Productions stills from the short film 'Mistake'

Teesside University

I have almost completed my year at Teesside University. Throughout the year I have done a documentary about the sport Iaido. This was a great challenge because I had no idea what it was. I had a great team alongside me (Megan Tulip, Heather Luke & Natalie Swain) and had a good time directing the piece. After myself and Heather the editor finished editing the film we were all happy with the outcome. The tutors must have also been happy with it because we got 81%! Great work team!
I was also Director of Photography and Assistant Director for Megan Tulips' insomnia short film 'Deprivation'. This piece is now in the final stages of the edit and it is looking awesome but creepy at the same time. I used a bit of my animation background and got stop motion in it which I was happy with.
My final piece 'Butterflies' about the bond between a grandfather and granddaughter has fallen through which I am sad to say but I have another piece in pre-production. 'Mistake' is about a man who accidently kills his wife/girlfriend. The story will be told by the man who is watching the accident take place around him. It is going to be told to the audience as a poem. Hopefully these two films will get some good marks.

Specialism

I forgot to mention what roles I have during this Specialism project.
For my production 'The Imagination of Little Tommy Murdoch' I am the writer, the producer, the director, the editor and the animator. Which is quite strenuous. I have pretty much filmed it all and now all I need is to film the pub scene. The edit is well underway and within a few days I am going to start the animating. This is going to take me a long time to do so I am hiding myself away in edit suite 4 so nobody can disturb me. Having filmed most of my production already I had a very thorough look through the scenes and the all seem fine with minor sound issues which can be resolved.
The other production I am doing is Dan Harris' 'Waiting' which is a poem monologue about a man who has given up on life. I am the co-producer (with Dan Harris) and co-director (with Steven Swain). This project didnt get off to the best of starts but I now believe that it is going to go ahead. It was hard to sort out this project with my other production being so big and with me moving house so it kind of got put to the back of the queue. But now we are near enough there and all we need now is to sort out when the actors are free so we can put their scenes into our shooting schedule. The poem went through some major changes and we are now onto our 6th and final draft, this was due to me and Steven coming up with the idea of the poem being abstract and with the actors in the area not fitting the age criteria or even not having any actors available. So, some actors are doubling up and we have changed the ages of the characters in the poem. This works out better for all of us because then we can see the change in the character of Arthur when he becomes a little older to when he is really old. This production is going to be filmed the week before Easter break.

So, overall both productions are well on their way and I believe we are happy with whats going on. The only bad point that I have is that we cant come in during Easter so I havent got that time to edit but hopefully I will be done before then.

Specialism

Well, my Specialism production of 'The Imagination of Little Tommy Murdoch' is well underway. Almost completely filmed, just one more shoot date to go!
After the mental search for a mother I finally found someone who fits the bill so we will be filming her scenes this upcoming weekend.
Filming for these past two weekends has been really hard because we needed to move everything around in my step-brothers bedroom which took a while so we were left with a tight schedule. Also, one of the actors rang me up the day before the shoot on the 5th March and said that his foot had swelled up. This could have caused us major problem because he couldn't walk properly but it added to his drunken character. Another bad point with actors, which wasn't the actors fault, was that my animated character Taiga Minion actor got the chicken pox then she got tonsilitis so this held us back until she was well again. So, this weekend she was better and we got almost all of her scenes completed. There are a few more to do because we had to stop because of the rain and because the holders of the P2 card previous to me didn't remove their work so we only had 9 minutes to work with. But overall, I believe it worked well. Camera and sound were perfectly fine and another great day of shooting awaits!


NOW TO EDIT THE ANIMATION!!!

It's over! It's finally over!

After watching the Multi-Cam back I have realised that Camera 4 was out of focus, this really angered me because it had been fine for three months. The sound had minor issues throughout the shoot and whilst I was on Camera 2 I was perfectly fine. Today was the deadline for the folders. I had finished mine long before the deadline and I was busy trying to put Jess Shaw's Wool Room advert onto DVD when a couple of members of the group told me we could hand the folders in. I then handed it in and soon afterwards put the advert onto DVD and on the master tape thanks to Louise Tonner. Woo! It's over. Now for the Live folder...

Sam

Phew!

Well the Multi-Camera Production is finally over! Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Wooooooooooooooooooo! Wooooooooooooooooooo! *ahem* Sorry got a bit excited there. Finally after three months hard graft it all came to an end on January 19th @ 4:52pm. And weren't we all buzzing!

During the show I was on Sound, Camera 2 and the dreaded Camera 4. The sound and camera 2 went perfectly fine and for the past three months camera 4 was fine too, but for some strange reason it decided not to work when most important. I was so angry with myself that I couldn't get it fixed in time but I did my best to get the shots that the director wanted. The rest of the shoot went great and we will be watching it tomorrow morning.

In other news, the Live Project was filmed last Friday without any trouble. During the shoot it was extremely cold and I would like to thank the cast and crew for putting up with the climate to get a great shoot out of the way. I would like to thank the rest of the people who came to be extra's, you know who you are! Yesterday myself and Louise Tonner edited the Live Project all in one day which was good because the deadline is tomorrow morning. The touch ups are done and we are all ready for hand in.

I also finished my production logo designs, this included: DVD case design, CD design, Postcard, Letterhead, CV, Business Card & Complimentary Slip. We then got to critique everyones work and when I got back to mine most people said colour needed to be added so I created a new design which will be ready for deadline which is the 9th February. I will also created something for it that will hold all the designs together. I also want to animate my logo so if I have time to do that I will.

Sam

2nd Unit

All the 2nd Unit has been filmed and edited. Buck Turbine (or Action Man) was the first to be done. Once we got the actor in for rehearsals and he had a few run throughs with his lines he came to film the 2nd Unit which was then shot and edited within a day because the deadline is fast approaching. This 2nd Unit turned out really well, because of the performance of one John Noble and the crew. It has been given to the head editor and he has sorted it all out so it can be viewed during the show. The other 2nd Unit was Sci-Fi, this was also done really quickly because we had to work around the actor; who is a fellow student. But through it all he remained patient and made it easy for me to direct him through what I wanted. Even though it was what was originally planned for both shoots I think they both turned out really well even though they are so simplistic.
Sam