Week Thirteen: Reflection and looking forward.

I am biased in how I view everything, I am tired from overwork and still a bit salty about how things went.
However the suggestion that given time removed, looking back I might come to appreciate or enjoy the project might come true.
But I am overall proud of my efforts regarding the green-screen, the idea of taking on the whole project with green-screen stupid for the project, but fantastic as a learning experience. It hindered the films, but helped us in our development and I guess that’s the important part.

It’s over, we’re done. Well, the show-runner wants to keep working on a bit so once he puts it online for the world to see might be in the best possible position, but I need at least a short while before I am willing to go back, I need sleep.
Still, I am proud that I was able to pull it together, to salvage it, between the weak material and largely working alone I am happy with myself all things considered.
The material was out of my hands so given what I could do, I think I did a good job.

I think that’s the important thing I need to take away from all this, I will be given stuff I hate or don’t care for. I still wish to pursue post-production and not everything is going to be something I enjoy.
Chances are living in this country that most of my work will be advertisements or lifestyle shows, but that’s fine, it really doesn’t bother me, I am under no illusions of becoming a great director, I know the Australian reality. If I am working, I’ll be happy.
A stable income is more important than chasing pipe-dreams.

The good news is that I am editor again new trimester and the film I am working on, if all goes to plan, I think will be something wroth being proud of.

Week Twelve: The Exhibition

Pony backgrounds used in episode are on display, they're amazing as it really does look like the show! Maddy Benporath did an outstanding job and I hope she has great things ahead of her.

Having the exhibition on Tuesday, while the actual grade is on Friday is the sort of thing I have come to expect now, still the supposed logic is that we’re working towards a tight deadline, as in being like on TV where there’s a specific time and date where the show must go to air (or head’s will be rolling). While this was a bit personally inconvenient for me as my parents were leaving on the very same Tuesday to go on holiday overseas for a month, so instead of seeing my parents off not to see them again for a long time, I was instead looking at render percentages on an iMac.

The actual schedule was a bit all over the place, originally, we were told must be done by like the Monday night or something so the organisers can have it ready to be shown. However apparently in due to some kind of miscommunication, the audio department was unaware so they wouldn’t have a scratch mix (a early mix) done until late Tuesday, which was roughly the time where the films would soon be shown. The simulation of TV deadlines just got more intense.

It was done however, my director got me the scratch mix and I imported it into the project, after a last minute fixing of a couple things (although forgot to fix one flash-issue) we were ready to render.
There was one strange issue with the audio seemingly out of sync at one point which caused a bit of a panic with the director, however when the film actually rendered suddenly the issue was no longer there, so I guess just another one of those things.

Despite my film being the shock-and-horror of the class in terms of being SO far behind apparently compared to the others a week ago, my film was the first to actually render.
So while other films were still being tweaked with audio due to issues with that, I just watched on while a spare iMac was chugging away with our render.

Note: " Little Pony" is spelt right, should have been "Lite Ponly"

In this moment I felt pretty good (and a bit smug) about how things were going.

But as a group we all pulled through and all three films were rendered, on a USB and handed-in, we made it.

So actually showing, after some amusement at the way our films were described on the posters of films (including ‘fixing’ a spelling error which was actually part of the Fan Fiction title) and episodes two and three being swapped around (although thankfully due to our naming conventions, the episodes were played in the intended order which was Twilight 1, Pony 2, Batman 3), we made it in.

The theatre watched the first few films before hours with documentaries and a couple short films, they were all really good.
I personally was quite impressed with the Robot one, the post-production work in it was great, it looked totally legit.
Also shout-out to the homeless and bush-fire docos, powerful stuff.

But then our films, the audience reaction was… as I predicted. A few laughs here and there, but it hardly set the world on fire. My episode (My Little Pony) as the middle one and had the middle amount of laughs, as for the last episode (Batman), well there was long pauses of silence from the audience.
Using my pseudo-science I would put this down more to the audience getting bored of the concept, the first episode  (Twilight) had the most amount of laughs, but with mine being medium and the last being very few, I have to put this down to the audience getting numb at the concept, even the narrator jokes about genitals were getting a numb response by the end.

I personally believe this would be the same result no matter what order you played the episodes in, I think the last episode which played, had it been the first would have had the most laughs, while if the first episode shown was placed last, it would have had very few laughs.
So no matter if it went Batman, Pony, Twilight or Pony Batman Twilight or Pony Twilight Batman or Batman Twilight Pony, it would have been the same result.
I don’t think it was down to the actual content or quality of the episode stand-alone, I think the issue is the package as a whole.

I wasn’t surprised, I knew this would be the case, from early on I knew that the jokes which could get the most lol’s would be A. Screaming, B. Dick Jokes. AKA lowest common denominator level of humour. The rest, got a chuckle here and there from somewhere, but once again didn’t set the world on fire.

Am I being too harsh? Maybe, maybe I am too close to the project. But if anything, the audiences rather muted reaction just validates my feelings.
Still, the fact my episode had the medium amount of laughs, I’ll take that.

Unrelated to my project, but I really enjoyed this game. "A Witch's Trial"

As for the rest of the exhibition, played a few fun games from the Games Department and saw some really neat art from the Design students, so not a bad night overall. Pop-corn and free booze, far better than last time.

As for the audio mix, it really did help pull it together. Most of laughs I think are from their efforts, audio is such a vital part of film.
People will tolerate poor visuals, but the one thing people will never accept is poor sound, YouTube has been a long standing testament to this theory.
The musical beat in the background was nice and hoppy, the sound-effects were cute and it really helped to hear the actor as the narrator narrating, instead listening to my own awful voice.

The audio students did a great job, as did the background artist (see top of post). The other departments deserve all the credit they can get.

Week Eleven: Feedback

My rough-cut wasn’t viewed very well, due to receiving false information, I had cut the edit based around the understanding that the narrator dialogue had already been recorded, so my version wasn’t as tight on purpose as I hadn’t received the dialogue audio yet.
Turns out the information was wrong, the narrator dialogue wasn’t recorded at all, only the Showrunners episode had the dialogue recorded on the day, leaving the other two episodes to be done via ADR, due to this misinformation my edit was perceived as lacking.
To the point where the class freaked out and it was threatened that my episode would in fact be cut entirely, I thought this was all rather unfair as my comping work was ahead of the other episodes and at least I put a LUT on all the shots.

Anyway, the main feedback was to record my own dialogue with my microphone, edit to that for timing purposes and then the narrator would later match my speed so it can just be slotted in with the final audio mix.
Other suggestions included less time spent on rocket ships and more movement going on.

The key bit of feedback was that my backgrounds weren’t all there yet, I still had a lot of green and placeholder stuff behind it. So my main goal was to get all the backgrounds in and then later shift the backgrounds around per shot to give the illusion of movement and help fake camera angles Something otherwise impossible on the day with the limited greenscreen space.

Week Ten: The Shoot

The shoot went smoothly for the most part. The major incident which occurred was that our male lead got sick one of the days which cancelled the entire shooting date. Unfortunately communication was a bit of cluster between mixed messaging. I got the message when I was already on the train going into the city (I live rural), so it was too late for me. Once in Melbourne I did miss a couple trains back as I was trying to call people attempting to get information, I finally did get around to everyone, but I suppose lines were all busy on all ends.

This meant that Twilight had to be filmed all in one day instead of allocated two days, but we were working well on set and we managed to film two days worth all in one day.

I wasn’t there for the miniature shoot, but all the shots were gotten. I was the DOP of the pony episode and we got everything we needed to film within the whole day, due to giving ourselves a good amount of time, for the most part we were able to stick ahead of or just on time. Which was good stuff.

Week Nine: The Look

Being a film shot entirely on Green Screen, this puts an instant limitation on camera movement and lighting as it could negatively affect the keying process in post-production.
However, if we had the freedom, I would have tried to match the show’s general style as much as possible.

But due to the amazing work of the design students, the visual style of the backgrounds is spot-on with the visual style seen in the TV show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic which the script is based upon.
Visually the show changes from brightly lit to dark depending on the mood, however for our film it’s almost always brightly lit due to the nature of the greenscreen. The backgrounds provide any darker tones needed (such as in the forest) and I suppose colour grading could as well in theory.

But camera movements aren’t really possible in the limited space, meaning anything would all be post-production tricks.

Week Eight: Character Breakdown

Unlike other characters in the script, Flyhoof is a totally new character conceived for the story.
While it’s true that Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy don’t act in the script like their canon show counterparts nor do the actors take any real inspiration of the performances of the voice over artists/animators.

Flyhoof is different because she is totally original, so it does give some more flexibility. Her general visual style was my idea, I envisioned a more edgy character. As she is an Original Character (or OC), I was inspired by the infamously edgy OC pony characters created by the community, a common trait of these would be full black coat with red mane, so that’s the look we went for. Of course in my mind the original version still had wigs and a full costume, but the end resulted fitted in fine as it provided a stand-out contrast in comparison to the more bright other characters.

Her performance was largely based on what Logan desired.

Week Seven: Three Different Ways.

Fluttershy’s death scene is in part the climax of the film, it’s set in the forest (all naturally filmed on green screen), but there was debate of different ways this could be filmed (including even outside).

Due to the nature of the stunt where the actor (Jackson) falls over it could be covered in three different ways. We chose to use a static shot of him walking in, then lifting his foot up into frame which shows the beartrap, then he falls out of the frame as he dies.

But another way this could be filmed is to introduce a tilt, so when he gets caught by the bear-trap, the camera could tilt down to reveal the bear-trap to the audience, then his reaction as the camera tilts back up or he simply falls down into frame.

Another way is like the static show, however as he falls out of frame to die, the camera would tilt to follow him, but the reveal would remain the same as him lifting his foot into the frame as a surprise.

However I think the story is better served by the total static, I believe it adds more comedy quirk by having the foot lifted into frame with the trap (as his foot is normally out of frame) and then simply falling out of frame.
It makes a bit more sense with the Greenscreen forest in the background as well, if inclined it would also have extra editing for the background to track the movement of the tilt.

Week Six: Safety

Sets can be dangerous places, so many things may need to be flagged as problematic. When filming a short film child services believed that having a goat near a teenager was a danger because of biting, so then again people these days are on the careful of everything side.

Tripping hazards is the major thing, film sets have cables, boxes, lights, boom mics, props and all sorts of stuff everywhere. It could be very easy to trip if not paying attention.
Masking down cables is a good way to keep things clean and have less slack to loop around one’s foot. Having all equipment in its own obvious corner and not scattered around is another good way to avoid problems.

Having a safety prep talk before, highlighting problems is a good way to hopefully make sure everybody, both cast and crew is on the same page.
Safety officers can also be employed to ensure the upmost safety and check off on stunts, fire and more alarming things which need to be flagged as a problem.

Electrocution is another one, faulty equipment with a high amount of energy can cause many problems, one of my colleges found that a light would zap him. 

Week Five: Budget

Budgeting is a reality of film-making. Using the Screen Producers as a guide, I got the weekly cost for a low-budget web-series to be $10,155 with the costing being $2,031 per day.

Here is the breakdown for a daily cost which I figured.

Producer $750, Director $164, First AD $144, Second AD $122, Runner $107, DoP $157, First AC $107, Clapper $107, Data Wrangler $107, Sound Recordist $144, Editor $122.

Now I am sure these numbers as well below the industry standard, but it’s what I could figure out from the reference.
https://screenproducers.org.au/assets/Uploads/4.6-Pay-Rates-Allowances-Motion-Picture-Production-Certified-Agreement-MPPCA.pdf

Maths and budgeting is not my strong point really.

Week Four: Work needs doing

While we have made strong strides into pre-production, there is still work which needs to be done.

Casting/Costuming

Casting is critical right now, we need to know who it is we’re working with and what they’re able to do, costuming will also play a big part in this. As we have three different stories, we’re going to have to need three different sets of costumes.
I myself have already began work on what the costumes for the My Little Pony characters can be like, but until we know the gender/height/size ect of the actors, we can’t progress with the actual physical side of the costume.

Title Sequence

The title sequence is due to be shot by week seven, this means we need to have our idea chosen, equipment booked and set(s) built by that time. Some of the ideas floated require green screen, so being able to light/shoot green screen will be critical knowledge to pull that off beforehand.

Locations

I don’t believe we can get away with shooting everything on the soundstage in front of the green screen, apart from looking maybe bad, the sound-stage is in high demand for many other students as well at the uni, we can’t hog it.
I believe we’re getting close to the narrator’s room, however for other locations I don’t know how close we are. Different episodes will have different vibes and locations as well, so there’s a lot of work to be done in this area.

We’re getting ever closer to the middle of the trimester, we gotta’ get moving soon.

Week Three: Title Sequence

The idea behind my pitch is to focus on the writer of the Fan Fiction themselves. While a lot of pitches focused on the fan-fiction or the presentation of the fan-fiction (a lot to do with books being opened, looking like a classic fairy tale ect), I personally felt that focusing in on the creative mind behind the works is an interesting way to open the episode.

It would star a tween (or most likely a adult who is dressed up like a tween) who storms into their bedroom frustrated after a day at school, after tossing their bag on the bed, they bring out their laptop to start typing (only major light source in the room).



Behind them is their thoughts, which would be the ideas of the Fan Fiction they are conceiving, then they start to type. The camera would spin around and on the screen is a word document, which would have the name of the episode.

Another thing I wished to include is a disclaimer regarding copyright, that this isn’t our works, that the original copyright isn’t either. We’re walking a double-whammy copyright brigade issue with our project, not only the original holder of the IP, but also the fan-fic writer themselves.

The first attempt at my pitch didn't go well, not enough detail, too vague. So my second pitch I think went a lot better in terms of what my vision is. It seems however a version of my idea is being considered, but some old man on a typewriter instead of a tween on a laptop.

Which to me is going back to the old classic fairy tale vibe of the other intros, which is perfectly fine, I understand it, however I think it does miss some of the reality of who it is that is actually writing these stories.

Week Two: Crew Roles

I am still unsure what role I wish to take in the industry, however I believe I am leaning more directly towards post-production.
As much as I enjoy the creative process in terms of script-writing and the general concept of the show, I don’t think I am focused enough.

I don’t have the people skills required for directorial or producing work, or the artist mind for production.
I am not quite strong enough for camera and I don’t know if I can deal with the pressure of being around people when they’re worked up (of which I have been led to believe happens quite a bit on set in the real world, my experience at uni so far has been great on set, however I know that isn’t totally representative of on the job).

If I was to be camera, I think I would prefer a smaller unit such as news or current affairs kind of camera work, while still stressful, there isn’t a lot of other people with flashy lights either.

So I think editing could be where I fall into place, I am quite skilled with computers and know Adobe Premier at a decent level right now.
The only thing is I am not very good at AVID, I did an editing unit with it when I was still a games student and as I never used AVID outside of that class, I forgot how it all worked despite getting good marks at the time.
I am so used to how Sony VEGAS and Adobe Premier work, that I would honestly need another class in learning AVID again, for me it feels a bit jank in comparison.

Week One: The Pitch

My pitch wasn’t done very well. Instead of having a solid story idea, I instead came in with a vague concept. So, it wasn’t too surprising that my peers weren’t sure to make of this, at the time this was by design as I thought in my mind that I could custom shape the vague idea to whatever they thought could be cool. But in hindsight the vague nature of the pitch would look poor in comparison to fully fleshed out ideas with character and resolution.

My inspiration was shows like the UK version of the office or the ABC show Utopia. My general idea was a kind of dry satirical comedy. I know comedy is what often are the golden winners for web series and honestly after the more grim/realistic films we have been making last few trimesters I more than welcome something light hearted.

But on retrospect, the kind of satire I would have might only have amused me and nobody would enjoy watching a web-series about some guy letting out his annoyances of the world, it could have become very preachy against the nanny state.

Although I must say that I am very pleased with the actual result, of Fan(tastic) Fiction. As fan fiction was a good strong part of my own tween/young teen years the idea did resonate with me strongly.

I think this was the right direction, the more laugh-out-loud kind of less preachy humour is something all of us can get behind, not just me.

If I did it again, I would be less vague. I would come in with a more stronger vision, so I could offer concrete answers to what the story was about instead of just being open to suggestions.

Utopia

Modes of the Documentary

Modes of the Documentary

By MD

As time grew on and the documentary evolved out of its original rigid definition of an ‘unedited’ stream of footage (thanks to Nanook of the North), different styles of the art-form have taken flight over time.
Bill Nichols has theories five major modes of documentary, of which are still today in creating categories and sub-genres for works.

Poetic

The poetic mode of documentary is the most abstract in many senses, often coming dangerously close to becoming experimental films and often incredibly avant-garde. Typically these films are without narration or an overall narrative, often desiring the audience member to take it upon themselves to create their own narrative or meaning from the piece (as is human nature).
Baraka is classic example of a masterpiece of a poetic film, with breathtaking visuals (the first film to ever receive an 8K scan, once described as the best looking DVD ever printed by Roger Ebert) and a spine-tingling soundtrack to boot.
However I would be hard pressed to tell you what actually is the story or point of the film, I can tell you things I saw, but how they’re meant to link together (if at all they’re meant to link together) is very much up to the digression of the viewer.
A less flashy, but no less notable example of a poetic film can be found in Junktopia, a film which shows art being made out of ‘junk’, however with the way it’s filmed and the musical choices give it a post-apocalyptic (dare I say WaterWorld?) world, lacking any humans but showing our material impact upon the Earth. While many dislike this film, I was quite taken with it.

Expository

Perhaps the most classically thought of mode of documentary, Expository documentaries revolve around the idea of telling the story of an event, person or fact-seeking. Such as the type of documentaries you’d find on the History Channel about the Second World War. They often have a presenter of some sort, although this presenter isn’t necessarily involved in the story itself, more as an avenue to get across information. They focus more on the actuality of the events, however the means of which they present this information isn’t just restricted to interviews or archival (although they do use these), they also can use recreations. These recreations can be as simple as an actor playing a general pointing at a map with a stick or one person walking down the street passing a secret document to another. However the entire film could be made up of recreations as well, however these recreations aren’t one continuous thing for the film (otherwise it would end up more in the realm of biopic), instead they can be interlaced with interviews from the people who were there or experts of the event.

Observational

Observational documentaries can sometimes be hard to define, elements of it can be found in both Expository and Participatory modes, the general idea however is that the documentary ‘observes’ the event without getting directly involved in it.
For example in a Participatory documentary about a racist man going to a rally, the presenter would be walking alongside the subject, talking with them constantly and would be filmed themselves standing alongside in the rally with them (such as what Reggie Yates did when he joined the race rallies in Russia). However, in Observational the presenter isn’t generally seen or heard, in this sense the camera acts as a first person perspective for the audience, so in an abstract sense they can feel like as if they’re standing in the race rally themselves, looking at the subject in question.
The only time you’d hear the presenter was if it was vital for the question to be heard or seen if say the police came and the fourth wall would be broken. In this way Observational, while highly edited can have a more ‘fast and loose’ vibe to it.

Participatory

The Participatory documentary has become one of the most popular forms of documentary of recent times, in some cases the audience is more interested in watching because of the presenter than the actual interest in the subject itself, this very much lines up with the way a lot of internet content on YouTube works these days, they’re personality driven, instead of pure content.
The classic examples can be found in the ever delightful Louis Theroux, where the man finds himself among Neo-Nazis, Sex Offenders, Dangerous Animal Owners, Porn Stars, Gambling Addicts and almost anything else you could possibly think of.
Louis Theroux is of course not alone, other examples can be found in Ross Kemp and Reggie Yates. Part of the appeal is not just the core personalities, but the idea of ‘privileged access’ or the pure audacity of the presenter. These presenters find themselves in the company of people the audience are deeply interested in, but wouldn’t ever dream of meeting. They can often get invited into places out of bounds, in a sense they’re thrill seekers of an intellectual kind. This can extend to programs like River Monsters, the most popular show on as Planet. Those who might not normally care about fishing (like myself), are deeply invested in the program.

Self-Reflexive

The Self-Reflexive form of documentary is one which can have the most twists and turns, in this the documentary is typically about the filmmaker themselves. In the purest sense, they would film and edit the work themselves. A somewhat crude, disturbing, yet intriguing example is Tarnation. A young boy of 12 starts to film his life and amazingly still kept filming his life for years and has the footage years later. Of course in his case, it helps that his story is one full of despair and tragedy. Abused childhood, raised by kooky grandparents, a broken mother, a disappeared father, being gay at a time when it wasn’t as easy and experimenting with his own sexuality at a very young age. Having such a unique story to tell allows the film to be a standalone piece, despite being up of random footage with text on the screen to tell the story.

The documentary is an interesting form of filmmaking, it unfairly gets a bad rap often as being boring and lame, something shown on terrible VHS tapes at school, however just a slight bit of care and digging will grand the audience an insight they might have never had before. Documentaries are not only entertaining, but can be very informative.
I have often said I have learnt more from the internet than I did at school and that also rings true for the documentary.
While not a documentary really, on QI last night I learnt that Killer Whales are in fact Dolphins with the name misquoted from Killer of Whales. I didn’t know that, now I do. That is Quite Interesting.

Blog #13 - Until next time

The final blog.

I am not sure if the future units require blogs or not, going into documentary next trimester, does that have a blog? I am not sure to be honest.

Time to reflect!

I think overall we did a decent enough job although the final product is yet to be final.
We showed off the film in front of a bunch of people at uni and the result wasn't... well, what we had hoped for.

There were audio problems and visual problems, simply put there was not enough time in post-production. Originally we were meant to have three weeks, but we ended up having two. Because of this, we got picture lock done on the night before, which didn't leave enough time for audio to finish or the colour grade to be done.

However it's not over. The group has decided to push on. The two audio have decided to finish which is fantastic, they're under no obligation to do it, so it says a world about them that they will. So the score will also be done.

The colour grading will also be re-done and the credits will be rejigged (many problems, such as not showing up right away, long gap after and our 2nd A.Cs name not showing up).

But I think as a group we have learnt a lot, I sure know I have learnt a lot.


As for next trimester, the future!
I am not sure what I will be doing a doco on yet, haven't seen the brief. Although I am thinking something about lifeguards or surf lifesavers could be interesting.
Cannot wait!

Blog #12 - The perfect coffee

The Director of Photography requested that I make him a coffee as he nominated to stay behind and watch the equipment as it was separate to our base.
His perfect coffee was three chunks of instant, two sugar cubes, a lot of hot water and only a dash of milk.
I thought he was mad, but I took it to him and in his words "perfect".

Having a setup for food and drink is something we can improve on in the future. As it stands we had a giant kettle thing which provided the hot water and a bunch of loose tea-bags and coffee. Which changed from day to day.
In future we need to be more specific about what we need, how many cups we need and have more to eat than biscuits.

Thankfully one of the actors mothers brought alone sandwiches, so that was great. There were also heat up food which was good too, but sparse.

There is a lot of people to feed when you start to think about it, our core group, audio, extra helpers, actors, actors parents, ect. I think we need to overestimate the amount of people on set in the future.

Let's not forget that it was an issue of hot food which caused the entire Top Gear scenario.

Blog #11 - Lens

Constantly lens were used throughout production, in the pre-production stage the selection of lens was chosen as well to be put on the running list for the day.

There is a whole box full of different ones, although we used primarily the 14inch, 24inch and 50inch. The bigger the number, the further the view you get. The smaller the number, the more tight and closed in.

The thing about these lens is, they don't offer zoom of any kind, so unless you want to be playing around with digital zoom later (which can reduce the visual quality), it's vital to get the shot you want right away.

A good thing about lacking zoom on the lens however is that you won't accidentally zoom in while trying to change the focus. Focus pulling was something we really didn't do while filming and maybe was something we should have invested more in. A couple of our shots were in fact out of focus.

Steadicam (yes it is spelt that way) by its nature had focus problems, although we had more problems with keeping the Steadicam steady than anything else. It took a while to set up, having to balance it all, the problem was, the final shots with them tended to be on the Micheal Bay end of the spectrum which was a bit of chaos in the editing as a lot of it (even with the aid of software) was unable.

Battery's being on charge is always fun, charge stations are pretty much the first thing set-up.
PRO TIP!: Don't try to charge a Steadicam battery and a normal set of battery's off the same plug, it will blow the fuse.
Yay.


The whole thing was shot in something called SLOG2, which from what I gather is a filter to make it seem more "cinematic".

Blog #10 - Setting off fire-alarms is what we do best

When we filmed on location inside, lighting was needed constantly.

Lighting meant power cables, plugs, those orange boxes (RCD's I think) and of course the lights.
For reasons I cannot explain, they're named after hair-colours. "Redheads", "Blondies" and "Dedos", okay maybe Dedo isn't a hair colour, but the others are!

Blondies or aka the big ones are very big and very hot. At one point we're trying to set up this silhouette in a doorway shot, so to get sharp edges around the actor we need an awful amount of light behind him. As I was helping set it up, I was put in for a dummie to see how the shadows looked, I got to feel first hand how hot it got, very hot.

Lights are hot, it burns the plastic gels, it makes it hurt if you touch the metal and it sets off fire alarms as we learnt. The 2nd A.C. commented "oh I thought it would give us trouble" when he saw the fire alarm, the heat triggered it.
So the owners of the property can be assured that their fire alarm worked just fine.

Lights also have a habit of getting in frame, something I found out again later when I was editing the film.

Blog #9 - Being upstaged by a seven year old

The audition process took us quite a while, we had about 20-25 girls come in to audition for the roles of Megan and Jessica.

And a few men come in for the role of Charles.


Originally I wasn't meant to have any part in it. Why would I? In the words of our producer "no need to have lots of people there gawking at them", so as for some reason on the project I became the "printer guy", I came in early to print off the posters and place them up though the uni pointing the actors to where they were meant to go (which thankfully worked).
I was ready to go home when I asked to stay to be the line-reader opposite them... for the entire day.

So here I am, no acting experience, not prepared and tired. But I did as I was asked and tried my best. Tried being the best word, how actors are able to remember their lines is beyond me, still after three days I couldn't remember the scene.

I felt pretty bad about it, I was the impression the actors were getting of our group, as I looked down nervously on the paper accidentally reading their lines.
Of course I was able to see actors first-hand doing their thing.
One tried to hug me, of which I got confused and another started crying. Of course she wasn't actually crying, she was just acting in the scene. But I got scared real fast as I thought I did something wrong and caused it. It would be a typical me thing to do.

Most the actors were between 12 and 16, although one walked in and was tiny, as in smaller than my waist line, she was seven years old. She was able to remember her lines.

Blog #8 - No wonder films are expense

I am a new(ish) driver.

Being told I had to drive hours wasn't great for me, not at all. Driving into Melbourne was chaos, finding a park in Melbourne was chaos and driving through Melbourne was chaos (although I did find a whole new appreciation for good radio).
But put aside the torturing uncomfortable nature that I had to be the one with the SUV and couldn't go home as I couldn't drive it in a night, the cost was something all new as well.

Petrol, that one night in a motel, Food on the way. Normally my costs are the Myki card and the $3 coffee's at 7/11.

But now I had to pay for petrol, parking spots, a lot more food, accommodation and all of this isn't including the $150 something I must of overall put into the project in either direct or buying props.

Of course ours was the cheapest possible film we could do, no wonder that big films cost stupid amounts of money.