I have decided that I want to create a short film for my production management project, I've identified that one of the things that may be missing from my portfolio is a good a script and therefor I want to challenge myself to writing and producing a short film.
 |
 |
| I came up with a basic story but this has changed. |
The story I have come up with so far is that of a boy a similar age to mine who's sleep paralysis episodes parallel the hardships in his life, loosing his girlfriend triggers the episodes to grow worse and worse until he is too scared to go to sleep. Obviously the story needs fleshing out someone but I feel like this is a good place to start. I will start working on the story and eventually script in the following weeks. As for research I have already started compiling a research document about studies on sleep paralysis and lucid dreams and have learnt much about the condition and its linked to a phenomenon known as rapid eye movement. As well as scientific explanations for the condition I have also found a spiritualist website that claims the hallucinations experience during sleep paralysis are not hallucinations at all but real life demons and ghosts whom use their 'Dark Energy' to paralysis and torment victims. Maybe I need an exorcist? I wonder if there is a way I could work this view into my film?
Thursday the 23rd March
Today I pitched my PMP idea in front of our class and in front of the makeup students, I prepared a PowerPoint presentation to discuss my ideas and the current stage of production that I was in. I think that the pitch went well and hopefully people will want to work on my production as I need crew to fill a number of roles. As well as crew to help with filming I also need the makeup students to help me create the look of my piece. It was important that the makeup artists understood my pitch as they will now have to go back and start mood boarding for the ideas that they want to work on. Hopefully I have impressed at least some of them as I will need there services in order to help create the look of my film. They will be needed to apply makeup to my characters and also help me create the monsters in the dream sequences. I will add a copy of the pitch to the production blog. Also I should add that the working tittle for the short film is now 'Sleep.'
Friday the 24th March
Today I met up with Joe who is now a member of the crew on my production, Originally I had asked Joe to be my Co-writer but he has also expressed interest in being my assistant director too. Joe and I began working on the story behind my premise, after creating many pages of notes we eventually had enough idea's to put them into a timeline. We did this and created a simplified timeline of events so that we could get an idea of how the story would pan out. The fact that we have now come up with a story that includes a story arch with plot points and put this into the format of a timeline means we can now easily finish the script as we know how everything will pan out. As well as creating the timeline and making general notes on how we want the piece to look and feel we also did some research, firstly into films that use lighting and editing to convey emotion in a way that we would like to emulate, we watched the Neon Demon and it really inspired to try and use a range of coloured lighting to portray emotions. As well as this we watched a short film about sleep paralysis I think it gave Joe an insight into the condition.
'Sleep' Premise
Darren is a teenage boy, he lives at home with just his mother and comes from a working class background. Darren suffers from sleep paralysis caused by anxiety and doesn't have many friends as well as this he doesn't know his father and has no siblings meaning he has become a very isolated person. Darren's anxiety is causing him to fall behind on work and fall out with his friends and because of this Darren's girlfriend leaves him, rendering Darren heartbroken. Losing his girlfriend causes Darren to start experiencing more episodes of sleep paralysis with hallucinations as well as experiencing scary nightmares. During episodes of sleep paralysis Darren hallucinates visions of the Shadow man, a mysterious figure who Darren then confronts in his nightmares. Darren has nightmares of his now ex girlfriend and best friend being taken away by the Shadow man but is the Shadow man trying hurt Darren by taking away his friends or is he trying to tell Darren that they are not good for him? Is the Shadow man real? Who's side is he on?
Saturday the 25th March
Joe and I did more work on the script today but as well as this also scouted a potential location, for one of the dream sequences in the film we need a river so we drove down to a part of the Tees that is easily accessible and took some photos deciding it would be an excellent location to shoot one of the scenes.
Tuesday the 9th May
Admittedly it's been a while since I updated this page but to be honest there hasn't been anything that interesting to tell you about well there has but I've spent all my time doing pre production stuff and neglecting the blog however I will now attempt to remember everything that's happened between today and March 25th so...
MUA's
Firstly the make up students all presented me there ideas for 'Sleep' and after meeting and talking with the five MUA's that applied to be head of make up on the film I decided to choose Jaeden for the role. He seemed very interested in the idea and shared stories with me about his own encounters with sleep paralysis. I loved his motivation and enthusiasm toward the product and after his pitch I knew he'd be the right guy for the job, as well as this his ideas were the best they really stood out to me. He was excited by the prospect of getting to mould whomever I was to cast as the Shadow Man into something terrifying, he brought down some designs and talked me through ideas that he had which was very exciting.
Script
After this with the help of my script editor Joe Nolan I finalised and finished my script, the ending got re written a couple of times as I wasn't sure it made sense. I wanted the film to be open ended but the original ending may have been too open, so I added a couple of lines of dialogue for the Shadow Man which should point audiences in the right direction to understanding the meaning of the film.
Although the film isn't really designed for the mainstream audience, the changed ending should make it more accessible to those who will see it.
Casting
After finishing the script it was onto casting. Casting was a mixed bag for me really, in my head I knew exactly whom I wanted for two of the roles. I went down to the village hall to watch a local theatre groups production of YOLO staring classmates of mine Matty Dickens and Kane Smith, after seeing the performance I was very impressed by Kane. His performance was incredible, he conveyed so much emotions and a wide range of them too, after the play finished I knew in my head that Kane would be perfect for the role. My scouting mission was successful too because Kane agreed to be the lead role in Sleep. I was very happy with this as I really rate Kane as an Actor. I also had my mind set on who the Shadow Man would be, I needed someone tall whom could loom over Kane so for this role I choose Josh Wilson, as well as being tall Josh had what the MUA's called the right bone structure which would make it easy for the MUA's to transform his face using various make up techniques.
The other two main roles I needed where harder to come by, I tried to hold auditions for the female part but the girls couldn't all be in at similar times. In the end I only got to audition Shannon and got Florence to send me a video audition. The other two girls I had shortlisted were completely unavailable and couldn't send me video auditions so I couldn't go with them. Originally I chose Shannon but due to various scheduling issues I was forced to change this, which was unfortunate because I thought she was really good. In the end I went with Florence and for the other male role I chose Dylan Ward, after working with him last year I knew he was really good so I was glad he was willing to be in the film.
Full Cast:
Kane Smith = Darren
Dylan Ward = Shawn
Florence McMahon = Emily
Josh Wilson = Shadow Man
Crew:
Director= Myself
DOP= Matty Dickens
Boom= Rhys Collins
AD= Joe Nolan
The First Shoot
Now that we are caught up I can finally talk about my first shoot which took place today, after the nightmare of scheduling all of our PMP's was complete I was very much looking forward to starting shooting. Today it was time to shoot scene's 8 9 and 6 (in that order.) We started down by the river behind college for scene 8 with Kane and Dylan, make up was at 9:30 and we were finished by about 11. The shoot went very well, we followed the shot list and everything was simple enough. It was a dialogue heavy scene so all we needed was a master shot of the conversation and two close ups. As we got this done in good time I decided it would be useful to get a master shot. The scene we shot was by the river and the characters were sat on a bench talking so for the master shot myself and Matty (MY DOP) ran over the bridge to the other side of the river and got a shot of Kane walking over to the bench, I thought this would be a nice way to start the scene and I could intercut this with the shot we had got earlier which was a pan of Kane sitting on the bench. My cast were excellent as were my crew, they were all very easy to work with and took direction very well. Dylan and Kane were very convincing in their roles and the shoot went smoothly, Dylan knew all of his lines to a tee which made things a lot easier. After we finished up with scene 8 myself and the cast headed in for a break before we sent Josh Wilson to get his Shadow Man make up done, admittedly the make up took longer than I (and the MUA's) expected but in the end it looked good. after the make up was completed at base the whole cast and crew accompanied by Danniella doing behind the scenes headed to Ingleby Barwick for our next shoot. This shoot was scheduled to finish at 4 but ran over by about 45 minutes, I made sure to shoot the scenes with Dylan first as I knew he had lesson at 4pm and we did actually finish before then but Dylan did not want to leave the set even though I told him multiple times he could and should go back to lesson. This shoot did not go as smoothly as the first as it took us a while to decide what we were doing and to my disappointment we did not get time to use the drone that we took. Eventually after a slow start we got all the footage we needed and finished at around 5pm.
The Second Shoot
On Thursday the 11th of May it was time for, what I would call, my main shoot in the village of Stainton in Middlesbrough. My auntie had lent us her home for the day which was great as it was exactly the type of house I had imagined Darren living in when I wrote the script, old, dusty, dirty and frankly quite spooky. We began filming at around 4 in the afternoon and planned to shoot scenes numbered 4, 7, 10, 5,2 and 1. Make up was to be done on set so that we could prepare and set up for filming whilst that was happening. I asked for Kane to have his make up done first as we could shoot the scenes starring only Kane whilst Josh was getting his make up done. While Kane was in make up my self and the team started setting up. I asked Rhys and Joe to set up the lights in the front room while myself and Matty 'bin bagged' the windows. 'Bin bagging' is a term myself and Matty coined for the process of blacking out windows with black bin bags in order to shoot night for day. The bin bags worked well and completely blocked the sun light from entering the room we were shooting in. Obviously the bin bags were not in shot as we drew the curtains. This worked really well and the shot genuinely looked like it was shot in a room at night. After the prep was done and we got Kane back from make up we began with shooting his scenes downstairs in the living room and upstairs in the bedroom and then after a while we got the call that Josh's make up had been applied so we paused the scenes we were doing and moved on to all of the scenes staring Josh. I made this decision as Josh's make up is uncomfortable for him to be in and therefor for his benefit I wanted to get his scenes done quickly. During the filming process the crew ere excellent, Kane got really into his role as Darren and Josh was creepy as the Shadow Man. The crew were great too, Matty once again impressed me with his ability to find an excellently framed shot even in the tightest of rooms. The plan was to move back onto the scenes with just Kane in after we had shot Josh's scenes but I was clearly far to ambitious with my scheduling. I thought we would be able to get all of the scenes done at the house in one day but that was no the case. We were suppose to be finished at 9 but we ran until about 10 after this I made the executive decision to drop the scenes we had left and reschedule them to be picked up later. These were scenes 1 and 10 and half of scene 4. Even though we had scenes we did not get done we had shot a lot of footage and everyone worked very hard, we were all tired by the end of the night and by the time we had packed up and left it was about half 10.
The Third Shoot
The third shoot took place on the Thursday the 18th of May. This was a simple shoot, we only had one scene to do and that was scene 3. The scene was relatively short and just featured a little bit of dialogue between Kane and Flo's characters. The crew call was for half 9 and we started by getting the actors into make-up straight away. When this was done we headed straight to location which was very close to college, it was just by the river and was a nice setting for the scene. The scene literally consisted of 4 shots, a panning opening shot using the dolly, a master shot and two close up cutaways for the conversation. Because of this the shoot was really easy, we got done in the hour but I feel like it would have gone quicker if Flo knew her lines, don't get me wrong she was good but it was clear she hadn't really looked at the script. This slightly stressed me out as we needed to get done asap so Matthew could have Flo, but in the end we finished with plenty of time left.
The Third Shoot
The third shoot took place on the Thursday the 18th of May. This was a simple shoot, we only had one scene to do and that was scene 3. The scene was relatively short and just featured a little bit of dialogue between Kane and Flo's characters. The crew call was for half 9 and we started by getting the actors into make-up straight away. When this was done we headed straight to location which was very close to college, it was just by the river and was a nice setting for the scene. The scene literally consisted of 4 shots, a panning opening shot using the dolly, a master shot and two close up cutaways for the conversation. Because of this the shoot was really easy, we got done in the hour but I feel like it would have gone quicker if Flo knew her lines, don't get me wrong she was good but it was clear she hadn't really looked at the script. This slightly stressed me out as we needed to get done asap so Matthew could have Flo, but in the end we finished with plenty of time left.
The pick up shoot
Tuesday the 30th of May was the date I decided to schedule my pick ups for. I wanted to get these done as close to the original shooting date as possible so that I could stay in the flow of things. Myself and the gang met at college at half 9 all raring to go. I had planned to start early hence why we all met at half 9 however we did not get to the house until about 11am because people were very late to college. Joe my AD was about half an hour late and normally this would have annoyed me however it did not as we could have started with out him and he could have met us at location when he was ready BUT none of that mattered anyway as Josh who we couldn't start with out was over an hour late to our meeting point at college! Josh had been out the night before explaining how he'd manage to not make the call for half 9. After we eventually got there everything went fine, we started with scene 1 and the half of scene 4 that we had to finish with Kane and then moved onto Josh's final scenes when his make up was finished. Josh was very 'ill' from his night out the evening before and at one point I thought he wouldn't be able to wear the make up, I tried to that we could reschedule if necessary and that I was not going to force him to put on the make up if he didn't think he was 'well' enough however Josh was a trooper and carried on without complaining (Mainly because he couldn't talk.) Shooting went smoothly and we were done around 4 2 hours later than expected but again this was because we were delayed by circumstances out of the crews control. It felt good to be finally finished shooting.
No comments:
Post a Comment