Lazarus Day 4 T-2
Oh My God the title isn’t just ‘Day 3’! What horrible, unexpected thing happened this time to throw the production off on a curve? Er… Nothing. It’s just that this post is way, way to long for one hit so I’ve broken it down into slightly more manageable sections. In the back of my mind I can already here Mark screaming at his monitor “Get on with it!” So with out further a do.
So Widley was a big day! A monster day! A day like no other! Well in my experience certainly for Beacon. You’d be surprised how many times I‘ve been to fort Widley with a handful of cars filled with zombies and guns. Never the less, this undertaking required a little more organisation than the average shooting day.
With the cancellation of the bunker 2 weeks previous, a number of scenes that had been earmarked for that shoot had been moved to the fort. This increased the already large volume of footage that we needed to shoot at the location. We were about to try something never done before!
At the start of the year Beacon had picked up a second broadcast quality camera. We were going to use them both! (Okay so that’s never done before by Beacon Productions, loads of productions use two or more cameras, but for us it was a first) For the majority of the day we would simply shoot all scenes with the two cameras. Thus reducing the number of times we’d need to run through each scene. At a key point in the day we’d split into two units and shot scenes independently. This was to be my directorial début as I got to lead off the lead off the second unit.
Obviously since this hadn’t been done before a certain amount of pre-preparation was required. It should be noted that I am intimately familiar with the fort. Due to this familiarity, the sections of the script that I intended to happen at the Widley had been written with the forts actual geography in mind. Each location in the script corresponded to a room or corridor in the fort. Unfortunately the director had never been to the location (attempts to organise a reccy previous to the shooting day had failed horribly) at least I had detailed maps for him to look at. Two days before the shoot I meet up with the director (who ironically lived just down the road from the location) with the help of the maps, a script and my piss poor verbal descriptions of locations we began to divvy up the scenes between us, well confirm that I would direct one section. On paper at least, things appeared to be going well.
Then the director explained that one of the leads couldn’t make it to the location until 12:30 due to work, we were scheduled to start at 11:00. Now we could have, even at this short notice, shifted the site booking around this development. Rescheduling the rest of the cast and crew… Well we didn’t want to go there, so we did our best to plan around this late arrival. On the whole the meeting had a very positive feel. As I journeyed home I felt better about the project, than I had at anytime in the previous five weeks.
Thursday and Friday nights passed in a blur of phone calls trying to confirm extras and sort out last minute costume. We were going to be down on the number of zombies we wanted. A shortage of zombie drivers with cars meant I simply couldn’t arrange transport for everybody who wanted to come. Well I’d have been more upset if we had empty car seats.
At about midnight on the Friday it suddenly struck me that I’d been so busy herding people and props, I hadn’t really sat down and thought about how I’d shoot my section. Obviously I’d written it, and already had a pretty good idea in my head how it would look and feel, but my written action descriptions had already proved to be open to interpretation. I decided to try and sketch out some story boards. Now try is a very important word there, I can’t draw. Even my stick men are atrocious! Never-the-less 45 minutes later I had 3 badly scrawled pages of A4 detailing my ‘vision’ for the scene. Now for some reason I choose to use a sparkly turquoise pen (that’s the ink colour, not a description of the actual pen) on faintly ruled yellow A4 paper. So far these child like scribbling’s have resisted all attempts to scan them for net posting, but if we ever get them to look legible, then I promise I’ll put them up for public derision.
Finally at about half two in the morning I headed for bed. Saturday was going to be a big day, clearly the best way to start it would be sleep deprived.
So Widley was a big day! A monster day! A day like no other! Well in my experience certainly for Beacon. You’d be surprised how many times I‘ve been to fort Widley with a handful of cars filled with zombies and guns. Never the less, this undertaking required a little more organisation than the average shooting day.
With the cancellation of the bunker 2 weeks previous, a number of scenes that had been earmarked for that shoot had been moved to the fort. This increased the already large volume of footage that we needed to shoot at the location. We were about to try something never done before!
At the start of the year Beacon had picked up a second broadcast quality camera. We were going to use them both! (Okay so that’s never done before by Beacon Productions, loads of productions use two or more cameras, but for us it was a first) For the majority of the day we would simply shoot all scenes with the two cameras. Thus reducing the number of times we’d need to run through each scene. At a key point in the day we’d split into two units and shot scenes independently. This was to be my directorial début as I got to lead off the lead off the second unit.
Obviously since this hadn’t been done before a certain amount of pre-preparation was required. It should be noted that I am intimately familiar with the fort. Due to this familiarity, the sections of the script that I intended to happen at the Widley had been written with the forts actual geography in mind. Each location in the script corresponded to a room or corridor in the fort. Unfortunately the director had never been to the location (attempts to organise a reccy previous to the shooting day had failed horribly) at least I had detailed maps for him to look at. Two days before the shoot I meet up with the director (who ironically lived just down the road from the location) with the help of the maps, a script and my piss poor verbal descriptions of locations we began to divvy up the scenes between us, well confirm that I would direct one section. On paper at least, things appeared to be going well.
Then the director explained that one of the leads couldn’t make it to the location until 12:30 due to work, we were scheduled to start at 11:00. Now we could have, even at this short notice, shifted the site booking around this development. Rescheduling the rest of the cast and crew… Well we didn’t want to go there, so we did our best to plan around this late arrival. On the whole the meeting had a very positive feel. As I journeyed home I felt better about the project, than I had at anytime in the previous five weeks.
Thursday and Friday nights passed in a blur of phone calls trying to confirm extras and sort out last minute costume. We were going to be down on the number of zombies we wanted. A shortage of zombie drivers with cars meant I simply couldn’t arrange transport for everybody who wanted to come. Well I’d have been more upset if we had empty car seats.
At about midnight on the Friday it suddenly struck me that I’d been so busy herding people and props, I hadn’t really sat down and thought about how I’d shoot my section. Obviously I’d written it, and already had a pretty good idea in my head how it would look and feel, but my written action descriptions had already proved to be open to interpretation. I decided to try and sketch out some story boards. Now try is a very important word there, I can’t draw. Even my stick men are atrocious! Never-the-less 45 minutes later I had 3 badly scrawled pages of A4 detailing my ‘vision’ for the scene. Now for some reason I choose to use a sparkly turquoise pen (that’s the ink colour, not a description of the actual pen) on faintly ruled yellow A4 paper. So far these child like scribbling’s have resisted all attempts to scan them for net posting, but if we ever get them to look legible, then I promise I’ll put them up for public derision.
Finally at about half two in the morning I headed for bed. Saturday was going to be a big day, clearly the best way to start it would be sleep deprived.
14 Comments:
It a shame the Director never bothered to recce the location seeing he lives so near to it, impressive the amount of pre-planning you did beforehand.
Have to point out one thing; Beacon has done several multi-camera shoots over the years; the majority of The Parsons was a 2-camera shoot, and Beacon Banter is 3-4 cameras. We've only done 2nd unit work two or three times before though.
Well you learn something new every day. I'll beat the researcher later!
Was it the first AoSB 2 camera job? Come on spill the beans.
As for a location reccy, well it was trying to get 4 people, 2 of whom were on shift work, in the same place at the same time.
It just proved a nigh on impossible task.
"get on with it"?
That sounds like a very polite version of me!
(and kudos for the regular posting recently)
Yeah, it was to my knowledge the first AoSB two camera shoot. Certainly worked well. Don't beat the researcher, bless him/her, might come in use for future stories!
Do you know how hard it is to get into a council owned building for a Recce, you can't just walk in there. Plus, JOBS come before Beacon, job earns money, pays bills, enables one to live in the capitalist world were it is run by various symbols of currency, Beacon is a hobby. Since I have actually worked my arse off on this project, I suggest it would be wise to removed the word "bothered" and replace it with something along the lines "unfortunatley couldn't find the time, due to work commitments."
Dan
I'm sure Steve C. had many work committments too. Bothered was the wrong word. But hats off to Steve for all the hard work he put into this story alongside holding down his job and his other time-consuming hobby.
M.T.
When is anyone actually going to see this episode ?
It's goes in screen in the spring on Six TV as far as I know. Then I think it's going online as soon as Beacon finds a good place to upload episodes. At the current moment it resides on my hard disc in two versions, the broadcast one, and the VHS/DVD episodes which is being tweaked here and there. So there will be two versions, like a "Special Edition" if you will.
Dan
Hi Mr Fuller,
Actually, the story has been seen by several people; it was premiered at a Beacon social back in October. We always prioritise members of the club to see the edited productions first as we are a video club with SB one of our main shows. The outlet of SIX TV is good to have, but it is not essential to Beacon Productions.
Hi,
Adding to what Dan says, Lazarus is scheduled to be shown in the Spring. We have several other things to screen first, including our "Doorstops" series. Probably be up on the internet soon too. It looks really good, although I am sure you appreciate it is just one production out of many we make each year. We're proud of it, but it is not the most important thing we have ever made. Its great to have its production documented here by Steve, he is giving a fair assessment as he has experienced what it is actually like trying to film 15 episodes of sci-fi in eight months on a miniscule budget with people giving their free time.
Steve
Crikey! I don't check the site for a couple of days and a bit of controversy brews up and fades away.
But I like to comment on comments so...
Mark, yes it is a polite version of you :) Despite being normally foul mouthed, I try to maintain a PG cert for language on the blog. My run was ruined by Pete's post, but don't worry I told his mum, and he got sent to bed without any dinner.
Anonymous, Yeh it was kind of a first, I can now do a legitimate happy dance. Still gonna beat the researcher though.
Actually in my experience it's very easy to get into a council building to do a recce. In fact they insist you do a recce. It's very hard for you to write the risk assesments they want to see, if you've never been in the building.
It's also worth mentioning that Fort Widley isn't a council building. It is however really easy to get into to do a recce. In the past I've been in there with less than 24 hours notice.
I've already covered jobs, so don't need to do that again.
As for work commitments. Well I was on bizarro shifts from hell, and they did interfere. Luckily I managed to clear all of the shooting weekends through a combination of shift swaps, and leave. Something I was willing to do as I knew Lazarus would be my biggest contribution to the club that year. Once Lazarus was in the can I virtually dropped off the radar for 3 months largely due to work. Many members commit far, far more time and effort to the club than I do. Oh and M.T. the holding down the job didn't go so well :)
Mr Fuller, since you don't get Southampton TV you'll see it when I get a copy of either version. I'll give you a call, and arrange a little party with the other zombie folks who couldn't make the official premier.
And finally skipping a couple about scheduling, Steve is right Lazarus is just one production out of many. It is however getting a lot more 'hype' because of my little blog. I personally would like to see other Beacon writers and directors big up their 'babies' with production stories, either with solo projects like this blog, or on Beacons own website. But doing this kind of thing is not to everyones taste.
And finally everyone remember Lazarus is not the most important production in the world.
The most important production in the world is the script I'm currently working on :)
Testing
Right. In case anybodies is wondering where the next post is, its currently been forced into a holding pattern overhead.
This is due to 'technical' difficulties. Blogger have just forced me to upgrade my account. and now I have I can't access the dashboard of the blog to post :(
The reason for this is simple. This blog isn't registered on my account, it has it's own account, which I don't know the passwords to :(
Luckily Pete, who created the account, has the passwords saved on his PC :)
Unluckily Pete is out of town on holiday until Sunday evening, so I have no way of getting the passwords off Pete's PC :(
If I'd known all of this 2 hours ago, I'd already be in bed a sleep.
Evil blogger management :(
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