FOOL’S GOLD
For this years final project Nina and myself decided to work together. We had both written scripts but were unsure which script (or both) would make it into the pool of projects. We agreed that, whosever script we decide to work on the writer would direct it. “Fool’s Gold”, Nina’s script was in the pool and mine was not. SO… Nina would Direct whereas I would produce this piece.
PRE-PRODUCTION-
Beginnings pitch/skype call:
Nina and I got to work pretty quick. We wanted to work and finalise the script before doing anything else. So we tried. Putting too much of our time towards the script came back to hit us in the back. We were due to give a pitch presentation is front of the whole class and because we had put so much our our attention on the script, we didn't get much time to make a great presentation. We therefore put something together quickly.
The presentation didn't go as well as we’d like it to. We got quite a lot of feedback from both David and Eddie. As a producer I had to agree with the feedback I got. Nothing I had done was too detailed, especially the schedule. We were given an amber light.
I had a Skype meeting with Eddie the following week. We spoke mainly about the thing that I was finding most difficult - schedule. I had produced before but on a much smaller scale, and so I was a little overwhelmed. He told me exactly what to cover in the schedule and also that, when it comes to scheduling always work from the deadline back. I did what he said.
Locations:
We thought we had pretty much all the locations covered pre-production had even started. By this point we had the following:
Rachael’s bedroom
Living room
Rachael’s bathroom
Stranger 1’s bedroom
Alley way
This meant we needed one more location - the outside of a pub/bar/club. I spent a day researching local bars and pubs. that same day I called several ones including the Claddagh Ring and Gallery. The gallery never got back to me, and so I pursued the Claddagh Ring and acquired a location. Unfortunately, not long before shoot dates, we lost the apartment where Rachael’s living room and bathroom scened would take place. This meant that I would have to get other locations. After much deliberation and desperation, myself and nina decided to use our own living room to film in. It wasn’t ideal and were weren’t entirely happy about it but it’s a sacrifice we had to make. This left us with one more location to find once again - the bathroom. I asked Zane if we could use one of the bathrooms in his house, kindly he agreed to let us use it.
Crew:
Acquiring a crew wasn't too hard. One thing was for sure though, Patryk would be DoP. Since year one Patryk and I have worked on several projects, I trust him he trusts me, and so I trusted that Nina would also trust him. We went on the basis of, “we help you, you help us”. It just made things easier. The hardest aspect about crew was being able to schedule our shoot days for when everyone is free. Because everyone was filming at around the same time it made it a little hard to work around everyone’s schedule. However we made it!
Full list of crew
Miguel Fonseca - Producer
Nina Shaw - Writer/Director
Patryk Zabielski - Director of photography
Alexandra Fernandez - Editor
Ineta Muzikevičiutė - First AD
Lowri Woods - Sound Recordist
Rachael Lewis - Lighting
Zane Dedlow - Lighting
Ray Man - Composer
Lauren Gillespie - Runner
Cast and Casting:
I left Nina in charge of Casting. She went online and created a casting call advert. Luckily for us, in just 1-2 days masses of people were showing interest. We were feeling lucky! I scheduled two days for auditions. We auditions quite a few people, but not a lot in comparison to the numbers that responded to the casting all ad - some dropped out and other’s just didn’t turn up. During the course of the auditions we met at least five people we were really interested in.
We became really interested in a lady called Michelle. She was french with quite a strong accent, but that didn’t matter. From what we had seen she was almost perfect for the role. Not long after we learnt that she was not comfortable doing much of what was in the script. Subsequently, Nina tried to change some aspects of the script to fit the actress. Nina became quite frustrated because some things were crucial for the script. We spoke of the and I explained that she knows her story and her characters, and if those characters do certain things then they just do and it is a actresses job to adapt to that. We decided to let her go.
Nina emailed over 100 actresses days before the shoot and thats when we found our leading lady - Lela Bergeron. We watched he video audition and really liked her. Her north american accent seemed perfect for some reason. I listened when Nina spoke to her on the phone, she was wonderful and praised my paperwork and Nina’s writing. We were excited to work with her.
Mark Carroll impressed us from the moment he walked through the door. He seemed like a nice funny guy and played the role of John almost to perfection. Again, this was too good to be true. We hired him the same week of the auditions. After that I admit I wasn’t in contact with him much. the reason being that Nina and I were struggling to come to terms with Michelle and the script whilst balancing everything else. Mark Called me one day and as his right he asked as to why we had not been in contact much. I explained why, why said he understood but was being quite rude, both by phone and email. I promised to keep him in the loop at all times! His crude behaviour continued throughout the shoot. :S
We had found someone at the auditions to play MAN 1. However, he dropped out a week before the shoot. Luckily, Nina knows quite a lot of actors and we decided to offer the part to one of her good friends, Thom Rumbelow. He was keen to be a part of this film and so he agreed to play Man 1.
Chris Rochester played Tall Man. We liked him from the audition and he was always happy to be a part of out film so there were no difficulties casting for Tall Man.
Final cast list:
Lela Bergeron - Rachael
Mark Carroll - John
Chris Rochester - Tall Man
Thom Rumbelow - Man 1
Legalities:
I used a template to make release forms for both location and talent. I got all actors to read through the contract thoroughly and sing it. So they did. I also got a location release form that I asked the Claddagh Ring manager, Finbar, to sign the paper also. When shooting on location outside the Claddagh Ring, there were other customer outside the pub. I spoke to each of them individually. I explained that I had booked to film there at this time and if they were not comfortable being on camera, if they could kindly move to a different table. They were all fine to be on camera and so I got them to sign release forms.
Props/Costume/ Equipment:
Finding Equipment was easy. I booked all the equipment we need from the loan store and also used our DoP’s canon camera.
I also booked a visit to the props loan store where we found loads of little props to create a more homely ambiance whilst shooting in the living room.
Costume wise, we asked our actors if they were comfortable bringing something of their own. They all agreed, and so Nina discussed costume with them all.
Other Paper work:
As a producer I was also in charge of creating call sheets and shooting schedule. It took me years to do so. working out what to film when, and they when to have the right costume changes. There are just so many things to consider. I did get there in the end however!
FILMING:
We shot the film over a course of three days, form the 1st to the 2nd of April. We had planned on shooting a week prior to that, however due to crew schedules and also problems with finding an actress we had to push it back one week. I scheduled each day rationally I believe, allowing for mistakes and lateness.
Day 1 - April 1st 2014
So first day shoot was here and we seemed more than ready to shoot scene 3. Nina, Rachael (our housemate who also worked on lighting) and myself drove to the location with us we took all the equipment. Whilst they set up some things I quickly went to the shop where I bought drinks and some snacks. It was only a short shoot so I bought only little supplements. Some of the crew were late. That was not the biggest problem however. When scheduling I had no given thought to the time change meaning we would have longer days. I was expecting the sun to be down by 7:30. This was not the case, we were now behind schedule, but still managed to finish before time. Though this was problem, It wasn't something significant, I had given enough time for mistakes and extra shots. The only thing that made it worse was Mark behaving as though he did not want to be there always complaining about time. We all tried to comfort him but he secluded himself from the cast and crew. I realise that maybe not keeping in contact with him before made him behave this way. But I had spoken to him after and he seemed fine, so I didn't understand why we were getting such arrogance from him, even towards those who had never met him. All in all we finished before time and i was pretty confident in what we had gotten.
Day 2 - April 2nd 2014
The first day Went a lot Smoother. We were ahead of schedule pretty much the whole day. On this day we shot 3 scenes: 1,6 and 7.
We started by shooting scene 1 in my old bedroom, this was Lela’s and Thom’s only scene together, a sex scene. They both seemed really comfortable and got along pretty well. it was a funny shoot, but we got it done.
Soon after I began to get the food ready with the help of Rachael. Had everyone fed and comfortable before we headed out to our next location to shoot scene 6. We arrived at the Claddagh Ring pub on time and finished before schedule. This was the first time we worked with Chris who played the role of Man 1. Here I also had to take care of some legalities as mentioned before. I had to make sure that the pubs customers were comfortable being on camera as extras - the were and so they signed release forms.
We then moved onto scene 7 where we continued shooting with Lela and Chris. In this scene Lela’s character has sex with Chris’ character in an alley way. This shoot was a little tricky because of sound and lighting. However we managed to sort out most problems. Once again we finished on time and everyone seemed pleased. I even overheard some of the crew saying how this was the smoothest shoot they had been on so far. this made me extremely happy but also the realisation that film is what I have chosen to do for the rest of my life.
DAY 3 - April 3rd 2014
The 3rd and last day of production. This was the longest day we so far. Call time was 12 pm. We got snacks and drinks for everyone. Some of the crew were late and for this part of the day we only needed one cast member - Lela. at Zane’s house we filmed 4 short scenes that were all in the bathroom. We went a little over schedule but were overall happy with what we had. At this point I was enjoying it so much I did not want to finish shooting.
I messaged Mark saying that due to the sunlight that call time had changed to a later time. he agreed and said it was all fine. He turned up half an hour before the original call time, and therefore had to wait for the sun to go down for around 2 hours. I could see he was getting a little frustrated. We made food for everyone and all sat around the table - all but one. Mark preferred to sit outside and refused most of the food offered. Although I thought he was being unreasonable I sucked up my pride and kept on making sure I was doing everything to make him feel comfortable. I offered food and drinks plenty of times… he only took a coffee. once it was nearly time to shoot, he decided to walk into the kitchen and say “Where are the biscuits? I’ve been here for two bloody hours and I’m bloody starving”. This was not the worse for me however. Whilst at rehearsing, I walking into the living room to see how Nina was getting along. What I saw infuriated me! As Nina was giving him directions, Mark sat on the sofa and played with his phone. I wanted to say something but for the sake of the film i had to suck up my pride once again. I let it happen just in case he decided to walk out on us if we said anything.
Anyway… enough nagging. Finally the darkness was upon us and we could start shooting. I kept a careful watch on time as we were over schedule. Before we began I asked the cast and crew to be quiet for a short while for me to explain how things wee going to run in order to make back time. Everyone was excellent, they took what I said and did just that. We finished before schedule one again.
Post Production:
After we shot everything Nina and I gave ourselves one day to relax and then got back to work. We went into edit right after the relaxing day. I was very impressed with how fast the edit was going, due to the fact that myself and Nina both have jobs it was harder being able to the there to make sure everything is going as it should. Time was used efficiently.
Whilst the editing was in progress, I began working on a poster. I asked nina how she would like it, and explained that she would like to maintain the style of the film.
The edit was finished on the day of submission. Unfortunately I could not be there as I was at work that day. I asked to be emailed or be sent a youtube private link so that I could watch it whilst on my work break. So I did. I watched the film in an internet cafe. I was extremely proud of the progress, but there were some things that i thought needed to twigging still. Once I finished watching it I spoke to my director on the phone and sad what I thought needed changing. Nina agreed and those changes were made. Then I was Happy and gave my “Go Ahead” for submission.
This has probably been my favourite project to work on since i started university. I am extremely proud of the film though there are things I wish we could have done differently. However they are very minor things and I don't believe will impact the film much in a negative way. I only wish I could have had a little more creative control. However i respected that this was Nina’s baby. She had written, she knew exactly what she wanted.
Production and pre-production documents:
Other projects:
I worked on four other projects: Ray’s and Lauren’s; Lowri’s and Tomi’s; Hana’s and Claudia’s; and Ineta’s and Patryk’s.
Ray’s and Lauren’s:
On this project I helped out on casting. It was quite interesting to see other people acting a different story since i had been so focussed on my project. It was nice being able to work with Ray and Lauren as we are great friends outside of university.
Lowri’s and Tomi’s:
In this Project I did something I love to do but usually am to scared to do - acting. I played the younger brother of one of the main character’s in they film. This character was a gangster-wanna-be type of guy so it was quite fun. As much as it was enjoyable to work on this project I felt as though Tomi as a director was a little lost, he directions were very brief and usually not to the point.
Hana’s and Caludia’s:
On this project I worked as a sound recordist/boom operator. I had done sound many times before, but it had been so long since i had last done it that my arms started to hurt. This was an extremely fun set to be on especially because the film is a comedy. I felt as though Claudia is a strong but cautious director and is always happy to hear anyones suggestions, but she knows what she wants and is not afraid to say no! :D I was Also happy to see Hana Briggs being a producer, she was always right on top of everything and worked hard to keep everyone comfortable.
Patryk’s and Ineta’s:
This might have been my favourite project to have worked on. I worked the role of gaffer all I did on tho set was to arrange the lighting the director and DoP thought appropriate. Although I was only needed mainly for the set up, I thoroughly enjoying just listening to Millicent and Kenneth (Patryk’s documentary subjects).
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