A Production Diary

Diary Entry One

I'm currently in pre-production for my film school final piece, a ten minute short film that I'm shooting at the end of this month. Anyhow I thought it would be helpful for me, and for others, if I kept a production diary of all the things that go wrong (and right) in the pre-production, production and post production processes.

So let me start...

The film is currently titled 'Woolies' and is based on the closure of the shops in the Woolworths chain at the tail end of 2008 and start of 2009.

In its self this has raised one immediate problem. Location. As a rule people tend to recommend that people who are doing short films on a tight budget don't do period pieces. What they tend to be referring to is stuff set during the reign of Henry VII, during the Victorian Era or during the Great Depression. But it could extend up to the 60s, 70s and even up to the 90s.

But you'd think you'd be pretty safe with a couple of years ago and I reckon that most people would be. But now I have to create a chain of shops that no longer exist and that's not so easy. All of the shops in the UK have now been replaced, mainly by things like Poundland and Wilkinsons, and this has meant that getting my mitts on an empty shop isn't proving easy. I contacted one locations manager who had a perfect location but for £1500-£2500 per day... that's a little bit too dear for my tastes...

Hopefully I can wangle a decent location off the West London Film Office who are operated by the council and therefore shouldn't (although everything I know about the council tells me they will) try to take too much of my precious budget.

The second road block is actors. I popped casting calls up on Casting Call Pro and Talent Circle (two of the biggest actor directories in the UK) and received about 150 applications. I have arbitrarily whittled these down to about 15 actors that I want to audition for two of my four roles.

I have also been using Spotlight (the UKs top agented (if that's a word) actors directory) to contact the agents of various actors whose faces I'd recognise. I've been surprised how many agents have got back to me within a couple of hours saying that their client might be interested and can I send a script through. I doubt I'll be able to get any of these actors but, all the same, it's an encouraging phenomenon.

So on Wednesday I'll be auditioning my actors and hopefully by then I'll have a better idea of locations. What will I do if I can't get an actual shop? I don't know. I don't want to consider it. What do people recommend? I have a sound stage at my disposal and could, hypothetically, build some sort of set on it but that seems kind of tricky.

Please feel free to offer me advice and criticism as I journey through the experience of this short film. I have the majority of equipment provided by the school (although I'll address additional equipment rental in another post) and also a professional DOP (which is great) but other than that they're pretty useless. Hopefully this thread will be interesting for people in my position to see what sort of problems they can avoid and, hopefully, how to overcome others...
 
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As if to further prove my technological incompetence it turns out that I was just looking in the wrong folder... :blush:

Anyhow it's uploading now so if anyone'd care to take a butcher's at it then I'd be mighty grateful/let me know!

:)
 
Diary Entry Six

Well, I've been a little bit slack about updating this diary, especially given the rush I've faced to get through the editing process. We had our test screening (rough cut) last Friday and despite the fact that there was no feedback process to really gauge reaction from, I reckon it went well enough. I've now posted a rough cut on Vimeo to send to cast and crew as well as the Indietalkers who have expressed an interest on this thread (let me know if I've forgotten anyone!).

I've been using Final Cut Studio at home for the past couple of months but I'm not a very technical person. I can put together a scene fine but when I start to have mini crises I lose the will to live. For the reason I've been doing most of my editing from the film school where I can get technical support if and when I need it. I decided to edit it scene by scene, rather than as one project and this has meant that in the rough cut the transitions between the scenes are not as smooth as I might like. Still that doesn't seem to have been a major area of concern for anyone who's seen the film so far.

I've been speaking to an audio post production chap (who I contacted via Indietalk) about doing a little bit of Foley and cleaning up some of the disturbance caused by a combination of protesting vuvuzelas and circling helicopters. To be honest the audio that on set was such a big issue doesn't seem to be that much of a problem now, but it will be great to get that sorted out. My composer was due to come up to London from Portsmouth last Wednesday but we decided to reschedule until after he has been on a choral tour to India, so that we have plenty of time to record at a proper piano. I think that a nice score could make this movie really cool especially for the timelapse scene. I've also received the voiceovers for the start and finish of the movie which were missing from the rough cut- it's just a case of getting them worked into the film.

After that all that's left at school is a day with the professional grader who comes in to sort out the grading on all the student films. Please point out any colour/lighting problems in the film, if you watch it, so that I know what to ask the grader for help with correcting. After that it's upwards and onwards into the big bad world. I'm already starting to cast my mind ahead to another project. I'd love to do a bit more work on some other people's films, if they exist, and at the same time I'm considering if/how I want to approach my next project. There are things I really like about Woolies and other things that I've just found really frustrating, so it's a case of trying to iron out the crinkles whilst keeping all the things that went well. But I guess that's part and parcel of the filmmaking process.
 
Well, I'm just putting some of the final touches to the edit and I have a question. This is possibly only applicable to those people who've seen the rough cut:

I have an opportunity to use some eyewitness footage of one of the Woolworths stores on closing day in my film. The footage is quite low quality but I think it might look quite cool interspersed within my footage as little mini montages. How do other people feel about that? Would it just be naff? Would it be confusing? Or would it give it a scale that I can't achieve with my limited location?

Cheers!
 
IMO, I think it could work at the very beginning or end. Not so much interspersed with the narrative/vibe that you've created in the short.

Don't forget to let us know when you've got it all done :)
 
It certainly would be very easy to duplicate your main sequence and do an edit with the footage worked in somehow. As Dready mentions, probably best to keep it at the head and tail of the piece. Who knows? It might work, might not. Give it a try!
 
IMO, I think it could work at the very beginning or end. Not so much interspersed with the narrative/vibe that you've created in the short.

Don't forget to let us know when you've got it all done :)

Dready stole the words right out of my mouth. That's how I would do it, too.

Also, as far as it being poor quality, is there anything you can do to it to make it look like television coverage. Maybe slap a fake TV News logo over it, and a fake news reporter talking about it? Or, something.
 
Dreadylocks said:
IMO, I think it could work at the very beginning or end. Not so much interspersed with the narrative/vibe that you've created in the short.

Yer, I think you're probably right. The trouble is that I've already used the little shrine thing as a bookend (that will have a radio broadcast over it).

Flicker Pictures said:
It certainly would be very easy to duplicate your main sequence and do an edit with the footage worked in somehow.

Easy? :rolleyes:

Cracker Funk said:
Also, as far as it being poor quality, is there anything you can do to it to make it look like television coverage. Maybe slap a fake TV News logo over it, and a fake news reporter talking about it? Or, something.

I know that I couldn't do this to the requisite quality level to make it look anything other than total crap!

That said you haven't seen/heard the version of the film which has a radio broadcast over the top so this combination of AV cues might make it work a bit better... Not sure...

Jamster said:
How about you use it as a wallpaper for the end credits to roll over?

That's a pretty simple practical application and, the more I think about it, the more I think it's what I go with. I think it would work quite nicely as a postscript sort of thing and a nice back drop to my credits. I could also possibly condense it, if the credits were rolling at the same time, into a smaller box and that would help it retain some of the quality.

Thanks for the advice you guys and gal!
 
I went with Jamster's idea of using it as 'wallpaper' (well, mini wallpaper) for the credits sequence and it looks really cool, despite all my claims that I couldn't do it ;)

But, for some reason, when I play back in FCP the text looks really grubby quality and I'm not sure why because I've never had problems with the text tool before. FCP users?
 
But, for some reason, when I play back in FCP the text looks really grubby quality and I'm not sure why because I've never had problems with the text tool before. FCP users?

At a guess, has it not been rendered? Some video filters and generators can be played back in Final Cut without having to render them, albeit at reduced quality.
 
At a guess, has it not been rendered? Some video filters and generators can be played back in Final Cut without having to render them, albeit at reduced quality.

I thought it might be that I'd forgotten to render the whole thing but I have now and it's still low quality...

Maybe I should post screen shots if that would help?

Not sure whether it's easy to make out the problem on these screenshots, but here goes...

Screenshot2011-05-02at171430.png


Then this is what happens when I play the film back...

Screenshot2011-05-02at171515.png
 
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Have you just tried deleting the text layer. Saving the file, restarting the program and then re-doing it? Could just be a glitch.

That's all I've got. Unfortunately I'm not familiar with Final Cut :(
 
Have you just tried deleting the text layer. Saving the file, restarting the program and then re-doing it? Could just be a glitch.

I haven't tried just redoing the whole thing but, to be honest, I don't want to do that unless everything else proves impossible.

Here another clue:

I exported it as a Quicktime movie and it came out very small (like 7x7cm) but perfect quality. When I enlarged it it became all stretched and crappy again. Have I somehow changed the settings on final cut so that it is trying to make very 'small' movies? If so, how do I undo this? Might it be because, as you can see in the second picture above, I have made the video footage smaller in order to have the text underneath?

Cheers!

EDIT: I'm now sure that this is the problem. Some how I've fudged the aspect ratio and need to get it back...
 
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I'm 99% done I just need the sound tweaked.

Unfortunately I can't get through to my sound designer and apparently he has his exams at the moment.

If there's anyone who can do sound editing who is willing to get me out of a tight spot then I would be eternally grateful!
 
Ok. I am 100% done now.

I am going to post the film in the screening room as soon as I upload it to Vimeo.

However: I followed the steps of the Compressing for Vimeo tutorial that has served me well in the past. This time, however, it compressed it to only 613.2 MB which is 113.2 MB more than my Vimeo limit. I'm not keen to purchase Vimeo Plus- do any of you kind, generous boffins know how I can convert it further? :)

UPDATE: Just an update, even though I'm pretty much talking to myself here, that the film is now uploading to Vimeo. I upgraded to Vimeo Plus in order to do this and then, seconds later, realised that I had also managed to somehow create a 300 MB version of the film. I could've punched myself at this as it is further evidence that I should never be allowed anywhere near anything remotely technical. Anyhow we live and learn and it should be online in a few hours.
 
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