DEBLOG FROM SOUTHAMPTON

We arrive at the Macdonald Botley Park Hotel in glorious sunshine to find ourselves plunged headlong into golf world, with more leisure facilities than surely can be healthy for you. This seemed to have an adverse effect on Alex as, just for this weekend, he asked us all to call him Andre Falkowski and proceeded to hang around the tennis courts looking for a playing partner whilst hopping from foot to foot and shouting "you cannot be serious" in a strange accent! I do think that the hotel took the health kick a little too far when, on the Saturday night after our meal, we went to the hotel bar for our traditional "end of shoot" nightcap. With cash in our pockets and our room keys in our hot little hands, we found out it was extraordinarily difficult to buy a drink from the open hotel bar - so we decided to break with tradition and went to bed instead.



Two very small scenes in the gym for me this weekend which finally began shooting after long delays. This team had a real vibe for them by the introduction of Ollie to distract Avril from the TV screen showing Jamie. And a very welcome addition he was too as he stretched and posed in the gym, flirting with Avril (who naturally was not in the least bit impressed) resulting in a really fun scene. Bryn also did well having been roped in at the last moment to play Becky - especially, as she told me, English was not her first language (and my Norwegian sucks - although I am working on the cheeky little phrase she taught me!) However, with a little gentle coaching over a coffee in my hotel room Bryn was ready to rock. This second shot was changed to a different location due to the lesuire manager having gone home to bed with the keys to the ladies changing room. Sometimes working around these problems can produce better results, a challenge raises your game and I think Chris demonstrated this by using mirrors when setting up this shot in the newly acquired toilet location. I think it was better than the original idea.

Shoot photos by Manny Elias

Deblog From.... by Deborah Bouchard.

DEBLOG FROM BELFAST

And so to Belfast on a big shiny Easyjet bird! We arrive at The Europa Hotel (Winner - Most bombed hotel, also known as The Hardboard Hotel) to pleasantly discover possibly the biggest beds in the western universe, a 40inch flat panel TV and a completely mental shower. Very pleased with our situation we meet Mike and the team bright and early on Friday AM for an informal chat - complete with shoot schedule. I'm called later that same afternoon and look forward to getting stuck in.(Shoot photos by Manny Elias)



After a ride in Mike's Yaris (get your tyre pressures checked Mike!) and a treat for the ears on the stereo we arrive at a very cosy and pretty cafe outside Belfast which is swarming with the local press - well done team Belfast - in anticipation of the arrival of Gerard Mcsorely. Gerard turned out to be a lovely bloke with a wealth of experience and a pleasure to talk to, although I know he found his role both challenging and a stretch!





It was a much more straight forward plan this weekend, compared to last and with the shot (s) in the can, Gerard off to his trailer for a relax, Alex and I decided to introduce the residents of Ballyclare to a little ipod dancing, which, I'm sure they appreciated.









Of course, no trip to Belfast would be complete without a short stay for a pint of the black stuff at The Crown Liquor Store (handily located across the street from our hotel - sorry Cobra). With all of us actors working on our northern Irish accent to the wonderful tag line "Rupert's shooting movies on the moon" we sat and whiled away the time whilst waiting for our plane!

Deblog From.... by Deborah Bouchard.

Liverpool Making of - Document 02

Some cool pictures from the shoot last weekend. All photos copyright Manny Elias.


Sitting outside while we sort the electrics out....


Andy the live-feed camera man. His camera was supplying the 'close up' and 'you tube' projections


Andy, myself and Cara the first-camerawoman wonder if the camera is picking up the 'subtle' (difficult) balance of spot lights, lamp lights and projections in the 'flat' scene.


Tom goes through the famous 'BumbleBee' technique with Bella and Deborah.


Alex relaxes and plays guitar. We felt this would be a good time to use 'the method' and locked him in while we went for a sandwich in the sun.

Liverpool Making of - Document 01

Click To Play

An excerpt showing a test clip of the liverpool shoot alongside a mobile phone film or the filming taking place. The film was shot as a number of scenes but all in a 5 minute long single take, with the camera moving between sets and actors hitting their cues then rushing to turn off a light or adjust some set.

This clip shows part of the final and 7th attempt at the 5 minute marathon and was infact the take i decided to use in the end. The image on the left is prior to colour correction and the sound is the untreated audio, but it gives a good idea of the process. Video shot by Manny Elias on Tom's phone

Bumble Bee, Bumble Bee.

When Sam and I first met the cast confusion was our element of surprize. We bombarded our newly found actors with plans of epic proportion and scared the carp out of them by telling them they were to be donkeys and carry all our gear. But... thanks to a great British brew and a couple of taxis everything was ironed out and the companys blushes and backs were spared.

Instead of building on our new found affection for each other, we took our now trusting cast to a dust filled garage that resembled a seagull sanctuary or steptoes yard. In here we were to embark on the truly mega adventure.

I gained the role as actor liason and performance director (for want of a better phrase... like performinator!) and set about working on the intention and the grit of the scenes.

I mainly used brechtian, artaudian and stanislavskian techniques including bumble bee bumble bee (see an actor prepares p39) or loud football noises to wooooo (creating a role p997). these got us into the mood for a truly wonderful time.


Now i have built up the story I am going to leave you guys hanging, i believe in teasing things out and also keeping some cards close to our chest (this is a challenge after all).

So in the near future you may hear me elaborate further but for now... enjoy your own shoots and don't forget... To Bumble Bee or to not Bumble Bee, that is the question!

Preventing the Possible Plights of Production

The Liverpool film has now been shot. And in just two hours at that. And it didnt even need any editing!

Our approach was to shortcut the usual filmic processes of scene setups, multiple locations, continuity, and editing by simply filming epidode 3 without any locations, in a simple empty garage space, and all in one take.

I had tried this one-shot performance approach recently on a music video for John Smith and i enjoy creative restrictions. Though i love editing more than any other part of the process, i really enjoyed NOT editing.

However, even the most pared down creative processes have their problems. Liverpool MYMIF had some great ones. I shall explain:

1. Black Box Theatre

Space for creative work is incredibly hard to find. There are loads of empty spaces in Liverpool, its just that you cant get access - they are sat on by greedy developers. And a simple 'black box' theatre space over easter holiday is even rarer - either locked into an unflexible academic calendar or fully booked. Bizarrely enough, i did locate an available space run by a company called 'Black Box Theatre'. However, upon inspection it was bright yellow. In the end i struck upon a simple garage space run by The Art Organisation, called The Projection Gallery.


2. Electromagnetism

To get round the fact we had no location and yet the script was set in a pub, a club, a flat and the lock up, we used a few simple props and some live projections to hint at the different environments. We also had a few theatrical lights, with which we artfully lit our set, and consequently shorted the electrics of the gallery. Oh bugger. An impromtu tea break followed while we treid not to panic and work out what went wrong. We located a melted extension coil under a desk and rewired our gear in a more sensible fashion. Power on!


3. Coitus Interruptus

Space sorted, power on, all we have to do is shoot. The intense, protracted rehearsal and choreography of our single 5-minute-take delayed the actual shooting schedule to the eleventh (well, 7th) hour. Our curry was booked at 9, and we still hadn't shot anything! Everything now had to fall into place, with no hiccups.

One of the biggest challenges of a 5 minute take is sound. We knew our movemnts, our lines, cues, scene changes, but we could do nothing about sound from the outside. I was just praying that the seagulls that had previously been sqwaking on the tin roof had all well and truly buggered off.

3 attempts in and things were going ok, but just ok. But then, at the 4th attempt, everything seemed to be feeling just right. This is the take we'll use, i know it. I'm triggering the projections, smiling smugly inside, watching Cara doing superb work on the camera, Fletch handle the boom smoothly and discretely, even Bella's fella Matt was dancing in the lightbox. He could tell this was the one. And then it all goes wrong...

I hear loud grating sound from outside the gallery. Someone is opening a gate, dragging it, clunk, and a van drving in the carpark, right outside the door. The crank of the hand brake, the engine stops. To everyone's credit, they simply carried on like pros.

As soon as we cut, i went outside and saw a van. But no-one there. then i eard a sound, from the van. i went to investigate, only to discover a romantic couple shagging in the front seat. I knocked on the window and attempted to use sign language to explaining we were shooting a film. This simply confused issues, so i opened the door and aksed if they were going to be moving the van again, parking i mean. They were dead nice about it and said "sorry about that, it's cool, we're finished now". It was very heart warming in the end to think that while we were spending these first glimpses of summer in a dirty garage, some couples were simply at it.

I went back inside and we reset. Three more takes later and we felt we'd got it.
All in all i was pleased we tried something a bit different, even if it did have its own problems, but it was a unique experience!

DEBLOG FROM LIVERPOOL

It was a very warm welcome to Liverpool, both by all the Team and the natives, so kind of them to dress in their best, with hats and everything to welcome Make Your Mark In Film to Liverpool- I'm sure it was that and nothing to do with the National? Without giving too much away, as I understand each concept to be top secret, it was a very ambitious idea and I was interested to see how it would fit together when Sam & Tom first explained it. However, explain they did and took their time to rehearse in a really "actor friendly" manner for all of Friday. I swerved the opportunity to watch Eraserhead at the cinema Fri evening (sorry Sam - just needed to relax after an intensive day!) However, relax was not on the minds of the race goers - we all enjoyed a rather special rendition of Downtown (acapella in the hotel bar) and I'm sure Alex won't forget the sweet version of "Hey Baby, ooh, Ahh" outside his room at 4am. (Photos from the shoot by Manny Elias)

Saturday dawned and, after we met the rest of the team, we began to shoot with a break to watch the race (when in Rome? - my jockey jumped of his horse and Alex's came second). It was a very technical shoot and took a long time to set up but as it was a beautiful day there was tea on the terrace! (There were lots of other funny incidents to share with you all but I'll let Sam tell it how it was!)

The shoot in the can, we met for Liverpool's Cobra night out (other teams - you're in for such a treat) - thanks Cobra. We ate, had a couple of beers and swapped stories. It was a great celebration of an idea, a shoot and the beginning of a remarkable project.

Deblog From.... by Deborah Bouchard.

Main character - background info

Hi All,

Hot off the press, well by email from Judy. I requested some additional background info on our 3 lead characters. So here goes:

Surnames:
Emma Wrenn
Jamie Barker
Avril Carter

Background
Emma's 25, a scorpio (apparently scorpio's can be 'brooding, vengeful and secretive').

Emma is a bit of a drama queen and wears her heart on her sleeve.

The wedding to Jamie was only 3 months away when she found out he was cheating on her (just over a week previously). Her friends had warned her, but she wouldn't believe it, until Jamie received a text message while in the pub with Emma and some of their friends. Jamie was across the room, his phone left on the table near Emma. She wouldn't have read the incoming message, but Avril dared her. Jamie was kind of relieved to be caught out. With the church booked things were going faster than he'd planned.

Emma had told everyone including her parents and younger sister how Jamie was definitely 'the one'. And she still thinks he is. "He's weak willed, these girls throw themselves at him. It's me he loves, we have this connection."

When they met, Jamie was a budding musician, and Emma sees him as 'spiritual' and a poetic soul - in fact he's lazy and happy in his job (inland revenue).

Emma and Jamie had been together for 2 years. He'd bought her Tabitha as a kitten (to make up after a row). Emma assumes the cat must miss her 'daddy' and thinks she's pining when she just need to cough up a fur ball.

Emma's sentimental - about songs she and Jamie both liked, favourite films, places they ate together. When she wins him back, she'll say 'I told you so' to all the doubters. Friends talk about 'moving on' but you can't move on from a soul-mate.

Emma's hobbies are all creative, she enjoys decorating and DIY. Art college has made her confident with power tools. Worried about her, Avril has been taking her on girly shopping trips, nights out etc.

Emma enjoys manipulating her photos on the computer. Annie Liebovitz is her heroine, currently on her ipod are Pink, Gwen Stefani and The Gossip. Jamie was first introduced by a friend at a gig. Emma could blog for England and pouring her heart out to web 'friends' is addictive to her.

Welcome to the blog

Hi All,

Well we have a blog - please add pics, music and info for all the teams taking part

Cheers
Louis