Borderline (Collaboration project)

Great success! Collab shoot is shot and now in post production. The whole shoot went great with out a hitch and without too many arguments from me and sam, however leading up to the shoot was a different story, two tempered italians working together is always going to be heated in arguments.

Keir and Simon; our actors were amazing! I couldn't of asked for better actors who have played the characters so well. Sarah; our camera lady has also been amazing, even though she had her own work to do she was there filming for us which shows great commitment. With her great eye for shots came Andy's great ear for sound, he also did a fantastic job for us and we couldn't of asked for a better shoot.

Special thanks to Stoke property shop too who sorted us with the location, what a great location it was. http://www.stokepropertyshop.com/

Here are some pictures from the weekends shoot.

David and Miguel

Me giving directions for a scene

Mr. West

Sarah on camera

'Friend, car friend, friend'

The two co-producer/directors Me and Sam

Presentation is Done!!

Ahhhh, done.

One deadline down, another one and a half to go! ee yay! I feel quite elated, it went so quickly, just talked for 10 minutes and then was asked a few questions...ahh.. blimey all done.

Few more weeks now til it's all over for me.

On shoot this weekend, going to be a long weekend, but then I can spend the rest of my life in editing and then party party party.

Good times.

Going to catch up on some telly i've missed now because I deserve a little break at least.

Dentist shoot

Todays shoot went really well for Mr.G. We were shooting scenes at a dentists today, luckily the kind surgery of Alchemy in Stoke let us have the upstairs surgery for the whole day. I was on stills and often on sound as well as setting up. I'm quite ill at the moment and I encountered the hiccups 3 times today.

The staff there were great, really helpful and co-operative, they showed us how to use the cool chair and even made an appearance in the film. It's always good when people are willing to give you time.

Mr.Hippo and his healthy clean teeth.

Orchestra shoot

On shoot yesterday evening for Glenn. My job was to pull the tripod along the track and also to help set everything up and to take some photos. As we didn't have an SLR, I just used my compact camera, so i have the images here. The concept involves music, so we filmed the local Staffordshire Orchestra.

The track and dolly! Set up in 10 minutes, Huzzah!

Chris being the dummy whilst we test the lighting and make sure the shots will work.

DVD cover shot me thinks?


Before the shoot:

BAD BAD news. The actor for my collaboration film emailed to say he'd broken his ankle, we're suppose to be shooting this weekend! Me and Sam were devastated, but we spent all day yesterday calling around and I think we may have found someone now. Scripts finally drafted, and location seems guaranteed. We went around just viewing a few more today. Only problem is that we're having to push back the shoot for another week! So we have to get it done next weekend now, which I didn't really want, but we'll do what we have to do I guess.

I was highly stressed yesterday, but I'm feeling a bit better now. Going to get on with other work to just take my mind off the collab for the evening.

Another shoot tomorrow morning. 8.30am call time ...grr.. could be worse I guess, then it's carry on with paperwork time again.

Righto, back to work. x

Trains + Bowls

Hi all,

Had a very interesting couple of days.

Jumped off the train from London to Stoke, which by the way was crazy! I couldn't sit down anywhere in economy. It was the first train back up North on Monday after the no service, and it was the first train that day to leave without taking 3 changes just to get to Stoke. So me and hundreds of other people thought, hmmm it shouldn't be busy, lets jump on that, I need to get back as early as possible and don't want the hassle of changing....yep. So I decided to go sit in first class. Yep, that's right my first experience in first class, wasn't anything spesh, just more room really.

Soon after many other people followed, and those too scared to go to first in case they got charged extra, were told by the train managers to go sit in first class because they were stood in the door ways, and the next stop wasn't for another hour and half. Busy busy.

Nehoo, jump off the train, and I go straight to set with my suitcase and everything, like a pro.. I get straight on set and help shoot. It didn't finish til late, after which i crashed out, and then woke up today to do it all again....but it was for a different director, and it was a bowls shoot.

The concept is great, as plain as bowls to us youngsters may seem, but I don't want to give the concept away until the films finished and distributed. If i can get some stills I'll pop them up.

I'm not feeling too good either, I think I've caught mums sore throat which I said I wouldn't get off her...great. Lots of honey in my coffee now.

I'm starving, time to eat.

Happy Easter everyone.

I know what you're thinking, what is this? It's half a cow with a man coming out of it... and you're right it is!

This was taken for the Ray Ban cow birth shoot that has had over 1million hits on YouTube in it's first week. I was lucky enough to be on the set for the shoot and here are the pictures from my experience.
The wonderful actor being covered in goo so he can be born from the cow. He was a great guy, and the other actors were great too.

The massive, really expensive jib, it's controlled by the computer and is programmed to move exactly the same for each take, completely flawless, and they made it move to look like it was handheld. Brilliant! We spent half the day setting up the shots and the jib, and then the rest of the time shooting. It was a long day, a long process, for 48 seconds of film, but it was definitely worth it.

Here's the video:

QVC + me

Hi all,

Finished shooting yesterday morning, and then had a busy day sleeping and cleaning, and sleeping lots more.

Up early again this morning, left Stoke at 8am and went to QVC studios, had a tour with a lovely lady thats an ex student of my course. Went with a few others. It was such a great experience to see.

As you know it's live television being broadcast 17 hours a day, which is alot. So to see how they all run the show behind the scenes and the constant preparation that is going on for the shows is amazing. It's a leading television channel for selling things and it's just amazing to see it all, all that preparation for a few minutes of air time.. really good.

We got to go around the studios and see all the sets, they have minimum of 4 sets per studio, which all interchange easy as you can imagine.

This was us guys sitting on the set, we went a bit crazy with the happy snappy of pictures.. but they didn't mind which was cool. They were all really nice and friendly and really helpful. I'm hoping to go back for a bit of work experience and just throw myself into the action. They didn't look too stressed and looked like they had a laugh as well as work hard, so i'm going to go try see if I can spend a couple weeks there.

I've gone from Battersea and am at my home in London now, I've got meetings with more companies tomorrow, so I hope they go well. Just going to talk to them about the industry and see what kind of things they do, so it's another long day. Will be great to walk around London tomorrow, I miss being here so that will be fun going to go window shopping as I have no money :D story of our lives ey..

Stress

Long day already, been up since 8am and have been preparing for my shoot tomorrow. I'm scared that everytime my phone goes, some one is calling to cancel on me, I think thats why I'm not sleeping properly and waking up early.

Now I'm getting a headache..ow.

I've picked up some more bits ready for tomorrow, and I'm writing up the call sheets for everyone, just waiting on one piece of information.

Apparantly I look tired...

I feel tired. Going to be a long few days coming up, I'm doing two hours shooting on Monday morning and then going to sort out more collab stuff.

I had level 3 screenings to attend on Wednesday which was cool. Last semester films were being screened at our BFI Film Theatre, and we dressed up a bit for the event.

Sams bowtie is made from black card. We're still looking for a location as our back up plan has failed, so back to square one. Still lots to do, so little time.