This morning we screened the pilot again in Soho. I got up at 5am to catch a train to London to attend this event, but whoever’s in charge of the signals between Didcot and Paddington (Network Rail?) was not on my side. I got to Paddington 40 minutes late and missed the first and most important screening.
I suppose you’re expecting a rant about how terrible the trains are. Well, you’re not going to get one. I think I’m the only person in the world who is reasonably satisfied with the the UK’s railway service. Since giving up driving a decade ago – after realising that I was definitely going to kill someone if I didn’t – I’ve travelled by rail a hell of a lot. Not as much, perhaps, as those poor unfortunates who commute by train five days a week. If I did, maybe my views would be different. I rarely travel at peak times, so unlike those wretched commuters I usually get a seat and the fares are generally affordable.
Nonetheless, I believe my opinion is still perfectly valid when I say that I find UK rail travel to be a rather pleasant experience. For example, I’m writing this blog on a train. Could I do that in a car? No, not unless I wanted to puke up everywhere. What about a coach? Same problem. (And let us not forget my negative coach-based experience in January, with the patronising driver who put me off National Express for the foreseeable future.) I can read a book. I can get up and go to the loo. I can wander to the buffet cart and purchase some food. Extortionately priced food, admittedly, but no more so than that you might find in a motorway service station.
Okay, you’re thinking, so train travel is better in principal, but what about in practice? What about the price? If you’re travelling alone, off peak or having booked in advance, trains are, at worst, the same price as the fuel for the same car journey. And you don’t have to tax, insure, maintain or MOT your train. (“Sorry, mate. Your emergency alarm handle’s bust and we’re waiting for the parts to come in.”) Alright, but what about all the delays? Well, the thing is – there aren’t that many of them. Honestly, there really aren’t. This morning’s experience was unusual. And hopefully I’ll get my ticket at least partly reimbursed. Do Texaco reimburse you for your tank full of petrol if you’re late to your meeting because the traffic’s awful? No, they do not.
Yes, there’s still plenty of room for improvement: more branchlines, better Sunday services, cheaper peak-time fares, less mugger-friendly stations. But that’s only going to happen if passenger numbers are sufficient to pay for the investment. Someone’s got to make the first move.
Hmmm, this wasn’t meant to be pro-train propaganda when I started. I was going to write about the law of diminishing returns as it applies to screening attendance, and perhaps touch on the plans for Cannes. Sorry. Next time I promise the post will actually be about Dark Side.
The Dark Side of the Earth: April 22nd, 2011
This afternoon I updated my shotlist for The Dark Side of the Earth to reflect the changes made to the script last month. The main purpose of this list, at present, is to arm me against the barrage of questions I will face from any serious financier or producing partner. Thanks to this comprehensive 54-page document, I will be able to explain exactly how every single shot in the film will be achieved, what will be miniature, what will be full-size, how many versions of the Fixer puppet will be required and what actions will be required of each one, how many days of motion control shooting will be needed, etc, etc.
This raises the issue of how prepared a director should be with their shots. Where do you draw the line between sensible preparation and stifling of creative spontaneity?
I’ve storyboarded many of my films in their entirety. Soul Searcher, The Beacon and even the original Dark Side had big folders of my dodgy storyboards generated for them, and I stuck to those boards very closely. Because I had to. On all of those films I was not just the director but the producer and DoP too. I didn’t have time on set to come up with shot ideas, so the storyboards were essential.
On Soul Searcher I also dabbled with previsualisation, creating a videomatic for the climactic Hades Express sequence using a Lego train. This proved most useful in post-production, when I could use the Lego shots as placeholders in the edit and show the clips to the model-makers.
As regular visitors to this website will know, a few years ago I created several Dark Side sequences in videomatic form (which can still be viewed on the video page), and I also had some scenes storyboarded, although the script has changed so much since then that much of this work is now sadly redundant. It was done as much to relieve the creative pressure on the inside of my skull as anything else.
If the film gets greenlit, my new shotlist will doubtless be translated into storyboards for most if not all of the movie, and many key sequences will probably be re-prevized (if such a term exists).
Because of the scale and expense of Dark Side, it would be foolish not to plan to the nth degree, but I’m very keen that the dialogue scenes remain loose enough that I can react to the performances on the set, adapting my shots and coming up with new ones to best compliment what the cast do.
The Dark Side of the Earth: April 18th, 2011
Yesterday’s Dark Side ’96 reunion was a lot of fun. Six of the eight cast came along: Matt Hodges (known to some as the frontman of defunct West Midlands punk outfit King Monkey), Chris Jenkins (known to fewer as “Jenkins” from The Beacon), Dave Abbott, Gaz Parkin, Si Timbrell and of course my humble self. Sadly we had been unable to get hold of Conrad Allen or lead actor Lee Richardson. But we were joined by a very special extra guest whose identity I shall not reveal. Camera duties fell to my good friend Rick Goldsmith, while Ian Preece did sound work in more ways than one.
It was a lovely day and once again it hit me how completely we failed to appreciate the beauty of Malvern when we were growing up there; it’s only when we visit it now that we realise how lucky we were. Chris was particularly lucky, having a huge dell for a back garden – and it was this garden that drew us to film there back in the day, and indeed back in the yesterday.
Just like back in the mists of time, burning things featured high on the agenda, and many cans of WD40 were cast into the flames. But the makers of this flammable product seemed to have wised up to its explosive capabilities and redesigned their cans so they just leak a massive jet of flame instead of blowing up when heated, so Gaz bravely went back to the fire and inserted my Nivea For Men deodorant, which promptly gave us a proper explosion. (Don’t try this at home. We tried it at home and it worked out totally fine, but you might be an idiot.)
I was relieved to find that it wasn’t just me that remembered things about the shooting. I was interested to hear the responses people gave when I asked them why they took part in the film – some of which were quite amusing.
Although things seemed quite tight time-wise, and we did go past the planned wrap time of 6pm, we got it all done and everyone got to leave at a reasonable hour.
While I’ve been writing this entry, Gaz called to tell me – sod’s law – he’d just bumped into Lee. Apparently his phone had been in for repair and he was gutted to discover he had missed the reunion.
The Dark Side of the Earth: April 13th, 2011
This coming Sunday is the 15th anniversary of production wrapping on the original amateur version of Dark Side of the Earth. To celebrate, I’ll be reuniting with many of the cast in Malvern Wells, where much of it was shot. As is always the case with shoots, however simple they might seem, complications arise. In this case we’re under a little time pressure because the cameraman isn’t available in the morning, and the cast all have to travel back to other corners of the country in the evening for work the following day. Can we get it all done? Will anyone be able to remember anything? And how will we get around the absence of lead actor Lee Richardson? Watch this space.
Soul Searcher: Looking Back
This week I worked on a corporate in Derby and stayed with my friends Tom and Chrissa, owners of the production company, Light Films. They hadn’t seen Soul Searcher, despite hearing much about it, so I took a copy of it along and we watched it one evening. It’s been a few years since I’ve watched the film, so I was interested to see how I would feel about it after all this time.
The opening 15 minutes seemed slow and clunky (I was reminded of Jonny Lewis’s comment in Going to Hell: The Making of Soul Searcher that the first cafe scene should have been cut tighter), but after that the movie found its feet and I was pleasantly surprised at how well it stood up. Our script definitely needed about four more drafts doing before we shot it though; it’s very sloppy.
Whilst I feel I could get better performances out of some of the cast if I was doing it again today, I’m very proud of the way I told the story (such as it was) through camerawork and editing. The sound design, Neil Douek’s mix and Scott Benzie’s score are all first rate and raise the production values significantly, as do the many varied and interesting locations. Unfortunately some of the FX let the side down, particularly the barely-mobile banshee (if only I could have found a few more quid to allow a more articulate puppet to be built) and the charming but misjudged stop motion ascension of Ezekiel. On the other hand, David Markwick’s spectral umbilical cords, James Parkes’ Moat of Souls FX and many of the incidental things like the portals work really well. The miniature train is pretty effective too, though perhaps some of its earlier shots should have been trimmed down.
All in all, The Guardian summed it up very accurately when they said “it looks great and moves beautifully” but it suffers from “an implausible and, at times, confusing script, and some barely regulation acting.”
The Dark Side of the Earth: March 30th, 2011
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.
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.