U OK M8? ~ A Peek Behind the Scenes

The Idea

Like most of my ideas, this one came out of nowhere. and by nowhere I mean that for months I had been desperately racking my brain for any morsel of creativity that could allow me to develop my portfolio for my up coming university interviews. It was a few weeks before my first interview, and i had become painfully aware how 'all the filming' I planned to get done over the Christmas break had been replaced by putting on about two stone. I had had a few ideas, but none fitted the Sam-Papidas-no-budget-no-time-film* criteria like this one.

*The Sam-Papidas-no-budget-no-time-film criteria

- It's Okay ~ Perhaps goes without saying, but a good idea is one that, well, is actually good. And better than a good idea, is a complete good idea, where I actually have some clue at what to write and how it'll end.

- It's short ~ I've recently become distinctly aware of the length of my videos, and while I'm all for longer projects I've noticed that, especially with universities, people just don't have time to watch something.

- It's cheap ~ Like all things, the less money they cost the better obviously I'm not against spending money on a film, it’s one of the few things I'd be willing to put money towards, but thankfully with this small project, my only costs were the chips I bought to thank my mates who helped me.

- Carlos is in it ~ Just like money, for an indie filmmaker good actors are hard to come by. Carlos' interest in acting and screenwriting mine in directing and editing make us a pretty good team, and whenever he's on board I’m pretty confident we'll make something decent. that is when he is on board, because for various reasons he is now as available and willing to act in stuff as Trump is likely to invite refugees for dinner. So while I cannot fault the man's high standards, as someone who knows just a couple of somewhat willing actors, a Da Costa seal of approval can often make or break a project.

- Locations are Local ~ break a project.- Locations are Local ~ (And ideally simple and limited). As a 17 who cant drive and who's bike has had a puncture for about a year, getting anywhere to film there is somewhat of a challenge. I'll get onto the location for this particular film later, but somewhere accessible, requiring little set dressing and hopefully legal is always good for 'run and gun' filmmaking.

There were a few different factors that inspired and motivated me into creating this short, the first of these, as i said, being the my aim to create something new for my university portfolio. Id spoken to my friend who had already had his interviews, and he said some of the things he'd been asked included whether he'd made anything that tackled a social issue or a music video. he managed to hit two birds with one stone and show them a sorta song/poem video he'd made about technology and social media (you can watch it here). I was worried about what I could show them if asked the same thing, but i didn't set out to make something about mental health from the off. It hadn't actually occurred to me to make something addressing it, but as the issue is very prevalent in mine and many of my friends and families lives, when the idea did come to me, it seemed like the perfect thing.

On top of that, as even though I did want to create a narrative short, and I do feel there is narrative you can interpret from the film, it is more an awareness video to advert, which meant I would have something in that ballpark to show at interviews. On the subject of adverts, I came to realize that lot of my inspiration came from a brilliant series of Macmillan adverts, where someone is wandering alone in the wilderness, and then out of nowhere joined by a nurse, with the other all message that cancer can be overwhelmingly lonely without support. It was this kind of twist that I wanted to create with this project.

Pre-Production

As much as it pains me to admit, I disregard filmmaking 101 and do barely pre-production, either because the situation doesn't need me to plan it all out other than in my head, or I'm just making it up as I go along. I normally do a script, but beyond that storyboards and shot lists are somewhat of a rarity. It's bad I know, I'm working on it. Regardless, though it may not look like a lot, I vaguely attempted to do some pre-production, mostly just so I had something to show to Universities when I went.

The treatment for this went as far as the jumbled message I sent Carlos, pitching it to him to be in it. Then, the night before shooting, I decided I should probably jot down some rough doodles on the main shots I wanted. I managed to clearly map out the opening as I knew what I wanted, but left the main bulk of the running, as I knew vaguely what it would look like, my plan being just to get as many shots in the can on the day and work it out in post.

Below you can see some side by side comparison of the story board and the final footage.

Despite the already minute plan I had assembled, I ended up barely sticking to it. Ultimately there were many minor changes in how we did things, either with the order of shots, improvising things on set such as the Carlos falling while running (something he was more than willing to do repeatedly both for re shoots and Foley) and how we decided to execute the transition from nightmare to reality, where we realised the original plan of matching the shots in two locations would be a bit to tricky on our time limit.

To give weight to that, and basically sum up our filming experience, here is me using Carlos as table to make a improvised shot list during filming, in a rather suggestible position.

However the biggest change, or at least creative decisions I eventually made, was whether to implement an idea of having physical 'demons' (as we called then) chasing him through the woods, acting as physical manifestations of his issues. This idea came about as I was worried that just having a man running through the woods by himself would be too boring and not create a clear enough sense that he was being chased, and I hoped that these demons he was running from would hammer home the sense of being trapped and hunted.

Below are some if the examples of what they would of looked like, and the raw footage we shot for them. I was unsure exactly how we could achieve them, but id done some tests would tracking a mask in After Effect and felt pretty confident I could do this for all the footage.

I was wrong.

Here is an draft of the only bit of footage I got round to doing, even this took me a ridiculous amount of hours as the faithful track tool had a hard time keeping to Ali's body. To be fair, I didn't fully think through this beforehand, and should have maybe looked into creating some tracking point on the actors, and I am nowhere near that competent in After Effects, so I'm sure a better man could have created something cooler. Although, even on set we were aware of our limited preparation, and this idea came with the understanding of, 'if it works it works', and we knew we had enough footage to go sans demon.

And that's what we did. After painstakingly going through frame by frame and adjusting the mask to fit Ali's movements, and then make him disappear behind the trees, I sat back and gazed upon the fruits of my labour. Only to then realise it didn't actually look that good. I was pleased with the effect, and without more planning I don't think I could have gotten much else out of it, but I realised it wasn't going to add a new level of tension and fear to the piece, and concluded that the tried and tested 'don't show the monster' method of creating suspense would be the way to go. Only with I'd come to that conclusion about 4 hours earlier.

This is the only footage I got round to editing, but I did go onto add letter boxing, more grading and fake camera shake which did help sell it more.

While blocking out the shots, we had in mind about 3 different demons that would be chasing Carlos, one that was slender and move constantly toward him slowly, appearing later on to cut him off, which is what he is actually meant to be reacting to when he stops and doubles back. And another that could disappear and reappear between trees while chasing him.

With Carlos we wanted to create a low down monster that seemed to be scampering and crawling along the ground, so we had him move on sticks. In my opinion, even unedited, there's still something creepy about the way he moves.

Location, Location, Location

It goes without saying that I knew I needed a forest for this film, which, despite me living in the countryside, is easier said than done. There's plenty of trees but not a lot of them together in a creepy looking nightmare forest. Typical.

Nonetheless I went location scouting with my friend Alex (who we all call by his surname 'Woosey' and who will hence force in this, and any other post, be referred to as such) and we come across the perfect place. There's not much more to say on that, but I did test out my new steadicam that I would be using for the real thing, and made this little test video.

I recommend you watch till the end for some light amusement on behalf of Woosey.

It's fortunate that on top of being one of my only friends interested in film, Woosey is also one of the only ones that can drive. which opens a world of possibilities for filming further from home, except when he informed me that on the weekend of filming, which for other reasons had already been delayed to just before my interview, that he was going to his nans. Not his fault, but it did leave me a man down and going to my dad doe-eyed for a lift.

Production and the Long Road to Exporting

This POV Shot that I got from clipping my go pro onto a hat nicely encapsulates process of struggling over hurdles that is filmmaking.

I've already spoken loads, and largely covered the main conflict of this project, the demons, but I'll summarize any other points or thoughts on the overall production of this project.

Thermos'~ This has been the first project that we've brought thermos of coffee with us and it will not be the last. this may sound trivial but especially on a cold January shoot, a cup of warm coffee is a God send.
The actual woods were in were annoyingly narrow, going tapering off from a point, which meant that we had to shoot with the camera mostly facing just one way to try and create the deep and confusing forest I wanted. In fact, most the shots were done around the same few thicker groups of trees, just shot from different angles.
The actual name for the video was inspired by the, I think its a LadBible Campaign of the same name and styling, which also promoted men to talk about mental health and release the issue of male suicide and depression. It also works with Ali's line of a similar nature, so though it may appear a little strange, there is somewhat meaning behind it.
Health and Safety ~ I don't really have anything to say about this other than be careful and don't be stupid. Running full pelt through the woods while staring at a camera screen is not smart, and i twisted an ankle, slipped over and ran full pelt into the back of Carlos when I didn't realise he'd stopped. maybe I’m just not as intelligent or agile as most, but even Carlos got a good few smacks round the face with branches, so keep that in mind.
We experimented quite a bit with using the steadicam in different ways, turning it upside down for the lower shots of feet, and Carlos holding it himself to get a more snorricam feel as he ran.
Audio ~ Now I'm no sound man, but even more me the audio was a bit of a mess on this shoot. For instance, I thought I would be able to get all the foley I needed to Carlos I needed by having him run around with the mic by his feet for a bit. Little did I realise till later that there was something rattling on the mic that meant all the sound was garbage. This trend continued as I forgot to turn the sound on the mic up for Ali's take, which was the only one we could do, meaning I had to boost it in post, and then deal with denoising the audio in Premiere, which I found out is infamous for not working correctly on exports, so that was a lot of fun to mess around fixing.
To top that off, I had a very clear idea of how I wanted the final shot - a wide of Ali and Carlos sitting and chatting at a table. however, in the true spirit of Guerrilla filmmaking, the pub garden we had decided to slip in and film, and maybe not ask permission for or buy anything, didn't take too kindly when they noticed what we were doing. I mean, we were going to get a drink after wards, and no one was outside, but the manager said some made legal spiel about if we didn't have ID we couldn't be there, so we decided not to push our luck and run away. we got the shots in the end, and i think it worked out better, but did mean I was unable to re shoot what we'd done at the pub for better performances and audio.
Overall - 9/10, jolly good fun.

Thank you you for reading, and if you stuck around this long I hope you found it educational in some minor, bemusing way. As you've come this far, you might as well give the final thing another watch, as it is for a good cause.

A minor side note for those of you who may care, but this link is actually form vimeo, rather than my YouTube, as I've been experimenting with which allows me to upload in better quality. I'm not sure yet, so if you do have any observations on the quality versus YouTube, please let me know.