Better late than never – it’s the £1,000 public reward in our crowd-funding campaign: a behind-the-scenes look at the fourth day of shooting. As usual, big thanks to Sophie for editing this.
We’re just £22 away from the £1,100 Mystery Reward. Stay tuned to find out what that will be.
Here’s the £800 public reward for Stop/Eject: a fly-on-the-wall’s view of the third day of the shoot. Thanks to Sophie for editing this.
We still haven’t caught up with the total, which stands at £906, so look out for the FX breakdown on this blog next weekend.
Regular readers may (but probably won’t) remember that almost a year ago I interviewed indie filmmaker Kate Madison as part of a documentary I planned to make under the working title of “Living in a Fantasy World”. I should have realised that shooting a doc about people trying to make incredibly ambitious fantasy films on shoestring budgets was going to be a long, slow process, but I didn’t think it would be eleven months before I did my next bit of filming.
Brett Chapman shoots B roll on Stop/Eject as Hadrian Cawthorne looks on. Photo: Paul Bednall
Yesterday I went up to Manchester to document the first day of shooting on Dan Rowbottom’s Dark Crystal-esque fantasy adventure Raven Waiting. In due course I will be sharing some of this footage with you, but today I want to share my thoughts on behind-the-scenes, or “B roll”, filming. Here are my top tips:
In what must rank as one of the smoothest-running and most enjoyable shoots I’ve ever helmed, my Virgin Media Shorts entry Ghost-trainspotting was filmed yesterday.
With an entirely exterior script, weather was the biggest concern, but it rained for less than five minutes all day and was generally quite lovely. The camera started rolling earlier than planned, we moved at a good pace all day and we wrapped early. What’s not to like?
Actors Rob Ashman and George McCluskey got on like a house on fire. Rob in particular looked brilliant in his trainspotter outfit, as you can see from the photos here which Katie took:
I’ve already started editing the film, and like last year it’s going to be challenging to get it down to the required length of 140 seconds. Unlike last year, there are model shots to film, which I hope to do this weekend. Stay tuned.
Blue Peter microwave
Shot 104 on my Stop/Eject storyboards has been loitering for a long time. Originally slated for the last day of principal photography, it got dropped and has been bothering the back of my mind ever since. It’s a bird’s eye view of a ready meal turning slowly in a microwave… if the hypothetical bird flew into the microwave before Kate shut it, and survived long enough to look down on anything. (The shot is part of the circles theme that runs throughout the film, which I blogged about earlier in the year.)
Back in the autumn we bought an old microwave, my intention being to rip the top off for the shot. Even though I was clearly not planning to turn the thing on after dismembering it so, safety concerns were voiced and thoughts turned to mocking up a microwave interior.
I finally filmed the shot this morning, and I don’t think anyone – including me – expected it to be achieved in the incredibly low-tech fashion it was. I folded up a piece of old foam board and punched a hole in the middle of it, and gaffer-taped an allen key to the bottom of the circular plate so I could rotate it through the hole from underneath. See the captions for more details:
So that’s another shot ticked off the list.
The final shot
If you’re in Hereford, come along to the test screening tomorrow (Wednesday June 20th) at 3pm. It’s in the downstairs lecture theatre at Hereford College of Art’s Media Centre on Bath Street. Non-students are welcome; just sign is as visiting Christabel Gingell. I need all the feedback I can get to finesse the edit.
Several weeks ago I evaluated Stop/Eject’s shooting schedule. As noted in that post, we got behind schedule more than once during production. Today I want to look at the reasons why, so I can remind myself next time I draw up a schedule, and so that you lovely readers can perhaps pre-empt similar problems on your own projects.
Self shooter. Photo: Paul Bednall
Lack of a First Assistant Director. The key role of this crew member is to keep things running to schedule, and we didn’t have one. Two people were lined up and then dropped out due to paying work, and no other applicants were forthcoming. Difficult to see what could have been done to avoid this, other than raising more money to pay everyone.
Steve Giller assembles the alcove. Photo: Paul Bednall
Lack of other skilled crew. There were only two people on the crew who were really handy with power tools, Col and Steve Giller, and Steve was only around for a couple of days. So when we arrived at a new location and had to assemble the alcove set and rig lights from the ceiling, there were only one or two people doing these two most time-consuming tasks. Solution: ask around in pre-production for DIYers who fancy helping out on a film.
Hair and make-up changes take time. Photo: Katie Lake
Large number of locations. Even though we found several locations in one building, there was still a lot of moving around, which wastes huge amounts of time. Ideally you should shoot in only one location each day.
Alcove headaches. Photo: Paul Bednall
Think carefully when choosing the aspect ratio for your film. Consider the shape and size of your key locations and props. When making The Dark Side of the Earth‘s pilot, DP Oliver Downey pointed out that the tall, spindly Swordsman puppet and the tall training room set were not well suited to the 2.35:1 anamorphic ratio we were shooting.
So those are the main things that slowed down Stop/Eject, and of course there are many, many other things that can hold you up when shooting. And although many of these are impossible to foresee or prevent, a little thinking time in pre-production can identify a lot of these issues and help you plan accordingly.
Production stills by Paul Bednall Photography, except where otherwise indicated.
Behind-the-scenes stills by Paul Bednall, Sophie Black, Philip Briggs, Tommy Draper, Steve Giller and Katie Lake.
For Stop/Eject’s post-production crowd-funding campaign, we’ve introduced a new idea. As well as individual rewards for everyone who sponsors – anything from a ticket to the premiere to a voice role in the film, depending on how much you contribute – there are public rewards too. The way these work is that every time the total raised passes one of the hundred pound marks, we release a little treat online – like podcasts or special blog posts.
When the campaign was launched yesterday, we received an amazing £240 in just a few hours, smashing through the first two public reward targets.
Accordingly, Sophie has published a special, detailed blog breaking down the design and creation of the living room set, and a video podcast about the final day of shooting. Why the final day? Well, because the podcasts about the other days aren’t ready yet; we weren’t expecting the total to get past £200 so quickly!
And watch the podcast right here:
You can make your contribution to Stop/Eject at stopejectmovie.com and help us reach the next target, £300, for an in-depth breakdown of how I lit the shop scenes, what with and why.
A typical Stop/Eject pick-up shot
Over the years I’ve developed a bad habit of shooting pick-ups. I really wanted to leave Derbyshire on April 26th with the whole of Stop/Eject in the can, but sadly it was not to be. 25 close-ups of the tape recorder which were scheduled for filming with a skeleton crew on that final day were pushed aside to make way for the weir shots dropped earlier in production.
I grabbed three or four of these close-ups while we were packing up at Magpie, but the rest would have to be shot in my living room back in Hereford.
Which is what I spent most of yesterday doing, with my long-suffering wife Katie standing in for the leading lady once again.
The ultra-spacious 007 stage at Oseman Studios. Note the iMac in the top right showing the shot from principal photography I'm matching to.
Although it took longer than it would have done with a couple of extra crew and a bit more space, it was incredibly useful to have my iMac right there with all the footage from principal photography on it – some of it even roughly assembled – so we could make sure the lighting and hand movements matched perfectly.
Focusing up close with the Sigma EX 105mm
Almost every pick-up was shot with a Sigma EX 105mm macro lens which I bought on eBay a few weeks ago. This is a fantastic lens with a huge focusing range which enabled me to get big close-ups of individual buttons on the recorder.
It’s weird shooting things that tight because you start to worry about stuff that’s not normally visible, like tiny bits of dry skin on people’s hands and miniscule dents in things. When you think about what size of screen the film might be projected on at a festival it’s possible to become picky to a crippling degree.
Lovely optical artefacts from using a cheap macro adapter
For a few specific shots, where bad things are going on in the story, I switched out the Sigma for a Canon zoom and fitted a cheap macro adapter on the front. This gave me soft focus, blooming on the highlights and colour aberration around the edges of frame. I love to do optical stuff like this in-camera wherever I can, rather than relying on post-production effects which can often look cheesy.
Anyway, the shots were all accomplished successfully, despite the fact that the hero tape recorder had a fault and wouldn’t play for more than a couple of seconds before grinding to a halt. For extreme close-ups on the rotating capstans and the playhead moving into position I used a children’s tape player bought from a charity shop last year (for the opening shots of the Stop/Eject podcasts) from which I’d removed the cassette door.
Shooting a kiddies' recorder with the door removed
A couple of shots were storyboarded as being top-down from directly above the table. To save rigging up the camera on a C-stand, I laid the table on its side and blu-tacked the recorder and tapes to it.
Annoying as they are, I advise you to always expect there will be pick-ups to shoot (maybe right after principal photography, maybe only a couple of weeks before the premiere) and plan accordingly, i.e. keep as much stuff from the shoot as you possibly can, particularly…
Of course pick-ups aren’t always because you dropped stuff during principal photography. Often they’re new material that you realise you need as the edit develops. It’s too early to say whether Stop/Eject will have any of those. Either way, there is still one more storyboarded shot to film – of a microwave. Which sounds simple, but it’s not. More on that another time.
My hands are sore, extremely dry and covered in small cuts. From this, if nothing else, I know I’ve just been on a shoot.
All of Stop/Eject‘s cast and crew will be recovering from some physical extremity, be it exhaustion, malnutrition, excessive dust inhalation, cold, damp or – in Georgie’s case – five days of constant crying.
Georgina Sherrington ("Kate") and Oliver Park ("Dan") during the weir scene
I can’t believe we did it. I feel all the relief I did when the shoot collapsed back in October, but also the satisfaction of actually having shot the damn thing. And for the first time in years, I enjoyed directing.
Over the coming weeks there will be lots of blog entries about various aspects of the shoot, including an evaluation of the schedule (which I’m sure the cast and crew all have some pretty strong opinions on), the lighting, the things that slowed us down and the lessons I’ve learnt. I’ll also get around to the entries I promised in pre-production but failed to deliver, like what’s in my director’s folder and what all the camera equipment does. I’ve got some interesting observations on the usefulness of my Proaim shoulder rig in the field too. And there’s loads of behind-the-scenes footage to start sharing.
Not to mention a trailer, once I’ve cut it.
But for now, here’s a summary of the last week.
Colin and I picked up the hire van first thing on Friday morning and, with Katie’s help, loaded it with equipment, props, costumes, food, bedding and even a fridge for catering purposes. We travelled up to Derbyshire, stopping in Loughborough to pick up a jib kindly lent to us by Steve Lawson, arriving at Sophie’s place in Belper at about 2:30pm.
The sun breaks through for a scene at Belper Cemetery
The list of things that needed doing before we could start filming the next day was pretty big (though nowhere near as much so as it was the day before the intended shoot last October). Ideally we would have travelled up the previous day, but we had too many things to finish doing in Hereford first.
There was a ring to get resized, a set to finish building, costumes to be fitted, furniture to move, a location to hoover and another location to be recceed. This latter task threw up the biggest problem of the shoot. It was the weir at Willersley Castle Hotel in Cromford. Here’s what it looked like when I scouted it a few weeks ago:
A pleasant trickle. So to speak. Photo: Sophie Black
And here’s what it looked like last week:
An embarrassing gush. Photo: Sophie Black
Weeks of heavy rainfall had swelled the water to a lethal torrent. That location was meant to be our first one, on Saturday morning, so we swapped it with the afternoon to give us some time to figure out what to do.
So we started at Belper’s River Gardens on Saturday morning. In a week when the whole country got rained on pretty constantly, we were extremely lucky to experience only a couple of brief showers. In fact most of the day was quite sunny and, although it was a slow start like it always is on the first day of a shoot, we got through the material at a decent rate.
Rather than move locations in the afternoon, I opted to shoot the weir scene at the River Gardens, with the aim of getting the wide shot round the corner at the optimistically-named Belper Beach. Unfortunately we didn’t get to the wides before Georgie had to leave to catch a train, so we ended the first day a couple of key shots in debit.
Sunday saw us filming the Boy Racer’s scenes in and around the River Gardens before moving to Matlock in the evening to begin the shop floor scenes. At this point the schedule got pretty intense and it was really hard work to keep up with it.
Late finishes and early starts became the norm, and we all got pretty fed up of working in the shop, even though it looked fantastic on camera. At lunchtime on Tuesday we moved back to Belper for the basement scene at Strutt’s North Mill, and brief scenes on a bridge, in a cemetery and in Sophie’s kitchen.
Back at Magpie on Wednesday, we tackled the living room, bedroom and nursing home scenes before a long night of shooting on the alcove set, finally wrapping at some point around 2am I think.
On Thursday we returned to Willersley in the hope that the water level might have gone down. It had not. If anything it had got worse. In the end we crossed back over the river and filmed our weir wide shots in the grounds of Masson Mill. Then it was back to Magpie to clear up, pack, return Sophie’s furniture and finally drive back to Hereford in the rain and the dark, stopping again to return the jib and the fridge before finally getting to bed at about 3 o’clock on Friday morning.
The cast and crew. Standing (left to right): gaffer Colin Smith, sound recordist Johnny Cartwright, Libby Wattis ("Old Kate"), make-up artist Debs Bennett, costume designer Katie Lake, runners Laura Iles and her boyfriend Kurt. Sitting: Ollie Park ("Dan"), producer Sophie Black, me and Georgie Sherrington ("Kate"). Photo: Colin Smith
Huge, huge thanks to the cast and crew for sticking with me on this long and exhausting journey. Special mentions must be given to Colin, who was constantly put to work by every department and had to drive the van, Georgie and Ollie, who spent a couple of hours standing in cold water on Thursday, and Debs, who ended up doing a lot of the cooking and had to drive for over an hour to get home after every late wrap.
Stay tuned for more tales from the set of Stop/Eject.
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