Pain is temporary. Film is forever.

April 28, 2012 neilosemanshooting

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.

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.

T minus two days

April 18, 2012December 30, 2013 neilosemancasting, costume, crewing, directing, producing, production design

Sophie's partly dressed living room. Well, not her living room. The living room she designed. — Sophie’s partly dressed living room. Well, not her living room. The living room she designed.

Hooray, I’m finally looking forward to the shoot! On Tuesday I cast a new Dan – Oliver Park – which was the last major hurdle to overcome before production. Our crew is all in place, all the minor roles are cast but one, all the locations and props are lined up, and the costumes and set are nearly finished.

So it’s looking good. It has been a real struggle getting to this point though. More than half the original cast and crew have had to be replaced – mostly due to them getting booked in the last couple of weeks for paying jobs that clash, though in a couple of cases due to hospitalisation! If you’re a veteran Neil Oseman blog reader you’ll have heard of The Curse of Soul Searcher. This is The Curse of Stop/Eject.

In all seriousness, I don’t think I’ll ever make another film (except simple ones like The Picnic) unless there’s money to pay everyone. It just isn’t worth the stress and hassle caused by having to re-cast and re-crew when people pull out. It’s actually got easier to find people the closer we’ve got to the shoot, presumably because people can be more sure that they won’t be doing any paid work on the shooting dates, but aside from anything else it’s a nightmare for the costume department when they don’t know their lead actors’ sizes until a few days before the shoot.

Sophie has been very busy this week, building the alcove set and painting and dressing some of the upstairs rooms at Magpie, not to mention doing calligraphy on 600 cassette inlays.

Katie has been running around the charity shops of Hereford, looking for the last few bits and pieces, and dying and altering things here at home.

I’ve been drawing up the schedule, going through storyboards with Rick (the camera op), chasing things up, getting paperwork in order and talking to the actors about their characters.

I’m so glad we didn’t shoot Stop/Eject last October. We are a million times better prepared now. The only thing that doesn’t look like it’s going to co-operate is the weather.

This will probably be my last post until after the shoot. We’ll try to update the Facebook page at least once a day, internet connection permitting, and rest assured we’ll be building up a tasty backlog of behind-the-scenes podcasts and blogs.

I want to start shooting tomorrow. I can’t wait two days. That’s how good I’m feeling about it right now.

T Minus One Week

April 13, 2012June 2, 2012 neilosemancasting, lecturing

Quite a manic, stressful week….

Tuesday afternoon’s auditions were enjoyable, but unfortunately I didn’t find anyone who was quite right for either of the roles. The threat of having to postpone the shoot started lurking around again. This is something I really wanted to avoid, because I didn’t want to mess everyone around again. And indeed we have avoided it, as I will shortly explain. (Just to be absolutely clear for any cast and crew who are reading, we are NOT postponing the shoot.)

On Wednesday I travelled to Birmingham for the final fundraising lecture. A small but interested audience listened to my ramblings and placed coinage in the sacred flashing bucket at the end of the night. Thanks to Ort Cafe for hosting the event, and to Brendan O’Neill for hosting me overnight.

Sophie and Therese (who’s playing Alice, the shopkeeper) put me in touch with some other possible actors and I met a couple in Birmingham on Thursday morning. Sophie also decided to try calling a more established actress to see if she was interested in the role…

…and she was, so I’m pleased to announce the casting of Georgina Sherrington, best known as the eponymous Worst Witch in ITV’s late nineties children’s TV series. I look forward to working with her.

As casting has been the main theme of my week, I thought I’d dedicate the rest of this post to answering the question: what am I looking for in an audition? Someone that will make my job as easy as possible. It sounds incredibly lazy now I’ve just written it, but it’s true.

Assuming a person is a competent actor with decent range, with some rehearsal time you should be able to mould them into any character. But rehearsal time is something you often don’t have on a micro-budget short, and you certainly haven’t got time to do a lot of experimenting with the actors on set. So if only for practical reasons, you want to cast someone who requires minimal direction.

I also tend to find that people who have the right look for a role are more likely to have the right personality and thus require less direction too.

Intelligence is also part of it. I always look very favourably on actors whose audition readings show they have fully understood the words they are saying. For example, when casting the lead role in Soul Searcher, there was a line in the audition sides that went: “I could count them all on the fingers of one hand.” Ray Bullock Jnr, who got the part, was the only auditionee who held up his hand when reading that line. A small thing, you might say, but I say it’s very telling.

Similarly, when Benedict Cumberbatch auditioned for Max in The Dark Side of the Earth‘s pilot, he was the only actor who read the word “galley” (meaning a kitchen on a ship) correctly, instead of assuming it was a typo for “gallery” like everyone else.

There are other things I’m looking for too, like screen presence, charisma (if appropriate, and it usually is in some form or another) and a personality that will be pleasant to work with, but essentially the ideal actor is the one who requires the least guidance to portray the character in my head and imbue the dialogue with the meaning I intended.

Ups and Downs

April 8, 2012 neilosemancasting, financing, lecturing, production design

The hero tapes, beautifully labelled by Sophie

There was a glorious 48 hours about ten days ago when everything was going our way on Stop/Eject. We had all our key cast and crew, all our locations, most of our props and costumes and we seemed well on the way to getting everything we didn’t have in time for the shoot.

Then people started dropping out. First the lead actress, then a sound recordist, then the lead actor. This, unfortunately, is the way it goes when you can’t pay people. You can’t expect them to put the film first. No amount of advance planning can change that.

So on Tuesday I’m off to London (nine hours round trip on National Express – the closest you can get to hell on earth) to audition a new cast. Exciting, but scary because of the limited time remaining before we shoot.

And on Wednesday it’s up to Birmingham for the final fundraising lecture – 8:30pm at Ort Cafe, 500-506 Moseley Road, B12 9AH. Find out how my feature film Soul Searcher was financed, made and distributed, with plenty of clips, behind-the-scenes footage and amusing anecdotes. As usual entry is free, but donations will be welcomed.

And by the time that’s all over there will be little more than a week before we shoot.

Despite the setbacks I’m feeling pretty positive about the whole thing. Almost every aspect of the production has been improved by the postponement from last autumn – including the props, some of which you can see here. Roll on April 21st!

Retro Librarian

April 3, 2012April 10, 2017 neilosemancostume, guest blog, preproduction

Today we have a special guest blog from Stop/Eject‘s costume designer, Katie Lake. She’s going to explain how the costume vision for Alice, a.k.a. The Shopkeeper, has changed since we originally geared up for shooting last October.

The shopkeeper for Stop/Eject has changed pretty drastically since the first draft. Originally an old man, the character is now being played by a woman. To get across the idea of her being old, Neil (the director) originally liked the idea of Victorian costumes after the actress wore Victorian-esc clothes to the auditions. It probably also had to do with the fact we filmed a pilot set in the Victorian era and hashed through enough costume options together to have the Victorian era etched permanently into our brains. But having a little extra time to mull over the character and how to portray Neil’s imagining of the character through costume, I became fixated on the idea of a 40s/50s librarian look.

Tiles in the shop location that we wanted Alice's costume to match with — Tiles in the shop location that we wanted Alice’s costume to match with

Neil wanted her to look like a shop keeper for a charity (thrift) shop, and so many of the women who volunteer at them seem to be themselves stuck in the 40s and 50s clothing wise. I also felt it fit better with the overall retro theme, and didn’t give too much away about the shopkeepers background (no spoilers so I’ll leave it at that!). After discussing it with Neil, we decided to go for the idea, and came up with a color palette as well. Neil was eager to have the costumes fit into the color scheme we’ve already picked for the film, as well as with these beautiful art nouveau tiles that line the shop we’re using as a set. Which were mustard yellow and olivey green. I knew I wanted to add browns, cream, tan, and maybe a splash of maroon to the palette. To get the 40s/50s look I knew I wanted wool plaid skirts, blouses and cardigans, short pearls, rounded-toe 1-2″ heels, and retro glasses would be a bonus.

Alice's watch and glasses — Alice’s watch and glasses

After gathering some reference photos on pinterest, I headed out to charity shops looking to see what I could find. After a few different searching days, I’d come up with a couple skirts, a pair of 40s looking trousers, a couple blouses and cardigans, a broach, some pearls, and a coat. After every shopping trip I’d lay the pieces out on the floor and mix and match them. The more things I found, the more the outfits would come together until there were just a few pieces missing. At that point I was able to figure out exactly what I was looking for to finish off the 4 looks. When you have specific items on your list, it’s much harder to find what you are looking for than when you had a general idea and color palette. Instead of looking for any wool skirt size 12 or larger (as long as it can be taken in) in greens, golden yellows, brown, tan or cream, I was now looking for a tan or light-medium brown colored wool skirt in a solid or subtle pattern. I was also getting pretty desperate for shoes. After realizing I am the same size as the actress (shoe sizes are different in the US and UK) and looking through my collection I found a suitable maroon pair, leaving me with only a saddle tan or navy pair to find. After searching numerous charity shops while paying a visit to the actress for fittings, we found the last skirt and navy shoes. A couple days later my ebay finds arrived- a nurses watch and retro glasses- finishing off my list.

Here are the photos from the fitting – the skirts have been pinned so I know where to shorten them too, and each has to be pulled in (that’s why they are looking a bit bulky)- so the look will be more streamlined once the alterations are done. I’ll also add the details, like nude stockings, the nurses watch, glasses hanging around her neck, and HMU will do wondrous things with her hair.

Next up I’ll do the alterations, organizing/cleaning/iron or steaming the costumes, and breaking down the costumes on paper (in an xls file) so I (or the actress) don’t have to remember what goes with what on the day (and in case I get sick or injured someone else will be able to fill in).

I’m also still working on the male lead’s costumes- as all but 3 of his costume pieces were returned last year, and with the additional costs of all the shopkeepers outfits, I now have to dress him with half the budget. Did I mention he was a hard-to-find size as well?

Visit Katie’s costume blog at www.katiedidonline/costumes for more on Stop/Eject and other projects.

Crowd Sourcing

April 2, 2012June 2, 2012 neilosemancrowd sourcing, equipment, production design

Dedo, de-e-edo. Dedo come and me want to go home.

Loyal readers, once again I need your help. Do you own any of the following things? Would you be willing to lend them to us for the Stop/Eject shoot? (In most cases we would need to collect them on April 20th and return them on the 26th or soon after.)

A lady’s vintage/retro bike
Any empty cassette cases
A camera jib (small enough to be used indoors)
A mini-spotlight kit (Dedolights or similar)
An HMI (any wattage considered)
Any fast Canon EF(S) prime lenses 85mm or longer
Walkie talkies

Rest assured your items will be well looked after, and in return you’ll be credited on the film, receive an invite to the premiere, a DVD copy, and a free download of my indie feature film budget and sales exposé How to Make a Fantasy Action Movie for £28,000.

Also if there’s anything we can lend you in return, we’d be happy to do it. (I have some Canon DLSR camera kit, shoulder rig, tracking dolly, basic lights and so on.)

Since our travel budget is limited, we could really only borrow things that are located in or near Hereford or North Derbyshire, or somewhere en route between those two places (e.g. Birmingham).

Finally, if there are any unsigned bands out there who have an angry-sounding rock/metal/punk song we could use a little bit of in the film, please get in touch.

Contact me on: neiloseman [at] googlemail.com

By the way, let me assure any of you concerned by the cryptic ending of my last post that no-one has died or been injured or anything terrible like that. But unfortunately we are having to look for a new leading lady. The shoot dates have not been changed.

Back to Derbyshire

March 31, 2012April 10, 2017 neilosemancrowd funding, lecturing, location, recce

Explaining how some of Soul Searcher's low-tech VFX were done — Explaining how some of Soul Searcher’s low-tech VFX were done

On Tuesday afternoon I headed up to Derby for Five Lamps’ Film Night at The Quad. The turn-out for the event was good, with several old acquaintances unexpectedly in attendance, plus a distant relative I’d never met before. After a nice selection of short films were screened, including Sophie’s excellent Ashes trailer, it was time for me to get up and witter on about Soul Searcher for an hour or so. The talk was well received and some intelligent questions were asked at the end.

The one that got away was this big... — The one that got away was this big…

Most importantly, the Stop/Eject donations bucket – beautifully decorated by Sophie with flashing lights – had nearly £60 in it at the end of the night. Big thanks to Sam and Carl at Five Lamps for hosting the event and to everyone who gave so generously.

The next day was to be an intense Stop/Eject recce day. But the first task was to shoot scene 20, a GV of the river in Belper with autumn leaves being washed away. This had to be shot while there were still leaf-less trees around, which there won’t be by the end of April when principal photography commences. Katie and I had collected the leaves before Christmas and now it was time for them to have their fifteen minutes of fame.

I set up the camera on a little dock and Sophie started sprinkling the leaves into shot. They did not wash away as I had hoped. They pretty much stayed put. And all the ducks and geese and swans came over and tried to eat them because they thought we were feeding them bread. D’oh.

After that we popped into a nearby furniture store to enquire about using their power supply and a space for hair and make-up when we film in the River Garden next month.

Checking out the weir at Willesley. Photo: Sophie Black

Then it was time to pay Sophie’s grandparents a visit and – after some subtle attempts to convince her grandma to play Old Kate in the film – we set off with grandad on a recce tour of the Derwent Valley. The main aim of this was to find a weir that was more suitable for filming on than the dramatic but inaccessible horseshoe weir at Belper.

Our first stop was Willesley, where we walked down to the river behind Masson Mills. And we immediately found the perfect weir. I spent quite a while checking out different angles and considering how my planned shots would work there.

Next stop was Magpie, the shop in Matlock that we lined up last year as the film’s key location. This was the big shocker. I knew from talking to Matthew, the owner, on the phone, that since last October he had purchased the building’s three upper floors and was in the process of expanding the shop into them. The reason I wanted to recce again was in case the ground floor had been changed during this expansion. And indeed when we arrived there we discovered it had, which will necessitate some minor changes to the shots and blocking.

But then we took a look upstairs. This used to be a B&B, and many of the rooms are intact and not currently in use by Magpie… Rooms that are perfect for filming the flat scenes in, and the nursing home. And rooms that we can even stay in during the shoot. All the outstanding locations and the accommodation problem all sorted in one fell swoop! Matthew, you are a legend.

After this we returned to Belper and the basement of Strutt’s North Mill, as featured in my lighting previsualisation blogs recently. There I conducted some quick white balance tests on the overhead fluorescents while Sophie measured the bobbin crates which we’ll be using as shelves for the cassette tapes.

There was just time for a chat about how the cassettes should be labelled and a look at the suitability of Sophie’s kitchen as the location for a brief scene before I had to catch my train home.

All in all, a very successful and productive trip. So much so that it seemed something had to go wrong to balance it out, and indeed I got some bad news yesterday regarding the cast. But more on that some other time.

Stop/Eject: Pre-production Update

March 26, 2012June 2, 2012 neilosemancostume, lecturing, producing, recce

Tomorrow night is my Soul Searcher lecture in Derby in aid of Stop/Eject. I’ll be talking about how I got my feature film funded, made and distributed, with plenty of clips and amusing anecdotes (that were far from amusing at the time, I can tell you). Find out all the details at the event page on Facebook.

There’s plenty for me to do on the train up there – most importantly going through the storyboards and altering them to fit the revised script.

Staying in Derbyshire, Sophie and I have a packed schedule for Wednesday, with lots of weirs to recce, some crates to measure, props to approve and a GV to shoot.

Get a sandbag like this for a £10 donation

Meanwhile Katie is off to Smethwick for a costume fitting with Therese Collins, a.k.a. Alice, the character formerly known simply as The Shopkeeper. Expect a guest blog from Katie about that soon.

Remember, even if you can’t get to Derby, you can still contribute to the production by clicking the donate button in the righthand sidebar. And we’re still offering a free sandbag with mainland UK delivery for every £10 you donate. See my earlier post for more info on that.

Less than four weeks to go until we shoot…

“It’s a Film.”

March 24, 2012June 2, 2012 neilosemanwriting

Recently I revisited the Stop/Eject script. Yet another advantage of delaying a shoot is that you can get some distance from the project and come back to it with fresh eyes.

I’m still very happy with the script in most respects, but one thing stood out to me. The shopkeeper, one of the three main characters, appears out of nowhere on page six. (I took great delight in being able to write the stage direction, “As if by magic, the shopkeeper appears.”)

This now seems extremely convenient. It’s deus ex machina. Where was the shopkeeper when Kate and Dan first came into the shop and looked around? Where was she when Kate started experimenting with the tape recorder?

Because the shopkeeper is a magical character, I felt like I could get away with her being mysteriously absent from the first few scenes. Subconciously, I was thinking, “It’s a film.”

“It’s a film.” As in, “It’s only a film.”

If you’ve ever been involved in a low budget movie project, you’ve probably heard this phrase more than once.

A well-meaning crew member asks, “How come John didn’t notice when Susan was writing that text?” The director shrugs his shoulders and replies, “It’s a film.”

A producer asks, “How did Anne know when Bob was going to walk by?” The harassed writer replies, “It’s a film.”

It’s a film, so we can accept massive coincidences. It’s a film, so we can accept logic problems and the odd plot hole. It’s a film.

I have come to loathe this phrase in recent years. Because what it means is, “I’m a lazy filmmaker and I do not respect my audience.” And if you don’t respect your audience, they will not engage emotionally with the story, and your film will fail.

I want people to watch and enjoy Stop/Eject more than once. I don’t want them taken out of the story by wondering why the shop is completely unstaffed for the first five minutes.

So I’ve written her in. It took a bit of effort to come up with reasons why she wouldn’t interfere with what Kate’s doing, but that actually led to a richer and more believable characterisation. Win, win.

So next time you’re tempted to answer a legitimate logic query with “It’s a film,” ask yourself: if you don’t care about this movie, why should your audience?

Soul Searcher Previz

March 22, 2012August 3, 2013 neilosemanpreproduction, previsualisation, video, videomatic

Back in 2003 when I was developing Soul Searcher, I tried my hand at making a videomatic for the first time. A videomatic is a kind of previsualisation, like a moving storyboard that shows not only the camera angles but the pacing as well, and often gives an idea of how the music and sound effects will work with the scene and what the VFX requirements will be.

Nowadays previz is usually CGI, but back in the day it was not uncommon to build crude miniatures of the props and people in a scene and film the previz in the form of a videomatic using a camcorder or lipstick camera. Pat McClung and co, when prepping James Cameron’s Aliens, made Drop Ships and APCs out of cardboard boxes and pulled them on strings through landscapes formed from rumpled paper and blankets. A decade later, when planning his deep dives to the Titanic wreck, Cameron had his team build a model of the ship and like-scaled models of the submersibles, so he could previz the shots they needed to get on the ocean floor. Phil Tippett went to the trouble of animating Jurassic Park’s previz in beautiful stop motion, demonstrating not only the angles and movement Spielberg wanted for the real scenes, but the lighting as well. Even Peter Jackson’s cutting edge Lord of the Rings trilogy employed cardboard mock-ups and a video camera to previz the flooding of Isengard.

In that fine tradition I attempted this videomatic for Soul Searcher:

Shooting a videomatic for The Dark Side of the Earth. Photo: Ian Tomlinson

Looking back on it now, it was quite a lazy attempt and suffered greatly from the poorly drawn storyboards, which are very hard to interpret, especially when bits of them are cut out and pasted onto the live action footage. Although I found making this videomatic very useful for my own process as director, and many of the Lego train shots were cut into the film during post-production until the final miniature shots were ready, it wasn’t much use for showing other crew members what work needed to be done. In fact, when I brought the model-makers on board in 2004, I decided to draw a new set of nice, neat storyboards rather than show them the videomatic.

My videomatic skills improved, however, and by 2006 I was shooting a series of them for my new feature project, The Dark Side of the Earth. You can view some of them here.

Neil Oseman

Director of Photography

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