A Production Diary

NickClapper

NickClapper

Diary Entry One

I'm currently in pre-production for my film school final piece, a ten minute short film that I'm shooting at the end of this month. Anyhow I thought it would be helpful for me, and for others, if I kept a production diary of all the things that go wrong (and right) in the pre-production, production and post production processes.

So let me start...

The film is currently titled 'Woolies' and is based on the closure of the shops in the Woolworths chain at the tail end of 2008 and start of 2009.

In its self this has raised one immediate problem. Location. As a rule people tend to recommend that people who are doing short films on a tight budget don't do period pieces. What they tend to be referring to is stuff set during the reign of Henry VII, during the Victorian Era or during the Great Depression. But it could extend up to the 60s, 70s and even up to the 90s.

But you'd think you'd be pretty safe with a couple of years ago and I reckon that most people would be. But now I have to create a chain of shops that no longer exist and that's not so easy. All of the shops in the UK have now been replaced, mainly by things like Poundland and Wilkinsons, and this has meant that getting my mitts on an empty shop isn't proving easy. I contacted one locations manager who had a perfect location but for £1500-£2500 per day... that's a little bit too dear for my tastes...

Hopefully I can wangle a decent location off the West London Film Office who are operated by the council and therefore shouldn't (although everything I know about the council tells me they will) try to take too much of my precious budget.

The second road block is actors. I popped casting calls up on Casting Call Pro and Talent Circle (two of the biggest actor directories in the UK) and received about 150 applications. I have arbitrarily whittled these down to about 15 actors that I want to audition for two of my four roles.

I have also been using Spotlight (the UKs top agented (if that's a word) actors directory) to contact the agents of various actors whose faces I'd recognise. I've been surprised how many agents have got back to me within a couple of hours saying that their client might be interested and can I send a script through. I doubt I'll be able to get any of these actors but, all the same, it's an encouraging phenomenon.

So on Wednesday I'll be auditioning my actors and hopefully by then I'll have a better idea of locations. What will I do if I can't get an actual shop? I don't know. I don't want to consider it. What do people recommend? I have a sound stage at my disposal and could, hypothetically, build some sort of set on it but that seems kind of tricky.

Please feel free to offer me advice and criticism as I journey through the experience of this short film. I have the majority of equipment provided by the school (although I'll address additional equipment rental in another post) and also a professional DOP (which is great) but other than that they're pretty useless. Hopefully this thread will be interesting for people in my position to see what sort of problems they can avoid and, hopefully, how to overcome others...
 
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NickClapper said:
So on Wednesday I'll be auditioning my actors and hopefully by then I'll have a better idea of locations. What will I do if I can't get an actual shop? I don't know. I don't want to consider it. What do people recommend? I have a sound stage at my disposal and could, hypothetically, build some sort of set on it but that seems kind of tricky.
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I'd suggest you do consider the possibility that you will not discover the right location. In the event that you can't find a suitable location, which is very, very likely without a bigger cash incentive than i believe you could offer, as it's not that often a store is left vacant without the creeping hands of larger chains prowling to fill it.

What i would suggest having read the material, is that the climax of the store and the demise of the chain, could be presented without the need for an "Empty" store. Empty of products etc etc. Perhaps it's the final shift, and the ending now in place takes place the day before the clearout. So the end still looms. The store wouldn't be full, but this will allow you some leighway as there would still be products on the shelves (You would just put the others away and out of shot, before hastily putting them back up as soon as you're done).

It's a real tough one, Nick, finding a store that will allow you to film there, the problem being it's not often that the store owners have the right to give you permission. There's always someone higher up. That's the problem with chains.
 
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@CamVader: Thanks, man. I hope that it will be interesting for other people and that I might purloin some tidbits of knowledge from IT members...

@PTP: You're completely right. There's no necessity for the shop to be empty. The trouble is is that most independent stores that could look like Woolworths are really small. The ones that are large enough tend to be chains. So I figured that (especially in the current economic climate) an empty store might be my best bet. But I'll probably approach some 'live' stores as well as an insurance policy. My shoot is scheduled for the weekend and, as you know, almost all the action happens either on the shop floor or in the locker room, so I'm not sure that many shops are going to want me there whilst their open. The other option is to do a night shoot, but no one's going to enjoy that...

I know that there's an abandoned post office in Ealing that would be great, I'm just having difficulty getting in touch with the people who control its rights as a location. Hopefully that will do the trick but I do need to keep in mind alternatives, so thanks again! :)

If anyone wouldn't mind reading the script, do let me know. I want to get feedback on how it reads to people in the UK and I would also be interested in how it reads for our stateside friends who, perhaps, aren't as familiar with the closure of Woolworths as an event.
 
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Nick, I bet you could get real clever with incorporating old photos (or old video/films) into your movie, maybe green screen them in? Have the actors standing outside the store then heading inside, roaming the aisles, checking out... etc. Just a thought; probably not the tone you're going for.

Good luck with it!

* I have yet to see it, and need to queue it up now, but I've heard they did something similar with the documentary "The Kid Stays In The Picture". anyone?
 
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NickClapper said:
@PTP: You're completely right. There's no necessity for the shop to be empty. The trouble is is that most independent stores that could look like Woolworths are really small. The ones that are large enough tend to be chains. So I figured that (especially in the current economic climate) an empty store might be my best bet. But I'll probably approach some 'live' stores as well as an insurance policy. My shoot is scheduled for the weekend and, as you know, almost all the action happens either on the shop floor or in the locker room, so I'm not sure that many shops are going to want me there whilst their open. The other option is to do a night shoot, but no one's going to enjoy that...

I know that there's an abandoned post office in Ealing that would be great, I'm just having difficulty getting in touch with the people who control its rights as a location. Hopefully that will do the trick but I do need to keep in mind alternatives, so thanks again! :)
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No problem at all. It's not necessary for the Lockeroom to be in the same establishment as the store, so hopefully if you can't find the two as a double-act, you can always have multiple locations aslong as it doesn't dent your budget.
 
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Diary Entry Two

Well I've just got back from my first round of auditions and it was an interesting and enlightening experience. On the previous short films which I've dabbled with I've not actually held 'proper auditions', so this was a bit of a learning curve. The first thing I would note is that actors expect to be auditioned, don't mind being auditioned by people who aren't that experienced themselves and don't mind only spending 15 minutes in a room with you. For them it's about getting the job, for me it's about getting the job done.

So I had about 11 actors scheduled to see over three hours this evening but, inevitably, the calls and emails came in through the day so that I only had about 7 names that I was expecting by the time I sat down to start. Hideous double booking and lack of script distribution aside, these auditions went really well. Ok, one person didn't show; but I've known people to do a lot worse that 6 out of 7 at their auditions. And, to be honest, I could happily have given the parts to any of these six people- they were all really good. At the end of the day (and I still haven't decided yet) I think it's going to be the actors who I felt had the easiest connections with the characters and who can bring off 'low key' without the need to self aggrandise.

In a new innovation in film everywhere I have also conducted auditions by Skype. One or two of the people who I would have liked to have seen in person couldn't make my time slot but, rather than simply passing up that opportunity, I decided that you can get a good feel for the actor/actress via a webcam and a microphone. I will say now that it's not the ideal way to conduct an interview but if you can't get them face to face then it's a hell of a lot better than just missing out, simply because your times didn't fit. I can't say at the moment whether I'll cast anyone from the Skypeditions but they're certainly in the running.

Anyhow pre-production continues like a merciless train and the location scouting is turning out to be a particularly problematic experience. I'll do another post explaining my entire location scouting process, hopefully once I've managed to track down somewhere that works for me as a faux-Woolworths. Until then it's back to rewrites, casting, storyboarding...etc. Once I've got some decent pre-prod material knocking about I'll pop some photos up here so that people, in years to come, can marvel at the eccentricities and inadequacies with which I ran my maiden shoot...
 
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Sounds as though it's going well.

"Skypeditions" should be a last resort, if an Actor cannot within good reason show up for an audition, it says alot for their commitment, which is something you certainly do not want to deal with.

I would also suggest-if you haven't already- that you go through a few Actor databases and check out some reels, it's not always that you'll find the actor you want at your auditions. Sure they could be great, but it's worth it if you find somebody in other avenues who may have missed the casting call, and is ideal for the role.
 
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Jamster said:
Sounds cool Nick, before you lock yourself into any one in particular get your fav´s back to ´ínteract´ to see the chemistry - all the best, Jim.
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Yep, very true. I double booked a few actors (an admin error at the time, but fortunate) so I got to see a lot of them interacting in the scenes. I'm doing more auditions next week for smaller roles and some recalls for the bigger ones...

@PTP: I agree about people who don't come to the auditions. If it had been at the weekend then I would have put my foot down and just not seen them again. But I understand the difficulties associated with getting all the way out to West London on a Wednesday evening after (or during) work, so I thought I'd make an allowance.

I've been going through Spotlight and contacting agents as well, if I see someone who particularly strikes me for the role. But the amount of replies I've had to my casting calls means that I've been ruthlessly cutting people down based on CVs and showreels and could only audition about 7% of the people who applied. If there were specific people I wanted to work with then I would go more direct, but searching through 120 applications is work enough without going through the entire Spotlight database!

Thanks for the support guys... more to come... :hmm:
 
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Jamster said:
Nick, matter of interest any replies have film/Beeb experience?
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Pretty much everyone will have some sort of 'film' experience, be that shorts or indie features. A few of the actors have had (very) bit parts in better known films, but most don't. As for the BBC- a lot have done bits on Eastenders or Crimewatch or Doctors, stuff like that.

But given that I'm advertising for an unpaid gig I was expecting people who can't get paid work week in week out. Otherwise they'd have no interest in doing my short for nothing more than expenses and a nice lunch...
 
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Diary Entry Three

Well I had my final round of auditions/call-backs last night and I'm pretty much happy with the cast that I'm (mentally) assembling. I will be contacting everyone later today and so I'll hopefully have my full cast signed up within 24 hours.

The auditions have been an interesting process and one I certainly don't envy from an actors point of view. Pretty much everyone I've seen has been friendly and normal (well, normal enough) and so that's made the process a lot easier. You do hear myths about very strange experiences in the casting room, but I've not had any of that. For independent filmmakers, at least over here in the UK but this probably applies to the US as well, I think auditions should be your absolute first port of call. There are simply so many good actors looking for unpaid work that it seems a shame to put together a decent production that's hindered by a lack of quality in the acting front. I've received hundreds of CVs for this short, so I don't think anyone will have any difficulty getting actors onboard.

The other problem which is, hopefully, resolving itself is that of location. I've been on the phone to everyone I know over the last week trying to find someone who knows either where I can get a store from or where I can get store fittings to do some set dressings. The best idea I thought I had was to see if I could use a charity shop on a Sunday. I sent an email to the YMCA Ealing a few days ago and still haven't received a reply, so it seems as though that wasn't such a masterstroke. But the first location that I found (and thought had fallen through) seems to be back on the cards. It's an abandoned post office owned by the council and controlled by my local film authority. The guy I spoke to has high hopes that I can get hold of that location for the weekend for no more than £250, so I've got my fingers crossed on that. But the lack of locations has made it difficult for me to get some of the paperwork together, particularly the call sheets and risk assessment that my school need for the public liability insurance.

The crew is pretty much together now. My DOP was appointed by the school and we met for the first time yesterday. He seems nice and reckons that we won't have too many problems in shooting it, which is a weight of my shoulders. For a sound recordist I am talking to a guy who was recommended to me by Indietalk's very own PaperTwinProductions, so hopefully I'll have that confirmed as well by the time the sun sets tonight. I also put an ad out for helpers on Gumtree and have received a very positive response (i.e. more runners than I need). I once again extend my invitation for Indietalkers, old and young, to join me on set and can reserve a slice of crew cake for you if you let me know!

All in all it's been a fun and productive couple of days. I start crewing on a classmates film this weekend, so that's going to cut into my pre-production time, but should be interesting all the same.

UPDATE: My first 'good' news of the day is that that location has already fallen through (it's been gutted and turned into an IT centre) so I'm back to square one...
 
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Cracker Funk said:
How about constructing a set on a soundstage? Your school should offer one for free, no? So all your costs go to constructing a couple fake walls.
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Yep, this is my back up plan.

I only really have two locations in my short; the shop floor and a locker/changing room. That's why it would be beneficial if I could get a location that gave me access to both. Two days to shoot this short is really not enough, especially if I'm having to schedule in different locations. But if worst comes to worst I'm going to try and build something on the sound stage. I think I'm going to set myself a deadline of Monday evening to either have found a suitable location or to commence work on building my set.

In retrospect I would have tried to find a way to work this idea without showing the shop floor. Shops seem to be the most inaccessible locations in London. Restaurants, clubs, bars, pubs, libraries, town halls, churchs...etc are all doable, but shops? Doesn't really seem possible!
 
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Random thought just popped in my head.

On low-budget indie films, set-design often looks very unconvincing. I think really good set-design requires both resources and experience. So, if you end up using this as a backup, could it help to hide the details of the background by using really shallow depth of field? Also, sound design can go a long way in selling the location.
 
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