Music

I arranged to record the music with Katie on a Saturday afternoon with the basic microphone build into my camera- it hadn’t let me down before so why not? We’d already decided we wanted all the music to be light acoustic sounds so she brought her acoustic guitar and ukulele.

We started by recording a few songs she knew that we could add in as incidental music including ‘Blackbird’ which she knew very well and I felt would make a great closing track and ‘Norwegian Wood’ as I really liked the idea of using it as a transition into the party scenes, the opening lyric is ‘I once met a girl or should I say she once met me’ which I hoped anyone who recognised the song would subconsciously hear in their mind and would connect well with the visuals. We also recorded a piece called simply ‘Spanish Ballad’ which would match up with what Katie had been playing at the beginning of her scene as Sarah but I wanted a recording on guitar as the sound better reflected the hopeful, vaguely romantic mood of the scene.

We then recorded a song called ‘Yes It Is’ I’d requested Katie learned as I’d been listening to it and thinking about the climax scene in the past and I felt it really worked with putting the audience in Michael’s position.

Then there was the original music. This was purely for the opening scene, I wanted something bright that sounded vaguely improvised to really set the tone for the film but acknowledge the differation between the white on black titles and the dark shots in-between. I asked Katie if she could switch between finger-picking and strumming chords and what she came up with was pretty much everything I asked. We ran it a couple of times until we’d perfected it and then I recorded it. In the end all the runs we did had something wrong with them so I had to subtly mix a few versions but it worked. We played the muted visuals while Katie played to ensure it would match up as well as a possible.

I then recorded a few sounds from the guitar I could use as incidental music, a friendly chord and then a mysterious apprehensive one. I also asked for a couple of high pings I wasn’t sure I would use but I wanted to be on the safe side.

Finally I needed to record something on the ukulele for the montage, Katie looked up a few tunes but nothing seemed to fit. We gave it some thought then Katie mentioned that she could play the song having seen Paul McCartney play it as a tribute to George Harrison she had learnt to play ‘Something’ on the ukulele (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b_kvE_DsCU). Since the montage had been inspired by ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ it seemed only appropriate that it ought to be a Beatles song. We played it thought a couple of times then we recorded the famous refrain separately and called it a day for the music.

Opening Credits

Having already been warned against shot reverse shot I knew I neared to establish a strong visual style and I hoped making the opening sequence including the credits would help me do that.

My original idea was to have several boxes appearing on the screen with the video in each playing and fitting together. This turned out to look quite messy and very difficult to pull off and even if I managed to put it together just as I had imagined it didn’t really fit in with what I was trying to do elsewhere. I’d already spent a few hours on it but continuing was not the answer.

The original concept:

In trying to develop a new idea I started with finding a new font for the titles. A pet hate of mine is seeing the same automatic fonts used by Microsoft cropping up in people’s films again and again. My top three most despised and over-used would probably be Comic sans, Chiller and Bradley Handwriting. I picked a particularly jolly some might even say playful font in the end because I wanted to keep the film quite light-hearted. To that end I decided it would look better as black on white than white on black which is when it occurred to me what I nice contrast it would make to the dark shots I’d taken of the opening.

The font I setled on:



Once I’d put together the basic credits framework I thought about how I could make it more visually interesting. The idea of having speedy drawings appear next to names appealed to me so I searched the internet for a basic program for recording your drawings. What I found wasn’t ideal as the black on white came out slightly grey making the use of chroma key impossible and the files took ages to render but I worked round this with what I would call some skilful resizing.

I picked pictures that would apply well to the names but have a simple childish charm to them. I used a picture of Fern and Joe on the title slide to briefly confirm in the audiences mind the premises; Joe has just broken up with his girlfriend. I used the final broken heart similarly.

Sketchy drawings of Joe and Fern:

Second Filming Session

The second shoot got off to a rocky start. To give us more time Bobby and I had stayed over at Katie’s the night before but we over-slept and were woken only by Matt knocking on the door the following day. It took a while then to wake everyone and prepare for filming.

Costume was immediately an issue. Bobby, as instructed, had brought the same clothes he wore from last time (for pick-ups and a scene we ran out of time for last week) and a casual t-shirt and jacket such that he would look as though he’d only just arrived at Joe’s house to casually console his friend. Matt however had only brought clothes he’d worn on the last shoot and forgotten the pyjamas we’d ask him to bring. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. There were obviously no men’s pyjamas lying around Katie’s house but she could lend him unisex pyjama trousers and her sisters dressing gown which we thought would look as though Fern, Joe’s ex-girlfriend, had left it behind the night before and would add to the immediacy of the scene following the break-up and show Joe in a light where he is too miserable to care what he looks like.

We started with the first bedroom scene. Since that was set early in the morning I figured their genuine tiredness might actually enhance their performance. The pair were supposed to be playing a video game throughout this scene but we quickly realised that without the screen we would cut to in editing actually in the room eye-line was going to be a problem. We over-came this by moving a picture of Paul McCartney from Katie’s wall where we intended the screen to be and asked Matt and Bobby to focus on him like he was a third actor.

The second bedroom scene was shorter and should have been simpler if we hadn’t had so many issues with corpsing. I really wanted the Joe and Michael scenes to be very naturalistic and build-up the idea that they are two friends completely at ease with each other in contrast to the party where they stand about awkwardly in the company of others. To try and achieve this I played about with the positioning asking Matt to sprawl over the swivelling chair and Bobby to lie back on the bed fiddling idly with the pen.

I needed a few simple shots for the opening which I was afraid if I didn’t do at this point might be forgotten despite the shot list. The first was the alarm clock which prompted much debate over whether to use a digital one or not, I played about with the lighting on this one to try and get an interesting effect with the shadows. I filmed a couple of other pre-planned shots and then thought for safety I’d better get some of Joe and Fern and what actually happened prior to the main film just in case I needed it in post production.

The kitchen scene took the longest because it was ultimately the longest scene and I wanted to keep the naturalistic look which meant asking Bobby to not only concentrate on his lines but a few set movements. In the scene whilst talking to Joe, Michael fetches out a bag of mixed nuts and pours him a drink of water. This stops it from being just two people standing and talking which rarely happens in real life. However when the conversation turns serious the two go very still to emphasise the point which the whole film hangs on. The scene went reasonably well although we did come across a problem that would haunt me throughout post-production. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell him Bobby’s eyes will inevitably in almost every shot slide from Matt to the camera and sometimes back again.

I also attempted a tracking shot here with the use of a broken swivelly chair and had Katie pull it backwards across the kitchen whilst i sat on it holding the tripod steady. It didn't look bad but we couldn't stop Matt from laughing at the spectacle and the noise it made over-powered the dalougue- honestly you would have thought I'd have learnt from last year when we tried the same thing with the tricycle.

I found the door scene possibly one of the hardest to film because I couldn’t quite make my mind up where the camera should go relative to Matt position. I really wanted it to look straight onto him in a close-up, slightly back-lit because I thought it would make a nice contrast to the dark shots that preceded it but when I thought about Matt’s position in the doorway I realised the only way it was really going to work looking in on him was if he opened the door a crack and leaning forlornly on the frame looked out at Michael. I tried doing a few poor shots from Joe’s point of view looking out at Michael but I’m still undecided as to what I should use in the final edit.

After we’d filmed all the originally scheduled scenes we had to use our last hour to film the scene we’d skipped the weekend before. I’d hoped we’d have someone to play Natalie by now but no such luck, Carrie and Amber were still unavailable so as the only person present who looked even vaguely Greek I had to take the role instead. I don’t enjoy acting in my films because I want to be behind the camera knowing what’s going on able to check it’s all to standard. I find myself concentrating on that so much I completely forget to act it took me a couple of goes just to remember to say my line but we got round it in the end. It won’t be the strongest scene in the film.

We used out final half-hour on pick-ups. Last time we filmed a fairly weak closing shot in which Joe puts his arm around Michael and walks him back into the party but in the small space of Katie’s hall it wasn’t very clear at all and I didn’t feel it was anywhere near strong enough for a closing shot so I re-shot in the same location but with a close-up on Joe taking Michael’s hand which got a far more emotional response from our immediate audience (Katie). We also added a shot of one of ther girls (me) flinging water at the camera which meant getting the cling-film out again but the results were at least far more sucessfull than last time.

Then we added some close-ups to the kissing scene, we’d rushed it last time because we felt uncomfortable about asking Bobby and Matt to do it more than a couple of times. But now they’d got into the swing of it they didn’t seem to mind.

All in all it was a far more successful day than the first and I’m fairly confident I can put a film together with what I have now.