Our crowd-funding campaign has launched today. We need your help to bring Stop/Eject, a heartbreaking story of love and loss, to the screen. Donate as little or as much as you’re able, and don’t forget to tell all your friends to do the same. You can link to our Crowdfunder page or you can embed the widget (see sidebar on right) on your own site.
Although Light Films have kindly funded the development and initial pre-production, we still need money to buy more props, costumes and materials for the set, and to cover travel, catering and accommodation. For those of you who have been following my filmmaking exploits online for a while, this is your chance to get personally involved. Everyone who donates will get a thank you in the credits, plus there are various great rewards available if you donate over certain amounts, such as exclusive posters, signed artwork and DVDs of my films, some of which have never been available to own before.
Still not convinced? Check out my previous Stop/Eject blog posts to read about all the hard work that’s already gone into this project. I believe this film will be something really special, but I can’t make it without your help. Sponsor it here. Thanks everyone!
Stop/Eject is back with a vengeance. Light Films is now taking a back seat in the production, but production designer Sophie Black has come on board as a producer and we’ll be launching our crowd-funding campaign any day now. Watch this space for your chance to get involved and help make it happen!
Following on from my last post, let’s take a closer look at how part of The Beacon‘s car chase sequence was created, in particular the bit where Sarah goes flying out through her windscreen during the crash and miraculously lands on the roof rack of the villain’s speeding car. This ridiculous feat garnered a round of applause at the premiere, but how was it done?
The car crash was done for real, as previously explained, but clearly I couldn’t afford the stunt team and wire rigs necessary to catapult someone through the air and then composite in the vehicles below, which is how you would probably do it if you had a proper budget.
In fact there are no visual FX in this sequence at all. The illusion is created entirely through editing, using quick cuts of Sarah (LJ Hamer) leaning through the pre-smashed windscreen, a close-up of her legs being pulled out through the windscreen by a couple of crew members stood on the bonnet, a low angle shot against sky where she’s not moving at all, and a dummy being thrown at the villain’s car. The dummy was pulled together from whatever items we had to hand and looked terrible, but only eight frames of it were needed in the edit before cutting to an angle of LJ (already on the roof rack) dropping from all fours onto her front.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so a video must be worth at least a million. So I’ve put together a little compilation of the rushes so you can see exactly what I mean.
A decade ago I was editing The Beacon, my stupid Malvern-based action movie made for about £3,000. The Cardboard Chase is most people’s favourite scene, but a close second for me would have to be the car chase:
Setting up car-mounted cameras
Pretty silly, huh?
The car chase was shot over three days, mostly on Castlemorton Common in Malvern. It was done totally guerrilla style – no permissions, no insurance, no safety briefings, no stunt co-ordinator. The red car belonged to one of the crew, whilst the blue one was purchased secondhand for the production at a cost of £120, then taxed for £90 and insured for LJ, the lead actress, to drive at £235. (This was just standard car insurance so she could drive it on the road legally, and in no way covered it for film stunt use.)
The crash was shot on private land. The white car belonged to a friend of mine who was going to scrap it anyway. Crazy cast member Si Dovey offered to double for LJ driving the blue car towards the white one (sorry, I know nothing about makes of cars so colours will have to suffice to identify them) and miraculously came out alive, despite not even wearing a seatbelt on the second take. Getting the wrecked cars towed away afterwards (which was a major hassle) cost £75, bringing the grand total for the sequence to £520.
So an action-packed car chase can be shot pretty cheaply, but of course you shouldn’t try it under any circumstances because it’s extremely dangerous and highly illegal on public land.
Additional (27/10/11): By the way, you can download the whole budget for the film, if you’re so inclined, from The Beacon page.
Disaster has struck. My “Top Five Worst Things to Happen While Making a Film” has a new entry. It wouldn’t be appropriate to give all the details, but broadly here’s what happened.
For the last week or two I’ve been spending almost all my time on Stop/Eject and though there were a few heart-stopping moments, like losing one and almost both of the lead actors, last week it was finally starting to come together. Katie and I spent all of Thursday packing equipment, props and costumes and preparing several meals and snacks for Katie to eat during the shoot (she has allergies). On Friday morning we set out for Derby along with Colin, two cars rammed full of people and stuff.
We arrived at the house of a key crew member where we were to be staying during the shoot. I was worried to find that certain key aspects of the production were still not sorted out. Having received very little in the way of practical or moral support, my stress levels had been steadily building as the shoot approached, and now I was feeling like I could throw up at any moment.
To make matters worse, it slowly became clear that other members of the family in whose house we were staying were not happy with us being there. The final blow fell when two more relatives showed up and kicked us out of the house.
At this point the producer was forced to cancel the shoot. I then had the unpleasant task of ringing round the cast and crew – one of whom, Ray, was already half way to Derby – and giving them the bad news. Colin, Katie and I spent the night at Sophie’s house in Belper, where her parents were very kind and hospitable to us. Yesterday morning we were faced with the problem of how to get two car-loads of equipment and people back to Hereford in only one car, and in the end I had to call my parents and ruin their Saturday by having them drive up to Derby and get us.
Although I must confess to a degree of relief that I didn’t have to shoot the film with the preparations not as complete as I would have liked them to be, today it’s really sinking in how gutted I am that the film has been stopped, ejected and thoroughly chewed up. It’s now a question of not just when but if Stop/Eject gets made.
Anyone who’s followed my blogs for any length of time will know that I’m no stranger to filmmaking disasters. Here’s how my top five shape up now:
After building a 25 metre earth embankment in a muddy Gloucestershire field for Soul Searcher‘s miniature train to run along, Colin and I were forced to put all the earth back where we found it at 1am in the pouring rain without having used the embankment at all, due to the train constantly derailing.
When we wrapped on day one of The Dark Side of the Earth‘s pilot shoot – which was personally costing me over £30,000 – due to delays with the set construction and an over-stretched lighting crew, we had only shot one of the sixteen set-ups scheduled.
Stop/Eject‘s shoot being cancelled a mere 12 hours before the call time.
At the age of 19, while shooting my first paid directing job – a community drama about skateboarders and BMX riders in Droitwich – one of the kids came off his bike during a trick and fractured his skull.
Halfway through principal photography on Soul Searcher, after being battered by set-back after set-back, we discovered that footage from the previous night’s apparently successfully shooting at Doodies cafe was corrupt.
Shooting People‘s book “Get Your Short Film Funded, Made and Seen” recommends surrounding yourself with friends on your shoot. This may seem contrary to the advice fledgling filmmakers are always given not to cast their mates in their movies, but assuming your mates are professionals and talented at what they do, I wholeheartedly endorse Shooting People’s suggestion. As Michael Bay says, when he’s not busy bludgeoning cinema to death with a big CG robot, filmmaking is like war. Everything is against you – time, money, the weather – and you’re always fighting to get your shots and tell your story. So you need to know your cast and crew have your back.
This is why my filmmaker friend of twelve years, Rick Goldsmith, will be operating camera on Stop-Eject; why Colin Smith, veteran of Soul Searcher and The Dark Side of the Earth plus countless other films I’ve DPed, will be gaffering; why Ian Preece, a trusted fellow freelancer with whom I’ve shot numerous corporates, will record the sound for part of the shoot; why my lovely wife Katie is designing the costumes; and why I wrote the lead role for Kate Burdette from the Dark Side pilot. It’s also why I’m delighted to announce the casting of Ray Bullock Jnr. – Soul Searcher’s leading man – as Dan. Ray gave a great audition opposite Kate last night and I look forward to working with again after eight years.
Ray Bullock Jnr as Dan auditions opposite Kate Burdette
I know that all of these people will deliver the goods, no matter what the realities of the shoot throw at us. So although there are still locations to sort, schedules to arrange and bit-parts to cast, I feel a contentment now as Saturday’s start date approaches. Because when it comes down to it, with all these great people on board – plus great new collaborators like Sophie Black and Deborah Bennett – all I have to do is not fuck it up.
And by the way, you can read more about Katie’s work on the costumes over at her Katiedidonline blog.
The curse has struck this week, but as I write the worst seems to be over… which is not to say it won’t strike again. We’re still looking for a runner, a camera operator and a sound recordist for Oct 17th and 18th, and a make-up artist for the 15th; please get in touch if you’re interested.
Meanwhile, here’s the latest podcast, covering locations and design:
More recces last week. (Is that how you spell it? Who knows? Looks like a misspelling of recess. Actually recesses are involved too – well, alcoves to be precise.)
This time we got into Magpie, the antiques/collectibles shop in Matlock, north Derbyshire where I can now confirm we will definitely be shooting. In just two weeks’ time. Gulp. The owner is a very kind and helpful man who is happy to let us do whatever we want with the place, so big thanks to him.
Then it was back to Belper where Sophie’s contact at the East Mill Visitor Centre happened to be around, so we were able to get a look at their basement. It wasn’t quite what I was expecting but it was very, very cool, lined with unusual, Egyptian-looking pillars. I’m only posting a photo of one corner; for the full glory of it you’ll have to wait until the film is finished… assuming we get permission to shoot in there… and assuming you’re too lazy to go visit it yourself.
East Mill basement
Sophie gamely hung around while I wandered back and forth between a few nearby exterior locations, pondering hard. I was trying to balance the demands of the script with the practical and logistical impositions of the locations. I had written some scenes with the locations in mind after my first quick drive through Belper, but on seeing them up close and personal it was clear that they weren’t going to work as I had intended.
For example, braking suddenly on a bicycle on the main road bridge over the river is not something we could do safely, not to mention the sound problems we would encounter in recording the subsequent dialogue beside the road. The pretty River Gardens seemed like a logical alternative, but would it make the scene less interesting? I certainly thought so until this morning when, storyboarding on a train (a major pastime of mine lately), I realised how the gardens’ bandstand could be used to reinforce the visual theme of circles. So by moving the scene to the gardens I could make it safer, easier to shoot, easier to record clean sound, and thematically stronger. Not a tough decision to take.
River Gardens, Belper
I’ve just sent out the final draft of the script and only one scene is left to storyboard. Sophie has started turning in concept art, Katie has started buying costume pieces and Col has built the SD Mark II, a high-tech device of which the function and awesomeness I shall leave you to imagine. I must confess to being a little worried about casting, as we are still struggling to find people interested in the smaller roles. If you want to apply, you can email your CV and headshot to stopeject@lightfilms.co.uk
See how that’s a clever pun? No? Well, if you read on you will discover that this post concerns the PEAK District. Ahahahaha! All must bow down to my comedy genius. Seriously though, my least favourite thing about blogging in WordPress is that it makes you give your posts titles, and I always waste at least five minutes trying to come up with a pun-based title.
Right, so on Monday my wife Katie – who is the costumer and wardrobe supervisor for Stop/Eject – and I travelled to Derbyshire to meet with Tom and production designer Sophie Black, discuss the look of the film and recce locations. Sophie lives in the small town of Belper in the Peak District (Sneak PEAK – remember! Hahahaha!), and it was while dropping her home during the Wasteland trailer shoot that I got my first glimpse of Belper and decided to shoot most of Stop/Eject there.
The village’s most notable landmark is an old redbrick mill which looms over a weir on the River Derwent, and this was our first port of call. We considered the merits of the riverside gardens for happy scenes with the film’s central couple, and scouted about for somewhere they could safely paddle. After looking at a nice cobbled street we travelled on north to Matlock to see Magpie, Sophie’s prime choice for the charity store central to the film. Unfortunately it was closed, but we had a good peer through the window, noting that it had great character but was very small and could prove hard to light.
After lunch we went in some more shops both in Matlock and Belper, and though many were far more suited to the practicalities of filmmaking, none was as visually interesting as Magpie. Next week I’ll get to recce the inside of Magpie and make a decision.
The other location we checked out was Belper Cemetery, which has lovely views across the valley and will add a lot of value to the film, providing of course that we can get permission to shoot there.
All in all, things are going pretty well so far, but since my films are more cursed than Will Turner’s twice-cursed pirate father I’m sure it won’t be long before it all goes spectacularly wrong. In the meantime, enjoy the second Stop/Eject podcast featuring lead actress Kate Burdette – not that she needs any introduction to followers of The Dark Side of the Earth.
Friday was primary casting day for Stop/Eject; thanks to everyone who came along. We should be reaching a decision very soon on at least one of the characters.
On Saturday I ventured up to Debden in Epping Forest, where three years ago I helped out for a few days as a cameraman on Born of Hope. Born of Hope is a very ambitious feature-length Lord of the Rings fan film, directed and produced by Kate Madison. The finished piece impressed me far more than the official film trilogy, and I very much related to Kate’s struggles and determination to get it to the screen on a microbudget.
Born of Hope producer-director Kate Madison
I attended Saturday’s cast and crew reunion in order to do my first bit of shooting for a new documentary feature I have in the works. Currently saddled with the terrible working title “Living in a Fantasy World”, this doc will follow several amibitious UK filmmakers as they make or try to raise finance for their independent fantasy/sci-fi projects. Kate was one of the first people I thought of when I came up with the idea, and I look forward to following her and her partner Chris Dane as they develop their next projects, The Last Beacon and an untitled fantasy web series.
Living in a Fantasy World is very embryonic at the moment and little else is likely to happen on it until next year, but rest assured that you’ll always be able to hear the latest news on it here at neiloseman.com
