Martin Lejeune - Film Maker

Last night I had the pleasure of being in the audience of the Bristol Sitcom Trials. A project that takes script submissions and whittles down the five best to be performed live on stage. The scripts had to be 10 minutes long with a cliff hanger and a five minute resolution. We saw the ten minute scenes and then voted on which sitcom got to show its final scene.

It was a really fun evening and not just a great opportunity for people to amuse me but for writers to get peer feedback on their work. There are so many writing competitions out there offering fantastic development deals or fabulous cash prizes but very rarely do they bother to give feedback on why your script didn’t make it. Unfortunately I only found out about the competition the day before it closed when I was two thirds of the way into writing my pilot script.

So the five sitcoms -

“Shock Treatment” by Richard Dowling
Dr S. Lime is a Bond quoting therapist who takes on an apprentice who questions his working practices. It’s always hard to be the first out the gate and the cast did a good job some great moments like the doctor flicking fag ash on a patient wanting to give up smoking.

“The Tragic Life of Roger Bulwark” by Luke Cedar
This started out terribly clichéd with the titular Roger wanting to ask a girl out but manage to rise above it when he suspects the girl may be behind a robbery being investigated. Oh and he has an imaginary friend.

“Whitecoats” by Katie Boyles

Two pharmacy workers bicker about how much pride to take in their work. Probably the most ‘SitCom’ of the lot with it being very character and dialogue focused.

“Games Night” by Ed Campbell
A women gets very competitive when her brother comes over to play monopoly and her husband realises he knows the brothers date. I couldn’t help feeling it was a set up I’d seen before with competitive siblings and would have liked to have seen more time given to the secondary characters.

“Making Heavy Weather” by Eddie Robson & Julie Bower

A scientist and a repair woman are assigned to a space station that controls earths weather have to deal with a religious fanatic who thinks it should be left to god alone. I have to say this was my personal favourite by a country mile. The two women in the leads had instantly defined characters the snooty scientist with delusions of grandeur and  the IT girl who has to put up with her constant bitching. The grounded characters allowed the over the top story and setting to really work. 

Here is a compilation of the entries and the winner in video form:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSKXQ632i1o

So some guys stateside are developing a digital bolex camera like the old 16mm cameras that I am far too young to remember. 16mm film never went out with a bang or a whimper and a lot of people agree that they’ll be a dedicated group shooting film until the end of time.

Five or so years ago me and filmmaker chum Ornsack would try and work out how various HD mediums compared to the 16mm film stocks that we read people like Sam Raimi started out on always hoping something would come along and match it and to be honest we’re happy enough with DSLR’s.

In many ways these days it’s not about the camera but the cameraman and the lighting kit. You can buy a manual camera for under a grand and get brilliant images out of it but of course they have limitations such as the compressed codec it records on too.

I love the idea of shooting RAW and having more colour space is no bad thing when it comes to shooting visual effects or for colour grading. According to Philip Blooms review you’ll get about 10 minutes of footage on a 32gb compact flash or about the same as if you were rolling film which I suppose is like getting nostalgic for a Comadore 64 and being presented with the loading times again ie not the bit you were fond of.

Saying that getting into the discipline of shooting as if on film is no bad thing if it forces people to be more organised about how they shoot. So a camera that shoots RAW sounds very exciting especially if it falls between the DSLRs and the RED price wise as an option for independent features in the next few years. So if you fancy throwing some money at a camera that doesn’t exist yet but would be pretty nifty if it did then check out the kickstarter campaign.

Hello blog, sorry I’ve been crap recently I’ve been busy, I shot a short action movie and then moved to another city.

an action movie? That sounds very interesting why not blog about that? we like reading your blogs about how you make films?

yes that is a fair point and I shall make an effort to do just that. It was also suggested I write a blog post on how moving to Bristol has effected my creativity. (sounds like bullshit I know, but it was suggested)

Well my computer was in a box and my girlfriend told me off whenever I tried to film anything.

(She didn’t really tell me off. She’s lovely)

Now what about Flat Footed Apocalypse? (Woo FFA that’s our favourite!) Well it has had a successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe and is now gone on its merry way in the world to screen at other festivals as well as now being on youtube. 

Flat Footed Apocalypse will be screening at the CINE Fringe film festival in Edinburgh on August 15th, 20th and 25th as part of their ‘Films From The Edge’ Collection. 

Heres what they have to say:

The details of our film screenings can now be announced!

We have 5 different screenings this year, each with a different theme which we will rotate each day.

Each film screening will start at 16:30 in City 1 of Sweet Grassmarket, EH1 2JF. They will contain a selection of films and last approximately an hour.

In addition to this we will be running a few workshops. The brief description of each screening and workshop is below.

FILMS FROM THE EDGE

Some film screenings are a slice of life… this one is a slice of cake! Five films from across the UK showcase the best in upcoming Thrillers and Comedy.

The perfect blend of thrills and spills these shorts explore themes of friendship, betrayal, murder, mystery, and downright silliness that could only be found at the Edinburgh Fringe. AUGUST 15th, 20th, 25th (16:30)

So whilst I was making ‘Flat Footed Apocalypse’ me and the girlfriend were talking about what to do next, I’ve got a couple of scripts in various stages but we want to do another period piece since it is something we have the skills and resources to do reasonable well on a limited budget, What with her being a costume designer and me being alright at the ol’ VFX.

One of the first things the script (as its first draft stands) calls for is the firing of a flintlock pistol. Now since I neither have any such pistols nor trust actors with things that go bang I decided to have a go at doing these digitally.

To do this I collected a couple of sample pieces from various films that have featured them as well as scouring youtube for videos of such guns in action and went through them frame by frame.

Working out what happened in each frame made it straight forward to break it down and recreate as a sequence similar to an animation rather than be overwhelmed by the many different processes happening at the same time.

I’ve had some great feedback from people more familiar with firearms then myself, mainly that there should be much more smoke and interestingly the trigger hammer would need to be pulled back by the shooter rather than happen when the trigger is pulled as this technology was only introduced a hundred years after our film is set. But overall there wasn’t anything in the test that would taken them out of the movie if they’d seen it in a film.  

It’s been a great week, we’ve had a lot of feedback about the film, our first festival acceptance and we were the most watched film on virgin media shorts last week. Thanks Everyone!

The film is now live on the Virgin Media Shorts site!

Last week I spoke about editing the film. Today we’re on the ‘polishing’ I mentioned. Specifically the colour grading.

We had a very clear idea going into filming of the sort of style we were after. A high contrast desaturated palette similar to films like ‘Children of Men’  and ‘28 Days Later’. We also used a fast shutter speed to get the same sharp look as the later as short hand to establish that we were in the post apocalyptic genre setting.

Having a look in mind before shooting is very important as it allows you to plan the final look rather than simply hoping for the best. One mistake we made was putting the male lead in a black t-shirt which rather quickly lost its detail with the high contrast.

The days we shot had the mixed blessing of being overcast. This really gave us the washed out look we were after but with the added downside of inconsistent light. Some of our shots have bright sun whilst others take place during rain. The first thing I did in the grading process was to go through and match the brightness and contrast as best I could.

Once that was done it was then time to add the ‘look’ firstly by desaturating the shots to a consistent amount between -30 and -50  then by adding an adjustment layer in after effects with a hard contrast which would then be consistent.

As a result of the weather we had some highly exposed shots that gave us white skies with little or no cloud remaining visible, as well as not looking as cinematic as the other shots in the  sequence, these shots stood out as having less contrast. What was decided was to go back and do sky replacements on some shots and simply adding more contrast to the top part of others.

For the sky replacements I was able to use the white-out sky as a matte to place still images of clouds  behind the performer.

It’s a step that a lot of shorts seem to overlook but I find it vital to get the most out of digital equipment as well as keeping a consistent look. Some filmmakers I’ve spoken to consider it “fixing it in post” or cheating which is odd as colour timing, the process of developing film under different coloured lights for similar results is something cinema has been doing for decades.

So with the shoot wrapped its on to the final edit. I’ve assembled the scenes into the running order but am now faced with a new problem: I’ve got to get the film down from 4mins 30sec to 2mins 20sec.

The  first thing to go is a potentially unneeded opening sequence and a somewhat clunky last shot conceived for titles to play over at the end. The next is a sequence of dialogue which whilst nice, is slightly redundant. Finally, there are two shots where the character of Mark holds his hand out the same way which offers us another useful snipping point to loose a good thirty seconds of dialogue.


Finally I show the rough cut to another film-maker to get feedback. Then with an even finer tooth comb I go back through every line and cut any out I think we can do without. Mark originally said “The worlds gone to hell Amy, It was always going to end this way, We were just waiting to see who would go first, I’m sorry you’ll be on your own” and I am quite surprised at how much more powerful it is once the first half was trimmed. It’s more powerful to hear the consequences without being told that the worlds “gone to hell”.

Looking back through every shot I find every unneeded frame, such as spaces after lines of dialogue which may only be six or twelve frames long but after tightening  up gave me enough room for two lots of credits.

You don’t read much about the editing process, often because it’s simply one person and a work station moving pieces of footage about. It’s not that nothing happens indeed; it is arguably where the film really gets made, everything that comes before being preparation and what comes after  polishing; but it is not easy to discuss the cuts and choices made without sitting you down and showing you all the footage recorded as well as what has been kept and whilst I disagree, I’m told internet blog readers don’t have that much of an attention span… =P

Next Monday I’ll be writing a bit on the process of colour grading the short.