Are You There? Teaser Trailer

We created this for fun, and because we can! Written by Tom, graphics by Patrick, sound by Tom.

Are You There? Production diary 6

All of the cast and some crew have been sorted! Props are being bought! Extra camera batteries have been ordered! It’s happening! I’m dreaming of a DSLR camera rig I saw on ebay – If I can get my hands on a few spare pounds… It will add a lot to the production, with a matte box, shoulder rig and follow focus, it will allow us to do a lot in terms of camera movement and options. Anyway, fingers crossed I can scrape up the dosh!

The star of the film is my good friend RJ Woolsey who has been in more than a few short movie productions. RJ was the first actor brought on board and the main character was written with his look in mind. He’s agreed to cut his hair the way I want it to be and with a bit of make up he’ll be perfect! He’ll be in almost every shot so make-up will be very important… At the minute we have no make-up artist on board so this will be rectified in the next few days or so, (hopefully!)

We do need a few more crew members so I’ll be talking about them in another diary.
The other two roles in the film will be Geef, played by Elaine Thompson, who will be making her acting debut, and Dean Harper, played by Sharon Carroll, whose credits include appearances on BBC TV and the Discovery channel, along with many smaller productions.

I haven’t had much chance to rehearse with them yet, but my most important advice to them is about what I’m looking for from their performance: Don’t Act! Be!

If they try too hard and look like they’re acting, then I won’t be happy; all of the reality that’s we’re trying to create will evaporate… So much rests on their shoulders… For me as the writer and director, this but scares the bejeebus out of me!

I’ll be creating some character information sheets for them so that they can get ‘inside’ their character and also it will give them a better idea of what’s in my head. They can use this to develop things in their own way. I know they have to take ownership of their own character, but it’s still important to me that I get onscreen what I have been aiming at or imagining.

We are still adding other crew members as we get closer to the planned shooting date, but it’s amazing to me how many people actually needed to do things in a reasonably professional manner!

A few props have been ordered and we’ll have some guest stars in the prop departments 😉 (No spoilers, you’ll have to watch the final movie to see!) We’re gathering a few bits and pieces to use to decorate the sets, but there’s so much still to be done and not a lot of time in which to do it! We have to spend time in each indoor location to decide how to decorate things but we have solved a few problems – such as how to make one room look like two!

We still have a lot of camera gear to lay our hands on but getting a few more batteries was a necessity, as shooting RAW video and preparing the camera eats them for breakfast! We still have things like a clapperboard to buy or make, with our budget, it will probably be the latter!

Next time: Budget

Are You There? Production diary 5

The last few days has seen Patrick and myself testing and experimenting with RAW footage using the Magic / Tragic Lantern Canon firmware add-on as part of an ongoing process to decide on how we’re going to shot the film.

RAW from the Canon 600D is a remarkable achievement, but it has a few drawbacks that mean that the decision to use it is not straight forward…

The workflow is a lot longer than using the standard H.264 codec that the camera shoots, with the raw file being converted to Cinema DNG files, then the Cinema DNG files are brought into After Affects then converted to Apple Pro Res HQ for editing.

Due to the speed of the memory controller on the camera, it is not possible to just chose 1080p or 720p HD and go for it, as at 14 bit 4:4:4 the amount of data the picture produces is overwhelming. This means that you have to choose from a arrange of non-standard sizes and aspect ratios and mix and match to get a picture size and data rate that will allow you film for longer than a few seconds…

This meant I had to do a lot of juggling with settings to come up with something that would be acceptable in terms of picture size and data rate. This is what Patrick and myself would be the best compromise:

Resolution – 960 x 544
Picture format – 14 bit RAW
Framerate – 25p
Sound – External stereo 48kHz

Now, this still had a few problems. In one test shot, there was what look like dead pixels… The footage was converted using raw2dng from magic lantern. But downloading RAWMagic from the App Store solved these problems, except when the footage is adjusted too much when colour correcting.

The next problem was that we felt the footage was very noisy. This proved to be the most difficult nut to crack… We both felt that the noise was unacceptable.

The camera is a reasonably old and low budget DSLR, but its what I own, and for doing most of the documentary style things that I do, it is very versatile and has served very well. There are a lot of things that we can do to improve things, however.

The Canon ISO settings on the camera are in multiples of 100… but a little research shows us that the lowest noise iso for the Canon camera is 160. The only way to add this to the 600D is my using the Magic Lantern firmware, so after tweaking a few settings that’s how we’ve set things.

The next thing we tried is using a “denoising” setting while importing to After Effects and a denoising plugin within After Effects. The best results that we have tested have been from a plugin called Neat Video… but Neat Video costs $99 which is outside our budget at the minute. We’ll keep testing things so this may not be the final answer. We’ll be sure and tell you exactly whats happening as we continue our tests.

The one thing we can say is the the 14 bit 4:4:4: RAW footage is so full of detail, and so responsive to colour adjustment that, while we haven’t solved all of our problems and may shoot in in H.264 as a last minute choice, we are (I am!) almost certainly going to stick with the plan to shoot RAW.

Next time: Cast and crew

Are You There? Production diary 4

The script is finished, the storyboards are finished and the production scheduling has begun!

The final version of the script (third draft!) saw a number of changes, mostly to fill a few glaring holes in the main character’s motivation and persona.

Another big change being that all the characters now have names!

For example, in draft one, the party scene looks like it takes place at the home of “The Curator” – but as a loner who takes a job that places him out of human contact it was odd, and against the character I am trying to portray, that he would have a party at his house… So in the final draft… “Dean Harper” has a party to which “Teeay” feels he has to make an appearance, but is uncomfortable in a social setting. Believe me, this makes much more sense!

There were a few of these changes that made the script a lot more self-consistent, and, overall, much better. It was helpful to discuss them with my brother Patrick, who found that a lot of the questions he had about the first draft were long gone by the final version of the script. Even questions he had never asked were answered!

What I ended up with is something that will (I hope) give the viewers an insight into the main character, his flaws and a glimpse of him at a tipping point in his life. The pieces will be there but the viewer will have to put them together in their own mind.

Simultaneously with the final draft, I was completing the story boards.

The storyboarding process is something I’ve avoided a lot, (mostly due to working alone and being lazy! 😉 but because we’re doing this as a learning experience and because it’s important to convey what I want to others, I committed to it like never before! For our five minute short I ended up with exactly twenty-six pages with six drawings on each of them. Consulting the calculator on my iPhone I make that 156 drawings in all.

All looking like they were drawn by a child!

And that’s a point that I never really worried about. As long as the basic shot is conveyed in some sense, I was never concerned that my drawing skills were severely lacking. As long as you can imagine the shot, and make shapes on the page, then you can convey your intent using the storyboards. It also helps a lot and makes you visualise the exact shot that you’re trying to get.

Of course, no storyboard will survive contact with reality, but the process is close enough that it is possible to now draw up a shot list and schedule.

I’m doing this in Microsoft Excel, arranging things in my own way, which may not be exactly what is needed. From this document, I will share with Patrick, who will do the visual effects, and I’ll use it to create schedules for the cast and crew. It has costume and set information along with props, music and sound cues. A comprehensive document that I’ll use to help keep things on track and plan for the shoot.

Next time: More technical info!

Are You There? Production diary 3

With the stylistic question settled, I moved on to contemplating the technical aspects of the shoot.

My camera is a Canon 600D. I’m using Magic Lantern and Tragic Lantern firmware to upgrade its capabilities and provide a lot more control over what I’m shooting.
This leads to some interesting choices: resolution, frame-rate, codec and colour depth.

The initial (and still the most likely) plan is that I shoot using Tragic Lantern in sRAW 4:4:4 at 24 fps and with a scaled up resolution of 720p.

This will give the greatest latitude for detail, colour correction, VFX and allow us to deliver a final short in HD format.

It’s not without its drawbacks though. The data rates from the 600D aren’t the greatest, even with fast cards, and the workflow is a lot more involved, including needing a lot more time, effort and processor power…

The alternatives including hiring an Atmos Ninja HD recorder or buying a Black Magic Design HD recorder. These would allow capture of the cameras HDMI output, but on the 600D this again would be 720p maximum, at a colour depth of 4:2:2 (good enough for our purposes). This route is obviously going to be an expense, but will be our main option if I can’t get tragic lantern to work.

Our closest rental house has the Atmos Ninja on hire, but for three days it costs the same as buying the Black Magic Design recorder, so that would be a tricky one. Ideally, though, we shoot in sRAW from tragic lantern.

As a few of the locations are quite intimate, I might hire a 10 – 55 mm lens from the rental house to allow a wider range of shots in a tight room. I noticed that 2001 has a lot of distortion on a lot of the “Discovery” footage, but the extremely wide angle does make the ship look at lot larger than it probably did on set, and the distortion heightens the feeling of looking from HAL’s viewpoint.

Also, the kit 18 – 55 mm lens is not a great lens. It’s hard to focus and feels quite plasticky and unsubstantial under my fingers. The rental lens is of much higher quality and will allow wider apertures and better zooming where necessary.

So that’s where we are today. More soon!

Next time: Final Draft

Are You There? Production diary 2

So, after a few days of working in Scrivener, the script was done.

The first draft of my sci-fi short was called “The Curator” None of the characters had names, and some of the ideas weren’t so clear, but it was mind and it was done!

The first person I sent it to was my brother, Patrick, whom I would be relying on for the visual effects and as my main crew!

This bit is always nerve wracking – showing your work to someone…
What if it’s stupid? What if they hate it? Will they see the same things in it you do?
Thankfully, he liked it. Whew!

Having shared the developing ideas with Patrick from the start, he had been excited enough to create some visual effects tests using footage shot for the educational film.

These turned out very well and made us both excited – though the “pocket device” from the story was proving to be tricky to nail down.

I was recording with RJ soon after this and asked him to play the main role in the movie. He agreed and pledged to do whatever it took to get it done! Trusting soul! I gave him a copy of the first draft and waited to see what he thought. Again, I was lucky enough to have him like it!

Some technical and stylistic things needed to be sorted out at this stage.
Although Patrick is very skilled at visual effects and Adobe After Effects is very powerful I really felt that what I wanted to do was to buck the trend of shiny, floating displays and extravagant camera movements…

Quite deliberately, I want to create something in a retro-futuristic science fiction style. This means (for us) no crane shots, few dolly shots, use of split screens, old-fashioned display screens and computer interfaces, use of data disks, 70s style sci-fi costumes and, amongst others, visual effects that aren’t “too perfect.”

With Patrick agreeing, I put together a research list of films to watch – most of which I had on DVD already, with a few iTunes and Netflix thrown in. This list included;
Solaris (Tarkovsky)
Stalker (Tarkovsky)
The Andromeda Strain
2001 A Space Odyssey
War Games
Marooned
Dark Star
Silent Running
Forbidden Planet

The main influences while I was writing being Solaris and The Andromeda Strain but they all were passing through my mind at some pint or another. For me, these movies have things in common and those things are (for me) missing from a lot of modern sci fi… Character and psychology.

George Lucas always said the story should be about the people, not the special effects (which worked well for the first three Star Wars movies… What happened George…?) that’s what I want to get to in this short film – have effects be there but be subordinate and almost un-noticeable next to the characters and the story.

The next aspect of these movies that I loved was that they are almost all psychological dramas. They play with the mind and show us the psychology of the protagonists. Now, in a five minute short film, this might prove difficult, but with a bit of luck we will show the intended character development and motivation in our movie.

I also felt that in modern sci-fi movies, the viewer is sometimes forgotten. Like the shark in Jaws, HAL from 2001, and the “Monster from the Id” in Forbidden Planet, the unseen can be much more intense that the monster shown on screen. It’s the presence that counts.

I want to try and add these elements to the script and the film. Dialogue is sparing and a lot will be told through audio cues… Our locations are unique and interesting and we’re not relying on whizz-bangery. Fingers crossed it comes out even half as good as it seems in my head!

Next time: Technical questions

Are You There? Production diary 1

Sometimes things just align (pun intended;-) and the time is right.., I’ve been thinking and writing stories and screenplays for years now, but since a film made with Paul McParland won at the Supershorts Film Festival about eight years ago, I haven’t got myself organised to make another short. I just never had the facilities or opportunity… I’ve written lots, but I never focused my activities on making my own short film…

Until now.

Now that I’ve started the recording studio, I’ve managed to put together a small camera set up and through a few projects, have been back in contact with the local filmmaking community. Even so a few things happened within a short timescale, making this project possible and feasible.

The first was recording a fun “hidden extra” track with RJ Woolsey for his second CD… As RJ was acting in some local short film productions, we thought it would be fun to make a short film based on this extra track “Mafia wars.” This is ongoing and will be in pre-production as soon as the album is finished.

The next encouraging thing that happened was buying a Røde microphone and discovering the My Røde Reel international short film competition. Finding out about the competition set my mind wondering about entering. I’m sure I could make something? Five minutes? I can do that… But what could the premise of my story be? Where would we film it? Who could be in it?

My existing scripts and stories were too large in scale. My animation scripts wouldn’t suit a live action film. For a week, the only ideas that came to mind were too large for the budget (£0), timescale and, probably, the available crew. A week or so in limbo.

The final and biggest spark was a visit to a location in County Louth, Ireland. Myself and my brother, Patrick, went to a mountain where we would be filming for an educational film. When we got there I was blown away (almost literally! The camera and tripod were blown over at one point!)

Within two minutes of seeing the amazing location I had begun to develop the seeds of the story idea; On the drive to the location I started to come up with ideas….

Someone needed to come up here to use the antenna… Why? What would make them trek all the way up here…?

And so, even as we were shooting for the other film, the ideas were coming to me.
By 6 pm that day I had fleshed out the story a bit more and began the script.
The first step was creating a new project in Scrivener. If you don’t know Scrivener, go and check it out! It’s a total writing package available for Mac & pc and there’s possibly even an iOS version coming soon.

Scrivener allowed me to put my ideas down quickly; Its cork board view allows scenes to be easily moved around and tried elsewhere and it has a fabulous way of helping to organise your thoughts and research from right within your script project.
The first draft was written over the next few days. Again, Scrivener made formatting the script very easy. A plus for me, since I’m often very lazy and don’t format things correctly – since I was hoping to work with a few more experienced crew, I thought I had better do things correctly. Also, because the process is going to be documented and online, I thought we’d take less flak if I got it half-right. 😉 Another plus is that it’s going to be a learning experience for us all, especially me, who is used to winging things too often.

Next time: Style