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