Editing, DVD Menu

Today I just about finished my editing. I first thing I decided to do was to create the opening and closing credit sequences. I thought that this would give me a definite start and ending point to aim at. I knew I wanted to end on the shot of Caroline dead. So I put that shot in first. I reviewed the footage a few times and realised that all the long establishing shots of clock faces, taps dripping, wind chimes, etc would be nice to have evenly spaced throughout the film. Then to have them split up with small microcosms of violence and noise. I thought that this would draw parallel's between the vicious killing of someone with the peace and quiet surrounding a murder. I thought it would be interesting to have images of the women happy and then the images of knives and white noise to make the audience uneasy. I wanted to end with a crescendo of noise and images to heighten expectation as to what was happening ending of the image of someone who was apparently dead. I originally wanted to have the male voice over but was unable to get hold of a microphone and also I thought it would be to overkill and self explanitory. As I got further into the editing process I thought of this film as having less of a narrative and more the feeling of a piece of visual art with the audience left to make up they're own mind rather than telling them. After I had completed this I made a DVD menu on iDVD. The menu consisted of six of my favourite images I shot.

3rd Day of Filming

The third day of filming was 19th May. I once again borrowed a camera and tripod from my sisters boyfriend James Doherty. He also offered his help with anything so I took him up on that. After reviewing the last weeks footage on final cut I realised it was going to be hard to make a whole film about one woman's insomnia and keep it interesting to watch. I decided to inject some conflict into the script by having a male character talking about killing her using a voiceover. Therefore I storyboarded a number of different shots from the male characters point of view to signify a murderous intent. These storyboards consisted of a man handleing and cleaning a set of knives. I thought about intercutting images of the knives being handled with images of the female character and all supported by a voice-over in the form of an inner monologue from the male characters point of view. I thought this would be much more interesting to make, edit and watch. My dad would be playing the would be killer. My plan is to just shoot his hands and arms while cleaning the knives. My reason I just want to shoot his hands because I want the male to be annonymous which I believe would be slightly scarier and put the audience a little bit on the edge. When shooting all my footage I really wanted every image to be composed, crisp, and beautiful. I was aware that my film wouldn't have a clear narrative or genre, so I thought that I might be able to make up for some of that by having beautiful images on screen. I am very aware that this will be a film made in the edit stage rather than on location or in a script.

Time lapse shot

The second day of filming consisted of me sitting at my back door pointing the camera up at the trees at the back of my house. I started at 7:00pm and filmed one shot until 9:00pm when it got dark. This shot will be my time lapse shot of day to night. It is the catalyst shot really because It will be used a few times in my final film showing the days passing. I had to change tapes very quickly after the first hour so as not to be too obvious when its all sped up in the edit.

Filming

So I have completed my first two days of filming. The first day started with me drawing up all the days storyboards to be filmed. These storyboards consisted of the main narrative shots and important cutaway shots. My main thought behind every shot is that it has to convey loneliness, depression, and time passing slowly. I felt these three points would be the way i would convey insomnia and a lack of sleep. My initial instincts was to go for a clock ticking, a tap dripping, trees swaying, and white noise on a television. I managed to shoot all of the shots i wanted. At first I had problems with the tap dripping due to the reflective metal surface showing me and the camera. I got over this by shooting from below the tap shooting upwards. The trees swaying was easy enough because it was very windy on the day I shot. The clock ticking wasn't so easy. I had to prop the clock on a stool to reach the height of the tripod. The clock itself had a see-through plastic cover which was reflecting the camera and the room. To remove any of the reflections I shone three powerful lights placed directly off frame right and left, at the clock and it removed any reflections. I then shot the second hand ticking around two or three times the entire clock face. I figured I could either speed up or reverse the shot for dramatic effect later on in the editing process. The white noise on a television was just as hard to film. I had to find an old VHS in my house to play and rewind which would give me the white noise I needed. When I found the white noise and tried to film it things were being reflected by the TV into the camera lens. So I got both my parents to hold the same large white boards above and to the side of the TV to cover up any thing in the room. This worked really well and I got the shot of white noise. I also had the editing process in mind for this shot. I thought I could have the irritating sound of white noise over the film to signify the monotony of waiting and being awake. My actress got to mine at 7:59pm. We got straight down to filming. I had story-boarded two specific shots I really wanted. The first being a single solitary eye open for a long time. This would be to introduce the character and it also ties in with the theme of the film. The second being both eyes looking down and then looking up straight into the camera. I just thought this would be a good shot and quite powerful and engaging for the audience to look at. My next instinct was to get a shot which could be later used for a time lapse shot. So I had a high angled shot looking down onto a bed in the form of a CCTV camera. I thought it would look like one of those studies were being carried out that you would see on a TV show about peoples sleep patterns. So I had Caroline shuffle around for ten minutes or so tossing covers around and trying to sleep. This will be speed up in the editing considerably to show time passing. We then sat down and discussed what we would do if we couldn't sleep. We both came up with going outside and maybe go for a walk. So we got the camera and drove to an empty road. We then proceeded to get some great shots of Caroline walking along the white lines in the middle of the road. Every time a car came past we had to run out of the road so we wern't killed and then start the shot again. I shot it from a number of different angles and then we called it a night.

Exams, David, Changing Idea

Ok now with all my exams and DMU work out the way I can now start on my short film. I have all but given up on the original Romantic Rooms film. The scale is to large now to fit into 20 days until the deadline. My only option is to re-work another idea that is much smaller and realistic in scope. So I have re-visited an idea from my A-level that I never made which is about someone coping with insomnia. Its always been very simple in my mind, involving things such as no dialogue, voice over, monologue, poetry, slow images of clock faces etc. It is a very cliche student idea but never the less its 'do-able'. So I have borrowed equipment off my sisters boyfriend who works in a media house in London which is alot easier than taking it from Confetti. So I will be filming Tuesday 12th and Wednesday 13th which should be all I need. The actor who I have cast is the best person I could find at short notice. Her name is Caroline Rogers and she has attended the Urdang Academy of Permoring Arts in Covent Garden for 3 years now. Shes a close friend and has bugged me to be in a film for ages now so I cast her because I know shes good, reliable, and will do well for the part. So now its just a matter of planning what I'm shooting tomorrow and getting on with it. I am going to be using some paperwork templates that our tutor has supplied us with. Documents such as Recce reports, location scouting, health and safety, actor contracts etc. I am also going to be drawing out my storyboards and finishing my script before I go to bed tonight.

Casting David.

Now I've cast the role of Sophie I have been getting worried about casting David. Starnow didn't work out so I have been thinking of alternative routes. It suddenly dawned on me that I should look at easy access and flexible people who I know are talented. I then thought of asking Andrew Spooner. Andrew is from Croydon and we've known each other for seven years now. He has done Drama at GCSE, A-Level, and University. He has been in two of my previous films and I know how good he is. He would be perfect for the role of David as he is the right age and look. If we can now figure out the filming dates then we will be all set to start.

Script, Locations, Actors

Since my last blog entry alot has happened. My first priority was to finish the script. I thought that as long as I had a finished and complete script, that it would be my base from which to build on. So I had finished the script by my deadline of the 10th.

At this time I was still receiving applications from starnow.co.uk. I had 29 altogether now but the majority of the people applying were for the role of Sophie. I was slightly panicking about the lack of promising actors to play David. After some emails to the prospective actors a few had become very interested and were asking for scripts to be sent. One inpaticular was a man called Chris. I believe I have made a big mistake here. Chris had been sending me a few emails asking me about exact shooting dates. I haven't set any shooting dates as of yet due to not having a guaranteed cast. This seemed to be a problem for him and therefore the emails became quite short and to the point. I then proceeded to try and set up an audition for Monday 18th March. Chris seemed to have problems getting to Confetti and wanted his expenses paid. I had previously thought that the 'no money' issue could rear it's ugly head at some point, and true to form it did. After some more correspondence it became apparent that Chris wanted his expenses met which I could not afford. I don't blame him for this because I was asking him to give up days of paid work to appear in a student film. On a more positive note through 'star-now' a women named Samantha had got in touch and was very interested in meeting to discuss the script and character. She was the right age for Sophie and seemed to have alot of good experience in theatre and TV.

Today I had the audition with Samantha. As we were sending each other emails about meeting to discuss the film i had decided to not do a formal audition of camera, reading lines etc. The reason being that I didn't want to shove a camera in her face and force her to read dialogue she hadn't read before because this could be unsettling, boring. I realised that the character of Sophie is someone who has travelled, is a free spirit, and who has been forced by her own social conscience to settle down and find a job. I figured that a character who isn't afraid to travel on her own to all these foriegn places would have to be someone who is friendly, easily approachable, isn't easily intimidated. So it is at this point I decided to make the audition more of a meet and chat. Seeing as your reading this Jamie i should be honest and admit now that I was five minutes late, and she was on time. Not a great start I know. We made our way to the canteen and proceeded to spend the next hour just talking about everything. We spent about ten minutes on the script and film and the rest of the time talking about anything and everything else. It was incredibly insightfull into Sam's own life and it gave me alot of further inspiration in creating new dialogue and action in the script. For example she talked about her favourite drink being cranberry and apple. I instantly thought about the part of the script where Sophie orders a drink, and now I know what drink to make that. So in my mind I basically cast her half way through this conversation.