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.