Another long delayed update, sorry. What’s been happening?

Well, Vince Pope (from Beetroot Music) is busy doing the music for the film. I sat down in the studio with him last week (Tuesday 9th June) to see what direction the music needed to go into. Watching the film with the rough music ideas was exciting. Music is so important.

I’ve been editing the poster a bit and got one printed out (for £45!). It looks great though, so I’ve made some tweaks to it, and will be sending it off to a print factory to get a whole lot of them printed out.

Yesterday I met up with Pete Wallington outside City Hall (London) to take some plates of the city that I’ll be compositing into the backgrounds (as we originally filmed on the Northbank). Talking of compositing, I’ve also met up with Chris Andrews who I’ll be working together with on the visual effects for this film. It’s going to be epic because of his work load, but I’m confident.

I’ve already started on some of the more easier ones like compositing in televisions. Oh, and if you’re interested, here’s an image of the poster. The detail is probably to small to see properly at such a low resoultion, but it’s actual size is 30 by 40 inches; massive!

Click on the image to enlarge.

It’s been a while since my last blog update. I’m sorry to all those that visit regularly (I can see the blog stats). I’m back now and here’s an update.

First of all, Howard Berry has finished the edit for the film. He’s just doing a few tweaks here and there and doing some motion graphics for it now.

I’ve given this edit to Vince Pope, who will hopefully be doing the music and sound for this.

Once Howard has finished preparing the shots needed to do visual effects with, he’ll send it over to Chris Andrews and me to do our CG magic on.

It’s going to be tight, in regards to meeting film festival deadlines. The good thing is, there’s lots of festivals througout the year so it shouldn’t be a problem.

I’ve also registered a website for the film. It’s currently just a sort of holder page, but it should soon have images, trailer, screening info and other promo stuff.
Check it out at ShatteredPieces.com

I’ve been inactive for a week, just trying to recover while tying up the last few bits and bobs after production. 

I’ve also given the last lot of footage to Howard Berry (the editor) and finally got to watch the rushes myself! I have to say, it does look great. It’s probably going to be 3-4 weeks before I see the first rough cut of the film. I’m feel really impatient, but I’ve just got to wait.
I’m both excited and scared.

While Howard edits, I’m researching on visual effects techniques, currently crowd simulation. I think I’m getting the hang of it.

Anyway, there’s probably not going to be many updates until I actually start doing the visual effects shots with Chris Andrews, which is probably going to be in about two weeks. Until then, we’ve all just got to wait. Sorry about the brief sentences. Brain drain.

KC and Andrew Ormerod, decided that it was best to start shooting on Friday night, rather than the Saturday. My call time was 7pm at the office interior (in The Cannon Street Business Centre), to tell Andrew Ormes how I wanted it dressed, and work out any last minute things with the crew.

Then, it was off to our first shoot location; the office exterior at Aldermanbury Square (different to the interior). This first scene we were shooting was supposed to have a crowd of Londoners evacuating the city. I wasn’t expecting many people; I had asked for about 50, and then use camera lenses and angles with visual effects to enhance it. Instead, only about 15 people turned up! The weather and late night were probably to blame, but I was lost. We tried it a few times, and it looked really bad.

After a bit of thinking between Pete and myself, we came up with ways to try and make do with what we had. From what I saw on the monitor, it looked quite cool, but I have a feeling there will be a need for a lot of post-production work.

My hero of the day has to be Chris Andrews. Unfortunately, our original “visual effects supervisor”, who I won’t name, didn’t bother to turn up to any of the shoots. Luckily, I know my visual effects so I had managed on those days, but I really needed somebody to supervise this crowd scene while I focussed on directing. A few hours before the shoot, Chris got in contact with me asking me if I needed help with post-production. I asked if he could actually help with the production as well, and he said yes. The bonus is, he actually turned up and was a big help. Thanks Chris!

While I’m thanking people, I’d like to thank the extras that came and were so patient in the cold, doing one take after another. It wouldn’t be a crowd of people without you.
Thanks also goes out to Jacqui Adams for looking after the extras for us.

We finished the crowd scene at about 12am, thanked and sent the extras home, and then it was back to shoot the scene in the office interior. It was better than most of the other shoots, as it was indoors, dry and warm, but it was during the night so the whole crew were fighting sleepiness.

I am always a “crazy” person, but I think I went even crazier than usual that night. It was hard. We finished the office scene at about 6am. We needed to shoot a newsroom scene, so we thought we might as well do it on the same night in the office. We put up a not-so-green-screen on the wall (it had a lot of yellow in it), and Pete tried his magic to make it evenly lit and not look too yellow.

Lubna Milne, who I had never met before the shoot, played the newsreader. She was such a professional, and we filmed it fairly quickly.

I can’t remember when, but we finished earlier than scheduled. I ended up getting home at about 9am. Went straight to bed, and woke up at 5pm. The night shoots mess up my brain. I can’t tell what day or time it is. I felt like it was afternoon, when it was really 11pm. Our next and final shoot started at 4am on the Sunday, but that will be talked about in my next post.

Here’s some production stills taken by Andrew Ormerod: