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The film is now finished and we have now got to look at distribution, the film is currently burnt onto DVD but with a huge loss in quality, so we are looking to burn to Blue Ray disc but this means more expense as blank Blue Rays are expensive.
I have also looked into local film festivals to see if we can get ourselves noticed locally within the film groups.
Nationally I have not looked into yet.
I thought I should reflect on this project as a whole. Pre Production was a real nightmare it felt like it lasted forever and being the first time I had co-produced a film it was very stressful. I feel I fulfilled my role as co-producer dealing with mainly finding a location to film at and hunting down props for the film. As for the production itself, I felt we could of done with an extra day to film the extra scenes we needed but I then also feel that if we had planned for 3 days the first 2 days would have been too relaxed and we would still have been rushed on the 3rd day. My fellow peers performed well on set and we were able to finish the filming on schedule, there were a few minor set backs but I feel myself and curtis kept everyone on track. Alam the producer had no problems doubling/tripling up on roles on both days and he was a pleasure to work with, in pre production Alam handled all communications and planning, this was done with precision. Curtis directed the piece and on the first day needed a little guidance in what was happening and when it had got to happen by. Day two saw Curtis settle into his role, he was more assertive with his role and everybody knew what they had to do, overall Curtis as a Director performed well and he got the film made on the 2 days. Azizur was assigned assistant director, the reasoning behind this was because Curtis wasn’t fully aware of the traditional background of the story Azizur could support Curtis in these areas however I feel Azizur didn’t bring anything valuable to the production days and therefor didn’t fulfil his role, Azizur was also assigned the role of props, he produced a list of props which was great but when I went through the script there was lots of vital props missing from the list, so myself and Alam took on the rest of the props purchases.
This production has been a valuable learning experience for myself as I have learnt that if you feel that someone is letting the group down then you should raise this issue at the start instead of ignoring it and paying for it at the end of the production.
Other things I have learnt from this production:
We thought we had planned every eventuality but even so we had some unexpected problems.
Qubul was really helped along with the two great actors that we chose. Without these the film would not be as strong.
Having a strong reliable team means the production will be more efficient.
I researched a lot into lighting and came across the phrase “painting with light” many times. I now understand what this means. After watching Qubul back if I was to be very critical I would say that the table scene is too perfectly lit. It makes it look slightly unnatural and would now bare this in mind with my next film.
These are all things I have learnt from this one production and I shall continue to learn more on my next productions.
Overall I am really pleased and proud to say that worked on Qubul and I feel we produced the film to a professional standard.
Today we played Qubul to a small audience, it was received with mixed reviews. My thoughts on the screening were that the film appeared more visually interesting on a large screen, and that the storyline was more intriguing. The colour of the film was very off and this is something we need to take into consideration when grading the film as this may be the same screen that it is screened on for the degree show.
The edit is now complete, but one thing is still left to tackle; colour correction and grading. Our last film convexity took a long time to grade but hopefully Qubul should not take so long. Each shot needs matching to the next with colour correction so there is no huge difference in colours. Even though the camera was white balanced for each shot you will still find difference in colour temperatures. Also we are going to apply a film grade to the film this will bring the contrast up so that Blacks appear as blacks and not grey but it will not saturate the skin tones so it feels very filmic. This film is very vibrant in colours and we wish to bring out the red in Lalitas dress, this will be done by turning up the Reds in the RGB balance. After we are satisfied with the colour in the film a film grain will be applied at about 10% this will remove some of the “Digital” feel from the film and make it feel more like it was shot on 35mm film. This personally I think has a much warmer feel to it.
The past few weeks I have been overseeing the editing with Curtis and Alam. There has been a lot of footage to look through and process and so far weve done about 5 days worth.
The first challenge was sorting through the shots deciding on ones to keep and ones to discard, once this was done we arranged the files in the order that they play out in. This itself took a days work.
The next edit day consisted of synchronising the seperately recorded sound to the video, this is a very lengthy process, Curtis did the first half of the day and I finished the rest. We utilised a clapper board on both days of recoding which helps with synchronising. This is something we have not used before as we have recorded the sound directly to the camera through a mixer to control the levels. Using a seperate audio recorder has made the sound a lot more cleaner and has required a lot less post production work.
The hardest part of the edit has been the conversation that takes place at the table, this consists of cuts between over the shoulder shots. This is becuase we have faced issues with continuity errors, the actor and actress will have a glass in hand in one shot but then not the next. The only solution to this problem has been using a two shot to cover up the glitch.
We are now nearing the end of the first cut and the film is looking good, it has its minor faults but what film doesnt. I think for our first professional film it has turned out well utilising professional actors, a 8 man crew and renting a location out.
Today myself and Alam are meeting with our storyboard artist. I am looking forward to this meeting as its the first time we will get to see sketches of how the storyboards are progressing. I have seen one preview of the sketches that she has done of Lalita and I was very impressed. I will be taking a video camera along with me to document this for the behind the scenes feature. The deadline for the storyboards is the end of next week so they should be nearing completion.
AFTER MEETING -
Ok so we met with Kalie, unfortunately she forgot her sketch books so we were unable to see any sketches, however we discussed how much she has done and what changes have been made to the film since we last met. Kalie is going to scan in some sketches so we can start to see them very soon.
I have just finished capturing all 9 hours of the Behind The Scenes footage and it proves a real useful tool for self analysis.
I was a bit dubious on whether to have a behind the scenes video made for this film, purely because in our last production it meant we were one pair of hands down on the day of production. This time I asked a fellow student to film our behind the scenes footage, meaning we could focus on the production and he could worry about the behind the scenes.
After watching all 9 hours of Behind the Scenes footage back I believe its a great tool for reflection as it can be used as a visual tool to look back to see what I could have done differently. Its the production from a different perspective and this is great.
You can see from the footage that everyone on set knew what their role was and that we were running to a tight schedule, there was no messing around and we were taking our time to perfect shots.
We arrived on location at 12:15pm around half an hour late, en-route to the location Curtis told everyone in the car that yesterday there was a few moments yesterday when there was a bit of fun banter happening in between shots and that it was good because it kept the morale up but to keep it short and sweet as today we had a tight schedule to work to. I feel this was necessary to express how important that today went well to the other crew members.
Natalie our makeup artist was already on location at 11am to prevent yesterdays problem of running behind due to makeup, so when we arrived on location Bhavna’s makeup was already finished and Ashwin’s makeup was halfway done. This was great help to us, and as soon as we were on location myself and curtis set about setting up the first shot of the day – the hallway scene, the set up for this took about 15 minutes because the equipment was already assembled in the room.
The actors were refreshed and ready to go and I think this was mainly due to the fact that when we were setting up the actors would be taken to the hotel lounge area and given time to relax and chat, and then when they were needed they would be called to set.
Todays plan was to shoot the remainder interior shots that we didn’t get done yesterday, and to have finished these by 6pm to break for tea. After tea commence shooting the exterior scenes.
We pretty much managed to keep to the schedule all day, we kept time in between shots to a minimum and today really proved how evident our team working skills had improved. Every crew member was doubling/tripling up on jobs and no one seem to have a qualm about this.
As we neared the end of the interior shots Alam and Azizur began setting up outside in the back garden to save time after lunch. This proved vital later on. The weather started to take a turn for the worst as predicted in the forecast for today it started to rain a little. We decided we would fight it out and if its begins to rain really heavily we have always got plan B which is to film the last scene indoors.
Whilst the cast and crew had lunch, Me, Alam and Chris set up the equipment outside, the weather was holding off and it was only a slight mist. We had come prepared with umbrellas and rain covers etc so this was not a problem, we just didn’t want our actors getting wet.
As for lighting outside I decided to use a large photographic backdrop stand 20ft wide x 20ft tall and on this I mounted a very large white bed sheet, behind this I set up a Blonde Luminaire on a stand pointing directly towards the sheet. The sheet acted as an extra large light diffuser and once positioned correctly worked wonders for the outdoor scenes.
We started shooting outdoors at 7pm and the actors had to leave no later than 8:45pm, this obviously meant we had 1 hour 45 minutes to get all the shots we needed to end the film (In the Rain) it was a challenge! to say the least.
Considering all the factors, the time scale, the rain, the length of the shoot and how cold the actors were getting during takes we still ensured shots were framed correctly, the camera was white balanced, no reflections were visible in the windows of the house and the actors were kept dry and warm in between takes. I feel this is the most professional we acted as a crew, everyone knew what was happening and others helped out with roles they usually wouldn’t take on. We managed to finish dead on 8:45pm and we had a few minutes to spare for a group photo.
Overall I am very pleased how the two days shoot went and if I had any reflections to make it would be that we should have looked into making it a three day shoot to make it less rushed, it was a very tight schedule and you might find that it could have been a stronger film with a three day shoot.
Today started out with loading all the equipment into my car outside Ellen Terry, we were running behind a little as we were hoping to leave Coventry at 12:00pm but we ended up leaving for the hotel at 1pm after certain set backs e.g forgetting props, traffic, and getting petrol. We left Coventry in two cars, when arriving at The Old Rectory Hotel Alam went and spoke to Christine the owner to let her know we’d arrived and to just brief her tht we would be in and out of the hotel for the first hour or so whilst we bring all the equipment in and set it all up. The set up today took longer than expected, we had given ourselves 3 hours to set up the set and equipment, what we hadn’t scheduled for was makeup for Ashwin our Male actor, so this ate into our production time. The plan for the day was to film the 3 external shots looking into the room first but as we were setting up it began to rain heavily and so we made the decision to leave that till tomorrow as tomorrow is the outdoor shoot. We then had the problem because it was not yet dark outside we could not do any shots where the windows would be in shot because the film is supposed to be set in the evening/night time, so me and Curtis discussed what to do and we decided the first shot we would do is where Lalita is sat on the bed trying to light her cigarette. We commenced shooting at around 4:15pm, one thing that felt disappointing was that it had took us 3-4 hours to set up the lighting and set and the first shot lasted around 16 seconds and then the lighting set up required changing. This reminded me today of how important it is to have a greater knowledge in lighting when working on camera, because without good lighting the image in the camera is going to look awful.
With the room being so small the lighting was very challenging and one problem I faced was the fact that the ceiling had black cross beams, so bouncing lighting off the ceiling was not achievable. We have been taught three point lighting at university for interviews etc. but it is one thing to light a stationary subject correctly but to light a moving subject is much more of a challenge. The research I carried out befre filming really helped me today, understanding temperatures, shadows and problem solving. I used 250. Lee Gels to diffuse the Red heads on all of the shots and at certain points blue gels were added to correct colour.
After we had shot all of the shots excluding the windows it was time for lunch as we wanted to make sure our actors and crew were properly fed and watered, hungry actors are moody actors, so this was vital. During lunch myself Curtis and Chris continued to film, getting shots that the actors were not needed for. We tried to capture the shot of the lighter missing the bin but this took about 46 takes to get, with the lighter landing out of shot on most takes.
After lunch we were set up for OTS shots of Lalita. The set up was pretty basic with standard three point lighting and one Dedo to soft light Naveens head and shoulders. At this point it felt like we were making more progress as the actors could now do complete run throughs of the sequence and get more into character, more so than the previous takes. The actors seemed to get more into their roles at this point and looking back at the behind the scenes interviews, they have expressed how they felt we were making more progress once we started the OTS shots.
We wrapped up filming at around 10:00pm with all cast and crew members happy with what we have achieved. It would of been nice to get a few more shots under the belt but it just means we will have to start earlier tomorrow. Az took Curtis, George and Ashwin back to Coventry whilst me Alam and Chris stayed and packed away the gear (we didn’t bring the equipment home as we would have to take it over again tomorrow and set it all up again).
Overall todays shoot was a gruelling one and its been a very long day but I have enjoyed every minute of it and I found the actors and Crew very easy to work with, considering its such a small crew we seem to be consistent with our shots and were pulling together very well as a team.
Tomorrows plan is to start a lot earlier, its now 2:30am and I have to be up for 7:00am and we are set to leave Coventry for the hotel at 11:30am.
