d a v i d m o o r e f i l m s: 2008

This process diary represents a brief review of my 2005, Master’s of Film and Television by coursework, major project, a 16mm short film entitled “Life’s little drama”.
This time last year I had just started penning my process diary for my graduate diploma major project “Crash”. As I write this, “Crash” has now appeared in, or is about to appear, in 6 international festivals, and this is mainly due to the improvements I have made to my film making efforts since I have attended the VCA School of Film and Television Course. My sincere hope is that with this 10 minute film, I can repeat the effort to justify another year of study and expense whilst progressing my film making career. 2005 Has been a huge year in many ways, and I will now entail some of the sordid detail.

David Moore
24th October 2005

When I completed the graduate diploma of film and television in narrative at VCA, our final script writing assignment was to pen our stories for a Master’s script, whether we intended to come back or not. I wrote a script entitled “Fallout” a modern fable where a man dreams about the end of the world, with a show down between him, his wife and a strange girl. He wakes, forcing his wife out of bed, to run, from this so called nuclear threat, in the dead of the night, only to pick up the strange girl in the middle of the no-where, and for the film to finish in a
dramatic conclusion, forewarned by his dream.
Through the end of year screenings I was lucky enough to be introduced by my script lecturer, the wonderful Chris McGill, to a producer by the name of Jason. Jason loved the script and was very keen to produce the film, which was very exciting for me, seeing I didn’t actually intend to apply for the Masters at this time, though I did intend to apply for the Masters by Research.
I met Jason and we proceeded with funding applications for “Fallout” and in the meantime I prepared my application for Masters by Research. But somewhere in the process I found myself re-thinking about whether I should apply for the Course-work program, maybe it was a good idea to make a longer form film after all, and if “Fallout” came off I would have two films! I knew that it would be much tougher to get in, seeing they where only taking 5 students, and I sincerely hoped if I did get in, I could get the hecs placement . About this time my mother-in-law was extremely ill with the final stages of cancer, so I had to leave quickly, back to the far north coast, where my wife and son were supporting her. This was a difficult time, but I had to return briefly to pack my things in Melbourne and to complete the sound mix on my film “Crash”, move out of my apartment and leave some things with a friend and drive from Melbourne to Lismore over several days. About a week later she died. I couldn’t return to Melbourne for my interview and this meant I had to have it by phone, never a good option I know. I remember the day clearly.
I sat on the back porch of my mother-in-laws house, waiting for the phone call. Black clouds angrily hung around with the odd lightning bolt and thunder clap making its presence felt and I distinctly recall thinking that I didn’t want to do this, not right now. I was still really tired from supporting my wife and her sisters through this trying time. As the phone rang, it was apparent that it was going to storm and I wondered whether I should not answer for fear of being struck by lightning through the phone line, but I did answered the phone, unfortunately. I gave the most awful interview in my entire life! My pitch for my major project was woeful and I just remember the words “this is shit, you are just speaking shit” rolling round in the canyons of my mind. Needless to say I had also encouraged my wife to apply for the Post-graduate painting course at VCA, under the romantic notion that it be fun to be students together, so sure that I would be re-accepted. The irony is that, even though her application was late, she was quickly accepted and I was not. Oh well, bit of a blow to my ego, apparently I missed a position by half a mark, but at least I was applying for funds to make the other
film and I would find something to do, what, I don’t know!
We moved to Melbourne, with Ros (Producing teacher) help and found a great little house in Footscray through a friend of hers, quickly settling our son, who suffers from Aspergers Syndrome, into school. Footscray West Primary turned out to be a gem and he was very happy, which for a child with autism is amazing! Then something unexpected happened, a call from VCA offering me a place in the Master’s program. Well obviously I was going to have to pay (again) but I decided to go for it in the absense of anything better to do.
The Writing Process
So I started the course and I had to come up with another project to write, seeing I was pursing “Fallout” with Jason. I think Hugh (Burton) was a bit disappointed that I wasn’t doing that film as a VCA production as I he really liked it. I started looking for other projects to write and considered doing my Masters by Research project, which was a feature I entitled “The Secret Diary of Red Alex”, but I felt it would really not work as a short film, which was a shame as it had some great stuff in it. I then heard about the plight of the Australian, Cornila Rau, who had been locked up in Baxter detention centre for several months and not distinguished as Australian because she suffered from a mental condition, and the only people who tried to help initially were the other immigrants who are considered illegal. The themes of being an foreigner, an outsider in your own country, purely because of her mental state and her only acceptance being by those displaced themselves really interested me. I wrote a very heavy treatment full of florid language that I am not prone to at all (yeah right!) and read it in a script proposal session with class mates Siobhan and Iris, as well as Hugh and Janis. It was called “Asylum” and parts of it they really liked, but generally they drowned in a sea of words.
I quickly retreated and did second draft, but it wasn’t really going anywhere. So I decided not to pursue it any further and I pulled out another old script that I had started several years ago, again a feature, called ‘The Return”(which I won’t reprint all 25 pages here as I am sure you’ll fall asleep, if you haven’t done already). It was essentially a thriller come horror film, about a man who is possessed by the spirit of a dead man, determined for revenge.
MARCH
It was about this time we started the process called ‘speed dating’, with the current producing students, a rather spontaneous, if not pointless exercise, as you rush around the room in five minute intervals and meet and greet, pitch your project and get to the next person. So I pitched to a genuinely keen bunch of producers, but I remembered that last year I really wanted to work with a producer, but none of them where particularly interested in my project, besides I think I recked of desperation, so I had already resigned myself to doing this project on my own, thinking that the repeat would happen. But I did connect, particularly well with Kate (Breen) and Robert (Miller) so I guess this refutes my earlier statement about the useless of this exercise. I promised to give them, and a few other producer,s a look at the first draft of my script, and ran home to spend a solid week writing the shorten version of an 80 odd pages old script. It was ok, parts of it was interesting, but it needed a lot of work, I distributed the draft to the producers as promised and I had lunch with Robert, who I had connected with, really well and talked about the script, then I retreated to the mac lab to respond to a very depressed email from my twin brother, who was also living separately from his wife for a year because his work had him living in Sydney and his wife and son in Brisbane.I remember feeling very moved by the email I had just sent to him, so I went home and sat in front of my computer then proceeded to write like a madman for the next 12 hours, whatever fell out of brain.
APRIL
It was called “My Brother Hereafter” and was also 25 pages long, it was raw, but had some great visual moments, but it felt very disparate. I raced into VCA literally 2 days later and found that Hugh hadn’t found his copy of “the Return” in his pigeon hole yet, so I told him not to read it and gave him a copy of the new script. I ran into Kate, who told me she had read “the Return” and had a distinct look of non interest on her face, so before she could say anything else, I handed her the new script and told her to forget the old script, she promised to read it and get back to me, I also gave a copy to Robert and Chris McGill. I preceded to have a few script tuts with with Hugh and Chris about the story, I don’t think Chris was really very keen on the story, but he gave me some good advice, as did Hugh. Kate called me and asked for a meeting to discuss the project. The meeting was to happen right after I finished a class peer script appraisal session, where my class mates responded to the script. Parts of the story they liked very strongly, but they felt the whole story was just to long, it was a very useful session. I met kate, she was very keen to come on board straight away, to start working on the story together and we looked at the issues which included copyright permission from Lucasfilm, for the use of the Star Wars characters in the story, as well as some footage from a Warners Bros. film. I liked Kate, she had a very quiet and determined energy about her, but I did explain that Robert had also expressed a very strong interest in the film and because he had approached me first, I thought it only courteous to give him first option. I met Robert for lunch and we talked about story issues and questions he raised. He did ask me was I just working through therapy by writing “My Brother, Hereafter” and I honestly didn’t know how to respond. Needless to say he wanted on but for his own reasons he wasn’t prepared to commit to a project just yet. As It was April and I was several months away from the date of production (in July) and now that I was fully into the writing process, I explained to him that I wanted someone on now, not later, to be involved from the writing stage through and Kate was keen for this, so we agreed that I would go with her as the producer of this film. Kate and I met again and set down some ground rules about communication and money, amongst other things, then started to discuss story issues and re-writes as well as logistics for the shoot. I had already written to Lucasfilm seeking permission to use the Star Wars characters in the film, to which I had been very lucky to guess their correct email address, seeing they don’t print it anywhere, (Lucasfilm prefer everything in writing, posted to them). But within 12 hours of emailing them I had a response from them specifically requesting what I did and didn’t want permission for. I had to make it very clear to them that the film would need to be cleared for international and local film festivals as well as the School’s copyright parameters. They went away and came back asking more specific questions about the characters, to which I answered, and finally they asked for the script pages, directly pertaining to their copyright characters. The final question they wished to know how the story resolved itself. They were very thorough and extremely professional.
It was now the middle of April and we needed to line up a meeting with Ros (Walker) head of Producing and my supervisor, Hugh to have a meeting between themselves, Kate and I to makes sure that certain communications issues that had arisen with the previous years did not reappear. Since Kate and I had already had this discussion and agreement, this meeting happened without a fuss. At the conclusion of the meeting, Kate and I stayed in the studio and used the white board their to map out the story structure and discuss re-structuring the script to give it a bit more clarity. The story had already been whittled down many pages with the necessary changes needed to hone the film, this meeting between Kate and I really helped shape it story structure even further. I went home and wrote a new draft that was half the length, dropping the scenes that Kate and I decided where redundant.
It was about this time that I had the opportunity to work in the art department on a new short feature being shot that Jason was one of the producers for. Entitled “The Heartbreak Tour” it was from writer/director Ben Chessel, whom had done this course previously some years before me. It would be a good opportunity to work on a longer project, have the experience of doing a shoot that was more then several days, and hopefully learn something. This would mean that I was fulfilling my course obligations of an ‘industry’ experience and it would start very soon.
CREWING
In the meantime, Kate and I where discussing things like the copyright permission, and crewing. We had decided to drop the Warners Bros clip as it didn’t work in the story anyway and their fax indicated that it was going to be extremely costly. In relation to the visual effects in the film, I had already asked Nicki Johnson from the previous years’ VFX course, to do the required visual effects shots for me to which she happily agreed.
Last year, I worked with a great production manager by the name of Nicole Bardy, but unfortunately Nicole was heading overseas for a long, well deserved, holiday, but during our cinema studies classes with the 3rd years, we were getting to know them bit by bit when one day, Emily Owen approached me and asked what my intentions for crew place where on my film, to which I responded that I really didn’t have any places filled as yet, she then volunteered on the spot, to be production manager, I was bowled over and immediately accepted. She said that her project would be over by the time we would go into production and it would fulfill her crew points. Works for me! I started looking for a Director of Photography, I had been given the details of Marin Johnson, a DOP that Jason (Byrne) had worked with and was keen for him to shoot “Fallout”, I sent the script to Marin, who liked it very much and would think it over and we would meet on the set of “Heartbreak Tour”just so we could put a face to a name. As for composer, I also had dinner with Doug Gibson to discuss the music for the film. Doug was a 2nd year composition student at the VCA Music school and had done the music for “Crash”. It was a really great collaboration together and he seemed keen to do more.
I met with Andi Spark, one of the heads of animation in the school, to ask for her assistance in find animators for the ghost scene, she thought it would be great for a couple of her animators to come on board as part of their crewing commitment.
MAY
It was graduation time, things seemed to be progressing and I was on the 5th draft of script, rather than dramatically changing, it was being honed. It was also about this time that I found out that “Crash” had been accepted into the Frameline29: San Francisco International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, the largest festival of its kind in the world, along with my class mate from last year, Richard Vette. I knew that I could possible get a grant to this festival, but the interesting fact was that it was awfully close to my shoot dates. So I applied to Film Victoria and the AFC for a travel grant to attend the festival and figured I would make the decision about what to do once I knew if they intended to give me the money, or not, but the one thing I really needed to make clear was that I didn’t have any of my own money to contribute, obviously any money I was to have, (which at this stage was mostly being borrowed off my dad, due to the fact that after a year and a half I still hadn’t sold my house in NSW) was to go into my VCA production. Film Vic said I should just say that in the application.
It was also about this time I donned a suit to collect my diploma at graduation, my parent specially travelled down for this, seeing I was the first member of my family to graduate from anything, and to graduate with first class honors to boot, dad was particularly proud, quite interesting!?!
We finally heard from Lucasfilm. They had gone quiet for several weeks, which I put down to the fact that Episode III was about to be released, and literally the day before the release of their newest blockbuster, they gave us permission, at no cost and in perpetuity to use the Star Wars characters. Awesome, so far so good. I was starting to get good feedback from my script, it was a tiring time, as my wife was away, setting up an exhibition in Lismore and my mother was staying, looking after my son while I was running around in the day and going to the “Heartbreak Tour” shoot every night.
Marin the DOP sent me an email saying he did love the script, but couldn’t do it as his father had died back in the States and he was heading home. I decided to speak to Siobhan, as she, in her own words, is obsessed with cinematographers, she gave me a list. I would really of like to go with Katie Millwright, another ex-vca grad, who had just shot the feature I worked on, I loved her framing and could see our vision being very similar, she read the script and thought it was very interesting, but had planned to be out of the state at the time. It was also about this time that they decided to open up the Anthony Ganim Prize to us for a scholarship, this meant getting a letter from David Price, the post-graduate supervising at the film school. Poor David is already hugely busy being the post-producing supervisor as well as head of visual effects, you can imagine his response to being asked to do something else, but he did, and I submitted my application (opening the flood gates to a heap of other students in the process, now he really was impressed!) The good thing was, by doing the submission it forced me to do a budget, so I had a good idea of what it was really going to cost me.
End of May, the shoot is drawing closer and Kate and I are getting pretty set on the script so I finally decide to start on the storyboarding. People tell me I am quite good at storyboarding, but the reality is, I can’t start a shot list until I get the images out of my head, on paper, drawn! This was going to take a while, and as usual the pictures start well drawn and get rougher and rougher as I go. Oh well its not meant to be a piece of art.
I met with Brooke Howden, a casting director at Chameleon casting today. Brooke is great, yet another introduction from Jason, we discussed the character outlines I emailed her and she presented a list of potentials, I would love to work with Dai (Patterson I think?), who I think is a terrific actor and friend of Siobhan’s, Brooke would run the script past him and we planned to do a casting session very soon.
June - PRE-PRODUCTION
Its the 2nd of June and today it really felt like things started to gain some momentum. I had a 2 hour meeting with Kate and Emily, we talked about everything, very happy with the progress, still no Director of photography, I have been talking to a DOP by the name of Max, via email. He finds the script very interesting and is keen for a meeting, which we organise at my place next week. Something amazing happened today, after Richard (Vette) and I getting a NO letter for the travel grant to go to San Fran from the AFC, I got a call from Film Vic, they had decided to dip into next year’s budget to pay for our trips. This was going to complicate things somewhat, because if I go it means I have only 20 days after I get back before making the film.
I talked to Michal, she was jealous, but happy for me to go, and then to Kate, and she didn’t hesitate, and just told me to go. It meant everything was going to need bumping up to get done before I go. I had lunch with Chris (McGill) and he told me the script was ready, which was good to know, because if he made other suggestions I beginning to think it would never be write. Hugh also gave me written feedback saying that he found the script appealing.
I know I had to prepare the material I was taking to America, such as documents promoting “Crash” including a pitch for selling another project, as per part of the Film Vic requirements. I had already written something for my original submission, but it just needed a polish. The feature shoot was finally over, which was great, I didn’t have a great experience towards the end, having the first AD scream at me on set for something I didn’t do, so I was happy to leave that behind, even though it was a good experience.
I had approached a few actors to play the father, as I told Brooke that if she handled the boys and the adult counterparts, that was heaps of work for her to do already. Dai said no because he and his partner, Claire, had just had their first child together and he was on another planet at the moment. A couple of the other actors also said no for the father, I was going through showcast and approaching every person I could see as that character. The musicians were a different kettle of fish, we knew we could get actors to play them, but then we would need to find the instruments, and the biggest problem is that it looks like actors playing instruments, other words, badly. Doug said he would see if he could find some players interested in being in the film.
June 8th. Kate and I went and saw the Sun Theatre and the Irish Pub, both in Yarraville, and they where all seemed cool about using their locations for the film shoot. Kate organised a meeting with Nicki Johnson (VFX artist) and one of the animators, Anthony, to discuss the ghost and Star Wars scenes, to make sure we where all on the same page, after this we dropped round to David Price’s office and had a quick chat with him about the VFX. Nicki asked him is she had problems with the green screen pub stuff, if she could come into the school, he didn’t think it would be a problem, but he did try to convince me of the merits of shoot this film on Beta SP, due to the possible movement we may experience in the comping of the vfx and animation shots. I understand his argument, but I am still quite keen to shoot on film, the reason being that you don’t often get the opportunity to shoot film and I really wanted a very grainy stock. Another actor said no for the father role so I have sent the script to another person, the good news is the mother is going to be played by Bernadette Schwerdt, a fabulous actor that I got know off another student’s film last year, we had lunch a couple of times and I thought she would be fabulous as the mother. She said yes.
Thursday 9th. Had another production meeting with Kate and Emily. Kate admits that she didn’t realise how close the film shoot was to my return from San Fran, but she knows there is little she can do about it now, as I have booked all my tickets and am leaving in under a week. Talked about crewing issues, still no DOP, no main location for the house, although Emily believes it will be fine to shoot the outside apartment scene in her building. Kate and I then had a preliminary budget meeting with Tracey (Claire) as Carol Gregory is overseas (again!) and we did the budget which came in as $14,000. I was a little shocked to say the least. Kate and I then took off to look at the house a fellow classmate Dustin shot his short film “Night” in last year, in the film it looked old and dark. During Dustin’s film the bathroom floor collapsed, so guess what, the house was newly renovated, with a new bathroom, didn’t suit at all. Kate then took me to look at the exterior of a brick house that Robert (Miller) knew the owners of, and was seeing if it would be ok to shoot in. It looked like a 70’s brick house and might be suitable, but we just had to wait and see. This afternoon I had a meeting with Doug in the music school with a violinist, who was going to improvise some string music for us, so that Doug and I could get an idea of the direction with the music. Some very interesting things came out of the session, and we decided a waltz style would work well, as I really wanted to work against the direction of inherent drama in the film.
June 10th - casting
Had to working at my teaching job this morning, out at Vic Uni, St. Albans, have been teaching there one day a week since the beginning of the year, but its about this time it become very inconvenient, even though its a little bit of money I am earning, but it really is hard to schedule around. This afternoon is casting at Chameleon with Brooke. Brooke presented me with a comprehensive list of actors, both adult and child that would be arriving today. They filmed the whole thing, Brooke was amazing, they are such professionals there. We had some really excellent performers, though we had 4 drops outs in the male actors side, interestingly enough, all playing for Adult Alex, my lead. Brook told me of her recommendations and Kate and I discussed them before I decided to look at the tapes they had recorded at home to make a final decision.I emailed 2 sound designers that I had met during the year to see if they where interested in doing the film, both seemed alright about it and would read the script. I also had a email response for the character of Grace, with a phone number so I rang the actor, Isabella and she liked the script and would think about the role.
June 11th, Saturday. I met with Max Davies, DOP, today, he was a lovely guy, very experienced man, trained at AFTRS a long time ago, he was very interested in discussion about the look of the film and was keen to do it, for a fee, which was the sticking point. My thinking was that I wasn’t sure how we could get around it, but Kate's’ feeling was that we could find someone for free. Max was keen to do it only on the condition, that we wasn’t busy, and he was waiting for a call to shoot a a television series. In the meantime I had approached another actor by the name of Chris Stevenson to play the father. We had to play the fax game, because, like so many other actors that I have come across, he didn’t have email. I rang Chris at an appointed hour, a very gruff sounding man answered the phone, so far so good, certainly sounded like the character. He had read the script and asked me was the kid autistic, which I thought was an extremely interesting response, considering I was the father of an autistic child, which of course he didn’t know. I explained to him that it wasn’t because Alex was Autistic but rather it was too much for him to imagine his father being this monster. Christopher’s only issue was he was due to leave from Europe the week after next and was only returning a few days before, this I didn’t have a problem, as I explained I was heading off to the states on wednesday. He agreed, yes I finally had my mother and father and I had ask Brooke to invite the other actors to join us.
June 13th. With only a few days to go before I leave, I had a meeting with kate to discuss own main issues, being, we still didn’t have a house to shot (Robert’s house didn’t happen) in, nor a DOP to shoot it, although I really wanted Max to shoot it, we needed a fallback just in case. We still didn’t have the musicians, nor a production designer, which I always find to be one of the most difficult crew roles to fill, because its a full time job, involving a lot of running around with no pay and lots of expenses.
Tuesday 14th. I leave tomorrow, so I am running around like a blue arse fly, exchanging money, organising spending money from my dad, because I won’t have it from Film Vic till their cheque comes through, which will be the end of the first week in San Fran. Today Hugh has organised a meeting with me and Kate, just to check in where we are at for his purposes. Kate knows I have landed her with heaps to do, and it very gracious about it, she has all the crew positions to fill, find another DOP if necessary, several locations, including our key location, and 2 weeks to do it in. I race home, throw my clothes into the front loader, tear around my office packing, step on my $600 sunglasses, completely crumpling them, can’t find my mobile phone, and wonder what the ominous bumping noise is coming from the washing machine, (you guessed it, it was my mobile phone! I have to wait another 40 minutes to get it out!) Cyclone David finally abides, sending off lists to Em and Kate and trusting it will all be ok. I won’t write much about San Fran, seeing this diary about about the film process, needless to say I had a huge fortnight, learning a lot about how a big international festival works, when I wasn’t at the festival watching amazing films, drowning in vodka and partying(Absolut Vodka was one of the key sponsors) I would continue working on my storyboards from the hotel. Every morning I would run off to an internet cafe to see how Kate was fairing and if she was still talking to me. It was through this period that Max Davies came back saying that he had got the TV series so he couldn’t do it, Kate had recently met a new DOP to town who she was going to introduce me to when I got back. She had also placed an email ad through the school alumni email and found a house as well as an apartment and a possible production designer from the foundation year at VCA (generally pretty green, as they obviously haven't done much, but sometimes you strike gold, which we did fortunately). Kate did an awesome job while I was away.
June 29th. Back, straight into it. I have to write a report for Film Vic in order to access the rest of my grant monies, I have a ton of email to reply to from other festivals who now want copies of the film “Crash”, I also have to look at the locations that Kate has found, and meet with the new DOP she has found by the name of David Hawkins. But firstly I have the safety report to complete, to guarantee the safety of cast and crew with certain scenes. I need the safety consultant to write a report, signing off, as well as organising a stunt co-ordinator for some days, but I have to write notes explaining how I envisage the scene being shot, otherwise we may have to pay for a stunt guy when we don’t him. We have also find out that in our preliminary budget meeting, our figures for stock have been quoted as 35mm, not 16mm, meaning that our budget has come down now, which is a relief. I meet with Kate for a couple of hours to go through every thing, and look at David Hawkin’s showreel, it looks good. I approach another person for camera assist, someone I used to work with in Sydney, now living in Melbourne, but she is busy on a feature. I talk to Brooke and organise to meet with the actors, all in the same room, just to be sure they are the right choices, as they didn’t audition together.
JULY
Shooting month finally here! I met David Hawkins, very personable, seems very professional and more importantly he wants to do it. I talked to Kate and we agree that David would be good to go with, and also at this late stage I don’t have any one else to consider. That’s not to say I settled with David, because I didn’t, but on the other hand, there was no other choices left and I was very happy to stop looking.
July 4th. Kate tells me we have a cater, we also have most crew roles filled, still don’t have a camera assistant or any camera crew for that matter, many because they usually come attached with the DOP, but because David is only fresh off the ship from Sydney, he doesn’t know
anyone, but he assures us will find someone.
July 5th. I meet Doug in the post grad lounge and have a meeting about music, then meet Kate and Jesse, who is our costumer, another young one from foundation who seems very keen.
I met the actors for a rehearsal and for confirmation. As I mentioned, I had never had the 2 adults and 2 boys audition together and I just wanted to get them into a studio to make sure they worked together well. They do and I am very happy, they are all happy to do the film,
especially with the ‘all the glory and no money part’Kate, David and I then go around to the house that is, hopefully, our main location, bar very few modern additions it is perfectly 70’s, just the look I was after, right done to the tiles in the bathroom and caroma plastic
toilet holder. We have our house.
July 6th. Today Kate and I meet with Tessa, also a foundation student and very keen to do production design, I give her a brief of everything I want and the budget to do it with. She goes away all revved up. I also meet with Kate, Emily and Iris (Huizinga) who is my fellow Masters class mate and will be doing 1st Ad as part of her crewing role points. This afternoon, Hugh gave me my written feedback from the external assessor. I was hoping for positive feedback, but the assessor, found the script confusing, disjointed, with poorly developed characters, and her only upside was that she found the film had some highly original ideas. Her suggestion was to put it in a straight line narrative for that would sort out the jumpiness to the story. Basically what I felt she was saying was that I should make it just like every other film on child abuse and it would work, but I don’t see the point to this, because it would then be just like every other film on child abuse and why would anyone be interested in watching it. I find this news depressing, but I try to ignore it and move on, needless to say, it doesn’t help that “Fallout” didn’t get funded, either. Oh I didn’t mention that. “Fallout” just missed out on funding apparently, but I had a very positive conversation with the project manager at the AFC who was very positive about my script and did invite me to resubmit. She told me that she thought my films had a remarkable aesthetic and she would welcome future applications from me. Another member of my class won the funding, which did feel a bit like a knife between the ribs, being so close, Oh well.
July 7th. Still no musicians, I wrote to several on the internet that I had found, but they where all busy or not interested. Frustrating. Biggest shock was today I found out that I am going to be a father again! As I mentioned before, my wife Michal went away to set up an exhibition in May, but she injured her back doing this and had been on strong anti-inflammatory tablets trying to recover. She was having a pretty tough year, still trying to recover from the loss of her mum and integrate into a new community as well as deal with her own issues at VCA in the painting school. I did question her before I went to San Francisco about whether she may or may not be pregnant, of which she bit my head off saying that she would know if she was pregnant. Well seems I was right and Michal just sheepishly admitted she was probably in denial, especially when I lay down next her that night and put my hand on her tummy and felt the tiny flickers under the skin, like there was a party going on inside, knowing that we finally knew. I looked at Michal and asked how she could not of known? She was 4 and half months pregnant. We have decided not to say anything until we know the baby is ok, being that Michal is approaching 40 and seeing we already have one beautiful son, but who has a disability, we want to do all the tests to know that she is fine, she, I say because thats our feeling, its a girl!
July 8th. Had a heads of department meeting to go through all the joint film issues and for people to meet and know who they where working with. Over 2 hours we worked with all the scenes, to makes sure we all knew what was happening. Doug has found professional musicians who are willing to do it, but they want to be paid and paid very well. I don’t see we have any choice at this late stage, Michal agrees with me and we reluctantly go with it, hoping that they can act as well as play instruments. July 10th. Christopher, who is playing the father should be back and I call to organise for a rehearsal with him and the kids. Bernadette is unable to make it, but this is fine as she is really only doing a support role, and I know she is such a pro she will just get it. I am thinking of adding a little bit more for her though. Tonight David H. and I go to the apartment that Kate has found for Adult Alex and Grace’s scene, its good and they are happy for us to have it.
July 11th. Meet Chris Stevenson at the front desk with contract to sign, he forgets to sign one of the pages, will have to chase him again. I drop round to where the main house location is, to pick up the contract… its not where its supposed to be so I leave a message about this and the fact its a waste of a trip. I then drop round to the
cinema and they are all fine, get the agreement signed. Then to the pub, the manager, whom I still haven't met, is not in again, but an office lady says she knows about the agreement and is happy to sign the form on his behalf, and the day is all locked in (or so we think?)
July 12th. Meet Doug at his place to listen to the music he has written for the dinner scene that the musicians will actually play in the house, it sounds great. I then go to school and talk to Janis about the stock, because we have decided to go with fuji for the inherent green look but the office girls don’t believe it will be delivered in time, saying fuji have never been very good at this, apparently our order is a little late. But Janis has spoken to Fuji and they assure us it won’t be a problem. We still have some safety report issues, Janis promises to ring and sort this out for us.
July 14th. David, Tess and I met at the house today and walked through all the shots,
taking stills on my digital camera, to make sure that we are happy with the angles and in what order we are shooting it and what locations need dressing. This takes about 5 hours but was a very worthwhile exercise. I go home and put them into my computer and create yet another storyboard, but a very accurate one that will be very helpful on the shoot. I am still looking for one more character to play Jen in the pub scene, Jen is Adult Rob’s girlfriend that he yells at. I keep getting turn downs because the role is so small, but finally I have spoken to someone tonight who will do it. Kate tells me we have lost the cater, she will try to find someone else, but worst case, will do the catering with her sister. I am not crazy about the producer doing the catering, purely because I think she has done enough and her job is problem solving and being on set feeding people means that she won’t necessarily be able to do that. But at this late stage I don’t know if we have any other choice.
July 15th. I have met with Kathy Mueller today, she is filling in for Hugh while he is away on vacation. Kathy told me that she loved the script but had a few problems with some scene, she really felt the final scene in the film should be in a hospital with the Adult Rob severely injured.
I can see her point of view, but no way am I changing things now, and I also know how difficult it is to find a hospital to shoot it, I have been down that road before. But she is very supportive, especially after the negative script feedback from the external assessor, which I am still trying to shrug off. Kathy did tell me the apartment scene, with Adult Alex and Grace, was a bum steer that didn’t go anywhere and that I should drop it. I thought very seriously about this.
I meet with Tess and Jess, whom I have thoroughly confused now and keep calling them the wrong name, about costume and art department, they are doing fine.
July 16th. Today I meet Chris Stevenson and the kids, Nic and Mitch, for a rehearsal, we play some games, to loosen up and then block through the belting scene when dad is dressed as Hitler, just so they know the action and how to do it safely. They are all going to be fine together and I come away feeling confident that they will give me good performances. Talked to Kate about Kathy’s suggestion for dropping the apartment scene, and maybe putting more time in the house, we agreed to drop the scene, which meant that I have a Isabella playing a character who doesn't exist. But because she came to rehearsal the other night and played Jen, I figured I would just ask her if its ok to play that character.
July 18th. Today is equipment day, where all the equipment is packed and transported around to the house. Doug will record the music onto dat for us to playback to the musicians today. We meet around at the house with the van to unload the equipment, fortunately the house has a spare room that we can use to put all the equipment in, which is a godsend because I am the only one old enough on the crew who can drive the van, typical, the last thing I want to be doing, but there is no way around it. Tomorrow is the day.
The Shoot
Because of the nature of a shoot, I didn’t keep a day to day diaries, so I will have to recall from the old grey matter. The first day of shooting was a total stuff-up, mainly due to the fact that the grip, Freddo Dirk, decided that he had business to attend to else where, and was just going to help set up his equipment then bog off. Problem was that Emily and Iris had set a good schedule that meant we worked our way through the house, from the bathroom through to the front of the house, for the kid’s bedroom scene. Because we now didn’t have a grip, David H. decided to do all the night scenes first and got Freddo to black the house out, throwing the schedule out immediately and do all the night scenes first from the toilet to the adults bedroom. So, unbeknownst to me, Freddo hopped upon the roof and proceeded to walk across the very rotten beams of the pergola outside, breaking 2 of them as he went. I was more concerned for Freddo health then the beams, I thought that it meant he had fallen through, but he was fine and I was left with 2 broken beams to fix, I try not let this worry me and we move on. As I mentioned before David H.. was a bit shot on camera crew, because of being so new to Melbourne, but he had managed to find some good people, the only problem was that the focus puller, though very good at her job, seemed to go out of her way to take it upon herself to
lecture us students on the error of our ways, and seemed to have no end of things to complain about. The thing that I realised about her was, (and it took another film shoot that I worked with her on to realise this) I think she honestly thought she was being helpful, and wasn’t doing it to be a massive pain in the arse, which unfortunately is the way it came across. But I draw the line when she starts telling me, the director, how to work with children, (when this the 5th short film that I have directed children in, not to mention I am the father of a 12 year old and one on the way, she is 25 with no kids) and definitely not tell me how I should, or should not spend my own budget.
Our Gaffer was also an experienced young man, in some way more than others. One night, after the shoot, he went out clubbing all night, and didn’t go home. Needless to say when he walked in, he smelt like a brewery, but was lucid. Kate made it very clear to him he should go home, but he insisted that he was fine and wanted to stay, so she informed him that, if he did have any accidents that day, he would not be covered by insurance.
Because the schedule was changed so dramatically that first day, I felt that it never caught up, their where call sheets, but we didn’t seem to do half the things on them, and yet did scenes scheduled from other days. I got very worried that we won’t going to get it all done, and in some ways, didn’t feel that I wasn’t focussing on getting the best film made, but rather worry about the details, I got very depressed about this after the shoot. Especially with the pub shoot day disaster.
The pub day shoot disaster was the scene where the adult boys meet with Jen in the pub and have a fight about their father. Kathy had told me she thought this scene very expositional and that I should move it to a hospital scene, which I wasn’t go to do at this late stage, so in the rehearsal we threw the script away and improvised some good stuff which definitely helped. We turned up at 8am to meet the manager, who never showed, and to this day I still haven't met him. We waited on the street for 3 hours trying to get onto him, but the pub was locked up tight and we didn’t have his mobile. Finally the chef turned up, he vaguely remembered that we where coming, so he let us in. The manager still hadn’t turned up and we didn’t know where to put the equipment, so we tried to place it in the most out of the way space, but of course there really weren’t any. Then the new owner turned up, and to say she was happy to see us was an understatement. I had to make an emergency call to Kate to return to set at this point, as she had class on at VCA she needed to attend, so she could try and sort things out with the owner, who was furious with the manager (and yes) for saying yes without her say so. We told her that we intended to buy lunch for the crew here and would be out by 7pm, seeing we had lost all the quiet morning. Kate turned up with the location agreement and between her and Iris, calmed the owner down, but it took more time as she insisted the equipment be moved outside, which took another half an hour. It felt like a total disaster. I was ill with stress and wanted to throw up, because it was now after 11.30am. the kitchen fans where now on, recorded sound was obviously going to be terrible and basically I really didn’t respond we to working under this level of stress. Kate encourage me to cancel the day and try and do it some other day, in another location, but the logistical idea of doing that seemed (at the time) to out way the fact we could now film with the owners permission. I decided to stay, in hindsight I don’t know if I would.
I think the performances where ok, but I really wasn’t in the head space to do a good job as a director, and with a problematic scene anyway, I needed to have my full wits about me and it was a good lesson. Some how I needed to take stock and full command of the situation to make it work, even though it wasn’t. At least I persisted, but unfortunately I was the one that failed the actors, next time I am in this position, I need to have my wits about me. The other drama going on before this was that I had been given some bad advice about the telecine process. I had been told that you could safely leave the telecine up to the school operator, which I did the first time only. When David H. and I went into look at the first telecine tape, it was so full of dust and sparkle, we were amazed, but what horrified us was that part way through one of the takes the lighting dropped 3 stops and it was suddenly very difficult to see anything. David went into shock, on the way home he started to ring everyone on the camera crew, trying to find out what had happened. I thought about it and decided to ring David and express my concern about what I had just seen. Later he told me I was very nice about it, but I must admit, I was wondering whether I had made a mistake, but I reminded myself he was an AFTRS graduate and they just don’t make those kind of mistakes. The next night we got Steve, the telecine operator to put the reel on, and we watched it, it was fine, it turned out that Steve had set the light levels for an earlier scene, then left the film to transfer without watching it, so of course when David H. had changed exposure for another scene, it wasn’t right for the rest of the tape transfer. I apologised to David for doubting him, although I really hadn’t come down to hard on him, and he was really fine about it. Steve on the other hand only had one thing to say “Yes, it is a bit dark!”. The understatement of the year! But the dust and sparkle problem did not get any better, Janis organised Cinevex, the lab, to clean the first 3 reels, as they had put the camera sheets in the plastic bag with the negs they sent back, thus filling the reels with paper dust. But they claimed this was standard procedure, although this was later contradicted by the Manager. The shoot was almost over, we had the last day in the studio at school and it was very laid back, the only thing in the back of my mind was that fact that Michal was having an ultrasound and a invasive procedure to indicate the sex of our baby, and that the child was healthy.
After the last shot, I rang Michal and she confirmed our feelings, that it was a little girl and that she was fine. I could finally say something about it to people. I made a toast to cheers everyone for their hard work and announced the upcoming birth of our new baby daughter.
Jim Brownest, the stills photographer, and a dear friend of mine, who had flown down from Noosa to take the pictures at his expense, was so shocked, as he has known Michal and I for over ten years, also doing the photography for our design business for a long time, he had been staying with us over the period of the shoot and we hadn’t breathed a word to him about it. The expression on his face was priceless.
So the shoot was over, and I was feeling pretty flat about he whole thing, I had the focus puller lecturer who wouldn’t let up, the boom operator who got the snit and disappeared with 3 days to go and the other thing that happened was that we ran out of the Fuji 400 stock and ended using the 500 stock that was only meant for the pub scenes, as it was the weekend and we knew we couldn’t get stock down from Fuji over this time. It was fine, but it did mean those scenes where particularly grainy, especially since we have been pushing it one stop, which also turned out to be a surprise as the lab sent us an extra bill for $800 that we weren’t expecting for doing this. Another lesson, I assumed that pushing it one stop meant twiddling a dial, which it probably did, but it also meant that it had to stay in the processor for longer to develop, and that little bit longer is what cost us. I will ask a lot more questions next time.
I wondered if it was like this because I hadn’t spent enough time in preparation, was it because I went overseas, but we had heaps of meetings, it felt organised. I think that I need to be much more forceful about things next time, I think I can be far to nice for my own good, as weird as that sounds, but being a director, does not mean, being everyone's friend, I love the spirit of co-operation and motivating people to give you their best, but sometimes you just need to be very direct and I think on student films, where everyone is a volunteer, I find it really hard to come down on people that aren’t being paid and are here because they want to be. Its a difficult line to cross, and I am hoping that it will be different for me with people who are being paid in the future, we shall see.
POST-PRODUCTION
My post period is a bit hap-hazard as I go straight onto 2 other student productions for my crewing points. I was supposed to work on fellow class-mate Julius production, which was this bigger than Ben Hur thing that he was doing because he had recently started working for Renegade Film Production House as a commercial director, so they had been volunteering their services and equipment for him to use, as development of one of their newest directors.
My role was that of continuity. A couple of weeks before hand I got a call from Simon Myers, the film’s producer, asking if I was up to it, my response being that I felt confident, that I had only done some student shoots, but it was fine. Next thing I know is Simon calls me during my shoot to say that I would now be 2nd AD as they now had a professional continuity person. Initially, I told Simon I would be happy to do what ever they wanted, as long as they could guarantee me my crew points, but once my shooting finished, I thought about this and got really angry because Hugh had put his foot down in the pre-production meetings (that Julius hadn’t attended) and told us we have to give the bigger crew roles to class-mates as a first option, thus Iris and I had to drop our professional continuity people. It felt like Julius was going to do what ever he liked because it was a Renegade shoot and get away with it. About this time, Robert Miller asked about whether I could do continuity on Kyle Blanshard, 3rd major project. Initially I apologised to him, saying I was committed to another project, but seeing I was obviously being stuffed around, I told Robert I would see what I could do. I spoke to Janis, telling him my preference for doing Kyle’s film and then I spoke to Simon, who sounded overjoyed that I wasn’t doing his film (he could of tried to sound disappointed!) Anyway, I was now off Julius film and doing Kyle’s film, which was fine. In the meantime, I was organising the visual effects and animation, so I had to online the specific scenes with Nicki that she needed, as did the animators, Anthony and Brad, so they could get to work. I also had an informal meeting with David Price about the dust and sparkle problem. He admitted he wasn’t sure if it was Cinevex or the school or my camera loader who caused the problem, as unspooling the films loosely could allow dust to settle within the reels, which is what the lab was suggesting. But David did also wonder whether the old reels on the telecine machine at school, which where up for replacement, could also be contributing to the issue, they had ordered the new parts, but they where weeks away.
AUGUST
Paul Fletcher, head of animation, was getting concerned about the commitment of the animation guys because they really needed to get onto their own projects. He told me that they wouldn’t be able to comp it now and wondered whether Nicki could do it. I talked to her and she didn’t think it would be a problem, Nicki is so laid back, it great. I continued to work on Kyle’s shoot, which was mainly nights, but it was a good crew and I enjoyed myself and felt valued in my continuity role.
Between Kyle’s shoot and Iris’s shoot, I saw some of the visual effects shots underway and the
animation, which was going slowly, but going, Brad, determined to get it done.
THE EDIT - SEPTEMBER
1st of September. I finally get into the offline edit suite. My shoot seems so long ago and I have been so flat about it, ever since it finished. I don’t know if its just the fact that it felt
disorganised (which is simply my perception) but I also think it is the let down from returning from San Fran, going straight into production and the combination of some of the problems incurred. I really think that you put so much time and effort into your film because you want it to be really good, when really it is just a student production. But then again, its a VCA student production, so there is a level that is expected, otherwise you wouldn’t be in one of the finest film institution in Australia. But frankly on this day, I sat and watched all my footage and, like a big girls blouse, burst into tears, mainly because the footage looked so grainy in the night scenes, that it appeared like a snow storm at times. I had to put this behind me and get on with it. I am an extremely fast worker in edit and within 2 days I had a rough cut. Hugh had returned from his trip and I showed him, Kate and Janis in Cinema 2. Janis and Kate where enthusiastic, Hugh was quiet. Sometimes he underwhelms me with his responses! I wanted him to say it was great, but I felt that he had good cause to be quiet, as is my heart of hearts, I knew it didn’t work very well. He thought the beginning wasn’t very compelling, that the sleep gibberish scene, which is where the 2 boys speak gibberish together in their sleep, was much more interesting, my feeling was that, to put it first lost any set up for the film, but I did think he was correct in his observation.I ran into Chris McGill in the hallways and I told him how depressed I was feeling, his advice was to get a professional editor to come and have a look so I approached Hugh and asked who was to be the professional editing consultant this year, as I knew the school did get someone in. This year it was Ken Sallows which is awesome, such a great editor, he looked at the cut and thought it was ok, that he understood the film, but I showed it to 2 other students, who didn’t understand it, I was getting more depressed. It was the second week of my edit, I didn’t feel like I was making much headway and then I was scheduled for night shift, which I couldn't do as Michal was relying on my assistance at home. After a day in the painting studios and with her bad back and being quite pregnant now, I was doing all the cooking, etc at night. So I decided a week off from editing wasn’t such a bad thing, I could try and work out what to do. In the meantime I had been helping Iris with her edit through the day when I was approached by a 1st Ad I had worked with on Kyle’s shoot, to do a TAC commercial with him as the 3rd AD. It was a one day commercial, no pay as usual, but it was a good experience. Then Nicki organised to come in and use the computers at school for some green screen stuff, as her programme wasn’t cutting it at home. Over the course of the weekend I popped into edit to have a look at the cut again. Erin White, a graduate from the honors course from the year before, was at school doing tech support. Her film from the previous year, “62 sleeps” had won the Sydney Dendy’s Short Film Award earlier that year. She offered to watch the film with me and agreed it wasn’t working, but didn’t think it was as bad as I was making it out, she also made the observation that the pub scenes where very expositional, but that the film had some great stuff in it, she suggested I finish the film on the father’s collapse scene, which, by far was the strongest scene in the film. I was now back in edit full-time, I had less than a week to complete the cut and was still no closer to a solution. I decided to play my trump card and get in Chris McGill to have a look. Chris watched the film silently, then turned very quietly to me, as he does, and in the manner of an oracle, spoke. I can’t remember to much of what he said, for, like a oracle, the information washes over you, it just doesn’t seem to make sense, but in other ways, makes perfect sense. From the little I remember he said that the narrative was not strong enough to sustain the film, that I should select a piece of music, and cut it, like a sonnet. He assured me I was smart enough to do it and he had every confidence in me and then in a blink of an eye, was gone. Like a sonnet, what the fuck does that mean!
I spoke to my classmates at lunch, and they all looked at me is if I was a mad man, but assuredly they all agreed that I should not to worry about it, just to keep cutting. But I knew there was something to be said in what he suggested, so after lunch I started a new session in the avid, placed a piece of the music from Vavadlis’ 4 Seasons, one of my favorite classical music albums, and literally started to cut to the music. It started to take shape, it was different, but not that different. I put the original beginning back on it and conceived a little voice-over dialogue, and continued to cut. I went home feeling more buoyed by the direction I was taking.
I kept thinking about whilst cooking dinner, then after dinner I came back and finished cutting it. The first major casualty was the ghost scene, the scene that my poor animators had been working on for weeks, I felt really bad about the decision, but I had re-structured the film now so that a therapy sessions joined each flashback scene, and when I didn’t have one, I would put an Adult Alex voice over, like he is in therapy, to bridge this problem. There wasn’t anyway to cut the ghost scene in with no therapy session that related or was explained by it, so it had to go. It was working much better now. The next day I rang Kate and asked her to come in, feeling quite excited about it. The pub stuff was much shorter, though the ending still wasn’t very strong, but it certainly felt like an edit that was starting to work. The old excitement of editing was finally starting to creep back into my veins. Kate came in and watched, she immediately agreed that it was much better and we thought that we should try it out on somebody who hadn’t seen it at all. Kate suggested Ros (Walker) who was in today and she agreed. Ros watched the film and found it to be very powerful, but got thoroughly confused in the pub stuff (again) wondering, which brother was who, and thinking that when Rob disappeared on the bed, he had died, hence the title “My Brother, Hereafter”. I thought very much about this and it became clear the pub stuff had to go as well, but that meant I had to find a new ending, because if I finished the film on the father collapsing in bed, it was a definite downer! Kate and I talked about this, finishing the film with the mother leaving, but I felt that it had to be something else. The music that I had added, now drove the film like a steam train even though I knew it was only a temp track. The film was now 4 minutes shorter, being just under 10 minutes, a good length.
Then I had 2 brilliant ideas.
The first being that I could finish the film with a therapy session, there is a really powerful scene where Adult Alex screams at the solo violinist to shut up. There was 2 beautiful shots, a slow, wide dolly shot, revealing the musician playing, and closeup of Adult Alex yelling, also on a slow dolly to match. Maximising my therapy shots, because of the few I had, I used the wide shot just before the final scene of the father collapsing, in which the mother leaves as little Alex stares dreamily at her empty side of bed, he then returns to his bed and sees that his brother, Rob has been awake all this time, and has offered no assistance to him or his father. With tears in his eyes we cut to the close up of Adult Alex screaming shut, we cut back to the wide of the musicians and Adult Alex, with the musician walking off in a huff. We linger on Adult Alex still crying then cut to black. A real kick arse ending.
The second idea that it a occurred to me, was that the film was also three stories. The mother, brother and fathers’ stories, with Adult Alex/young Alex as the narrator. So if I re-cut the film to make the three chapters relate to the stories of these three characters, that would be a clear linear narrative structure to follow, thus resolving the constant criticism from the outset of the script, that the film was too juxtaposed. After recutting these scenes, specifically the first dinner scene, with the focus now more on the mother now and her powerlessness, I then took another step which really excited me. What if I gave these acts (as I know called them) titles, I tried it. On the mother scene, with is a beautiful still shot of her, sitting at the dinner table, looking mournfully at her plate, stead-fastly refusing to look up. Over the top of this, in a classic roman font, the words ‘ACT 1:’ and the in a bigger font on a second line ‘MOTHER’ fades up slowly, gracefully.
As a graphic designer for 13 years, I have looked forward to the day I could utilise type in a film and it now seemed to be happening. I did the same for brother and father, and it was now complete, the film had three stories, all told by the same narrator in 2 time periods, in a powerful and evocative way.
The next issue was the title, I obviously could not use the same title “My Brother, Hereafter” as it isn’t about the brothers and their relationship anymore, it was more than this. I toyed with titles like “The Opera” as it felt like an opera now, but it didn’t fit, but I wanted something that would play along with the concept of the film, being, that it was a serious subject told in a non-serious fashion. I wanted something that would work as if it was a series of 3 short stories. “Life’s Little Drama’s, in 3 Acts” is what came to me. It would do for now.
I invited my classmate, Siobhan, to look at the cut, she thought it was so much better, but told me she really missed part of the ghost scene, which was of little Alex going into his parents room, asking for help and being rejected, she thought it was particularly menacing. I
wasn’t sure how it would cut it, so we took that little clip and put in straight after the ice scene, and it seemed to cut in really well, mainly because the mother exits frame and it cuts to Alex entering frame from the same direction. So she won, I left it in. Kate liked the cut very much now, and we felt that we where finally there, the last test was on Ken Sallow’s who had one more appointment with me for the fine cut, and seeing I had really only thrown this film together in the last 3 days, I thought his feedback was essential. He watched the film, turning to me, he heartily congratulated me on my ability to take a huge step back and turn the film from something that was good into something that was really interesting. He then shook my hand and we proceeded to mince through of a series of 14 tweaks to finalise the film. His final suggestion was to lose part of the title, to become just “Life’s Little Dramas” as he thought it gave it away.
I managed to find Hugh and we watched the cut of the film in the cinema, just the two of us. He turned to me with a very relieved expression and told me he was very happy that I had made it work.
The final tweak I made, which I thought was really lovely, being a fade transition from young Alex, crying on his bed, through to the crying Adult Alex sitting on the wall in therapy, just before he yells that he wants it all to stop. And so do I, the edit is now over!
All I needed now was the visual effects footage of the Star Wars scene with the light sabres animated, the music and the sound effects.
Nicki had gone away for a weeks holiday, as had Doug, the composer, disappeared back to the States for a wedding. So there was little I could do for a week. I was also a little concerned that Nicki would feel she had just spent all this time do the green screen stuff and now none of it was being used. Fortunately she hadn’t done much of the ghost stuff, but the little she had done, wasn’t in the film either. But being the trooper she is, she did a fantastic job on the swords scene and had it all ready in time. I mentioned to Anthony, one of the animators that I had dropped all their work, he was very cool about it, but mentioned that Brad was very stressed about his project and it was probably not a good idea to tell him just yet. I sincerely hope that I didn’t handicap his film in effort for mine.
Doug came back and sent me an idea for the Darth Vader, Star Wars scene, I really wasn’t sure what to think about it. I had asked him to make it a little like Star Wars, but not. I listened to the mpeg he emailed me and I really wasn’t sure what to think of it, though it did sound to
dramatic to me. I told him I would think about it. The following week he sent me his idea for the film’s opening in mpeg via email.
My brief for Doug from the very beginning was to play opposite to the drama, thus the waltz idea, but for the opening title he sent me a smarmy, saccharin coated piece of music that just wanted to make me sick. I loved it.
OCTOBER
My online edit was fast approaching, but I was asked by the producer of the TAC commercial that I worked on as a 3rd AD, to come on board a Tropfest film as the 1st Ad that she was producing. It would be a good experience to develop another business contact as well as have the experience of firsting something this year, only problem was that it crossed my online dates, that are concrete, unless you are dying of something. My options where to say no or to swap with someone, I tried swapping with Iris, who was straight after me, she would think about it, but seeing It was only 2 days earlier than what she was going to do, Iris thought it would impact much on her film, so kindly said yes.
In the meantime, I had been looking for a sound designer, specifically for the Star Wars scene, but generally to enhance the whole film. I had contacted 2 sound designers earlier in the year, both where very busy, I visited one of them at Soundfirm and he was going to see if he had time, but had a feature that he was committed to, the other just was plain flat out as well. It took a week, but Soundfirm was too busy for him to commit. I then remembered that Adam Lee, an actor I had worked with several times,
mentioned to me that he had worked with a great sound designer, so I gave him a call and he sent me the name of Deanna Inkson, who I called straight away. D, as she likes to be called, had done varies VCA shorts in the past and was already working on a 3rd Year Major film, but we watched the cut on video without music and then with music and she was very keen to do the film, which is great to see that kind of enthusiasm. So I was set for sound and music. I did the 1st Ad role on the film for the 4 days, it was a good crew, little inexperienced, but we got there, and it was another opportunity to work with David H. again, who shot the film and a good opportunity for me.
Online Edit
I went straight into my online Edit the next day. Because of the dust and sparkle problem, as David Price promised, all my tapes where re-telecined with the new reels, that had finally arrived. The footage did look much better, but still was full of dust, the only problem was that the image had been transferred, but not the sound, so it meant for the re-compiling, it was going to take twice as long, because all the sound had to be captured separately from the old tapes. In the meantime, I had a plea for help from one of the post grad narrative students to come and help her edit her film, as she was not having much luck with it and Hugh suggested that I would be a good ally. Seeing my recompile was going to take several hours I spent them with Melissa, and reshaped the front of her film very quickly before jumping back to my online.
That afternoon, Nicki brought in her visual effects footage that looked great, and we edited them in manually, seeing there was no timecode, this was the only way to do it. It didn’t take too long, and we had to tighten the cuts up even further, as I had done some minor changes since I had given Nicki the footage, all that time ago.
David Hawkins then came in and we started grading the film, specifically with what I had dubbed ‘the snow storm scene’, because of the grain activity. This was the first time David H. had seen this and he was gob smacked (again), not able to verbalise for a full 3 minutes, till I told him to get over, because I had too! We brought the exposure down to make it much darker, which we did intend to do anyway, it helped, but not heaps just one of the many compromises I have learned to live with. We graded all the night scenes, and then went back to the beginning of the film for the first daylight scene. We had two options, to go for, a very yellow look, or very blue in the colour, it was an important decision, as it set up the feel for the whole film. I got Declan, the online operator, to do several options before finally deciding to go with the slightly dirty but warmer look and not the cold blue look, as it really set up the 70’s feel we where going for.
The next day, Declan and I continued with the grade (David H. had to go to work, but we had gotten through most of the film grading the day before) and then fixed titles and the final job, which took most to of the day was removing the dust and sparkle, which, as I said, was better, but still a big job. Declan was great.
Over the weekend, Declan did quicktime files for the sound designer and the composer, now that the visual effects shots where in. It meant the edit was slightly different and they would obviously need to take this into account, especially D, the sound designer.
I meet with Doug and we went through the music he had written and I asked him to make the Star Wars scene sound more Star Wars. We also talked about whether to have music all the way through or just in the bulk of it and decided that the ice scene and what was left of ghost scene, didn’t need it, neither did the brother disappearing scene. I promised to return the following weekend.
We had the music recording session booked for a tuesday, but of course it didn’t occur to me that it was Melbourne Cup day, so of course we couldn’t get our musicians to do it, so the booking was changed for the wednesday, the first day of my mix, which is not great, but can’t be helped.
I saw D again on the thursday and we did some ADR for Adult Alex’s therapy scenes. Because there was a very noisy wind on that day we shot it, the sound of it rushing air under the door, acted like a low level vibration in the background and D felt it was warranted a redo of these scenes. Later in the week she played this dialogue to me plus the sound design, it was all sounding good.
On the weekend I met Doug again. He has been juggling his final exams and portfolio presentation, plus the music for my film. It sounds great, only thing is that he
literally translated me when I asked for Star Wars music, I got Star Wars music, its too close now. So he turned the top end off and left the bass play, which didn’t sound so close and I suggested that he do a counter-point, being that he had a violin playing over the top of the Star Wars base, but continued to the next scene, it should be very interesting to see if it works.
Tomorrow is the mix and I have visited Doug the last time. All his music is fantastic, though I was still wasn't sure about the beginning of the Star Wars scene, so we re-scored that part there and then, it thinks its much better now and I am totally in love with the final scene, act 3’s music.
The SOUND MIX
Met with Mr Peter Frost, wednesday morning, for the 1st day of mixing. Deanna had already brought in the sound effects files and had them onto the system, I was very impressed by this, I think she has done a great job. Day one is pretty boring really, all Peter does is lay atmos and clean up dialogue and other incidental sounds that should or shouldn’t be there. This afternoon at 2pm, I have the recording session with the musicians we hired for the film, over at the music school in the recording lab. I did the music recording there last year, the engineer, who’s name is Myles, is great and he and Doug seem to have a great relationship. So at 2ish, I tell Pete I am disappearing over to listen to the recording, Kate meets me and we go over together. First hurdle, one of the musicians has only got an hour, I can’t believe that she thinks it will be all done in an hour. They start practicing, and its like, “oh my god” they better sound better then this”, but unfortunately they did not. The lead violinist, who was also the man that we organised the group through, was the main problem, they may be fine to play at weddings or corporate events, the usual waltz smultz, but playing original score was beyond them.
I popped back to see what Peter was upto and he advised to fire them immediately, so when I got back, Doug was looking like ‘where's the nearest window to jump out of’. and Myles was reading a book with one finger in his ear. Myles then played back some practice studio stuff that he and Doug had done last week, I suppose Doug hadn’t told me about it because it was for his benefit to practice his music and really I should pay for any recording sessions. In any respect, the minute I heard a good recording of what it should sound like, I ended the session. I was very polite and told them thanks for coming in and left it at that. I went back to the office, spoke to Peter again about somehow putting the last day of mix off, which was possible from his perspective, but it was verging on assessment day, so Kate and I bailed up Hugh (as you do) and he didn’t have a problem with it, if Jenny (Sabine, Head of School) didn’t. It appears that the problem lay in the fact that my last day of my project was meant to be the afternoon of my final day of mix, so I spoke to Carol (Gregory) and she asked me to put my request in writing as it really meant I was asking for an extension. I wrote the letter. Carol rang me that afternoon and said it was do-able, but to have it in asap Monday. Peter and I made a date for the following Sunday.
Mix Day 2. We were now working on sound effects, Doug was going to bring in his midi (electronic score) recordings at 1pm, so we started to play with the sound effects on the Star Wars scene and the adr on the therapy scene. My fear is that the adr sounds like adr, but I take Pete’s point, there is no movement or room sound, and that will make them more realistic. Peter has the funniest way of working, whereas I work through methodically from beginning to end, he jumps all over the place, when he gets bored with one scene he jumps to another, this drives me batty, but hey, he runs the show down here. Doug drops the CD in, it looks like an old coaster, as it has so many scratches on it, but it works and thats the important thing.
We drop the music in, it sounds great, it can only sound better with real instruments instead of synthesised violins and cellos. Peter is really impressed with the score and I am very excited by the combination of images, sound effects and music. The final minutes of the day, I have my first complete listen to the mix so far, it sounds great, but still a bit to go. Peter agrees we have a full day ahead of us next week and is very happy he has a day off to catch up with other crap projects tomorrow. Doug calls me to say he has found another group who are ex-vca and will do the recording for $300. I am bleeding money at the moment, but, as I said to Kate, I don’t want to compromise at this late stage. The booking has been set for monday at the recording studio and I pack our clothes into our car and drive my 8 months pregnant wife and my 12 year old off into the sunset for our first weekend away in over 12 months in the lofty mountains above Lorne on the great ocean Road.
CONCLUSION
Because my final day of mix is next week, obviously I am not going to be able to record the final day of mix in this diary. But in looking back on this long year, I can draw several conclusions as to the success and failure of the film and my master’s programme. I really think that as a film director, I am progressing on several fronts, I am definitely a stronger story-teller now from when I started this course 2 years ago, I am also much more confident with directing actors than I was a year ago, also with my confidence on set is much better, I have now been on enough sets to know the goings-ons and the order of how things happen (I probably was last year too) but I feel confident about it this year. In the writing department, I did feel confident about my script, then lost all confidence with the external assessors feedback. I think in hindsight she made some valid points, but were mixed in with her conservative perspectives that I really should of just ignored. Areas I need to improve. I need to be more confident in my ability as a writer and as a director, I am a serious self-doubter, but if I can’t believe in what I am doing, than why should anyone else. This will definitely help with situations like the pub day disaster, I just needed to pull myself together and get on with it, (which is what I did do), but not just go through the motions, really pull it off, otherwise I should just pack up and go home, which, in this case I probably should of done just that, because I knew what I was shooting, wasn’t working. I have a rock in my bathroom that has been engraved in a beautiful roman font just one word. ‘Trust’. I need to trust in my ability, I have learnt to let go and trust in the ability and talents of the people around me but I still don’t trust myself. This will be the next big step for me in order to succeed as a film maker. Was the year worth it, I would say yes, I got a lot out of the lectures, the people who trained us in writing and director, where fantastic, and in the end I think my film works and is a good film, and that all one can ask for, but the assessment is always subjective to the tastes of the viewers, and I can only hope they find my kind of slightly askew style of story-telling, palatable. Thanks for reading my 15, 268 words of rambling verbosity, I hope in some measure it has made the process clear.

ALMOST THE END!
All text ©2005

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Collapsing Sandcastle Scene

Saturday, July 19, 2008

As Time Goes On - half way home!

Thursday, June 12, 2008

As Time Goes On Early Sample Clip - Andy Killcross

As Time Goes On Music Video Clip - Production Stills

As Time Goes On Music Video Clip - Storyboards

As Time Goes On Music Video Clip - Andy Killcross

Life's Little Dramas - Poster ©2005

Life's Little Dramas - Production stills

Life's Little Dramas - Short Film Production Diary

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