No Respite Productions

Inspiration can come from the strangest of places.

I was watching the brilliant That Mitchell and Webb Look on BBC and they have a fantastic sketch on there called The Quiz Broadcast. What's funny about this sketch is that this light hearted piece of entertainment seeminly takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where people are constantly told to "stay indoors" and a thing known as "the event" is referenced as causing the current state of affairs. The event itself is not expanded upon but characters frequently talk about it and the horrific effects it has had on mankind.

Watching this, I laughed my head off and then began to wonder exactly what would "the event" look like. This is the subject of a new script I'm currently writing. It's going to be a very short and morbid affair, starring just myself due to a lack of any other willing actors.

This is something small to keep me productive and creative whilst I still wait for the forever stalled filming of Ring of Death to eventually take place.

I've always avoided television in favour of working on my own creative pieces, but it would seem that in doing so I've missed out on a rather fundemental need... inspiration. Here's a clip of the show that I could find for you to enjoy.

Well, it's all gone a bit wrong.

We've hit a wee bit of a snag on the whole filming front. The major issue is one of finance and transport. Sadly the global downturn has hit me, and we no longer own a car as a result.

The beef I have is that it's stressful, difficult and impossible enough to try and get locations arranged and cast on board without having the added stress of wondering how the hell you are going to get there in the first place.

To which end I've had to can filming for the time being until things pick up. Fingers crossed I can do some lighter stuff in the meantime, but for now. I guess I shall have to just wait and see what happens. Last post for a while no doubt.

So how did it go?

The first day of filming for the Ring of Death movie was a mixed affair.

It's probably best to get the things that went wrong with the shoot out of the way first...

• Me - I went wrong, or at least my expectations of how much we could film in the day. I completely overestimated how many scenes we could do in 6 hours, which left quite a few of the actors sat around for a long time doing nothing. As it happens my leading lady spent 5 entire hours doing nothing... not an ideal way for her to spend her Sunday I'm sure.
• My occasional snapping at the actors because of my inability to gauge times correctly wasn't a great way to kick off the shoot.
• It turns out the greenscreen we are using is WAAAY too small for the fighting scenes to be done against, so it's back to the drawing board there.

But actually, that was really all that was wrong for today. The real killer was my assumption that we could do lots and lots and lots of scenes during that one period. I have learnt my lesson. It appears to be one I need to relearn at the very beginning of each shoot but at least it's out of the way.

What went right...

• The footage we did manage to capture (two and a half scenes worth) was excellent, the actors did an absolutely stand up job and I've captured some great moments. They were all absolutely brilliant in their roles.
• We made a start on the filming! I consider that a huge positive!
• It turns out the patchy sound capture set-up I've created did the job just fine. Apart from some weird memory bleeds out of audacity when it's been running for too long, we got some real nice and crisp audio. Miles better than anything we'd get from the camera.
• The greenscreen set up itself looked quite impressive and I think I got the lighting just right. Although time will tell as to how good the chromakey will work. More on that soon!

So pretty much that covers my very first shoot. Only other thing I'd add is that next time I'm going to throw a few extra quid and get some buffet type foods from the shops to feed the actors with. I had provided bisuits, but an extra tenner to make sure they were well fed during the shoot would have really improved morale and meant that they would not have had to trek to Subway in the windy cold!

Hopefully we'll be filming the shoot later on this week, hopefully a total success story then!

Cheers,

Adam

Hello all,

Not really had any time at all to update this blog, and this is down to the fact that pre-production has been the only thing on my mind as we enter the production phase.

All I'll say is I've spent a fortune so far, consumed vast amounts of time trying to get this whole thing underway and still have a million more things that need doing before I head off tomorrow AM with all my gear in tow for our first shoot over in Gloucester Docks.

I've been busy working on acquiring lights for the green screen filming, my character's costume, making sure all the cast know what's going on... amongst all of that I have tried to storyboard as much of the film as I could but sadly only a small fraction has been done. It will be intersting to see how smooth the filming goes with storyboarded scenes vs. non-storyboarded scenes but somehow I don't think I'll be surprised at the results.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll have lots of notes and pictures to upload. Here's hoping anyway! I aim to try and blog some realtime snapshots of the filming process with my phone so stay tuned.

I should probably mention that the main tools in my armoury for tomorrow are...

1. My own annotated version of the script with all my shooting notes and plans
2. A Call sheet showing cast and props for each scene that we've planned to film.
3. Storyboards of the scenes (where completed).
4. Tape Measure for the greenscreen shots, which will allow me to move the camera to the right height and distance when filming the background footage.
5. Paper towels for those "messy" shoots
6. Tea, coffee and biscuits for my hard working cast.
7. A set of cards to keep non-active members busy during shoots.
8. An 8 in 1 handy tool
9. Masking and duct tape.
10. Webbing and strapping for locking stuff (you never know) down in place.

Wish me luck! Keep your eyes peeled as I plan to update more frequently now that we've begun filming, this was always supposed to be a diary anyway!

Adam