Back in the April we started the long and challenging process of production management. The first step was obviously to come up with an idea for a production, at first I struggled with this. All I knew was that I wanted to make a short film appose to a TV drama or mini series or any other kind of production. For a while I had my mind set on making a short horror film, the reason for this being I thought it would allow me to be more creative and experimental, the idea of playing around with lighting to try and create different effects was something I was very fond of. After a couple of weeks of brainstorming, trying to come up with ideas and watching short indie horrors on YouTube with Jess I was starting to worry that an idea would never come to me. But like the old movie cliche my idea came to me in a dream or should I say a nightmare. My idea was to make a short psychological horror film about sleep paralysis, it's a subject that really interests me as it's completely uncommon nobody (I know at least) ever talks about it and it's certainly a concept I've never seen used in a film and it only effect 8% of the population. As someone who suffers from regular occurrences of sleep paralysis I thought I'd be in a good position to show an accurate representation of what an episode feels like and hopefully convey the levels of fear that occurs in real life onto the big screen.
So I had my concept but it still wasn't really an 'idea' I just knew what I wanted to make a film about, I hadn't come up with a story or any plot points so that was the next stage. In all honesty this was the hardest part of the process for me, at first I hated all my ideas, maybe I didn't even give some of them a chance. I wanted to make something audiences would find scary but also troubling, I wanted the film to be an uncomfortable watch not in a gruesome way but in a psychological way, the audience would have to be scared but also feel empathy for the main character. This is why I needed to come up with a short story to surround the episodes of sleep paralysis, I wanted parts of the film to take place in the main characters nightmares but part of it to take place in his real life and for the two to intertwine with things from his real life influencing his nightmares and vise versa. I decided the character should be a similar age to myself not only to make casting easier but to help the audience feel more sorry for him. He had to be sad too, a loner, someone who's anxiety is completely taking over their life. These characteristics work as sleep paralysis is a condition heavily linked to anxiety, I could have the characters anxiety cause his sleep paralysis but also make his sleep paralysis worsen his anxiety and push him further away from his few friends, creating a vicious cycle. My idea became that the protagonist's anxiety begins to make his friends sick of him, eventually they can't stand him any more and begin to resent him for bringing everyone down and eventually they get rid of him worsening his condition. Meanwhile he is still suffering episodes of sleep paralysis and starts regularly seeing a figure of a man in his room, later he meets this figure in his nightmares and has dreams of the figure taking his friends away. It is up to the audience to decide weather the figures presence in the protagonists life is pushing his friends away OR the figure is taking his friends away because they don't really care for him. He is either trying to ruin this life or save him from his no good friends. I would argue that the preferred reading would be the first one but both work and to me I like the idea that the figure the protagonist is seeing is actually on his side and trying to save him from the nasty people in his life.
Now that I had fleshed out my Idea and developed my protagonist it was time to start writing, in honesty I think I lack confidence when it comes to writing. It's not one of my strongest abilities at all so I decided to hire a co-writer, someone I could work closely with to help develop my story. It had to be someone I trusted that I could work with and bounce idea's off. Because of this Joe Nolan became the first member of my production team and the two of us got to work on the script. Our first brainstorming session came whilst we were off college, we sat at mine with a laptop and a note pad and for hours brainstormed ideas and researched films we could take influence from. Then we got to work on the script. The process took a few weeks and eventually we came up with the first draft, lots of takeaways were eaten in the process. The first draft was far from perfect but I was happy with the story, we both liked the idea of leaving it open ended and the plot points were good. Eventually by the time the final draft came around I had re written the ending a few times, to make it more accessible for the mainstream audience and add a few lines of dialogue that hinted at the oppositional reading.
After the script was finished it was time to get to work on the pre production stage of making my film. Before this however it was time to pitch my idea not only to the class but to the MUA students too, I had to try and sell my film and get people interested working on it. My first task was to organise my cast and crew. I started with sorting out who my cast would be, I had already decided that Joe would be my assistant director as well as my script editor as I thought someone else with a good knowledge of the script would be a valuable asset on set. Director of Photography is one of the most important roles on set as they help shape the look of the whole film, I chose Matty Dickens to be by D.O.P as I know from working with him in the past that he is one of the best with a camera on the course and we always have the ability to collaborate together and bounce ideas back and fourth. As I was set on being the Director myself, for obvious reasons, the only space left on my crew was for a boom operator. I chose Rhys Collins as my boom operator as I once saw him hold a boom in the air completely still for 57 minutes without a break. After I had chosen my main crew it was time to pick my make up team. The MUA students that would make up my make up team would have a very important role as I needed some special effects make up to turn one of my actors into the shadowy figure in my script. After the pitch I mentioned earlier the make up students went away and prepared ideas and mood boards to bring back to us, I had five make up students interested in being head of make up on my film. They all brought me really good ideas but in the end I was blown away by Jaeden. He seemed really interested in the project and shared similar ideas to me, I liked his commitment and the amount of work he had put into thinking about the special effects make up he would use in the film. Next it was time to pick crew, I knew who I wanted for two of the roles right from the get go, I had seen Kane Smith perform in a stage show called YOLO and I thought he conveyed all of the right emotions to be the lead in my film, after a little bit of convincing Kane said he'd do it. The other actor I knew I wanted was Josh Wilson as the Shadow Man (the name I eventually came up with for the shadowy figure in my film) he was a good choice as he was much taller than Kane and could therefor impose himself over him making Kane's character look more vulnerable. As well as this the MUA students had said that Josh would be good to do special effects make up on as his bone structure would allow them to more easily transform his face. For the other two roles I went with Dylan Ward and Florence McMahon, two actors I knew and trusted could do a good job.
Now that I had a full cast and crew I could start the fun and exciting journey of paperwork, by this point I had already done all my research into the subject so it was just onto scheduling shooting times, sorting out risk assessment's, call sheets, artist realises forms and other exciting documents. With 10 other productions being made I was aware that scheduling may become a nightmare and time would be very short, so I made sure that I got all of my shoots scheduled in early so I had enough time to o everything. An advantage to this was having the headache of sorting out shoot dates and times taken away quickly but the side effect was that my production was only a week away from starting. Obviously I was excited but also at times a little nervous.
Onto shooting now and my first shoot day came along really quickly, it was a long day as I actually scheduled two different shoots for that. To find out more about what happened on set you can view my production diary on my blog. The first shoot went well but I wish I had given myself more time to get everything done, I think I was a little ambitious with how long it would take to shoot each scene and toward the end of the day we ended up rushing. We had to really as it was a very warm day and Josh's make up was very uncomfortable for him to wear for long periods of time, I had initially wanted to use the drone but again there was not enough time for this. Despite our lack of time we got everything we needed and all went well, everyone was happy on set and the cast did themselves proud. it was great to get the footage off the SD card and onto the computer to see what the first few scenes of my film were looking like, it was an exciting time as all the hard work that was put into pre production was finally come to fruition. My second shoot was my main one, at the house in Stainton village, we had planned to shoot 6 scenes in total that day and we started at around 4 in the afternoon. Because of the actors timetable it was hard to schedule long days as they were all needed somewhere else throughout the day. The plan was to stay 4pm-9pm but we ended up there much later thanks to the hard work and commitment of my team, this was because Josh's make up had taken much longer than expected so we were pushed back once again. We got A LOT of footage this day and in reality I probably once again planned to do to much in one day. It got to around 10 and I made the decision to start wrapping up, this was because I felt like I didn't want to over work my team and decided it would be a better idea to reschedule the missing scenes at the house to be picked up rather than work everyone into the night. The footage from this shoot looked great and the location really helped build the atmosphere. We got a few really cool dolly shots too which made me very happy. I managed to get the rest of the scenes rescheduled for a few weeks later. Anyway it was time for my final (main) shoot and it was my smallest one, a nice easy day by the river to shoot some dialogue between Kane and Flo's characters. Originally this would have been my last shoot day however because of the pick ups I had now scheduled it wasn't and we headed back to Sainton village to get the rest of the scenes there a couple of weeks later.
The production process was a very rewarding but also challenging one, I learnt lots about managing all aspects of a production as well as directing a film. I think the main think I learnt was how to deal with a large number of cast and crew and how to plan out and schedule a production. As well as this I learnt that keeping my cast and crew happy is vital but in some cases it is impossible to keep everyone happy and occasionally you have to let people deal with here own problems instead of trying to sort them out for them.
After my production process was finished it was time for post production, between shoots I had been organising my footage and starting to edit individual scenes to alleviate the work load when it came to the editing process. Unfortunately because I was working on everyone else's productions I never found myself with a lot of time to edit until after this process was wrapped up. Editing is one of my favourite part of the production and with this film I had the ability to be more creative and play around with a few new ideas. For example I wanted the use of colour to help the audience establish the protagonist's emotions in his dream. I did this by playing with the colour channels but also using the tint tool to give the screen a heavy glow of colour. As well as putting all my footage together I still needed to find a few assets for example I had to find some royalty free pieces of music that would fit the tone of the film and a couple of sound effects. As well as this I had to record some voice overs with Joe as he would be voice the Shadow Man. After I had all of these things I could finally put all of my footage together and see the final product. it was a great feeling to final finish the production process and have a finished film. Now I had to think about showing my films to an audience and building some hype before the premier. I could do this by posting about my film online and creating a few promotional posters. Hopefully my film resonates well with my audience and people will be able to see the double meaning, having screened the film to my peers I have a good idea of how the audience will react to it and hopefully this will be in a positive manner, my worst nightmare would be to make something that doesn't make sense but I have a worry that not all audience members will understand my film. This isn't always a bad thing it just may mean that my film isn't targeted at the main stream audience.
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