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...
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...
Last edited:
Please help me, I'm descending into a deep depression that occurs every time I realise that technology is actively working against me (which is very often...)