Here is the layout for my movie.
• IDEA… This I find the most difficult part!
• WRITING THE STORY – OK, it takes time and some re-writes but its worth it.
• SHOOTING SCRIPT takes many re-writes but is well worth the effort.
• STORY BOARD. This is a must, without it you will be lost.
• CAMERA… We used my SONY DCR VX900E
• LIGHTING… Red Heads, Arri Spotlights Soft boxes Dimmers Cables Etc
• SOUND. Mikes, Headphones.
• CONTINUITY Digital still camera
• EDITING…Mac and PC Computers
• APROX RUNNING TIME 10 to 12 minutes.
• TAPE. Easy to forget but without it …………
There were only four people involved in “Time to Kill”, and two of those were acting in it, which meant there were effectively only two full time technical crew…
THAT WAS MY FIRST BIG MISTAKE!!!
The lesson learnt is that you need all the help you can get, and luckily it's there for the asking at F.C.S. All the expertise and help you need is available from a very friendly bunch of guys and gals, so take my advice and ask.
There is so much to think about when making a story film that to try and make it with only 4 people, 2 of them acting in the film is almost impossible; don't try it.
We had 2 locations; one was a kitchen in house No1 and the other a living room in house No2. The first shoot was in house No1 and was relatively easy to work with, as the kitchen was quite large, so there were fewer problems placing lights and equipment. This was our first day's shoot, and went well. So far so good.
On to the next days shoot, we moved to the living room of the second house, and although various items of furniture where removed or assigned to a different part of the room the main difficulty was with the lighting. There were times when I would have liked to put a redhead in the middle of the dining room table or where the sofa or the TV was! Although the owners where willing to help in any way possible (and provided sandwiches and cups of tea when they were most needed!), there are limits as to what you can expect them to do, after all it is their home you are working in, and it's bad enough having lights and cables all over the place without having to reorganise major items of furniture. They had to eat in the kitchen as it was…
Well we finished the days' shoot, but there was a lot more to do so we were up early the next day, to carry on with as little disruption to our hosts as possible.
One of the things that helped a lot was that we were able to leave our equipment there overnight, saving much time and effort lugging it back and forth. The next day we finished about 5pm, but there was still a lot to do. Unfortunately, all this came at a very difficult time for me as I was undergoing chemotherapy at the time; in fact we then had to postpone shooting for about 8 weeks. Still it gave me time to think about things. One problem is
CONTINUITY even though we had some records it was impossible to remember just how everything was, and in the middle of it all I was offered a commercial to be shot in Italy; what a dilemma, what should I do? Well it was a NEXT DAY early dash to Heathrow to do some more filming, this time in FRONT of the cameras! No more worries about continuity, lights, camera etc; just 4 days of being treated like a film star, and then shooting on a mountain top. It took 2 large gaffers to haul me to the top! But that's another story, perhaps for another time. To put things in perspective it took 60 people (not counting the Actors!) to make the commercial. Four days to shoot and it would last 45 seconds at the most!!!
On a side note, one thing I love is FILM NOIR and the old black and white films of the thirties and forties. One of the reasons I loved them so much were the indoor shots, they were so wonderful to see; not perhaps as realistic as today's films but lovely to look at, and after all filming is an art form so some artistic licence must be allowed. The reason they where so wonderful is because they where shot on a set in a studio, and beautifully lit. They would have hundreds of lights available of every type and size and they could be placed wherever required. They could take a wall out or a ceiling away just as required to make space for any particular light that was needed. I wish I could have done that; it would have made the lighting so much easier!
Well, back to my movie, after about a week or so we went back to work. That is when we had our first headache. CONTINUITY! All 4 of us had different ideas as to what was where. It was too long a break from shooting, and we had to re-shoot some scenes to make it all knit together. So an extra day was needed to complete the movie. Well it was a case of ‘I've started so I'll finish', and now it was down to editing which was done initially on my MAC and then finished on Davins' PC. The mixing of different systems created some compatibility issues, but it became necessary, as we needed the software on the PC for sound.
I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO MY NEXT MOVIE.
HAPPY MOVIE MAKING FOLKS!
HAL