Why the Puma logo? Is it because I have about 4 Puma hoodies in different colours? Even though I'm wearing one now (my favourite green one if you're curious) - no that's not the reason for the Puma logo, nor is it the fact that they sponsor my lovely boys in black and white...
No, the reason for the picture of the Puma logo is because this brand is about branding. We are currently working with a local graphic designer on branding the film. What does branding a film look like? I don't know, the Pissheads logo was based on beer branding and do in some ways was an obvious concept - though Keltie Cochrane did a tremendous job fulfilling our brief. This time the theme isn't as obvious - so I'm dying to see what the team comes up with... We've talked tents, boobs, beer, badgers and bongs - you can't get better than that!
As soon as we have the branding/ logo sorted, we'll roll it out across the marketing materials and we'll also release the trailer. The trailer is done, and just waiting for the branding, it'll be here first! The film itself is undergoing the sound edit at the minute and pretty much on schedule for a programme of screenings this summer - I'm actually getting pretty freaking psyched at the prospect of showing it to a proper audience. It's very much an experimental film so I'm excited to see if people like it. If not - well at least we tried, we tried to do something different rather than a formulaic derivative piece of junk! Aaah we'll find out soon enough!
No picture on this blog - controversial! Just a quick update on where we are at right now. I know I haven't posted for a while - this was due to David being away in Leeds, which meant no work on the edit and me being ILL - which meant no work on the project really. So where are we now? Well David and James have spent the last couple of weeks fine cutting and I think we are just about at picture lock.
We are going to collect the animated sequence from Ashleigh next week - which we will then edit into the rest of the project and once that is done I guess we will be picture locked (or thereabouts) - the reason for my vagueness being that we are using TONS of temp music at the minute and lots of the scenes are cut to that music... which will need to be replaced before we release - which of course will impact the cut a little.
We've had a couple of very informal screenings and the feedback has been generally positive, which is great, fingers crossed it's still that way when we show it for real! What else?
James and David spent yesterday (and will spend the rest of this week) working on a trailer for the film which we'll "premiere" on here and then rejig the website to accommodate. Finally we are looking towards ADR, sound edit, mix and then the grade...
Exciting times ahead - we are aiming to start the screenings in the Summer - a bit of counter-programming with the Euros and Olympics???
Yesterday we shot the last major sequence from the film. From the start, this sequence was *always* going to be shot outside principle photography because, well mainly because principle photography was really short (8 days) and also because it's a flashback to Pob and Staggy as kids and I knew it would take ages to find the right boys.
A shit photo taken by me
DoP Richy Reay (playing the shopkeeper) gives chase
As recently as late January, I was beginning to panic that I'd never find them; I had tried a few casting companies, drama schools and what-not and I was drawing a blank at every turn - and then a coincidence...
A friend of mine posted on Facebook that she was thrilled her son had got the lead role in a local theatre production, I didn't even know her son was into acting. We auditioned Dylan and his mate Torin and as well as a physical resemblance they had just the right amount of mischief for the roles. So we booked the day, rang the ever helpful Ashley at Pinball Films to borrow his jib arm and then went location scouting. James and I spent an afternoon traipsing around the alleys of Walker but we couldn't find what we were looking for - the crappier parts of Walker have all been knocked down or regenerated lately so we gave up on reality and came closer to home. A few more hours driving around our beloved Bensham and we came across a fabulous alley just of Saltwell Road. Red brick oppression on 3 sides.
Anyway recreating the 1980s in an anonymous alley isn't too hard, so we managed without a big crew. In fact this was the smallest crew yet: just me, James, Richy (who was acting in this scene too), Dougie and Dryden. Needless to say, without the extra bodies, we cracked through the sequence of 3 scenes really quickly and we wrapped two hours early! This little shoot brought our number of shooting days to fourteen (including the two reshoot days) - which in some ways is silly considering principle photography was only 8 days, but 3 of the extra days related to new scenes that weren't even written when we shot in the summer and another was yesterday - which as I said was always an extra day. Then as you'll know if you've been following this production from the start we had some major problems in production - so really it's not too shabby at all.
David is up from Leeds at the weekend and then we'll sit and put the new footage into the timeline; and at that point we will pretty much have the entire film in front of us for the first time and then we'll know if we have anymore shots to pick up. From there it's on to final cut, the grade and the mix... the finish line is well and truly in sight.
Thanks Tina for the wonga
Right before we get into it, let me start upfront by saying I appreciate that everyone needs to make a living. I'm not some silver spooned rich kid living in Kensington dahling - I have a mortgage and kids that need feeding just like everyone else. Sometimes though people take the piss - this happens on both sides of the relationship.
Unscrupulous filmmakers lining their pockets while expecting everyone to work for nothing (and yes I know people worked for nothing on this - but we didn't take any money either, paid where we could and have designed an equity share for all cast and crew); then there's the other side - which in this case involves - you've guessed it, music.
While editing David, James and I have suggested various bits of music as temp score - this is temporary music that we use to pace the edit and to convey mood while we wait for picture lock and then do the music for real. Now as people who've made dozens of films between us, we are not so naive to think that we are actually going to be able to afford the Bob Dylan song we are using at the minute or the Stone Roses - but there was one song that I really hoped we'd manage to swing. It's by a fairly obscure contemporary artist on a small independent label and though I knew we'd be asked to pay for it - I really hoped it would be within our means. So yesterday, I contacted the label - explained the film, mentioned the budget figure and basically tried to appeal to their better nature - which clearly didn't work... they came back with a price THREE TIMES TOTAL BUDGET OF THE FILM! Now whatever budget you are on from £500 to £500,000,000 - at what point does paying three times the entire cost of the film for one song make financial sense???
I may be stupid but really??? 3 times the budget, on one song? Errr no thanks. Either they really don't want us to use the song (maybe they HATE this film) or they are just a bunch of charlatans... it's mad, it really is. But as ever there's a silver lining - the no last night sparked a great idea in my head and James agreed that it's a much better direction to take the soundtrack- and so we live to fight another day.
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