The Interview... Screening & Final Thoughts

Last night our films were exhibited at The Little Theater; which doubled up as a competition to decide the best films that had been made in the second half of the year. I am happy that 'The Interview' was screened and not 'Man Without A Movie Camera', as this time we are a much more tight knit group of individuals who all brought to the production. Also I feel satisfied with the quality of this film, as last time it wasn't until a late stage that we discovered that it was up to Me Gus and Luke to take control of the film.

The screening of our film didn't go to plan though, as two shots for some reason had no dialogue, which I thought would stop people from understanding the story. The end of the night came, and after 2nd place was announced as 'The Vision' I thought we had no hope, and that the lack of sound had destroyed out chances. But when it was announced that we won! I couldn't believe it, I didn't even leave my seat to collect the bottle of Champagne because I was in such shock. Afterwards, we spoke to other people from our course who said that they had voted for us because they were surprised at the sheer quality of the film from its location and look to the actors. I was chuffed to have won and to receive this level of peer feedback on something that I had been working so closely with for the past few months, even though I was slightly disappointed by the sound cutting out.

Other than what I have done, which you have witnessed on my blog. Everybody has made such a huge contribution to film to make it stand out, Mark for his lighting; Elspeth for finding the location and the professional actor; Josh for the music; and Gus for helping shape the story. This film is something we are all proud of, and hopefully we can take it on to bigger and better things. We are going to enter our film in to various film festivals which at the moment consists of sending it to future shorts, encounters and crystal palace film festival, after we make a few slight sound adjustments.

The Interview... Colour Grading

After struggling in the past and still being determined to try and get colour grading right, I felt that this was the time to get it right. It is only now that I understand that a big part of colour grading is making sure that the skin colour tones look right, however, it is acceptable to have a stylised colouring system such as in the matrix where everything is a shade too green. Although I wanted to get the tones right, I also wanted to get a nice 'filmic' look to the film. This was possible with the 7D as it meant that we were able to crush the blacks, which makes it look
sharper.
As you can see this increased the look of the film ten fold in comparison to the footage from the z1 for man without a movie camera. However, just before we finished up a professional colour gradist came in and spent an hour on it, but like us struggled, because the screen was not able to cope with our HD footage. I think that although he knew what he was doing I had spent two days working on it, and in his hour he only just came to terms with how to work with our footage, which may mean that my colour grade looks better. I can't be sure of this however, because neither worked on the colour grading monitor, but we will see at the screening.

The edit overall now it is finished look great I am very happy with it. Although, I can across a lot of problems due to the sound, I think that it helped me learn techniques that will be transferable to future productions. The 7D meant that we had an untidy work flow and a lot more rendering time than would have been necessary if we shot in standard definition. This has paid off and I think we now have a film that is worthy of being exhibited to audiences that aren't from our course and entering external festivals. Whilst making this film I have become a lot more adept to final cut pro, and have created an edit where I have done more than create a sequence of images. The extra things that I have done have stepped up the aesthetic values of 'The Interview'. The location and the older actors have also contributed to a film that is not obviously a student film, which we were trying to avoid and have done successfully. Over the course of this module, I have learned skills that will make me capable of independently creating films. Hopefully our hard work and effort pays off and people like it!

The Interview... The Edit

As we shot digitally as opposed to on tapes and captured the audio separate logging our footage was a much more complicated process. After putting the information from the memory cards on to the computer we had to use MPEG Streamclip to change the file format to a Quicktime Movie so that it could be read by final cut. To sync the audio we used a program called pluraleyes, which I highly recommend for DSLR users. The program runs as a final cut plug in, where you insert your clips with reference audio and the recorded audio in to the time line (they don't have to be in line with the right clip) and then get it to sync audio. Its that simple! However, it did lead to a very messy workflow which made editing a lot more unorganised, as all of our takes were in a time line as opposed to where all the content usually is.

This meant that doing the rough edit was tough, as it led to scrolling through the a long time line to find the best shots (as you can see above the time line was over 2 hours long). However, after the initial rough edit was put together, it was less of a problem as we knew the shots that we wanted to use. As Me, Josh and Elspeth all done edits, we decided to copy and paste our favorite parts of each other to create the ultimate edit. This however, was made slightly more difficult by Josh having a newer version of Final Cut Pro than University. This meant that we could not copy across his work, so to transfer the shots across, we noted the shot and its in and out points from the the clip and copied it across.

After we had a sequence that we were happy with, we needed to deal with the sound. In hindsight I feel that we should have done this after we had colour graded and had a picture lock. This is because we couldn't edit the pictures any more, as we feared that Rich Wood who was helping us with the sound might do things it, which would then be obsolete if we changed the sequence. After discovering no quick route to dealing with the issues of the tape recorder making a noise and then not, we had to go through every shot in the interview room and take it out manually. This was done by using a Soundtrack Pro add on called de-noiser by izoetope, where you identify to the program which sound you don't want in the clip and it suppresses its sound. As the scene in the interview room was only 3 mins it took about an hour to go through each clip individually in order to get it sounding good, however the levels still needed to be adjusted which Rich helped us to do. (This is what iZotope looks like).

Software... Remember Bump Top?

Bump Top. The cool looking software that completely changed the way we see a workspace on our computer that I blogged about a couple of months ago? Well according to their website they have been bought by Google! This is great for the Bump Top company as I'm guessing they cashed in, and their software may become the future of our user interface, just as Google Chrome is slowly becoming everybody's favorite browser, and Google Video... I mean YouTube ,which they also bought, is the 3rd most visited website on the web. Hold on... Google also own blogger! In this technical age we are all just a part of Google user interfaces. I thought Google were an ethical company? So why do they keep buying everybody and creating a monopoly (seriously!)... I can't decide where I stand on all of this. What do you think?

Anybody who wants Bump Top... Its still available here as they can't put it on their official website.

The Interview... Production Weekend

We started our production on Friday to take some of our stills which we then finished the morning after. The rehearsals gave us a chance to build a rapport between the cast and crew; and me and Elspeth provided food for everybody to create a nice relaxed environment in Josh's living room. This meant that on the day we were all prepared and all knew each other to an extent before production started, which I felt was good for the actors especially who didn't know one another before hand. As we had one location, with 3 scenes the set ups were simple enough.

Our problems on the day came from capturing the footage from the memory cards to laptops, as the scenes were long the 2 macbooks we had on location were unable to handle the files. This led to Gus wandering around Bristol with Ciaran (who owns the camera) looking for a new card to buy whilst we used Mark's small memory card. We wasted a lot of time doing this with something we could have been prepared by buying another beforehand, and when all the shops in Bristol didn't sell the right cards we had no option but to get one of our friends to drive a better laptop to the location. We won't make this mistake again! But I guess that's the gift and the curse of using newer, better technology that we were unfamiliar with; as the footage looks better than it would've on a z1.

To do our opening shot we used dolly tracks, but due to the harsh noise that they made whilst moving we are going to try and dub it. I hope this works well as the shot is one of my favorites from the day, but I guess we will see when we get to post production. We were very lucky when making this film that Brideswell Art Center aided us to the extent that they did. As in our schedule we did not make plans for running out of space on memory cards or have a contingency plan for losing 2-3 hours. Even though I did checks on the cards, I did not run one that was a video over 1gb. Without them allowing us to stay for those extra 3 hours, the film would not have been possible.

The Interview... Production schedule

The following is a brief outline of our plan for the weekend:

Friday:
- Meet Ed at 1.30 outside uni library.
- 1.45 start stills in university shop.
- 2.30 start stills in library office (finish at 3).

Saturday:
- Meet Ed and Brittany outside Victoria Park for 11.00am.
- Shoot park stills and get audio for the opening scene (finish at 11.45).
- 12.45 Meet Duncan & Guy on the bridge next to Bus Station for rehearsals.
- 1-5 rehearsals at Josh's house.

Sunday:
- 9.15 ALL OTHERS to meet Mark, Elspeth and Ed's cars at McDonalds (near waterside).
- 10.30 Corridor and cell scene.
- 12.00 Interview Room.
- 1.00 Lunch.
- 1.45 Interview Room until 6.00 for finish.

As everybody has a copy of the schedule and everybody is aware of where they need to be and when, we have a list of all the shots that we need to do. It seems as if this weekend should run smoothly; even though I have given almost 6 hours to do the interview room scene, this includes room for any small delays.

The Interview... Older Actors Please!

Sometimes, not all the time, but its safe to say that most of the time student productions are ruined by the involvement of only student actors, which makes a film look 'studenty' and aids the audience to not suspend their belief in what they are watching. Even if you may not agree with this, it is what we have decided as a group, so we need to find people that at least look a little older!So after asking an actor that I know that used to go to Bath Spa Duncan Roe (24), who will fit the role of the good cop. I emailed Chris Jury asking for older students who may be interested in being in a short film, where I got a reply off a few students, but one stood out Guy Smallwood (26). This was good as we were making fast progress with choices over who we could cast. After meeting with the two separately and giving them scripts at the end for them to learn the lines, we only had one more to cast, Luke Philips! After getting home from speaking to Guy, Elspeth phoned me and told me about an amazing CV that she had received after sending a message to the theater royal, from Ed Browning who was on IMDB (click his name) featuring in Casualty, Teachers and Doctors with actual roles! Although we didn't really need to see whether or not he would be good enough for the part due to his credentials, after meeting with him today I can confirm that we have a full cast of actors in their mid twenties, which is better than most students. Only if we had a budget would we be able to get a more desirable cast! I'm Amped especially as we are now using a Canon 7d for our shooting, which means huge implications for the quality and look of our film!

The Interview... Locations. Check.

For our film script we have one real location that we need for a long time, which is a police station (interview room and cell). As the other locations park, shop and office only include still shots.
Even though only pictures were being taken, the locations were nethertheless tricky to attain. As we are insured students with a film script about schizophrenia, we thought people would jump at the idea. However, this was not the case as Sainsbury's, Co-op and Tesco's (I only chose sainsbury's logo because it looks nice on my blog) would not allow us to film in their stores because the police were in the film, but Sainsbury's in particular didn't like the idea of a schizophrenic in their store! The police however, were very long winded about the procedure, as they never really gave us a direct answer, and kept asking us to call back later and call other stations, one of which didn't have a cell! But they are busy and do have crime to fight!

At the same time Elspeth had been in contact with both Bath and Bristol film offices, who helped us attain the park and an old police station, that was now Brideswell Art Centre, that still had interview rooms and cells! After visiting this epic breath taking dungeon, I knew that it was going to make the film epochal. Take a look for yourself!

With this out of the way we had less to worry about, and after walking around university we managed to get permission to film in the campus shop, and in the head librarian (Alison Baud) is allowing us to use her office. Although we highly wanted to avoid using any university locations as they will be in black and white it will make them seem very generic. Also even though they may be recognisable to our class, it won't be at all to wider audiences, and with all the shops I have spoken it is our only option.

The Interview... The Next Draft

After taking an outside look at our film we felt that something needed to grab the viewers attention at the start of the film to keep them interested. So after creating our newest draft we have now added a few extra lines of dialogue that tell the story but most importantly an opening scene with a black screen, with a woman screaming for help and Luke Phillips telling her to calm down come with him. This is in hope to draw the viewer in, with the similar technique to the one used in Boyz N' The Hood (1991).

The Interview... From Treatment To The Interview

Taking the step from Treatment to The Interview with such a small turn over time was difficult, as we have pretty much changed the idea. However, we have kept the themes of Schizophrenia and the use of dual perception, which we initially thought may come across well in a job interview, where the protagonist thinks he is being smart when he isn't.

When starting we established our brainstorming room as Gus', which is big and has a ping pong table in it, which is now our executive meeting room, and also has loads of other stuff which makes it a quite inspiring creative space. This helped as we all sat around and threw ideas and an American Football about (as it was the superbowl last week). We started to wonder about mental people that slipped through the system unnoticed, that you regularly see and is commonly referred to as 'a bag lady', as they don't think they are doing weird things. (Check Elspeths blog about schizophrenia symptoms)
Do they get reported to the police, because they do stuff that is out of the ordinary to members of the public? How do the police feel about dealing with these people?

After doing some internet research we found that the sectioning somebody isn't easy if they aren't a real danger; and obviously somebody can't be arrested for crimes they are yet to commit. So surely this would create an ongoing cycle that would continue forever until the mad person done something that was a serious criminal offense, which evidently results in a lot of police effort and paperwork, which must infuriate them. This also brings us back to our original idea, as criminals are interviewed. So from here Gus and I started to write and developed a premise and then a script about...

A police interview with a schizophrenic man, who thinks that he is in a job interview to become a police man, because he thinks that all of the petty crimes he had committed were for the greater good and stopping the fictional corrupt company who he calls 'Them'.

This script not only shows the way that the police may see schizophrenics, but also the issue of whether these criminals are criminals? As they are incorporating the themes aforementioned (Schizophrenia and dual perception). As we dramatically changed the script we have included Luke Philips' name in the script as the schizophrenic, used the name Vincent for one of the detectives and kept the bottle smashing scene in the supermarket! I think that this script works as on the surface it is a fun short, but has underlying serious issues; like MicMacs (2010) but less humorous and less bias. As we want the viewer to take the role of an 'outside detective' who decides who is in the right. Is it fair that the police shout and make fun out of him? Is it fair that they have to deal with him?

!!!!So give it a read!!!!

My Script... Is Going Into Production

So... My script has been chosen by Luke Philips (man without a movie camera group member) and his group to make in to a film. Shockingly, this is the author of Treatment, which our group have now decided to adapt. Small world/class.

So, how do you feel about somebody taking I script I hear you ask? I am overwhelmed! I find it quite an honor that somebody else feels that way about it because I put a lot of work in to it. I think it is good that this has happened as even though people have said good things about it (friends and minerva comments) for somebody to want to make it is a whole new ball park. Although I know it is going to be changed I think I have laid solid foundations for somebody else to work off of, and I trust that they will do a good job as they have something riding on it.

In despite of the fact that I was skeptical about somebody other than Jeunet developing my script. I am pleased that out of the ? films other than my own that are going to made on this course, that somebody saw something in mine that was better than all of the rest.

Choosing A Script

After finishing my script and handing it in so that the other groups were considering whether to make it or not, my group and I had to choose the script that we would most like to produce. After sifting through scripts during class and at home whilst browsing minerva (our university website, where all of our work is), we decided to narrow down films to the ones that used themes that interested us the most, and that were doable for a production of this size (no budget).

We came to the conclusion that our favorite 3 scripts were:

The Industry by Liz Scott
This is a mockumentary about the film industry. I think this would work to make a really good short film, as last years winner of virgin shorts cgi-brows mocks one aspect of the film industry, and this would appeal to similar spectators. Convincing actors may be a problem, but we though that we could interview people in front of blue screen, as it would be something I would like to learn.



A Justified Presumption by Lyndon McGukian
This film is a lot more serious and current, as it follows a boy who is friends with an old man, who his parents say he shouldn't see. This I feel would create a heart warming tale, however due to parents and an old man in the script. We all feel that this would make producing the film difficult.

Treatment by Luke Phillips
This script is about a man with Schizophrenia, who does mad things without his medicine, without realising. Although we feel the script takes a naive look at the disease as his girlfriend is able to control him when he hasn't taken his drugs, we feel that we could develop the situations that he gets in to. This would mean making the film more of our own than the other two; but more work.

Although we have not yet 100% decided, I feel that we will probably do Treatment as we are all interested in translating the dual perception of the protagonist 'Vincent' to the screen. At this moment in time I feel that the other two scripts are too risky (A Justified Presumption, due to the actors) and too subjective (The Industry, whether the actors can be 'funny' with the lines). However, if these things weren't an option I think that we would have a much tougher job picking.

My Script... To Whom This May Concern

If anybody is wanting to make my film I have just found a cool local website! Its a taxidermy company called head and tails, who rent out loads of cool taxidermy. I'm not sure of the prices so you would have to inquire. But they even have rogue taxidermy animals available in their unusual collection here is one of their animals (the crowbit)...
And if they charge too much money you can always murder/strangle/suffocate and then stuff your own.

My Script... 2nd Draft

Its done my second draft is complete and is now out of my hands! After developing this script I feel that I have given all of the incidents causality and made its elements clear. When changing the script I added in more description to events, in order to make it so that I am the first director of the script making the reader envision things the way I felt that they should happen. For example in the first script where I had:

Konrad steps back and admires his creation, and proceeds to take photographs.

This has now changed to:

He grabs a digital camera out of a drawer and takes a photograph.

This small change about the description of something changes the way it is envisioned by the reader. As the second insinuates a close up of hands grabbing the camera and the a wide shot; as opposed to the first which only includes a wide shot.

One of my main issues was that he saw an article in the paper and from there seemed to decide that he was a taxidermist and he would make an animal. At first I thought of the film in a cartoonish way, where things would just appear, and everything would be very far fetched. However, I have now addressed this issue, as even though it slows down the script a little it is important to get you in to the story, and understand the circumstances more.

Did I mention I had !*!* 2 NEW CHARACTERS*!*! and they are better than Poochy and Rufus (left and right). Usually new characters are rubbish and ruin everything as we know it, but the one place they don't is in an undeveloped script. As I aforementioned that I wanted my film to be silly and cartoonlike, with fast paced unreal environment. It seemed some PEOPLE felt that it was necessary for there to be a medical test of some sort before he gets awarded to suspend belief in the story. It happens that these PEOPLE were right, so thank you. My two new scientists take on the roles of enthusiastic scientist (William) and not so enthusiastic scientist (Benjamin). This works as William, who is blinded by potential fame convinces Benjamin the same, along with the medical tests that return positive.

Although the script has adjustments to be made to it before it is put in to a production. I feel as if I have laid solid foundations for a good film to be made from it, as the story is told well, which is a good start for any film maker. Despite the fact that I didn't want anybody to take my baby like Angelina Jolie. I now hope that somebody does, as it would be quite a compliment. I feel that from this process I now know how to write a good script, that it leaps from the page in to the readers mind. So here it is have a look!

Scripts!

After browsing the Internet looking for the script for Darren Aronofsky's movie Pi to see how he dealt with an unwanted visitor at the door with somebody suspicious inside. I discovered an illegitimate cousin of IMDB called IMSDB, which contains a very wide range of scripts from released film. Although this site is very good, I am still uncertain whether the scripts are originals or reproduced by film fans. This should make good reading and help me develop ways of script writing, sadly there aren't any examples of short films that I have searched, as these would help more!