to come up with some interesting content for it and build over the next few months leading up to the films launch, although last night Daz and I were trying to guestimate how long post-production would take and came up with a depressingly long time (4-5 months), so don't hold your breath much before Christmas.

I really want to do some more directing, I've totally got the bug for it, so I need to crack out the final edit of SToA, pass it over to Daz for sound and music and then get writing again. I'm still a bit stuck on what to concentrate on.

My gut feeling is that I should concentrate on my sci-fi story (as dev time should be a lot shorter), but tone down some of the ideas that would require a lot of CGI so we could do it on a tighter budget, although common sense says just concentrate on one of my other story ideas that could be made on a much lower budget.

I think, to ease my own mind, I'll continue the work I started last week and see if I can crack out a version of Architurus without the Architurus elements (they would require serious amounts of CGI) and see if it still makes sense - I get the feeling it might make a better story. If it doesn't then it's on to the next idea...

That's a wrap!

Thursday, July 14. 2005

We got the final shots of SToA in the can today (at lunchtime and after work).

I was a bit sad as I managed to get some of my work colleagues into an establishing shot of Dr Crabtree's University, but unfortunately the camcorder let us down and it's a bit out of focus (the curse of not using DV Rack). However, other shots we did inside came out a treat (strange coincidence, they announced on the news that the college I went to was granted University status yesterday - so it much have been a day for completing beginnings, 'finis et origo' as Jess would say).

I'm so close to getting a final draft edit it's painful. I just have to tidy up the Mr Widdershin's bookshop scene and we're just about there. I have no idea how long it's going to end up - I'm guessing about 20 minutes, so I'll need to do a lot more trimming and tweaking yet, but at least it should give me some idea of whether the story actually works or not.

I'm tempted to give it the old two week lie fallow period, try to get some sort of distance from it - immerse myself in writing son-of-Architurus (I had some good ideas for the main theme of that this morning while I was watching my son try to get down from the breakfast table). And I suppose Daz will need a few weeks to play with ideas for the music... Yup, that's what I'll do.

Crash and Burn

Tuesday, July 19. 2005

I was up to three o'clock Saturday morning pulling together the first rough edit, and boy, did I pay for it the next day. I spent the whole weekend in a fug, which was a shame as it was our first chance in a few weeks to have some quality time with our son.

I was so tired I couldn't even bring myself to watch the final edit all the way through, I had this really awful feeling it was going to be Bad, so Lucy watched it first and gave me the thumbs up. I watched it saturday night and fell into a huge bad mood. It was by no means good. Well, not that bad, but the tiredness of burning the midnight oil for so many weeks had finally caught up with me and I just didn't ever want to see a triangular book again.

My biggest problem was the opening five minutes, with no opening credits and no music it just didn't feel right. I kept trying to force myself to look past these as I knew that they would come in time, but it still didn't sit right.

I avoided it all day Sunday, only pausing at my PC once to export a copy off so I could watch it at work yesterday. This I duly did once lunchtime had rolled around and, thanks to two early nights, my fresher eyes saw the problem immediately, the whole first scene, the graveyard scene, didn't work.

It painted Alice as a bit of a cow and Jess as a bit spineless and whiny. No, no, no, no it'll have to go. And then what? I can't start with the Dr Crabtree scene, it won't make sense. What about if I swap the second and third scenes around? That would work. The book shop scene is nice and strong anyway (it was the last scene we did and Vickie had really got into the stride of things by then), so now that's first.

As soon as I got in yesterday I set about cutting and pasting. It still wasn't quite right though, it started too quick. Off to Flash to make some dummy opening credits, add a bit of Ludovico Einaudi for effect - oh yes, much better.

Only problem is that suddenly the first five minutes were much stronger and the mistakes and troublespots throughout the rest of the film came very much into sharp relief.

Still I was feeling a whole lot better about it. It was weighing in at fouteen and a half minutes, still way too long for my liking. I was starting to worry that I wouldn't be able to find enough to cut out to shorten it, so this morning I fired off an e-mail to UK Independent Film Making Guru Chris Jones. I remembered that he had mentioned in his seminar the other week that he had been quite mercenary editing his films and been very pleased with the results, so I asked if he had any tips. Here's what he said...

'Get into every scene as late as poss and get out ASAP. Try trimming the end off every scene, even losing dialogue, see if it still works. Anything that does not serve the story should go. Try anything and see how it feels.' I've taken these words to heart and, along with tidying up the glitches I've already shaved a good thirty seconds off, and I'm not even halfway through it yet. Should work out a treat.

I also e-mailed Jo at Screen South, see if she could point me in the direction of any other local filmmakers who might be able to cast an objective eye on progress. She came back wanting more information the project and mooting the possibility of meeting up next week, which would be cool.

Still feel shattered though, so I'm off to bed to read more Brave New World...

Bingo...

Wednesday, July 20. 2005

I've finally got the rough edit into a shape that I'm happy to start getting feedback from. I've cut it down to 13 minutes 30, which is more or less exactly what I was aiming for. Adding some music to various sections has helped immensely as well, a little bit of Mozart and Einaudi go a long way. Of course, soon it will all be Miller, which should be fab.

Now the fun begins! I'll just dig out my coat of very thick skin and WWII metal helmet. Let's see how well I can take criticism...

Writing Again

Thursday, August 4. 2005

After days of fannying about with plot structures and web pages and suchlike, I've sat down this evening and actually written something. It felt good. Like getting out of a nice hot bath and getting into bed where there's a fresh duvet cover and bedsheet. Luvly.

Actually, I couldn't stop myself, I came up with some excellent ideas for the new Architurus, including an opening sequence that I had to get stuck into. I've really got to think of a better working title though, the Architurus elements are no longer really in it, and it's not terribly good either.

Last night I went through and re-edited SToA from start to finish with an eye on pacing and tempo. Some bits got changed out of recgnition, other's merely tweaked. I just need now to get a version of the final sequence that I'm happy with and I'll put that baby to bed (or at least give it over to Daz).

I caught up with Nic at lunchtime, who seemed quite enthused about the version of the edit I gave her a couple of weeks ago, which is good news.

Also heard back from Screen South today, they suggested meeting up in London next week. I'm not sure why as I could drive to their offices in Folkestone in less than five minutes, so what he long haul to London's about is anyones guess.

I explained to them that next week would be a bad week for me - it's the last week before my two week summer holiday, so it's bound to be mental trying to tie things together before I go away. One thing I always do at work is start a new project, get stuck right into it, go away for two weeks and then come back and not have a clue what I've done. Every time.

I'll see what SS suggest, perhaps there's something exciting in London going on... I have a few hours extra holiday I could use up if necessary. And as we're not actually going away anywhere on holiday, I could always do London the week after.

Mystic Rhythms

Wednesday, August 10. 2005

It feels like someones put life on slo-mo at the moment. Must be something to do with the fact I have two weeks off work from next week and it can't come soon enough.

I've got as far as arranging to go over to Screen South at some point next week, and have handed the final(ish) cut of SToA over to Daz to start working on the sound and music. He says he can get a first draft of the music done over the weekend, so I should have something half decent to show the Screen South gang.

Apart from that everything feels like it's been soaked in treacle. Slow, slow, slow...

The new screenplay is starting to come together. I've made some major changes to the main character's back story, making him a bit more interesting, and mysterious, but it takes a while for the new info to filter through into the story and get him 'in my guts' as one of my lecturers at college was fond of saying.

One other thing I'm trying with this is to not plot in so much detail. OK, so I've plotted roughly in my head, and I know, at least in principle, where the main characters should be at the end of each act. But instead of plotting every single detail, so that I end up writing by numbers, I'm trying to use the storyform and PSR from Dramatica to guide writing the first draft, rather than plot to the Nth degree. I guess, I'm starting to appreciate what Sam Snape told us last year.

One thing I've found is that it's easier to get inspiration while in the flow of writing, than by trying to meticulously plot each action and step of the journey. I want to try and get a more organic feel to the story, something I feel my previous efforts have lacked. And those moments where you're writing away and you suddenly get a perfect moment of clarity, where everything just reassembles itself in your head into the most exciting twists and turns of events are absolutely priceless, a real natural high.

This seems to be working so far, with about four scenes coming out in the past few days that have, without really trying, been better fits of the PSR breakdown than I could ever contrive by plotting alone.

It's all very mystical really.

Up, up and away!

Wednesday, August 17. 2005

Went hot air ballooning this evening. Fantastic! I'd recommend it.

Anyway, news from Screen South at last. They want me to go in on Friday to meet someone called Alex Finbow (cue gaffaws of laughter from my wife and cracks about meeting a yellow and green striped man ).

After doing a bit of research I found out that it may well the same Alex Finbow who directed 24 Hours in London . (This would tie up with my original request to Jo at Screen South, which was, 'do you know anyone who could cast a critical eye over my short and help improve the edit at all?').

Then again it might not.

But assuming it is, it's quite exciting, as they seem to be going out of their way to help me which is magnificent. Hopefully I'll find out more tomorrow...

I'm about half way through act one of the sci-fi thing that was Architurus. My new philosophy of not plotting to the nth degree and letting the story write itself a little more seems to be working.

I discovered the other day I'm a right brain dominant person, and plotting in detail seems to be much more of a left-brain activity. Working through the plotting while writing feels a lot more comfortable to me, and the old right brain is really starting to kick in with some surprising stuff. The trick seems to be knowing when to allow the left brain to reign the right brain in and when to let it go off and do it's thing.

Also, having edited the short, I feel a lot more comfortable knowing how late to leave the start of scenes and how soon to get out again. I'm sure if I'd written this a year ago, or even six months, I'd be on page 300 by now...

Much work to do yet, but it's feeling good.

And the answer is...

Thursday, August 18. 2005

Yes.

It is the same Alex Finbow who wrote and directed 24 Hours in London.

Very exciting, as Dr Crabtree would say. Though why he should say it just after Jess has pointed out that it's a woman's only ritual, one can only guess. Probably something deeply Freudian going on there, but I shan't dwell on it.

So tomorrow at three I shall be heading over to the Shearway Business Park (all of a five minute journey) for my first proper meeting with 'people with a reasoanble bit of clout' as a director.

One slight prob is that Daz is working late in London and may not be able to get the latest version of the soundtrack over to me for the meeting, which means I'll have to go in with the rough cut mix, which is pretty ropey. But never mind, as far as I'm aware we're going to talk about editing, so it might make more sense if the sound edits are more obvious anyway...

Uncle Andy!

Friday, August 19. 2005

I'm now officially an uncle! Hurrah! Congratulations to my sister and brother-in-law on the birth of their new baby boy.

The meeting with Alex went really well. He seemed reasonably impressed with what I'd done so far, considering it was my first effort, and gave me some excellent ideas on how to improve it.

It'll mean a lot more work now, but as we were talking a new vision of what the film could be crept into my mind.

Strangely enough he said a lot of stuff that I'd thought, but as no one else had picked up on it, I figured they were just fanciful notions. He also suggested a couple of things that I'd tried and then lacked the confidence to stick with, so those bits are goping straight back in.

His main comments were:

The whole last sequence is unclear as to what is going on. More information is needed to get the link between the old book and Jess etc.

There were a few scenes where the acting is unbalanced, with stronger parts and weaker parts. He suggested finding the strong parts and then setting them as a benchmark and ensuring that I had scoured all my takes to ensure I was using the best I could get.

The footage I have of 'Gertrude' that we shot out on the Marsh all those moons ago is slightly wrong, as her body language suggests that she is giving something, rather than taking it.

There are a couple of scenes where I could start even later as well, which I'd missed.

The biggest and best suggestion he had was to perhaps introduce Gertrude in voice overs at a couple of places to explain more the origins of the book and why the ritual had to be done on a certain day etc. etc.

I've always thought voice overs are crap, but when you've not a lot of time to tell a complex story, I've realised they could just be very useful (the thought crossed my mind the other day while we were watching About a Boy).

He asked me a pertinent question which was; how many people do I want to get the film on the first viewing? It's a great question, and one I'd not really considered. I'm still not sure what the answer is.

My initial reaction was, 'only a few people'. Then I thought, 'how pretentious and daft can I get? That flies in the face of the very reason I want to do any of this, to tell stories with some value to as large an audience as possible'. Fool.

So as we drove over to the hospital to see my sister this evening, I started formulating a new idea to introduce Gertrude and how she can better explain the book. Then I started thinking about taking it beyond voice overs and introduce her actually writing the book. Should be possible as Amber only filled up a certain number of pages...

Eternal Sunshine

Wednesday, September 28. 2005

Today I got SToA out of the proverbial drawer where it's been collecting dust and watched it for the first time since I showed it to Alex Finbow nearly five weeks ago. Thankfully it was better than I remembered, but it's so obvious now where it needs improving.

I've arranged to go and see Chris Knowles at Kent Screen tomorrow lunchtime which will be cool.

I'm also going to try to shoot an extra shot for the end of the film, one I didn't get when we were at the flat. I kicked myself at the time for not getting it, but I thought I could get away with it. I'm not, so I need to get it. Should be quite easy. As long as Darren remembers to bring the picture that's hanging behind Vickie's head in the Ritual Scene to band practice tonight, all should be well.

Soon be Christmas...

Thursday, September 29. 2005

Went to see Chris Knowles at lunchtime today. He is very enthusiatic about filmmaking and I think he'll do a great job at encouraging it the the area. He also seems to know a lot of very useful people, including one guy I met the day, Dave the Thief, as he was introduced to me, who lives nearby and is apparently a superb sound-recordist.

I've probably taken SToA too far for Chris to help now, but he has suggested a lot of avenues for getting the short seen in the local area, which is cool.

I also managed to do my first ever mini-pitch, well not so much a pitch, rather than a ramble about the Architurus effort. Chris and Dave the Thief seemed very interested in the concept, which is mainly all I talked about (hence why it wasn't so much a pitch). The good thing was I felt very comfortable doing it. Dave even suggested it should be a TV series, which I've considered on more than one occasion, but shied away from as I just feel far more comfortable with the idea of it being self contained in two hours of film.

Chris was also talking about starting a Screenwriting workshop in Folkestone, so I might well go along to that.

I also got the extra shot of Vickie I wanted as well today, so I'm much happier about that. Now we just need the shots for the beginning of the film and then re-edit it and do all the sound and we might just be done by Christmas.

Next year.

slegnA fo sthguohT terceS

Thursday, October 6. 2005

The re-edit of SToA continues at a pace. I'm working backwards through the film re-editing scene at a time. Not sure why, I just felt like editing the ritual scene first, and then it made sense to work back to the beginning, at which point I could then shoot the extra footage for the opening sequence and then work back through forwards for the final edit. Probably won't work out that way, but it's as good a plan as any.

One thing for sure is that I'm just doing what I think is right and not worrying about what other people think (as I did on the first edit, only to get shot down on things and finding myself thinking, 'damn, that's how I wanted to do it, but I didn't trust my instinct enough'). As a result, I'm much more satisfied with the results.

One thing I'm concentrating on is the visual grammar of the film. Alex Finbow made some comments on this front and it's not really something I'd payed too much attention to (I guess I was running on my intuition whole we were filming). The weird thing is that I'm only starting to understand it now I have the footage there in front of me, which is probably a bit late, but so far, I've just managed to work with what I have and it seems to make sense. My only concern is that it could be a bit easy to justify poor choices of shots with well thought out, but ultimately useless, answers, which only serve to weaken the film.

Off the fence

Monday, October 10. 2005

I've now completed my backwards pass through SToA and I'm much happier with the results. I've completely re-edited some scenes, looking for better performances from the actors and more dramatic ways of cutting it together, and others I've just trimmed and tweaked. It'll still need further work, but for now I can concentrate on shooting the extra footage for the opening sequence.

I'm also reading through Kerl Reisz and Gavin Millar's 'The Technique of Film Editing' at the moment, which is proving very useful. Even though it's about 50 years old and been republished more times than I've had hot dinners, it still holds a lot of excellent ideas, some of which seem to be getting lost in our pop video culture.

It's strange as I didn't think I'd still be learning as much about the whole filmmaking process as I am at this stage. I thought it would be a case of simply learning how to use Avid, knock off a quick short and away we go. But the more I think about it and edit the film, the more I realise my shortcomings as a director and a writer.

I'm really starting to appreciate the whole idea of visual storytelling, and I'm learning things that, although I might have worked out eventually had I not done this, would have taken me a lot longer had I stuck to writing alone. In fact the editing stage for me has been the hardest and the most exciting, in terms of realising what I can actually achieve on future projects.

So I'm starting to err on the side of those who say that if you want to write for the screen, you have to have made a film. It's not the end of the world if you don't, but it'll get you a lot further down the road than simply sitting at your PC staring at MMS or Final Draft or Sophocles. And it'll give you a much better appreciation of what the other people you work with (directors, AD's etc) have to go through.

Gertrude's Book

Thursday, October 27. 2005

We finally got to shoot the extra footage of 'Gertrude' writing her book on Tuesday night and I spent last night cobbling it together. It looks quite good.

Thing is I can't quite get my head around what she should be saying in the voiceover. Still, I've plenty of time to think about it as I have a two week window before Darren returns from his holiday and begins on the sound edit in earnest.

A bit of Spine

Wednesday, November 2. 2005

After a week or two of malaise and holidays, things are starting to move along now. I finished the re-edit of SToA with new intro sequence at the weekend which looks much better than I anticipated, although I still haven't worked out the dialogue for the voiceover fully yet.

One thing it has left me is unsure about the very last shot. It's meant to represent the Alchemist in the intro sequence travelling through time to possess the body of the main character, but as Alex Finbow pointed out, it doesn't really. It needs more work there. I'm curious at to whether I could just cut it shorter and not bother with it. The new finale to the Ritual scene proper works a lot better than before and may be strong enough by itself.

The Architurus script is coming on really well now. After a couple of false starts, I'm now nearing the completion of a first act that I'm really happy with. There's plenty of conflict, the characters seem to be finding their feet and it's tripping along at a merry pace.

The thing that's really struck home over the past few weeks is that the story must be structured. The only reviews I tend to read these days are those in Screen International (or on Screendaily.com) as these usually tend to be honest critiques of the story. Time and again the underlying criticism of many films is, 'great story, but lacked structure'.

One of the key things I've found is to stick as close as I can to the Dramatica structure, but not to plot in so much detail. Consequently I'm finding it much more fun now I don't really know what's going to happen. It's a bit like orienteering, Dramatica tells me which direction I need to be heading and I have a reasonably good idea where I need to end up, but I have no idea what the terrain is like on the ground till I get there and I have to work hard to fight through the undergrowth and forge a path.

This is quite different to how I did things before, plotting everything in detail. I found that the detail was never enough and the undergrowth was always a lot thicker than I expected and encouraged me to take different (better) routes which I hadn't anticipated. Eventually (it always seems to be somwhere towards the end of act 2) I ended up walking on a completely different track to that which the 'detailed' outline said I should be on. And so, unable to reconcile the two, I berated myself as a bad writer gave up and tried something else.

But now I've seen the light, it still isn't all roses. One downside to all this rigidity is that Dramatica can give you too much structure. With SToA I'm finding I'm cutting stuff out, like the Graveyard scene, mainly because I'd stuck to a rigid (albeit cut down) structure, only to find that I'd repeated myself; not completely - the sentiments expressed were from different perspectives, but the outcome was eventually the same. But at least I had the choice later on to do that, rather than realise I'd not covered enough ground and the film was lacking (and consequently fodder for the critics).

The only way around this is experience and trial and error. Last night I hit a sticky wicket for a while 'til I realised that the scene I was trying to write had a similar set of variations to a previous scene, so I just mashed the two together. Lesson learnt.

Inner Critic at Play

Thursday, November 17. 2005

After five very long evenings staring at SToA, I think I'm finally at final edit.

I've tweaked and twiddled for hours and I can now watch it all the way through without cringing at any point. Must be a good sign.

I'm learning slowly how to trust my inner critic. He can be a pain in the arse sometimes when I don't want him around (like when writing a first draft), but at this point he's been a godsend.

It's taken me a while to allow him back, especially having locked him up for past couple of weeks while I was working on the screenplay. But he's had some fun in the past few days, so that means he should shut up when I turn back to the screenplay in the next day or so.

I've corrected the colour (that's an art in itself, I hope I've done a decent job), got the sound as good as it can get it and now it's all ready for the Miller Meister to take over and weave his audio magic across it.

Must sleep...

Another Hamlet Moment

Sunday, January 8. 2006

Another busy week draws to a close.  On top of the usual round of working and writing, I've been working on the Secret Thoughts of Angels web site.  It's not complete yet, when it is I'll post a link for you to all to look at (a clue for the impatient: I'm in the UK...).  I'm quite pleased with it so far.

I've also been developing an idea for another short, something less ambitious than SToA that I can shoot in a single location with perhaps two actors.  The main idea behind it is to write something that creates an emotional moment or Objective Correlative , as T.S. Eliot would have it, (thanks to Danny Stack for pointing that one out).  

Also, having read and studied so much on character, I want to write something more character driven.  I think SToA is certainly plot driven as, at the time, that's all I really knew how to write.  I think there are further untapped areas of Dramatica yet to be mined that may well prove useful in this area...

The ending to Architurus is shping up nicely in my head at the moment.  I still need to do more research, so the script remains parked on page 60, waiting for the 'little men downstairs' to set the lights to green when they have enough info.  I need to find out more about small scale special ops tactics and I know just the man to call...

If anyone finds themselves at a gig this Friday with a band called Scary Mary playing, say 'Hi' to the bass player (or at least don't laugh too much at him when you realise after all these weeks of rehearsals he still can't remember Chasing Rainbows!).

Stand-Off

Monday, January 16. 2006

Met up with Ben Shockley for lunch today and was introduced briefly to the great Ken Colley. He didn't hang around for long but at least I got introduced which now puts one degree of separation between me and George Lucas and Clint Eastwood. I also got to meet two of Ben's other friends, Denis and Alan who are both filmmakers and/or actors. A good time was had by all.

Ben was telling me about his appearance in the banned X-box 360 advert. He plays the taxi driver at the end and can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch.php?v=WnpGtHq7Z0U . I'm not entirely sure why it was banned, I thought it was quite good and could see little in the way of anything offensive. I guess it's just not the image Microsoft want to promote.

This evening I went round Daz's to see how the sound mix was coming along for SToA. It's sounding rather good. Daz showed me a new method he was trying of playing along to a drum beat, rather than just playing along to the film. It was amazing how rhythmical my edit was, I was muchly pleased. The drum beat worked really well and, although it won't be in the final mix, I'm sure we could release it as a single... Perhaps not.

I like the way Daz is taking the music, going quite synthy, rather than classical. He feels that it will give him more scope for ideas further down the line. Once he's cracked the intro I'll ask if I can give you a sneak preview (he did give me a copy, but I want the vocal effects to be dfferent, so you'll have to wait!).

I also had some good ideas for the next short which I've been kicking about this evening. It could be quite a dark little story.

A very productive day, all told.

Cut!

Sunday, January 22. 2006

I finished the new short screenplay on Thursday night and, at the time, I was very pleased with it. Now I haven't seen it for a couple of days, I'm starting to doubt myself. Still I shall leave it until next weekend before I give in to the urge to read back through it. Then I'm going to try David Ball's working backwards technique through it, see if it stands up.

It's a very dark little story and I can't think of a title for it yet, but I like it, and I felt very moved by it while I was writing. We shall see...

I've been reading David Mamet's 'On Film Directing' which is another interesting read. He seems (at least when he gave the lectures in the book) very keen of the Eisensteinian notions of telling the story through the cut, through the juxstaposition of images.

However, I'm still struggling to get my head round how this actually works for films with dialogue. I get what he's saying but it only seems to make real sense if there is no sound and you are telling the story through images alone. I suppose it's a way of structuring scenes that allows you to keep dialogue to a minimum, freeing it up to become a tool for subtext or irony. The real story is in the images.

I was watching back through SToA this evening with his words fresh in my mind, and there is actually very little I could think of changing, not that I could now anyway.

Perhaps more will become clear as I work through it (it's only short, I started it last night and I'm halfway through it already - I was starting to find Mackendrick a little of the slow side the past few days so I thought I'd take a quick break from him).

I've spent this evening ploughing through my Screen International 2006 Festival Guide, working out which ones would be suitable to submit SToA to. Cannes is definitely the first port of call, with its deadline of March 15th. Thing is, if, and that's a huge IF the size of Jupiter, it got selected, I'm going to have to work out how to get my paltry MiniDV film onto Hi-Def or 35mm...

Sounding Boards

Sunday, February 12. 2006

Have been having fun working on the sound effects for SToA this week. Although it was a task Daz was originally going to take on, increased work pressures have meant for him 6 day weeks for a little while now, significantly cutting into his already limited time. So I've stepped into the breach and set about doing the tedious work of cleaning up dialogue and making everything sound as amazing as I can, freeing him up to do what he does best, play music.

Again it's making me appreciate another aspect of the filmmaking process that I guess a lot of writers don't get first hand experience of; the power of sound in action. Now we all know (at least we should) that sound is very important in a film, but until you start throwing stuff about it really isn't easy to appreciate just how subtle and powerful it is, or how it can change your perception of a cut or an action. It's quite amazing really.

Only a month and three days before the Cannes submission deadline. We'd better get our skates on.

I've also been storyboarding the new short, now proudly sporting the working title 'Pills'. A few more people have taken a ganders and given me their opinions, mainly thumbs up, thankfully, although I've still yet to hear from Ben.

Not having access to the storyboard software I used for SToA, I've been dusting off my A-Level Art skills and doing them by hand. They're rubbish, but I'm turning them out a lot quicker than I did with the software.

Also, I'm finding I'm thinking a lot more on a shot by shot basis, which I found I didn't using the software (inexperience or laziness prompted me to paint with much broader brushstrokes). I'm sketching them out on index cards, which also makes it easy to play with the juxtaposition of shots allowing me to previsualise the story much better than I ever did with SToA.

Bright Light

Monday, March 13. 2006

The time stretching continues as Daz and I race towards finishing the sound mix for SToA. Last night (Sunday) we finished the music which I think is excellent. Tonight we'll be mixing it all together, tomorrow I'll be burning the DVD and Wednesday I'll be posting it off to Cannes.

I think the music will need a bit more work once we've had a week or two to reflect, but it's more than good enough to send out (I marked on the Cannes submission that it was a work in progress which buys us more time to make imrpovements to the sound track if we want to).

On the New Short front, Ben's informed me that his DP friend is interested in helping out, which is good as Nic, who DP'd SToA, is off to France for a few months to work.

I've also been reading up on David Siegels' ideas about the nine act structure . I'm not entirely convinced by it - it seems to me he's still describing a three act structure, just with a bit more detail about how to structure those acts. Also it slightly assumes, in Dramatica speak, a good ending, which you might not want to write.

Nonetheless, there's some good stuff in there, and it's certainly helped me see some holes with the Architurus script, which can't be a bad thing.