Sneakers For Life!

This week Myles and I entered a short film/trailer competition on YouTube. It was an online competition across Europe by Foot Locker, with a grand prize of a lifetime supply of kicks (lifetime supply being 65 pairs over 5 years!). Already owning an ever growing ammount of trainers, the prize sounded very appealing and was an excuse to make another short film, my first to be entered into a competition. Here is the competition outline.



This was the first film that me and Myles had made in an advert/viral style, which I had been waiting for an excuse to do for a while. In the end it worked out well, despite some minor concerns, the main one being the slightly washed colour of the film, which was a result of a few factors, such as poor lighting conditions in the kitchen, which was made worse with a large window next to the fridge. This lighting was further made an issue, due to the difference in appearance on the Z1 monitor, the MacBook it was edited on and how it appears on YouTube, which made colour correction even more difficult. There were also things improved during the shoot, such as the ending, which was originally supposed to be an ambitious 360 pan of the kitchen (which probably wouldn't have worked as well in hine sight). Anyway here is the final product. Written by Gustav Newby, Directed by Gustav Newby & Myles McAuliffe Camera & Sound by Myles McAuliffe, Performed by Gustav Newby, Edited by Myles McAuliffe and original score by Tim Crosbie.






Peace!

That's A Wrap!

This weekend we finished the shooting of our short film, Man Without A Movie Camera. It went a lot better than expected, despite the worst imaginable weather conditions! The first day of shooting started off quite dry, despite reports that there was going to be heavy storms throughout the day. Due to the surprisingly nice weather we decided to start with our outdoor shots to ge them out of the way before it turned, which it did on setting up our shot and would continue to do every time we wanted to film outside. Our second day of shooting, however was perfect filming conditions with a clear blue sky and great lighting, unfortunately this wasn't great for continuity with regard to the previous day's weather, but gave us a chance to do some pick-ups at the end of the day for some of the stormier shots of the previous day's shoot.

In the end our planning paid off, with time left at the end of each day's schedule meaning that we didn't run out of time on either day and had time to do multiple takes of every shot, to give us some leeway if anything is to be wrong with the footage when it comes to editing it. Some looseness in the structure led to us achieving some of our most creative feats of the film, such as a few of our best shots and a strengthening of the script being forced through an extras absence on the second day. One of our shots, which we came up with on location ended up being by far our best shot of the shoot, which was a tracking shot filmed from the boot of one of the extra's cars, as you can see in the photo below with Myles holding the camera while Luke drives.

Next step is the editing, which will be started after another short film for an online competition is made this week, which should be completed for viewing in my next post, so keep your eyes peeled!

Pre-Production

The pre-production process is going well so far, with nearly everything sorted for next weekends shoot. As producer, my main concern this week has been regarding locations. Me and Myles went on a scouting mission during the week, taking photos of possibilities. The main location we were seeking out was a Car Park, and we managed to find two possible candidates. Unfortunately our decision wasn't made any easier on talking to security/owners about their availability over our shooting weekend, as they were both readily available for us!
When we make our final decision on which of the car parks to use, I am going to put them into my new toy, the Hitchcock iPhone application to start storyboarding. It's a nice application, which lets you storyboard films including all the extra details, such as where a tracking shot/zoom will start and finish and lets you add templates of cast and what directions they move. Anyway, here is a video showing what it does better: