We just finished our third shoot and it went pretty well. It took place largely in a very cramped hallway with hot lights, tripod and reflectors all getting in the way so we didn’t film as long as I would have liked.
Cramped
It was probably one of the more frustrating shoots we’ve done. The tight quarters and the fact that we used my own house made it difficult. I find using the place you live to shoot can be stifling, its hard to see it with fresh eye’s.
The star, Neil O’Shea, having make up applied by Kate Ring
We shot about five hours a day over two days and I have been shooting about another five hours of pick up shots over the past few days. from the initial shoot we got about 17 gb of footage. so much of it is useless but it feels good to have a large amount of back up.
Reflector, Sam Mcnally
This was the first shoot that I borrowed and tried some diffuse lights, they only reach about 150 watt daylight. I definitely have made some pretty large errors while using them, the light was far too intense in some scenes making some footage basically worthless. Really I think natural light with only the reflector may have been better but the sunlight was changing by the second so that would surely have caused other problems. Either way the lights were an interesting learning experience even if incredibly stressful.
Neil O’Shea
The edit is going well at this point and I hope to have something to show for it all shortly.
The Underground film festival 2015 got underway yesterday with made in Cork 1 and sci-fi/horror categories screening in Camden Palace.
There were some brilliant films in both these categories and it was especially encouraging to see so many high quality shorts from here in Cork. I will link to the tickets and brochure pages below so check them out. I got genuinely freaked out by some of the horror shorts, especially the smiling man by A.J. Briones.
For the next week the underground film festival is going to be showing shorts and features primarily in Camden palace. I will be projecting for the festival for about half the week and it is certainly the most fun I’ve had volunteering for the festival so far. There has been a lot of hard work put in by everyone at this point and it shows.
birds eye view from projection box
The cinema looks good and there is a lively atmosphere in Camden on the nights. The two events I am really excited for that have yet to come are made in Cork 2 and the Cork made feature film Dead Dogs directed by Ian Ruby. It really is a very unique opportunity to see a lot of films that wouldn’t usually be shown on the big screen.
I would strongly encourage coming to see the feature film Dead Dogs on Monday night the 24th of August at 9:30 pm and the made in Cork shorts playing on the same night at 8:00 pm.
Thanks for reading and be sure to click on the links for the festival below.
In this post I’m going to go through a few of the things that I really enjoyed about Fury Road. I have heard more people than I expected had a problem with the film, the main one being that it was boring or else overly simplistic. I can see why people felt this way about the film but I would make the argument that their criticisms are among Fury Roads greatest strengths. I have read the backstory on some characters but I have not read any of the supporting works there may be and I have not seen previous Mad Max films so this is just Fury Road. Im about to spoil the main plot.
So the big criticism of Fury Road I hear is that the plot is too simple overall. Max, Furiosa, Immortan Joes slave wives and eventually Nox, are all fleeing Joe for a Green Place where Furiosa claims to have grown up. On the way they find out it is turned to swampland. They decide to surprise their pursuers by driving straight back past them and taking control of the stronghold.
Max on the front of Nox’s car
While the plot is simple I think what saves it is the characters and their implied histories. We have max, alone and haunted by memories of people he could not save, presumably whatever small tribe he was part of. Furiosa, a slave soldier who has chosen this time to escape Immortan Joes regime. Immortan Joe is our wasteland dictator antagonist, seemingly in constant discomfort with visible difficulty breathing. Each one of these characters have very clear desires. Max wants to be left alone with his thoughts. Furiosa wants to break the cycle of pain and sex slavery by returning to her birthplace and attempting to absolve herself of her actions under Joe. Joe wants to maintain his tight control over his domain but especially wants his “property” or wives back.
Immortan Joe
What then happens is these characters then go on an almost non stop high speed chase across the desert of a post apocalyptic world.
The world they exist in has so many nice subtle hints about what has happened. Mad Max is a very visual movie, I read some backstory on the characters afterward and there are visual clues to the past events of their lives all around. That is what makes the world of Fury Road feel so real, over the top but at the same time very lived in.
Maxs slave tattoo
The film is filled with examples of this, like when Max is caught for the first time all his useful details are tattooed to his back. With this we are given so much implied information. For example, they have the means to test blood, they have a society that functions while looking insanely chaotic, they are slave based and probably have been for some time, do all slaves have these lists of qualities tattooed on their back? It’s a small example of the world building but thats the key, there are many sprinkled throughout the film.
Along with that there are nice moments throughout the film between characters. Max and Furiosa had my favourite moment together. Toward the end when they are running back through their pursuers max is caught by Furiosa before he goes under the wheels of a car. As with all their other moments they are basically non verbal but it is clear that she has come to care for and respect Max (mainly because she was stabbed through the side while holding him and didn’t let go). Furiosa fights to kill him at the start, I don’t think Max wanted to kill her but obviously Furiosa was not taking chances with who was pursuing her.
Furiosa before fighting Max
So naturally as movies go they help each other out over the film and learn to trust each other and eventually save each others lives. None of this is ever really discussed between the characters! thats why I think this is such a great film. It’s all so visual, our protagonists barely talk and we still get their relationships arc while they are booting it across the desert pursued by maniacs.
I think that all these things mean that this movie cant really be boring, it may be simple but simple is not boring. If someone didn’t like it I would say it has to be that they either weren’t paying much attention or it just wasn’t the film for them. I know this has been pretty much a love letter to Fury Road but it really is one of my favourite movies for a long time.
Thanks for reading,
Patrick
P.S. The colour correction post production on the film is a really interesting story too, the night time scenes were shot during the day for example, check out the link to it below.
Quick update about the upcoming shoot. We have a decent enough script now that probably needs only another rewrite and then a few tweaks. we will have a crew of at least five this time making it the biggest crew to date. There will hopefully be production shots to post this time. Were hoping to shoot from 26th to the 28th of August. The script is short so were going to concentrate on doing our best with what we have and taking our time with each shot.
The script has changed considerably, it may not be horror but its pretty gross. I think it is also a little funnier than the other shorts we’ve made.
so until the shoot I guess, heres a picture of a wasp trying to chew through a mouse cable.
Gonna talk a little about one of the animations I did for my degree show in 2015, posted here:
I displayed the animation above on a 1998 sony cctv monitor. I’m interested in how brief we are as living things and thats why I chose such simple animation and mundane subject matter. I filmed people through a one way window and then animated them. It is basically rotoscoping but rather than using all the expensive software I just separated the video into frames using photoshop. Then I printed them out and individually traced them using a light tablet.
light tablet
It was simple but still a pain in the ass to finish. the animation above is about 750 drawings not including all the rejected ones. Then scan them all in individually.
The cctv monitor, box below contains speakers.
I used a Sumvision cyclone micro 2+ media player to play it through and a BNC to scart cable to connect it to the monitor. At one point with about a day to set up I thought I wasn’t going to be able to use the monitor and I despaired, got it running thanks to another student though.
wires were all eventually hidden
I enjoyed the technical aspects of setting up my space. It was nice to do a little less conceptual problem solving.
back of the cctv monitor
Thats basically it for the cctv piece I did for my degree. I’ll post later on about the projection it shared the space with. I would really like to make a short film using this animation technique but it would have to be seriously well thought out, I wouldn’t want to invest a lot of time and effort into something that was fundamentally flawed. I think with the right script though it could be a really funky way to make a short.
