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I was holding out on boasting about this one until I had some measure of production undergoing. Well, after this weekend, I figure I'll boast a little now. Last year sometime (or possibly before then), someone asked me to write a script with four or five people in a single house location. He gave me a movie to watch and said it would need to be "something like that." I watched the movie, wrote the script, asked the guy what he thought, and as these things tend to go too often, I never heard another word.
So after my short last year, I decided I wanted to shoot a feature length this year, and this script with one house, five people, and no special effects seemed like a perfect no-budget choice. Over the past few months, I had torn the script apart, numbered the scenes, scheduled everything, got the location, and got the people. I prepared for an October 18th date to attempt to shoot the whole feature.
On October 18th, I had my cast and crew of one (two counting me), and we set to work all day long. We didn't finish it (primarily because I didn't factor in "diva time" for some of the actors), but we're well over half way only needing a part of a second day to finish the shoot (and pick up any missed shots from the 18th). It was an experience and a half and we even left the location better than we found it (having replaced a faulty outlet), and after day two on November 1st, I'll have a lot of editing ahead of me.
To be honest, since I was serving as the director, I haven't let the wonder of seeing my vision play out soak in yet. It's hard to see the big picture through all the lights, the myriad of cords snaking all over the floor, and the out of order pieces and snips of scenes and dialogue that go into actually making the movie. But it was a thrill all the same to see it all coming together.
Naturally, once it's all done, I plan on going through my other low budget wonders that I've written here and there that those filmmakers also never picked up. Their loss is my gain in this case as I have some easy fodder that I own full rights to to shoot into fruition and see those visions come alive.
I'll report more when there's more to report, but for now, I figured I finally had something to boast about now that I have (after fifteen hours on location) three and a half hours of footage to show for my work. It's just very cool, and I did it all on my own.
Haha awesome mate. What camera did you use to film? And are you going to post the whole film online when its done? I would definitely love to see it...
Taking these things into your own hands IS about the only to get anything moving. I got tired of waiting for someone to just read something I'd written. It's kind of a perennial vent of mine around here. I spend plenty of time writing and refining, and yet, I can never get past the query letter.
To answer Toby, I actually used a consumer grade Canon Elura 80. It's MiniDV and does a minimal DVD quality, though it requires a lot of light to maintain that. The raw footage I transferred looks pretty good though.
I'm not sure if I'll post the whole thing online or not. I'm still exploring that side of things. We'll see.
One location makes a short shoot feasible. It's five people in a house, so we shoot one room and then move on to another until it's all done. So far, I've shot probably two thirds of it, and I'll be shooting the remainder on November 1st. But yes, the total shooting time will be two days.
And yeah, I like the story. I think it turned out really well. This is the one (you may recall) that I wrote based on the iPod song list idea I posted last year. I never posted the script, just the method of creating characters on the Screenwriting Class board. It created some really unique characters, and they were not only interesting to write, but fascinating to see brought to life.
Logline... Four people gather after the death of their friend to decipher his last messages to them and the reason he died.
Well done George be your own boss, it's the best way. Any way if you do happen to post it online make sure you inform us. Good luck with the others as well.
Taking these things into your own hands IS about the only to get anything moving. I got tired of waiting for someone to just read something I'd written. It's kind of a perennial vent of mine around here. I spend plenty of time writing and refining, and yet, I can never get past the query letter.
Couldn't agree more. I plan to direct one of my features sometime in 2009 my one of my script-writing buddies... if you ever want to achieve anything, you do have to take it into your own hands as you said.
Principal photography on No Kind Of Life completed on the early morning hours of November 2nd (about 1:30am). I'm now going through the dreadfully tedious process of picking the audio clips out of the files we recorded on set and aligning them to the video. Since the camera records audio, it's easy to align and tell when it's out of alignment.
I will say that this process is not as easy as you might think it is. It takes a lot of attention to the minutest details and it's easy to make some of those mistakes everyone laughs at on movie goof sites. I had a dozen or so pictures of the location to make sure everything was oriented exactly as it was two weeks before (including the half dozen random objects on top of the fish tank).
Had one actor who learned that acting in a film was not as easy as it looks either as he struggled with trying to duplicate his lines and actions over and over and over and over again (without his having learned them well before hand). It caused a lot of frustration for me and the rest of the cast, but it was another learning experience, and I found that after knowing how nervous he was on day one, I should have worked with him in the two week interrim before day two. That means as the director, I can take some responsibility for his performance since I could (should) have helped it.
And next time, I'm scheduling more time. I felt a little like Ed Wood there near the end with "Scene 12, Take 1...action...ok, cut, let's move on to the next one!" No safety takes. No second chances. If it played off like it showed in the script, we moved on. Hope it all turns out well enough. Yeah, totally allowing more time for the next one...
At the end of it all, I was told by people who said they like getting in on first director films that I was well ahead of a lot of the other ones they've worked with before with the preparation I did have (and that we shot an 80 page script in two days -- yeah, they were duly impressed -- but we'll see how it all turns out). They commented that they'd been on some shoots where they got ten minutes to show for ten hours and another where they'd gone six hours and had nothing to show for it. I guess the best compliment I had though was that everyone was willing to work with me for the next one. I guess their experience was actually pretty decent.
So while shooting is wrapped for now, it's only a "for now" as I trudge through five and a half hours of footage looking for the story I wrote down before this all started. I'll keep everyone advised on this and future projects as they come to fruition.
I like the logline, and I'm very impressed you produced it yourself.
I remember your video you posted here. I thought that it was pretty neat, and very creative, so I'm sure your film will be the same.
Thumbs up
Cindy
Award winning screenwriter Available screenplays TINA DARLING - 114 page Comedy ONLY OSCAR KNOWS - 99 page Horror A SONG IN MY HEART - 94 page Drama HALLOWEEN GAMES - 105 page Drama
I think the hardest part about the dailies is seeing how easy (painful) it is to make those mistakes we all like making fun of. The only rehearsals were of the scene right before we shot it. I warned everyone that we'd be moving kind of quickly and to make sure they knew the script really well. Well, 2 out of 5 isn't bad, I guess.
The way I shot it, I went until I had a clean (or mostly clean) take, and moved on. I knew that I could cut it together in such a way as to cover mistakes here and there since I didn't allow much of any time for anything extra. In all honesty, I regret not scheduling it for longer since it could have turned out even better. But it's all a learning experience and the next one (I have four or five features in the low budget range that I can shoot) will be better.
And I'm not if your second to last line was a question or a statement...
Well, this script and some of the others I have were specifically developed and written for a limited cast in a few specific locations, so the resources on hand were the only ones used. Writing that way takes some patience and creativity, but sometimes, you end up with something better than you would have with all the freedom in the world because you're forced to consider only what you have instead of being allowed a magnificent deux ex machina that you could never afford. But the bonus is that once you get into "their" world, it's easy to write for them since the characters start leading the story naturally from point to point. Sure, they might go to the beach for that one scene, but since I can't get there, they can just as easily discuss it in the backyard.
And I'm not so cool as Avid and Adobe (the beta version of CS3 left its mark last year and will not leave). I'm using Windows Movie Maker (because I know it back and forth) for the rough cut and then Pinnacle (which is actually owned by Avid, I guess) Studio for the final cut. I would use it for the full process, but I don't know it very well yet, and I want to cut the movie on something I do know. It's a simple enough film that Movie Maker can handle the basics. The sound is being mixed, cleaned, etc by my brother using whatever he has. I really don't know, but he's good at it.