Oh hello there. Bet
you thought I decided to ditch the whole blog idea? Not a chance.
Reason being? It’s been a busy
mofo of a year, so what better time to review the whole year and work load at
the tail-end of 2016.
What you'll read is
the attempt to get a short film made, festival runs, meetings, and I'll throw
some films in at the same time. Hope you enjoy.
PART 1
So first thing
first...my short movie.
December 2015.
Application thrown in for the Creative England BFI Ishorts funding. Why not,
hey? It’s free. Did I learn from the last time i did it? Nope. Did I try? Yeah. I needed a producer, a bit of clout.
But sadly, and not entirely their fault as they actually got the funding, it
didn’t work out.
Well, time to basically
put up or shut up. No one is going to just give you money to make your little
flight of fancy, so why don't you do it yourself?
January 2016. Plan
was in motion. Saving, planning, schedules, different avenues to go down.
Crowdfund or not? Mindfield. So what you have to do is just listen to people.
Lay out the plan, your problems, and where you want to go then listen to what
people have to say. It’s then your informed decision. Whether it falls on its
arse or not at least you listened and you made your decision. As this was
happening I was still writing and refining the script. I was watching shorts, figuring
what worked, what didn’t, and above all what I really like.
Tracks in place but
I'm still building the train. I get writer friends to look at the script -
genre fans and non-genre fans - just to get the feeling that the core ideas and
themes worked. Script was non-linear too, a problem I felt that was down to the
amount of information and character work within a short 10 minute time frame.
But while doing this I was thinking two steps ahead. I needed visuals,
pre-production material just to give people that idea of the project I'm was
trying to do.
This then tumbled
into a juggling act of re-writes, visuals, and locking down a location. My
thinking was to lock a location then everything will fall around it as that is
your safety net. It gives you an end game for your production, something people
can free themselves to work on as you have that concrete date.
Which leads down to
casting. There’s only a general net you can cast with independent films, so
unless you've got the money to get the talent you have to put the graft in.
Luckily enough I happened to find people that were a cut-above what I thought I
could even draw to the film, but the graft was still needed. I met every actor
and talked to them about the project, what I wanted from it, and where I think
it could go just so they could be heavily invested as much as I was. This is
where your script, your vision, and your planning comes in as they're tangible
aspects people can invest in.
The same applies to
the crew. As this was a low budget affair, you have to get picky with who you
want to get what you need. You also have to try and get the best people. As
with the cast side of the production, I was lucky to get some amazingly
talented people. This was not without a
few panic moments (3 make-up artists), but these things can be fixed with a bit
of time, perseverance, and knowing what you want (the end game).
July 2016. We started
shooting.
TO BE CONTINUED.....
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