“We will not go quietly into the night. We’re going to live on. We’re going to survive! Today we celebrate our independence day.” Yes, today here in Pioneer Valley and all over these glorious US of A those cheeky Yanks are celebrating kicking us Brits out for good. Didn’t do a very good job, did they?
I’m disappointed to find that watching ID4 isn’t a traditional part of the festivities. That movie had the largest number of miniatures ever in a Hollywood film. It was made in that brief era when the high price of nascent CGI forced filmmakers to use a combination of traditional and digital techniques to achieve their FX. Those CGI USAF planes look a lot more convincing for the fact that the alien Destroyer they’re flying towards is a lovely big model. I still don’t get why Will Smith didn’t see the dirty great ship as soon as he stepped out to get the newspaper though.
But enough of that. I’m here to tell you that The Picnic is now available to view on the Virgin Media Shorts website. The more views it gets the more chance it has of winning, so if you can spare two and a half minutes to give it a watch I would be very grateful indeed.

The Super-8 footage came back from the lab. Unfortunately a lot of it is out of focus. We carefully measured all our focal distances with a tape measure, so I can only conclude that one of the lens elements in the camera was loose or out of alignment. So I was glad I took the precaution of shooting everything on HDV too.
It didn’t take me long to edit the material, and the composer is now working on the music. Virgin Media Shorts limits entries to 140 seconds in length. I thought The Picnic would run to 90 seconds, but the assembly came in at 170. With a lot of trimming I shaved 12 seconds out, then I cheated. Since I was treating the HDV material to look like old film, I figured I could get away with speeding the whole movie up slightly, which would enhance that look and get it down to the target length.
Colin has plenty more Super-8 cameras in his arsenal, and hopefully for the next project we’ll have time to test one beforehand.

Five things I like about Super-8, the format:
1. It’s film, so even though you may have bought the camera for a fiver at a car boot sale, it will give you more beautiful images than the most advanced digital rig Lucas or Cameron can come up with.
2. It forces you to be disciplined on set because the cartridges are so short.
3. The anticipation of your footage coming back from the lab is simultaneously nerve-wracking and delicious.
4. Does your video camera have a trigger? No, it has a boring REC STOP/START button.
5. You can shoot real slow motion.

Five things I like about Super-8, the J. J. Abrahms movie (no spoilers):
1. The guy from Early Edition is in it. Remember Early Edition? That show rocked.
2. It’s not in 3D.
3. It has an evil military guy in it. All the best movies have evil military guys in them – Short Circuit, Flight of the Navigator, DARYL, ET… And the kids are like the Goonies. The only thing missing is the Truffle Shuffle.
4. Like Abrahms’ previous offering, Star Trek, it perfectly balances action, emotion and humour. There’s something here for everyone.
5. It’s not a sequel, prelude, remake or reimagining. It’s not based on a video game, a book, a comic, a Broadway show or a theme park ride. It’s (gasp!) original.

In my last post I touched on shooting ratios, and the great discipline and focus that film, even Super-8, can give you because of the expense of the stock. Today I just want to expand on that a little.
I always used to think of myself as a director who only shoots what he needs and doesn’t do loads of takes. I was forced to revise that self-image somewhat after principal photography on The Dark Side of the Earth’s pilot. My first time shooting on film – and 35mm at that – saw me shooting six or more takes of many set-ups. Okay, it was tough to get the swordplay and the inflatable germ suit and particularly the puppet Swordsman to do what they were meant to, but still I should have been more economical.
When it came time to shoot the pick-ups and miniature shots, I resolved to mend my ways. To be honest, my hand was forced by the tiny budget I had left to spend – which could not stretch to purchasing more stock. We could use only what had been left over from principal, plus a couple of short ends Ollie contributed.
So I had to focus. In practice that meant three things:
1. Rehearsing and rehearsing and rehearsing until we got it perfect, and only then going for a take. Not rehearsing it for a bit and then saying, “Okay, let’s go for a take and see what happens.”
2. Recognising when I had a satisfactory take. How many times have you been in the edit and used take one or two, forsaking the four or five takes that came after? Plenty, because a lot of the things you think are important when you see a shot in isolation (a little camera wobble, for example) are completely unnoticeable once they’re cut into the scene.
3. Making the crew understand that they had a very limited number of takes in which to get it right, so that they would raise their games too.
Everyone rose to the challenge, just as they did on the set of my Super-8 short The Picnic the other weekend. But could I apply this philosophy in a very different scenario? Could I keep my shooting ratio down on one of my paying corporate gigs?
Well, on Monday I had the chance to find out, as I directed a series of educational webisodes in the style of a Gok Wan-type make-over show. Within a few minutes of first turning over, I could feel the discipline slipping away from me. Unlike the Dark Side pick-ups and The Picnic, this shoot had dialogue, opening the doors to line fluffs and obtrusive background noises as potential take-wreckers. Both of these reared their ugly heads early on. What could I do about this? How could I make everyone raise their game, since everyone knew we were shooting on video? Only by moving onto the next set-up after just one or two takes repeatedly at the start of the day, showing everyone that they had to get it right pretty much first time. Unfortunately, by the time that idea occurred to me we were several set-ups in and I’d let some of those run to four or five takes. D’oh! (And when I edited the first set-up the next day, I used take one – just goes to show.)
But in the end, thanks to copious rehearsals, I did get my shooting ratio significantly lower than I would have done without attempting that focus and having that 35mm and Super-8 experience. If nothing else, this benefits me in the editing suite through having less extraneous material to wade through.
On a completely unrelated topic, I am writing this at 36,000ft over the coast of Canada. One of the plane’s audio channels is playing eighties hits. They have a brilliant slogan which runs thusly: “Have you had a fall and you can’t get up? Then you probably remember the eighties.” Harsh but true.

On the video page you can now view the trailer for Video8, the documentary covering the reunion of me and my old schoolfriends who made the original amateur version of The Dark Side of the Earth back in 1995-6. The documentary itself is still being edited and won’t be finished for several weeks yet, and I still haven’t decided whether I’m going to put it online or not when it’s done.
On Thursday Katie and I are off to the US to spend some time with her family, who we haven’t seen in 18 months. While there, as you know, I’ll be sending off The Picnic (yes, it has a title now), my Super-8 short to be processed, and indeed I’ll have to edit it and enter it into Virgin Media Shorts while still in the States. Try to behave while I’m away. I shall be very cross if I get back and find that you’ve had a wild party in the UK in my absence and got vommit all over the upholstery.