Starting a film project can be pretty daunting. So many phone calls to make, emails to write,
favours to ask. So this is what beginning stages of preproduction has been like for us
on our latest short film, and hopefully you'll be able to learn from some of my mistakes.
It all started with an email from a guy called Johann who had written a script. I read the script, we had
a couple of Skype calls, and before I knew it I had agreed to direct this film. But I thought, well I'm
in full time education and I'm trying to make weekly episodes for this channel, so let’s wait
a year until I’m finished with school. But Johann convinced me to go for it anyway, and even
though I had no idea whether this would be possible, I said okay, 3 months. We’ll
shoot in three months. That was kind of terrifying I think mostly
just the logistics - we’d need actors, how much crew would we need, where we gonna find locations?
So I got in touch with Carl ,an up and coming producer who I’d met through a different
project. He was up for it and he got straight to work
combing through the script to see what we’d need to make this happen. Now the three of us didn't actually live
that close to each other, so we'd have bunch of calls, where I’d talk to Johann
about how we could approach this creatively, and then talk to Carl about
what we were going to do to pull that off practically. I’ve realised that I really like collaborating
on these bigger projects, we'd have these calls and talk about the project, and then at the end
make up these to do lists for each of the things that we'd do before the next call.
And that was really helpful for me to stay on track, since I really struggle with procrastination.
So I talked to Carl, our producer to work out how long it would take to set up and film each of the scenes
and then we'd try and order them based on what would make most sense for the actors, but also bearing
in mind which scenes need to be shot in the dark, and which ones in the day.
It really is a bit of a rubix cube trying to find all these things where you fix one thing,
and then that messes up something else, so you really have to try all these different combinations
until you find something that works. But it is honestly hugely important because you can't do anything
until you've got down a date. Now the producer also handled all of the budgeting, but we'll get into that in a separate episode
On the creative side, it was really helpful for me to try
and find the core of the story - and I feel like with ‘Two Wrongs’ it's a story about revenge and so that
dictated a lot of the decisions that we made. For example, I wanted it to be quite snappy,
one thing happening after another, because I feel like when it comes to revenge,
If you were to stop and take note and think about what you're doing, you probably
wouldn't go through with the revenge.
As far as the tone and style goes, one of the first things that me and Johann
had talked about was how those orange sodium vapour street lights were really important to the aesthetic
they just felt right. And then I built on that idea
to go from orange light at the start of the scene to a much cooler almost moonlit kind of look for the end of the scene.
As it goes from hot rage to cold blooded killing. So those images were some of the first
On the mood board which is basically just a little montage of any kind of
screenshots from movies, photos about the locations, anything that kind of helps to communicate
That vision in your mind from when you're reading the script, down to something that's on paper.
So it's consolidated, and so you can show it to the DP and the costume designer.
Now after talking to Johann I found that we were kind of on the same page, a lot of the things that
I definitely didn't want to do, he was agreeing on them, and then he was also definitely bringing
a lot of good ideas to the project. So I wanted to include him in the process
rather than just taking the script and running off with it.
So we basically talked through what we thought the purpose of each scene was, and then went
through each line of dialogue trying to see whether any changed were needed.
For example, after reading the first version of the script, I felt like the overall message of the film needed
to be a bit more subtle, a bit more kind of woven in.
But of course the big limiting factors for everyone are time and money, so there were some things
that we had to change because we just couldn't do it, like for instance at one point we thought we were
gonna be able to get access to a hospital, but then when that didn't pan out, we really had to adapt to that.
In the mean time, Carl had hired Rebecca, a casting director, and after
I’d given her a rough description of what each character could look like, she pretty
much did everything else for us.
So when arrived in Manchester, I didn’t even know how many people were going to be auditioning.
But I went straight to the room that Carl had booked for us, and Rebecca had done a great job
finding a whole bunch of actors, I think it was about 25 people who auditioned, and they were
all scheduled throughout the day in their ten minute slots.
I felt like the best actors showed that they had range - they could respond to
feedback, while still giving convincing performances, not only in their face expressions and dialogue
delivery, but also in their body language. Because some of the actors were great, above the neck, but
just seemed really uncomfortable like they didn't know how to stand.
You know, it was really worthwhile just to spend an entire day focusing on character and performance,
Being able to work with so many different actors, I felt I knew a lot better what I was going to be doing on the shoot.
Since I wasn’t going to be back in Manchester until the shoot itself, I decided to make the most of it
and do some locations scouting the very next day.
Johann lived around there so he'd already sent me some pictures of what looked like some pretty decent locations.
So we walked around and found a pretty nice looking Cafe, and Carl had actually managed to get us permission
to film there. And although I liked the look of it, and it would have worked for the kind of geometry of the scene,
It didn't really fit with the film.
We needed a takeaway joint, something like that. Because this short really is a product
of it’s location, the story just wouldn’t take place in a small little village full of rich
people. So out scouting I wasn’t looking for green fields, and fancy restaurants.
It was more like this sort of thing from the mood boards that was more aesthetically appropriate, but also fit in more with the kind of
culture around gangs and how it is usually people who are kind of on the edges of society, people who have nowhere
else to go. So I felt like a good place to start was around the back of buildings. We found one
place that was a really good fit for our second scene, both in terms of the aesthetics, but also about the kind of shape of where everything is
and how the scene could take place. But then I decided to just take a look around the back of the
building, just to see if there was anything there, and we stumbled across what I'm pretty sure
was the most run down, grimy looking place in the entire area. Because that was really the idea,
We were in a very nice part of Manchester, but then we would just find these little pockets of decay, and film there.
Most of the locations we picked were actually within
walking distance of each other, which was gonna make it really easy when it came to filming,
One problem with that was it meant they were all right next to a train track, and on the streets where we'd have
problems with sound. But, how bad could it be? And so I left Manchester after
the auditions and location scouting feeling much better about the project, happy with
what we’d accomplished and with a clearer idea about how to direct each character
from the casting, and I was really glad to be able to walk through each scene in the actual locations which I knew
would be helpful for the storyboarding. So it was all beginning to take shape.
Already the film was pretty different to what we started with, and we still had two months before the
shoot. I had no idea what was coming up, but I had a feeling
it was only going to be even more intense. But one thing is definitely for sure:
I knew it would have been a big mistake to wait a full year before getting started on this project.
My name's Simon Cade, this has been DSLRguide, and i'll see you next week.