Things have been going so well over the past few weeks, something had to give. While the edit is just getting better and better and the writing of the new version of Architurus is developing nicely, work (my day job) goes from bad to worse as half my colleagues are being made redundant (including Bill, who’s working on the SToA web site for me). Most depressing.

Plotting the new version of Architurus seems easier than it ever did before, but I suppose I’ve played with Dramatica long enough to know when to let it lead me and when I need to think laterally to get the best out of it.

The big breakthrough for me this time is that I’ve manged to distil the core theme of the story down to one statement, something I’ve never been able to do before, so building it up again is easy as everything is being scrutinised against that statement. If an idea doesn’t relate to the theme, it goes.

I’m quite surprised at what’s stuck and what’s been dropped, but I feel so much more confident I’m heading for a decent first draft that won’t disappear off beyond 300 pages with no end in sight.

Working on SToA has really taught me how to be merciless in my writing and editing. Occasionally I go too far, but it soon becomes apparent and is easy to reclaim the wanted children back from the orphanage.

No word back from the Screen South gang so far, but I’m growing more confident in my abilities as an editor, so I’m not sure I need them quite yet.

I’ve finally got the rough edit into a shape that I’m happy to start getting feedback from. I’ve cut it down to 13 minutes 30, which is more or less exactly what I was aiming for. Adding some music to various sections has helped immensely as well, a little bit of Mozart and Einaudi go a long way. Of course, soon it will all be Miller, which should be fab.

Now the fun begins! I’ll just dig out my coat of very thick skin and WWII metal helmet. Let’s see how well I can take criticism…

I was up to three o’clock Saturday morning pulling together the first rough edit, and boy, did I pay for it the next day. I spent the whole weekend in a fug, which was a shame as it was our first chance in a few weeks to have some quality time with our son.

I was so tired I couldn’t even bring myself to watch the final edit all the way through, I had this really awful feeling it was going to be Bad, so Lucy watched it first and gave me the thumbs up. I watched it saturday night and fell into a huge bad mood. It was by no means good. Well, not that bad, but the tiredness of burning the midnight oil for so many weeks had finally caught up with me and I just didn’t ever want to see a triangular book again.

My biggest problem was the opening five minutes, with no opening credits and no music it just didn’t feel right. I kept trying to force myself to look past these as I knew that they would come in time, but it still didn’t sit right.

I avoided it all day Sunday, only pausing at my PC once to export a copy off so I could watch it at work yesterday. This I duly did once lunchtime had rolled around and, thanks to two early nights, my fresher eyes saw the problem immediately, the whole first scene, the graveyard scene, didn’t work.

It painted Alice as a bit of a cow and Jess as a bit spineless and whiny. No, no, no, no it’ll have to go. And then what? I can’t start with the Dr Crabtree scene, it won’t make sense. What about if I swap the second and third scenes around? That would work. The book shop scene is nice and strong anyway (it was the last scene we did and Vickie had really got into the stride of things by then), so now that’s first.

As soon as I got in yesterday I set about cutting and pasting. It still wasn’t quite right though, it started too quick. Off to Flash to make some dummy opening credits, add a bit of Ludovico Einaudi for effect – oh yes, much better.

Only problem is that suddenly the first five minutes were much stronger and the mistakes and troublespots throughout the rest of the film came very much into sharp relief.

Still I was feeling a whole lot better about it. It was weighing in at fouteen and a half minutes, still way too long for my liking. I was starting to worry that I wouldn’t be able to find enough to cut out to shorten it, so this morning I fired off an e-mail to UK Independent Film Making Guru Chris Jones. I remembered that he had mentioned in his seminar the other week that he had been quite mercenary editing his films and been very pleased with the results, so I asked if he had any tips. Here’s what he said…

‘Get into every scene as late as poss and get out ASAP. Try trimming the end off every scene, even losing dialogue, see if it still works. Anything that does not serve the story should go. Try anything and see how it feels.’ I’ve taken these words to heart and, along with tidying up the glitches I’ve already shaved a good thirty seconds off, and I’m not even halfway through it yet. Should work out a treat.

I also e-mailed Jo at Screen South, see if she could point me in the direction of any other local filmmakers who might be able to cast an objective eye on progress. She came back wanting more information the project and mooting the possibility of meeting up next week, which would be cool.

Still feel shattered though, so I’m off to bed to read more Brave New World…

We got the final shots of SToA in the can today (at lunchtime and after work).

I was a bit sad as I managed to get some of my work colleagues into an establishing shot of Dr Crabtree’s University, but unfortunately the camcorder let us down and it’s a bit out of focus (the curse of not using DV Rack). However, other shots we did inside came out a treat (strange coincidence, they announced on the news that the college I went to was granted University status yesterday – so it much have been a day for completing beginnings, ‘finis et origo’ as Jess would say).

I’m so close to getting a final draft edit it’s painful. I just have to tidy up the Mr Widdershin’s bookshop scene and we’re just about there. I have no idea how long it’s going to end up – I’m guessing about 20 minutes, so I’ll need to do a lot more trimming and tweaking yet, but at least it should give me some idea of whether the story actually works or not.

I’m tempted to give it the old two week lie fallow period, try to get some sort of distance from it – immerse myself in writing son-of-Architurus (I had some good ideas for the main theme of that this morning while I was watching my son try to get down from the breakfast table). And I suppose Daz will need a few weeks to play with ideas for the music… Yup, that’s what I’ll do.

Woke up this morning to find my PC had died – once I’d turned on the irritating reboot on failure option I was presented with a lovely Blue Screen of Death.

Luckily Mother-In-Law has come to the rescue and loaned us her PC to retrieve the data, so thankfully I haven’t lost anything. Unfortunately early diagnosis hints that it was the Power Supply Unit that failed, causing damage to the motherboard and the hard disk drive…

All of the film footage is stored on my external hard disk drive, it so I’ll be able to limp on editing on my old laptop. Can’t quite afford that new dream Twin G5 Apple Power Mac and 30" screen just yet… (although any donations would be gratefully received!)

My esteemed Stateside friend Bill is busy working on the SToA web site – of I which I got my first sneak preview of last night and it looks excellent. I’ll try to come up with some interesting content for it and build over the next few months leading up to the films launch, although last night Daz and I were trying to guestimate how long post-production would take and came up with a depressingly long time (4-5 months), so don’t hold your breath much before Christmas.

I really want to do some more directing, I’ve totally got the bug for it, so I need to crack out the final edit of SToA, pass it over to Daz for sound and music and then get writing again. I’m still a bit stuck on what to concentrate on.

My gut feeling is that I should concentrate on my sci-fi story (as dev time should be a lot shorter), but tone down some of the ideas that would require a lot of CGI so we could do it on a tighter budget, although common sense says just concentrate on one of my other story ideas that could be made on a much lower budget.

I think, to ease my own mind, I’ll continue the work I started last week and see if I can crack out a version of Architurus without the Architurus elements (they would require serious amounts of CGI) and see if it still makes sense – I get the feeling it might make a better story. If it doesn’t then it’s on to the next idea…

A few people have asked what equipment we’re using to make SToA, so here’s a definitive list:

Canon XM1 Mini DV Camcorder (set to Frame Mode) with Wide Angle Adaptor.

Benbo Tripod – This is a photographic tripod rather than a camcorder tripod – very useful for getting the camera into odd positions (like into bookcases for reverse angles of Mr Widdershins), although the lack of a spirit level means extra care has to be taken to ensure the shots are level (of course any shots in SToA that are wonky are deliberate!).

Small Velbon tripod for low level shots (the Benbo is great, but a bit on the big side).

Dedolight Kit: Four Dedolights with more than enough filters, reflectors, gobos, projectors and other assorted gizmos to keep Chris the Gaffer happy for a long time to come.

Serious Magic’s DV Rack running on a Compaq Laptop with 512Mb RAM capturing video to a Western Digital 250Gb External HDD.

Sennheiser MKH416T Shotgun Microphone with handgrip, Rycote windshield and homemade boom pole (an old extendable plastic mop handle gaffer taped to the windshield)

We’ve got all the main scenes in the can (well HDD) now, so this week will see a flurry of activity for me, Nic and Vickie in our lunch hours filming some extra bits – exterior establishing shots and the like and then we’ll be done with shooting and life can return to comparative normality for a while. I’m really going to miss this filmmaking lark. I hope I can get something new going again soon.

It’s been hard work, but I’ve got to say it’s been the most fulfilling experience I’ve ever commited myself to. I’m amazed at how much time people have been prepared to give up to help get the film made and I’m eternally grateful and honoured that the cast and crew think that highly of me that they’re willing to put the effort into it that they have. I just hope I can deliver a finished product worthy of their efforts.

Today we shot in Marrins Antique Book Shop, which was for me perhaps the nirvana of filmmaking. John, depite a few early nerves, came through with some great performances of Mr Widdershins. Accidentally, I saw Sydney Pollacks’ advice* to shoot early, before the actors are ready, in full effect today and I’ve got to say he’s right. I think John thought we’d take longer to set up than we did, so we caught him a little by surprise when we said we were ready. He didn’t have too much time to sit around intellectualising about the part, we just threw him straight in, (which I actually felt a bit bad about to start with), but I think it paid off as he was well into the role within two or three takes.

It still amazes how you think you can know characters well, and yet not really know them at all. You live with them in your head for months and years and then the Actors breathe life into them and it’s like meeting an old friend you haven’t seen for ages. You recognise them and feel comfortable with them, but they’re unpredictable, like you don’t know how the intervening years have changed them. It’s quite exhilarating in some respects.

* Moviemakers Master Class – Private Lessons From The World’s Foremost Directors, Laurent Tirard. Faber and Faber, 2002. p21.

I forgot to mention the other day that we have now got Mr Widdershins cast, ready for shooting this weekend. As it turns out, it’s the manager of the bookshop in which we’re filming this Sunday. Double bonus.

To be honest, I kicked myself when I first met John (for ’tis his name), as I’d only just sent the copy of the script to Ken Colley. Had I gone to the bookshop a day earlier I could have save myself a little bit of bother. Nonetheless, Ken Colley it seems is off doing some movie or another and so we were able to approach John who was more than willing to give the part a go.

Vickie and I met up with him on Tuesday lunchtime for a quick read through, and I think he’s perfect for the part. He has a very good voice, and being one who seems knowledgeable in more esoteric matters, the part could have been written about him as well as for him.

We’re off to the flat to shoot the remainder of the Jess and Alice scenes tomorrow and then on to the Bookshop in Folkestone on Sunday. That’ll be interesting as Vickie is only available ’til 11 o’ clock, so we’ll need to shoot all her stuff first then do the reverse angles when she’s gone, which will be interesting.

After that, there are just a few more shots I want to get in and around Hythe next week (we’ll do that in out lunch hours, it’ll only need me, Nic and Vickie and we all work at the same place).

Speaking of Nic, I hope she keeps going tomorrow, she flew back from New York this morning where she has been holidaying for the past week, so she’ll no doubt be jetlagged. With the bombs in London yesterday I was worried whether she’d get back at all, but we Brits are a resilient bunch and everything seems pretty much back to normal today.

Daz got caught up in the awful events slightly yesterday. He was on the tube when the bombs went off and the train stopped short of Mansion House station. He had to walk up the track to the station proper. Scary stuff.

I’ve got my friend Bill in the States working on the web site to back the film up. I only asked him to do it this afternoon and he’s already come back with some awesome concept artwork for the site. Magic.

I panicked a bit as Louise announced to me this afternoon that she’s arranged a press interview next week for me. I realised they may well print something in the local paper about the project next thursday, so we’d need to get a basic web site up and running pronto. Watch this space!

On the writing front, I’ve got my second Architurus draft all StoryViewed up, and ready to develop. The Dramatica storyform has thrown up some interesting propositions which’ll take some thinking about… I just can’t decide who the bad guys should be – I know what they should do and their reasons for doing it, but for dramatic purposes I don’t know whether they should be an external group trying to affect the main characters, or it should be someone from the main group of characters behind their activities. My intuition says the latter, but I can’t quite decide who (or if it’s a new character, what).

Now that the demands of production on the short are dwindling and until such times (like next week) that I have more footage to edit, I’ve thrown myself back into writing, or rather rewriting, for a while, trying to crack out a second draft of Architurus. It’s been bugging me for a while that I never really finished the first draft to my satisfaction.

Having learnt much over the past few months about the noble art of storytelling, I’ve come to the conclusion that, while there are some good ideas the first draft, it ultimately fails because there is too much going on. Before I thought I could fix this by stripping out some of the story, to be reused later. But this didn’t work, as the bits I’d kept now felt dishonest. People’s motives had suddenly become confused and blurred.

Also, in Dramatica terms, I realised I’d possibly got the wrong person as the Impact Character, which meant the story never quite got to the end in a fashion I was happy with.

Having spent some time thinking about it over the past few weeks, the solution is fairly simple and obvious; change the Impact Character. However, I was scared that this woud ruin the story completely. As it turns out, it does, making much of what I’ve written redundant – but the key point is the realisation that it’s probably not a bad thing. The core themes are good, I just haven’t dealt with them very well.

It’s actually made storyforming the new draft considerably easier, because I wasn’t having to constantly justify in my mind why characters had to hold on to certain roles to perform certain functions and get clever plotting convoluted twists to justify my faulty logic.

I, in my youthful, inexperienced enthusiasm, wanted to tell a rich and complex tale, but ended up with a bit of a mess with no real soul. This time round things ‘feel’ a lot different, I care more for the characters already as they are operating on more fundamental level, with basic desires which make it a) easier for me to grasp, b) (hopefully) easier for the actors to get into and c) a lot easier for the audience to understand.

Into the abyss we go…

Oh man, I’ve just got back from watching Batman Begins. Christopher Nolan, you’re doing us British filmmakers proud, what an awesome movie. I salute you!

But I still wouldn’t have let Bruce kiss Rachel – didn’t sit right to me, especially with what happened afterwards. But a minor quibble in a sea of praise. Great story, great dialogue, great acting, great action, great direction.

One other thought, what happened to the little boy (the one Batman/Rachel rescued that had been gassed)?

This entry is PDA powered, hence its brevity, I’m getting crump in my hand…