Aside from the continuous lack of sleep and the ever-present high blood levels, I just want to do it again. Being able to say, as small as it is, we did it after looking at it for long enough thinking "how on earth do we do this?". Coming off the back of directing the music video the step up seemed necessary. Now I can see why the step up is ALWAYS necessary. I'll be coming back to step my game up in every way possible. Better production design, production values, character, costume, lighting, everything. There is absolutely no reason why I wouldn't take the reigns to do this again because it's kind of addicting. The more stress the better anyway. It seems that once you find a nice flow and a steady momentum, you just go with it and you deal with whatever comes your way. I've worked with a four man crew instead of a five man crew for over 3 months now. With a missing crew member at all times I'd say we've done dandy. By no means am I saying I wouldn't want a fifth crew member. We're entitled to that 100%, and at times we've suffered because of it. We've managed to make a 20 minute short film in 6 weeks. To me that reflects massive amounts of hard work and dedication.
Todays final shoot consisted of some stuff we didn't actually need speaking objectively, but I wasn't really taking no for an answer if it meant we could organise another shoot and improve the film. Cutaways, they were essential in tieing some of the more difficult transitions between scenes together. And one particular scene we were yet to film in the funeral directors, which was indeed a pleasant location. For the film anyway.. Image below. Production values-wise I think this location really added to the film. It's a very small scene with no dialogue which required our actor Nathan to internalise a lot of the time to express his emotions physically, which I found he did brilliantly throughout the whole film. I remember Yiannis just giving me a horrible look when he first saw the coffin in the script. Granted it was a hard thing to get hold of, but look how happy he is with it.
Yiannis is ready to kill me I think. I ask a lot from him, but I think he appreciates how much of an obsessive perfectionist I am when we get to the edit and we see its worked out. He's been incredible on this film. We've both worked non stop and in a way we've managed to take the pressure off one another by doing so in the process. It's given me the confidence to say I'll go on directing, knowing I'd have a competent producer in Yiannis if he did decide that was the job for him (fingers crossed). Our organisation was always spot on. Week in week out. We got the equipment we wanted due to this, and I'm never willing to sympathise with others over something like that. It's a dog eat dog world. You either push in line or stay at the back of the queue. I've certainly never expected another crew to willingly give us the equipment we wanted because we put a foot wrong. You take it on the chin and think up some ingenious way to move the camera. As a director that's your job.
From start to finish it's been a kind of up and down experience. At times I've been jumping for joy and for the slightest of moments I've lost sight of what I was doing due to panic or the overwhelming fear of thinking you had forgotten to get that one shot you needed. By summarising this film I'm essentially summarising my first year entirely. Starting off being unsure or in two minds about directing has lead me onto the path of directing two things off the bat, being passionate about both of them and wanting to do more. By saying that I can say I've grown immensely over the course of the year. As a person and as a Film student. It's heartwarming to hear some feedback from peers too. The odd compliment here and there in reference to how well I may have handled directing, or how they'd certainly work with me again as director above anyone else goes such a long way. It makes you realise why you actually do it. We're students, we make mistake after mistake but we learn and we do it because we love it, or why else would we be here? Plus, we're all friends here. There's no employer and employee situation going on here so there's no need for a power play. Simply respect your crew and assert authority if it comes to that. As an employee I can say I fully appreciate that and I've brought my three years of experience in the working world into the course that way.
I took this picture after the final shot of the film, which was a simple cutaway of the tree behind. The irony. But just look at the pure joy. To celebrate Yiannis even taught us some Greek dancing which we all ended up doing in Jacks backgarden...
Toward the end it has just been a headache. Every day. Directing and editing as our editor seems to think that a successful day of editing is to go into a mood after two hours when he thinks thats more than enough work. Me and Yiannis were left to pick up his slack and continue working whilst organising extra shoots, blogging, and self-evaluating ourselves. It's tiring like I've said a few times, and enjoyable, it's just a shame that others can't enjoy it just as much and help us out in the process by doing their job and releasing tension. I have shot this film. Aside from one shoot. I won't credit myself for this, but then theres the question, why shouldn't I? I assume Mr Spielberg himself would fancy crediting himself if he shot 90% of the film and directed it. "Oh, John our camera operator didn't turn up again did he not? It's fine, I mean I've shot more than half of this War Horse thing already. Let me get my wellies on, I'll get in the muddy trench with the camera and call action."
But yeah, over the summer I have a lot of stuff lined up. King of the Howman, a North-East skateboarding tradition. I will be hopefully shooting and editing that which will be screened out at an event at Newcastle which around 300 people attend. Exciting stuff. Some smaller skateboarding side projects. Hopefully room for another short myself and a few others have been brainstorming. A LOT of screenwriting. I plan to have a feature film finished to come back and get feedback on. Ambitious I know but it's always worth a shot. I'm even going to try and shoot something on 16mm if I can get hold of a camera. I shoot a lot on 35mm for photography, but using 16mm will give me a head start on the learning curves we'll face when we come back in September and begin using 16mm. I have a concept for that I've already pitched to a few people and they're on board as members of the crew so that's great to know. For now we still have a while to go polishing the film off in post-production.
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