In which I become a movie mogul
Some of you might know that this mid-year break, instead of having a holiday from Uni, I took a Winter School course; it's called 'Australian Story' but it's pretty much identical to Video Production A. One semester crammed into 6 days, spread out over 3 weeks. And it was a lot of fun. The time compression put a lot of pressure on us, but to be honest, I don't think I could have handled this course if I'd done it as a semester unit. It also hammered home why Uncle Mike (professional in the field) has a problem with hiring media degree graduates; in 3 weeks, 6 days of which were in class learning, we had to shoot and edit a 2-5 minute 'documentary' around the theme of what it means to be an Australian. Assessment was done on submitting 10 shots (including a set minimum number of specific moving shots), 1 minute of interview, the final 'doco' and our production journal. I can't imagine taking 5 months to do so little work. The three weeks felt full because I'm learning as I go; now that I've got an idea of how it all works, I'd feel confident to do the same, and a longer project, in a week (assuming no other classes, of course.) Which is Mike's beef with B.Media graduates - they have little to no concept of the cost of shooting time, and mess about instead of getting in and doing it.
Anyway, the upshoot of this is, I've been buzzing with ideas. One is to shoot some interviews with old choristers and put together a form of documentary for AUCS, primarily as edited interviews that can be watched on the website, complete with archived recordings of the choir, interspersed photos, etc. I'm thinking of this as being my no-pressure learning project.
Then last Friday, I spent the day with a friend, Ross, who I met in first year. We both felt very similar frustrations with the Adelaide Uni media degree, and got on very well, but general life stuff means we've talked more on-line than seen each other off-line for the last year or so. Anyway, thinking through how I'd want to shoot this, and other ideas I've had for filming, I figured I would need a steady partner in crime, so dropped him a line and asked if he wanted to meet to discuss possibly shooting a film this summer.
One great thing I learned is that as long as I'm a student at Adelaide, I get access to the editing suites. They're in the Schultz building, and technically are open 24/7, but you actually need swipe card access to get in. However, all B. Media students automatically have swipe card access, and although I've stopped studying anything for the Media degree, my transcript still has me listed as being a double degree BA/BMedia. I checked with Philip Elms, who teaches video production, and he sees no issue with it, provided we don't use the editing suites when the video production students need them for course work. As we plan to film in December and edit in January/February, it's not going to be much of an issue.
So, the plan is to resurrect an old, high school jokey film idea, "Cuthbert the Beserker". The whole idea behind it was that it was a deliberately terrible fantasy film, full of awful effects, bad acting, etc. Things like a spell where Cuthbert is grown to giant size while being attacked by dogs: shots 'before spell' involve alsatians, labradors, greyhounds, etc, shots 'after spell' have corgis, chihuahuas etc. It will be a Truly Bad Film - literally, that's the name of our production company. We have no budget, and at the moment, no equipment (we can't borrow the University's equipment, sadly.) So now until December is pre-production: put together the script, find suitable locations, beg, borrow or cheaply acquire equipment, persuade various friends to lend us costumes, get smoogey with my friends in the Costumers Guild to try to con trick manipulate get them to agree to make specific costumes and props that we can use, determine which of our various friends and acquaintances are good enough actors to be worth filming but vain enough to do it simply for the thrill of seeing themselves on the screen, and generally do all the preproduction planning that needs to be done.
Here's what I think is the clever bit; once we've done the filming (and hopefully our preproduction will be good enough that we can do it all in one hit and not need to go back for any more), we'll edit it in sequence. The plan is to release it in 10 minute segments, aiming for at least one per week, posted on YouTube. Gives us editing deadlines, but also gives us a platform for it to be seen. The final thing (with extended scenes, etc, of course) we'll release as an entire movie, and hope that it gets picked up on the fandom/convention scene, much as "The Gamers" did.
The follow up is, having cut our teeth on that, next year we'll try for a more serious film, in the steam punk genre. It'll have the same issues with a total lack of budget, but hopefully the actual production values will be decent enough for it to be worth promoting in a serious manner, and possibly we'll be able to apply for some grants, funding from the Film Commission, or something like that. That's the plan, anyway.
So yeah, that's the kind of scary, but wildly exciting future for me at the moment. I've just committed myself to a big project, on top of studying, with someone who will push for it to keep going. Between the two of us, the momentum should keep things moving. It feels daunting, but at the same time, I'm almost bouncing in my seat with eagerness every time I think about it. Professionally speaking, statistics say it won't lead any where, but you never know, and if we don't do it and the chance comes along, we've lost it before we'll even see it.
So, any volunteers?
Anyway, the upshoot of this is, I've been buzzing with ideas. One is to shoot some interviews with old choristers and put together a form of documentary for AUCS, primarily as edited interviews that can be watched on the website, complete with archived recordings of the choir, interspersed photos, etc. I'm thinking of this as being my no-pressure learning project.
Then last Friday, I spent the day with a friend, Ross, who I met in first year. We both felt very similar frustrations with the Adelaide Uni media degree, and got on very well, but general life stuff means we've talked more on-line than seen each other off-line for the last year or so. Anyway, thinking through how I'd want to shoot this, and other ideas I've had for filming, I figured I would need a steady partner in crime, so dropped him a line and asked if he wanted to meet to discuss possibly shooting a film this summer.
One great thing I learned is that as long as I'm a student at Adelaide, I get access to the editing suites. They're in the Schultz building, and technically are open 24/7, but you actually need swipe card access to get in. However, all B. Media students automatically have swipe card access, and although I've stopped studying anything for the Media degree, my transcript still has me listed as being a double degree BA/BMedia. I checked with Philip Elms, who teaches video production, and he sees no issue with it, provided we don't use the editing suites when the video production students need them for course work. As we plan to film in December and edit in January/February, it's not going to be much of an issue.
So, the plan is to resurrect an old, high school jokey film idea, "Cuthbert the Beserker". The whole idea behind it was that it was a deliberately terrible fantasy film, full of awful effects, bad acting, etc. Things like a spell where Cuthbert is grown to giant size while being attacked by dogs: shots 'before spell' involve alsatians, labradors, greyhounds, etc, shots 'after spell' have corgis, chihuahuas etc. It will be a Truly Bad Film - literally, that's the name of our production company. We have no budget, and at the moment, no equipment (we can't borrow the University's equipment, sadly.) So now until December is pre-production: put together the script, find suitable locations, beg, borrow or cheaply acquire equipment, persuade various friends to lend us costumes, get smoogey with my friends in the Costumers Guild to try to con trick manipulate get them to agree to make specific costumes and props that we can use, determine which of our various friends and acquaintances are good enough actors to be worth filming but vain enough to do it simply for the thrill of seeing themselves on the screen, and generally do all the preproduction planning that needs to be done.
Here's what I think is the clever bit; once we've done the filming (and hopefully our preproduction will be good enough that we can do it all in one hit and not need to go back for any more), we'll edit it in sequence. The plan is to release it in 10 minute segments, aiming for at least one per week, posted on YouTube. Gives us editing deadlines, but also gives us a platform for it to be seen. The final thing (with extended scenes, etc, of course) we'll release as an entire movie, and hope that it gets picked up on the fandom/convention scene, much as "The Gamers" did.
The follow up is, having cut our teeth on that, next year we'll try for a more serious film, in the steam punk genre. It'll have the same issues with a total lack of budget, but hopefully the actual production values will be decent enough for it to be worth promoting in a serious manner, and possibly we'll be able to apply for some grants, funding from the Film Commission, or something like that. That's the plan, anyway.
So yeah, that's the kind of scary, but wildly exciting future for me at the moment. I've just committed myself to a big project, on top of studying, with someone who will push for it to keep going. Between the two of us, the momentum should keep things moving. It feels daunting, but at the same time, I'm almost bouncing in my seat with eagerness every time I think about it. Professionally speaking, statistics say it won't lead any where, but you never know, and if we don't do it and the chance comes along, we've lost it before we'll even see it.
So, any volunteers?