Mystery Film

 

This weekend was spent organising storage boxes and locating misplaced film equipment.  Old cameras and lenses.  I found this forgotten old Super 8mm cartridge in a box, no idea what’s on it, how old it is or even if it’s one that I shot.  Mysterious.  I don’t have a Kodak envelope for it, and I think there aren’t any Kodak labs honouring the old prepaid envelopes these days anyway.  It’s been at least 20 years since I shot anything on my super 8 cameras!

After googling around I found a company called Gauge Film that advertises processing and telecine for S8 and 16mm films, so I’ve booked this mystery cart in for development.  We shall see what happens.  Maybe nothing, maybe an old film of mine or maybe some random film from someone else.  

Over to you Gauge Film. https://www.gaugefilm.co.uk/

Back out of the darkness.  Radio silence.  It’s been nearly ten years since I last updated this blog.  A major move of location, change of job and plenty of procrastination.  Ten years... wow.

A lot of water under the bridge in that time, a whole generation of camera tech, the DSLR fad has come and gone, 35mm adaptors are history, there have been huge changes in tv and film production, streaming services like YouTube and Netflix have come of age... things have really moved on.

Ok so my first order of business is to get back into the swing of things, a quick update... the plane crash short film is finished, I went with the title ‘Tacoma’ in the end, that was the working title (loosely based on the idea of structural failure) and I fully intended to come up with a new title but somehow the working title just felt right.

Tacoma was submitted to various festivals but not a lot of interest, it’s not really a festival film, not art house enough and so I’ve decided to move on from short films.

I’ve got ten years worth of experience, and plenty of new filmmaking gear.  Next project will be the big one.  My first feature length film.  I’ve got a script in development and plenty of ideas.

Onwards!

Filming the plane interior.

We began shooting in earnest today with the aircraft cabin sequence.  This should have been one of the easiest parts of the shoot as I had found several companies advertising cabin sets (most of them are simulators used by airlines to train cabin crews) but when I started trying to make a booking I found that all of them were either out of business or simply not interested in helping a low-budget short film.

Luckily I was able to track down a suitable location at an aircraft museum which was available at the right price.  :)

We shot very light, with minimal lighting (just a couple of LED panels) and relied on the natural lighting in the plane itself.  The shots turned out great and will really help to add some production value to the project.

Next shoot is in a couple of weeks, when we shoot interiors for the main scene that comprises the majority of the film.

Suitcase full of money...

I've been busy assembling the various props I need for the shoot, including a number of plastic aircraft kits that will decorate the boardroom table, and the metal suitcase for the corporate fixer character to carry.

The suitcase is a classic Halliburton I picked up cheaply on ebay, it's a bit rough around the edges, but should be fine for our purposes.  The script calls for the case to be full of money, so I bought some bank training notes from ebay. 

These notes are marked with chinese writing, but I am planning to cover that with a paper 'strap' over the centre of each bundle.

I've mocked up how the case will look by laying the notes out flat, I will glue each one to a section of foamboard, with extra side pieces to create fake bundles of cash for the close up shot.

Forty eight hours from London...

This weekend was the annual Sci-Fi-London film festivals 48hr short film competition, and myself and a filmmaker friend decided it would be a good excuse to get out and make something.

The competition requires teams to register at midday on the saturday and deliver a finished short film on dvd by midday on monday.

We've made several short films in the past, and a fair number of 'test films' that were shot in very small amounts of time, so I figured completing a film in 48hrs would be simple enough.

On the saturday morning we registered for the competition and set to work.  We had several ideas and selected the one that seemed the simplest, then after rooting through the props and costume boxes in the loft, we collected our actor and finally started shooting at 3.30pm.

We shot until 3am, with locations spread across Biggin Hill, Croydon and Camberwell, and then after a few hours sleep started editing at 8am.

I have a very editing intensive shooting style, so once I got into the edit it became apparent that finishing on time would be a real challenge.

While I edited, my filmmaking partner created the sound effects and selected the foley ready to insert into the edit, including some fantastic breathing sounds for the main characters gasmask.

I finally finished the first assembly edit by late afternoon, and it was running to eight minutes.  The competition allowed a maximum length of five minutes (including titles).

So I began the long task of condensing the edit, grading and adding the sound effects, which became an all-night job.

By 7am I finally had the effects shots finished and started rendering, although I opted to do only two of the originally planned four shots to save time.

It took a further hour for the shots to render and then I finally had everything ready to export at 9.00am.

It took over thirty minutes to export the film in the HD and SD formats and a further half an hour to prepare and burn the first DVD... which didn't work.   A frantic re-complie of the DVD fixed the problem and I was finally finished at 10.30am.

I was on the train into London by 11.20 and arrived at Charing Cross at 12.00am after just missing an earlier connection at Waterloo East.

I made it to Regents street by 12.20 and found a queue of twenty other filmmakers dropping off their productions, and each of them taking two or three minutes.  I was finally submitted by 12.45... with just 15mins to spare before the one o'clock deadline.

So after a hectic 48hrs we have completed another film, and entered our first competition.  Now we wait to see what the judges make of our entry.

http://www.sci-fi-london.com/48-hour-film-challenge

Casting Begins...

Three weeks to go until the proposed shooting date in mid-march.

The revised draft of the script is ready and I've put out a casting call through PCR http://www.pcrnewsletter.com/pcr/

PCR offer a very professional service, and my adverts there usually result in a deluge of replies, although this time the requirement is for actors in their 50's so I don't expect to get as many replies as I have in the past.

The ad went live on monday and so far I've got around a dozen replies, including some that look very promising indeed.  There are still a couple of days to go until the deadline, but I don't expect to get many more applications, most actors seem to get their cv's in early.

Location hunting is still ongoing, there are two key locations to organise, including the aircraft cabin interior and the boardroom.  I expect to have both of these agreed soon.  Luckily there are at least two flight-crew training simulators in the South East area and a very large number of conference rooms!

For this project I want to previsualise the entire film before the shoot, so I've been working on the storyboards and the next stage will be to use Frameforge to create digital versions of the shots.

I will post an update on the process soon.

Focusing on this AND that...

I've always loved shots that do something a bit out of the ordinary, and this scene from Pulp Fiction features a great example of split focusing, with Bruce Willis in the foreground in focus at the same time as Ving Rhames in the background.

So i've been continuing to add to my collection of camera gear, and my latest ebay bargain is a used but as new split diopter filter, which is perfect for exactly this kind of shot.

I use a Cokin filter 'P' filter holder for my Canon DSLR, the Cokin range of plastic filters are easily the best value filters on the market and a great way to add value to your shots without breaking the bank.

The filter holder slides onto a ring mount (available for all lens sizes) and has a single filter slot which allows the filters to be rotated or raised/lowered.

The split diopter looks a little like a half magnifying glass, and slots into the Cokin holder easily, although it does exhibit some vignetting around the corners when using the lens at it's widest angle.

Here are a couple of shots that show the diopter in action, the first shot shows the scene with the naked lens.  The camera is looking through a mirror back into the room.  The bed is in focus but the frame of the mirror is soft.

This second shot shows the scene with the diopter in place, and the difference is immediately apparent.  The foreground mirror frame is much sharper while the bed in the background remains in focus. 

The downside to using one of these diopters is the visible edge of the diopter itself. There is always a clearly visible line of soft/sharp focus where the split needs to be hidden, in this case I've aligned it with the edge of the mirror frame, you can just see the blurred line above the starfish.  In the Pulp Fiction example the line is hidden by the edge of the wall.

I'm pretty excited about how well this diopter works, and it's another useful tool for the camera bag, I still need a few more grad ND filters, and a mattebox to control flare.