A Savaege Blog?

I said I would write a short from scratch a few posts back by the end of the month, that month being March… well I failed to do so.

I did manage to write a first draft to an idea that has being in my head for a few months but that wasn’t the brief I set myself. I think I’ll give myself a C+ anyway for this task… yay I past!

Anyway with the Summer months approaching fast it’s high time I got the finger out and get some idea’s down on paper.

Last Summer I had planned on shooting a few projects one being my short “Turn”. I spent weeks trying to get a cast and crew together. I got some but failed to get the people who I thought would help make a good short.

When things weren’t working out I pulled the plug, I felt that I if I went ahead then I wouldn’t do the crew or myself justice. By then the summer had past. I later did shoot Turn in December.

This Summer I am going to shoot at least 3 shorts! There I said it.

They will be short zero budgets. I have several projects already and some are almost ready for Pre production. Ideally I would like to start shooting in May… a whole (less than a) month away! We’ll see.

Filmmaking is great isn’t it? All the glamour, money and fame… yeah if you’re an A list filmmaker maybe. Truth is, it’s very hard work with little or none of the above. If it’s the fame, glamour and money you’re after then I’d suggest a different career, perhaps enter Big Brother or something.

I’ve seen it with several people who I went to college with, yes they may have been very much into film but just didn’t realise what it was all about.  Long hours, weeks with no days off and often working for free. Why? For the love of it, for the hope that when you get the rushes back that you have something special.

On set you’re most lightly going to be very busy or not busy but have to wait and wait and wait until you’re needed. Two shorts I was in the lighting crew last year were like that. In one we set up the lights for a scene and then went off and had a cup of coffee and read the paper. We might get a call to tweak a light a bit, and then we’d go away again and have another cup of coffee. It can get boring at times, you’re well away from the shooting but close enough that you have to be quiet. Then an hour or two later you might get to light the next scene.

In another shoot it was the complete opposite. We’d set up the lights in one scene and then go off and light the next. Once the first scene was shot we’d go back there take down the lights and go off and set up the next scene (we were lucking to have enough lights to do this).

We only got about five minutes at lunch for a quick cupa and we were off again to be ready for when the rest of the crew were finished.

When shooting finished then we’d be the last to leave because we’d have to take down all the lights, wait for them to cool before putting them away.

I enjoyed the latter the most without a doubt.

Here’s a picture I took with my Canon 350D… ah what a lovely calf, isn’t it? …it’s a bit soft but sure you’ll have all that…

Here another picture I took… a rubbish bin

It’s pouring rain at the moment so can’t take anymore for a while… I’ll put up a gallery when I really get going.

Two weeks after I bought the camera I might finally get to use it. A Courier just called and dropped of my compact flash card… (The right one this time I hope).

The weather isn’t great at the moment so won’t be great for taking pictures. Anyway I will post up some of the results I get from the camera.

Also I see Mike over at Darksats Blog bought himself a Nikon F55, interesting to see what he can come up it aswell…

I finally got some writing done last night and finished up with the first draft to a 4-5 minute short which I’ve given a working title of “Open the Gate There Will Ya”.

Its about a guy who wakes up on a up river stone beach and everything around him seems out of place and not normal. As he walks along the beach he encounters even more bizarre situations.

I did cheat a bit in that this was an idea I had a few months back, I came across it last night as I was trying to refresh my mind during a brainstorming session. So while I have completed a first draft by the end of the month it is not an entirely new idea.

Therefore I will try to come up with a completely new idea that would only have been conceived since I set myself the task.

With the weekend that was in it I got very little done (not a thing) with regard the writing a short script. I set a deadline for the end of the month, which now means I have 12 days to come up with the first draft.

I have a few ideas they just need a bit of beefing out. Hopefully tonight I will manage to get something constructive done.

Before Christmas I had set myself a brief to write a few shorts but the production of ‘Turn’ put an end to that.

I’ve been meaning to start writing something with the last few weeks but have never got around to it, I get as far as turning on the computer and then go of doing something else…

The brief is simple as I will probably fund the productions myself, hopefully costing somewhere between €00.00 and €00.01. With that in mind there will be no fancy stuff.

All Exterior locations. Locations kept to a minimum, preferably just 1 location 2 at most.
Little or no live sound.
As little talent as possible, just 1 would be ideal but 2 to 3 would be ok too.
Always keeping in mind that you’re writing with a no budget production in mind.

Now I might as well set myself a deadline for a first draft as I’m at this… we’ll say the end of this month.

We’ll see how I get on…

I’ll jump back a week to the Oscars and how it was great to see an Irish Film pick up an Oscar. Playwright Martin McDonagh’s debut film “Six Shooter” picked up the Oscar for Best Live Action Short.

I saw Six Shooter a few months ago and was very impressed with it. The performances of Brenden Gleeson and Rúaidhí Conroy were top notch. Gleeson seems to be in just about every film these days and Conroy has grown up a good bit from his role as Tato in “In to the West”.

Six Shooter is an excellent black and bloody comedy about a sad train journey home through rural Ireland, an older man (Gleeson), whose wife has just died that morning, encounters an strange and possibly psychotic, young oddball (Conroy). His outlandish words and actions set in motion a chain of events that lead inexorably to the tale’s dark and dangerous conclusion.

The dialogue is truly excellent and flows superbly through the 27 minute short.

McDonagh’s first venture into film has picked up several festival awards and was nominated for a BAFTA following its first transmission on Channel 4.

SIX SHOOTER, was produced by Missing in Action Films, Funny Farm Film & Television and Fantastic Films and co-funded by Bord Scannán na hÉireann/the Irish Film Board and Film Four Lab. International sales are being handled by The Works.

This coupled with Ken Wardrops’ highly acclaimed and multi award winning shorts including his exceptional “Undressing My Mother” has shown the world what great short films Ireland can produce.

The bar has undoubtedly been set for the rest of us.

For anyone that would like to see Six Shooter you can view from the Channel 4 website

http://www.channel4.com/film/reviews/film.jsp?id=154712

I wrote my first feature length script when I was around 15/16. It took a long time to complete it but I got there eventually. I had looked up the Internet to get information on writing a screenplay and I was fairly happy with the format.

I sent it on to a few people and the feedback was always positive. My head swelled. Looking back now these people wouldn’t have been experts on screenwriting. TV producers maybe.

To the untrained eye it looked very much like a script. I signed up to a screenplay review site and uploaded the script for some more feedback. I didn’t get much before it was dumped, not because it was necessarily a bad script but because of formatting issues.

I was disgusted with them, what did they know anyway? “the script was constantly going in and out of past tense” one person said.

Fast-forward a couple a years and completion of a filmmaking course as well as writing a few shorts and reading tons. I had lost interest in the feature script so didn’t really touch it in a few years.

One thing that pains me is reading a script that isn’t formatted correctly, sometimes you put yourself through the pain to give the writer some feedback on the story. It’s Lazy, if you want someone to read your script, learn how to format correctly. Don’t give them a reason to hate your script after two lines!

So… recently I decided I’d edit my feature script and maybe give it to a few contacts I had made over the years for some more feedback.

OH MY GOD! IT”S TORTURE!!!

On the first page alone I must have made up to 10 corrections! The whole bloody thing looks like it’s in past tense, and the spelling and grammar mistakes! SAVE ME!

I haven’t got round to finishing the re edit yet and boy it won’t be fun!

So one bit of advise. Learn how to format correctly. Proper spelling, it’s you’re NOT your. And write in present tense! (I’m learning that the hard way)

Well…. all that rant yesterday wasn’t really worth it afterall. My memory card came today and guess what? Fool here ordered the wrong bloody one!

I blame credit cards, they make it way too easy to buy things online. There is no worrying handing over the cash over the counter no chance to check if the product is right (well you could research before hand or even go to a brick and mortar store to check out for yourself).

Apple have even taken it a step further with their one click thingy. Select an item, click a button and your credit card is charged. Great? Well maybe but what happens when you select an item and then up comes “Other people that have bought this product have also purchased the following”. And you think to yourself “ya could do with one of those and one of them”

Click the one click button and instead to paying out €79.99 or whatever you pay out €799.99. Good for apple bad for your credit.