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