Right now I’m in the middle of shooting The One That Got Away, a tale of an old man, the sea and a mermaid, told using marionettes. Puppets are a fairly new thing to me, my one prior brush with them being the seven-foot-tall Wooden Swordsman in The Dark Side of the Earth. Here are some things you might want to consider if you’re thinking of going all Thunderbirds yourself…
Puppets are slow. Expect your shoot to take at least twice as long as it would with live actors.
Puppets can’t do much. You’ll need to break your shots into small chunks because it’s difficult to make a puppet do multiple different things in the same take. In the edit you’ll find yourself favouring the wider shots because the body language of the puppets will typically be far more expressive than the face.
Make time for rehearsals. It’s a lot of work to build puppets and you may forget, or run out of time, to make sure they will move convincingly ahead of the shoot. Even an experienced puppeteer will need time to get to know your puppets in order to get the best out of them.
Think carefully before building your sets. Are they going to be big enough to get the shots you need without seeing off the edge? There can be a tendency to focus on making everything work for one master wide shot, but what about your reverses – is there enough set for those too? And where will your puppeteers stand/sit/crouch/lie to operate the characters? If you’re using marionettes you must consider the strings as well, ensuring that no part of the set or lighting equipment will get in their way.
Sound design and music are important to any film, but with puppets and animation they will often have to do more than their fair share of the work to breathe life into the characters. Get someone good on board to take care of this vital area.
Reflectors are incredibly useful tools, whether you’re a one-man crew or a DP on a big set. And with a 5-in-1 reflector costing only around £10 on Amazon there’s really no excuse not to own one. Here are some of the things you can do with one of these:
On a cloudy day, use the SILVER side to bounce light into the shadows on your subject’s face.
On a sunny day, use the WHITE side for the same purpose (the silver side would be bright enough to make the subject squint) and to put a nice white reflection in the subject’s eyes.
To simulate firelight, bounce a lamp off the GOLD side of the reflector and wobble it gently.
Use the BLACK side for negative fill, useful when shooting in a room with white walls to get some shape and definition back into your subject’s face.
Strip the reflector down to the TRANSLUCENT WHITE centre and rig it on a C-stand above the subject’s head to reduce and diffuse harsh sunlight.
Two reflectors, one below and one above frame, perform functions 2 and 5 respectively. (Georgina Sherrington as Kate in Stop/Eject)
My recent trip to the Cannes Film Festival was my fourth, but I still learnt several new things and re-learnt old things that I’d forgotten since my last trip:
The Market Guide – a sort of Cannes bible containing contact details for everyone attending – is available Argos-style at the back of the Riviera Building by the escalators. Getting a copy of this book was always a big advantage of having an expensive market badge rather than a free festival pass, so having free access to it is very handy. The staff at the UK Pavilion are usually happy to look stuff up for you in their copy too.
There is a free left luggage service to the right of the casino in the corner of the Palais des Festivals.
Antibes, ten miles out of Cannes, is a popular place to stay because it’s cheap yet easily accessible by train. A weekly rail pass is only 8 Euros.
Wifi at the festival is awful, so save any screeners, photos etc. to your mobile device before leaving home/your hotel.
When networking, show your trailer/screener/photos as soon as possible to prove that you are (a) a doer, not just a talker and (b) a filmmaker who delivers high production values. From the response our Stop/Eject and Ashes materials have got, we can only assume that most people’s materials don’t look as good as ours. Showing trailers/screeners also gets the attention of other people nearby or even across the room, which can lead to further networking opportunities.
Also when networking, it is not cheating to talk to people you already know. Often they will introduce you to people you don’t.
Delices Yang, the Chinese Restaurant I mentioned in a previous post as a good place to eat cheaply, has had a makeover and is now more expensive, but is still competitive – especially as it’s all-you-can-eat.
Attending the Cannes Film Festival and Market for the first time can be a big shock; it certainly was for me back in 2005. Here are some of the things I learnt from that first trip.
Filmmaking is a business, not an art. Films are bought and sold like tins of beans, and profit – or the reliable promise of profit – is the driving force behind it, just like every other business.
Many more films get made every year than you could possibly imagine, and crucially many more films turn a profit than you might expect. The industry does not consist of only Hollywood blockbusters and micro-budget indie fare. There are also hundreds of formulaic low budget films that most of us will never see, but nevertheless find an audience and make money, typically on straight-to-DVD release or in foreign territories (even if they were made in English). There is a living to be made if you can get into this section of the industry, though it may not be exactly what you always dreamt of.
Name actors are everything. When I went around the market in 2005 asking all the distributors if they were interested in buying a fantasy action movie (Soul Searcher), the first question was always: “Who’s in it?” It is almost impossible for a film to make a profit unless it has elements (a name actor, a name director or it’s based on a successful book, game, etc.). For the same reason you won’t get a film financed without one of these things attached.
Don’t believe anything they tell you. Cannes is home to more horseshit than Biff Tannen’s car. Most meetings you have, no matter how positive they seem, will ultimately come to nothing.
There are many, many talkers but not so many doers. If you go to Cannes having actually made a film, particularly a feature, you will immediately command some respect.
Of course, it is one thing to read this stuff in a blog, but another entirely to learn it firsthand. If you want to be a filmmaker, I strongly suggest you attend the festival at least once so you can truly understand the industry you’re getting into.
Business cards are exchanged at a prodigious rate in Cannes.
With Cannes approaching fast, here are some things you definitely shouldn’t leave out of your suitcase:
Comfy shoes. Because of the way the festival and market are laid out, you do a HELL of a lot of walking in Cannes. Yes, the festival has glamour after dark, but during the daytime you want your most comfortable walking shoes on. Even so, pack plasters too, because you will get blisters.
Sunglasses and sunblock. Most meetings take place on the sun-decks of the pavilions on the seafront. It’s a hard life in Cannes, it really is.
Business cards. Cannes is the biggest filmmakers’ networking event on the planet. You will collect a massive stack of business cards and you should be prepared to hand a lot out.
French phrase book. Although everyone speaks English at the festival, this may not be the case at your hotel, in restaurants, etc.
Materials. Take something to show people, be it a press kit, a one sheet, or the film itself on your smartphone. If it’s the latter, a pair of headphones and some sort of hood to keep glare off the screen are strongly advised. Again, most meetings will be in bright sunlight and with plenty of chatter going on around.
The first day of shooting on Stop/Eject. Photo: Paul Bednall
Like Janus I’m looking forwards and backwards today, the first anniversary of Stop/Eject‘s shoot beginning. First of all, here are a few key things I’ve learnt from making Stop/Eject:
Pay people. It’s not worth the stress and hassle when unpaid cast and crew pull out at the last minute.
With the project drawing near to completion, my thoughts are turning towards my next films. As regular readers will know, writer Tommy Draper has been working on a feature-length version of Stop/Eject for some time.
However, I feel that trying to get a feature financed with me as director right now wouldn’t be much easier than it was a couple of years ago when I was trying to get The Dark Side of the Earth made. So I intend to make another short film first. It’s too early to reveal any details, but I can tell you that after advertising on Shooting People I’ve teamed up with a writer called Kevin O’Connor who is currently working on a third draft script based on a one-line idea of mine.
I’ll also be entering Virgin Media Shorts again this year, and my wife Katie is hard at work on a puppet for that. Intrigued? You ought to be.
Stay tuned for the latest news on all of these projects, and I’ll leave you with a reminder of what we were up to this time last year.
I’ve recently booked my flight and hotel for this year’s Cannes Film Festival and Market. This will be my fourth Cannes, and I’ve been trying to get the cost down every year. Here are my top five tips for saving cash on the Côte d’Azur:
Get free festival accreditation by applying as soon as registration opens (usually the start of February). Make sure your IMDb page is up-to-date to prove you’re active in the industry.
Book early to get the best hotel deals. Adam Hale tipped me off about an extremely cheap campsite with mobile homes – Parc Belle Vue – but it was already full by the time I decided I was going to Cannes this year.
Stay somewhere on a bus route (timetables and maps here). Relying on taxis can quickly destroy your budget, but the buses in the Cannes area are only one Euro for a single ticket and run until about midnight.
Slash your food and drink budget by living off canapés at parties and carrying a water bottle which you can continually refill from the cooler downstairs in the Palais des Festivals. If canapés don’t fill you up, Delices Yang on Rue Emile Negrin is cheap and cheerful if you can handle all the MSG.
Save around ten Euros each way by taking the train from Nice airport to Cannes, rather than the tourist-baiting 210 bus. Board the free airport shuttle bus, alight at L’Arénas and from there Nice St. Augustine railway station is just a five minute walk (map here).
Consulting with editor Adam Hale (left) and director Brendan O’Neill (right). Photo: Anneliese Cherrington
Last weekend I participated in my first 48 hour film challenge, serving as both director of photography and postproduction supervisor. This is the first time I’ve ever done the latter role and I made the huge mistake of failing to prepare for it. This, coupled with the fact that I wasn’t around during the start of the editing process because I was busy DPing, meant that some avoidable errors were made. We got the film finished on time to a good standard, but I learnt several things that will be useful if I ever take on the role of postproduction supervisor again.
Here are the top five things I’d recommend to anyone wishing to have a quick and painless postproduction process:
Sit down with the camera and post departments before the shoot to make sure everyone knows the workflow and what’s expected of them. This includes agreeing on a format and frame rate to shoot, and a format to edit from, and making sure that all hard drives and memory sticks to be used during post are formatted appropriately so they can be read by all the computers being used.
Have a dedicated clapper person on set and make sure they understand the importance of getting the right info on the board. Too often on a low budget the job of slating is given to a crew member with several other responsibilities, increasing the chances of them writing the wrong thing on it and confusing the hell out of the editor. (We got this right on last weekend’s shoot, and it helped enormously.)
Beware of shooting too much footage, particularly if you have a B camera or second unit. We had so much that there simply wasn’t time to view it all in post. Also avoid shooting series (multiple takes without cutting in between) as a time-pressured editor will often miss the fact that there are several takes within the same clip.
Keep logs if at all possible, noting any technical problems with each take and the director’s preferences.
Ideally the DIT (Digital Input Technician) or an assistant editor should do three things once he or she has ingested the material, besides the obvious backing up: 1. Transcode the footage to ProRes or whatever format has been pre-arranged for editing, 2. Sync the sound, 3. Associate information from the logs with the clips, or at least rename the clips with slate and take number. It’s a bad idea to rename the files themselves because it can cause re-linking headaches down the line, but if the DIT has access to the editing software they can rename the clips within the bins.
Watch this space for a forthcoming interview with writer-director-producer Brendan O’Neill on the whole process of making a 48 hour challenge film. Meanwhile, here’s the film:
To finish my look back at the decisions, successes and failures of the Stop/Eject crowd-funding campaigns, here are my ten top tips based on the sum of our experiences on this project:
You need “elements” – aspects of the project which have an existing audience base, such as a name actor or a director with a strong social media following. Sometimes people will donate because the film is being shot in their home town, or maybe it’s about a subject they have an interest in. Whatever it is, figure out where that existing audience base is and what they want, and create your rewards and promotions accordingly.
Work out in advance how much your rewards will cost to produce, and reject any that aren’t cost or time efficient. I suggest they should consume no more than ten percent of your budget.
Make your pitch video professional – tightly edited, well lit, well shot and with broadcast quality sound. No-one will sponsor a filmmaker who can only be bothered posting a five minute ramble shot on a webcam. Your “elements” should appear in the video.
Whether building your own crowd-funding platform or using an existing one, make sure it’s extremely quick and easy to donate, with a minimal number of clicks.
A longer campaign doesn’t necessarily mean more money raised, but it does mean more work for you promoting it.
If you take a day off from promoting your campaign, people will take a day off from donating. You cannot sit back and expect the money to roll in. It doesn’t work that way.
Keep reminding people about your campaign, but do it indirectly by publishing new content like blogs, behind-the-scenes videos or storyboards. Most sponsors will have to see your campaign several times before deciding to donate.
The internet isn’t the only way to promote your campaign. Go to events in the real world and plug it. Take a donations bucket or hand out cards or flyers with the campaign address on.
Make people feel involved in your project, both during and after crowd-funding. Run competitions, invite feedback on things like poster designs, issue updates and answer questions.
The endorsement of a well-recognised person or entity can give your campaign a massive boost. BBC Midlands Today putting a Stop/Eject report on their Facebook page worked for us, but the holy grail is getting a celebrity to retweet your campaign link.
This Sunday I’ve been invited to give a talk on the making of Stop/Eject for the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers. Tickets are also available to the general public for £6.50, and the event takes place at Perdiswell Young Peoples’ Club in Worcester from 9:30am. The other speakers are producer/director Ben Lewis discussing documentaries and the internet, and award-winning fimmaker Howard-Smith Laci on working with actors.
My talk will cover the whole process of making Stop/Eject to date, covering crowd-funding, casting and crewing, finding locations, scheduling, design and visual themes, storyboarding, the budget, the challenges of the shoot, lighting, the evolution of the edit, and visual effects. There will be plenty of clips throughout, including excerpts from the forthcoming DVD documentary Record & Play, and specially prepared material illustrating the evolution of a scene from the script through shooting to various iterations of the edit. My presentation will end with an exclusive screening of the first five minutes of Stop/Eject in rough cut form.
Giving talks is a great way to raise the profile of both yourself and your projects, and I’d advise any filmmaker to do it if they can. Here are some tips:
They’re here to listen to you. Many filmmakers are shy and don’t like to speak publicly, but if you’ve been asked to give a talk that’s because people believe you have something worthwhile to say, so there’s no need to be nervous. Audiences will be inspired simply by the fact that you got out there and made your film – that’s something to be proud of – so talk with confidence.
Don’t read word for word. There is nothing less engaging than listening to someone read a speech. Yes, I know news anchors and politicians read off autocues, but they have had lots of training and you haven’t. I suggest that if you can’t remember at least 90% of what you’re going to talk about, you’re not qualified to be giving the talk in the first place. (If that’s the case, don’t be afraid to suggest to the event organiser that you change the focus of your talk to something you’re more comfortable with.) Certainly you should have notes to structure your talk and make sure you don’t miss anything significant, but you should speak from the heart, making eye contact with all areas of your audience. People will prefer a bit of rambling over monotonous reading any day.
Show clips. Filmmaking is one of the best professions to be in when it comes to giving a talk; you already know how to entertain an audience, and you have a lots of moving image material at your disposal to show them. I suggest you should never talk for more than ten minutes straight (ideally more like five) before showing another clip. You may want to talk live over some mute clips – behind-the-scenes footage, for example – to keep things immediate.
Rehearse the length. Give your talk to your empty living room with a stopwatch on hand, to ensure that it’s the right length for the slot you’ve been assigned. Remember to allow Q&A time at the end. I’d advise against taking questions as and when they arise during the talk, because it spoils the flow and can drag you behind schedule.
Stick around afterwards. If there are other talks at the event, always attend these if you can. You might learn something from the content of the other talks, or from the way those talks are delivered, not to mention the fact that you would want those other speakers to stay and listen to your talk. And in the breaks and mingling sessions between and afterwards you will get to meet satisfied audience members who may want to work on your future projects (that’s how I met Sophie) or give a talk at another event (that’s how I got this weekend’s gig).
