Short film: pre-production

Ayşegül, my wife, wrote a short script based on a Barbara Eskine story, and we'll be shooting it on HDV, using the Sony Z1E. Ayşegül's got the go ahead from Ms Erskine's publisher. So first up we'd like to thank Ms Erskine and those at the Blake Friedman agency for giving us their help, time and support for our project.

I thought I'd throw up some bullet points on production as we go through it. First pre-production. The usual stuff has been planned. Our route will be:

Shoot in HDV, using Cineframe 25 for a film look. I know CF25 reduces resolution, but we'd de-interlace anyway, and when de-interlaced, 50i tends to leave artefacts behind. We've already shot some scenes one the street in 50i and the de-interlacing plug in's I had certainly didn't look as good as CF25. Any tilts certainly got munged up.

Black Stretch also looked good, but decided against Cinematone as it tended crush the blacks rather too much. We did tests with the Shireen, our actress, and in the location. The story is a simple drama, not anything too stylised or dramatic, so a plainer, lighter look is sufficient.

We'll light the interiors, even though we're shooting in the day and the room is quite light. However there's some stuff at front doors that I'm nervous about as Cinematographer, and the location has lots of mirrors. Also the 16:9 frame may cause us some trouble, with regard to where we will be able to hide lights, boom operators, etc.

Ayşegül has scheduled the film to be shot largely in one day. We actually already have about 20 minutes of footage that we shot in Christmas day as tests, but should be good for a title sequence. The storyboard and shotlist and a partial floor plan have been completed.

Redesign...

Hmm, and the page is looking a little more acceptable now I've managed to adjust the blogger.com default look. Please let me know if this has screwed up the formatting in your browser, and I will slip back to one of the templates.

Second post...

Found an article at cinematech.blogspot.com The UK Film council has installed 50 digital projectors across the UK, amounting to just over 1% of all UK screens. Not much really, but then when you consider how many screens many Independent/foreign language/documentary film projects will go to, it's a possible market.

I need to do more research on exactly where these screens are, and the screening format, are they working from Tape, HDD, optical disc or what? Also do they conform to the DCI specs, or will the Europeans follow a different route to the American D-Cinema system

One year ago, this story announced that the film council were investing £11.5m in a "digital cinema" network, just over a year later it seems we're only 20% of the way into that programme. this page lists the most recently completed installations. There's a depressing number of Cineworlds, Vues and Odeons in there, seeing as there was supposed to be a commitment to Digital cinema opening up to the independent film sector.

However, this all harks back to the early 80s, when the Multiplexes began, that there would be screens for all tastes, which instead turned out to be blockbusters playing on multiple screens. At the local Vue, Oscar winning-or-nominated films like Brokeback Mountain, Capote and Good Night, And Good Luck stayed a week before being shunted off. Fun With Dick And Jane, however is in its third week, despite its death at the box office. Old habits die hard it seems.

Well, here's another one!

OK, so as if I didn't have enough to do already I've started a blog. I can see this being something I get to waste a lot of time on. If there's a rationale it's that it constitutes research for teaching practise. I'll probably have a try at podcasting at somepoint, consider yourselves warned.

It's of no concern whether or not this is of any use to anyone else out there, it's really just for my own amusement, and somewhere to stick useful (to me) links.