Chris Jones Blog

Senior Sound Designer Starts Work On Gone Fishing!

I had a splendid meeting today with Bernard O’Reilly who will be our senior sound designer on Gone Fishing. Bernard works for a renowned company called Videosonics that have done the final mix for many a Hollywood Blockbuster. So to have him and Videosonics onboard is a great coup.

You can see a Quicktime VR 360 of their main studio here, if you want to know what a full Dolby Digital mixing theatre looks like.

So today, Bernard and I worked our way through the film, discussing ideas on specific sounds, not just foley, atmospheres, spot effects and music, but also on more esoteric ideas to help build a unique soundscape for the poetic narrative of Gone Fishing. There is one major action scene too, which Bernard will fill with a cacophony of ‘crash bang wallop and wiz’ effects… It’s all VERY exciting. We also discussed a few key moments where, for dramatic reasons, we will pull the sound out completely.

In the next few days I will be dropping off some of the original props, such as the fishing reels, so that Bernard can re-record the specific sounds they make when being used. This is one of the reasons why I actually bought some of the mian ‘hero’ props instead of renting for the main shoot.

When we locked picture last week, Eddie created a bunch of files for Bernard, most important of which are a QT of the picture, with burn in’s and also a OMF of all the audio. OMF is a file format that was created by Avid, and it’s like a folder with all the sounds in it, plus a timeline. In theory, Bernard should be able to import it directly into ProTools and all the effects should remain in the right places.

I have got to say it again… IT’S SO EXCITING!

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected]

The Accounts Are Done!

In an entire day of HELL – can I say that loud enough – HELL!!!!! - the accounts for Gone Fishing have been done. It started at 9am this morning with a pre breakfast meeting with my accountant, before a day of paper sifting, through receipt after receipt. The actual GF accounts are really what I would call my quarterly VAT accounts for my company, hugely expanded this quarter, to accommodate the shooting and allied expenses for GF.

There are no real surprises in the budget, with only a tiny proportion of invoices going missing (that will be chased up next week). As we were shooting on location, travelling, catering and accommodation were big spends, but when you see just how Bury Hill Fisheries looks in the film, you will agree it was money well spent. Moving a crew and 35mm equipment around were perhaps our biggest spend.

For the GF course, I will have a full expense breakdown and we will be studying the pre shoot budget, and final budget, examining differences, and discussing where we got things right, and where we did not.

We are still a few £thousand short of our budget, and we have some more expenses to come, but not too much we hope, as we want to continue the trend of getting pretty much everything for free!

Executive Producer, Lucia Landino, helped out all day with the accounts, as I bounced between meltdown after meltdown – I HATE ACCOUNTS!!! - (sorry) - and we finally got there at about five pm. Now it’s time for ice cream and completely empty headed movies.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected]

Gone Fishing Locks Picture Edit at 1.45am!

So we locked the picture edit at 1.45am last night. Editor Eddie Hamilton and I made a huge number of tweaks that at first glance, are fairly minimal in impact, but we both know that they made a big difference holistically. At one point Eddie stopped and looked at me grinning and commenting that ‘it’s so good, and so rare, to get the chance to come back to an edit after a short break, to make these small but important changes…’ I knew exactly what he meant.

It’s not that the previous edits were wrong or bad, it’s just that some of them could be better. Editing is often like musical composition, you are looking for rhythm, using timbre of voice, contrast of image and sound, timing of performance, all to its maximum effect within the confines of the story and the style of story telling. Editing begins as a technical construction, moves into the world of craft and ends up in the realm or artists, using feeling and emotion to guide your choices. 

During this final edit, we played with a few new ideas too, some of which worked, some of which didn’t. We also ditched a lot of the shots of Goliath, the killer pike, replacing him with swelling water. This was simply because water is hard to scale in the mind of the viewer (something we discovered and found surprising in test screenings), and Goliath simply looked smaller than he actually was. I learned something there - about water, scaling it, using slow motion and scaled props in shot etc… As Eddie put it though, we had to shoot it to know that it wouldn’t work fully (though there are still shots used). Film makers ‘due diligence’ as it were.

Last night also included making all the deliverables for the sound guys – exporting all the audio, making a QT files with time code, and adding an academy leader. It was when Eddie added the Academy leader (the countdown clock at the start of a film) that I got goose bumps, mainly because I heard the ‘plop on two...’ This is a one frame beep that sound guys use to sync the film up (of course time codes and such usually take care of all of this but it’s nice to have this old school rock solid backup). And it’s the plop that for me is synonymous with sitting in the final mix, in a dubbing theatre, and watching the magic of sound mixing bring your film fully to life. I was giddy as a schoolboy!

There is still a long way to go, completing VFX, track laying sound, mixing the sound, clearing music, grading picture, checking and making titles, making a DVD, making a Blu Ray (that’s a new one for me!). Not to mention, festivals… and the attempt at the Oscars! 

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected]

Compiling Clips for the Gone Fishing Course

I have been working on the one day course for the contributors of Gone Fishing today, and building the DVD with the clips. I have lots of video goodies, including this one here, which illustrates different slow motion frame rates. For some scenes we used an electronic High Speed camera which came in a van and needed super cooled computers and loads of hard disk space. It could shoot up to 2200 frames per second, so you can see why it needed so much kit. Light was also essential, you needed lots of it, so thankfully we were shooting in bright daylight. The camera actually shot a square frame, 1024 x 1024, and these frames were saved as a TIFF stream. I handed the camera guys a half gig drive to copy the media across to after the days shooting and walked away with it at the end of the day. Simple and efficient.

Back to the course… the best part of this course, and I have said it on the blog before, is going to be going through the development of the story, through scripts, shooting, editing, sound, music and mastering. The different edits are fascinating to watch in order, and to see how the film grows and is crafted in each different edit.

I can’t wait to present it to the group!

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected]

Exec Producer Dave Hardwick gets onboard Gone Fishing!

Great news! Executive Producer David Hardwick has come onboard Gone Fishing, adding to our coffers. This is particularly good news for me as Dave has now invested in every single film I have made! He should be given a knighthood as a patron for the arts! The pic here is taken in Cannes a few yeas back, with (from left to right) Dave Hardwick (now EP on Gone Fishing), Simon Cox (second unit director on Gone Fishing), Claire Trevor Roper, Jason Connery, Me (Chris Jones), Carmen Dyer and Genevieve Joliffe.

So how did Dave get involved in the first place? Well, Dave met my brother in a lift in Germany many years ago, they got to chatting about the films I had planned, and Dave then got in contact with me and subsequently involved in each and every one of our films.

Best of all, Dave has also introduced another Executive Producer to Gone Fishing, Manu Uppal of the Net-link Group.

In between films, Dave has also been pursuing a music career, and you can hear some of his music here.

To date, we have now raised somewhere in the region of £21k, leaving us only a couple of thousand short of our target which I am now convinced we will achieve.

Blimey!

Onwards and upwards!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected]

Gone Fishing First Press!

We have just received our first press, from the local newspaper in my home town of Wigan. You can read the article here. The great thing about local press is that they always paint you in a good light, and also give you lots of space. This kind of grass roots coverage is always good as it actually has immense penetration, reaching hundreds of thousands of people – and it’s FREE!

We all think of the internet as being the mutts nuts when it comes to PR, but the old methods still reach a huge volume of people in a very credible way. Of course, local press usually goes for the ‘local lad does good’ angle. And that’s something I play to when I do this kind of PR, keeping it human and real. Local radio is another really good one too.

The other thing that is gratifying, is that journalists download hi res images, with clear text descriptions from the website, and days later, they appear, verbatim, in their paper – you can see the Gone Fishing pictures page here.

I think the internet has now really reached a point where it’s near impossible to stand out as we tend to blank everything now – everything is one click away from being thought of as some kind of spam.

This feature also generated cash too as several new contributors got involved and contributed to ‘Gone Fishing’.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected]

VFX starts

We have begun the visual effects stage for Gone Fishing! Hoorah! Yesterday, Midnight Transfer took the 35mm film and scanned selected shots on their Northlight scanner. The shots were outlined in a EDL supplied by Eddie Hamilton (Editor) and are just the shots that need visual effects work.

We shot both 3perf and 4perf 35mm film, and when scanned, the 3perf frames come in at about 9mb each the 4perf coming in at 12mb (per frame that is!!!!). Each frame is saved in a format called DPX, which are RGB encoded with 16 bits per channel. The big thing to note is that the scans are VERY low contrast, as you can see from the picture (left is the raw scan, right I have adjusted the levels in Photoshop to look more like the final image will appear).

The six shots ended up at around 12gb which Midnight Transfer saved to an external USB2 HD that was dropped off last week. The next step is a meeting on Monday with Men From Mars, who are doing the actual effects. I have committed to doing one effect myself, using After Effects - it’s a really simple shot, and MFM have promised to hold my hand through the entire process. I will report on my progress and what I learn on the blog.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected]

Accounts... where did the money go?

It’s getting to the time where I need to file my VAT quarter, which means I will need to go through all the receipts and invoices on the spike in my office. This is not a job I enjoy. In fact, most people just bundle it off to the accountants! But I am going to wade through it so we can accurately measure our budget.

I have been reflecting on where we spent money and what can be done about reducing those costs in the future. One real problem that I have eluded to before on the blog is mobile phone charges. A few members of the crew had contracts where they had either a vast amount of time available, or even completely free calls. Most others didn’t and some people ended up with huge bills, especially in production. We did have a production policy where we expected people to be on a contract where calls would not cost anything, or negligible amounts. For some crew members this was the case. For some who were not on a contract, this was a problem.

The problem is that some people don’t think about the most cost effective way to make a call before they make that call. First off, ‘am I on a the best contract that I could be, given I may have very intense periods of phone useage?’ Second, ‘can I use a land line to land line phone?’ or  ‘Can I use Skype?’ or ‘Do I in fact need to make this call, can I send an email?’

The real killers are land line to mobile, or mobile to mobile calls without a proper contract. We were seeing individual crew members bills in the region of £500! Now contrast this with ‘Urban Ghost Story’, made a few years back before the ultra proliferation of mobile phones, in production for four to six months, an office with three phones, and the total phone bill was less than £700.

So phones are a real hidden cost. You need to make sure every crew member who will reasonably use a phone regularly, is on an appropriate contract, or they could easily rack up a huge bill that they will expect you to pay. I am on a contract that costs £35 a month and I get 1,200 minutes cross network free. I did exceed this during the shoot, but only just. Production Manager Steph Wrate had a contract that included completely free calls. Fantastic!

So just beware of this hidden cost, it could end up exceeding your entire budget if left unchecked.

When I get through the accounts, I will provide a budget breakdown so you can see where the money actually went.

Onward and upoward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected]

So the plot thickens…

We have been editing, testing, editing, testing… and getting great results and feedback in these screenings. In some ways we are now slipping into analysis paralysis on some points, but on others, we are really having to fine tune the edit. For me, great movies stretch the credible right to the very edge. You take the viewer right to the very limit of plausibility, but never past that point. Hollywood movies tend to do this very well.

We are having such a plausibility debate right now with Gone Fishing, with specific regard to how big viewers thought the enormous killer pike in the story actually was. In previous edits we didn’t have the new footage we shot last week (of Brucey, our big rubber pike), but now we have it in place, we are getting all sorts of sizes quoted. These shots, no matter how impressive, scale the fish. And here is a great one! One test viewer said of our big rubber pike, ‘It was clearly a real fish the you filmed, and so it can’t have been bigger than a couple of feet!’ Blimey. Our effects are so good they are working against us.

The solution is of course to be minimal in what we reveal. So it’s back to the edit to modify once more. This is one of the reasons I love editing so much. We really get the chance to craft the story to perform like a sports car. These tiny tweaks, cummulatively, make such a difference.   

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected]

Test Screening 3 and final roller

Last night, after a small re-edit, we held another test screening. Results were as usual very interesting. No revelations this time, just amplifications on what we already knew, and a few more ideas to integrate into final picture grading.

At some point, screenings like these start slipping into opinion – which isn’t much use. Analysis paralysis! We only need to know what worked and what didn’t in terms of story mechanics. So we are now pretty clear, the story is working as we intended. We are now effectively picture locked, and we can get on with the visual effects, audio track lay, picture grading and final mastering.

I have begun the process of getting the neg scanned for VFX, so let’s see how fast we can get those special effects shots done! The final picture element to lock down is the end roller, and editor Eddie Hamilton is going to be making a temp roller tonight so we can lock down length and timing.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected]

Test Screening Number 2 - new stuff discovered!

Last nights test screening went very well. Lot’s more stuff discovered. First off, everyone really enjoyed the film and felt impressed by how ‘BIG’ it felt. This is mainly down to the story, photography and music, and also the simple ‘non tricksy’ direction I think. I am very pleased.

But... we still have some stuff to iron out. The killer pike looked great, but water has a weird way of messing around with scale, and everyone thought the pike was too small. Most people were not bothered by this, but I think it’s something we need to deal with. I have re-cut some other shots in now where less of the pike is seen, and more water splashing takes place. It works well too.

We also isolated a line of dialogue that many viewers could not understand. This is a classic one – and why these screenings ARE SO IMPORTANT. Everyone involved has read the script, and so understand the dialogue, and therefore, couldn’t even conceive of why another person might not understand what is being said.

Virgin eyes and ears can often hear something else, and while I still know the line is delivered well from the actor, for some reason, half the people watching didn’t understand what was said. This is in part because the actor was a little nasal, perhaps something to do with the emotional performance, or maybe the mic positions. To be clear. The performance is wonderful and sound is clear.

But… for whatever reason, the audience does not ‘get the line’. I have EQ’d it a little, rolling out some bass, and we will test the film again – hopefully tonight – with these new tweaks. We may go back and re-record that one line with the actor too, trying to get the words more clearly defined.

Blimey, it’s amazing how important these screenings are!

Onward an upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected] 

Gone Fishing Get's it's first Fine Cut! And it's AWESOME!

Last night I worked until 2am with editor Eddie Hamilton as we fine tuned the third major recut of the film. This third cut is really a long series of tweaks rather than a re-cut. I think we had the structure nailed in the last edit. This edit was all about adding the shots we filmed last week, and also the ADR I recorded with Bill Patterson yesterday.

Straight off the bat, the new shots REALLY make a difference. There are only about ten in all, but boy do they really help. It’s that final 10% that always makes a difference, and for me, this is where many other short film makers fail. Truly at the last hurdle. They simply don’t go that extra distance to get it the best than it can be. Good is just not good enough for world class. That’s my personal benchmark.

The newly recorded voice over from Bill Patterson makes a hug difference too. It’s cleaner, clearer, better timed and of course rewritten in the edit suite weeks ago, so it fits the edit perfectly.

We also integrated many little tweaks that were suggestions from other editors I had shown the film to over the last few weeks. Best buddie, editor and DP Jon Walker had some really great suggestions about allowing the first few shots to breathe. We tried this and it’s a definite improvement.

Eddie also spent a great deal of time tweaking the sound and adding sound effects. All this makes a huge difference too. I am just one major sound effect short for the test screening tonight, but I just have to remember that tonight is not the final version, but an audience test.

Getting very, very, VERY excited now!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected] 

Re-recording ADR in car with our lead actor!

I just spent the morning with our lead actor, Bill Paterson, as we re-recorded the story of how his character Old Bill, caught the biggest pike in the world. In the narrative, this takes place in a car, so we re-recorded it in his car just outside his house. I used my trusty old Sennheiser mic and a small, 24bit Edirol field recorder I bought for £200. I recorded uncompressed 24bit audio direct or a memory card – I bought this Edirol recorder last year for £200 and it has served me well on many occasions.

Bill did ask if we should do this in a proper ADR studio, but my take has always been, why try to recreate the sound of being inside a car in a studio, when you can just sit in a car for real?! It also gave us the time to get it right, without the pressure of an expensive studio.

We had decided to re-record this part of the drama because on the day of the main shoot, we were filming in a car on a low and everything went wrong – consequently we fell behind schedule. It meant we were unable to shoot it the way we had planned, and it ended up being a little rushed. It plays OK as it is right now, but this new recording will really improve the timing. It also meant we could tweak the script and add a few lines to match the edit now that we have that in place. Effectively, re-writing the script in post production, a tool I bang on about on my courses.

I am going to Eddies (the editor) cutting room tonight, and we hope to do a picture lock for the next test screening tomorrow night. How exciting!

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected] 

Building the 1 Day Course for Gone Fishing

I spent most of yesterday planning the 1 day course that the £100 ‘Gone Fishing’ contributors will receive, some time in January 2008. I have also been cutting a trailer which I plan to put up on the site in the next few days.

I have decided to make the course a kind of chronology of events, as I think the most valuable part of it will be about story development, in prep, on set and in post. How the narrative morphs, becomes more subtle and fine tuned. Also, how on set problems are overcome and fixed in pickup shoots or in script rewrites during post - what can be dropped for pace or subtlety in the edit for instance.

This narrative development will also be mirrored by production development, how things get bigger and better, but also how the production department deals with that.

I am also hoping to have a series of camera tests, including Super 16mm, 35mm, HDV, DVCProHD and HDCam so we can all judge for ourselves just how the formats stand up to one another.

During all of ‘Gone Fishing’ I made a concerted effort to take my own medicine – that is, do what I have said, specifically on my courses and in the Movie Blueprint book. I must admit, many times in the heat of the moment, I felt the grip of fear and my legs nearly buckled, but I trusted my experience and knowledge and didn’t react to situations that I knew would lead to bad choices or compromises. In every instance, in retrospect, it was the right choice to make. I must admit I did feel relieved as I have been preaching these methods for years, and hadn’t personally had them in practice for some time. Glad to report, it’s all still good advice! (phew!)

These would include things like, stay away from the video monitor, or switch it off. At one point, I noticed we had a 70kw generator driving one video monitor! I had them switch off the generator immediately at sat next to the camera to be with the actors. They appreciated that intimacy and it shows on screen.

Another lesson was really all in the prep. Get the script right, plan it in detail in advance (even with story boards) so that when you are on set, if problems occur (they will), you will know what are ‘good solutions’ and ‘bad solutions…’

Another thing is about well planned and executed pickup shoots with a minimal crew. It works wonders with the edit, and is achieved for very little investment in time and money.

Work with the best people you can find. DP Vernon Layton made our film look a million dollars. I promise, when you see it, you will be amazed at just how beautiful it looks. Editor Eddie Hamilton cut the film beautifully and has overseen all technical post production, freeing me to get on with other stuff.

You can read more details about the course here, and if you know anyone who wants to sign up now, they will get an Associate Producer credit too.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected] 

Production Music for Gone Fishing

I have been working on music (STILL I KNOW!)for the last few days and have come to believe that in order to get the immense and epic battle music I need, I am going to have to use some library or production music. This seems to me to be the only way to get that huge orchestra sound without actually hiring an orchestra. Yes I know synthesisers and samplers are good now, but even when they are at their best, I can still hear that it is electronic and not human. And in this climactic battle between boy and pike, I need something that goes the extra mile.

After trawling around, I finally found Boosey Tracks, and an album called Epic Action and Adventure Vol 1 – I think I am going to look into using the track called THE TIME HAS COME (A).

Check it out. It’s certainly epic!

Onward and Upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected] 

Post Prodution Outline So Far....

I thought I would just outline our post production process so far, for those who are interested.

We shot 35mm, which was processed overnight at Bucks labs, and then shipped in the morning to central London where Midnight Transfer did the 35mm telecine to DVCam, with all the relevant information such as lab roll, timecodes and keycodes. Remember, this is an offline cut, not the master conform and grade. For that we will go back to the 35mm and re-transfer at full 2k res.

This DVCam tape was then digitised onto an Avid Media Composer (on a laptop, software only) and the rushes were sunk with the production sound which came in from sound recordist Ro Heap on DVD, recorded in 24bit (24bit, opposed to 16bit, for extra on set headroom) and 48khz sample rate. Accordingly, the Avid project was setup in 24bit.

Once the rushes were sunk, we could do the edit, which Eddie Hamilton did.

Tonight I am planning to do the final edit, integrating the new material we shot last Friday. Once that is done we will have one last test screening to make sure there are no gaffs. I am also going to do some ADR with Bill Patterson to help the story along and clean up some location dialogue.

Once all that is in place, we will begin the final mastering stages of sound and picture.

So for now, Eddie has all the data on his laptop, and I have a cloned Firewire drive of all the media and the project, so I can view edits should Eddie make any changes while I am not present (he can just email me the project as I have the media already).

Broadly, we hope that Videosonics will do the audio mix and Midnight Transfer are going to do the picture grade. I will outline just how all that works when we get closer to the time.

One last thought, I do plan to make a BueRay or HD-DVD version of the film, simply to go through the process and learn the pitfalls and advantages of these new formats. I am looking forward very much to this as it will be a good real world test of the process and technology, and of the results possible. If it’s as good as both the HD-DVD and BluRay camps claim, I suspect festivals in the future will start to accept BluRay and HD-DVD disks for submission.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected] 

Gone Fishing gets its 100th contributor!

We hit our 100th contributor last night (thank you Wendy!), bringing the total raised so far to…

£19,685!

Blimey! I mean really, BLIMEY!

We are still short though, so if you know anyone who may want to come on the course or come to the premiere, click here. I have been working on the £100 film makers package, and there are details on our website here. Again, if you know anyone who may be interested, send them the link. I am working on adding extra content for the course too, and remember, for those who are interested, we will be allowing people into the final grade (at 2k film res) and final mix (Dolby Digital) just to get a taste of the experience.

So here is the roll call of the latest Associate Producers…

Tom Evans Marino Santirso Ruiz Tom Evans Jon Sorenson Martyn Bamber Jean Verdi Stuart Reid C K Chu Pete Bryden GF Ellis Simon Coddington James McGough Jonathan Wilkinson Emilio and Rosa Landino Beryl and Finley Ellis Andrew Welding Sarah Hickman nic hodgkinson Christine Cheung Amy Enticknap Desire Densiti Trevor Hughes Chris Wetton Conway Churchill Flo Churchill Ed Every Rachel Murray Ray Battersby James Lord Mary Long

Maria Landino Tamsin Stevens Adam and Tara Simon Van Der Spoel Alastair Nicholson Linda Potgieter Jan Potgieter Katherine Shannon Ian Seckington Ken Royall Susan Heneghan Russ Wharton Alex Clennel White Mark Fogwill Dominic and Jane Landino Stuart Teare Andrew Delaplaine Juill Greenman Parham and Lotti Margaret Smith Brendan Deere Phil Ashcroft Tim Mewton Scott Devenport Iain Spence Leonie Jones Lucian Cristian Branea Graham Inman Pasquale Bellini Wendy Pauw

You can read the original proposal here.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected] 

First stab at the DVD cover...

I have spent the day designing the first DVD cover for ‘Gone Fishing’. This is very different to a feature cover in one major way – it will never act as a POINT OF SALE for a buyer. The only people who will get the DVD will either be given it, or come across it some other way, certainly not by pickup it up and thinking ‘This looks good, I must buy or rent it…’ Having received many short films on DVD in my office, I noticed how most attempt to look like a feature film in some way. I am going a different way with ‘Gone Fishing’ in the hope of standing out a little.

Now I don’t have to aggressively  SELL SELL SELL via the cover, it gives me the chance to start the ‘story experience’ before viewers even gets to the DVD. I am hoping that we will win some festivals and awards, and that, coupled with the great cast, will pique the interest to the point where viewers will put the DVD into their player.

I have opted for a nostalgic, fishing book feel. This was directly influenced by a book prop that I had found on eBay, it’s a book from the thirties on angling with a wonderful painted cover. The DVD cover will now set up the viewer expectation of the gentle, lyrical feel of the film, and of course, the angling aspect already implied by the title.

I like the artwork very much, though I am aware that it’s not a throat grabber. I think that’s the point.

In due course, we will be adding more to it, as I said, hopefully awards from festivals. Of course, the whole thing may be re-invented too. Ah the creative journey to excellence is a rocky one.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected] 

Pickup shoot is 100% success!

Saturday morning, the day after the pickup shoot, and I am looking out of my window in amazement at the weather. According to the BBC it should be bright sun, and it’s grey and miserable. Yesterday on the other hand, the day we shot, WAS AMAZING SUNSHINE! We could not have been luckier with the weather.
So the shoot went very well. We had a very small crew, running without sound, and now ticking over like a well oiled machine. We cranked through loads of simple cutaway shots, like the one here of the gnarled shark hook the killer pike chews up in the story.

By lunch time we had about ten shots in the can, all with amazing backlit sunshine. What was great is I could feel the edit of the film coming together, as I knew just how these new shots would slot in perfectly and plug little problems.

After lunch came the moment of truth with our large, rubber ‘Bruce’ like pike, built by Jenny Cochrane. It was operated by a couple of very nice divers, Steve Reid and Dave O’Dell, who came along for the fun of it. I don’t quite know what they made of Goliath when they finally saw him, but they were game, so they got into the water and we all attempted to make movie magic! Sadly, for most of the time, Goliath performed just like a big rubber pike would. BUT… after lots of takes, we could all see that we got short glimpses of real genius, where Goliath looked terrifying and enormous and completely real. I can’t wait to see the footage. So 100% success!

We also did a few shots of photos that we had to drop during the main shoot as the actual props were not ready (as we had only just filmed the cast in costume – this is always a scheduling nightmare as actors need to be in costume etc., and it’s rarely done before the main shoot). We did these shots in the main building at Bury Hill Fisheries, overlooking the lake, which is a bizarre place to do such shots.

We should get a tape of the rushes from the labs on Tuesday and have it all cut in by Tuesday night. I hope to have a locked picture by Thursday and a final test screening on Friday, making tweaks over the weekend if needed. Then it’s all about the final picture conform at 2k res, getting the digital effects right, and a track lay and Dolby Digital Mix. The very talented guys at Videosonics have already offered their help so I know the movie will sound a million dollars!

FANTASTIC!

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected] 

It's 5.51 am...

I spent yesterday driving a van around London collecting camera kit and lights – I love that moment when normal life ends and you step into the world of movies – that for me was yesterday when I collected the van. Cameraman Steve Brooke Smith camera along for the ride, and thank god he did as there were lots of little niggles to iron our that I would have missed, not least not having a tripod head! We got that fixed though.

It’s now nearly 6am. I have had my shower and am about to leave. We plan to be shooting by nine! Hoorah!

Back in the saddle.

Looking forward to the day.

Onward and upward!