Brain Melting...

So last night I was up until 2AM thinking about this film - and I'd like to say that it was the first time I was left awake by this film, but no. Wake Up has basically consumed my thoughts for the last two weeks, and even a successful response to my casting call (which netted me about 40 people interested) hasn't quelled my mind - only increased it.

There's a strange sensation I've never felt before that's been building up. Normally, in fact, almost always, I'm a very calm individual - opinionated and loud, but calm. Nothing really phases me, so to speak, at least not with what I've experienced in my life. I've had deadlines for essays come rapidly, but they're always just one all-nighter from being solved, even if I've got to pull 5 in a row (which I did last year). During a week in November 2005 I totalled 17 hours of sleep from Sunday-Saturday. And nothing really bothered me, I wasn't even that tired.

I don't know; I'm aware of that fact that I'm some kind of anomoly, since nobody should be THIS passive towards life - but all of the sudden, this film.. this creation that I was initially approaching like I approach everything in life... has made me lose sleep, stop thinking about everything else, and... hell... this is what "stress" must feel like.

All of the sudden I realize that in two weeks, I'll be sitting here in this basement, with about 20 people around me, waiting for instructions. There'll be people that came from Toronto after earning the job to be in front of the camera, awaiting my instructions. They're trying to get themselves into the industry - I'm just trying to create a film that I can show in a film fest. I don't have a clue... correction - I didn't have a clue how much effort would be needed, but repeated talks with my DOP has made me realize how much shit that's involved. I mean, I need a PA (Production Assistant), a 1st AC (Assistant Camera), some grips, lighting guys, a makeup artist, and for christ sake, some guy to handle just FOOD. What the hell. FOOD? But yeah, I guess I need to feed people. Oh, and there's also the guy that holds the Boom mic - he needs to do it right, and have an understanding of Ohms.

This damn film is killing me - and even though I know that this is the hardest time right now, I'm sure getting my ass kicked by this thing I've never had to do before - put real effort into something. But I don't want this to suck balls, especially not with actual actors. So it's likely that my ass will have to take a 2 week beating while I realize what the real world is like - this isn't some shitty highschool production where me and my friends are filming us being morons with no concern for how the hell it looks - I mean, Wake Up is going to have ASSISTANTS.. and somehow, my stupid brain managed to literally build a small chain o' command that put me on the top...

I've got no experience. I've got no clue. I've got people that know what they're doing (mostly) around me, and I'm going to have to fake it. I'll have to swallow my hatred for everyone, push away my tendency to mumble and joke my way out of things, and actually direct.

Damn. Directing is nothing like it is in the movies. And after this, I know I'll have a shitload more appreciation for films... even the shitty ones (except anything made by Michael Bay... I mean seriously, The Island?). And on Sunday and Monday, I'm holding auditions for the 4 key roles - that of Lyndon, Bryce, Dustin, and JC. This isn't something I've ever done before, either, so I'm going to have to make it up as I go along with no real clue or experience.

But then again, I watched the Futurama episode where Bender auditions to be on "All My Circuits", so I'll just recreate that scene and be fine.

-Mark

PS: "That was so terrible I think you gave me cancer!" - the best line from that episode.

3 weeks to go, 9 million things to do.

It's been a little bit since I last blogged, yes. I've been working my ass off on the film, and as of this moment I've acheived a lot... for once.

I finalized the script after handing it to the script expert. Surprisingly, there was only a small change needed, which was made. Now the script is solid, and it was ready for public disclosure.

So I started working on the storyboard, which has been ridiculously tedious, and is still only about half-finished. Luckily, I can literally take this to about the day before shooting, which was decided on October 14th and 15th. The digital stills I've been taking is VERY time consuming, and using just stand-ins has proved to be a nightmarish annoyance, since they don't know what I'm doing. It's not a huge deal, since it's just a rough outline, but ugh. Talk about frustrating.

Moving along, I managed to pick up one actress - it wasn't difficult, given the 30 second conversation it took to acquire her. It also made it easier that she's one of my friends. And she's got such a huge role: The girlfriend. All she does is answer the door and look excited. No lines, and a grand total of maybe 3 shots. Genius.

However, I actually posted a casting call on Friday, and got a response - a guy from Barrie that's interested in playing. That's a hell of a drive, but hey, why not - it's just good to get that first response.

Course I'm now paranoid that it'll be the only response I get. I've already started to second guess my call for the female lead, since it wasn't particularly descriptive or really gives an accurate/appealing character to play.

What's most interesting for me is HOW much more there is to this than I predicted. Like most novice filmmakers, I just assume it goes script-drawings-shoot-edit-done. There's a ton of little inside work to do, and I'm still only about half-way through my pre-production. I've got to finish off getting my crew, get all the actors, all my extras (which arguably, will be the easiest part), have a crew meeting, hold auditions, get a shooting schedule, pray for good weather, pray for warm weather, set up all the locations, arrange for food, finish my storyboard, get all my equipment, and there's probably about 200 other things I'm forgetting.

Joy. And all this being done on a budget of zero dollars.

And let's not forget that I still have that whole "school" thing somewhere in there. But that can be ignored.

-Mark

Shot breakdown and more pre-production rambling

So I'm still working on the shot breakdown here for Wake Up, but a quick conversation with two people secured the last of the locations. My crew is nearly complete, I just need people to hold things during the shoot now, really, which can frankly be anyone. On that front, everything's going great.

Today in class we discussed storyboards, which is loosely what I'm doing with a shot breakdown (it's more of a mix). Since I have no real talent to draw, I decided that it's much more useful to take digital photos with stand-ins to more properly show what I'm describing. It's a stroke of real genius for me, in my own opinion, since I can't draw, can't afford a real storyboarder, and don't know anyone that likes to do it that'll do it for free (although I've heard rumblings - either way, it's not important anymore). I've still got to fill out the sound technician spot, which is a huge overimportant title for a really unimportant job - you're basically the boom-mic operator - at least in this film.

Obviously, actors and actresses are the biggest hurdle, and so far I haven't even started to look. I wanted to do that last weekend, but finding a prof that'd check over the screenplay, which we also discussed today, sort of pushed things back till at least next Monday.

With the shot breakdown, although still in its infancy, I'm starting to get a stylistic feel for the film. I'm utilizing space a whole lot, trying to push the characters away - and deliberately keeping the audience from identifying with the supporting characters. That's all I'll reveal for now, though.

It's occurred to me now that I still haven't described Wake Up at all - so my next blogging will be dedicated to this mysterious film I've been rambling out. And I PROMISE, that within the next week I'll have some visual content up to feast your eyes on.

-Mark

Courses and scripts

The wheels are uncharacteristically spinning on my next project, seeing that I've completed the screenplay on time, and had a talk with the guy who's agreed to be my DOP (Director of Photography) and Gaffer (lighting). I've even got all the locations down pat (which is a grand total of 5). Strangely, everything's not a cataclismic failure thus far.

I had the first production class on Friday; I can tell right away that it'll be an intense course that'll basically get me the basics of what I need to know. And shock! surprise! the first thing I learn is writing a script/storyboard.

But I'll back it up a second.

My teacher is a guy that's done a bunch of work in commercials/tv/actually established projects. I caught wind that he'd checked over a ton of students' scripts and critiqued them; so naturally, I handed off my script to him to check over. I'm sure he'll rip it apart, which I want, so it'll likely end up being something entirely different then I started with. Which I'm cool with, since there was things I liked, and didn't like about what I currently had.

The equipment I'll be using is a 5000 dollar camera, but alas, still in DV-format as opposed to actual film, which would otherwise be 16mm. Course, I don't have the coin available for 500 dollars worth of reel, otherwise I'd hit that up immediately.

My DOP/Gaffer has done a ton of work, both paid and unpaid, across Southern Ontario for some time, which includes work for the Canadian Film Board. I've also seen some of the films he's done, and while very anti-Hollywood, he's also ridiculously knowledgeable about the actual process, and damn good. It's nice to know that I won't really have to worry about that side of the film, because he's got his shit together there.

For now, I'll have to leave it at that. I've still got a ton of pre-production to do, next of which will start tonight with the shot breakdown. That's easy; just tedious to actually do. But there the film will really start to flesh out - being that I'm more an artist than a storyteller (dialogue was one of the things I didn't like about my script), I'll likely tell the story more through this method. We start shooting in early October, so I've got a tight deadline to do all my pre-production.

And I promise soon I'll put up some visual content for the film.

-Mark

Birthpains of a filmmaker.

So for the last 6 or so months, I've been toying with a new film idea. My last/first short film, titled The Sturnich Conspiracy, had a whole lot of flaws that pretty much caused it to fail miserably, most noteably the lighting. It was a damn shame, considering how much time and effort others I had aquired help from put into it. I made a ton of mistakes which ranged from no set direction, no script, no storyboard, no planning, pretty much no kind of consistent effort until the post-production stages, when I realized the film was a mess with some good points in it. I tried to cram a 30-40 minute story hopelessly into 11 minutes. As a result, the the main (and pretty much only) character stopped talking 5 minutes in, ran around for 6, and died kind of unexplainedly. The last minute of the film is pretty well shot, actually - about the only positive to take. Basically, with such a restricting timeline I threw out the entire subplot/catalist of the movie, so really it just looked like the character was weird/dumb/completely out of his mind.

Yeah. Messy.

But not all bad came from this. I took what I had learned, which most importantly was to PLAN a film out before shooting, and to get real actors to star instead of just my random friends (and myself).

I spent all summer planning and fleshing the plot out for my next attempt, which eventually came to the title of Wake Up. And before anything, I set dates for me to complete stages of the production. My last "deadline" to pass was the finishing of the screenplay, which I can thankfully say I've done (at least, the rough). In those stages, I worked on finding some help, and luckily for me, I picked up the same two guys that helped my post production in The Sturnich Conspiracy. That would be the graphics/visuals/titles guy, and a composer. Both of whom did excellent jobs on TSC, and frankly I'm a little surprised they agreed to come on for Wake Up. Anyhow, I'm meeting up with the graphics guy on Friday to discuss more of the film, and see where I'm sitting. And with classes starting in only a few days, and the hectic weekend (of moving) over, I can finally sit down, ignore all my other classes, and work on this film.

And yes, I'll post The Sturnich Conspiracy in a little bit, if anyone's interested in the "start" of LEGP.

-Mark

It All Begins With an Idea

I've been meaning to start this for awhile. Approximately 8 months ago, I arbitrarily started up my own "studio" production name for the films I was going to make... based off a song I'd heard. But let's not get ahead of myself.

I'm a student filmmaker that's currently attending the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ontario. I'm in my third (of four) year of my major, which is shockingly enough, a Specialization in Film Studies. Here's the catch: It's a tiny major in a campus that specializes in Medical Studies and Business Studies, oh! And Business Law. I'm really out of place, considering the other students like I total about 40 out of 35000. And those that are specializing? About 10. So naturally, I'm in the wrong place. But I'm stuck here because I've already gone halfway so I might as well finish.

I have ambitions to make films, either as a director, an editor, or cinematographer. To be honest, I don't really know which I want to do more. I have a lot of idea and stories I'd love to tell - which leads me to want to become a director. But: I've been mastering digital editing since I got my hands on Adobe Premiere 4.1 when I was 17 - and I really enjoy editing and I've become quite good at putting things together, at least technically. So that favours editing. But I also space out a whole lot and when I think of a movie, either a box office one or a student film in my head - the things I remember most are types of shots I'd like. I'm a big fan of meaning through camera, and I frequently ignore dialogue in my previous films (or, I'll say.. film attempts) for the shots. So that's pushing me towards Cinematography.

Of course, there's a huge roadblock: I've got NO experience making an actual budgetted film, and the best camera I've ever used cost about $4500 dollars, which although sounds expensive, pails in comparision to professional equipment. The biggest crew I've ever worked on is about a 6 man crew, which is short of the usual... hundreds of people that work on "good" films. I lack knowledge of certain technicalities of filmmaking, particularly lighting. And I'd say that my major would help, but it's 95% theory, which makes me brilliant in the context - but not in the deliverance.

There's hope at the end of this tunnel - I'm enrolled in a course there that's all production, so over the next few months I should be crammed face-full of useful information. And there's some festivals I'm going to enter in over the next year that might help me get into.. well, some kind of education/actual film skills.

So, what's the purpose of this blog, you ask?

Well, it is here I will enthrall you with the tales of my filmmaking attempts. It will basically serve as my diary to write down every little thing I learn along the way, both in the on-set and off-set world. I know over the next year, I'll be much more involved in filmmaking than I ever have - and I'll be taking any reader along for the ride.

Course, I intend to post production stills, "behind the scenes" pictures, promo video blog posts, graphics, musings on the movie world, and anything else that relates.

Oh, and it goes without saying that I'll be sharing my finished products on this blog. I'm not doing these student films for money - I'm doing them to learn and to share everything I've done. My fortunate adeptness in editing is the first step - from here on out, it's where I buckle up and experience first hand the filmmaking world. My course starts Friday - my ideas have started months ago.

So sit back, watch/look, read, and enjoy!

-Mark