Directors log

Thursday 7th October 1999/ Friday 8th October

My position is announced. I am to direct a film based on a myth or fairytale. My group consists of Stacey, Paul and Heather and I am their artistic leader. Reel with shock at this revelation. I have great support for the journey I am about to embark upon. The first logical step is to get loads of fairytales and myths. The next day I make a start of sorts. I looked into the only mythical book I have, some bible a Jehovah’s witness gave me. Really it was a ploy to get him to go away. A stroll through the jumble of pages for about three quaters of an hour, stumbling along it’s deep and twisted contents, Richard and Judy purring away in the background. I note down the odd story, mainly because of their dark and sordid tales that it outlines. I end up with little to show for my brief journey into the mind of God.

There’s a story where two virgin angels appear and go around Lots house and have a feast. All the people from the village from old to young gather around the house and say ‘Bring them out to us so we may have intercourse with them’. Lot goes outside but shuts the door. He says ‘Please do not act badly. I have here two daughters who have never had intercourse with a man.’ and tries to persuade them to go away. The randy mob won’t take no for an answer and try to break in but they go blind and tire themselves out trying to get in. We never heard that one at Sunday school!

There is another story about two daughters getting their Dad drunk and getting pregnant by him. This doesn’t sound that feasible to recreate for the purpose of film nor is anything else I found really or put to Paul later that day. Stories such as wives telling their husbands to sleep with their maid servants in order to get children by them are the only options I’ve created for myself thus far. So I decide to look at more traditional fairy stories while I’m at home for the weekend.

Tuesday 12th October 1999

After an unsuccessful search through all my old kids books the day before I return to Barnsley after my forced absence. After Broadcast I head for the library and, more importantly, for the humoungous database that is the internet. I find a site with loads and loads of fairy tales on it and print loads off. A fair portion of that night is spent looking through them. Nothing really grabs me by the testicles and says ‘make me into a film’. I am struggling for inspiration almost a week into the project. To add to my self made confusion I hear through JD that the groups have changed and I’m not sure who I’ll be working with. With any luck one of them will have a wonderful idea for adaptation but I haven’t given up yet.

Wednesday

Sit down on the settee in my room listening to the Orb and working through all the fairy stories. Not much grabs the attention really.

Thursday 14th

This is the day when our product is born, perhaps not born, conceived anyway. Will it be a flourishing individual or a still birth? It’s my responsibility ultimately. The idea is quite a simple one. Adam is it’s generator and we decide to adapt the well known Hare and Tortoise tale. It’ll be in a slapstick style. It is simply the best idea we have. The other contenders are thrown out easily.

For some reason my less than assertive personality surfaces and I melt into the backwaters of the conversation when I’m meant to be the leader. Decisions are made around me and I seem to be in a haze. Looking back I can’t work out why, it’s probably because I haven’t got that many ideas for stories to base the thing on. This isn’t through lack of trying and reeling through loads of stories about various elves, virgins, mermaids living happily ever after, princes etc. etc. I’d devoted quite some time looking for inspiration but nothing was happening. The lack of coming to the lesson with an real idea of what to base it on, a vision, meant I was wishy washy rather than striking. Anyway the Hare and the Tortoise seemed the best idea we had and everyone else saw a bit of comedy in the idea so their infusiasm it was definitely the way to go.

21st October 1999

I’m not sure what to make of today really although it clearly isn’t the greatest day in the history of directing. Well...it might have been for someone else...far far away. I started the day reasonably assured about what we were doing. A simple tale about a man dressed as a cross between an athlete and a hare against a really fat man who stumbles along. But my head is not transported into paper on this supposed Treatment handing in deadline that I found out about on the way to college.

It all builds up and I sense a real underlying resistance to it all. Then I’m kind of shivering in my shell again rather than leading from the front. The big guns are called in and Alf and Ian are throwing ideas at me and concern is rising. I’m never overruled and everyone stays within their technical roles as concerned citizens. The main problem that they pointed out it wouldn’t work was the lack of motivation behind the race, which looking back, I can see the point. Looking back is always easier than looking forward, unless you’re crossing a road.

People are suggesting a much more formal and boring approach. My mind has vague impressions of what people were saying to me: two pubs in a village, one called the hare the other I dunno...tortoise I suppose. I know that if I was to let this happen the film would be theirs, not mine. I slink off to the refectory, where my battered and reflective psyche collects itself slightly. This is direction, not democracy. I decide not to care what they think as long as they don’t mutiny or fart near me, it doesn’t matter. But my mind is also changed slightly. The basic idea is there but it needs development. It is a child surrounded by adults and needs to grow up fast.

If there was some kind of motivation behind the piece then my vision of running around Barnsley dressed as a weird comical hare then I’m convinced it would work. This is the main stumbling block. My old idea is dying and being replaced by a fresh life around me. I know that just having a blatant Hare V Tortoise set up, described as such won’t work as the audience will know what is going to happen. The recovery process has started but I still feel I am 8 inches tall and about to be crushed by everyone.





Everyone thinks this imaginative interpretation of the story will not work due to the perceived pointlessness of the whole operation. There doesn’t seem to be a point to what they are doing. This causes unsatisfied murmuring withing the groups and the higher ranks. I leave college trying to figure out what the hell has happened.

But after watching a bit of Neighbours and eating a stir fry I collect myself and decide to fight. I’ve been crap so far today, I can’t change that. I have to work myself out of the abysmal situation I’ve put myself into. Hours into the night are spent drafting a script and thinking about how things would work, what didn’t work and why. Time doesn’t matter, it’s productivity that counts. But my productivity takes a matter of time. I rack my brain and consider anything that drops into my skull. Formulating, plotting, scheming, writing.

By the time it hits three o’clock I have a script and a treatment. It is pretty much as it is now. I’m surprised how strange it came out but it should be pretty cool. Go to bed and sleep easy. with just a shadow of anxiety as to the outcome of the product and the reaction of others. A day of two halves. The day I stop learning is the day I die. 

Friday

College is not open today. The buildings are there but the people are not. Not the people I need to see or, more to the point, the person I need to see. I’ll need to print them off and get in touch with Adam tomorrow to set the wheels in motion. Adam is the man I need to communicate with to lubricate the wheels before they grind to a halt and rust into a distant memory. Quite poetic that, weren’t it? What I meant to say was I had to see Adam to get loads of stuff sorted. Several problems with this. He hasn’t got a phone and if he did I hadn’t got his number and our phone was knackered. I decided not to phone him. I could pop around his house, but I only have a vague idea of where he lives and picking out his house at random would be like winning the lottery but marginally less rewarding. I print off my script, read it and think ‘My God, what was I doing last night!’. I go to the information bit of the college on the second floor of the Old Mill lane. The FBI office bit. Like a student needing to know where another student lives (nice metaphor) I approach the desk. I explain my situation. The lady looks blankly at me, I fill her face with information that she cannot understand. I decide to stop talking in French.

They cannot give details of fellow students out to anyone but this script must get to him. It is a big ask and I am demanding quite a lot from Adam. Reading week could prove crucial. I don’t want to spring this on the producer who would only have a couple of days to get hare costumes, hats, police helmets, a witch outfit and all the other stuff that we need.

In the end I work out a way to get it to him. I pay for a stamp and hand the script and skeleton style treatment to the people who are at the desk. Then they will send it on to him. I wrote a letter to Adam too, giving him my home number in case he got a phone.

Reading week

In between games of tombraider and other reading activities I work out large portions of the production in terms of shots and positions. These I formulate in the way of scoreboards. Well it starts of in the nearly recognisable form of story boards and gradually degenerates into little figures drawn on uneven boxes on lined paper. Still I feel progress was made even if I probably will have to explain them to JD at a later time.

Wednesday 3rd November

Today is a shopping trip with a difference. The difference is I’m looking for a whole bunch of cheesy props. The witch is essentially sorted, I thought it wise to do this before Halloween but now it has passed and suddenly it’s Christmas. The pound shop seems unproductive this time, the best I could do in terms of animal costumes is a pair of reindeer antlers. Charity shops are the way ahead. The first one I walk in I find something which is beyond my dreams and expectations. A big, pink, hare. Most impressive of all is his head is just bigger than the size of an average actor so can be cut off and used for it’s intended purpose. Other key elements are picked up in this improbable shopping venture. A policeman’s hat - 80p from Scope and a small tortoise like in the electricity ad for 50p. This is the best I can do in the tortoise department. I walk to Adams (I’ve now sussed out where he lives) shunning myself not for having the T-shirt with this tortoise character on. It’s still in Coventry. Adam wasn’t in and we haven’t been in touch since before reading week. It has been a bit frustrating as, by now, the vision is set the task is to get it into reality. Or should that be surrealatity? A strange moment or two in the garden when, dressed as a cross between a policeman and a witch, I start attacking a cuddly toy with a kitchen knife. The bobbles fly everywhere. This toy could have been bought by a loving child but now it’s being assassinated by a strangely dressed knife wielding lunatic. It will make it’s college debut tomorrow.

Thursday 4th November

Feels like a dawn to a different day from my last Thursday in college. I still am slightly anxious as I’m waltzing in with a completely mad idea. Everyone still remembers the woeful lack of progress that was made a fortnight ago. Anyway today is a new game and I feel in control. An air of bemusement reacts to my script written a fortnight ago. I read the reaction on Debbies face with some interest as it seems to be the most extreme reaction of this. JD likes it anyway, I’d E-mailed it to him ages ago. Anyway I’m in charge and that’s what we’re doing.

Discussions with the producer are the next step. We enter the script into some complicated computer programme with a great deal of assistance from Ian. We have to change the format of it slightly so the computer will pick it up. All my INTERIORs should be INT’s and they are in the wrong place. I also learnt to be more clear about the settings in scripts and to number streets and rooms and making each setting individual. It’s all part of the wider concept of getting thoughts into a form that anyone can understand and ironing out the confused edges. After that we work on the logistical considerations to do with settings, props etc kicks in. Adam weaves his computer magic. A schedule is formulated.

An interesting footnote to the day is when JD and I walk into Honeywell learning centre dressed as a weird type of hare and a witch. Neither of us can see where we’re going or see the sense of shock that surrounds us. The odd giggle penetrates my cuddly toy haven.

Tuesday 9th November 1999

At ten in the morning I find myself in the little room above the old studio with Adam by my side. I’m quite impressed by his commitment as he’s blatantly hungover and bleary eyed but still turned up and is sharp enough to complete the paperwork. He says something along the lines that there’s no way he would have turned up in a similar scenario last year after a hard night in Hedonism. I hardly remember seeing him last year. Perhaps I was hungover too.

At around twelve hours later I find myself standing outside my house in the cold drinking Kia-Ora. I assess the locations fully to consolidate everything and work it through exactly in my mind. The bulk of the logical thinking has been undergone in the last few days but I completely finalise it so there is absolutely no doubt in my mind and no room for confusion.

Wednesday 10th November 1999

Filming and confusion! The store room is surrounded by whores of media students wanting things and no one is replying. We wait around for ages. Malcom is in charge of equipment and we make a last minute decision to change to the supercam. All in all it takes about an hour of faffing around before half of us pile into Helens beetle and head for today’s location, western street. It’s all been worked out and we will be exploiting the walls upon the sides of the houses. The road is lined with two walls which are no parking zones. It’s a safe, bland yet sensible backdrop for the first parts of today’s event (blob chase and witch) and relatively quiet. Not so much in sound terms as sound isn’t that much of an issue today more in terms of being stared at. Some strange glances are inevitable but it’s quite funny to wave at the cars that go by every now and then.

Then the schedule of the day is thrown into a flickering memory as we run out of batteries for the supercam lasted about ten minutes each. This means there is a drastic change of plan and we decide to film the interior shots. This catches me off my guard completely as I haven’t got it all straight in my head yet in terms of logistics and camera positions. There is a hint of the confusion and bewilderment that surfaces due to it not being worked out. It takes about ten minutes and a cup of tea for me to work it all out and tell everyone what’s going on. I end up apologising for this brief delay as I hadn’t thought it through.

November 11th.

Filming was a bunch of fun today and a right laugh. Right from filming the slightly embarrassed Adam walk down a street with his trousers down (and forcing him to do a couple of unnecessary takes for amusement purposes) it went pretty smoothly. We shot some outside shots of the garden and toffee crisps and me running around. I also did that strange thing with the cone and the rubbish outside too. Interior shots are the gorilla impersonation, the mysterious shaving foam scenario and the infamous ‘heavy legs’ encounter. We ended the day by filming the news bit and the shopkeepers response to the tortoise/ ninja turtle’s request for a fashionable garment. All in all a great deal of progress was made.

16th November 1999

This was the next day we could film as the equipment was booked out on the Monday and last Friday. Despite this extra time a woeful lack of progress is made. We are all over the show and haven’t planned this to the full extent. The lack of Helen’s car means we have to lug the equipment around so the planned schedule of the shops and cinema seems really unfeasible and unlikely. In the end we have one extra scene in the can - the getting up from the start of the dream sequence. For some reason we don’t record sound (I’ve completely forgotten why but there was a form of logic behind it) and we will have to dub in over afterwards. This isn’t a great problem as we have to record several sound effects anyway.

17th November 1999

We can’t film today as Helen is going to the England game. She’s in charge of security or something. The day is lost but I spend bits of it making sure the essential day of tomorrow will go without any hassle. This is not due to not having faith in Adam but more along the lines of reassurance and making one hundred per cent sure for the sake of my own mental health if nothing else. There is also a location change as I negotiate with a shop nearer the cinema rather than the sandwich shop that is about 3/4 of a mile away. It seems more logical to do it along the same area as the cinema is open from 1 so we’ll do that last. I also check with the manager at the Odeon to make sure we can use his doors.

Thursday 18th

Today is critical. From ten until about the end of college we are busy filming. The first thing we do is the fashion policeman. After the first shot J tries frantically to white balance but a state of desperation registers on his face. It was to turn out to be a significant (and extremely annoying) event in the making of the film. Other shots are gathered too. The heavy legs across the road and then we move on to the shop scenes.

I can’t remember the order we filmed it in but in the next couple of hours we have filmed the shots required with the spraycan and the tail end scenes. The woman from the petshop makes us all a nice cup of tea and we can afford a brief moment of relaxation before hassling innocent pigeons. Then we move on to the cinema.

There isn’t a lot to say about that really. It’s just an average tilt down from sign then enter shot with pretty much the same set-up for me leaving. We also record Adams latest struggle with his now legendary heavy legs.

We end the day by recording the hands/leaves scenario. This is the strangest part of the film and I’m not sure whether it will be at all funny, but it’s worth doing. Make up consists of permanent marker smudged on Adams face and I take a couple of stills to remember the moments by. After today we have recorded all the shots apart from the cinema interior. This mock up would have been recorded, I believe, if we hadn’t had several fire alarms going off at awkward times. The delay meant that half the people had to go home and the equipment was due in.

Friday 19th November

Today I start to prepare for the epic edit week that is due next week by logging around half the material. I also recorded the titles of the news onto an old VHS tape.

Monday 22nd November

The edit process started today. There was a false start as we put down the first three edits on assemble. A basic mistake but we’re basic people. It sets us back about half an hour or so then it’s time to start editing again. We end the day with about a minute of film to our name. It’s up to the end of the first sequence.

Wednesday 24th

After lessons dictated a day away from editing yesterday the process continues again today. By the end of the day we have up to the gorilla impersonating scene as I stayed until after hours to put it together. In other areas a vast amount of time was spent on getting the remaining shot we required - the cinema interior. This involves the booking of a room, equipment and Alf wonderfully provides us with a projector and a reel of old coronation street. The timing of this event originally was very tight anyway - about half an hour. The tape was in the wrong place from our efforts in the edit suite, and there’s the endless points of setting the shot and moving the projector at the right place. Time is bearing down on us and we hear the stirring of students purring outside, waiting for their three o’clock lesson. As a final element the film got twisted through the projector so it would no longer project. We were cutting it very fine anyway (we had an hour to get the shot in the room and that was before we even had a projector sorted) and find ourselves dumped outside the lesson with our equipment. But we’ve gone this far - we need to go all the way else all the cinema footage is void. All that is holding us back is the lack of a room. 

Very shortly we are lugging our equipment to a new location and set up the shot at a more leisurely pace. The camera just says ‘low light’ so we decide to take the tape to the edit suite to look at the results before packing away the equipment and giving back the projector. The resulting feet of footage is fine and everyone is relived. I feel well like a director as I’ve forced people to

Thursday 25th

Today is another critical day. I decide very early on that I won’t leave college until it’s done or I get kicked out. Editing runs smoothly at first, then jerkily and then it stops. There are numerous decisions to be made about the effects used on the dream sequence. The transition between the two sets of material and the caption itself. Further complications arise when we discover that the white wipe with blurred edges we have chosen blocks out the caption we will require. In the end we have to record some white and play it through the player so the caption will be over it. It’s the only way I could think to achieve the effect of caption fading in from the white wiped background.

The next problem is there is an absence of control track for about 15 seconds slap in the middle of the tape we are using. I consult with Mr Ashdown who suggests assembly editing with in points over this section, but we are unsure whether they’ll be a glitch between the two different control tracks. In the end I leave the assembly edit running while I go and grab some food at the refectory. It works fine (no glitches) but I’m still puzzled by the temporary absence of the control track in the first place.

Despite the problems we have a cut of the product, without sound in places, no music and it’s around seven and a half minute long. I’m not sure what happened then but there was something about Dennis saying that it would fail at it’s present duration. It’s creeping up to four and we have to record some sound anyway, the effects and dialogue. We book out the required gear and grab Ryan away from his computer in the learning centre.
‘Right Ryan, laugh’ is the instruction and the levels are set by Helen. Ryan laughs for about three minutes then there’s a couple of bizarre moments as we have a mock fight in the edit suite and hit our own hands and groan. Ry starts to punch a black box and it makes a great thumping sound. Other sound effects are gathered too. ‘Adults’ going ‘ahluulalala’ and ‘ping!’ to simulate the sounds an average witch makes when she moves from place to place (not that this has been particularly researched).

The day ends with me in the edit suite alone working out what must be cut in order to get the product down to the required amount. I start to lay this down on a new tape and am about to embark on the dream sequence when I get booted out of the suite.

In the evening I worked out music. I have had a vague idea of it’s content for quite a while but time is tight and I will have to know exactly where we need and what we need. Towards the latter stages of the day I sense a slightly defeatist attitude to the film’s completion in terms of the completion before tomorrow’s deadline and it does look harsh. I’ll fight to the bitter end, there’s nothing else I can do.

Friday 26th

Deadline day and a long one is in prospect. Start at 9 am by recording the music required for the production. I lay it down over the main hare running sequences (the link before the witch and the epic blob chase). Then I lay down the remainder of the visuals. It comes in at just over the six minute mark. Helen arrives just after I have put the jazz track over the dream sequence and I play it her back in it’s provisional state. The music’s at a wonky level and so we re-record it and it manages to be worse! After little thought we decide to move on to the sound effects stage and spend time synching the various beating sounds and ‘ping’s to their right locations.

The product is certainly taking shape - and so it should be! The main gaping hole in it is the absence of ambience as the sound track of large patches of it is pure silence. It’s very strange. So we go to John and get ourselves a mirance and go outside. It happens to be the most windy day imaginable and we are getting absolutely nowhere. We try to see if Jaz is in to see if he’s got any soundtrack. Someone in the staffroom directs us back to John as they have a sound library on Dat tapes. We search the index book and select, I think it was country lane traffic noises and John gets us the tape. The problem is that the Dat machine is on loan to a group who are departing to film in about half an hour and buried in the back of their car. A swift negotiation and it is in our hands. The problem is that neither of us has ever used it before and John only has a vague idea of which leads plug into the edit suite or whatever.

John lurks about in the edit suite trying not to burst out laughing as Malcom, who repeats his saying ‘the blind leading the blind’ fumbles around with wires and all kinds of things. After a massive effort we finally have the sound from the Dat registering on the mixer so we slap in a tape and record our ambience. 

We lay down the ambience over the required segments, trying to insure it is at a ambient level then we make a mistake. We forget to put an outpoint and it overruns into the dialogue of the policeman. Actually it might have been the dream music that over ran but there’s a bit of a cock up anyway, which actually works in our favour.

At this stage the hare waited around for a moment after the end of his unnecessarily surreal dream and we cut this by overlaying the policeman segment before this. Then I take a break as Debbie is back from her Broadcast lesson. I leave it in the capable hands of her and Helen who review the material we have and re-record some of the sound I put on earlier at the wrong levels.

The next job is to put the caption at the end. We are running out of time but we have a version that is hand-inable it’s just a matter of how good the sound is. We would have re-recorded the first heavy legs dialogue but decide to run off some copys and hand the thing in. Then I finally go home where I sleep for 16 hours before typing up the rest of an incredibly long log.