Goodbye: Location Scouting

The other job I was able to get on with over the past month was finding locations for the outdoor scenes in Goodbye.

My requirements are simple: a green field, cheap parking, and close proximity to the second location (my flat).

Usefully there are two communal gardens within five minutes walk of my home. One offers everything Goodbye needs: With the added bonuses of continual traffic noise and trains running past one end every 10 minutes.

This meant travelling out of Camden and into Islington. This is where I found the perfect location in a large park.

Caledonian Park, Islington

This could be the best location for Goodbye. Pity about the cost.

The field was very large, parking was available outside the entrance, it was near to my home, there was little traffic noise, and there were long paths - useful in case of rain on the day, as Goodbye's actress could run along them instead of the path.

The downside is that the land is Council property, and so I'd need to get a permit to film there.

Like many areas in London, Islington is covered by the film liason company The FiLM Office. The Office proved extremely helpful, offering a permit for a four-hour shoot for £250. But a complete unwillingness to negotiate, and the requirement for taking our £5 million worth of insurance for the shoot.

As a backup I checked with Camden Council's film office (Camden - one of the largest boroughs in London - isn't covered by The FiLM Office). Their representatives wouldn't give me a firm figure, however that office's website said filming would cost is "From £125 per hour". Plus an administration fee. And insurance.

As you can tell, making a no-budget film can be somewhat expensive.

Thankfully, there may be a cheaper option - a local church, which has a picturesque garden. If you can crop out the building works. The downside is the land is part-owned by the council.

Church grounds

If you ignore the graves and the cheap fence, it's really rather lovely here.

If the church grounds are unobtainable, shooting Goodbye will cost means either finding someone who can loan me a very large garden, doing it guerilla style, or running lots of rehearsals before shooting begins. I'm leaning towards the final option.

And that means finding somewhere I can rehearse with the actors and DoP, that's not going to wipe out my meagre budget.

Scriptwriting in the UK: Make A Short Film?

Danny Stack – co-founder of the Red Planet Prize TV writing competition - has written an excellent need-to-know on making short films. It's not a long read, but it's packed with practical advice for new filmmakers.

Scriptwriting in the UK: Make A Short Film?

Goodbye: Storyboarding and sound

The reason this blog has been been quiet was down to December being a bit of a busy month. I work full time on a monthly magazine. My team and have four weeks to get an issue out. But due to the Christmas holidays, we began work on our last issue on 7 December and had to finish it on Christmas Eve. That meant late evenings and weekends stuck in the office. And after that a lack of internet access over the Christmas holiday itself meant blogging was a bit difficult.

Despite that work continued on my short, Goodbye, as I storyboarded it.

Given the short's format - three minutes long, and simple shots - storyboarding it isn't vital. But sketching out the shots helped definitely helped to develop my visualisation of the film. But, somewhat bizarrely, aurally.

As I drew (well as you can see below, "scrawled" would be a better description) the shots, I began paying close attention to what sounds would be needed.

Goodbye storyboar

On the left are sketches of shots, with notes to the right. In the left are details of the audio needed for each shot. The diagrams in the middle are camera plans.

As a viewer I focus my attention on dialogue, rather than a film's music or sound effects has caused me to pay little thought to sound in my scripts, handing control over to the director. This time I am the director, so ignoring sound effects would be dangerous.

So alongside series of shots on my storyboards, I added notes about what background noises would be required. And what microphones would be needed. If I hadn't have begun sketching out the shots, I'm not sure when I would have thought about the audio side of this film. Perhaps when filming was just about to start and someone asked me where the microphones were.

Storyboarding also made me realise there are two films I have to shoot: Goodbye and the home movie a character watches during it. Fortunately the home movie won't require much work. Relatively speaking.

Goodbye: Script Tank script reading

Script Tank script reading

For the past year I've been a regular at a writers' group called Script Tank.

I'll post about Script Tank at a later date. All you have to know is that this group differs from other writers' circles in that its members are all experienced, professional screenwriters, playwrights and script editors. And many also act, produce and direct.

I have gone to many writers' circles. Each time I found myself surrounded by amateur writers. Occasionally one was supportive and well-meaning and helpful, but often they came across as bitter, aggressive, critical, and jealous. (Especially when they found that I'm a journalist. Encountering someone who writes for a living seem to pour acid in the seeping wounds that were their egos.)

In short, rather than pushing other writers to higher level, the people in these groups did the best to pull people down.

Script Tank does the opposite. I have learnt more attending these meetings than I have from reading countless books, blog posts, and articles on screenwriting.

A few weeks ago I wrote a short film, and was lucky enough to have it read out at Script Tank.

The piece was three minutes long, and was written so it could be made for a no-budget production (roughly, under £500). It used two locations, three actors, and maybe four lines of dialogue.

It got a round of applause. A long one. And a series of wonderful comments - both praising and critiquing the work.

Having my script be that well-received by experience professional writers, was a sorely needed confidence booster.

Afterwards I felt secure that the script was good enough to rehearse at an acting workshop that weekend. And that I was right when I'd decided to make the film myself.

So now I'm starting on putting the film together. First stop is to figure out how much this'll all cost. And that means getting a location sorted out, and putting a team together to make it.


EDIT
7 Dec 09: Corrected title, Script Tank link and formatting.
6 Jan 10: Added labels. Corrected formatting.

National Minimum Wage and the UK film industry

Recently the UK's broadcasting union BECTU announced the results of an employment tribunal that confirmed 'expenses only' jobs are illegal.

The reason is they fall foul of the UK's National Minimum Wage law. This states that every worker who's on a company payroll should be paid between £3.57 (16-18 years old), £4.83 (18-21s) or £5.80 (for over 22s). And that a worker cannot opt out of being paid.

These days many people break into the UK's film and TVs industry by taking on unpaid work - either as interns or work placements - or crewing films under an 'expenses only' basis (food and travel costs are covered, and little else).

This report has been debated at length at the blog of actor Mickey Bee and through Shooting People's newsletter. Some are saying this is could be the death knell of the British film industry, because less films will get made because producers won't be able to secure enough funds to make their films. Others say it's just going to push producers to be more professional and actually pay their crews. And some claim the ruling is another example of class warfare, a reason why business should be run along Marxist lines, and/or interference from the UK's facist government.

What is concerning people is that crews in every film made in the UK should be paid the National Minimum Wage - it doesn't matter if you're hired to make a showreel or a feature films.

Now I think this ruling will be good for the industry. If HM Revenue & Customs enforce these rules using common sense.

If a producer is making any kind of commercial product - whether a feature film, a TV show, or a web serial - then they should raise the money to pay their crew before work begins. That's something any legitimate and professional producer has to accept and deal with.

However, there seems to be little point investigating and prosecuting a filmmaker who's making a short destined for the short film festival circuit and show reels, and won't see any direct income from it. Especially when their crew is aware they won't see any income from this, beyond travel expenses.

And I really can't see HMRC taking the time to do that. They've got bigger fish to fry. Of course, I have been wrong before.

The only bit of relief in sight is that freelancers aren't covered by these regulations. They can choose to work for effectively nothing, as they are the company they work for. But there is an question over who in a film crew can be classed as a freelancer.

The panic that this news created should calm down soon. But when it
does, hopefully more people will be more aware of what their
responsibilities and their rights are.