Its the Premiere of Badman!

Last night the cast, crew and family & friends gathered at the University of West of England in Bristol to watch a special private premiere screening of the film!

Both Darren and I were delighted with the turn out and it was a real thrill to see the film finally up on the big screen.

We'd like to thank everyone who took the time out to come and support us and especially a big thank you to those who bought a copy of the film!

We took a couple of quick pictures. The one above of Darren, James, Chris Sanigar (From Bristol Boxing Gym), Susan, Jon and Paul Henry and the one below of Cian Jarvis squaring up with Jon.

Job Done!

Yesterday, we sat down and we watched the full version of ‘Badman’.

Although we had viewed every scene a hundred times before during editing, sound production and video post production, this was the first time we could gauge how well the movie ‘paced’ (timings from scene to scene) and enjoy the film as a single piece of work. We’re delighted to say that with the exception of a very few technical ‘fixes’ we were both happy that this represents the final cut of the film.

As we look back over this blog, from April 2007 to date and we see the massive amount of work that went into making the film, its staggering that we managed to complete it and also a huge relief! We received an enormous amount of support from so many people both in front of and behind the camera, and we’d like to take this chance to thank them all for their tireless efforts – we simply could not have done this without them.

For all of those involved with the film, and family and friends, there will be a private screening of the film on 27th September in Bristol, and shortly after that we’ll be submitting ‘Badman’ to film festivals and considering our commercial release options. We’ll post some pictures from the Premier on this Blog shortly afterwards.

Thanks again all – its been a blast!

A Trailer... Finally!

The website is up and we now have a fully fledged two minute trailer for you! You'll also find the original teaser trailer, a brief summary of the movie and a few photos from the movie! Just click on the image above.

Hope you enjoy it. Jon and I have to get back to editing now!

It's a WRAP!

On Sunday 10th August, we concluded shooting on the film!

Our initial 2-3 months of shooting turned in to 10 months as we struggled to produce the movie we wanted. Weather, money, availability of the cast and crew, re-shooting, all the challenges we expected and many more were put in our way but we got there.

We are currently pulling together our first proper trailer for the film and we'll be posting that on this site in the next week or so.

Also, we have set up a private screening of the movie for late September for friends and family of the cast and crew. Which means the pressure is really on for us to complete post production!

It's going to cost us a bit, but it will be great to see the film up on a big screen. We're really looking forward to it.

Editing

This post is mostly just to share a couple of pictures of Jon and I in the editing room (A.K.A 'the Kitchen'). We've been doing this for the last couple of weekends to get the actual timings of the scene locked down so that Jon can make a start on the sounds.

The editing is quite laborious and time consuming. Because each scene is made from several different camera angles, there are lots of different shots to paste together.

Firstly we have to pick the best take or version of each shot - sometimes the actor gives a particularly good or bad performance or the lighting is just off or, in the case of outdoor filming, something unplanned happens in the background (this can be a good or bad thing depending on what it is) or there may have been a problem with the sound. Lots of things to take account of!

Next, despite our best efforts, each shot is often lit slightly differently either because we filmed it on different days and have different levels of daylight or because we had to move lighting out of shot or to provide the right sort of illumination. So we have to adjust the colour balance or brightness and contrast of a shot to match them all together.

One consistent problem we've had on set is with yellow lighting. Because we can't afford expensive studio lights, we've worked with B&Q halogens which have been great except for their... yellowness. Fortunately our editing software, Sony Vegas, allows us to correct the colour afterwards! Here's a before and after shot:

Soldier Boys & The Wall of Sound!

In the main filming is complete. We've been very busy since the last post completing some on set and location filming and also we're into final editing and sound production work which we expect to take July/August and a bit of September. This will mean that actual production time on the film will be a year not including the writing phase!

Below is a picture we took on location for a scene in the film (you'll have to wait and see what its about!) where I and Peter Orford (Sam) got to play soldier for the day. It was actually quite hard going but just as tough for the 'crew'



For sound editing (this is my 'speciality') I'll be using Steinberg Cubase 4 plus a whole host of other tools and tricks to create that big feature sound. Once Darren and I agree a final edit for a scene (which usually looks quite alot like Darren's rough edit to be fair!) - I get given a small version of the video and high quality dump of the sound. I fly these into Cubase and work on the sound with the video just as a reference.

All kinds of things have to be addressed from levelling sound from one take to the next to reproducing sounds that either werent captured in filming or dont sound 'right'. For an 8 minute scene it can take a couple of days to master the sound. Below is a screen image from the software based 32Bit studio.



Finally we've bought the movie domain name. www.badmanmovie.com and soon enough we'll stick the teaser trailer up there so there is something to see.

Thanks for checking in! - Jon

A little fame at last?

Things have been moving on a pace since we took a little break in April for Darren and Jon to both have some time off from work and away from the Project. Now back and re-energised, filming has been moving along and we're into the last few sessions of principle photography -

In the meantime for those of you who are following our progress, here is a little bit of fun. This is the moment when the Badman teaser trailer appeared along side some of the big movies of 2008 on brightcove.tv - completely by chance, we use it for hosting purposes but we ended up rubbing shoulders with the big boys!

I'm sure Darren will be putting up a better update on what we've been up to shortly! thanks for watching - Jon.

Time for a party?

Another big day for the Badman Crew. This weekend we were busy filming a outdoor party scene. This scene takes place near the end of the film and involves almost everybody that has appaered in it to date. unfortunately as one or two people couldn't make it, we had to draft in a few extras with the promise of free food and drink.

Fortunately, the weather not only held for us, but was glorious and we were able to get everything we needed bar a few close up shots of Jon which we're hoping to get done next weekend, weather permitting!

Jon graces some of the 'background actors'
with his presence.

Darren provides some direction.

Tea is an important part
of any film-making enterprise!

Tease me...

Well, we finally have a teaser trailer for you to look at! A fuller blog entry will follow shortly...

For best quality, this one's posted on MSN:


It's also on Youtube with slightly lower quality:

Video Diary #8: Bruise Day

The scene we were filming this weekend took place the morning after the infamous boxing match. As such we needed to ensure that Jon had various cuts and bruises on his face. Sadly he wouldn't let us put real ones on, so we had to settle for make-up.

Video Diary #7: Breakdown

On Sunday, we completed the last of the filming on our Office set. We had lots of individual shots to pick up in order to finish off scenes or bridge parts of scenes together and most of our cast descended on the set. Special thanks goes to Glenis, who was suffering horribly from what she claimed was a heavy cold, but seemed to closely resemble SARS - yet she struggled in valiantly for us!

Once we'd finished the office scenes, we had to break down the set and turn it from an office into a meeting room, so that we could film an additional scene that we felt we needed. More on that in a moment. First though, here's the video:



More on that exposition. As Jon mentioned at the end of the video, we realised fairly late on that, although we knew exactly what our characters motivations were and why they were doing what they were doing, the script didn't really lay it out clearly for the viewer. We decided that the best way to do this was to write in a short scene where we simply laid our cards on the table and said 'this is why we're all here'. As the film is set in an office it seemed obvious that they way to do this was in a briefing. So we set up a teleconference (which meant we didn't need to cast any new characters - just find some voices at a later date. Lazy? Yeah, probably. But it does the job and gave us the opportunity to add some visual comedy and a little characterisation).

The new scene will probably only last about a minute on screen, but will hopefully make things a lot clearer to the audience!

A brief note on props: It turns out that even second hand teleconferencing units and flip chart boards are really expensive. We got around this by 'acquiring' them from our day job (several members of the office facilties guys were in on the conspiracy). We brought them back again the next day. Honest.

Also... you can't remove permanent marker from a whiteboard surface with turps. We found that out the hard (and slightly panicky) way. Fortunately Dr Karen was on hand with nail varnish remover - it's the acetone, you know! Always handy to have a chemist around the house.

Footage

With our cast busy celebrating Christmas, we've spent some of our 'time off' looking at and editing some of the hours and hours of footage we've put together. We've used Sony Vegas 8 to capture the footage from the tape and plan to use it to properly edit together the final movie. We're looking forward to restarting filming this coming weekend. Our plan is to finish up as much of the filming that needs to be done on the office set as quickly as possible so that poor old Jon can have his bedroom back!

The Grind

We are well into the filming process now! We've been filming on our office set every weekend since our last post and it's hard work! We've solved most of our lighting and sound issues, and apart from a calendar that refuses to stay attched to the wall our set and props are doing their job perfectly! Now if we can all just remember our lines and try not to drop the camera we should be okay.

Filming is taking somewhat longer than we had planned as some last minute changes to the set (we had planned to green-screen the windows but realised that this would sverely limit our steadicam freedom so we now have a 'frosted' effect on them) means that we can only film during daylight hours, at least for daytime scenes, so evenings are out!

It's becoming harder to persuade our actors and crew to commit to weekend time during December, what with Christmas preparations and all! So after next weekend, we'll be effectively shutting down the main part of production and using the time to hone our 'post production' skills - learning to use the editing software properly and so forth. And eating mince pies, of course.

More casting news: we have been joined by Glenis Ansell (pictured on the right, with Jon) who is playing the character of Caroline, our main character's boss. She's not as scary as she looks!

Finally, here's a selection of pictures to show you what we've been up to!

Is it hot in here?

So its time for an update and a good subject to cover off is the principle photography that's been taking place on the main set over the last few 'weeks'. Our cast and crew have been braving bright lights and long hours to get those takes just right and one of the key lessons learned has been around lighting. Two top tips for you are:

Bounce your lights off white walls/ceilings to get a good 'daylight' effect. Direct lighting of the set can result in 'yellowing' of the cast

Make sure that the monitor you use to approve the image being captured by the camera is 'flat' - in other words, if you are using a TV make sure it shows you what the camera sees and not what the camera sees once it has been 'enhanced' by the brightness / contrast / colour settings of the TV itself. Sounds obvious but worth checking!

Below is a picture of Darren testing lighting out before a hard day of filming - it is much harder work than you would imagine being on set all day!

Joyriding

Our hero needs a car. But not just any car. It wouldn't be in keeping to give him a ropey Astra or a Focus. No, our man needs something with a bit of status attached to it. So we got him a Merc. Of course our budget ain't big enough to buy him a brand new Merc, nor do we know anyone who: a) has a Merc; and, b) trusts us to drive it round for a day. So we hired one. This mighty beast, including insurance cost us £100 for the day. Bargain!

Thanks to Karen for the photo!

Video Diary #6: First Location Shoot

On the 23rd September 2007, we found ourselves in Bristol Boxing Gym filming a few of the scenes from the movie. Not only was it our first ever location shoot, but it was Darren's first ever time directing. Talk about in at the deep end! Fortunately we had lots of support from our friends!

Set Dressing

So, we have all the equipment, we've knocked up some props and we've done our casting. Now we just need to find somewhere to record our movie. A lot of the action takes place within the confines of an office. Nice as it would be to film on location in a real office, the costs involved are phenomenal. So we have to make our own!

I'd like to introduce you to... Jon's bedroom. It has all the standard features of a bedroom - a bed, a chest of drawers, curtains, even a treadmill.

Jon very generously allowed us to decimate this room and turn it into our set. He will be spending the coming weeks sleeping rough in his spare room!

The first job is to strip the room of all of it's traditional bedroom acoutrements. Now the purple walls (a girl assures me that it's lilac - I don't know how to tell - it just looks purple to me) aren't really appropriate to an office setting, so that has to go!

We actually managed to con one of our cast members, Susan, into helping out - in fact she probably worked harder than anyone getting the nasty cheap B&Q paint on the walls. It took 3 coats and a whole day!

Eventually, the paint was on and our next job was to furnish the room.
Details such as replacing the light fitting with a flourescent strip light will help maintain the illusion that we're not just filming in someone's bedroom!

A few budget desks and cupboards and a salvaged filing cabinet later, we had a room that was really starting to look like an office.

Finally, it was time to dress the set like a proper office - a pinboard covered in notices - monitors and keyboards on desks, stationery, files, reference books and other bits and bobs finished it off nicely. I think you'll agree that the finished product looks pretty good! Note details such as the health and safety poster behind the lamp and the canteen menu on the pinboard. We're all quite proud of ourselves!

It's all in the preparation

Years ago I remember some manager type banging on to me about the "7 Ps" which stood for "Perfect preparation prevents p1ss poor performance" and despite the fact I always felt that was only 6 P's, the message stuck. So with this in mind we've been set building, prop creating and make up testing prior to some pretty full on filming activity that is due to take place over the next week or so.

Firstly, and I'm not going to tell you why just yet, we needed to convert a rather nice looking office chair into something a bit more... well... used... so with the application of coffee, violence, fire, violence, wood and violence we 'aged' this fine looking chair and made into something a bit more... um... crappie



Next up, due to the boxing scene which we covered below, there is a need to play about with some make up and so that we dont look like complete morons in front of all the hired help on the day - we thought we'd have a bit of play at making Dazza look like he'd done several rounds with Ivan Drago.



Its worth noting that this was the output of a massive 2 minutes work - we were more interested in 'proof of concept' than anything else - also I was pretty happy that I was able to reassure Dazza that the burning sensation in his eyes the next day was quite normal.

Jon

Star Avengers!

One of the characters in the movie is a sci-fi nerd. In one scene, a toy spaceship is tossed around and the pros and cons of a tv series are discussed. Our original plan was to seek permission from the owners of one or more well known sci-fi franchises to display some of their toys around Dave's workspace. Unfortunately, the permission was not forthcoming, either because the owners were unwilling to allow us to use their images, wanted a larger fee than we were prepared to pay (i.e. more than free), wanted to know waaaaay too much about the script (with the implication that if their product was portrayed in what they conisdered to be a negative light, they would decline or request changes) or simply ignored our request. I guess that's their perogative!

In order to get around the problem, we had to create our own pseudo sci-fi franchise. So we needed a toy spaceship and a few pictures to put around the place. Here's how we did it:

First up, take a ropey hands free kit that never really worked properly from the car. It already looks a bit like a spaceship, see. Then take some bits and pieces from a model kit. (You can click on these pictures for a bigger version).

Next, (supervised by a responsible adult) take some super glue and stick the bits and pieces from the model kit onto the ropey hands free kit, being careful not to stick your fingers together in the process (ahem).

The resulting abomination looks pretty awful, doesn't it? Yup. But how can you make this appalling travesty of random bits of tat look cool and spaceshippy, I hear you ask.

Well - that's where the silver spray paint comes in! Now, it looks awesomely cool, huh?

Next up, take some generic action figures that no-one's ever going to recognise (one of which looks suspiciously like a key member of the cast) and give them the deluxe silver spraypaint treatment as well.

For the final touch, photograph them all, give them a spacey background, knock up a cheesy name for the TV series, order a mug an a mousemat with the reuslting picture on and hey-presto, you have an instant fake 80s TV classic (which probably looks better then anything they knocked out in the 80's anyway).

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the STAR AVENGERS™!

Star Avengers™ are © 2007 RMW Films. Any reproduction of their distinctive likenesses is prohibited unless you have appropriate executive permission from RMW Films to do so (which can be applied for in writing along with a 32 page application, a £500 fee and a writing credit). Your first couple of e-mails will be ignored. :)

Time for an update!

Well its been a busy few weeks since August and our last post. Jon has been training with Paul Henry to get the movements right for the boxing scene and we even have a couple of photos from one of the training sessions taken on location at the gym used in the film!

In this first shot, Jon is receiving some instructional guidance from Paul.


The advice is then being put into use over in the ring!


Lots of other things have been going on - mostly involving spending money! We appear to be some 25% over budget now but hopefully most of the expenses have been met. Darren has been off on shopping sprees getting incidental props sorted out for set dressing etc and we are expecting our permits for filming in and around Bristol to come through any day now!