EDIT 12-6-09:

The trailer for the film is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwVISHCsXP0



Original Message:

Hello everyone,

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...

Toby

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.

And Diva time really cut into my schedule....

George, congratulations.

It takes a big amount of inspiration and commitment to make a movie. Many people talk the talk, but not many people walk the walk.

No matter how it turns out (I'm sure it's great), it's an achievement just to make it happen.

Well done.

You shot a feature film over two days?

That's pretty impressive. The most I've ever shot in a single day is about 5 pages. : )

That is pretty cool, George, taking matters into your own hands like that.  Best of luck.

You must have alot of confidence in that script, and I am curious to know about the story.

Do you have a logline or synopsis you are willing to share -- or is a poster forthcoming -- or a teaser trailer -- anything?

You have to get a little more "Hollywood" here in order to drum up some interest, I think.  Throw us a bone.

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.

Kacy

Quoted from George Willson 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.

THAT'S A WRAP!

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.

Hey George,

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

Hi George,

This is a great thing, shooting your own script. I'm amazed you could achieve all the amount shots in so little time. Did you do rehearsals?

Let us know when the trailer is ready.

For me when the hardest thing as a director is when you watch what you've just shot. That's an awful experience.

Between how did you manage lighting the set and on what you plan on editing the film with.

All the best

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...

That's good George.

Rather than you i'm trying to develop a script in just few locations to make it myself but is hard to nail it right.

Anyway i'll wait for you to post something from the film.

For editing i used Avid Liquid and Premire Pro. They should be fine.

Cheers

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.

That is awesome and I hope your editing goes smoothly. Can't wait to see the finished product. And Again, congrats!

This last weekend I completed a rough edit of this film, and the learning experience continues. It's hard to describe just how much I've learned about the movie-making process by doing this whole thing on my own like this. You can go to film school if you want, but being in the middle of the whole thing from beginning to end is some serious real life training complete with mistakes you catch in post and wish you caught on location.

Naturally, I found some amateurish mistakes on my part that I'll learn from for future films. One of the most notable was where the actors' hands ended up during the individual shots. For instance, person A might have their hands folded for their individual shot and the wide shot, but draped over a pillow or something for person B's shot causing a random hand to show up in that shot only, blowing the continuity. This forced me to zoom in on person B in post, throwing off the sharpness of their shot (maybe that was the point - actors are really self-centered at times).

One amusing "mistake" for the moment has to do with clocks in the background. I knew about the clocks, but they really weren't ending up in any shots. Not to the point that you could actually read them anyway. Well, it turns out that one clock turned out to be very, very readable in the only scene where a time was specifically identified. A character spouts out, "you call me over here at 10 o'clock at night..." when the clock behind the person she's talking to clearly shows 9:20. Now, I can always say that we shot this the day before daylight savings time's "fall back", and that character just set his clock back early, but since movies don't come with programs, I'll probably just overdub her saying nine instead of ten since the actual time is unimportant.

It will also be fun to pick out lights in the glass of pictures on the walls, and in some instances, you can probably pick me out of the glass reflections. D'oh. I think I might have seen myself a couple of times, but I only just realized that it might be possible the last time I watched it through. Fortunately, I caught the most blatant instance of this on location and moved the glass. That one would have been embarrassing.

Our next task is to shoot a couple of city shots for some transitions (you know, the unscripted, yet totally necessary stuff), and then I'm turning the soundtrack over to my brother (the light and sound guy) to clean up and balance the sound as well as determine whether we have to rerecord the dialogue of any of the outdoor scenes in a more controlled indoor situation. Also going to be turning over a copy of the rough edit to the guy writing the music as I'd rather someone else deal with it since I'm doing enough.

But it's coming along. Thought I'd throw out an update on it if anyone happened to be interested still.

Finding those little continuity flubs in films can be fun.  And it happens even in the big Hollywood movies.  You may want to have some fresh eyes look at the film.


Phil

I definitely will be doing that when I get it good to my own satisfaction. That second set of eyes that hasn't been immersed in the whole thing for the past four months is beyond useful. That's why the big studios do previews...to get that second opinion. I'm pretty sure the composer hasn't read the script yet, so that'll be fresh eyes number one...

It's been almost a year since the last post on here, but post production is not only complete, but if you search for the title on Amazon, it's out there. How'd it go? Well...

I seem to have some notoriety for sound problems. First, my brother took months in cleaning up the sound to the best of his ability, and then there are still shortcomings. It's mostly good, and don't get me wrong, you can hear and understand everything being said, so volume is no issue. The main problem is inconsistentcy. I ran a leveler on the whole soundtrack so you can hear it all consistently without fooling with your TV volume through the whole stupid film (looking at you Matrix series), but in a couple of places, you can hear the breaks between the cuts. Honestly, only 90 straight seconds bothers me, and I'll bet it'll be forgotten as the film goes on since it's near the beginning.

Issue 2 was that my composer backed out and guess who ended up going back to his roots to write and record the music? Yeah, that'd be me. It wasn't so bad, really. The music feels like it fits the movie, actually, when it comes to the style of its recording. A bonus there is that I also have a soundtrack with my name on it. That proof is forthcoming. But I ended up doing 5 songs for it that I played piano, bass, drums, guitar, and even trombone as well as sang on. You can hear the songs at http://www.myspace.com/georgewillsonmusic.

Since the final runtime of the film was only 72 minutes (still feature length, but a tad short), I added the short I did in 07 as a bonus to the DVD, so you don't feel completely ripped off. I also plugged in a deleted scene (yeah, there was one; go figure), an extended scene, and some outtakes for fun. Because the movie is available on Amazon.com for purchase, I was able to submit the information to imdb.com, and it should be up in probably 3 more weeks (due to the sheer number of new entires needed for it, only one of the actors was already on there).

I may update this thread one more time when it's on IMDB (though I'll more likely kickoff a new thread since it'd be new and different and cool), but as of now, it's done. I'm looking forward to shooting the next one from here which will be a collection of four short horror/thriller pieces (I believe two of the four have been on SS at one time or another). I've given it the title Inexplicable, and it will be a bit more complicated that No Kind of Life, which will be nice. It also isn't, and since most of the previous cast is interested in another go-round, that'll make them happy to do something different.

And if anyone has wondered and just doesn't want to ask, I have kept my mind open as I've read scripts on here to see what might work in my non-budget world, but for now, I'm shooting the ones I have that were specifically written for a microbudget environment to get my feet under me before screwing up someone else's. After all, I would want to deliver something everyone can be proud of, not something that you'll introduce with disclaimers.

Incidentally, if you want to get a copy of it with a discount, and can handle CreateSpace, you can use discount code H63WMLZU at https://www.createspace.com/273480 to get 15% off the purchase price there, which might help with the shipping. I really need to put a trailer together.

Actually, the script is still online at http://www.fempiror.com/otherscripts/NoKindOfLifev3a.pdf. It's the last draft before we started shooting on the 18th, so you'll notice a few things about it that differ from what we normally have around here. First, it has scene numbers. You have no idea how essential scene numbers are when shooting. You'll also notice asterisk along the right hand margin in places along with words in red and even a single line at the top of a couple pages with an A designation. I use Final Draft for the shooting script and lock the pages so that when I have to make changes, the cast only needs the pages that changed. The asterisk and red helps them to find the parts that changed. When I sent this copy, I actually sent another version that showed the previous parts struckout. Final Draft makes that whole part really, really convenient.

Anyway, I'm happy it's done, and I'm looking forward to what comes next.

George,

Congrats, that's good stuff.  I read the script when I first got onto the sight.  Very good. I enjoyed it.  But since you directed it, I'm sure you stayed true to your original intent.

Look forward to seeing it.

Ghostwriter

Greetings once more everyone. I'm posting this to tell you that I posted the trailer into the first post of this thread. So by now, you've probably already seen it and are commenting, but if you haven't, get to post 1 and watch it!

Well done George! It must feel great to have things wrapped up.  It's an amazing commitment to film a feature, something to be proud of - for sure.

Awesome!  George, you're a cool guy I'm glad to see this kind of shit.

I have work now but later I'll send you a PM about No Kind of Life, among other things.  We have stuff to discuss my friend!

Quoted from slabstaa Awesome!  George, you're a cool guy I'm glad to see this kind of shit. I have work now but later I'll send you a PM about No Kind of Life, among other things.  We have stuff to discuss my friend!

I look forward to it. I like to discuss stuff. My freshman feature is behind me. It's time to make something good.

Um . . . this is all well and good but I got a certain Novel By a certain George sitting on my shelf that I will read soon. I hope this project isn't keeping you away from writing your novels incase I should want to read the second part in your chronicles.

Nah, the second book almost has a complete first draft. I can multi-task fairly well. Also planning the next feature... I keep busy.