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Rehearsal & Gear Test

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Just a quick update today. The last few weeks have been very productive and all the pieces are starting to fall into place. This culminated in our first big workshop / rehearsal / gear test on Friday night.

We spent the evening completely going over one scene with sound, lighting, two cameras, and even some costumes. We covered all conceivable angles, from establishing wide shots to extreme close-ups and my next task is to play around with the footage in the edit to work out how we want to cover the scene for the real thing. Jaque and I have already spent a lot of time talking about how we want the film to look and how the film's visual development should support the thematic development. This process of mocking up scenes and then trying things out and edit is really the final stage of defining how we want to execute the film's visuals, both aesthetically and practically.

I was pretty preoccupied operating B camera on Friday night, so unfortunately I didn't get a chance to take any behind-the-scenes pictures. Here are a few stills from the footage though:

Many thanks to Nick, Spencer, Jaque, Maia, and Dan for all your hard work on a Friday night!

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Quick Update: Workshopping With Spencer & Script Draft Three

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Okay, just a quick update for today. (I'm trying to get into the habit of making short updates regularly instead of putting them off because they have to be long and detailed - we'll see how it goes.)

I just wrapped up a day of workshopping with Spencer that went really well. On the one hand, workshopping can be quite challenging - both for the actors, and for myself as the director. However, on the other hand, it's hard to call something that's this fun "work"...

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2011 End Of Year Update

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With only a few working days left in the year, I think it's high time for another update on Play It Safe (especially since I may not get another chance to post again before January). So much has happened over the last few months, and I've really wanted to blog about it here regularly. Unfortunately, a documentary shoot I was on a couple of months ago caused a pretty serious flareup of my tendinitis and I haven't been able to type properly since then (consequently I'm actually writing this post using DragonDictate voice recognition, which I hope to review in the New Year). I'm about to head off for a couple of weeks of R and R before we start production early next year. Fingers crossed this will give my arms some more time to heal and I'll be back to blogging every week or so next year.

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Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul

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The Film Collaborative have just released an amazing resource: the new book “Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul”. This book is availible in a variety of formats. It’s available for free in PDF format, and it is free for a limited time for iOS and Android. It’s also available on Kindle and in paperback for a small fee.

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Listening, And Why It's Critical For Filmmakers

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Good listening skills are crucial in the film business. In my experience, a good director will spend most of their time listening. During a production you will be listening to questions and thoughts from every department. Good listening skills will not only help you to direct quickly and effectively, but will also enable you to maintain crew morale. It’s one thing to work for nothing because you believe in a project, but it’s another thing entirely to not be paid and then not even be listened to by a director or producer. If I wanted to put up with that then I would go back to working in retail (and then at least I would be getting paid).

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Understanding Aspect Ratios

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In my opinion, the technical side of filmmaking is often more complicated than it needs to be. This is because of the way filmmaking has developed over time. A lot of the methodology and terminology we still use today is based on the way things were done years and years ago. Take for example: the way the 16:9 aspect ratio was developed, the fact that your sound guy will probably still say “speed” to indicate that the sound is recording, and don’t even get me started on the different framerates we’ve been left with thanks to the differences between PAL & NTSC.

Aspect ratios are one of those things can seem a bit overwhelming when you’re getting started. I used to refer to some of the wider aspect ratios as “extra-widescreen” (and I actually still do sometimes, just for fun). I remember when we made Fraught back in 2006. I desperately wanted to present the film in an aspect ratio of 16:9 or wider but we didn’t have access to a camera that could shoot that natively. So we settled for 4:3. Now, I know of a bunch of things we could have done to fix that (especially since it’s a rotoscoped animated film).

With this post, I’ve done my best to explain what aspect ratios and resolutions are in relation to film and video. The rest of the post then explains the most common aspect ratios and lists some common resolutions for each.

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Filmmaking Ruined My Body

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I recently gave a talk to students at The MacRobertson Girls' High School. I’ve done a bunch of talks like this, so I knew what kind of lecture was expected. Generally, the aim is to try and get the students inspired and excited about filmmaking & other forms of multimedia. But as I prepared my materials for the lecture, I started to wonder if I could actually, in good conscience, recommend they take a similar career path to me. Sure, being a creative professional is exciting, inspiring, and incredibly rewarding. But it also has an incredibly significant downside. And I’m not even talking about the lack of stability, exhausting hours, general stress, or soul crushing rejection. I’m talking about simple heath and safety. To put it bluntly, my passion for film has ruined my body.

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Mumblecore?

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I’ve read stories where people like Kevin Smith recall seeing Richard Linklater’s “Slacker” and then they thought “my god, I can make movies too”. The film that did that for me was “Mutual Appreciation”, directed by Andrew Bujalski.

I first saw “Mutual Appreciation” at the 2006 Melbourne International Film Festival and it was an absolute revelation to me. I’d never seen anything like it. I found the stories interesting, I was fascinated by its naturalism, and I felt like for one of the first times I was watching characters who I could really relate to. They were doing and talking about things that I did myself. How to be a young artist. How to make it. Growing up and finding your way in life. I saw “Mutual Appreciation” and something clicked. It was as if someone had suddenly given me permission. I felt like I could now make the kinds of movies I wanted to, and maybe here was a way I could do it.

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The Screenplay: Collaborating

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One of the best film-related decisions I’ve ever made was enlisting the help of my good friend, Jack White, in writing the screenplay for my first feature film. Without him, I really doubt whether this film would have ever gotten made.

In my office I’ve got whole boxes filled with drafts for novels, novellas, screenplays, all sorts of crap, that I start but never get around to finishing. A lot of this stuff hangs around for years. I might pull it out every now and again to have a look, but I usually end up shoving it back in its box despondently. It’s a pretty terrible thing to see the result of years and years of work in such a scrappy state and know deep down that most of it is never going to see the light of day.

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The Importance Of Protocol

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I never went to film school, so I had to learn all the protocols of filmmaking on my own. I didn’t actually learn some of the basics until about three years into my career as an indie director. By this time I’d already won Best Australian Film at MIAF and been commissioned to direct a short docco for the BBC World Service. But still, I didn’t know the basic protocol of working on a film set. This was because of the way I’d come up - fiercely independent, making up the rules as I went. This approach got me some terrific results, but it also had its limitations.

Inevitably, my (lack of) knowledge was tested, and in quite an embarrassing way. Back in 2008 I had somehow managed to score a roll as First Assistant Director on my friend Alan Lam’s final honours film. I thought I knew enough about filmmaking, indie production, and visual storytelling to be of use, but it was a steep learning curve when it came to working with the crew.

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