Alice- Shoot 4: Car Park

This scene was in two halves, the interior car park and the exterior car park. The first of these was Alice's vantage point for taking photos for her job and the second was the section which she is taking photos of.

The first of these was done really well and thoroughly but it did seem to be a bit rushed as first we were waiting for enough dark so that the two sections matched up and then we were short on time because of when the carpark was closing, which was beyond our control. That being said like I said it was done thoroughly, the only thing was that it was not as thought out on set, which isn't necessarily a  bad thing as it meant that we had to rely on gut feeling and had very little time to potentially overthink shots or to experiment, it was refined and concise but still yielded solid results.

The second half of this shoot went much easier in the sense that we had literally all night to shoot it, we had one time constraint and that was sunlight which meant in theory we could have kept shooting up to around 6 am, luckily we didn't have to do that. There was no sound in this scene which was extremely useful because it meant that we could use the generator and set up a red head to light the three men for there close-ups. However, we didn't use this straight away so it meant we did shoot everything twice both with and without the light but this isn't a big issue as I am a big believer in over shooting to a degree for coverage. Another successful film shoot despite being pushed for time, we got everything done and to a high standard. This really is shaping up to be a very special film.

Inheritance Fire test

As one of the scenes in Inheritance is at night time and in front of a campfire me and Ryan went to my back garden and made a fire to test the lighting that this gave off. This was for the death scene in the film where Sophie returns to her camp to find her father on his death bed before he eventually dies and she is left alone to grieve. When doing this test I was very limited by space and fuel, if we decide to shoot this in my garden (which I very much believe we will) then we will dig up a patch of turf in the main bit of the garden to put the fire on so we have more space to build the campsite and the fire.

We shot this with the 35mm Lens on the camera and I am over the moon with the results, though I do feel the facial lighting is a little bit full on, I quite like this because we can focus on the raw emotion that the characters are feeling. In addition to fire however, we have discussed adding a blue backlight to act as moonlight in the scene, I am not 100% sure on this and unfortunately due to the cost and time of doing this shoot we wont be able to do a practise, however, what we can do is try it on set and we will know instantly whether it makes a difference or not se we will therefore know straight away whether the light is needed or not. I do wish that we could have done a practise of all the shots using this lighting but there simply wasn't enough space to manoeuvre the camera where I would have needed it. In summary, I think the fire is a perfect lighting source and does not need to be replicated, but there may need to be another source to serve as a back light.

Inheritance Lens Research

Due to the fact that Inheritance will be shot on my own DSLr (Cannon 750D) I have the luxury of interchangeable lenses and as such I have acquired a few which I can use in the film to give different looks and feels to my shots, obviously however, I wouldn't want to be just blindly using lenses without knowing what there capabilities are.

The first lens available to me is the one which the camera came with: 18-55mm lens. This lens is completely fine, although it will never be anything more than fine. It offers nothing special and as such should really only be used if a lens that does something that you specifically want isn't available. It's kind of like a Swiss army knife lens, it does okay at a number of things but realistically if I have multiple lenses (which I do) then there is no need for this lens.

The next lens available to me is the Cannon 50mm f.1.8, this is the lens I intend to use most as it can produce a very nice and shallow depth of field due to the low fstop of 1.8. This means that I can get some nice focus pulls as well as add some much needed depth to what I am shooting. It also means I can comfortably shoot at a higher frame rate to reduce motion blur due to the low fstop. In addition to this it is also fantastic in low lighting again due to that amazing f.1.8 which will make it ideal for the night shoots whereby there wont be an awful lot of light to work with so this lens will make the absolute most of what there is.

The third lens available to me is the sigma 70-300mm lens with macro feature. Firstly a macro feature means this is perfect for extreme close-ups as this will focus very sharply on close things when it is zoomed into 200-300mm meaning that I can zoom right in to (for example) a needle head and then focus right in so it is pin sharp on the focus. Apart from this it has a good zoom range that means I can film things far away if needs be and I can also do forced perspective via telephoto if I needed it. One other thing worth mentioning about this lens is the Fstop pull down. This means that when fully zoomed out the fstop is 4 but when you zoom in it goes to a minimum of F5.6 to compensate for the zoom, this means I will require more light if I am using the zoom on this lens.

The fourth and final lens is the Samyang 35mm F1.4, this is a great lens and is comfortably the most expensive of the lot but it is almost certainly the best quality of the lot. This does essentially the same job as the 50mm but does it better, excellent sharpness and colour as well as really easy depth creation and an even lower Fstop than the 50mm it is an amazing lens that I will be sure to utilise when shooting Inheritance due to it almost certain aiding me in achieving the look I want for the film, particularly in the night scenes.

Alice- Shoot 3: Party

Here it is people, the crown jewel of Alice, and that is precisely what it turned out to be, a fantastic experience for so many reasons and I genuinely believe we pulled off a scene/shot that will be celebrated at our university for a long time to come.

First came the prep which started at one, we set up all of the lights and moved the furniture to optimise the space and to make it look like a party. Then we actors started to arrive we did practise run throughs to ensure the actors could be comfortable with where they would be going and there timings etc so that the scene could be fluid and natural so that the camera felt like it was a natural part of the scene, otherwise regardless of the camera work the scene wouldn't work.

 Then at around 6 we started to shoot some takes of the scene, though it was not yet dark outside it was starting to get that way and we felt that it would be too big of a waste of time to not start shooting and on top of this, Beth could probably make it look like night time with a colour grade so it made sense to start shooting. The first few takes to me felt a little wooden and didn't seem to flow, but this could be expected with such a complex scene as it would take some practise and repetition to get into the groove of the scene.

When we eventually did start getting into the groove and flow of shooting the scene, boy did it work. The reason for the success of this scene I feel is because it was organic, this was essentially a controlled party and as such this felt real on camera. For me there was more to this than the performances of the actors (though they were important and fantastic) the scene is great because the extra work feels genuine and the performances aren't really performances at all, even when we did silent takes it still felt as though people were at a genuine party which I can only assume we achieved by giving it a good atmosphere that people enjoyed being a part of. I could really talk for hours about this shoot but at the end of the day its ambition and execution speak for themselves.

Alice- Shoot 2: Dark Room 1

This was the second scene for Alice where she is developing some of the photos she has done for the job she is doing, Mark walks in and the two have a confrontation as he finds one she was trying to hide. As this takes place in a literal dark room lighting the scene proved to be difficult and the camera operator decided to shoot off of an ISO 800 which I believe to be too high and when we have watched the footage back it has a degree of grain to it which may prove hard to get rid of but I admit I have no knowledge of how that would be done.

The above image quality issues are mainly due to youtube as this is a screenshot, I can assure you the actual footage looks much better. This was very similar to the first shoot in that we had time to get a lot of coverage, however, this time it was in the form of many different shots instead of many different takes, this meant we had a lot of coverage to work with which would no doubt be massively helpful come the edit time. My main issue with this shoot was that I lament the fact we never did a lighting test, only a location recce, this undoubtedly lead to the lighting issues we experienced.

One thing that may prove to be an issue was that Gary didn't seem from where I was to follow any set path as he was playing a drunken character it seemed that his path and movements would vary from take to take, this may not be true but if it is then it may cause some continuity errors in the edit, however we do have some shots that don't have him in that we could easily cut to to mask this. Other than this I felt the performance from both was great and I really felt as though they flowed naturally and had a bit of genuine tension between them from being in there characters. All in all another quality film shoot that yielded good results.

Inheritance- Recce/ Practise shoot: Moors

We went as a crew up to rosedale abbey and found some great locations which we can cover the majority of the film and aren't just to make do but are perfect fits for what I am wanting from the film.

The first was the chimneys that we shot this practice of the bandit scene at. the location is perfect as it offers plausible places for the bandits to emerge from as well as being a nice location for her to walk past in the scene. The scene itself also works very well, the shot choices work in my opinion and the effect of the shotgun which Andrew has been working on also looks great. The other thing that came from this test is that the framing is a little off on some shots and also we could do with a shot coming past the corpse to Sophie (me in this) as she stands up.

This is the second location we found literally a stones throw from the chimneys, this is for the campsite and to demonstrate this we shot a practise of the death scene when Daniel dies. Though this isn't of that much use as the scene itself will be at night time, it was still a valid opportunity to test the shots and see if we could create emotion in the scene. While I think on the whole the scene works, it needs tweaking slightly to create emotion and to make the viewer feel the pain of Sophie's loss.

This was the third and final location we found on this recce, this was a small pond which we will use for the fishing scene at the beginning of the film. I love this location on a day like this it will look amazing on camera and it will add to the visuals so well and this scene if done correctly will look stunning. I also feel the shots on this segment work really well for a quick scene that is to set the idea of survival and isolation into the viewers head.

That concludes the recess and practise shoots on the moors, I plan to use all three locations and also feel that mostly my shot choices work well aside from a few that need tweaking or adding in.

Report- Interview answers.

Here are the responses I got from Jim to the questions I sent him, I am very happy with the response and will find it to be very useful when it comes to adding this into my report.

Do you believe there is a ‘best way’ that someone goes about climbing the film industry to become a director?

I don’t think there is just one way or even a better way to the climb the industry ladder. I myself are still struggling to get where I want to be but I just focus on making the types of films I would want to see, and then hopefully there are enough people out there who agree. I do however want to progress with every film I make, as I will re-watch anything I’ve made numerous times and pick holes in it – but I believe this makes me a better filmmaker in the end.

I also think being clever about what films you make and if there is an audience and can it grab anyone’s attention.

What are the next steps for you on your career path?

My original plan was to shoot an ambitious sequel to my 2016 Batman vs Jack the Ripper fan film, with the sole intention of trying to better what we made previously but also showing a progression of my abilities. I wanted to make something a little different to ‘Ripper’ and get more into the action/horror side of things. My thinking was that if we did this right we could make quite the splash and get our name out there even more. The plan after that was to try and get a green lit on a feature comedy script I’ve been working on the past couple of years.

I’ve had an opportunity to pitch a feature idea to a UK based company who have a distribution deal with Sony in the US. The UK side loved the idea and I am now waiting on a potential green light from the States. This is a great chance to make my first feature and hopefully lead to bigger and better things.

Where do you aim to be in ten years and how do you think you will have gotten there?

My aim is to be a fully working writer/director who has made at least five feature films and is comfortable enough financially that I can take my time with what films I want to make. I don’t need to be famous – I’ve always wanted to make cult like films that have a fan base. My aim is to get paid for something you love to do and that’s it.

I believe hard work pays off but you do need a bit of luck and I have some help from another North East director Martin Owen who I worked with on his 2^nd feature ‘Let’s Be Evil’. Martin has essentially became a mentor of sorts and gives me advice but also opens certain doors I can’t.

What skills and traits do you feel make a good director?

Just looking at myself I think creativity, vision, passion, enthusiasm and drive are big things. Even at university I was adamant on what type of films I wanted to make, and that same passion and enthusiasm not only allowed me to make ‘Ripper’ but it also helped gather the great cast and crew we did. I was told by Bruce Payne that he knew straight away how passionate I was about the project just after one phone call.

I also think you need to know exactly what it is you’re making because you will be asked numerous questions from numerous people during a shoot and you MUST know what you want and be clear about it.

Are there times when you doubt that you want to be a director, if so, how do you get past these and continue pursuing the dream?

I never had doubts about being a director, I knew the first day at CCAD it was what I wanted to specialise in. I do however struggle with the financial side of things and lack of work, but I just try to put all my energy into any projects I am developing. I think it’s good to have a number of projects ready to go.

2016 was a tough year for me financially and I was supposed to be working away in LA which got cancelled at the last minute which was very disappointing, but I just tried to stay positive and focus on the future and the projects I was writing.

Given that I will be following a path not dissimilar to your own, what advice would you give me regarding post-graduation and where I go next?

I would suggest that you stick with it. When I started CCAD all I wanted to do was make films, learn and leave with a potential crew. I got what I needed out of CCAD and I am thankful for the freedom I was given to make the films I wanted to make. I am now at a point where I can call upon a number of crew, some who worked on ‘Ripper’ but some who saw it and liked it. The film has essentially become a bit of a calling card for me and it has opened a few doors.

I see far too many students leave university, get a job and never pick up a camera or work on a film shoot again - and that saddens me to be honest. I would recommend finding a part-time job that isn’t terrible, but then also gives you enough time to still be creative and make films. Even if it’s on a weekend and only something small – you must keep going.

Also try and get on as many post-grad film shoots as possible as a way of meeting new people and learning. There are also a number of North East based networking nights which are great for meeting like-minded filmmakers.

I realise this is a lot to take in on a blog post but this is easier than summarising and as such all I would like to add is that I got a lot more than I expected and cannot thank Jim enough for the level of detail and commitment he gave me in doing this.

Alice- Shoot 1: Opening Scene

This was the first shoot for Alice and quite fittingly it is also the scene that starts the film off. In this as I have explained in previous posts, the scene shows Alice setting up her job with Mark but the only  sight we get of Mark is him walking past the camera which we can tell nothing about him from. In this scene we needed to make it feel authentic by having a bar man and a waitress, so I suited up and became the barman, I quite enjoyed the role although in hindsight perhaps not the best idea because it meant I was forever stopping the between takes to ask how the take was to write in my production logs but this wasn't a huge issue it just felt as though at times people were getting a little annoyed at me for asking all the time or taking longer than they would have liked but realistically it needed doing so they would just have to deal with it.

During this shoot we had a relatively simple set up that gave astounding results, the lighting and aesthetic were beautiful and this basic set up meant that we could shoot many takes of the same thing in relatively small amounts of time which meant we could make sure we really nailed the scene, and nail it is exactly what we did, having watched back the footage, Charlotte gives an excellent performance and everything is timed perfectly and looks fantastic. 

We filmed around 20-30 takes of this scene from 4 'angles' there are the two images that represent two angles then we did each of these two from two different tables to see which gave the most attractive background, this gave us the four angles. The beauty of this scene is that only one performance really matters, Charlotte's, as long as Gary got it right at least once we could use his audio and the same goes for Sarah as the waitress, although the scene will work better if they can use the audio that matches the take because that way it will feel more natural but I have the upmost confidence that Beth would be able to make it feel natural anyway as she is a fantastic editor.

Inheritance- Colour Profile

For the shooting of Inheritance and to a smaller degree for Alice, I downloaded some colour profiles to test out that may add to the visual appeal of the film, these are called Cinetech, CineLook and CineStyle.

Though the footage its self isn't that great for these shots I do believe there is a clear difference between the colour profiles used although in my stupidity I didn't think to include the original footage that the camera would give. However, by downloading these I had already decided that I wasn't going to use the camera's raw settings so in actual fact this wouldn't make a huge difference to my decision.

The first conclusion I can draw is that I do not want to use CineStyle, the colours in this are way too washed out and the saturation seems to be too low, this may be good for making something seem gritty or devoid of joy (which to be fair Inheritance is in parts) but this is not a constant look I am looking for and I would much rather accentuate colour to bring more visual appeal to the film.

This then leaves the discussion of CineTech or CineLook, simply the answer is I am not sure, it may come to be a case of different horses for different courses and the filter changes as the shot requires it to but I am leaning towards CineLook as this has deeper blacks and higher contrast which really makes the colours pop, my only issue is that perhaps it does this too much and is too stylised, CineTech, however, just does this slightly not enough and therefore doesn't fit perfectly either. 

As the above comparison shows me I think that generally the colour is better on Look but the skin looks better on Tech, of course this is a preference thing, but on the whole I think that my preference is Look and I believe I will shoot with this setting on.

Report- Jim Campbell

In previous posts I have talked about how I wish to interview aspiring and professional directors for my report, well the first of my interviews has been with James Campbell. James is an aspiring director who is most notably known at this point for his Batman fan film: Ripper. This was crowd funded and filmed in the North East of England predominately and has seen a large amount of success with regards to exposure and views, the only downside of this is that it cannot be monetised due to the copyright issues of using Batman, technically speaking DC comics or Warner Bros could tell them to take it down from the internet at any time.

James himself was in the same position as me not all that long ago in the sense that he went to CCAD to do creative film and moving Image production and he graduated 2 years ago now. During his time there he found the basis of a film crew, he now works closely with Adam Bouabda, who often produces James' films (including Ripper) although more recently he has been working with industry professionals on bigger projects. It is of note than James owns his own production company: Eighties Doubt, and is aiming to bring out a feature film entitled, please don't die. A concept that he put into a short film and is now looking to expand upon into a feature which he is looking to add some bug names in wrestling to the cast list (I believe to feature as themselves). This would represent the biggest leap in James' career and could put him well on the way to being a professional director, although James mainly has interest in making cult films which don't necessarily bring an awful lot of financial gain, although it isn't the money that motivates James so this will not be an issue I would imagine.

As of this moment I have sent James the question from my previous post and am awaiting his response, when this arrives I will put it into another blog post so as to show the next step in my research. On a personal level I think that James is someone I can model my path on as he is doing well at the minute and I believe he will make it quite far in the industry.

Inheritance- Jib test 4

Another short post to highlight the jib test progress. This was different from the others as we added in the next two shots to make a sequence as I believe we are in a position where the shot is almost perfected and we have to think about what comes next. To compensate for the sway from side to side, in this test we used a device which Andrew made to hold the jib in place and keep it on a straight vertical path, this meant that the jib had nowhere to go and as such couldn't go anywhere but straight down. This meant that the only things to worry about was the steadiness of the tilt and the uniform speed that the jib comes down at.

As you can see the following shots need a little work but the principle works and will be much more clear on the real thing as the actress will have a task to perform which means we can cut into the movement of her actions and have a seemingly seamless cut.

Alice- Art Cafe test

This was a test shoot for the opening scene of Alice which is one shot of the protagonist (Alice) setting up the deal to photograph the antagonists for money. This shot is in a bar and just shows her during a conversation while she is talking to Mark who isn't shown in the scene.

Firstly we set up the zoom lens to compress the background this meant that we got a really blurred background with a pin sharp foreground so that the subject was in focus in front of a nicely lit of background that gave the illusion of a working bar. We will add extras of a waitress and bar man into the final scene so that this also adds to the feel of it being a shady deal in a bar. Next we added some lights to the scene and to the background so that we could light the subject and to add some flair to the background so the shot just looked nicer.

The lanterns and fairy lights in this scene really add to the aesthetic, however I do feel for the real shoot we should wait for it to be darker and we should compress that background further so that it is even more blurred as there is a little too much definition in my opinion. The lighting on the face however is quite nice and I think it highlights Brad quite well. I also think that the iso could be pulled down to 100 to darken it a bit as to me this doesn't feel like night time in a bar.
On the whole though this will be a nice shot and I am glad we are putting in this practise now to nail the shot and make these pleasing visuals now before the real shoot.