Nemesis Progress Update - 20/04/16

This is a progress update for Wednesday the 20th of April, regarding the progress of both production and post-production of the short film Nemesis. This week has been an interesting week so far. As it is supposed to be the second week of production, we have ended up editing all week instead. This is due to the fact we started filming a week earlier over the eastern holidays. This leaves us only two shoots away from finishing the film. Aside from the organisation of those shoots we have been left with a lot of time to start the edit early. Last week toward the end of the week we made steady progress toward starting a general timeline for all of the scenes which we would add to as we went along and finished each scene. This week we have continued that and have now made a huge amount of progress. We have roughly ten minutes edited, which need a few remaining tweaks and some missing sound. I plan to get my crew together to have a meeting at the end of this week to plan out what we will do over the next two weeks before the deadline. I hope that everyone will come together and contribute within the post production process whether that be to get a cutaway, create some foley or to research something that will further the process. I would not like to see anyone with 'nothing to do'. There is always something to do. 

Below is a shot of the current timeline we have on Avid. The gaps which are missing are the scenes we have either yet to shoot or the ones we are yet to edit. 

Tomorrow we are shooting early in Seaham. Organisation wise it has been a very quick turn around which I am happy with. We had very little time to get the actors and crew together so I am happy we have been able to pull it off. The scene we are shooting is currently missing from the timeline. That will give us time to return back to the edit suite for the rest of the day to continue the edit. The main reason I am pushing for progress all day every day is to meet two deadlines. The deadline for the project being the 6th of May, aswell as the other deadline on the 1st of May which myself and Yiannis as producer are pushing to meet. This is the deadline for the Cardiff short film festival which we are hoping to enter the film into. Below is a link to the website displaying the information of the annual event held in Cardiff.

http://www.cardifffilmfest.org.uk

It would be brilliant to enter the film into this competition as it is far from local. Technically speaking we are going international as it is in Wales. I feel that enough hard work has gone into this project so it makes sense to try and get as much coverage as we can for the finished film. Despite this, we have spoken about it many times and we doubt that the version of the film we enter into the Cardiff short film festival will be the same version we hand in for our uni project. We assumed that although we may rush to get things done in time for that deadline we will still have the rest of that week to make some alterations. That week I aim to be mostly finished the timeline itself so we can start on colour correction. I have looked into how we can make the most of colour correction and I am sure that will take the rest of the week to complete.

Editing Schedule 18th April - 22nd April

I have made an editing schedule for this week when we will be editing from 9-6 every day from Monday to Friday. I have spoken to my Editor Ethan and my Producer Yiannis about making an editing schedule to ensure we are making progress through selected scenes, to ensure we finish in time to make colour corrections to the film in the last week of post-production. Where we can we will be editing the scenes we have already filmed in between shootings, but as we are now currently into the second week of production it looks like we still have 2 or more shoots to go before we will wrap up production. 

So far we have made some very good progress into the edit. We are just over four minutes complete in a basic timeline which covers 5 different scenes so far. We have managed to piece together some scenes in succession, and we have even made significant change to the audio as there were some small problems which needed adjusting along the way. 

Week 1 - Monday 11th - Friday 15th - Completed back-garden/kitchen scene. 

Monday 18th April - Completed opening piano scene. 

Tuesday 19th April - Unfinished attic 'revelation' scene/Oscar collapsing. 

Wednesday 20th April - Unfinished Black room scene & hospital scene. 

Thursday 21st - Unfinished school lab scene.

I have colour coded the finished scenes and dates as green and the unfinished scenes on the yet to edit dates as red. 

Black Cabbie Main Scene Call-Sheet

This is an example of a call sheet I made for my Black Cabbie script. For this exercise I chose the most complicated and most grandiose scene of the film so I could make a very detailed shot list which covered a range of different things. I detailed the shot list as much as I could whilst making it simple enough to communicate to actors and crew. This is an essential part of making a call sheet I found. Noting all the important factors, but then making it simple enough to read and understand. My first attempt of a call sheet made me go back and start again to get what I have below. My initial call sheet was very poorly executed because I understood very little of the concept of one document being sent to everyone involved in a scene. This call sheet should apply to even small roles such as extras I realised. The inclusion of things such as sunrise and sunset became important. Not so much for my scene with it all being interior, but now that I have began shooting things such as my Me, Myself and I project I can fully understand how important it is to know when the sun sets. For lighting and continuity as both affect one another. 

I noted all the key roles in this version of the call sheet below including contact details for anyone on site and for the home office. I used CCAD as an example. I learnt to include and communicate which script pages and which characters were in that scene through use of a simple grid system which shows it all. 

The second sheet of my call sheet below shows the smaller details involved in the shoot. Despite the size of these things they do not become any less significant. Some things such as the involvement of smoke can cause allergies and must be treat with caution. The large number of extras also including the cast and the crew will all need a designated smoking area and toilets. This becomes a problem if the venue have no such facilities. Luckily if I was to film at Ronnie Scotts my needs would be accommodated as a catering and entertainment facility, it is pretty much the law for an establishment to have both a smoking area and toilets. Luckily as it is a jazz club with live stage entertainers it would also have a wardrobe for costume changes for extras and characters. Below this information I have included a map of the surrounding area of London (Soho) which connects to the nearest bus and train stations for reference of the cast and crew. This is very important as everyone involved may need to travel themselves, or they may act as runners to pick others up from said public transport stations. 

Nemesis Film Poster

Today I spoke to Ryan my cinematographer about a potential Film Poster for our short film. Though this is not an essential part of the project we felt like it would be a nice thing to do to market the film or to give it a more professional and industry standard feel. I also spoke about this to my Producer Yiannis who was also very happy with the idea, so we began putting together some ideas. Ryan is an excellent artist and has agreed to make some concept art for me to look at. Aswell as being cinematographer Ryan has been heavily involved with the set design and artistic direction of the film, as we have relied heavily on sketched out images as key props. 

My initial idea was to shoot something on 35mm film and then process that to a digital image we can edit on photoshop and other digital image editing software. As a huge fan of 35mm photography I feel like it would be something different, and it would be nice to experiment with rather than doing everything digitally like we have thus far. I also feel that the contrast of colour on 35mm film is greater when you make use of very few contrasting colours. For example if you are shooting against only two or three different primary colours 35mm film captures that very well opposed to many colours which seems to make more sense to capture digitally. If we were to shoot the main image we were using for the poster on 35mm, I could use a full roll of 36 exposures, develop them and pick the best image from the lot. This way we can experiment with different lighting techniques during the same roll of film. 

It is no secret I am a very poor hand-drawn artist. So far I've left the bulk of that to Ryan. Despite this I knew what I wanted visually, in terms of character and set positioning, and also where I wanted the film title, taglines, credits etc. I made this very quick sketch below so Ryan has something to go off. A particular shot in our film so far I feel sums up the overall tone and mood of the film we are creating, but also captures the essence of our main character. The character is on his knees facing a wall plastered from top to bottom with posters and theory information. The shot is from the rear of the character at a long shot capturing both the character and the posters facing down at him. Smoke rises in the air between the character and the posters creating a very sinister and hostile setting which the character inhabits. This is reflective of his mood - broody, frustrated, torn apart. 

Ryan also had the idea to include some sort of concept art of surrounding planets. I liked this idea and as you can see from the poster the character is circled by planet like images. This would be done through chalk or finite pencil sketches, which would then be digitally transferred onto the film image. Below the character and the surrounding planets stands the tall and wide film title which dominates the image. 'NEMESIS' is dead centre covering almost all of the bottom third. Below that would be the tagline, then the credits. I feel like this is a nice simplistic layout which is visually effective. We are not breaking any conventional rules of film posters only aiming to experiment with the way we are creating an image through the use of 35mm film. However this might turn out to only an idea and nothing more. We may resort to using digital imagery as it may transfer easier, but we will see as we will probably be making the poster in the last week of post-production. 

Below is an image which served as the main inspiration for the poster. The rising smoke from the character, the body positioning of the slumped over shoulders and the holding of the head suggests the fed up attitude of the character. The very few contrasting colours help create an extremely visually striking image which is also crisp. 

Progress Update - On Set With Roger (15/04/16)

Today we met Roger for the first time since the auditions in Newcastle. I was extremely happy about being able to cast him and his wife Sue as the two supporting characters in the film. I feel like they'll be injecting the film with a bit of acting experience, as they've worked on a lot of previous small scale student and low budget productions, and even some stuff for the BBC. I was essentially stepping way out of my comfort zone as a director to do this. I know a lot of people stick to casting young likeminded people because they feel comfortable. I felt like the best way to progress is to get some mature actors on board who know what they're doing, and I can learn from them in the process. And I did. Speaking to Roger and Sue behind the scenes of the film they were very understanding and knowledgeable of the filmmaking process, aswell as being confident and competent actors. I turned up on set on the day we had Roger (at two locations. Hartlepool and Sunderland) wanting to make the best impression I possibly could. Roger was an extremely nice bloke, who gave us a lift from Hartlepool to Sunderland for the next scene. He was relatively pricey for the day, but that concerned me very little, I was very happy to pay for his performance. Below is an image from the second shoot in Hartlepool where we filmed a nice mellow and scenic scene in the Marina. We were lucky to get a reflection from the ship on the calm waters which was a blessing. The lack of wind meant the water was very still and it helped further that numb and still atmosphere I wanted to surround the characters.

Test Shoot 12/04/16 - Trombone Shot

Today we had a test and lighting shoot in the studio for our upcoming shoot on Thursday. We are shooting in our studio all Thursday morning so we thought it would be best to get in the studio and practice with a difficult shot. As I have previously discussed in a blog entry I am aiming to incorporate use of a trombone shot (or the vertigo shot) into the film. This shot will serve as part of the story and it will be used to enhance the internalised madness of the main character the audience are aligned with. This shot is one which the audience are made to really feel, as it aims to disorientate them and also to pull them in. In todays test shoot we used the tracking dolly and the camera only, using the zoom of the camera fully. We then zoomed out as the track moved forward we created the trombone effect. 

The shot below is an image taken on the set of the test shoots. In the camera monitor we can see how close the zoom is focused on our glamorous subject, Yiannis. The track then moved forward and the zoom moved out so that the subject was no longer shot at a closeup but at a mid shot. 

This is another image despite the poor lighting this shows the setup we had for the test shoot.

Below is a link to Youtube where we have uploaded the best from the set of test shots we done, we will use this for future reference and also reference on the day of the shoot in terms of how to frame the subject and how fast the track and zoom should go. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sARlvzCjPSM

The Vertigo Effect - Nemesis Film Research

The Trombone Effect, also known as The Vertigo Effect, is a visual technique which is rarely used, due to the simple fact that it is very hard to pull off. The effect draws a lot of attention to itself, which is what most wise directors try and avoid. I'm of the popular belief that shots and camera movement should remain invisible. They should never attract attention to themselves as the story is the most important aspect of any film. The audience must be fully immersed, and an instant or dramatic camera movement or effect can puzzle the auditions and remove them from the film. Which is bad. 

However, I am aiming to use the effect at one point in my short film, to emphasise the unnerving and supernatural atmosphere surrounding a character. In the scene, the character of Oscar experiences what I would describe as an out of body experience inside of his own mind. This scene will draw a fine line between being a typical dream sequence, and a scene which explores the hidden moments in our mind. Following his breakdown, Oscar collapses and falls unconscious. He enters a dark red room which is empty, he is surrounded by shadow. The floor is covered in paper just like the previous scene, only this time on each piece of paper bold words appear 'do not trust him'. Before Oscar sees this and before he wakes up inside this red void, the camera will perform 'the trombone effect'. The character of Oscar will be upright, with his eyes closed. The camera tracks in whilst zooming out. At this point Oscar opens his eyes. What this effect will achieve, is it will instantly draw attention to itself, making the audience pay attention but more importantly they will be instantly aware something is wrong or 'unnatural'. The interesting thing about any camera movement that is noticeable, is that it is often deemed 'unnatural' and that any character involved, or any situation involved, is seen as deviant. For instance the dutch angle shot commonly used in Film Noir. Back to my point, as the shot is tracking in and zooming out on Oscar we then see him look around as if he is lost. At this point the previous assumption of the audience is confirmed. They assumed he was lost due to the effect, now we are showing them that he is. 

Below is a link to a Youtube clip of Vertigo, where the trombone shot is used. The shot became famous from this film in particular, Alfred Hitchcock used this shot in his 1958 masterpiece to elaborate upon a singular standpoint of the main character. James Stewarts character, has established by now his fear of heights. What this shot does is make us feel disorientated by the shot, to make us feel like we are falling yet at the same time being thrust upwards. It also delves into the psychology of the character very well by making heights out to be something which should in fact be feared, forcing us to sympathies with him. The shot also helps create a larger scale, showing what may have looked like a small drop to be a gigantic depth below us. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je0NhvAQ6fM

Below is another clip of a Trombone shot, this time used in Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975). The shot this time is used to create a very dramatic and intensifying effect. The trombone shot is used to track in on the facial expression of the main protagonist as he shows fear. The shot also suggests the character is in-fact looking at something which ought to be feared. The way a trombone shot tracks in and zooms out disorientates both character and audience, placing them in the situation which in this case a shark attack. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svEPWBxpYjo

Progress Update - 3/4/16

This is a progress update for our upcoming short film 'Nemesis', where I will be discussing what we have achieved in the previous week off in which we continued the pre production process.

Myself and my producer have been working very hard to piece together the cast and shooting schedule for next week where we will begin production on the film, with the first shoot taking place on Thursday. A few weeks ago we held auditions in Newcastle to gather actors for our projects which went very well. The following week was spent discussing what actors were best and why. We found that going over the audition videos helped us visualise those actors as our main characters. 

Eventually we cast a young actor Nathan Vose as the lead character of Oscar. We then cast another young actress Rachael Davison as the supporting role of Oscars girlfriend Claudia. We found out shortly after the casting process that the two actors know each other personally, have worked together in the past and do love working with each other. This was a huge relief to myself, as I was very concerned in finding two actors who would have a chemistry that radiated on screen. I believe this will happen when it comes to shooting our film, and having those two actors comfortable with each other will only serve to benefit the film. 

We cast a mature actor named Roger as the role of Dr Evans, another equally important supporting character. Roger attended the Newcastle auditions like Claudia, and we were very impressed by their performances which I witnessed first hand during the read through of the script. I feel that having the presence of a mature actor is something I can learn from as a young filmmaker. Roger brings with him a lot of experience in working with students and amateur filmmakers. I am very happy to have him on board and I look forward to seeing what he brings to the film.

Now that we are fully cast, my producer Yiannis has been working tirelessly to secure locations and sort out shooting schedules which he has done perfectly. With some minor adjustments and some odds and ends we need to finish, we are ready to go ahead with the shoot on Thursday and then the following day on Friday.