Back on the Den

I had a call recently from Dragon’s Den again. They do so love me…

They do follow-ups on businesses to see if anything is happening, and of course for me it is. I’ve invited them to join us on a shoot during the summer which they can use in one of their follow-up programmes. People might ask, why? When the episode itself was so cringe-worthy, why get in front of their cameras again? 

Because not only does it keep my publicity going, but the follow-ups are a chance to show that I’m accomplishing things. The last one was rather good actually. I had a chance to talk about Graveyard Shift, which we were still filming at the time, and to answer a few questions without getting interrupted. Unfortunately some of my more cheeky answers didn’t make the cut, but that gives me an idea of what to expect on edit this time.

With the edit making good progress and filming on the second project well along, I’ll have plenty of interest to talk about. 

And this time, having BBC cameras under foot during a shoot will be more manageable with rather a lot of experience behind us now. They were there for the first shoot of Graveyard Shift, and we were feeling quite new and unsure of ourselves in somebody’s shop with our original Director while BBC wanted me to look like I was Directing. This time I will be. 

I am very nearly finished with the basic cut for Graveyard Shift. I finished the Capoeira scene, which was the most complicated. I just did some minor speed adjustments last week on CS3, as it’s end of term and the students are out for two weeks which gives me the opportunity to do it on my lunch break. My PA is downloading the remaining tape for that project, as well as doing another download on a tape that had some jerky shots. 

If it turns out that the tape itself is jerking, we’ll have to deal with it but it’s a fairly minor thing that doing ADR will make almost unnoticeable. As it’s the zombie film, it almost adds character really. Hopefully we won’t have similar problems when we do the download for Old Blood, as the tapes won’t have been stretched from repeated downloads. 

With a major LARP event coming in just under a week, a lot of my actors and my PA are wrapped up in preparations for that, so organising the next shoot for 15th May is enough to keep us busy for now. I’ve had confirmation from all but one of the actors, and he’s just needed for one scene so the shoot will go ahead either way. I’m slowly reducing the juggle of actors, getting some of them finished off now. We seem to have students involved in several of the shoots I’m planning so things will be a little slow until the end of June. Then hopefully we can finish off the scenes we didn’t get last year fairly quickly. 

I’ll be writing a few more new scenes, but these only involve two actors, one of them new to the project. We’re adding another element to cross over into the sequel. This will weave in neatly, it actually helps separate a few scenes further apart which will improve the flow. There was one in particular that placed an actor in one place and had to have something slipped in so they have a chance to be somewhere else, and I had been thinking of using one of my secondary characters for a gratuitous kill scene to make the jump. But he’s one of my less reliable ones, and this will add to the story better. 

Meanwhile in edit land, my Isle of Wight editor has a new laptop that should be adequate to run the CS5 programme. Quad core, 8 gig RAM, etc. Fingers crossed, he should have it up and running very soon. I’ve checked out a book from my local library that is effectively a course in using After Effects, so I’m going to take myself through the lessons, practicing on CS3 at work as time allows. The students are still out this week, so I can make a start if I get to reading it quickly. This will put me in a position to be helpful as my editor gets to know the programme as well. The library also has a rather brilliant looking manual specifically on CS5 with a section for the Rotobrush, so my next move will be to read that one and photocopy the section. The laptop will be coming to Goblin Central on some visits, and we can master this together. 

As you may guess, I have a lot of patience. The down side of it is that I lose too much time being patient with people who will never deliver. However, the benefit of it is that it gives someone with the proper dedication the chance to work out any glitches instead casting aside potentially good help when I don’t have the cash to pay for reliability. There are people who are sufficiently enthusiastic about film to make good projects happen. You just have to find them. 

I’ve done very well overall, even with the series of editor fails. It only takes one good one to win. My current lad has the motivation and the determination. And very importantly, he communicates. I’ve harped on about that before, but I’ll do it again. People must communicate to collaborate. Some people do it naturally, others find it difficult to keep up with simple messages. It takes all kinds to make a world. But in the world of film, those who communicate can retain opportunities where those who can’t manage to respond to emails are likely to lose positions because they didn’t tell any one what was going on. There are always glitches somewhere, just tell the Producer and let them help you work it out. 

Every problem has a solution. Being patient helps to work out what it is. We’ve accomplished wonderful things already. When I say “we”, I include everyone who has taken part in the production of these two films. There are core group people who have done more, but even those who help in some way with just one shoot are essential aspects of our eventual success. A one-time runner worked out the shopping cart chair that gave us a smooth dolly effect for the shot in the church where Suzi levitates. And these are the stories most fun to tell. 

Eventually, I’ll be writing a book about it all. I am still primarily a writer. And then I can include all the things that get cut from the interviews with Dragon’s Den. ;)

Keeping It Rolling

Progress continues. 

My target to finish editing the sequence for

Graveyard Shift by end of holiday was slowed by having my editor come to stay for a week, but I made good progress and just have the last couple of longer, more complicated scenes to finish now. Before he came, I was working on at least two of my projects every day. I got four chapters of my Steampunk novel finished, halfway through the commercial script I’m writing, and several scenes edited from Graveyard Shift. Not bad for a couple of weeks. 

I have this week off the day job as well, so I’m making more progress. Those last scenes can’t be done in a single sitting, but making some progress daily results in eventual finish. 

I’m relieved to have done the most difficult scene of those that have the actor who wouldn’t study his lines. The wind noise on the microphone in November made it difficult to hear what he was saying on top of the lines being broken up for prompting. But it is done now, and just needs a few adjustments on CS3, visual effects and voiceover. He is in the finale scene as well, but there are five people in that one and his shots are not as difficult. 

Meanwhile, the technology is still giving us a run for our money but victory is in sight. My editor downloaded the last DV tape, but it seems that the cinedeck is geared toward Mac users and captured in .mov which is fine for a Mac, but not what I need. Never mind, I bought a firewire and the camera will go with my PA in a couple of days to download the way we did before. We’ll run out of battery before we can do the Old Blood tapes, but three more are getting charged and will be brought back when my editor comes to visit on Easter weekend. 

This is going to be a monthly situation as things are going. He is leaving the camera at mine as well, and will bring the tripod next time and keep them both at mine until the summer shooting is finished. I arranged to borrow a tripod for last weekend’s shoot. This gives me a whole new resource. He may not always be able to travel in for a shoot, but with the camera in hand, I do have other camera operators I can call in who don’t have their own equipment, including the students. 

I’ve also been doing some experiments on Photoshop on ideas for a more effective day for night effect, which makes use of the rotobrush feature on CS5. The trick is to make the actors visible while giving the impression of darkness. I’ve worked out how to do it, now we just have to get the programme up and running to try it out. My editor has a new motherboard on the way, as apparently the problem was a chip that wasn’t up to the demands of CS5. He builds computers, so I’m confident of his ability to sort it out. 

Being on holiday from the day job so much has prevented me from doing my usual Wednesday evening CS3 adjustments regularly, so I have a couple scenes backed up on that. Not every scene needs these adjustments, but I have two waiting for when I go back to work, and the last two scenes will certainly need some speed changes here and there. But even with all this, I should be finished sequencing all the Graveyard Shift scenes by end of April, and can start on the Old Blood scenes as soon as we have them captured. 

Oh, and I won my battle to sit with my team at the day job. Even better, the managers are going to be in the same place now too. I’m not sure what changed that, but it’s all good. 

The weather is looking nice these past few days, and we’re ready to roll. Events in April are keeping my various actors busy, but I’m planning the next shoot around the second week in May. May and June should see some real progress on the remaining scenes for Old Blood, as well as the edit for Graveyard Shift. At least now I’m working with someone who shares my dedication.

A New Arena

At the suggestion of the assistant editor of my local newspaper, I started a blog some time ago to follow my progress in the world of filmmaking. He suggested making echos of it on various sites, such as MySpace and Livejournal. So, having come across this site to follow a friend's blog, I've decided to add it to the copy and paste.

I'm not quite ambitious enough to go back and copy all the previous blogs, but I will do a brief update.

Through the insanity of what constitutes my life, I somehow found myself working on some no-budget filmmaking. I started out knowing very little about the technical side of things, so naturally I've been doing the leg work in finding out how to edit and do effects and even lighting for my various crewmembers who have been to film school. Luckily I'm both patient and dedicated (or was that stubborn?), so over time I've learned rather a lot, at least enough to know what we need to make my projects see the light of day.

The two projects at hand are a zombie film called Graveyard Shift, and a vampire film called Old Blood. Graveyard Shift finished production over a year ago, and has presented some interesting challenges for edit and effects. These mostly have to do with a load of amateurs doing things like filming scenes in a shop with bright sunlight coming through the window when it's supposed to be night time. In editing, this isn't a massive problem. One can mask off the window and change it to night lighting. That's all well and good until someone walks in front of the window, which requires expert rotoscoping to make a new layer so the character will get the light from inside the shop rather than disappearing in the darkness of the window.

Enter the new rotobrush feature on CS5 (Adobe Premiere Pro). This is a feature that can do the job relatively easily. The only problems are that the programme costs rather a lot, and my computer isn't powerful enough to run it. Anyone else would be facing the problem that only experts who require high pay would own the programme. Me, I have this thing with luck. Whatever I need for the filmmaking experience has a way of manifesting, either because I'm making props or because the right item will 'just happen' to be available, like some expensive Chemistry equipment a cousin of a friend had access to when we were making an Alchemical lab...

So, of course a new friend, who came to me, had recently purchased CS5 and offered to help. Meanwhile, having had a series of would be editors and cutting the shots several times myself for various reasons, I've developed basic editing skills. The state of play for this project is that I am nearly finished cutting, and the effects editor is getting some technicalities sorted to get his programme up and running so we can finish this. I still need to record ADR for the main actors as we filmed in public places and have everything from screaming kids to traffic in the background, and I still have some music contracts and background music to finish sorting, but we're on a constant work flow that will hopefully see this project in a salable condition by end of this summer.

But of course I multi-task and couldn't possibly focus on just the one project.

Last summer we started shooting my second film, Old Blood. Having learned quite a lot from the first one, it has gone well and looks like it will be a LOT easier to edit. But, we didn't finish before the weather got too bad to continue, so saved some of it for this summer. We had our first shoot of the summer yesterday.

Meanwhile, we've had people moving away, other people moving in, a child actress about to get braces any second, and all sorts of things going on that have caused a few re-writes and new scenes to be added. The story actually gets a bit better with every change. We should be able to finish shooting by end of summer as well, and I can spend next winter editing this one.

Through both these projects, we have had many obstacles based in working with literally no money and insufficient technology.

But we're doing it. And the results look promising, especially if you like old B-movies.

Production quality on these no-budget films is not what you would get from a Hollywood blockbuster with extensive computer graphics, but the stories are entertaining and the lead actors at least are good at what they do. The imperfections add to the charm of this genre.

More importantly, everyone involved is having a good experience. We are all learning from everything we do, and we have a brilliant time while we're doing it. I'm even twisted enough to thoroughly enjoy sorting out problems, like the shoot where one actress was snowed in and another was sick while it snowed on our 'set' but we had to get a shot of someone on the ground. The feeling of triumph when I win, is priceless.

And I always win. ;)