At the weekend I received some private investment towards the development of Dark Side, which will enable me to go to Cannes. I immediately started trawling the internet to book my flight and accommodation.
In previous years it has cost me around a grand to attend Cannes, but this year, even with the investment, I can only afford to spend UKP600. As you know from a previous post, I already slashed UKP260 off my costs by getting free festival accreditation instead of stupidly paying for a market badge like I used to, but how could I save another UKP140, especially when booking relatively late?
The first task was to find a flight, and I was surprised to see that the prices hadn’t changed since I looked at them around Christmas. There’s a temptation to just book the cheapest one, but you have to consider all the ramifications to make sure you’re not falling into a false economy trap. For example, last year I was lured in by a cheap flight and arrived a full day before the festival started, but that was probably cancelled out by the cost of an extra night in the hotel. The flight was also late in the day, which is risky because you have to think about how you’re getting from Nice airport to your hotel at the other end. If you read my blog last year, you’ll know that I ended up having to get an expensive taxi to my hotel after my flight was delayed and the train was cancelled.
So this year, before booking the flight, I worked through all the consequences that the flight would have for the cost of airport transfers at both ends. You can actually fly to Nice from Bristol, which is much closer to Hereford than the London airports, but the slightly reduced cost of getting to the airport is outweighed by the higher cost of the flights. In the end I plumped for an Easyjet 7am departure from Luton on the morning of Sunday May 15th. “Aha!” you’re thinking. “That was stupid. How are you going to get to the airport at that time in the morning?” Well, my plan was to get the last train from Hereford on the Saturday night, which (after multiple changes) would get me to the airport for 1:30am. I could then try to get a few hours’ kip in a chair before check-in opened at 5am. At the other end of the flight, I would arrive at a very reasonable time in the morning and have no trouble getting in to Cannes.
In the past I’ve paid at least UKP90+ for my plane fare, but this flight was just UKP76, so my budget-cutting was going almost as well as George Osborne’s, and with considerably fewer protests.
Next it was time to book a hotel. The closer to Cannes you stay, the more your hotel costs. I quickly found that, at this late stage in the game, there was no availability anywhere less than three miles from the town within my price range. Again, you have to beware of false economies. A cheap hotel a long way from Cannes may seem attractive, but when you miss the last bus back at night and have to fork out for an over-priced taxi, you suddenly realise it wasn’t such a great saving after all.
Last year I stayed about two miles west of Cannes in La Bocca, conveniently situated on the Ligne 1 bus route and a railway line running both to Cannes and Nice. I was keen to have easy access to both those transportation lines this year as well; I knew their timetables; I knew their costs. Using hotels.com, I found Les Residences du Soleil (Le Chateau des Artistes), a few stops further out along the Ligne 1 and railway line. At UKP288 for four nights, it was considerably cheaper than last year’s hotel. I’m very lucky that such a good deal was still available with less than two months to go until the festival. It even has one more star than 2010’s Hotel Neptune. And hopefully won’t have sounds of people listening to porn seeping through the walls. At three miles from Cannes, it’s further out than I’d ideally like, but it’s still walkable if I really have to.
Again, I carefully checked the transport options before booking, particularly how I was going to get from the hotel to Nice airport for my homeward flight departing at 11:25am. Fortunately the trains start running early in France, and with Ranguin Station a few minutes’ walk from Les Residences du Soleil I shouldn’t have any problems.
Totting up the money spent so far, and estimating how much I would spend whilst in France, I realised I had saved so much cash that I could afford to stay at the glamorous Luton Ibis the night before my outbound flight, thus removing the need to kip on some airport seats. Sweet.
So, to recap, the costs were: UKP76 for the flight, UKP288 for the French hotel and UKP28 for the Luton hotel, making a total of UKP392 so far.
Month: March 2011
The Dark Side of the Earth: March 23rd, 2011
Why do we enjoy film shoots so? Why do we bond with our fellow crew and cast and feel depressed when it’s all over, even if it’s been hell?
I asked myself this question last week, when I found myself on a major downer after coming home from Shelf Stackers, a three day short film shoot with Light Films in Derby. This is the fifth short I’ve done with Light Films and although I’ve greatly enjoyed them all, I’ve never had a downer like that at the end of the shoot before. Normally I only get that feeling after feature shoots, when I’m thrust cruelly back into the real world after three or four weeks of eating, breathing and sleeping film.
I think the common thread is adversity. Shelf Stackers is set in a shop, but – not for the want of trying – the producer was unable to secure a location, so the art department was forced to build a set. I don’t think any of them really had any prior set-building experience, there was no money to speak of, and a supermarket is a pretty tough thing to replicate anyway, so it was an uphill struggle for everyone. The day before the shoot started, they had nothing but a few bags of recycling to use as products on shelves, but when we came to shoot the shop – there it was. (Well, one aisle of it anyway.) As if that wasn’t enough of a challenge, we ended up shooting until 1am one day after falling behind schedule.
It seems a fact of human nature that we bond in the face of shared adversity. That’s why many of the cast and crew who’ve worked on my films say they really enjoyed it – even though (let’s be frank here) the shoots were complete cluster fucks.
Well, that’s my thought for today. There’s nothing tangible to report. We wait with bated breath for developments on Dark Side. We wonder whether I’ll be able to get financing to go to Cannes. We speculate on the possibilities of a Dark Side TV mini-series. We debate how best to fend off 3D with a stout stick. And we write abstract blogs.
The Dark Side of the Earth: March 16th, 2011
Technology. On and on it advances. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity or remorse or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until… well, you get the idea with that.
In the earliest years of my filmmaking career, you could safely say I was filled with fear, but after a while I could film anything you please – some shirts, some trousers and a few LPs. (Arrrggh! Stop quoting things and get to the point.)
In the earliest years of my filmmaking career, I kept up-to-date with all the latest techie developments. Ironically, from today’s viewpoint, there was barely anything to keep up-to-date with. Mini-DV and Final Cut Pro hit in 1999, the year I got into the industry, and for about a decade the low-end video world stayed the same. You shot on Mini-DV; you edited in FCP. The only real development in that time was the shift from VHS to DVD as the final delivery medium.
But lately things have gone nuts. HD arrived in all its various flavours. For a while it seemed like things would continue much as before, with HDV replacing Mini-DV in a fairly seemless manner, but no. The unstoppable T-800 of technology marched on.
Web-based video was becoming more and more prevalent, holding off the desire for HD in many corporate jobs, but bringing various format compatibility issues until Flash won out. At the same time, tapeless shooting was becoming a reality, again with a confusing array of formats and settings. Tapeless still scares the hell out of me whenever I have to delete my rushes during the shoot, an action which every nerve in my body screams against. And then there was the DSLR hybrid revolution, and now 3D is becoming affordable (though, I suspect, extremely poor-quality 3D).
This whole subject has been occupying my thoughts a lot lately, as my current camera is nearing the end of its natural life and I’ll soon have to invest in a new one. The first two cameras I owned for professional use, a Canon XM1 and XL1-S respectively, both seemed like the perfect cameras for me at the times that I bought them. I can’t say I’ve been as happy with the next camera I bought, a Sony A1, but I chose it mostly because it seemed like clients would all be asking for HDV very soon, but six years later this still isn’t the case. At least it was a fairly straightforward decision; back then the only options in my price bracket were Mini-DV and HDV. Now the choice is bewildering.
My ideal camera has recently been released – the Panasonic AF1 – but unless there’s a major change in my finances, I won’t be able to afford it. A number of the DSLRs appeal, but there are issues: the rolling shutter effect, the audio complications, the need for accessories like viewfinders and shoulder braces to make it practical to shoot moving images with.
Last weekend I DOPed a short film using a Panasonic DVX110 and a Red Rock adaptor which allowed me to use Nikkon 35mm lenses. The results were beautiful, my sole regret being that the chip at the back end of the rig was only standard definition. The experience made me keen to ensure my next camera is capable of using 35mm lenses. After all, with the DSLR explosion currently going on, footage shot on tiny chips with a huge depth of field is soon going to look as cheap and old-fashioned as analogue video.
I’ll keep you posted on how my camera choosing develops.
The Dark Side of the Earth: March 9th, 2011
Only those of you with long, white beards will remember my journal for The Beacon. (Maybe I’ll re-upload it some day.) Running from spring 2001 to summer 2002, it followed the making of my first “professional” feature film, a UKP3,000 actioner which essentially took the plot of Michael Bay’s 1997 Alcatraz romp The Rock and transposed it to the Malvern Hills. While trying to find a suitably ridiculous action sequence to cap the third act of the script, I was given some typically sage advice by my friend Rick: “You don’t need lots of fast vehicles and things blowing up if you have stuff going on with the characters.” And I thought then, as I think now, how great it would be to have stuff blowing up AND things going on with the characters.
Well, if you DO have a long, white beard and you DID read that journal, you’ll know that the finished film had nothing going on with the characters anywhere in its 75 minute running time. The Dark Side of the Earth, I hope, does. Today I wrote a new scene where two characters are arguing as things blow up in the background. Conflict, character and action all in the same frame – I’m living the dream. Well, not quite, because the dialogue’s a bit rubbish at the moment. But in theory the dream is being lived.
Other things are happening, besides me just sitting at my computer and bashing the keys until a line of Shakespeare comes out, but I can’t really talk about them. Not the positive ones at least. I don’t think there’s any harm in saying that a couple of companies that attended last week were impressed, but won’t consider getting on board until we have a cast attached and a detailed budget – a.k.a. “The Package”.
So we just need to hire a casting director and a line producer and get those done, right? Well, yes, but we don’t have any money. We need development financing. Hence the many applications to public funding, and we all know how those turned out. Although you might not know how the Screen South one turned out, because I didn’t mention it. They gave us UKP1,000, most of which is already gone. And you definitely didn’t know how the John Brabourne Award application turned out, because I only got the email the other day. I did not get it.
D’oh.
The Dark Side of the Earth: March 2nd, 2011
Yesterday was a big day for Dark Side: the day the pilot got screened to potential producing partners. With such things there is always the foolish hope that the screening will end with one attendee leaping from his chair and demanding to know immediately who he should make the multi-million pound cheque out to. This did not happen. Shocking, I know.
But it went well. Most of the people who said they would turn up did indeed turn up (which doesn’t always happen with these things), and they all seemed to enjoy it. We ended up running the lovely 35mm print four times, spilling out of our allotted timeslot at both ends. (Incidentally, the first run was at 24 frames per second, and the others were 25fps. As many times as I’ve seen it, I can’t tell the bloody difference. Carl detected some slight flickering in the highlights on the 24fps run, but honestly, listen to the advice of the Guerilla Filmmakers’ Handbook and always shoot at 25pfs. 24fps just isn’t worth the hassle.) Big thanks are due to the staff of Soho Screening Rooms for accommodating those extra runs for us.
Before the screening we met with a producer who gave us some daunting information about film marketing. To reach the sort of audience Dark Side aspires to would cost around UKP5 million in UK advertising, he reckoned, and over UKP20 million in the US. Ouch.
Afterwards we met Quay and discussed the last few niggling niggles in the script. I really can’t describe how nice it is to be left with such trivial changes to make after all that brain-mangling plot fiddling. It’s best summed up in the words of a character from Tamara Drewe who’s just finished a productive day of writing: “I feel like a man who’s just passed a gargantuan stool.”
Stop press! This morning a few emails have flitted back and forth in response to yesterday’s screening containing some very good news. I’d better say no more at this point, except that I feel we’ve taken a great step forward.