Tribute to a legend

Hi, if you've bumped into this blog and noticed that it's been quiet for a while, sadly the reason is that my good friend Richard passed away in December 08 after a battle with non-hodgkins lymphoma. His wit, humour and intelligence is sorely missed by all who knew him.
We'd only really started to scratch at the surface of what we could acheive as a creative team, he was soo full of ideas and zany energy, if I can even show an ounce of that in my future films, they'll shine because of it....

RIP big man!

Here's a charity link:
www.justgiving.com/mrbaldy

3 Hour Challenge Number 3 - Feck Support

So, here is the last 3 hour challenge that we've done. A bit of a longer one and a bit more ambitious with some of the shots, but we kind of ran out of time, so the colour matching is a bit off in places, the sound levels jump a bit and we could have done with a bit more edit time, but hey, we've got a little film done.

This one can be found at YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_PmLcKilB4

Any comments (unless exceeding offensive!) most welcome.

This was shot using 2 cameras and in HDV. One camera was used solely for the hand held shots and the other smaller beastie for the "in fridge", "in oven" and fixed shots. I don't know the specs off the top of my head (they're Rob's cameras), so hopefully Rob can fill in these details when he sees this post!

3 Hour Challenge Number 2

Ok, so a bit sillier than the last 3 hour challenge and this time the outcome wasn't as satisfying, but it was fun to do. We came up with the idea of playing with some images of the moon and filming in from outside to a scene happening within. We were then looking for a punchline, but it didn't quite work as planned, still, it was a good 3 hours.

Rich: I think given another go at the edit, I might remove the raspy voice over and the visual filters and end with a close up of the "explosion" (removing the shout and the spin round of the "actor"). Just an idea to try.

Anyway, here it is:

The 3 hour challenge

Been a while since I posted anything. Been really busy and then ill.
Anyway, a few weeks ago (or was it a few months? I'm losing track of time), Rob and I decided to set ourself the 3 hour challenge. What's the 3 hour challenge I hear you ask (or not). Basically, we gave ourselves an evening to create a completed(ish) short film from scratch.
It was a bit tight on time but we did it, so here it is (hopefully) for your amusement.
I'm the "actor" this time and Rob is behind the camera. We have done a couple of others since, but I don't have them ready to post. I'll do it when I can. Also, may be give a bit more of a description of how it all happened, if anyone is interested (if not, I won't bother, please let me know)

Anyway, here it is (warts and all)

What a wedding!

Just thought i'd drop a quick line to say Congrats to Sam and Richard, they got married last weekend at a stunning hotel in Devon - the weather was pleasant, the meal fantastic, the band and company superb! All in all a great day ;-)

So, after Rich has come back from honeymoon, we'll be ploughing on with gettting the script realised - more news soon!!

The Wild Within on youtube

Competition Success!

I'd seen the UWOL ( under water over land ) challenge for filmmakers over at www.uwolchallenge.com a while ago and decided to have a shot at it. The idea is, on the first day of the month, a theme is announced and participants then have 3 weeks to plan, shoot and edit a 2-3 minute short film around the theme. In this case it was " The Wild".
I mulled over a few ideas, and after having outdoor plans blown out by an unusually wet May, I ended up in my back garden, with a couple of bedside lamps, some plant pots and a macro lens I had acquired from ebay a month or two ago for £13!! the result - THE WILD WITHIN.

Fast forward to judging day, and guess what? It won!

Check it out here http://www.uwolchallenge.com/winnerscircle.htm
or see the hi-def version http://www.treborsnave.com/video/thewildwithinHD.wmv ( 180megs !!!)

Also check the UWOL challenge forum on www.hdvinfo.net - it's a great international community which I thouroughly recommend getting involved with!!!

Film reviews for the attention span challenged

A bit of fun really, but here’s a website for people who can’t be bothered with long film reviews. The limit here is four words:

http://www.fwfr.com/default.asp

For example:

Forrest Gump: America loves an imbecile
Pulp Fiction: Uma does line, dancing
King Kong: Gorilla falls, in love
Star Wars episode 1: 16 years for this?

3 Point Lighting for < £50

Last night we played around with some make-shift lighting. We basically got hold of a couple of work lights from Wickes (click here to get some). They are about £25 a pop and come with a 500W bulb in. They are adjustable in height and direction.

We didn't have any gels around and were short of anything to soften the light with, so we plugged in a couple of 150W bulbs instead and used some white polystyrene board to bounce the light.

I'll pop up some results so you can see the outcome but all-in-all it looked pretty good for the time we spent and lights we had.

We used one of the lights as a kicker and placed it to above and to the side of the camera.

We used another as a fill light and placed it to the side of "the talent" (Rob!), pointing down and reflected the light using a piece of white polystyrene.

It worked pretty well, softening up the shadow and illuminating his face.

Finally, we placed a small halogen lamp behind him to act as a back light.

Okay, so this was pretty make-shift guerilla 3 point lighting but the result was quite acceptable for less than £50s worth of lighting kit.

We got some shadows but this was because we weren't lighting our back cloth (a pair of white curtains).

Sound

We all know how important getting good sound is when making a film, well I found a blog article that covers this subject quite nicely:

The blurb:

"If you are making an independent film on a miniscule budget it is
inevitable that some aspect of your movie will be compromised due to your lack
of funds. The ultimate challenge for an independent filmmaker working with a
shoestring budget is to some how make their movie look and sound like it
deserves to be with the big boys on the film festival circuit."

http://digital-filmmaking.blogspot.com/2007/03/people-just-like-sound-of-movies.html

Straight Curve - One day event

This saturday, Rob and I went to the Straight Curve one day filmmaking event.

The line up was:

Johannes Roberts: Director of "When Evil Calls"
A Battle of Opinions: Ben Blaine VS Johannes Roberts(film theory) hosted by Sandra Shevey
Brad Ashton: Comedy Writing
Frank Graves: Screenwriter and BAFTA member
Chris Gurney: Freelance sound recordist introduces A life of Sound
John Ratcliff & Jules Dawton: The importance of sound
Chris Knowles: Advanced Scriptwriting

The blurb was:

"We have a fantastic line up of Tutors and Guest speakers who are there to give
you information and advice on how to get into the film industry.
Johannes Roberts: Director of When Evil CallsWriter and
director Johannes Roberts whose latest feature "When Evil Calls" starring Sean
Pertwee is due for release later this year will discuss how to get into the film
industry, what will be expected of you and the process you will need to go
through.
A Battle of Opinions: Ben Blaine VS
Johannes RobertsA lively debate about the "Auteur Theroy" with Johannes Roberts
and Ben Blaine of Charlie Productions, co-director of Free Speech starring Danny
Dyer and more recently "Hallo Panda" with Film 4 and the Film Council. This
debate will be hosted by Sandra Shevey who is an authority on Film Theory and an
exciting new addition to the Straight Curve Team.
Brad Ashton: Comedy WriterYou will also hear from Brad Ashton who has had
over 40 years experience in writing comedy. His credits include writing for Bob
Monkhouse, Tommy Cooper and many more. He is also the author of "How to write
comedy" and "The funny thing about writing comedy" both of which will be
discussed on the day.
Frank Graves:
Screenwriter and BAFTA memberAnother of Straight Curve's fantastic tutors Frank
Graves a member of BAFTA will take you through a short discussion on script
writing for beginners and give you his experiences as a writer.
Chris Knowles: ScriptwriterChris Knowles will take you
through a discussion on advanced scriptwriting looking at two methods in
particular called ScriptSpine and Scriptwrite.
A
life of soundFeatured guest speaker Chris Gurney (shooting dogs, basic instinct
two) a freelance sound engineer will give an inside look on what it is like to
work in the industry. He will give you usefull hints and tips.
John Ratcliff and Jules Dawton: The importance of
SoundSound recording introduced by our highly experienced Straight Curve tutors
John Ratcliff and Jules Dawton who will give a short tutorial. "

So, what did we think?

First up were John and Jules, to talk about the importance of sound and being a sound recordist. They made quite an amusing double act and told a number of stories from their combined near century of sound recording history. Overall, very interesting, although it seemed totally off the cuff and unstructured. I couldn't say I learnt much about sound but it was a fun session.

Chris Gurney was next. Again a pretty much off the cuff chat, with Chris stood at the mike and telling a few tales of his experiences and advice. An interesting session but very similar to the first one.

Next on was Frank Graves. Frank was lined up to talk about screenwriting. Again the majority of the talk was taken up by Frank discussing his background, how he got into screenwriting and his involvement with BAFTA.

I enjoyed his talk but the deepest he got into screenwriting was mentioning that there was a "3 act structure" and that in his opinion it is important to copyright your work.

Brad Ashton came on to talk about comedy screenwriting and foreign markets. I liked Brad. he was funny and had quite an upbeat presentational style. He gave a lot of encouragement and talked about how visual comedy is international and to not forget that there is a large market of foreign buyers gagging for good comedy. he mentioned that the german market was a big buyer and that a comedy scene, if written correctly, could be rolled out into several markets.

Chris Knowles was talking about intermediate/advanced screen writing. Sorry Chris, but this was the slowest section for me. Chris was obviously very knowledgeable about film theory but his presenting style was totally mismatched for my tastes. he spent a long while describing how he came to be a screenwriter and mentioned a little about his ScriptSpine and ScriptRight systems that he teaches.

The next session, and the favourite of myself and most of the people there that I spoke to, was run by Johannes Roberts. Johannes started by telling us a little about his first movie, a slasher horror pic which he funded himself from credit cards. After telling us how he had sweated blood and tears to make it, he then went on to read the list of awful reviews he had got. He giggled his way through each one and in true self deprecating humour joked about them and his movies. All the way through, he gave the message of "just do it" and not to let bad reviews, rejection or difficulties put you off. A very inspiring and funny presentation.

The final segment was intended as a debate about the Auture theory of filmmaking. Ben Blaine, who was meant to argue half the case was absent due to train problems and in his place we were given a monologue about Alfred Hitchcock by Sandra Shevey. Quite interesting but her views grated with a number of audience members and for myself I lost interest after 30 minutes. Sorry Sandra.

Overall, a fun event where we got to meet a number of people and do some good networking. With the price (free), you can't complain. What would have made it better would have been a bit more structure to the talks and some illustrations with video clips, etc. In their defence, after speaking to one of the organisers, I discovered that the venue had been a pain to work with, wanting loads of cash in order to allow any video footage to be shown.

Would I go again? Yeah, I reckon so. It was a good day out and a good way to do some networking.

PC V Mock

This week Rob and I did a little bit of video work. Rob came up with an idea for parodying the "PC V Mac" adverts that Apple are running (an example one from YouTube below).

We did our filming at my house, in the lounge, using a home made green screen (made out of a 4m length of green fabric that I picked up at lunch time for £4).

We shot it on Rob's Sony FX1 and edited it using Premier Pro v2. Rob is currently finishing up the edit and when he has, I'll post up the end result.

All in all, it took 2-3 hours to set-up and shoot. We had initial problems with lighting. My lounge is pretty dark, lit by small spotlights that are in dire need of replacing. The lights we had were too powerful for the room and we couldnt find anything to reflect them off, so we ended up using a single desk light and having to do a fair amound of adjustment in post. I'll get Rob to post up some before and after shots and you can see how well Premier Pro 2 handles it.

We took turns behind and in-front of the camera. In the end result, we appear to be stood side by side and to be of equal height, when in fact we were filmed separately and I am about 6 inches taller.

It was good fun to do and hopefully the end result is fun too.

Rock promo - Mcqueen

About a month ago I went up to sunny, windy Nottingham to help out on a music vid shoot for a company I know called TheFireFactory. Turned out the band was Mcqueen, an all female rock act from Brighton. If one thing can be said about this lot, THEY ROCK!!
My duties on the day included everything from helping build the set, rigging the lights and then being responsible for the special effects. Well, i say special effects, what i really mean is swinging a light about and pointing a big fan at scantily clad rock chix in a sub-zero derelict warehouse. I know, hard job, but somebody had to do it ;-) All in all a great day's experience, especially it was good to see how to shoot on film as well!

The vid is now released, the album and single in the shops ( yes i have bought it - A++)

Click here to see the youtube version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYIpqswP99I

Kudos to the DOP, Nathan Sheppard and Jake & Tom @http://www.thefirefactory.com/

What's been going on

Saw Rob and Sam in Love Puke on friday. Was really impressed. It was very funny, I was laughing from start to finish (for all the right reasons!).

At the after show party, Rob talked a couple of the guys who did the lighting (very well) into joining us on the short film. We also had a chat to one of the guys in the play, who we thought would be able to play Henry. He was happy to signed up. So we now have our cast.

Now the play is over we can get this thing done. Next step is sorting out locations.

Lessons from hypnosis

Just thought I'd post up a filmmaking/screenwriting lesson I picked up from my time training in hypnosis. Yep, I'm qualified as a hypnotist.

One of the key ideas behind hypnosis is that you have a conscious mind and a non-conscious (otherwise known as a subconscious) mind.

The conscious part is the part that you use when you are analysing, planning, talking to people, etc. The non-conscious part is the home of your memories, urges and reactions, e.g. if someone throws a tennis ball to you and you automatically catch it. That's the non-conscious mind at work. Also, if you are feeling a bit down and get the urge to eat doughnuts, thats the non-conscious mind at work again.

Basically, the non-conscious mind is a very clever pattern matcher. The popular book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell explains this very well, so give that a look if you want to learn more about the way the non-conscious mind works.


Throughout your life you have had seen things, heard things, touched things and felt emotions. The non-conscious mind links together experiences with emotions. That is why you can notice yourself re-feeling a past moment when you see a photograph of it or you hear someone speak in a certain tone of voice. The experience has been associated with the feeeling.
Basically, the non-conscious mind is very tuned in to associations.

What has this got to do with screenwriting or filmmaking? Well, whenever we write a script, the person reading it is reading it as two people. They are reading it with their conscious mind and also with their non-conscious mind. Each person is effectively two people. Unless a story appeals to both these "people" it will fail.
Have you ever seen a film that was kinda good but was missing something? Chances are, it only appealed to one of your "viewers", either the conscious (plot, character actions, drama) or the non-conscious (emotional, thematic).

In order to work, a script or film has to appeal to both. One way to appeal more to the non-conscious is through the use of metaphor, motif and symbolism. The non-conscious is highly tuned into these forms of association. The best kind of metaphor or symbol is one that is missed by the conscious mind, e.g. use of subtle visual symbolism within a scene. If it is too overt it will be noticed and then is in conscious awareness and will not have as great a non-conscious effect.
, symbols and metaphors.

Opening Night

"Love Puke", the delightfully sounding play, that Rob (and my fiance Sam) are in, opens tonight.

It is showing at Norden Farm Centre for the Arts, Maidenhead (http://www.nordenfarm.org/)

I'll be going along to see it on Friday (and hopefully sneak in to the after show party, ha ha).

...and another review of the script

I'm a member of writing site WriteWords (www.writewords.org.uk) and Zoetrope virtual studio (www.zoetrope.com). Both these sites let you submit short screenplay scripts, that you have written, for review. I am also a member of TriggerStreet, where you can also submit a script for review but only a full length one (you can also submit short films for review there too).

Here is a review I received, for the "Hit me baby" script, from Zoetrope member Daniel William Hesford.

"Very funny script, with a massive amount of cinematice potential. To be honest, the narrative opens in what seems to be quite a cliched and overtly pretentious style yet this is all set up for what is to come and the payoff is more than satisfying.

In fact, the narrative confounds expectations several times; the struggling couple turn into the employee/employer, the sombre, resigned assassination turns into a wacky retirement party. The changes of direction work well and are handled ably enough that there is little sense of discontinuity.

Dialogue is good - I would like to see more work in terms of emphasising the tone at each juncture; the narrative skips from dour romantic drama, to malevolence-laden tension, to sad inveitability to joviality. Maybe there is more to be drawn out here?

Characterisation is slightly thin although the personalities are well-drawn and recognizable and since there is a story to be getting on with, perhaps too much development would be distracting.

In all, the joke works extremely well; laugh out loud funny at the end. Hope these points are helpful - if anything, I think the piece could be longer!"

Scripts first review

Here is the first review I received of the script. The reviewer is Julie Balloo, a site expert from the Write words writers web site:

"Hi Richard,

I really enjoyed reading this short. It's very visual and each twist and turn is a joy to uncover. It might be nice to inject some faux romance at the top, just to give it even more depth. Obviously at the beginning we're thinking he's going to dump her so it would be interesting to have a are they/aren't they subtext which is then totally blown away. I thought that line as he climbs the stairs - 'I told her I was leaving but only on my terms' sorry about the paraphrasing, I can't cut and paste for some reason, is a bit wordy. It just jarred and took me away from the mounting tension. Loved the ending, very clever. I was left wondering though if Jim wouldn't perhaps have a little nudge or wink line to Henry suggesting that he knew Henry couldn't hurt him. I might be completely on the wrong track, so let me know."

I'm really happy with this. If anyone reading out there has their own comments/review of the script (good or bad) then please post it as a comment.

A man with a gun......

Good news!

Went to see a show on Saturday night ( Noises Off, put on by the Maidenhead Players - a super high quality production which had me in tears!!! ) and i happened to be sitting next to Drew, an actor who I have a lot of respect for. Anyway, I mentioned the Film to him, and he's interested in getting involved! As a big bonus point, he has a small armoury of replica handguns, including a full working rep of a Beretta 92F, which I think will suit Henry down to the ground.

Another piece fits the puzzle ;-)

Now, back to learning my lines.......

Some good books

I had a little look through my book shelf last night, looking for something to read before going to bed. I thought I'd just write up a super quick review from a few of my favourites.

Screenwriting:

Story - Robert McKee



The classic book on screen writing. This was one of the first screenwriting books I ever got and has to be one of my favourites. If you get the chance to go to one of Robert McKee's seminars, go. He is very entertaining, says what he thinks and it made for an entertaining and information packed few days.

Anyway, back to the book. Well, in it he gives a good explanation of what makes a good story. He talks about structure and planning and its importance (ever written 40 pages and then hit a brick wall or got to the end of the screen play and found out that you've got the soggiest act 2 in history? Thats where McKee says structure would help). He also discusses the concept of the controlling idea/theme of a screenplay and how that should shape the whole piece.

All in all a good read.


Save the cat



I only recently got this book. I like it for its humourous non-academic tone and different take on screenwriting. If you're only interested in writing for experimental or fringe films then you'll probably not like it, as it is very main stream focussed. I liked the "rules for screenwriting", with rules like "Pope in the pool" and "Double mumbo jumbo", you can't go wrong.


Film making:

Developing Digital Short films



One of the things I liked most about this book was the discussions on theme and colour composition.

There are several chapters that discuss in some detail the use of visual motifs, theme development and how they give your film that extra level of punch.

Directing:

Directing Actors

Directing actors does exactly what it says on the tin. It tells you how to get the best performance from your actors. I found it a great help, with the steps to take, to go from script to blocking and staging. Also, it gives a number of easy ways, to help your actors find different levels within a scene. Well worth a look.