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!