Sound Man

I started work on a new documentary (Distant Donors) last month which is still in production, so I don't have any footage to show, this time of nine minutes in length.

I'm again doing sound, however, this time my role is completely different. Whilst on Wired. I did Sound Design which was post-production sound, this time I'm the boom operator, which is production sound, and I know which role I prefer. Being the boom operator is a very important job, however, since I want to be a director I have all this creativity in me that wants to escape, something which holding the microphone doesn't let you do.

I didn't mind doing it at first, but I'm starting to get a little bored of it now, as the only work I have to do is when we go out on shoots, and so far we've only done five days of shooting out of a whole month. We've got some more shoots lined up but not a whole lot.

Since I've not had a chance to really be all that creative on this project I've been writing more ideas for possible future projects. Something which I find very fun to do, although unfortunately I tend to think beyond the doable, which can be a bit frustrating when you want to make a film and realise that you don't really have anything that you can film without a budget that is over a grand.

We wrap up on Distant Donors in the middle of January, so I'm not going to be able to be all that creative until after then, which is when we start narrative films. Hopefully for that I will actually get to direct, because I'm not sure I can handle doing production sound again.

On a side note, I've started work on another project with a company called Suited & Booted. I'm not the director of it, but I do get to do more than just sound which is good. It's a long term project, which is a promotional documentary for a hotel that is being refurbished. The project should be finished in October next year, so we'll be out shooting a few times a month so we can document the process. I've already been on one shoot and got to have a proper go on camera, which was really fun, because it meant that I got to be creative again as opposed to just holding a microphone.

Don't think I'll be up to much this month, with Christmas coming up and all, but I'll try and nab some rough cuts of Distant Donors to look at.

Wired.

I chose to do sound design on this film, since it wasn't my idea and if the director's chair wasn't filled, then I wouldn't have really known how to direct it anyway.

However, we were barely a week into production before it was clear that our director didn't know or care what he was doing. Which left a crew of 2 producer's, 2 camera operators, myself on sound design, an editor, and no director. I kind of stepped up here. I didn't really know how we were going to make the film, all I knew was that we needed to film something. And boy did we. Our editor was being given a tape a day to capture for the first couple of weeks of shooting. Only in the final week did it actually become clear what film we were making when I sat in the room with the editor discussing the film.

The editor had to essentially search for meaning in all the stuff that got filmed, and once we had a film that was coming together told the camera operators to go off and shoot specific shots that would fit well in the film. Therefore, he got a director's credit as well.

In between all the editing that he was doing I had to edit the sound that I had recorded myself, as well as some sounds which I took from a sound library. Since the footage we filmed was recorded without any sound, it was up to me to design the soundtrack for the film. I had major ideas for it at the start, before the film evolved into what it is now, although I've managed to keep in as many of those ideas as I could, as well as coming up with new ones.

I ended up manipulating a lot of the sounds to give them a more unique quality. And taking my inspiration for such artists as composer Max Richter and writer/director/composer David Lynch, I've managed to create what I think is a very original soundtrack.

You can also view the full video here: http://vimeo.com/7436933

I'm very pleased with the sound design that I've done on this film and whilst I might have accidentally typecast myself now as a sound man, my passion is still for directing.

University

I'm back at university now and since this is only my 3rd week back I don't have anything to show. However, this year I'm going to push the boundaries and see if I can enter some festivals.

The film I'm working on now is an experimental documentary. I'm doing sound design on it and boy have I got a tough job ahead of me. The film won't be finished until the end of the month at the earliest, but I'll try and get at least something up for next month.

Work Experience

For the last 2 weeks I've been doing work experience with mycornwall.tv.

Day 1 (1:00pm - 2:30pm): Was a very short day and I spent just over one and a half hours at a meeting with the head of production (who I would be working with). It was quite an informal meeting where we disgust what/who I would be working on/with throughout the week. Although it was also subject to change. We also brainstormed some ideas for possible future programming and different formats of programs for the website.

Day 2 (9:30am - 2:30pm): I spent day 2 at a documentary shoot at Pengersick Castle. I spent most of the day observing the crew working (which consisted of a presenter/director and two camera operators) and helped out with carrying equipment. Whilst I didn't get to operate the equipment I did learn a lot about the way the crew worked together and shot different stuff. The presenter/director was really interesting to watch as were the crews methods of shooting. It will be quite interesting to see the finished piece. However, I don't think it will appear on the website until October.

Day 3 (4:00pm - 6:00pm): Finished off a short documentary at Gwithian Towans Beach that had been started the previous week. It was about how teaching people from the forces to surf can be a great way for them to deal with post traumatic stress, by helping them to forget about it and just enjoy the waves and the ocean and also by meeting other people dealing with post traumatic stress. I ended up helping with sound recording and held the microphone throughout the interviews. Hopefully I did a good job.

Day 4 (10:00am - 11:00am): We were supposed to be filming at Fifteen today, which is Jamie Oliver's new restaurant near Newquay. However, when we got there it turned out they didn't know we were supposed to be shooting there. So unfortunately we'd made a wasted trip. Although I did get a free orange juice!

Day 5 (9:30am - 2:30pm): Spent today filming on Tolcarne Beach in Newquay. We were filming this piece on this girl who won a bronze medal in open water swimming at the 2008 Olympics. I can't remember her name unfortunately but she was the "celebrity" of the day. The event was to raise awareness for the surf life saver organisation which helps young children learn about the dangers of the sea and how to look out for them and avoid them. I helped with sound again and held the mic throughout all the interviews that we did. The rest of the day was spent following the "celebrity" around and filming the different activities and races that she was in. Unfortunately I ended up in the sea as when we went down to film by the sea again later in the day the camera man forgot the mic lead was still attached and so when a wave came he just stood there, and since I was holding the mic which was at the other end of the lead I ended up getting wet too. The annoying thing was I knew the mic wasn't going to be picking up any important sound, so I kind of got wet for nothing.

This marks the end of the first week. Unfortunately I was unable to work the second week because I came down with pretty bad tonsillitis which I'm still recovering from. I enjoyed the experience though and whilst I would have liked to have a done a bit more, as a lot of the time I was just stood around watching, I did learn quite a bit. I'm definitely going to be getting more work experience in the future, but I'm going back to uni this month to start work on documentary making. So expect some more videos in a couple of months.

A Remote Idea

This is the first comedy that I've done. I didn't write the script for this one and just directed. However, the main actor didn't want to learn his lines and wanted to improvise. It terms of content it worked, however a lot of that content we had to cut from the final edit because it just didn't fit in terms of continuity. Arms and heads were jumping around and nothing really flowed. As a result we ended up having to cut all the stuff that flowed together, although unfortunately this wasn't the funniest stuff.

Watching the film back now I don't really find it funny at all. Whilst I did enjoy making it, I'm not sure I'll be having another go at a comedy any time soon. I can't write comedies myself, but if a very funny script landed in my lap then I would definitely do it. Although I would have to be rolling on the floor with laughter, because even at the script stage this film was more of a chuckling quietly to yourself more than a laugh out loud comedy. And those are the types of comedies I hate. If it has been classed as a comedy I want to be laughing out loud throughout the entire film. If not than it's not worthy of the term comedy.

As a result I wouldn't class A Remote Idea as a comedy. More of a light hearted film.

The Cell

The idea for this next film came from another person in my group. However, the idea was very vague and so I wrote it up into a proper screenplay, changing a few bits as I went. The song at the beginning was something that I wanted to add in as the director. This was the biggest directing job I had done to date in terms of working with actors and whilst I found the cell scenes very stressful because my crew was doing fuck all, when it came the gallery scenes they actually had decided to do there jobs and so it went much smoother.

I also had to direct extras for the gallery scene. Unfortunately though the two main extras shots were cut out of the final cut, however, you can still see them in the first cut.

This film is an art film in my opinion as it has many different interpretations. I've shown it to many people, some of them don't get it and others do, but quite often they don't get it in the same way. Even I myself have managed to interpret the film in different ways as well. This is one of the reasons I really like this film.

Unfortunately though this film isn't perfect. There are many shots which are out of focus due to the camera operator. You could say that I am putting blame on the camera operator to avoid putting the blame on myself. However, as the director I never really looked through the camera. For all the shots I would check the framing, but that would be it. I would use my own digital stills camera to find the shots. Take the picture and then show it to the camera operator. I only ever glanced at the camera shot to check the framing. All the technical aspects such as focusing are the job of the camera operator.

Whilst I do find these out of focus shots disappointing when I watch the film I just ignore them, because I know that in the future it won't happen. When you work on films with a big enough crew, you have a person who's specific job is to keep the shot in focus, this is called the focus puller.

Another major issue with the film is lighting. I refused to move any of the lights as the director, because I didn't really have time to between checking the framing on the camera and telling the camera operator to change it slightly if it needed changing; and directing with the actors. The film uses lighting throughout it's entirety, however, if you watch it, it only really looks like it is being lit when you get 31 seconds in. The lighting crew were awful. When I told them to sort the lighting out they wouldn't do it. And then when I was ready to shoot after talking with the actors, etc. they suddenly got up off their asses and said, we need to change the lighting it looks shit and so they would. This lost us precious time in our studio shoot (the cell scene). On the other hand, once they had actually bothered to do the lighting it look quite good.

Although this isn't the reason for the crap lighting from the beginning up to 31 seconds in. That was just down to inexperience with lighting. For the shot 31 seconds in, one of our university lecturers came in to see how we were getting on and taught us how to properly do lighting. She then left and we were able to light the rest of the film quite well. It is just a shame we didn't have time to re-shoot the first 30 seconds.

There are a few other minor bad points but these are the main ones.

When ever people watch it they never really seem to listen to the lyrics of the song. I wrote the lyrics myself to the The Well theme from Hans Zimmer's score to The Ring. This is the music you can hear behind the lyrics. There are actually already lyrics to this song and I think subconsciously this is perhaps one of the reasons I chose this song. However, the original lyrics wouldn't have made any sense and so I decided to write my own. Here are the lyrics as written my me.

Oh so trapped, with in our own world.

Why we can't, escape when we're curled

Up so tight I can barely breathe.

Why did you run away and leave

When I was in need of your help?

Please, please, please, will somebody save me.

These lyrics actually sum up the whole film, when sung by Katey (the main character) which they are, and they tell us how the situation she is in and how she feels. Although you might have to watch the film (and understand it) to understand the lyrics fully. Now I'm not a song writer and so I'm amazed that I was actually able to even write these lyrics, as I've never written a song in my life. However, some how it just came to me, even if I did have to google "words that rhyme with world and breathe". I wouldn't really recommend it as a song writing method though.

If you want to see the first cut of the film then here it is. However it is obviously unfinished and therefore it doesn't have things in such as the re-recorded dialogue and the children's laughter when she turns around and looks at the suit case. Although it does contain the full scenes from the gallery, which unfortunately we had to shorten because it made the pace of the film too slow.

I quite enjoy making art films and I'm definitely going to be making more in the future. However, this is the last I can actually show you as I haven't made anymore yet. But I do have a few scripts that I am developing, so hopefully it won't be long before I'll have another one complete.

Next months film is going to be a comedy.

The Snowman Killer

This is a shitty little film that we made. Other than the concept it was all improvised. The camera we used was a down grade to the ones we normally use as it didn't have manual focus. The only advantage it had was night vision, but even that was amazing. Overall I think the film is pretty shit. But it just came from the necessity to make a film.

Gloucester Cathedral

This is the first documentary that I've made. Whilst I did shoot my first film Brave Story like a documentary, it was in fact a fictional film.

I wrote the documentary and did the sound for it. These were originally my only two roles on the film. However, after the director turned out to not have a clue what he was doing and literally was just standing still doing absolutely nothing a lot of the time. I ended up as the unofficial director.

This is the first film where I've had to work with someone who doesn't know how to do there job. If I were a studio executive then I would have fired the person whom was supposed to be our director on the spot for some of the stuff that they did, or didn't, do.

A word of advise to anyone who wants to be a director, make sure you are doing it for the right reasons. Why do you want to direct the film? And most importantly why do you want to be a director? If you don't know, then you shouldn't be doing it. And even if you know the answers to these questions, you have to be honest with yourself and say, do I have the creative vision for this film? If you don't know what you want to do with the film then either take it away and think about what you want to do until your sure about everything; or pass the role to somebody else, even if it means taking on a different role or not working on the film altogether. The most important thing is the film, not yourself.



We filmed this on mini-DV, using Canon XM2's. These are digital film cameras which proved quite challenging to work with inside the cathedral. With digital cameras you need to white balance the camera for the light source that illuminates the space you are in. If you get the white balance wrong then your image can look blue or red. Most of the time this happens only slightly, however if when you come to edit the footage together you have a slightly blue shot followed by a slightly red shot (or the other way round) then you can easily see the change.

This is the reason the cathedral proved such a challenging location to film in, because there were several different light sources illuminating the inside of the building. There was the sun light shining through the windows, as well as two different types of lights used inside. In the main room, the ceiling was lit with one type of light, whilst the rest of the room was lit with another. This meant that we were unable to get a wide shot of the interior of the cathedral that had an accurate colour representation. Either the ceiling ended up very red, or the windows ended up very blue. As a result we tried to film the cathedral in sections.

Saying that, the cathedral is a very beautiful building. However, if you wish to capture the true beauty of such a building, I would recommend filming on actual film stock, instead of using digital film. Whilst digital film does have many advantages, this is one of the areas where film stock shines through.

Dark V Light

I've now finished showing all of the films I've made on my own and I will now be showing you some of the films I have made whilst being at university.

When we were given the brief for this film, all we had to do was produce a high key (low contrast) and low key (high contrast) scene. They could tie into each other or be completely unrelated.



I'll leave you to decode any meaning from it!

I was the director of the low key scene for this film and I'm very proud of it as it is the first 'art' film that I've made. I'd quite like to do more experimental films like this in the future and I'm in the process of writing a few at the moment. However, I'm currently in the middle of making some other projects right now, so it might be a while before I get another chance to make a film like this.

Monster In The Woods

This is the film I wanted to show before Captive since it was the last one I made before it.



This film was very spontaneous and it came about because I really wanted to make another short film as I hadn't made one in a while. However, I didn't have a film to make, so I thought I'd try and familiarise myself with the camera a bit more. I ended up wondering down to the woods to test out some of the camera's functions.

The only function I really had a go at was the focus and this was the first film I made which had a pull focus in it. However, once I'd played around with the camera's functions I still really wanted to make a film so I decided I'd have a go.

But since I didn't have any actors the only way I could really make a film was if I did it Blair Witch style. Combined with a bit of inspiration from The Village I came up with the idea that the woods was filled with monsters. Original I know! However, since I had no actors I thought I'd make them invisible monsters.

The reason the camera runs away is because our character hears one of these monsters. And then at the end he gets attacked and eaten by the monster.

If you're wondering why the character has a camera then stop, because they don't. I wanted it to feel as though the camera is the persons eyes. Obviously filming in 4:3 doesn't make this easy and you just have to use your imagination to make the jump from, why is this person holding a camera, to there is no camera and we are seeing through the characters eyes (think of it like a computer game, e.g. first person shooter).

If anyone manages to get this story from the film then I will be very surprised. The only reason I understand it and still quite like it is because I know the bigger picture (which I haven't told you).

I still quite like the bigger picture of this film and have thought about developing it into a feature or half hour short. If I did then it wouldn't be shot in first person, but normal third person. We shall have to wait and see if I actually take this idea beyond this tiny little piece. Although if anything does come from it, then sadly you'll have to wait a very long time.

Captive

I was planning on showing another video, but unfortunately the web page isn't working. Hopefully it will be fixed by next month though so I can show you it then. In the mean time here is what I class as my first unofficial short film (up until now they have just been practice).



This film is actually based on a poem that I read years ago. When I was trying to think of a short film idea to make for my A-Level film, I wrote down a few random bits of ideas and one of them reminded me of a poem that I read some time ago. So I decided to combine the piece of idea that I had with the basic story that the poem tells and thus Captive was born.

I then searched for some music that I thought would fit well with the story. The two tracks that I use in the film are from Black Hawk Down. The first track is called "Hunger" and the second is "Ashes To Ashes". Neither of them are in their original form, as I re-edited them to fit better. However, when I was still developing my idea I listened to these tracks (although mostly "Hunger") unedited again and again. This once the main source of my inspiration.

I visualised the film in my head whilst listening to the music I had chosen. I then storyboarded out the opening sequence and the end sequence and wrote the voice over.

The next part is where I wish I had a producer because I found that I had to do literally everything. Once I'd picked my actors (who were just some friends that I'd asked) I had to work around their schedule which was very tiresome because my main actor (Tom Law) who is also a musician was doing a lot of gigs so he didn't have a lot of free time in when I could film. This was tough because I had a deadline to meet. But we managed to find one and a half days where we shot the entire film. It involved one very long day and a lot of travelling where we filmed the cliff scenes and the flashback scene. The scenes of him at home were shot on the second day which luckily didn't take too long because we only had a couple of hours.

I put a lot of hard work into this film and I am very happy with the end result. There are of course a few things I would change if I were to do it again. But these are only minor things. And for my first unofficial short film I think it is rather good.

Vanish

This is the first film that I've made which I co-directed. It was an interesting experience, although if I were to co-direct again I would have to get to know the person first and make sure that we both worked on the same wavelength, because the person I was working with was a bit of an idiot.

He was very arrogant and was making that actors do take after take when they didn't even need to. The whole reason for doing another take is that you want the actors to do something different, because you need to re-do the camera movement as it wasn't smooth enough, or because something else went wrong.

However, each of the takes that this guy did was exactly the same so I started to get slightly annoyed with him as he was just waisting time, and the actors were getting annoyed with having to do the same thing again and again when then didn't even need to.

My directing was much better I felt and I got on much better with the actors which I think is an essential thing when working with actors. Anyway here is the film.