Hey! So just to say I have began a new blog for my second year as a Media Production student, why not take a peek?
https://grantsnaithyr2blog.wordpress.com
UNITED STATES – CIRCA 1950s: Woman with surprised look. (Photo by George Marks/Retrofile/Getty Images)
As part of our second week of 161MC we were given a number of useful resources to read and look into as part of our self development in creating impact in media.
During this week we took a look at the Independent Filmmaker and his methods and trials in the modern digital era. Since the birth of the internet filmmakers have had a whole wealth of new and exciting prospects open to them in pre-production, production and post-production. Perhaps the most important development has been in the means of distribution. In one of our readings this week ‘Playing the Crowd: A Survey of Production, Distribution and Promotion for Indie Filmmakers’ by Alex Barrett highlights five key ways in which indie filmmakers have began to distribute their work against the standard model:
Online Screening Sites: YouTube, Vimeo, OpenIndie.
Brand Sponsorship and Advertising: Whereby a film is streamed for free on a site but a majority of revenue generated from that sites banners goes the filmmaker
VODO: Short for Voluntary Donation offers the viewers the both watch and share the film at their own will with a donation option available to the artist.
Hybrid Distribution: This allows a filmmaker to put their film to an audience whilst retaining the rights to it. Sites such as IndieFlix allow for this and offer 70% share of total net profit from dvd sales and downloads.
Mobile Devices: A film made specifically for small screen devices facilitated by sites such as MoFilm and Zzizzi which offer a 50/50 split on profits.
Whilst I think a lot of these distribution options are effective, perhaps negating Mobile Devices with the now readily available apps that allow you to view fullscreen films on a mobile phone more readily now, I prefer to show my films through sites such as YouTube and Vimeo, more so the latter, as I feel this reaches the largest target audience and as a unknown filmmaker it is more important to develop a following than to make money. As I feel more confident I would like to start a website to watch my films on and introduce a donation box and optional DVDs for sale.
We were then given an article on BFI ‘Life Just Is: A Filmmaker’s Journal’ which was a publishing of a journal kept by the aforementioned Alex Barret and his progression from University graduate to debuting his first feature film only aged 28 called Life Just Is. I found this to be a really interesting read for its reflection of inner thinkings that don’t seem to be too different from that of my own. For me, reading this really encouraged me to strengthen my quality of self reflection and the need to keep a constant check on my own thoughts at any given time. In particular a rather poinient moment in the journal for me took place on the 30th August as it was a moment that I can relate to:
“I now feel like it’s never going to happen and I’m thoroughly depressed. The whole thing has spiralled out of control and I feel like it’s me that’s lost the control. I’m starting to think that I’m working with people who don’t understand the intention, the point, of the whole thing. The whole thing is just fucked beyond belief. I feel like giving up, but I know I won’t.”
I think what this shows to us as independent filmmakers is that even though we do feel like this from time to time, we are not as alone as we feel at that given moment. We surround ourselves with creative minded individuals to create beautiful works of art through moving image and yet when it doesn’t seem to be going well we feel like it is only us who feels that way, when in actuality every creative minded individual can relate to that feeling of hopelessness.
Related Task Blogs:
https://grantsnaithyr1.wordpress.com/2015/01/18/the-big-pitch/
So a few of you know i’ve been busy in my spare time working on the early concepts for a short film I intend to start producing throughout the course of 2015, the ultimate goal being to enter it into a competition or festival. Its really early stages so far yet the few people i’ve gathered around me for this have shown such amazing commitment already and all seem really eager to get involved. But now on the edge of 2014 and the start of 2015 I have decided to extend an invitation out to everyone and anyone who would like to get involved whether it be in production, post-production, acting, lighting, make up, distribution, music anything! Without giving too much away here are a few images just to wet your appetite with (the storyboard provided by Carl Packer). If you are interested and would like to get involved please feel free to comment or message me with your interest and what you could offer to the group. Please bare in mind, not everyone can get involved as a group of too many people will become difficult to control. Thankyou 🙂
In this post I am going to be analysing and reflecting upon my experiences of my first Coventry University Media Production project, to create a short 3 minute film in a group. Our film is titled ‘Conflicted Mind’ and is centred around a character called Lydia who suffers with schizophrenia and hears voices in her head, she is attended to by a house calling nurse named Jenny. Firstly, i’d like to apologise for the fact that this video is on YouTube and not Vimeo, the file was too large and I will be sorting this issue out and putting it on Vimeo shortly.
Pre-production
Working on the early stages of this short film took far too long, and in all honest stretched right the way through into production itself which I think effected the final piece quite a lot as I’m sure is apparent to the viewers. The issue stemmed from the inefficiency of our group to work as a team instead of a bunch of individuals fighting for our own independence, we were all guilty of pride. Myself and our cinematographer Michael were especially guilty of this, as made apparent in my earlier blog post ‘Clash of Kings’. Though we all had a unified idea of our films basic plot, me and Michael found thirteen points of confrontation, in which we contested the particular artistic style of showing certain aspects of the film, the little details are always the most important. In the end, I think I compromised more than he did, it would have been interesting to produce two versions and see which was preferred, but there just wasn’t time. Maybe one day i’ll revisit this project with the old footage and edit my cut and share the outcome. Many members of our group became sheep early on in the pre-production phase as well. “Im happy with whatever you decide” became a motto. I think I personally could have been more organised by arranging strict meetings and schedules to meet to and recording meeting minutes so as to document our ideas more clearly. In addition to this, I took on the role of location scout and really found my biggest challenge in this department. I contacted several hospitals in search of a medical room to film as a mental hospital for our Lydia but had no success. In one particular day I called 6 separate people including one who was in a medical conference in Turkey, and travelled up and down six flights of stairs in the Graham Sutherland building to try and secure a medical mock room in the health faculty building of the university, and still got nothing. This lead to us altering the narrative slightly to Jenny being a house visiting nurse, which I think actually helped us out in the end as it presented us with more interesting shots and also put additional props at easy reach which we might not have brought along had we been filming elsewhere. One thing I found I did rather well in this stage was to propose questions to the group and coax ideas out of individuals by making them think. I felt confident in my role as a director/producer and despite it being a roller coaster of ups and downs, enjoyed the overall experience.
Production
I found Production the most enjoyable part of the entire project, when film day rolled around I was like a giddy school child! I believe I posted about this previously, the day was so much fun. We had a good team put together both from the Media Production course and personal contacts that I knew from outside. However, once again the lack of co-existence of my group reared its ugly head as me and Michael encountered issues over our thirteen points that we hadn’t fully hashed out beforehand. The result was that we mostly filmed Michael’s ideas, however we did include some of my input so in the end I was reasonably happy. I think as a director/producer I should have put my foot down more and stood my ground about my artistic vision, I feel my version would have actually been a vast improvement. On the plus side however, the group functioned technically together on the day of shooting, we captured some brilliant shots and sounds and had everything recorded in note pad form to aid in the final stage.
Post-Production
I had very limited input to the Post-Production side of the project which I think ultimately was the nail in the coffin for this project. The excessive amount of time we had dedicated to Pre-Production had meant that by the time we had finished filming we had two days to finish editing before hand in day. Unfortunately, during this time I became ill and was unable to attend the editing process, but stayed in communication wight he group during it as best I could. Without my hand to keep the peace the group seemed to turn in on itself when I received an agitated text from one member of the group about another member who had been unable to attend the film day and was unhappy with the footage and the actors. I tried my best to keep the peace from a far but lost my cool with the other member and spoke my mind too bluntly, and lived on to regret it. Whilst I wasn’t there our cinematographer took the editing under his wing and implemented his vision as best as he could whilst still keeping in some of my input. The final product can be seen above. Im not entirely sure what happened to our soundscape, something that had previously been praised as the strongest in the class, as it seemed to become twisted into a choppy and unclean version during editing, I think it had been tampered with to fit the films timeline but in the process had been warped into a lesser form. I was however very impressed with some of the visual work produced by Michael during the editing process and I think he ordered the scenes very well to match what we wanted to show. We had wanted to darken the scenes where the ‘Shadowy Figure’ emerged into the film to give an inner mind like experience however as we ran out of time we had to abandon this idea, however we did chase down our technical skills instructor to find out how we could have gone about this so that we were in the know for next time.
Response
The hand in day rolled around so quick and sudden and having only seen the finished product once I felt less the confident about how our film would fair against the rest of the class. However, as I sat and watched other groups works I discovered that most of them had encountered similar problems of extended pre-production and last minute editing and sketchy soundscapes. Whats more the lecturers mock results were coming in between 50 -60, which is pretty good considering below a 40 is a fail. Ours got a 51 from one lecturer and a 60 from another. It was the most ‘dividing’ of films out of the groups as non other had been given such a difference in marks than ours. We were told it had the most intriguing of introductions out of all the films, that our beginning was solid, our camera work was technically good and that they had enjoyed the acting work of our Lydia played by Natasha Cleverley who was also one of our make-up artists. Points to improve on included better script work, a more complex look at the character of Jenny and a lack of experimentation with effects in the editing process. In conclusion it was a real roller coaster of emotions that ultimately lead us to a happy place. I feel that this is a strong entry for my first Media Production film that can be used as a spring board to bigger and better things.
Special Thanks
I’d like to make special thanks to all of those who helped to make this project possible, our actors (Jamie, Natasha and Abbie) did a brilliant job despite the nerves and really helped us out when others dropped out at the last minute, you guys are like heroes. The donor of the suit and trousers for the Shadowy Figure (Stevan) I am so sorry about the button! Our make-up artists (Kirsty and Natasha) did an excellent job in such a limited time to make our Shadowy Figure look menacing and our Lydia look haunted, we are only sorry that we could not apply the final special effects in time to truly breathe life into your creations. To our sound recordist (Chris) who brought his technical know how and brilliant mind into play more than once, really don’t know what we would have done without you. To my mum and nan who kindly let us turn the house into a bomb site so we could make this project happen when I had spent so long on the hunt for a location to no prevail. And last but by no means least, to you the viewers, for taking the time to watch our film whether you loved it or hated it.
I found this helpful video about considering the editing process before and during the filming process to make the post-production side slightly easier to handle, I think its really useful and I can’t wait to put some of this stuff into action. Enjoy!
The Journey Begins 