I must confess that the start of this project was a bit of a
slow burn for me, but I’ve always had an idea tucked away just in case the
worst occurred. I just couldn’t fill in all the blanks.
The idea I had involved a guitar and a mentor like figure.
Those two factors always stuck with me no matter how the narrative changed. You
see as I watched the films shown to me on the Tuesday sessions, I waited for
that first one to really connect with me. Force
Majure was good, but I never felt truly inspired by it. I hated Dogtooth, Metro Manila was good but samey and Ida was just straight up dull. Finally, we came across Rust and
Bone.
Something about that film just clicked for me. I loved the
colour and style, I thought it was extremely well paced, and I liked how the
characters weren’t perfect people as they were believably flawed, but I think I
just gravitated to the central theme of the movie: loss.
I started picking apart that topic specifically, analysing
it and looking how I could incorporate it into my own film. What if the mentor
character had lost a limb in my film? What if that prevented them from playing
the guitar? As I explored that, I realised this also linked with Force Majure as that film dealt with
loss of place and identity. What is a guitarist if they cannot play the guitar?
What can they be when their aspiration is impossible?
So what I had at this point was two characters. An older
person who had lost their hand and was unable to do what they loved, and a
secondary character that they would interact with. The secondary character had
to have some relation to the first character, so I kept playing with the idea
of using the guitar. What if the second character couldn’t play the guitar?
What if the main character had to teach them without the use of their hand?
A little before this came to me I had seen School of Rock again, starring Jack
Black. The use of instruments and music to help build the relationship the main
character has with the children really stuck out to me. I used this element in the narrative, but having the mentor teach the pupil basics of the guitar so they had something to connect too. But
what also stood out to me was one of the key central points of the movie;
finding a sense of place.
The Jack Black character is disillusioned with his failure
to make it big as a rock star, so he attempts to live his dream through children,
but soon finds that he himself enjoys teaching and passing on his talents to a
younger generation. He finds a new place in life not from what he originally
intended, but finds another one still involved in the things he loves the
most. There is a real message there that
I love and I think is something that is really important for people to
understand.
So with those two factors, my film had taken new life and I
had my story. A former guitar player who lost her hand stumbles across a guitar
player just starting out and tries to teach her some basics of playing the
guitar, while maybe just finding a new role for herself in the process. Now
came to actually writing the thing.
The script had been difficult to say the least. The main
issue was that I wasn’t completely sure how to finish the story. I knew I
wanted an ending as I despised films like White
Ribbon for chickening out of completing their narratives due to a lack of
forethought, or simple pretentiousness.
So early on I hired a cinematographer (Luke David Sims) as I
don’t enjoy shooting my own work and we discussed the film. Originally there
was a third character in the film that was the best friend of the former
guitarist. They acted as exposition and they talked about where the character
was at this time. Luke argued that the entire section was unnecessary, and he
felt it should be cut since the rest of the story didn’t need it. The more I
read it, the more I agreed, but I saved the interaction to be used in future
work since I quite liked it. The reason it didn't work though was time restraints as the film would have gone well over 5 minutes, and the fact that you can say what needs to be said in this scene through visuals alone.
As you can also see, the original script called for the
guitarist to be male. I actually wanted a female at first but I thought an
actress would be harder to get. I mentioned this to Luke who hooked me up with
an actress that he knew and so I made the decision to change the gender back.
I’m honestly happy with these changes since the film is more focused, and
looking back at the edit, there was no way that scene was gonna fit in the 5
minute gap of the edit. Better it was cut there and then.
Link to full Script
I also threw together a rough storyboard to help visualise
specific moments in the film. It’s rough as it always is, as it’s a tiny visual
aid rather than a shot for shot remake of what I want to have happen. It gives
me more creative freedom too in the space I’ve got.
So now we move onto the filming. I had assembled my crew,
but Luke backed out several days before and then the actress he got me backed
out literally the day before. I had to find another on short notice and
thankfully I was able to do so. It did leave me quite stressed before the shoot
though. Thankfully, there were no more cancellations.
Alex Burgess and Tom Hayes worked sound, and Alex Sutcliffe
and Laura Voelker worked on cinematography for me. We all met up at the Hoe and
filmed at one of the nearby park benches. I liked the location as it gave us
free space but also a specific focus point where we could avoid outside people.
It took a moment for the shoot to actually kick into gear as we had some
miscommunications and technical issues at the start; namely stuff on the sensor
that left marks on the screen. I would have to remove those in post. I could
never remove them entirely but I definitely minimalized the markings.
Thankfully, as filming continued we all started to find our
groove. The actresses got on well with each other and both were easy to work
with. Everybody was on the ball for the most part, apart from a rather sleepy
Tom who could have put more effort in keeping the boom mic focused on the actresses.
Filming went over 5 hours and we finished right on time for everyone to leave.
I would film some later portions with Kate (former guitarist character) at the
burned down house and the green screen cove later, but that only took roughly
two hours in total.
In terms of the film, I aimed to keep the colour mostly there like Rust and Bone did. Force Majure did this too as too films with lots of drama, but didn't feel the need to drain the colour from their scenes. I also liked this in Do the Right Thing as the streets were overly colourful. The cinematography is very basic though, I didn't want to distract from the performance of the actors but having tilted shots and fast cuts. The films is told through these two people and the dialogue they share, something I thought Rust and Bone and School of Rock did very well. Although, like Rust and Bone I knew that having one or two shots focus on the missing limb in question told more than a thousand words.
Then we got to the dreaded edit. This part took longer than
I expected. First off, we tried a trick to key out Kate’s hand by having her
wear a bright pink glove and getting rid of it in post. However, I
underestimated lighting as the glove was in many shades of pink now, making
keying nearly impossible. Thankfully we filmed a different shot where she hides
her hand in her sleeve so I just used that instead.
Another problem was the length of the film after I finished
the edit was six minutes long. I was told I had a thirty-second leniency, which
worked for me so I had to cut thirty seconds off my film. I ended up cutting one exchange between the two actresses and a shortening a few shots to make up the time. Then I realised I
hadn’t put a very early intro scene into the movie yet.
By this point the film was just too long to include it so it
remained on the cutting room floor. Plus, the green screen didn’t look perfect
for this shot either. Just a little too dodgy. Apart from that though the rest
of the edit was mostly smooth sailing until I ran into After Effects trying to
get rid of the smudges and the marks. It wouldn’t let me sync my footage so I had
to finish, export the film then place it in after effects again. Then exporting
the film was a nightmare too, but eventually it paid off. I will be looking to do it again though by
syncing the footage as the after effects export has slightly lowered the
footage quality.
So how did this project go overall? This is actually one of
my proudest pieces of work. I got to really focus on dialogue in this movie,
which is something I just haven’t had the opportunity to do before. I worked
with my biggest crew ever and actresses not contacted through Marjons, which
was a big step for me. Finally, I really think what I tried to tell with this
story came through and I really hope others who watch the film can see what I
was trying to say.
Update: Sadly, due to an error where her hand was visible for a shot, a lot of people seemed to lose focus on the message on the film. This is a failure on my part, however, I wont let it discourage me. Instead, I'll learn from this mistake and do better next time.
