Customs

Argh! That camera's taking forever to arrive! First there was a problem with the case that was due to be shipped with it - the batch had been dented and cracked - and now the UPS site tells me that it's sitting in Customs. Gah. At least it's in the country - we may even be lucky enough to get it by the weekend!

Once it arrives, it's gonna be a steep learning curve in getting to know it. To date, I've only ever used an old analogue Sony with no useful settings on it at all!

The plan is to put together a couple of music videos for The Torr to get used to the functions before launching into the filming proper!

Box Clever

So, one of the key scenes in the movie takes place in a boxing gym. It's not a boxing movie, but that's where the scene takes place. This is primarily motivated by Stead's love of boxing; the scene could easily have taken a very different form, but one of the perks of being a producer and scriptwriter on you own movie project is that you can do... er... pretty much whaterver you want.

Anyway, the scene works really well on paper, but a convincing boxing ring isn't something that can be knocked up easily so, as with a number of other locations in the movie, we needed to find a real life boxing gym that's happy for us to take them over for a day or two.

A bit of searching around on the net narrowed it down to a couple of local gyms and a couple of e-mails later, Stead's elicited an agreement from one of them to accommodate us. Although we've yet to meet the owner - hopefully that'll happen later this week - he's indicated that he's happy to help and that it's something he's done before. I'll post an update and hopefully a few pictures of the place once we've had the meeting!

Next up... find some office space...

Video Diary #1: Script Readthrough - first draft

The plan was to read through the script with a reasonably impartial third party obvserving. This would allow us to pick up on any problems with the structure of the script, any problems with clunky dialogue and so-on.

The idea of recording the readthrough was so that it could then act as a tool when we worked on revising it - just to make it easier to listen to the dialogue and so-on.

We haven't included any of the actual script in this clip - at this stage it's top secret and if you were to discover any details of the plot, we would have to kill you!

Readthrough

Jon and I had our first complete readthrough of the first draft this afternoon.

It was a very useful exercise which allowed us to identify some of the more obvious problems with the script - things like the passage of time and so-on.

We videoed the proceedings and will be posting a short video diary in the next couple of days. Watch this space!

Steady, now...

Steadicams provide an awful lot of versaitility in your camerawork when you're filming. It means you can get in up close and personal, move around your subject and create a dynamic look to your movie without all that wobbling around that you get when you just hold the camera in your sweaty little hands. Problem is... they're really expensive. Hundreds of pounds expensive.

Or are they? A very quick search around the net uncovered The Poor Man's Steadicam, a site run by a chap called Johnny Chung Lee, who gives detailed instructions on how to build your own Steadicam from plumbing materials which comes to a grand total of $14. Yes, that's right, $14. That's £7 in real money. He also sells 'em here if, like us, you can't be bothered to build it yourself!

I've had a play with it, using the 'old' camera and it seems to be pretty effective - you're never going to get the same sort of quality that you'd get from a £1500 steadicam rig, but it's pretty damn good, for almost no money at all!

First Draft Complete. Yay!

It’s taken about 6 weeks, but finally a first draft of the script is complete. It’s currently coming in at a whopping 81 pages which is a fair bit longer than I’d expected. If one is to believe the theory that one page equates to one minute of screen time, then we’re running 21 minutes over the expected running time of 60 minutes.

Stead and I will be getting together at the weekend for a read through to get an idea of how it’s actually clocking in and whether it’s all hanging together ok. Then we’ll be starting a ruthless editorial process during which the majority of the script will undoubtedly be rewritten and Stead and I will attempt to kill each other over ‘creative differences’*

*for ‘creative’ read ‘ego’ and for ‘differences’ read ‘mania’.