In conclusion

Ultimately, it is Nicholas Clarke who does a wonderful job of a score for Rosie. I am really impressed by his effort, it really fits well with the film. I really enjoyed using Abaltat, but the score never really took off, which is a shame because I think the software has great potential, but I´m not sure it fitted so closely with a film like Rosie where so much depends on the music. It is an incredible tool for incidental music I believe.

The process as a whole as been frustrating, yet rewarding. It is good to get out of my comfort zone and try new things. I really didn´t feel like any more filmmaking after the 72 in Galway, but Rosie has got me excited again. It got me back into shooting with a light crew again. It got me thinking about our roles too - what it means to be a director, a producer, a storyteller, a musician and an actor. Lots of food for thought.

I am now facing another 72 Hour project, this time in Melbourne, and a shoot in Algeria for the third part of a Saharan project. Momentum and reflection, I think, are the most critically important elements to micr-budget filmmaking.

The final push

It has been a frustrating few months, with my attention being spread across so many other projects. Rosie hasn't been residing with me either, as it is with musicians who are all having a stab at scoring it. Indeed, I am having a stab at scoring too, as this was one of the original things that excited me about doing this project.

There is one concrete factor that is immovable and therefore brilliant. The film must be completed in time to be shown at the 72 FUNraiser in Berlin. This cannot and will not change. So at least I have closure, like a relationship that has gone on too long and is just hurting me...

It's been a while...

Rosie latest from James Fair on Vimeo.

Waiting Games

It has been over a month since I last posted info up here on the blog, and whilst I haven't been working on Rosie, it has very definitely been on my mind. The current situation is that it still resides with Justin McCarthy at Abaltat. I am so excited to hear how it sounds. I received an email from him recommending that we put some dubbed synced effects onto it, which meant that it will come back to me before being finished completely.

In the mean time, all my effort has been upon the next 72 hour film.... that is enough for me to be getting on with!

Getting excited again

I guess it is because the film is not with me at the moment that I am having a great few days without the stress of production. I can't wait to hear what Justin McCarthy comes up with for this soundtrack. I have borrowed a projector from work to experiment with chucking images up onto city surfaces....

Encodes

Since I've had the film back from Matt at Windmill Lane, I've been experimenting with encoding options which will make this film more compressed. Ultimately, the playout from Windmill Lane was 181GB, which is hideously big and not unusual for full HD. However, Justin McCarthy at Abaltat needs only a mp4 file to compose the music, so I've shrunk it massively to achieve that.

Overall, I am uncertain about the film at this stage. This is normal for me. I have always veered from love/hate relationships with my projects. But it is always difficult to sustain momentum when you are in the negative head space about a film. I think this may be the greatest benefit of a bigger team, is that you always bring one another along.

One thing is for sure - I am tired.

Completing Rosie

Completing Rosie from James Fair on Vimeo.

Windmill

Today I sat with Matt Branton and coloured Rosie. It was an exciting time, because it certainly starts to come together. We made some fairly bold decisions with some of the coloring, especially the flashbacks, and I am fascinated what John Bradburn and Andy Paton would make of the decisions!!! Personally, I think it adds a great deal to the film.

I'll write more about the process at some other stage, as I am tired from constant travelling and work right now. I am posting this small video to see the dark room that Matt and I have been working in for 8 hours!

Rosie @ Windmill from James Fair on Vimeo.

28 mins approx...

Andy Paton shows me his rough cut and has managed to shave 8 minutes off of mine. He wants to get it down even further, which is exciting. I must admit, I prefer his cut to my own, and all of a sudden it is flying...

I need it done by the end of the week though so that it can be ingested to the computers at Windmill over the weekend before I get colouring with Matt on Monday. It goes from being a sideline in my lifde to the main event again.

Back in Brum

Rosie from James Fair on Vimeo.

Worked out that the dodgy sync issues on Vimeo are because the video is better at 29.97 frames and it was slipping. What a great way to spend a Sunday...

Finish what you started....

I feel like I am a child who has rushed to dessert without finishing the main meal. I have begun filming a documentary about an 94 year old lady called Nin, who lives and works as a maid in Ireland, whilst Andy is still back in England finishing off the Rosie edit. Still , it is nice to have a few projects on the go. I am going to be in London pitching another 72 hour film project to Fremantle in August, this time to take place at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2010. We are a busy bunch....

Our plan is to screen Rosie, alongside 'The Gloaming', as an hour-long silent cinema experience. They will get projected onto walls in cities in the autumn and winter months and act as visual graffiti. The plan at the moment is to pump out the soundtracks upon a frequency that people can tune into on either their mobile phones or radio device.

Whether this comes into fruition is a different matter, especially with everything that we have on. I should finish what I started...

The Fleadh

So a year after the 72 hour film experience, I returned to the Fleadh in Galway to see the festival. I work throughout the festival to get support for a 72 in Melbourne, but the economy is very bleak in Ireland and business is hard.

Whilst at the Fleadh I speak to Matt Branton about the colouring process for Rosie. He is a bit gutted that we aren't taking it to Windmill Lane. He convinces me to change my mind and bring it in at the start of August. This is helped by Justin McCarthy at Abaltat volunteering to do the music for me. I wanted to play around and do it myself, but I'm not sure I'll have the time over an ever-increasingly busy period...

I also had a chance to catch up with Etain McGuckian. It seems like ages ago that she was helping us in Birmingham. She is busy with films of her own right now, which is awesome.

A change of plan

I have come to the Galway Film Fleadh to sort the pre-production on another project but Rosie hasn't come with me. I have left the film with Andy Paton, as he feels he can tweak it further. I am actually happier to have it entirely in his possession, albeit means I don't do a colour at Windmill. Perhaps we can get the project in at Splice, who are keen to help us also.

An Inspirational Dinner

Similar to my positive meeting with Carl, I had a great dinner with Gary Carter, where amongst a broad, fascinating conversation, we hit upon the notion of mastery, and whether we can truly master something. This has always been something that I don't necessarily believe or feel compelled to achieve. But Gary speaks so convincingly of his desire to master certain elements within his life. When he asks me what I think of my own films, I say that I am serving my apprenticeship - convinced that these experiences will inform an eventual mastery of a subject. I point out Boorman, Scorcese, Loach, all in the sunset of the lives, still making films because they want to. This isn't a job, it is a way of life.

When we discuss the marathons I ran without training, Gary asks me "what would you be like if you trained?". I don't have an answer for it, but it neatly mirrors another element of our conversation. If I was directing and producing for television when I was 22, what I be like with training?

I leave the dinner almost convinced that I want to return to the industry and put myself to the test once again, but it would mean relinquishing the creative freedom that I enjoy in Staffordshire. Food for thought perhaps.

Meeting with Carl Schoenfeld

Today I met with Carl Schoenfeld, who I am going to take the liberty of calling an old friend now. We have been in contact since he knidly helped me with my Masters thesis in 2006. We've been in contact ever since.

I tell him about Rosie, and he suggests talking to a few other groups of people as he thinks there could be a nice little future for it as a punky side project. He points out a few different routes, which I prefer to keep private at this stage so we're not seen to be jumping the gun. I've always enjoyed this about Carl as he never shits on things from a great height. He always sees a merit in most things and seeks to optimise things on those merits. Put better - he points you in good directions.

I would go so far to say that I enjoy almost a mentorship from Carl. We've never formalised anything as such, but he is such a helpful and experienced mind. I think that such mentorships are crucial to our development as people, let alone filmmaking.

Andy gives a helping hand

So with my rough edit done, I hand it over to Andy Paton, another colleague at Staffordshire University who specialises in editing. I figure he can cast a pretty critical eye over the project because he hasn't been involved too closely on it. I ask him to cut 6 minutes out of it. I'm sure he'll cut twenty.

This is a little strange for me, as I have usually done edits relatively autonomously, but I figure the variety of input will help give it some shape. I believe that it is such a challenging project in some respects, that it could do with a completely new set of eyes looking over it...

36 mins & 22 secs

It is the early hours of Sunday morning and I have finally finished a rough edit. I am suffering from a bit of man flu (hopefully not swine flu!) and it has been a slow stagger to the finish! The film currently runs at 36 mins and 22 secs, which is obviously a great deal shorter than I had originally intended, but I think that it suits the length that it has. I will aim to tighten it further once I have added one pick-up shot that goes at the end. If I can get it to 30 mins I will be very happy.

For now though - bed.

London

Rosie latest from James Fair on Vimeo.

I'm amazed how a clip that is one take can be in sync at the start but then be out at the end. Never mind, consider it radio...

The slow edit

As per the filming, the edit is slow. I am concerned about my resistance myself. Have I lost interest in this project?! Perhaps it is struggling to fit in along side all the other elements that are going on in my life right now. It is a frustration but I will see it through...

This morning, whilst thinking about this, I realised that it is perhaps my experimental approach to this film that is holding me up. I am considering every element, it is a process of reflection and ponderance. This is a luxury that I sometimes cannot afford with my filmmaking. I feel that I have developed my skills and instincts by learning these skills by rote. A militaristic commitment to improvement, as opposed to a reflective more rounded one. Even in the past my filmmaking was about challenging the things I read in books and putting it into practise, but now I think I am more conscious of this subversion, and where it could take me...

Editing

I have finally dragged myself to the computer to do some editing and I am quite happy that it is coming together. Each cut that I do comes with an element of surprise, as if I never realised I could do these things intuitively as opposed to an organised regimented fashion. Of course, this is rubbish, as I have made documentaries for years which didn't have the element of control. But I am nevertheless happy.

It will be short. I can see that now. But I'm not too bothered as I am happy to be experimenting in my field. So far I have 15 minutes down. I think it will end up around 50 minutes long - bang slap in 'middle of nowhere' festival blackspot. But I think that it will work when projected up onto surfaces in cities. Who will stand for twice that length? Either way, that length will be more than enough when it comes to experimenting with the sound, which is going to be the biggest post job I have ever encountered.

On a different note, I have been thinking lots about Roger Corman lately. I want to contact him to say what a massive influence he has been to me, yet I have never acknowledged it anywhere. Credit where credit is due and all that...

Procrastination

Rosie update from James Fair on Vimeo.

Finishing up the shoot

Last Friday John and I finished up all the sequences that involved Eeva. It was a great time, just whizzing through the last little sequences, six months after we shot the first ones!!! Eeva then flew immediately back to Finland, where she started her new job on the Monday morning. Thank you so much Eeva for your help and we'll miss you! I still have a couple of shots to pick up of the empty city at night and at dawn, so it is not officially a wrap.

On a different note, I went with John to the Strongroom Studios to audition people for his new film. It was great to see another filmmaker at work in the casting process. It was fascinating how he discussed the ambiguity that he enjoys creating as a filmmaker. I thought back through Rosie, and realise that this is not an element that I have adopted myself, preferring instead to direct a story for the audience, albeit with an ambiguous ending.

I guess that whilst I was inspired by John's approach that we discussed in the Symposium in November, we are and always will be, very different filmmakers. Thankfully, there is room in this world for both of us.

Exteriors....

Because of the limitations of filming in the day on Friday, when it is essentially a night sequence, we filmed a couple of pickups tonight that will cut into the film. Both sequence were tea breaks in the story, but one was shot at dusk (which will double for dawn in the morning) and the other was a night shot. Hopefully, once cut in, no-one will be any the wiser...

It was just me and Eeva tonight* as it was two simple set-ups. I get paranoid that my shots aren't as good as the work that John does. Then I ignore it and do the best I can!!!

*Thanks Tess for taking the pics!

The end (of filming) is in sight...

It is only when reading over this blog that I realise that half of the year has escaped, and it is already June. And almost half way through June also. I returned from NYC to the usual pile of post and email that kept my mind from the Rosie project. But now I have the end in sight. Eeva and I will film some tomorrow night, and then finish off with John on Friday. That will be all the shooting DONE! I am relieved and nervous, as I am not entirely sure that I have everything I need to make it cohesive. I am perhaps 90% sure, but without my usual mechanisms, of a script and a schedule, I cannot be wholly convinced.

I was chatting to Nerina Villa about her documentary short that she is doing for Screen West Midlands and discussing the approaches to editing. She already has a start on hers, despite not concluding the interviews, so that she knows what to collect. I wonder whether I would've liked to do this with Rosie, but figured that I haven't because I didn't want to. I described it once to John like putting together the pieces of the puzzle in post. And once a story is made from the images I have available, I will start on the sound. There is no sync audio on the footage, so everything sonically will have to be placed there. Building a picture, building a soundtrack...

On a different note, I took part in El Mas Santo recently. Another person who is doing what they love for the sake of it. I had such fun...

New York, New York

I've spent this week in New York working on other projects that look set to span the next 18 months. It has been a mad week. It becomes increasingly obvious that I must finish "Rosie" off in order to concentrate on the other things in hand. Yesterday I went for lunch with Gary Hoctor and Richard LaGravenese and discussed the nature of our work, and it served to reinforce exactly why I love filmmaking. To watch Gary and Richard speak so passionately about French cinema and so dismissively about the meat-market of festivals gave me a great sense of perspective. WE DO THIS BECAUSE WE LOVE STORIES... NOT BECAUSE WE WANT TO BE FILMMAKERS. The challenge it seems, is satisfying ourselves as creative people and a need to survive in a material world. It reminds me of Scorcese's point in his BFI American Cinema documentary, where some filmmakers tried to "do one for the studio" and one for yourself.

Despite the energy of Berlin and New York, I'm looking forward to going home and seeing Birmingham again!!!

Last filming date

Such is the pressure upon Eeva's time, we look to have a very small window to film the last parts of the film. It has been a busy year for all concerned and a difficult one to fit the filming around. I think, with all things considered, this has been a particular downside. Whilst John and I have discussed the fact that the distance in time suits the 'flashback' sequences, it has always been a problem for focussing my attention. Still - this is what the project has been about - a learning curve. I have never shot a film this way before, I will always bare this experience in mind when preparing another project.

More reflections post-Berlin

I have just returned from a week in Berlin where I was with Fremantle and their various soap operas discussing the uncertain future that lies ahead for television. I was constantly reminded of how fortunate I am to work autonomously from these pressures. It was lovely to meet inspirational people like Neil McCarthy and discuss our projects.

One thing that dawned on me whilst in these meetings, and whilst touring the UFA studios, is that it is the soap operas' limitations that inform the production. In a bizarre way, I feel that Rosie has been without limitation (dialogue aside) and I wonder whether it is this freedom to take the project where ever I choose that has sometimes left me rudderless and without focus. I certainly feel a lot more 'connected' to my other projects, as if I am responding to a higher creative purpose. With Rosie I have felt as if I don't know what it is I am making, and that scares me in a way, but liberates me in other ways.

I discussed with John Bradburn the idea of simply editing the piece together without the structure of which I scripted it. It would be fascinating to see how the whole piece would come together in this way as opposed to 'forcing' it from my previous plans.

I'll get the final scenes shot in early June and we'll take it from there...

More filming

Today we shot more footage in and around Birmingham. I am happy that we have now fulfilled most of the project, but with a little more to pick up in June. The sporadic dates have meant the film has different seasons and haircuts etc... it really benefits from the time difference.

I find myself panicking about length (no puns please). I spoke to John about it today. Why am I worried about this nature of shooting a 'feature' film? 75 minutes or above please. It is a bizarre formality. You end in a halfway house if it isn't a short film or a feature. But why do I care? The chances of these things moving forward are that they should be a feature or they won't get seen in festivals. But I'm not sure I want to go down that route as I mentioned earlier. So it will just be a story. It may be a 40 minute story. It may be a two hour story. Let's not worry about the length.

Both John and I are just happy to be experimenting in our field. We are so often held up in development limbo waiting for projects to get started. Or on shoots and waiting around with the rigamarole of big crews. This is all about the fun and enjoyment of filmmaking. It is about exciting ourselves and remembering why we do this in the first place - telling stories with moving image. We are pigs in shit...

Another shoot looms

I can honestly say that the intermittent bursts of filming on Rosie have been harder than the long sustained effort on previous shoots. It is not so much the physical or organisational effort but the mental one. It is similar to when my friends have done part-time study. It doesn't operate in a prioritised area of my life. It becomes a secondary thing. This is a difficult thing to admit, but a natural one.

I don't believe this has led to a lack of quality or focus in this project, but simply lacks the creative emphasis that a short production window can bring. I found this similar to when I recorded a musical project called 'Sagittarius', where the recording was done in a week, but the mixing to weeks and (in my opinion) created a reduction in the 'timeliness' of the project, and made it relatively sterile. I am keen to see that this does not come to a similar fate. I don't think it will as there is an energy about the project and it's experimentalist approach that I think will keep it edgy.

I am aware that I am using very flowery and emotive language as opposed to the cold and scientific. I wish someone would create a formula for soul.

Filming dates

We have a very fine window with which to shoot the remainder of the film. The dates have now been set and we hope to complete filming with a couple more filming days. In my mind I have no idea of how this shooting ratio translates to minutes onscreen, but I am certain that this film will be around 60 minutes long. That is a horrible length, as it is neither fish nor fowl. But that may be one of the possible outcomes.

I have to keep reminding myself to be open to this process, and not try to predetermine it all. It is like trying to kick old habits!

The Boy Who Collected Sound

Such is the disjointed nature of getting films made, that I have been focussed far more recently upon finishing a 6th draft of a feature script called "The Boy Who Collected Sound". It has been a long slog and it is three months later than I thought it would be. But it is done now and my mind this morning shifted back to "Rosie", which we aim to finish shooting in early May. I've only briefly revisited the footage that we have already shot and it excites me to see it. I don't know why, but I am particularly excited about the editing upon this project in a way that I have never felt before. I guess it is all the variables that we have introduced.

On a different note, the observant amongst you will notice that there is now Google Adsense material all over the page. I'm experimenting with it out of curiosity as everyone always asks me whether the films make money (because we measure success upon profit don't you know?). Well, this seems like as good an income stream as any other so I thought I'd explore it. Apologies if you automatically think I'm becoming a corporate capitalist whore... I'm acutely aware that the polar opposite of measuring success by profit is measuring success by lack of corporate intervention. It's a continuum that I couldn't really care about, as long as I get to tell stories.

Rethinking The Screen

A time to reflect

It is strange for me to have this gap in production, but I am quite enjoying it. It has been allowing me time to reflect upon my process. Usually the production stage is a frantic experience hinged upon the adrenaline of shooting, but not so much this time around. 

I am meeting with Eeva next week to casually have a cup of tea and catch up. No doubt the film will come up as we have to schedule a time to shoot in May before I go onto other projects in Berlin and New York. 

The plan is to shoot the next sequences on the HPX500 as it is going to be static camera. I haven't yet discussed this is great depth with John but upon reading Mike Figgis' book "Digital Filmmaking" I really identified with the section upon Camera Motion. I similarly took great interest in his writing upon scoring music, especially in light of the Abaltat experimentation. In many ways, I thing that it is a great tool for scoring film as opposed to OVER-scoring the film with catchy melodies. I remember discussing with Miriam Allen about how Abaltat would not write my Morricone score, but then that isn't what I need. The score shouldn't be noticeable as it arguably would detract from the film itself. Alternatively, it shouldn't be filler either!!! This will be a great challenge.

This weekend I will be hiding in the countryside writing a feature script (the conventional way) for a project this summer. A busy year.

May day

As February was hideously busy, with me working in Berlin, London, Birmingham, Seville and Dublin, we couldn't shoot extra scenes. Although March is looking less critical for me, it is still pretty manic for John and Eeva, so we are looking at picking up filming in May. This is a great relief for me...

The balancing act..

This is the first film that I have made where the production is spread over a couple of months in different sessions. I'm finding it quite hard to keep the film at the forefront of my mind whilst life goes on all around it. In many ways I prepare the short sustained bursts of production, as the focus remains upon the film. That said, I'm liking the time that these breaks give me for personal reflection. 

To cram as many clichés in to one sentence - I guess it is a question of finding a happy medium, and creating a balancing act.

Some introductions...

 I guess I should put some names to some faces for you. 

 This is me, James Fair. I hate writing about myself in the third person. Sometimes I find it is easier, but from here on in you should know that it is this face that is writing this blog and directing this project:

 

Eeva Rautio  is playing "Rosie". She is Finnish and currently a student of optometry in university:

 

Raul Camacho Marquez is playing "Lars", Rosie's lover. He is Spanish and works as a pharmacist: 

John Bradburn is the cinematographer. I work with him at Staffordshire University where we teach Film Technology:

 

Hopefully these faces can bring a bit of humanism to this otherwise very literary blog. I'll endeavour to keep it visual. I like books with pictures as much as the next person...

Berlinale

No news for a little while... Gary Hoctor (producer) and I went to Berlinale to screen "Watching & Waiting", and mentioned the possibilities of screening Rosie at Galway Film Fleadh this summer with Miriam Allen, the festival director. Simply discussing a festival and a time frame scare me, especially as the project is really in the early phases.

However, it provides me with an idea of timeframe.

Filming

It is a day for being handed the textbook filming problems...

The first calamity is the state of the kit that we have acquired. Despite arranging six P2 cards, we are left with one, as a result of collecting empty boxes and packaging that don't have cards inside. This is my fault for not checking them I guess. Similarly, the lighting kit has three lights and two of them don't work. The third light blows a bulb within a couple of hours of filming. This too could be my fault for not checking the kit. So you see a pattern forming - CHECK THE KIT. Do not assume the kit room have done it, because they aren't the ones who will be screwed on the filming day.

As it is, John, Etain and I went about making do, and started a different workflow whereby we'd film and drop the footage back to a 1.5TB drive every 17 minutes. Fortunately we have a high-spec laptop to enable us to do this. It doesn't end up affecting us too much as we are pretty slick on organisation and we soon find a rhythm. The filming itself is great. Eeva, Raul and Laura are naturals, very good at getting the mood correct. I'm pleased with all of their good work and get excited by the rushes.

The second calamity is the nightclub location. Despite visiting it in the week, and being happy that we'd arranged a deal to film there, we are asked for cash when we get to the door. Admittedly two get in for free, but four don't. This only costs £20 but it is an illustration as to why you should get something in writing when you agree it. The club itself is quite dark and it really pushes the camera to do a good job. Hopefully we can get something out of it in the grade. The crowd is pretty thin on the ground too, which makes it frustrating all round...

Etain arrives...

Etain McGuckian arrived in Birmingham last night to assist us over the next few days. We have made a point of keeping the crew very small, but are simultaneously aware that we'll need support. Etain is great at being versatile and worked with me on "Watching & Waiting" as my 2nd AD, so John and I know her well.

I think she is as bemused by the project as many others. It is certainly a different approach to filmmaking from we are used to. But the experience is certainly a fascinating one. I am surprised how comfortable I am despite being so close to the shoot. This is usually an incredibly stressful period, but I don't feel too concerned at all, largely because of the confidence that "W&W" has brought to the small crew. I think it is this certainty (as long as it is not folly), that means I am finally becoming at ease with my filmmaking.

Getting locations

Picking locations is easy. Getting permission to use them isn't.

I have learnt the following when trying to secure locations:

1) Going to see someone in person is better than using email or phone. I once had to convince a priest that I was a good Catholic boy before he would let me use his church for my student film. He only agreed because I saw him face to face and could gauge my sincerity. I wanted to specifically use his church and I got it.

2) Be honest. If you are going to have a crew of 30 and take 12 hours then tell them. Don't say you'll have no lights and then turn up with a lorry load of Arri's. I've seen people push this, even when filming "Watching & Waiting", and it leads to a bad relationship with the location staff, and probably screws up any future filming there.

3) In guerilla filmmaking, it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission. This is not an invitation to be stupid. If you want to film at a station or airport, you'd get permission. But in the street, out of harm's way and not blocking a throughfare... I would controversially say do it. No doubt some union or industry "professional" location manager would disagree (as I am disregarding their job) on the grounds that everyone should have public liability insurance etc... then we start to talk big cash, because lots of licenses and a plethora of procedural paperwork begins. Be wise, do your health and safety checks and stick vehemently to them. Don't film the general public. Anyone asks... apologise sincerely and stop. Know that this time you were unlucky and you should never push your luck.

With this in mind, tonight I visited The Rainbow in Birmingham for permission to film there on Saturday night. I explained the project, the scale of the crew and was polite. I really wanted this location as it is one of the funkiest in Birmingham and could look like any one of the many bars in Berlin's nightlife - the ambiguity that we are searching for. The promoter of the night was positive and we are all set to film! Here are some pics to make this blog a little more visual...

Cutting back on the rigmarole...

I believe that John and myself are benefitting from the liberty of filmmaking with less rigmarole upon this project. We both spent 2008 upon projects that required a lot more logistical organisation and to some extent, unnecessary procedure. Procedure is a fascinating piece of terminology. It suggests an obvious course of action, a predetermined sequence of events. However, as we proved when making "Watching & Waiting", it is possible to pervert that procedure, and still have a satisfactory result.

Similarly this time around, we want to rebuke 'procedure'. We are keen to keep the production team to a bare minimum, at most four persons. This requires versatile team members, who can perform a series of tasks as opposed to just one. Some critics will argue that this creates a 'jack of all trades, master of none' situation. It could also be seen to dilute the focus of any one team member, and create chaos on set. But here is my logic...

We are not rebuking 'procedure' per se, but the established perception of 'procedure'. The one which has scarcely been revisited since the days of the studio system and hideously fails to reflect the current possibilities within digital filmmaking. Therefore it is possible to develop new procedures, with new priorities that determine their shape and sequences. For example, finance continues to be a motivator, and therefore we cannot have a large crew that requires feeding and paying. Similarly, working with non-actors, I'd like to get as much time to them as possible, and not have my focus drawn away by numerous crew requiring attention. This would slow us down to attend to both, and time is another consideration. So these limiters, motivators, call them what you will, inform our procedural construction.

This procedure is also a developmental process. It is different from 'Peppermint' and 'Watching & Waiting'. I'm keen to explore ways in which to experience filmmaking processes. I can feel my filmmaking develop. I watched my African documentaries last night as I have a possibility of another next year, and I hated the constant fades to black, which I felt broke the rhythm of the narrative, yet informed the 'scrapbook' nature. In "Watching & Waiting" we only had three fades to black, which indicated the passing of time into the next day. However, I want to add another rule to the production of Rosie - no fades to black within the main body of the film. We will fade in from black and fade out to black, but nothing else... That is what I call development!!!

We must not lose sight of the experimental nature of this project. It is the usual cost attached to the rigmarole of filmmaking that prevents filmmakers from enjoying an apprenticeship or developmental phase. The pressure is on to create a 'hit' immediately, as opposed to develop your style or understanding. In any other art form this would be ludicrous, no-one would be expected to be a master painter without painting first. It is a craft. Similarly I have difficulty with the short-film approach to filmmaking... "make a short, get noticed, make feature". Would you only paint small paintings first before a larger canvas? Would you make doll's house furniture before making the dining table chair? Would you practice sprinting when training for a marathon? No. In my opinion, and it is an opinion and little else, we should take the focus away from the cost and business and put the attention back to developing a craft. Maybe then we can advance this cinematic art form.

Storage...

Much the same as the clutter you collect as you get older, I seem to of collated tonnes of hard drives of stuff. My concern with the shift to HD is that this takes up so much more space than SD, and I'm going to need more storage. Granted, the cost of hard drives has fallen dramatically but there is still a cost attached, especially when most people recommend you buy TWO drives, and clone them and store them separately. This is largely as insurance, but especially more poignant with the P2 workflow when we consider that the masters will get erased also after cloning, as opposed to remaining on a DV tape. This is a particularly daunting prospect.

Locations

One of the elements that John and I discussed at great length is the look of the locations. We didn't want the film to be area specific. Indeed we wanted to confuse people to where the film is located as opposed to recreate anywhere else. Casting Eeva (who is Finnish), Raul (Spanish) and Laura Mengozzi (Italian) helps create this confusion within the titles also. We shot one scene previously in the Christmas market which looks decidedly German, and the intention is to keep other areas relatively vague also. I intend to have them read foreign books as well, as a cheeky little tease about the lack of language.

The film is divided into two time frames. The first is the present day, which I have no problem illustrating as the UK. It is made obvious by the Birmingham night scenes and the currency that Rosie is paid in. The present day will be filmed upon mounted cameras.

The second time frame is the flashbacks of the past, which are handheld, and exploit the ambiguity of their location. I plan to film some of the interiors in my own apartment blocks largely because they are fairly non-descriptive and not particularly architecturally 'British'. It is a reversal of my previous filmmaking experience of "Watching & Waiting" in which Galway was the obvious location, and was required to be so by the Fleadh organisers. Similarly Libya and Morocco landscapes play a major part within the African documentaries.

This challenge is another welcome one.

Kit booking

Booking the kit today means that we are all go for the weekend of 31st January. This is where I think a bulk of the filming that involves Raul will be done. He has a month break in February, and I will be off the Berlin for the Berlinale on the 4th myself, so I would like to have more rushes by then. It makes me a little nervous, but we'll be adopting a similar turn around to 72 with P2's being rotated as we film, and audio being recorded to a Marantz hard drive and being dumped from that also to computer as we go.

A far cry from the VHS I used to have in college when I started in 1997. How 10 years have changed.

New Year... holidays and hard work

A break from the blog whilst the festivities took over. Not much has developed other than some experimenting with the Abaltat software. I generated a rough cut of the opening sequence, which will ultimately be longer, but just to see how the sound responded to colours onscreen, including the credits. Here is the result:

Workflow

Using P2 means that my PowerBook using Final Cut Pro 5.1.4 is rendered useless.... the spec just isn't up to handling that amount of data. So I'm importing it into FCP 6.0.4 upon a new generation iMac... it handles it adequately enough, and I'll hopefully get a new generation MacBook from our production company next week, which handled P2 effortlessly upon the 72 project.

I'm then exporting lower resolution edits to drop into Abaltat to generate soundtracks. This is proving to be a little tricky, as I have to export scenes one by one and then stick them together seamlessly back in the edit. On my test material this works okay, but it will be interesting to see how this works in the final thing. Most melodies are operating on a minimalist structure around the key of C, so they should be fine...

Testing

John and I spent a few evenings shooting scenes on various different cameras and settings before starting out. This was a matter of lots of discussion, as we had lots of elements to consider. Firstly, as much of the film will take place in low light, we immediately ruled out the cameras with CMOS sensors as opposed to CCD technology. 

Our second consideration was resolution. The SD/HD divide is very well documented, but this project really reignited the advantages and disadvantages in the formats. Put simply, the approach that John and I are taking to filming, combined with the non-actors, means there is going to be a high shooting ratio. With a 16GB P2 card limiting us to 17 mins of full HD, we have to find ways to get the footage rotated. This is not overly critical as we have access to plenty of P2 cards, but it is also a problem when looking at the transfer into post. Traditionally I have very bad habits at editing, which is that I digitise everything onto a hard drive and sift through material in the editing programme. With P2 that is an incredibly large amount of data to import, especially if we don't need it all. So this bridge will have to be crossed at some stage.

The option not to film with DV was because I felt it would limit the film's potential at festivals and future screenings. Whilst it would inevitably have made many other things simple, it just doesn't offer us enough scope to do big things with it once it is completed. Perhaps documentaries can still exploit the SD format much further, but I think the expectation for drama is that it should be as higher resolution as possible nowadays. Maybe that is just me...

The other consideration is camera size. We shot 'Watching & Waiting' on the AG-HPX500, which we were very happy with. However, this time around we opted for the AG-HVX200, as it is more portable and John doesn't have an assistant this time around! It obviously has a fixed lens, but we were happy with it during testing and decided that all things considered, it is the right camera for the job.

Abaltat

A further area for experimentation upon this project will be the sound. Firstly, I intend to mix the sound in 5.1, a process which I had not undergone throughout an entire feature. I will be largely recording all sound seperate from the camera and placing it in throughout the mixing stage of the project.

Secondly, I will explore a new software package called Muse, created by Abaltat. This programme looks at the picture information and generates music to accompany it. I am particularly interested at this area of the project as I think it is the pinnacle of experimentation within what is already a very experimental project.

Actors

I mentioned earlier that part of my experimental approach with this project is to work with non-actors. I was inspired by various different filmmakers but quite specifically by John Bradburn's experiences when making his film "Kyle".

I decided not to work with absolute strangers as it is difficult to get commitment sometimes upon this kind of project, so I opted to work with my friends Eeva Rautio and Raul Camacho Marquez. I felt that the two of them have expressive faces with great smiles that are infectious.

As I mentioned before, I am not going to show them the entire story plan. I intend to film scenes independently and talk them through each scene in turn, building up a larger picture within post. This is far removed from my usual approach of scripting a feature in great detail, so I am fascinated to see how it turns out and want implications it creates.

I'll be honest that the combination of working with non actors and without a formalised script is incredibly daunting for me. I'm excited about the possibilities but it is certainly an approach to filmmaking that removes the safety barrier and means that you constantly live with doubt has to how the final thing will turn out.

Developing story

One of the best things about working in an academic environment is that it has exposed me to other filmmakers and we discuss our approaches to work and indeed help on one another's films.

One such person is John Bradburn. We met whilst teaching upon the BSc in Film Technology at Staffordshire University and we quickly shared our experiences upon filmmaking. It was his approach to making "Kyle" that inspired me to do something similar with "Rosie".

The plan is to act with non actors and without a formal script. There is no dialogue, as I am fascinated to test my ability to tell a story through images. These are the limitations that I have set ourselves. I find that I can create far more effectively within the parameters of a limitation.

This is the second time that John and I are working together in a director/cinematography relationship. We previously shot "Watching & Waiting" in 72 hours at the Galway Film Fleadh, where time was the limitation. Upon this project we have all the time we want.

Like the 72 project, John and I began drafting story ideas together in the pub, although this time in wasn't as stressful. We simply start by writing 1-50 on a piece of paper and seek to write 50 potential two minute scenes. It worked when creating a template for 72 so we will use it again this time around.

I won't go too much into the plot here, for reasons I will explain later!

The Genesis

The idea for Rosie began whilst Gabby Morton Jones and I were filming a series of short documentaries for Channel Four called "Nightshift". We were not initially very happy with the films and I always wanted to revisit the topic of people who work whilst the world sleeps, and the stories that surround them.

This blog will be dedicated to the production process that I take whilst developing the film.