Here’s a video blog I recorded last year at the Cannes Film Festival. It’s an interview with Quay Chu, who served as script editor on my in-development fantasy feature The Dark Side of the Earth for several months. He talks about his role and gives some examples of how he helped me to shape the script.
Remember that you can get feedback on your own short screenplay, and help me to finish my current short film Stop/Eject, by visiting stopejectmovie.com/donate and selecting the £20 “Script Editor” reward.
When we created the range of rewards available to people who sponsor our short fantasy-drama Stop/Eject, we wanted to offer collaboration – we wanted to share our skills. One such reward is Script Editor. In return for a £20 donation you can have your short screenplay (up to 15 pages) read by Tommy Draper, Stop/Eject’s co-writer, with constructive critical feedback. Just click the button below to make your contribution and claim this reward.
I recently interviewed Tommy about his current projects and his thoughts on writing.
Tommy on location for Stop/Eject (from footage by Brett Chapman)
How did you get into screenwriting?
Tommy: I got into screenwriting quite a few years ago after posting my first short screenplay online on the website SimplyScripts.com. The screenplay was called ‘Same Room Same Time’ and it was read by Miguel Gaudêncio who wanted to make it (at the time he was looking to take the step from commercials and music videos into movies). It took several years but the movie was released into film festivals in 2008 and from there more contacts were made and more movies (shorts and features) have been produced.
What are you working on at the moment?
Tommy: At the moment I have 2 short films in pre-production with Hamburg based director Sascha Zimmermann. I have been working with Sascha since 2009 and over the last few years we have ended up with a backlog of screenplays we want to make. We are starting with two that are ready to go and I am about to work on new drafts of three other screenplays so these can be made in 2013 (and 2014 if necessary). My zombie feature film Wasteland is a day or two away from finishing filming by Derby based Light Films Ltd, when this is complete I will be talking to the Producer and Director about what project we want to work on next. I am talking to Stop/Eject producer Sophie Black about a feature film screenplay that she has written and would like me to come on board to rewrite, this project is in its infancy and will be worked on during 2013. In addition to all of this I have a feature film script of mine called ‘Rock n Roll Romantics’ which I have been planning on writing for quite some time and I am getting the script ready in-between projects.
Why is it important to for a writer to get impartial feedback?
Tommy: Feedback for a writer on their screenplay is very very important, a fresh pair of eyes can make all the difference. Everyone sees the story and characters in a different way so the feedback you get can identify faults or create new and interesting paths that can take your story from good to great. Getting feedback that is totally impartial is also very tough. A lot of people, especially if they know you, won’t tell you exactly what they think. A lot of the time it is more important for someone to point to out what doesn’t work more than point out what does and the best people to give you this kind of honest feedback is someone who doesn’t know you at all.
What is the most useful feedback you’ve ever received on one of your scripts?
Tommy: The most useful feedback I’ve ever received was on an old screenplay I wrote for Miguel Gaudêncio. The screenplay was written prior to Same Room Same Time getting made and after a few drafts Miguel got an established writer friend of his to take a look at it. I received a fair share of positives and negatives about the script but it was the negatives about the first act not working that helped the most. It was too long, gave away too much and made the screenplay drag. I took the suggestions and chopped out lots of scenes from the opening section (at the time I was reluctant to do this not seeing the issues) and the screenplay really took shape. I then went through the rest of the screenplay looking for cuts to make and a much leaner screenplay evolved which worked a lot better.
In your opinion, what is the best-written movie ever and why?
Tommy: Tough question this as there are so many brilliant screenplays out there. If I had to pick one movie then it has to be Reservoir Dogs. I think the script is extremely clever, the structure of the story with its flashbacks to give the characters depth is amazing. I also love that the you never see the robbery but you know exactly what happened and what went wrong. The best thing about it are the characters themselves, each one rich and totally individual. You understand their motivation and once wound up they play out their role in an honest, unforced way, which is hard skill but Tarantino masters that in all his movies. Reservoir Dogs was the first time I had seen a movie and then read the screenplay, it has been a massive inspiration on me ever since.
Last night we launched a special collection of new rewards for Stop/Eject sponsors. Available only until midnight next Friday, these rewards are already going fast, so grab yours quickly before they’re all gone. At the time of writing, a screen-used poster, one personalised cassette and four t-shirts are still available.
The Tape Collection
In the top right is the genuine poster seen behind Georgina Sherrington (Kate) and Oliver Park (Dan) in the living room scenes of Stop/Eject, signed on the back by yours truly. At bottom left is a unique opportunity to have one of the screen-used cassettes from the film relabelled and beautifully calligraphed by Sophie Black with a date and 90 minute time segment of your choice (though please note the tape is actually only sixty minutes long). There’s only one poster and one personalised tape available, so don’t miss your opportunity to scoop them up.
Bottom right is a Stop/Eject t-shirt featuring Alain Bossuyt’s competition-winning poster design. These are printed to order in your size, and we only have four more available at the time of writing. Thanks to Sam Tansley for modelling this.
This is a pretty esoteric post, I’ll warn you now.
Some of the Stop/Eject behind-the-scenes footage was shot on a Canon camcorder set to “24P Cinema Mode”. It took me ages to figure out how to convert this material to 25 frames per second without the motion becoming very jerky. So I’m going to set down how I eventually did it, in case it can help any other poor souls in the same situation. I was working on an iMac with Lion and FCP Studio 7.
The 24P footage I converted includes a dual interview with Kate (Georgina Sherrington) and Copy-Kate (Katie Lake), shot by Laura Iles and Kurt Baker.
What is 24P Cinema Mode? It’s aimed at American users, and emulates how “real” movies look when they’re broadcast on US TV. Real movies are shot at 24fps and telecined to 30fps (actually 29.97fps, but we’ll say 30 for simplicity’s sake) which is the standard frame-rate of American TVs, DVD players and so on. 24P Cinema Mode captures 24 frames per second and converts them, as the camera is recording, to 30fps. It essentially does this by duplicating every fifth frame and using interlacing to smooth out the motion. This is known as 2:3 pulldown. More expensive cameras embed metadata in their 2:3 pulldown footage so that software like Final Cut Pro can automatically restore it to genuine 24fps, but the material I was working with had no such metadata. I believe it was shot on a Canon Vixia HF10 or similar.
Step 1: Converting to 1080i60 Quicktimes using Adobe Media Encoder
The other problem I had with the footage in question was its format: AVCHD (identified by a .MTS file extension), which Macs don’t really like. Final Cut Pro will convert them via the Log and Transfer window, but only if they’re on an SD card or a disc image of an SD card. But I’d been given the footage on a data DVD, and copying it to an SD card did not fool Final Cut. After much trawling of the magical interweb and trying various free applications that didn’t work very well, I discovered that Adobe Media Encoder accepts MTS files. (If you don’t have the Adobe suite, you can buy an application called VoltaicHD that will apparently do the job.)
So here are the three transcoding stages I went through to convert the material into editable 1080P25:
Step 2: reversing the telecine effect using Compressor
I used Adobe Media Encoder to convert the source files to Quicktimes. I chose the HDV 1080i60 codec and retained the interlacing, field order (upper first), frame size (1440×1080 anamorphic) and frame rate (29.97fps) of the original material.
I followed the method on this web page using Apple Compressor. In a nutshell, you take an existing preset – say one of the ProRes ones, if that’s the format you like to edit footage in – and alter two things: the frame rate, found by clicking the video Settings button in the Encoder tab, and the deinterlace option, found in the Frame Controls tab. Set the former to 23.976 and the latter to Reverse Telecine (after first enabling the Frame Controls by clicking the small gear next to the on/off pulldown menu, and selecting On from said menu). At this stage you can also resize the image to true HD, 1920×1080. The resulting video file should be genuine 24fps with no interlacing.
Next bring your 24fps file back into Compressor and drop another preset onto it. Again, use ProRes or whatever your codec of choice is, but this time make sure the frame rate is set to 25fps, deinterlace is NOT set to Reverse Telecine and, at the bottom of the Frame Controls tab, where it says “Set Duration to”, click the last radio button, “so source frames play at 25.00 fps”. What this does is to speed up your video about 4% so that it runs at 25fps. This is the smoothest way to convert 24fps to 25fps, and the speed difference will not be noticeable on playback. In fact, whenever you watch a movie on UK TV it is sped up like this.
Step 3: retiming to 25fps with Compressor
If you’re in any doubt as to whether it’s worked, step through the video frame by frame in Final Cut and see if there are any duplicated, skipped or interlaced frames.
Of course, after all this transcoding, the image quality will have suffered a bit, but at least the motion should be smooth. Has anyone out there found a better method of doing this? I’d love to hear from you if so. Alternatively, if you want any more details on the steps above, just leave a comment and I’ll be happy to share them.
The moral of the story is, if you’re in the UK, don’t use 24P Cine Mode. Just like shooting 24fps on celluloid, it unnecessarily complicates post-production. Stick to 25fps and everything will come up smelling of roses.
A camera operator needs batteries, lenses, cards, filters. A wardrobe supervisor has racks of costumes. A sound recordist carries a dead cat on a stick. But a director needs only his folder. Like Her Majesty’s handbag, the contents of this hallowed portfolio have forever been a mystery. Until now.
Here’s what I kept in my Stop/Eject folder while shooting the film:
To-do list
The first thing I see on opening the folder is a to-do list. These are all things that need doing the day before the shoot begins, including things that I need to pack in the van for the journey up to Derbyshire.
Budget
A copy of the production budget comes next, with highlighted figures like catering and travel being the ones that are still available to spend.
Schedule
Next up is the schedule, one of several documents I can satisfyingly cross parts off as the shoot progresses. You can download the schedule here.
Contacts
A list of contact details for the cast, crew, locations and people we’re borrowing props and equipment from.
Script
Then we come to the script. The fact that it’s this far back in the folder tells you how many other things a director who is also co-producing and has no AD has on his mind. Ideally the script and the storyboards would be the only things in my folder. You can see that I’ve drawn tram lines. Normally a script supervisor does this during shooting to indicate which part of the scene a shot covers, but I’ve drawn them in advance to remind me which part of the scene I want each shot to cover.
Storyboards
The largest section of my folder is the storyboards. The ones with the pink highlights are shots I felt would make good production photos, the idea being that we would switch the camera to stills mode after the take and snap a few – but we usually forgot.
Lighting plans
Next are the lighting plans for each location. I covered these in detail in my lighting breakdown posts.
Artwork
Sophie’s concept art is next. Not much use by the time you’re in production, since it’s all been built and dressed already, but nice to look at.
A new Stop/Eject behind-the-scenes video has been released, featuring an interview with leading man Oliver Park.
Thanks to Sophie for editing this video. You can visit Oliver’s website at oliverpark.co.uk and remember you can watch the trailer for Stop/Eject and help the film get completed over at stopejectmovie.com
Stop/Eject‘s poster competition closed yesterday, and I’m delighted to reveal the winning design:
Winning poster by Alian BossuytRunner up: Jesse Peraza
This design is by Alain Bossuyt of Le Plan B. Sophie and I felt it would really stand out amongst other movie posters. We loved the retro colour scheme, very similar to that which we used in the movie, and the clever way of combining the romance with cassette-based intrigue.
Alain wins two tickets to the premiere and a signed copy of the DVD. His poster will be used to promote the film from now on.
Choosing the winner was tough, and there was one design which was just pipped to the post by Alain’s. It’s Jesse Peraza’s entry (right). We thought it would make a great DVD cover, so we’ve awarded it second place. Jesse wins a DVD too.
There were other great entries, but we felt these two best represented the tone of the movie. Thanks to everyone who took part.
This image of the stairs gives you a flavour of Magpie’s building-site-ness. Photo: Colin Smith
Stop/Eject‘s post-production crowd-funding campaign has been stuck at £440 for a little while now. As gentle encouragement to anyone out there who hasn’t contributed yet, or intended to but has forgotten or just not got around to it yet, here’s a taste of what we went through to make this film. What follows is a record of what it was like to stay and work in Magpie, Stop/Eject’s main location. Lest we forget.
First off, let me say thank you once again to Matt Hibbs, who was extremely kind in letting us use his premises not only as a location but as crew accommodation too. I don’t think I’ve ever met such a helpful and laid-back location owner, and without his positive attitude the shoot would have been much more challenging. So nothing that follows should be construed as a complaint. We knew what we were getting into, and we certainly got far more from Matt & co. than we had any right to expect.
Magpie once occupied just the ground floor of a four storey Victorian building. At the time of our shoot (late April), Matt had just purchased the upper floors, formerly a B&B, and was in the process of expanding his shop into them. So while the ground floor remained a working shop (and our key location), the rest of the place was a building site. Most of the refurbishment was taking place on the first floor, with the second and third storeys being used, prior to our arrival, for storage of tools and stock.
Katie loads the van at the back of Magpie. Photo: Colin Smith
The first thing I noticed when we arrived there the day before the shoot was that it was a lot dustier than I remembered from the recce. Everything was coated in brick dust, which made noses itch, throats dry and eyes water throughout the shoot. Sleeping in the building probably wasn’t very wise from a health point of view, even after Katie had hoovered.
Besides Katie and I, Col, Rick and Johnny were staying there too – four nights for most of us. We set up airbeds and sleeping bags in some of the second floor rooms. The first couple of nights there was loud music pumping out of the bar next door. And it was cold. The only radiator we ever found working was on the ground floor, at the back of the shop. Everywhere else was damn chilly by 3am.
Not to mention dark. Many of the light fittings had no bulbs in, and torchlight was usually required to find your way around at night.
Ablutions were another issue. Matt and his builders had kindly reconnected the plumbing in the second floor bathroom, so in theory we could shower, although stepping out of it into the freezing bathroom was not fun. But after the first night the hot water was found to be leaking into the shop, so Matt had to disconnect it. So it was cold showers, strip-washes or trips to Sophie’s place after that.
Deborah Bennett makes up Libby Wattis in our kitchen-cum-HMUW-cum-Colin’s-bedroom. Photo: Katie Lake
We brought a fridge with us, lent by Nic Millington, and a microwave and toaster, and Col’s hot plate, so we were able to make rudimentary meals. There was no potable water in the building, so we had to use bottled stuff from Sainsbury’s.
We were all very glad when Tuesday arrived and we could shift camp to Sophie’s house. Apart from Johnny, who claimed he got a better night’s sleep at Magpie. There’s no pleasing some people.
I encourage you to see our sadomasochistic sojourn at Magpie as a sponsored suffering. For example, you could sponsor us £5 a night for living in the conditions I’ve just described – that’s £20 total – and you’d get a digital download and an invite to the premiere. Sound like a good deal? Head on over to stopejectmovie.com and make your donation so we can complete Stop/Eject and make living in Magpie worthwhile.
Magpie’s upper floors (formerly a B&B) extended above the neighbouring bar, Twenty Ten. Photo: Colin Smith
Over the last few weeks, four test screenings of Stop/Eject have been held, at Hereford College of Art, at a friend’s house, at a book club and at The Rural Media Company‘s youth filmmaking group Shoot Out. Thanks to all the hosts and audiences for making these possible.
Test screening report form
Although these screenings were all small in scale, none of them having more than a dozen attendees, it’s still a large number of screenings, certainly more than I’ve ever done before for a short or even a feature. That fact reflects the level of difficulty in editing Stop/Eject. It’s probably the toughest thing I’ve ever edited. It has very little in the way of plot, but instead relies on a single character arc to propel the film forward. So the audience is dependent on very subtle cues – facial expressions, shot juxtapositions, music – to follow what’s going on. Get one of those wrong and they won’t follow it, and they won’t engage emotionally.
The Stop/Eject screenings revealed the usual things – which scenes were unnecessary or slow, and which moments were confusing. One thing that caught me completely by surprise is that a few people thought one cameo female character was male, which gave them an utterly incorrect interpretation of that scene.
That’s when you need to put yourself to the test / And show us a passage of time.
The passage of time is something else that the test audiences have struggled to pick up on; many people thought the film was set over a few days. It transpired that seasonal costumes, Christmas lights in the background of a scene and a shot of autumn leaves falling into the river were not sufficient cues. With each successive screening I added more and more cues, and people still weren’t getting it. In the end it was clear that I either had to flash up a title card (“Three months later…”) or take the advice of Team America and use a montage.
As this song suggests, montages are pretty cheesy, but to my mind they’re less of a cop-out than a title card. Plus a montage allowed me to incorporate shots from deleted scenes, and I always get a kick out of finding new and unexpected ways to use otherwise discarded footage.
Photo: Paul Bednall
The montage was inserted for the final test screening, and it must have worked, because no-one thought the events of the film happened over too short a time span.
But many of the issues that arose in the screenings were very much foreseen because they came up at script stage. Clearly they weren’t addressed adequately enough back then. One day I’ll learn that you can’t get away with ignoring any problems in your script. They will all come back to bite you in post.
Anyway, the edit as it currently stands is pretty good, and I think all involved in the project would be proud of it if I went ahead and locked it now and turned it over to the sound, music and VFX guys.
But I don’t think it’s reached its full potential. I think it could be even better, and so does Stop/Eject’s brand new executive producer, Carl Schoenfeld (who will be known to my long-term followers as the producer of The Dark Side of the Earth). So we’re now on the hunt for another editor who can take the film to the next level. This means post-production will take longer than anticipated; the film won’t be finished in 2012, but it will be the best it can possibly be, and that’s the most important thing.
Always fade out at the end of a montage /If you fade out it seems likemore time has passed in a montage….
Today I’m going to take a brief look at what you can do to shape natural light when you’re filming outside and you don’t have the budget for big HMIs or massive silks hanging from cranes.
Firstly, choose the right direction to shoot in. Work out where the sun is going to be at the time you need to film the scene and decide whether you want to shoot into the light, with your back to it or at an angle. There are iPhone apps that will tell you where the sun’s going to be if you’re too lazy to figure it out for yourself. Remember the sun moves left to right across the sky in the northern hemisphere.
Amateur photographers are often told not to shoot towards the sun. This is simply because amateurs will be using auto-exposure, which will close the iris right up as soon as the sun flares into the lens and leave you with a silhouette. As a professional, you’ll be setting your camera manually, so you can expose for the shadows and let the backlight from the sun blow out beautifully.
Here’s a shot from Stop/Eject where we made the most of this effect, and really lucked out with the reflections in the water:
All the evidence you need that shooting towards the sun is good.Using a reflector on the banks of the Derwent. Photo: Paul Bednall
Out the bottom of frame is a reflector, bouncing some of the sunlight back at the actors – and it’s being wiggled by a crew member to suggest it’s a watery reflection.
Collapsible reflector
If you don’t have a reflector you should drop what you’re doing and order one now off Amazon. They’re less than £10 and have a reversible zip-off cover giving the options of white, silver or gold surfaces to reflect off, or black to block light. If you remove the cover entirely you’re left with a translucent white disc which can be used to diffuse light, as we’ll see shortly.
If you choose to shoot with your back to the sun, you won’t be able to affect the light in your wide shots without big-budget gear, but you can transform your close-ups.
Let’s look at another example from Stop/Eject, before we did anything to the light:
Before
Georgina Sherrington (“Kate”) is facing directly towards the sun, which is behind and above camera. As you can see, the light is incredibly harsh and the shadows are so dark that you can’t see her eyes; an effect that would only have got worse had I stopped down to prevent the highlights blowing out.
Two reflectors were required to sort this out. The first, with cover removed, was held over her head so that the sunlight hitting her face would have to pass through the translucent material and be diffused. (The diffusion is actually less significant than the amount of light the material blocks.) A second reflector was held out of the bottom of frame, bouncing sunlight back into the shadows on her face and putting a sparkle in her eyes.
After
A much nicer image.
If it’s a cloudy day – and let’s face it, this is the overwhelming likelihood here in the UK – the above techniques will still work, but much more subtly. If you have access to a power supply, try to set up a lamp to get some eye-sparkle and fill in your actors’ faces.
In 2008 I DPed a short set entirely in a forest: Into the Woods, directed by Matt Taabu. I knew that getting light into people’s eye sockets was going to be a major challenge, so I insisted on hiring a battery-powered 200W daylight par. We put a layer of tough-spun diffuser on this and the gaffer hand-held it for most shots, aiming it into the talent’s face. You can see the eye-sparkle it produced in this production still:
Branko Tomovic in Into the Woods (2008, dir. Matt Taabu). Photo: Alex Bender
So if you’re DPing a daylight exterior, don’t think that means you can rest on your laurels. It’s still up to you to create the right mood and make the talent look their best.
