The Journey of Making a Film: The Planning Stage (Finding a Location)

Another important aspect to a film is the location. It needs to be the right setting otherwise it might not suit the rest of the film. Look at the script, what types of locations are there? If there is a scene set in a bedroom, how big is the bedroom? Is it set for a male or female? Is it a single person’s room, or a married couple? Unless you are making the set yourself, you will need to know the details of the setting. Make a list of the key points. Does the character interact with anything in the room? Would that object need to be with the room, or will you bring it with you as a prop? If the character sits down at a table, it might be easier to see if the location already has a table. Once you have a list of details for exactly what you need for the location, you need to find it. There are several ways you can do this.

One of the most effective ways of finding a location is going out and finding one. This would mean you will be able to see the location first hand, seeing the location in its full glory. It would also allow you to take recee photos, in order to show the director, or help you decide between many locations. When looking for a location, make sure it has all the details that is in your description. The more details you have, the easier it will be on the day of filming. You won’t have to bring as many props. Consider more than one location, as one place might be priced differently to hire than another.

February 16, 2017February 15, 2017 by Simon Reason Leave a comment

The Journey of Making a Film: The Planning Stage (Finding the Talent)

So you have written your script. You have a story set in writing. The next stage is to plan your film. This covers finding actors and locations, making a shot list, creating a storyboard, making call sheets, filling out health and safety forms and also finding crew. This is quite a big section so I am going to go through half of these on this blog post and the second half on the next one.

One of the most important things you will need for a film is actors and locations. You need good actors which will portray the role exactly how you visioned it. If you asked one of your friends to star in it, they will probably not be at the same standard as a professional actor/actress (unless your friend is a professional actor/actress that suits the role perfectly, then ask, as actors can sometimes have other commitments). One of my major problems was that the actors that applied, mostly had commitments on the days that the filming days were, so it was a last minute rush and panic for me. But if you book them in early enough, you should have no problem.

One of the best casting websites is Casting Call Pro. Actors of a professional standard can be found here. If you create a new project, with all the details including what the film is about, character descriptions, whether it is paid or not. If it isn’t paid, try and think what you can offer them. For my advert I mentioned that I would pay travel expenses and provide refreshments, as well as a copy of the film for their showreel. Many actors accept this as it helps them. It means that they don’t go out of pocket in travelling and they also receive the film in order to use for showreel material.

February 6, 2017February 6, 2017 by Simon Reason Leave a comment

The Journey of Making a Film: The Idea and Script

Over the next few weeks, I am going to bring a series of blog posts to do with the process of making a film. Recently, I directed a short film, which is currently in post production, called “Time and a Date”. I also wrote and produced it. This first blog post is for the process of coming up with an idea, developing it, then creating the script.

All great films started from someone coming up with the concept. Lord of the Rings started with JRR Tolkien gaining inspiration from Norse mythology and from locations around England. JRR Tolkien may not have been a film writer, but he was an author of a very successful book series. You can find inspiration in pretty much anything you see. A nice park, the beach, a strange looking tree. Your mind can make it into anything you want. The world is so full of inspiring people and places, you can find it anywhere.

Once you have this idea, the next step is to develop it. What is the story? Where will this story take the characters? What type of genre is the film going to be? If you develop the story fully, with the characters, genre, settings, it will be easier for the viewer and reader to visualise. With my recent film, I had an idea for a film about time travel. I eventually developed it to be encompassed with a date, and as a date can’t always go well, this worked. Every time something went wrong, the man turns back time to fix that fault.

January 30, 2017January 30, 2017 by Simon Reason Leave a comment

The Years Trendiest Video

YouTube Rewind is one video I look forward to every year. It brings together the most popular YouTubers of the year and also all the most popular trends. This year was called The Ultimate 2016 Challenge, as many of this years viral videos were based off challenges. You can see this years video down below.

Top YouTubers, such as Pewdiepie, Casey Neistat and KSI, were only a few of the people in this video. It starts off with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson opening his fanny pack and showing the YouTube button. He only recently started making videos on his YouTube channel this year, but the channel has grown massively, with The Rock on 1 million subscribers. Other YouTubers in this video have a varied amount of subscribers. KSI and Caspar Lee are quite popular YouTubers and have recently made a film together called Laid In America and are featured together in the YouTube Rewind, showing off a popular trend that has grown this year, The Running Man, with the music My Boo included.

Another major event that has happened this year is the Olympics, which is shown by a varied amount of YouTubers, in the form of a race track. There is even Casey Neistat, being towed down the running track on a skateboard, symbolising his snowboarding video, SNOWBOARDING WITH THE NYPD, which was shown on local news channels and gained over 15 million views. Other popular YouTubers are also included.

Another quite big challenge that occurred this year was The Bottle Flip Challenge, which started off in a school talent show. This video shows one guy doing the challenge, with everyone else reacting to it. This challenge has had so many people doing it, I’m not surprised its in the Rewind.

Lots of music videos make their way into the video, such as Beyonce’s music video, Hold Up, with Superwoman aka Lilly Singh, showing this off. There is even Pineapple Apple Pen also featured in this video.

There are so many references in this video that I can’t even mention them all. Watch the video above and see how many you can spot.

January 7, 2017January 7, 2017 by Simon Reason Leave a comment

Marvel vs DC…. Cinematic Universes.

Marvel and DC are two of the biggest brands for comic books. However, most people probably know them more for the comic book movies they produce. Marvel films tend to be more engaging, and more entertaining than DC films. This blog post will explore the differences between Marvel films and DC films.

Firstly, I will give a bit of background to Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, also known as the MCU. The MCU’s first film was in 2008, starting with the man of metal, Iron Man (Favreau, 2008) with Robert Downey Jr. leading the titular role. Since then, they’ve made 13 other movies, with 10 of those being standalone films of each character. I’ve added Captain America: Civil War (Russo, 2016) to this list, as the title is for a Captain America film, but in reality, it is a group film. The three other films in this list: The Avengers (Whedon, 2012), Avengers: Age of Ultron (Whedon, 2015) and Guardians of the Galaxy (Gunn, 2014), are all group films, in which there isn’t really any one titular role. The Avengers consist of: Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Hulk, Iron Man and Hawkeye. Nick Fury is their leader, but still not the titular character. They are all one big team to battle the villains. Same exact thing for Avengers: Age of Ultron, however in this case, one of the team created the villains. For Guardians of the Galaxy, the titular characters all had to come together to face their villains, whether they liked it or not. These films all have fantastic cinematography, great story lines and great character personalities.

November 28, 2016May 10, 2017 by Simon Reason Leave a comment

Music Video Shoots

Recently, I worked as a director for BBC Introducing: Beds, Herts and Bucks as part of my university modules. One thing I learned, most of all, is be organised but also spontaneous. I tried to plan before hand, what shots I was going to use, the order of which cameras I was going to use, and what each camera will be doing. However, when you are directing, you don’t tend to look at your notes. You have to sort of improvise, go with the flow of the music. Trust in your cameras to provide the shots that you ask for. Trust in your team, vision mixer for cutting to the beat, racking engineer to give a good colour balance to each camera.

On the day for prelight, the set design was sorted out then. Our band, The Japanese House, requested black drapes and for the filming to be done in black and white. As director, I agreed to this and thought it would be interesting to add some lightbulbs, above each of the band members, gives it some diversity. I also added some fairy lights and strip lights at the back, inbetween the band members. Afterwards I made sure each band member would be lit, through my lighting technician. Once all this set and I was happy, we were ready for the shoot.

November 14, 2016November 14, 2016 by Simon Reason Leave a comment

Revolution… An Idea?

Power is a key element in a lot of films. Films, such as The Hunger Games (Ross, 2012), V for Vendetta (McTeigue, 2006), and Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Wyatt, 2011), show a government-controlled environment, with the public in terror, and kept under surveillance. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a slightly different example, but I will come back to that later.

In The Hunger Games, the public are split into districts, segregated from the rest of the world by the government.The Capitol, in this film, is the government. Each of the other districts are the population. One of the districts, District 13, has decided to revolt against the Capitol. As the films/books continue, by the last book Mockingjay, Katniss Everdeen, the main protagonist in The Hunger Games series, is the main icon for the revolutionaries in District 13. One person became the symbol of hope against the government and for the rest of  the world. “A sense of generational conflict is also at the heart of the most popular contemporary dystopia” (Bell, 2o14) talks how there is a war, a sort of fight going on within the dystopian world of Panem. This war finally breaks in a full blown revolution in Mockingjay (Lawrence, 2014), with Katniss at the front line, leading the revolution.

November 7, 2016November 5, 2016 by Simon Reason Leave a comment

Doctor Strange Review

To start with, do not, I repeat, DO NOT watch while under the influence of drugs. This film is trippy enough as it is.

Doctor Strange (Derrickson, 2016) is the 14th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and is by far the most visually mind-blowing. The story follows Doctor Stephen Strange, a neurosurgeon, who was texting while driving, crashes his car and loses the nerves in his hands. His life was spiraling downwards, until he found someone who knew the path to fixing him. Since then, Doctor Strange has developed powers of magic, and became a sorcerer. He uses those powers to defeat the sources of evil (like every Marvel film, and pretty much every film) and saves Earth. This story is fairly similar to every Marvel film that has been made, except that Doctor Strange started off as a normal man, gaining his powers through an Ancient Being, and defeating powers that were significantly greater than him, all on his own. I thoroughly enjoyed the story though, it kept me involved and focused on the screen.

October 31, 2016November 5, 2016 by Simon Reason Tags: Doctor Strange, Magic, Marvel, Review Leave a comment