Production: Photos from Set

Here are some of the photos I took on our great filming day yesterday!

Photoshooting for the couple pictures. We got many nice pictures and Alistair will be printing them off so we can use them next week and prepare my room as a film set.

Teabreak for the group, at my house in parkwood.

At the Parkwood path for the second running scene. We had quite a few curious people walk through the set and wonder what we were doing.

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At Dolce Vitta to feed some ducks. Sach got a healthy wholemeal bread for the birdies. 

We also saw a seagull eat a goldfish. Yum.

 On set for the Breakup, Sun was setting and we were losing light quickly. It got pretty chilly and the ground was wet and muddy.

 Getting started on the Breakup scene

Production: First Day of Shooting

Today turned out to be our first day of shooting. The weather in the afternoon was a lot better than we had anticipated, so Cian and Sach checked if a camera would be available, and we were lucky enough that a camera did indeed turn back up at half two. By then we had taken a nice set of couply pictures of Sophie and Alistair. 

We had previously decided to let Alistair do the acting instead of Oscar. Alistair is a lot more comfortable speaking the lines, and is fine with doing it as long as it is not spread across the Internet. 
Sophie turned out to be very photogenic, so we got some beautiful pictures. She and Alistair got along well, so they infact look very natural together. We did a few scenes of them running from my house, where we had a quick tea break, and along the Parkwood path. Then we shot a scene at the duckpond at Keynes, feeding ducks there, a scene of them fighting along the footpath and we got started on the break up scene.

Lighting will be a difficulty if it turns out that our next shooting day (Next wednesday, hopefully), will be rainy. 

We were all very motivated. Everyone did their part, the actors had fun (so did we), and we were all very thrilled to finally start shooting. Overall we were on our feet for a good four hours until the sun set and it got too cold and uncomfortable for us all to continue. We believe we got quite a few good shots down!

Today left everyone much more positive about the project and the upcoming deadline. The day was exhausting but very fun, with our crew being friendly and cheerful together. 
(We even got Sophie to slap Alistair, after Sach insisted for so long)

In my next post I will upload a few of the pictures I took during the shot!

Pre-Production: Auditions and Scheduling

Last Thursday we held one last audition in the Production studio.
My mail to the school of Drama had gotten through, and I had received about five mails with inquiries about our short film. In the end, only one person turned up for the audition at three. The girl did a good job, and we quite liked her performance. Sach and Alistair were there with me, but we had nothing to do after the girl left.

Our previous actor for Adrian had cancelled the role, and in the end it turned out that another girl that might have played the role, was also unavailable. I had hoped for that girl to bring her boyfriend into the shortfilm, but neither of them were up for it in the end.
So I mailed the girl that had auditioned last week, and she agreed happily to be Caitlyn.

We arranged to meet up today to take a few pictures of her and Oscar, who will have to play Adrian now, as a couple. This is prop preparation more than anything, and will set us up for a day of filming in my room here at Uni. Oscar works during the weekends, and our Caitlyn is free mostly on mondays and wednesdays, when we can only really work in the afternoon. Arranging a filming schedule might become difficult, but we must really get started on the filming.

I requested of our actors to bring separate sets of clothes to the shoot today, so we can make it look as though they took many photos together. 

Pre-Production: Auditions (2)

We had set another audition date for monday, but no one expressed any interest in participating. One person only mailed me, and suggested he could audition on monday (yesterday), and so me and Sach met him in the media center and quickly let him read through some of the lines. He is a drama student and would do a good job, but without a female actress that means very little.

Caitlyn is definitly the heavier role, and the story's focus lies on her. It is so important to find a female actress, but we are running out of time. After the short audition, Sach and I took a trip to the school of Arts and spoke to the receptionist about reaching more drama students. She said if we mailed her the details of the production, they could pass it on to their students. I did that an hour or so later when I came home, but she is yet to reply and we have yet to receive any email from any possible actor.

We set our deadline to friday, and if we then still don't have an actress, I will fill in for the role of Caitlyn and my partner may play Adrian. This is no ideal situation at all and puts the production in a bad position. As the director I should not spend my time in front of the camera. 

Sach and I also edited some of the script today. We added dialogue over the montage scenes and improved and shortened the break up scene a little.

Pre-Production: Practising Sequencing and Continuity

(Forgot to upload: This was a draft from last week, the 4th of March.)

Today is wednesday - workshop day, and we just returned from a two hour session of practising filming. We prepared a short sequence that could, as it is, be fit for the break up scene in the actual production, and filmed it outside by the pond in front of the Jennison building.

For this, we prepared a storyboard of five-six pannels, in order to practise sequencing and continuity as explained to us in the lecture today.

We soon had taken several takes of one shot, and learnt that framing a scene, and getting the actors into the right position, can take a lot of time and several attempts until an acceptable shot is taken. The soft, uneven ground also made it difficult to properly position the camera, and Cian, as our camera man, had troubles sometime in keeping the shot straight.

I myself had the opportunity to practise a little camera work - although I gladly leave that job for the camera man. 

Pre-Production: Auditions

In today's seminar group, we edited the clips from last week's seminar group, and had a look for some royalty free music.

In the afternoon, we also held our first auditions in the student media center. It was rather disastrous, as absolutely no one showed up. The room Sach had booked (the only one still available) was very small, and already would have made the audition space feel very confined.
None of the six possible auditionees that had expressed interest showed up in the three hour period that we spent their waiting. So we just sat in that small room and played games and chatted. 

We may repeat auditons on monday and fix some planning issues, as today clearly didn't go as planned.

Pre-Production: Storyboard

Once the new, shorter script has been finalized, we decided to divide the script up between us to do the storyboard. Me and Cian worked on the break up scene together. We made some sketches and he as the camera man decided with me on the shots we wanted to do for the scene, and today I have redone the storyboard digitally to make it easier to work with for us.

Here are some example.

These are pages 1 and 3 of the breakup scene. I might upload the rest of the storyboard once we have put it all together. 

Tomorrow we will be holding auditions! The facebook event so far has attracte about six people that will hopefully show up between 1 and 4 tomorrow. We are hoping for the best, anyway.

Post-Production: Scriptwriting

Today we met up to edit and combine the two scripts that me and Sachin had prepared. We tried to do so because we anticipated them to be too different, or incompatible in style, but we soon easily combined a few scenes and wrote what we considered good dialogue and a good script.
We followed our previously made pattern, and shortened it as good as possible. Then Alistair, who was helping us edit, and I, timed one of maybe five heavier dialogue scenes - and found that this scene itself was already running a minute long.

As a result, we called Cian and Oscar in also, and worked through our first proper crisis. It turned out that the script idea, as it stood, was far too long for the two-three minute restriction we had been given. We had to drastically shorten our script - cutting out most of the important dialogue and interaction between the characters, and making most of the film deliver its information through montages. 

In the end we managed to finish a script that we can use, with only one actually dialogue heavy scene, but we all felt frustrated and saddened in the end that most of our work had to be cut. We are left with something nothing like what we anticipated for this project, and will have to come to terms with the fact that the restrictions will not allow us to fulfil the expectations we had previously set ourselves.

Despite this demotivating event, we have at least now finished a script and can start working on the story board - as bad as we feel for the way we were forced to butcher our previous ideas. 
Tomorrow, story boarding will start. We have divided the script into parts so that each of us can do some of the story board. I will be working with Cian, our camera man, to storyboard the break up scene between Caitlyn and Adrian - the only scene actually left somewhat like what we had previously planned.

Pre-Production: Casting

Yesterday Sachin confirmed to us that we have an auditon date and location set. He was able to get us an auditon location with the student media center on the 11th of March, from 1 to 4 pm.
He has promoted the event with KTV, and I have mailed the leader of the drama society once more, asking that they allow us to promote it also. We might still want to print out a few of the posters, updated now with location and date, and hang them up around Uni.

Depending on how busy it will be, we anticipate 5-10 minutes auditions per person - however we might end up not getting much interest at all. It is hard to tell at this point.

Hopefully we will soon have two actors and will be able to start the production process.