Fully Dislocated

In conclusion I feel I started off very well and had a steady, well thought out film being prepared. It was in the dying minutes when it really counts that it all went a bit wrong.

I was always told that when making a student film, 'Never extend beyond your reach. Use two actors and two locations, anything more would not work.'  I used five actors and five locations.  As I was aware of the challenge I had set myself up for I think it made it a lot easier to appropriately prepare.  You just can't prepare for things you don't see coming.

Overall I really can't fault my crew.  I had a few sound people who all did their job, no more no less.  My cameraman used his camera beautifully and captured some fantastic shots.  My producer did above and beyond what she was asked and did it with a smile on her face throughout, which made my life asking her to do things so much easier.

When I am preparing for my next film I will definately use a lot of the techniques I have used on this production.  I set up and planned a detailed, challenging and fun film to work on. I will have to pay a lot more attention to after the actual shoot next time.
I think I am guilty of believing the hard work had passed after the final scene was shot on the last day of shooting when really it was only starting.

This year has taught me a lot not only about the art of putting together a successful film but also about the kind of director and writer I want to be.  Mostly I know now for sure I will do my utmost to keep the drama on the page.

Class Work

The end of year show has now been announced:

Thursday 12th of June
Odyssey Cinemas
6pm

This is exciting yet scary news.  Exciting in the way that the last two years come down to this one night.  Scary in the way that everything I have produced over my time in BMC will fairly or unfairly be judged on this one film.

As Odyssey Cinemas is where I work it will also be a strange feeling to see my own work up the screen that I have seen so many many films on before.  Only this time someone else will be cleaning up my popcorn.

Editing Attitudes

I wanted to get cracking on editing the film the day after our second day of shooting.  My trusty cameraman didn't bring the files in for me to start.  That's the first full day of potential editing lost due to me making rookie assumptions. 

On this day however my cameraman offered and agreed to help edit the final film. My second big mistake came from allowing almost a week to go by of expecting my cameraman to show up when they said they would to start editing on their lap top.  The third was assuming they would reply to any form of attempted communication. 

When a reply finally came it was flooded with yet more empty promises and assurances that reminded me ever so much of the phantom shot list that never was. Why didn't you just start the edit yourself I hear you scream? This was my fourth big mistake.  Allowing my panic to be calmed by words that are a lot easier to say than to do. "I have made a start" and "The rough cut will be done for thursday" will both now echo as a constant reminder that I cannot expect people to have the same drive and passion for my project that I do. 

The day of the deadline arrived and as agreed (again) I am waiting on my cameraman's arrival with the highly anticipated rough cut. I had decided that I would just finish off whatever he had started and hand it in that day. Phonecalls, emails, messages and a few smoke signals were not enough to make me accept the obvious, he wasn't coming. 

A few days later and having left the country and missed the deadline I gave my producer the instructions to hand in whatever he done how little or small.  I had still not got any sort of reply but my ever reliable producer managed to track a reply down that he was not actually aware that he was meant to be editing, he was doing his own film and didn't appreciate this shoddy and informal treatment. 

Well there we have it, all I had to do to get a reply was send my messages out with an official BMC letterhead. 

I can honestly put no blame for my film not being edited yet on anyone but myself.  A relaxed attitude can only take you so far and I see this a massive yet harsh learning experience.  

Trailing Behind

Having took the video files home to edit over the weekend, I discovered that my lap top just is not powerful enough to edit at home.  The file sizes are too big and the quality is too good for me to watch anything as I assemble.

My cameraman has agreed to edit with me all next week and have a rough cut done for us coming back after the weekend/May day.  I have heard similar cases from him that stunk of 'telling me what I want to hear', so I wanted to at least make a start just in case.

Even though I could not gather a full assembly I was able to put together a short trailer using some of the smaller video files.

Shooting Reserved - Day 2

My second day of shooting started off very well.  We had confirmed the cabin for shooting and we were well ahead of schedule. 

We decided to shoot the remaining scenes from yesterday first then move on to the cabin.  I felt it was important to not have actors waiting around a lot just to film one scene at the end of the day.  I therefore made my shooting schedule so that the actors with the least scenes would all be shot together at the start. 

For example Patrick had the least amount of scenes so we shot his first then moved on to Ryan.  This allowed me to be able to send actors home early without asking them to wait around all day.  This method was terrible for my mental health but fantastic for team morale. 

Due to  our battery life once again not stretching the length we needed, we perhaps rushed the final and most important scenes.
Blame can only fall on my shoulders for this as I really should have picked up the equipment myself, I kick myself even more after the same thing happening on the first day. We had one battery on day one and two batteries on day two.  I really feel like this shoot should have had a third day to get things 100% right but that would have been too much to ask from everyone involved, for free.

Overall I was happy with the days shoot.  Light constraints in the cabin made for me having to adapt the plot slightly on the set.  A lot of it was meant to be shot in total darkness and without total darkness a lot of it wouldnt have made sense.  I changed things around and although I feel it wasn't as good as the original idea, I think it should still work. 

Shooting Reserved - Day 1

All of day ones shooting took place in Hillsborough Forest Park.  The schedule that I made had us filming several more scenes and using other locations today but due to our lack of camera batteries we were only able to shoot about 25% of the total film's scenes.  

I wanted to make the first day easy and quick enough to shoot in order to ease everyone into this film gently.  I did want to shoot more than what we ended up with after day one but overall I was very happy with what we shot.  

I scheduled the first day to use only 3 of the 5 actors required.  This give me a chance to iron out any wrinkles in how we were working things before having to get really stuck into shooting the more important scenes.  The main thing I will take from today is to always have spare batteries and to personally check that things have been done with your own eyes.

A Martin Scorsese Picture

One of my main directorial influences would be Martin Scorsese.  Some of my all time favourite films have been directed by him; Cape Fear, Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, Shutter Island and more recently The Wolf of Wall Street.

I have been researching how Martin is on set and have found that unlike a lot of other directors I have read about, he likes to get right into the set with the actors and tell them face to face how he thinks a scene is going and what he would like to change.  This is how I will try to direct Dislocation, up close and personal with my actors getting involved in the acting process and letting them know exactly whether or not I feel like they are doing a good job or not.

I have always been told to 'let an actor act', which of course I will not be instructing them on how to do their job.  I will however not be standing by smiling if I think we need to do another take.  I intend to praise my actors when they do well and politely request another take with suggestions if things are going as I had visioned.  I also will be taking a lot of advice from my DOP, Conor Shearer whose opinion I trust greatly.