Poster!

Rough cut complete and website coming soon!

After several weeks we at last have our first cut of the film together! It's a genuine thrill to see everything hang together and the story as it was on the page now fully come to life on the screen. My editor Donovan de Souza worked extremely hard at molding the footage into an engaging narrative and I am deeply impressed with his work.

Over the past few weeks we worked methodically and chronologically through each scene, finally getting scene ten completed today. Overall editing was a fairly smooth experience, with the one exception of scene seven, which we soon realised was without a doubt the most complex in terms of on-screen action and coverage. After an incredibly intense and lengthy editing session, however, Donovan managed to pull it all into line and now scene seven is probably the tightest in the entire film.

Editing has once again made me deeply appreciative of my actors' excellent work during production, cutting Gita and StJohn's interaction in scene ten surprised both my editor and myself for the pure pleasure we got from watching it come together. The emotion and depth of feeling in the sequence is awesome and it now probably ranks as my favourite part of the film even though the coverage is mostly simple A/B stuff. Goes to show that a good performance from your actors can often outshine even the most impressive displays of technical wizardry.

We were both extremely excited today when we finally got to watch the whole film run from start to finish and, not content to sit on our laurels, immediately started working on tightening up the running time.

I'm really conscious of trying to hit that 15 minute running time for festival entry and today we managed to get the cut to 14 minutes and 58 seconds without credits. I am a little concerned about how much more we can afford to cut from the film without compromising the narrative, but I'm sure we can look into some creative solutions and hopefully the feedback from the industry locals next week will throw up a few good outsider perspectives.

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The promotional website for "Alice(remix)" is coming together at the moment and I'm very happy with the current designs, we're looking to launch in the next few weeks so keep your eyes peeled. We've also got a raft of stills that have yet to see the light of day, as well as work on the trailer starting very soon!

Someday It'll All Make Sense: Getting The Rough Cut Together

So far my editor, Donovan De Souza and myself have had three sessions cutting and messing around with the footage and I have to say, going back over it all I'm mostly very happy with how it all came together. Editing has been an interesting experience, after all the abstraction and segmented progress of the shoot, it's great to have all the footage sitting there ready to be made into a story.

Donovan is agreeably obsessive about continuity and the flow from one cut to the next, (that's what I get for hiring an experimental filmmaker) and it is an absolute pleasure to work with him. I've noticed that because we're already such good friends, we have a very positive rapport and can make decisions very quickly with very little arguing. Thanks to the fact we have similar ideas about cinema I never feel like I have to force my editor to agree to an idea of mine.

So far we've cut the film up until scene seven. The running time currently stands at 9 minutes and I hope we can keep it around the fifteen minute mark when the picture is locked. Due to the way I structured the shooting of this film, the rhythm of the edit is what I would call 'measured'. We have a lot of on-screen action that is often caught in only a few shots, I didn't want to create a spastic over-edited picture, rather I wanted to create a mood through the actions and feelings of the character in the space and long unbroken shots were a way I hoped to achieve this. For example, all of scene two takes place in only a single slate.

One thing I've noted is that often films with rapid fire montage lose a lot of viable emotional drive, we end up being distracted by the technique rather than what's occurring in the narrative. This is something I really wanted to avoid. This is not an action film, this is a psycho-drama. If the audience isn't engaged by the character and the story, all the whiz bang cuts in the world aren't going to hold their attention.

So yeah, not long now till we have our first completed assembly of the film! I'm doing a screening in two weeks with several local industry types whose opinions I think could really help us when we come to the fine cut.

Days Two to Eight: Victory!

This post has taken longer to write than I would have liked. I rapidly encountered the problem that daily updates are a near impossibility when you're shooting flat out everyday. I was continually completely exhausted after each day and the prospect of writing everything that I'd just experienced down was not an appealing one.

Now, however, the shoot is finished. We're set to enter post-production very soon and have a whole raft of challenges ahead of us which we'll need to tackle if we ever want "Alice(remix)" to get out into the world. You'll be hearing it here first on the blog, I'll let you know how the cut of the film is progressing, where we are with marketing, grading, mixing and music. It'll be an exciting couple of months as we get this thing ready for human consumption.

But first...

A SUMMARY OF PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY

To put it simply, the shoot was a huge success. I can't emphasise enough just how well everything went. We managed to get all the shots we wanted, both ahead of schedule and under budget! It was an intense eight days, but it was also a lot of fun and a wonderfully rewarding experience. Everyone on the crew got along and we had no serious on-set dramas. More importantly the quality of the work the exceedingly talented crew proffered up was positively mind-boggling. Every department pulled out all the stops in realising the world of "Alice(remix)". I was deeply moved by how hard everyone worked on this movie, which at the end of the day, was just something that started out as a doodle on a piece of paper. It's fascinating to me to see something which has been in my head for the better part of two years finally come to life on camera.

The location we shot in, my parents' place, was very easy to work in. We had great access to all the necessary amenities, could be separated from the rest of the house and had pretty much free run of the place. I am very grateful my parents were kind enough to give us access to the location and allow us to siphon off their water and electricity! Not only this, because we essentially shot the entirety of principal photography in this one location, working was very easy. No materials needed to be transported anywhere and we lost no time or money cycling through several locales, unlike many other short films.

The schedule we worked on was one of the easiest I've ever seen. Even though this film is quite technically complex, it was a rare occasion that we'd run over our allotted time. Props to our 1st AD Jacob Holmes-Brown and our producer Nikit Doshi for their excellent time management skills!

In fact, the quality of work from everyone on set was a wonder to behold. Our camera team consistently amazed me with the quality of their work. The lighting and framing of the film was a joy to behold and I am so glad that we were able to synchronise our ideas of what the movie should look like so early and so well. There are, to my knowledge, no shots that I'm honestly unhappy with. Shooting on the RED was a joy and was definitely worth it. The workflow was very easy to manage and the sheer quality of the footage honestly blew me away. Thank you Mr. Sam Winzar for all your patient and hard work and a special thanks to Arthur Bienkowski, our very talented DoP who was never short of any ideas except bad ones.

Monique Wajon and her production design team also really brought their A-game to this movie. Every prop and dressing in this film was exceptionally well thought out and used perfectly. I really felt that the set we made looked like the sort of place that our central character would live and when we started getting to the latter half of the script, I was doubly impressed by how the art department team realised Nick's final project. It looked gorgeous and disturbing, pretty much exactly what I wanted. Well done guys!

I have to single out two other people here for special mention, though of course everyone involved has my eternal gratitude, these are Miss. Gita Bezard and Mr. StJohn Cowcher, our wonderful and extremely patient leads. These two have been on an epic journey with me over the course of the past five months and it was an awesome final adventure, after all our one-on-one sessions in the middle of nowhere, to bring them to a fully dressed and crewed set and completely change the dynamic of our working style. They both handled it brilliantly and gave great performances. Thank you both, from the bottom of my heart.

As I said, a big big thank you to everyone else who helped out on the shoot. It was easily the most fun and smoothest ride I've ever had on a set and I hope it was a similar experience for all of you. The footage looks great and I very much look forward to cutting a worthy film from it!

Day One: Finding Our Feet

As I said, my aim is to keep you abreast of how we've been trucking in our development of the film. We started shooting on the 14th. If you want a nice simple summary of how things have gone and can't be bothered trawling through the following few paragraphs, here's an easy one liner: "Extremely Well!"

DAY ONE

Arthur, Monique and myself had an early start, picking up the necessary equipment for the film at 9:30AM. This went off pretty much without a hitch and we were soon at the primary location for the shoot.

For the rest of the crew, the call was at 12:30PM. Thanks to Monique and her production design crew, the set was fully prepped for our first shot, which, typically for me, was an inordinately complex one. We have largely scheduled this film to be photographed chronologically, meaning the first shot we did was literally the first one of the movie. It involved a long shot, constantly moving and changing focus, gliding around the main character Nick's room, introducing us not only to the geography of the film, but Nick's personality and lifestyle. As with all first shots, this took us longer to achieve than we'd like, though Mr. Arthur Bienkowski and his camera crew took very little time to beautifully light the space. Our main problem was the co-ordination of movement and focus, as the shot contained so much information, as well as needing to be perfectly paced and clear for a duration of roughly 30 seconds. Not only this, but thanks to the stiflingly hot weather, we found flies to be a constant irritant, often flying into and ruining otherwise perfectly composed shots. After 11 takes, however, we finally had the shot we needed and our film had officially begun. I felt a little strange with StJohn on set, as this was really the first time he'd met a lot of the crew and I was anxious to make sure he felt comfortable. Once again, I was just over-thinking things as StJohn got along fine with the crew and, as always, took his direction exceptionally well. I very much cherish the fact that I got to cast such a well-known friend of mine for this role, as it allowed for an instantaneous intimacy in our work and I didn't have to worry about bruised egos.

We pushed ourselves hard, and thanks to Nikit's scheduling and Jacob Holmes-Brown's excellent ADing, we finished slightly ahead. Managing to get coverage for scenes 1 to 3. Our only real down-notes were an unfortunate case of food poisoning for some crew members including myself, likely brought about by bad yogurt, and some pretty significant oxygen problems on set, thanks to us failing to use ventilation. Neither problem really slowed us down and, really, what film shoot isn't without its problems anyway? We formulated a new plan to keep fans on set circulating air when we weren't recording and moved on, finishing the day exhausted but largely satisfied that we'd gotten what we intended to get in the time we'd intended to get it.

The Pre-Shoot: Methods and Madness

So, as I've mentioned in previous posts, one of our hurdles in producing this film was the requirement that we effectively split the shooting in two. The reason behind this is the fact that much of the film takes place with Nick, the central character, viewing old tapes of himself and Alice.

I decided that the best method of us recording all these essential clips would be to completely subvert the manner in which the 'official' shoot would be done. So, instead of utilising a large crew and complex equipment over a short intensive period of time, I resolved to shoot the film with only myself and the two actors, with one HDV camera which would be handled by the actors, over a period of several months. What came out of this experiment were over a dozen workshopped improv 'scenes' of StJohn and Gita, in character, dramatising different moments in their supposed relationship.

This was a highly unusual method of shooting for me, as I'm usually a bit of a control freak who wants the camera to be exactly where I envision it, the lighting to be perfect, the sound flawless etc. Shooting in this hand-held manner, I effectively forced myself to throw away all my techie impulses and just focus on the interaction of the central characters. It created very interesting scenarios where the actors and I would devise a scene, emotional beats and all, then the actors would walk off and perform their roles, with nobody present except the camera. I imagine it's a little strange to be committing to a performance with no audience visible.

Of course, not wanting to make things too 'easy' for myself, I decided that all of our workshopped scenes would take place in wildly different locations. So, over the course of about three months, we drove all around and outside the metro area. Though the large bulk of our focus was on performance and achieving a raw, 'truthful' picture of this couple, I did not want the footage that Nick views to be visually mundane or unappealing.

Having now done our first day of 'official' shooting, I think more than ever I appreciate the vastly different method by which we recorded our home video stuff. It was a wild, and weirdly personal journey. Being in such close proximity with your actors, with none of the usual technical or personnel accouterments, creates a very intimate space for performance and film. I cherish the fact that we got the opportunity to experiment with such a wildly different form of movie-making and get some great usable footage footage at the same time!

Life, Death and Rebirth: The OOMPF application and beyond

With all the essential crew now assembled, I began attacking the OOMPF application with gusto. Following an illuminating discussion with David Smith, the producer on last year's "Legacy", I determined that the application process would favour an overthought approach to the material rather than an underthought one. So, I set about obsessively assembling vast amounts of information about how the film would be produced, putting my unfortunate crew through some pretty early paces. We essentially had a period of pre-application production. This was mostly due to the fact that I knew that my idea was a fairly psycho-analytical/avant-garde one and that my visuals and set strategy would need a lot of thinking through to convince the board that I knew what I was doing.

My application, when it was finally completed after a period of about two months ended up clocking in at 137 pages and consisted of:

1) A one line summation of the plot.

2) A one page summary

3) The script

4) A full budget

5) The shooting schedule

4) The producer's statement

5) The director's statement

6) The marketing statement of intent

7) Crew CVs

8) The director of photography's statement

9) The production designer's statement

10) The editor's statement

11) Lighting plans

13) A shot list

14) A conceptual storyboard

15) Concept art of the set

16) A location summary

17) A detailed breakdown of how we were going to construct Nick's final project

18) Pre-Shot footage

19) Character biographies

20) Showreels from the director, editor and musician

Like I said, obsessive assembly of info.

So, in September we handed in our application and played the waiting game. This game proved to be tortuously protracted as we basically had the film on hold until we got word. All our plans were tied up one way or the other with the response from FTI.

Finally, in November, we got a response. There's no suspense here, the answer was "no". This of course was a bit of a blow, but I found myself surprisingly not too upset about it. We'd done so much work on the film already, it was basically unthinkable for me that we'd wrap everything up and kill the project. Sure enough, Nikit and I had a meeting and agreed that we'd see to it that the film would be produced, even without the extra cash from FTI. Fortunately over those past few months I'd been picking up some lucrative contract work with my production company and had enough money coming my way to make a self-funded movie a very real possibility.

So, we kicked the project into high gear. We set about locking down our shooting times (we had to push it back slightly to the middle of January, but honestly this ended up being more of a help than a hindrance) and ensuring all the crew was confirmed. Unfortunately, our very talented sound designer Damien Watt found it impossible to get out of full time work and guarantee his attendance, so we had to replace him, fortunately coming across Miss. Xoe Baird. Again, this was thanks to Adrian McFarlane and Sam Winzar. This guy will be getting a hefty credit I assure you.

With the crew sourced and schedules locked down, we set about arranging our first full crew meetings, which went exceedingly well. Everyone got along and we covered a lot of crucial info.

Due to our excessive work on the OOMPF application, we were at a real advantage for pre-production. A lot of the stuff which would usually have hamstrung us had already been figured out and it did not take long to get around what few problems remained. Our editor, Donovan de Souza, began the laborious job of assembling the footage for Nick's final project (he's almost done), we re-did the shotlist, hammered out a corrected schedule, got catering organised (essential to any good shoot), began buying props, got our contracts written up by a very talented law graduate (thanks Jehna) and recce'd the shooting location (my parent's basement -thanks guys). We then scheduled our test shoots and, well you know how they went!

So yeah, you're basically up to speed now! We're currently one day away from shooting. Monique and her team are coming around on Wednesday to bump in the rest of the set, the assistant director and producer are doing last minute checks of the location, the pre-shot footage (more on this tomorrow) is being handed over and we're basically all systems go!