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British indie filmmaker looking for concepts...

You know the feeling: all prepped up and ready to go, you have the desire, the dedication needed, but no script. Bollocks!

Hey there everyone, I'm stuck for an idea but have all the equipment and personel you could ever need. If one of you has an idea that you'd like shown but lack the means, I'm your man. Write your concept below (or MSN adress for privacy) and we'll talk... can't wait :D

SHORT FILMS ONLY!!
 
Glad you like the look of it, poster photo was taken by yours truly :)

How: it's a long story but i've just finished my last exam and i've got the time so here goes...

March last year I get moved to top set maths (I was in yr 11 at this point), I was made to sit by a guy I hardly knew & whom i percieved to be arrogant & cocky from our limited encounters; however we start talking and found we had two things in common: an extreme dislike for maths and a love of film... a few lessons went by and I mentioned that I was inerested in writing screenplays... then he revealed that he'd already written most of one and just needed to finish it off. Over the next few weeks we talked about screen writing, I showed him my few pages of script, he showed me some of his "project" and after a while he mentioned he'd like to make his screenplay and asked me to come onboard as producer whilst he directs and another friend of his does the camerawork.
Obviously I agreed and so we set about doing the pre-production:

Rewrites

Casting sessions - advertised in local drama clubs/classes, we had about 20 people audition and we cast from those.

Printed 12, 72 page scripts from my home printer - that was one hell of a day I can tell you.

Held a table reading for all the cast to rehurse lines/ get to know each other.

Production sceduling - taking into account everyone's holidays (absolute nightmare)

Then we had a photo shoot for a montage wall that the stalker has in his bedroom. - as my first love is stills photography that was my job - you can see the shots on the group page + this day was pretty hilarious to be honest - we had all had a huge end-of-GCSEs party the previous night and most of us turned up still drunk - I didn't trust myself to ride my bike so I did the 1hr trek :S .

Then we commenced filming mid-July - we used pretty low budget equipment: a canon HD handheld model, RODE video mic - which we bought an adapter for so that it could be mounted onto a painters pole instead of paying £200 for the boom pole that does the exact same thing, some 500w worklights, a nice crutch-leg tripod off ebay, a homemade go-cart dolly, some step ladders, a white sheet on a portable clothes rail as and some shiny car windshield sun covers as reflecters, a HD monitor and a mac book pro with final cut on. - oh and a smoke machine we borrowed off a mate for a night shoot.

After many ups and downs and some nightmare production challanges - e.g. late night calls from cast members "I'm on holiday so I can't film this week, sorry I forgot" things like that, we finally wrapped mid-september and now we are well into editing and hope to be finished around March ish

So in the end: A in maths, feature almost made... but the director's still cocky and arrogant :P J/K

...Phew - I realise I may have waffled on somewhat there... but I suppose that must have answered your question?

Liked your short by the way - nicely filmed & good example of ellipsis used to hook the viewer (and fustrate them to hell) - what was it? - I really want to know, although I expect you don't actually have an answer to that?

+ next weekend will be my first short but hire company has just pulled out of letting us use the camera so now we're using a mini-dv JVC which is no where near as good, but it should be okay - seen as it's a 2minute short... somthing always goes wrong.

Hows the inspiration for the short coming along?

SMITH

haha, yer it certainly did answer my question. That's some pretty awsome stuff there, sounds like you enjoyed it with all that makeshift equipment!
Have you decided how you're going to go about distributing it yet? (as in,, R u gonna show if for free atall)

Thanks, yer... you're right, i have no idea what it is. I didn't write it but I doubt even he knows! (my short film)

AW! that sucks!! why did they pull out!? - good luck with it all anyways.

the insiration isn't going all that well at the moment, I'm reading countles newspapers and bought a book on short film making so i should be underway soonish. My college has just anounced a one min continuous shot film competition, when I win that I'll get back to focusing on my script :P

Charles.
 

YER, very interested! That's the feature is it? - well: it looks pretty damn awsome! congrats on more or less finishing it! - WHAT RATIO IS THAT!? I'm guessin widescreen 16:9 but tbh it looks alot more to me, very cool!

Did you work from a shot list or storyboard? or neither?
oh yer: and I'd be very interested in what you did for scores? was there a sort of foley sound set up but with an instrument or what?

Charles.
 
YER, very interested! That's the feature is it? - well: it looks pretty damn awsome! congrats on more or less finishing it! - WHAT RATIO IS THAT!? I'm guessin widescreen 16:9 but tbh it looks alot more to me, very cool!

Did you work from a shot list or storyboard? or neither?
oh yer: and I'd be very interested in what you did for scores? was there a sort of foley sound set up but with an instrument or what?

Charles.

Yup, that's the feature - still got a lot of refining and post-prod work to go though! We shot in 16:9, but it's been cropped/matted to 2.35:1... the screenshots were taken on a screen with an aspect ratio of 16:10, so there's a bit more black at the top and bottom than you'd see on a tv.

The director storyboarded a few scenes - mostly the action sequences - but for the most part he just communicated with expletives and wild gesticulations :D In hindsight, we could have worked a lot quicker with detailed shot lists, but it was nice to be able to be so flexible and creative on the day.

We haven't locked the edit yet, so none of the sound work's been done. A musician friend is composing and recording the music with a mixture of mics, instruments and sequencers, but I don't know any of the specifics right now. The director wants to do most of the foley, which I'll be recording and then adding to the final mix.
 
haha, yer it certainly did answer my question. That's some pretty awsome stuff there, sounds like you enjoyed it with all that makeshift equipment!
Have you decided how you're going to go about distributing it yet? (as in,, R u gonna show if for free atall)

Thanks, yer... you're right, i have no idea what it is. I didn't write it but I doubt even he knows! (my short film)

AW! that sucks!! why did they pull out!? - good luck with it all anyways.

the insiration isn't going all that well at the moment, I'm reading countles newspapers and bought a book on short film making so i should be underway soonish. My college has just anounced a one min continuous shot film competition, when I win that I'll get back to focusing on my script :P

Charles.

I'm working on the distribution side of things at the moment. We're looking to get it shown at UK festivals, Raindance, Cambridge, Times, Leeds etc. - should be good.

+ They say they pulled out because they didn't have the neccisary insurance - but we know it's 'cause they are sceptical about renting to students. On the plus side "showing initiative" meant that our film studies teacher is letting us use the departments best camera which is never usuall entusted to first years.

Good luck with the competition - If you want someone to proof your script I'll take a look + which book did you buy? - i've found raindance books are v.good.

SMITH
 
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