Results tagged “brian coffey” from I Love Luci

I Love Luci's UK premiere is this Friday at the ICA in London as part of the London Short Film Festival.

Tickets are still available via the festival site.

If you get a chance to see the film and feel like rating it we'd be delighted if you would pay our page on the festival site a visit and made your mark: 

I Love Luci is complete and we have a new site to celebrate:

iloveluci.com

The film is now finished!!!!  I can hardly believe it.  It seems like we've been working on this forever.  Fortunately I have also been working on other things in the meantime so I have new projects to fill the gaping void that this could have left in it's wake.

I will continue to post here on an infrequent basis.  It's very hard to think of things to say every day that aren't completely dull and inconsequential.  But as and when things crop up I'll try and remember to continue plotting the journey here.  All the main Luci news and less personal stuff will be on the main Luci site though.

A couple of years ago I posted that we were going to Clermont-Ferrand to do some research into making short films and see some of the best examples the world had to offer at their very fine festival.  Not in my wildest dreams did I expect us to be returning with a film of our own.  But low and behold the gods are smiling on us and our perseverance, I Love Luci has just been selected for International competition at Clermont.

This is truly the wholly grail for us and I cant begin to express my feelings about it.  Apart from Brian and myself there are a whole team of people who have worked incredibly hard to make the film and it seems like such validation of their belief in the project for it to now be present at the world's most famous short film festival.

Last Thursday we went on a not so secret mission to 'pick-up' some shots for the film.  There are many reasons for doing this.  Primarily in this instance there was an aspect of the script that had been heavily debated in the development stages and had become kind of diluted by the time we shot the film.

It was impossible to tell this at the time, but with hindsight (and a little blindness along the way) I felt that the potential for a couple of extra shots to help the movie along would greatly enhance the final outcome.  The rushes (exposed film) arrived this morning.  They will be mute until we can get our hands on an Avid but we'll be able to see what's going on soon enough and whether or not the shots will cut into the film.

Tense times.

One post in over a month.  Neglectful to say the least.  Sorry.

What progress do I have to report.  In truth, not a great deal.  Things have slowed to an unbearable pace as we jockey for position in ever-increasingly congested schedules at post-facilities.  The future is bright however, I am pleased to say.

The next step, subtitling parts of the film, is underway and following this we only have the title sequence to do before we are home and dry.

I have never done subtitling before so I am keen to see how the process unfolds.  Unsurprisingly, we start with a transcription of the film.  I decided to do this myself rather than allow anyone else to do it.  I'm sure I'll have to do some tidying up but I want the dialogue to be as faithfully represented as possible.  I'm sure I'll run into some timing issues but that bridge can be crossed as and when.  For now it's transcription, that leaves room for change later on.

What next?

I am looking for exceptional short scripts as well as being in the throes of writing another short myself.  If there is a salutary lesson to have been gained from this experience it is this: have your next project as close to 'go' as possible when you are getting ready to go into production.  It takes a long time to set things up so the more projects you can have in a reasonable position to put into production the better.

It is now 8 months since I stood in the production office prepping I Love Luci and I have not been behind a camera since then.  This is a difficult position to be in and I am still looking for my next project.  For those of you following a similar path to mine that is the only warning I have - at this point!

On another note entirely I would like to say a big CONGRATULATIONS to David Mackenzie for SPREAD (Ashton Kutcher, Anne Heche) a funny, sexy, confident, stylish and daring portrait of a peculiar and all too believable Los Angeles scene.  Unmissable.  Top work sir.

Big Ideas (don't get any)

We are very near the end of the mix and it is a beautiful sounding thing indeed. 

All that's left to do is make the track at the end sit nice and loud and clear and give everyone the feeling we want them to have as they leave the cinema.

We have the wonderful King Creosote and Domino Records to thank for our final track, I won't tell you which one it is suffice to say you should go out and buy everything KC have ever published.  I am a fan for sure.

Their latest oeuvre is available via all the usual portals and some sample listening to treat your lugs to can be found on Myspace.

   Click here to buy the album on iTunes
 

I am currently in Savalas doing the foley for I Love Luci.  So I thought I'd do a live blog to cover the event a there is quite a bit of sitting about and just watching for me in this process.

I am away from my on computer so you'll have to do without photos for now I'm afraid.  I'll try and describe what's going on:

I'm sitting in a booth with the sound recordist watching little snippets of the final cut pop up on the screen.  We watch it back and forth and the foley artist decides on what kind of implement is best to match the sound of the picture.

Our booth has a huge window looking on to the foley artist in a studio that is not too dissimilar to most sound studios, but, it has pits in the floor with different types of road surface, floor surface and anything else you might find underfoot. There is a back room with bikes, cutlery, pots, different kinds of shoes, cloth, glass, metals etc etc.  All necessary for replicating the rich tapestry of sounds that surround us every day as we wonder through the world, and of course for making sounds from other worlds too.

We will be spending the next few hours shaking old bike frames, rattling tea spoons and rubbing bits of leather against and an old shirt.  We even have a dog we can record of necessary.

"We use the three beeps system here at Savalas...", Iain's opening gambit to the start of each ADR session with an actor begins with a brief explanation of what they will hear in their 'cans'.  Three beeps and then they begin talking, hopefully in sync with the picture on the screen.

Yesterday we had 3 of our cast in to re-do and in some cases re-invent some of their lines.  We started with Sanjeev Kohli, a very well known Scottish actor and ADR veteran judging by the way things went. 

As with all the cast we got some real gems but they didn't happen where I was expecting them.

Colin Harris was next up, followed by Camilla Rutherford.  In both cases the covering of the original lines was a technical pursuit, trying to recreate the performance from the shoot and while interesting wasn't nearly as fun as discovering the stuff that we could add to enhance the shape of the film.  This largely came in the form of laughs, breaths, sighs, coughs, audible shrugs and other minutae.  This stuff was great fun to do and it was a real pleasure to be afforded the opportunity to do this level of detailed work.

Many thanks to all involved:

Cast:
Colin Harris, Sanjeev Kohli and Camilla Rutherford.

Technical:
Recordist: Iain Anderson; Sound Designer: Douglas MacDougall; Voice Coach: Ros Stein

The last person I would like to thank is Joe, the night security guard at Film City Glasgow, who very kindly allowed us to interrupt his rounds to come and do a line that I hadn't put in the script.  The line covers a security guard at the end of the film - a nice authentic touch we thought, and a great voice.

NB There will be a few crap photos to follow, I promise.

The awards are on Friday the 13th.  I think I'll wear my whistle with Friday the 13th embroidered inside.  Maybe it'll bring Brian and I some luck. 

We'll just have to wait and see...

These are bloody great.



In preparation for our trip to Berlin (NB Luci is not screening at the Berlinale) I thought it would be a good idea to have a business card - all very stuffy and old school I know but it is still a thing that makes sense and is a little something for someone to take home - just ask Hugh about the virtues of business cards.

A couple of years ago moo cards were all the rage so I thought I'd take a look and see if they are still around.  And they are.  This is so simple, so cool and so perfect in its conception it's irresistible.  So for those of you as slow on the take up as me I recommend getting yourself some of these if you need a business card.  What's more, it's cheap enough to get them for something specific and then get a new design for the next thing you're going to.

In the absence of having anything that I can really talk about freely at the moment and the constant promises to update these pages I thought I'd share some of the stuff I did to prep for the shoot.

First up is this tiny snippet of video of a doll lying in a compromising position on the grass in my garden.



I had planned to shoot a drunken sequence for the film with a continuously revolving camera to try and enhance its drunken/romance/dreamlike qualities, but it's a minefield when it comes to editing - trying to work out of the usual rules.

Although this particular little bit of vid is a perfect example of how not to do something it was just enough to help me realise that I could use a revolving camera if I wanted to, without too much fear of what I might have to work with in the edit.

In the end time and stock got the better of me though and I just had to think on my feet for another way to shoot the scene.  It worked out just as well as my original idea and only took 40 minutes to shoot.  There's a lesson to be learned in there somewhere.

We got a brief and totally inaccurate mention in the Telegraph online today because Camilla (Rutherford) is working in Monaco this weekend:

The decorous actress has just forsaken the rainy streets of Glasgow, where she had been making a grimy film about heroin addiction, for sunny Monaco, where she is to be the president of the jury of the Angel Film Awards at the Monaco International Film Festival this weekend.

Telegraph.co.uk

Our film is not 'grimy' or about heroin addiction.  It does star Camilla though so they got that right.  Hopefully next time they'll mention the title...

Monday heralded the arrival of our editor, Jake Roberts. 

Jake and I have been friends for many years, starting out on the filmmaking trail at pretty much the same time.  I met Jake while he was editing for David Mackenzie and we have all been friends since then.

A bit of trivia for those interested: Jake and I both served time as hopeless assistants to David, Jake on Asylum and me Hallam Foe.

Jake has spent the last couple of days sorting out teething problems with the Avid and syncing up the rushes (uncut footage).  Last night myself, Jake and Brian Coffey (Producer) watched the lot from start to finish and I'm pleased to say feel that we have everything necessary to make the film.  This sounds like it would be an obvious thing, but, in the heat of the moment and under the pressure of the schedule, light and stock it can become very easy to find yourself in a situation where you don't have enough coverage (alternative shots to cut together) to make the best of a scene. 

We have our tricky bits to deal with but all in all I am pleased with what we have and would like to pass on a message of sincere thanks to everyone on the cast and crew.  All have done a superb job and I hope we will go on to make a wonderful little film.

The other good thing about the editing process is that I should have a little more time to write the blog and fill you in with details from the shoot so hopefully the normally intermittent service will be a little more frequent for the next short while.

We are editing at Film City Glasgow for the offline stage.  The DI will be done at Pepper Post and the sound will be done with the mighty Savalas.

I have loads of stuff to put here on the blog but I've been rushed off my feet in the last couple of weeks.  Normal intermittent service will resume tomorrow when we have wrapped our film. 

Today is the last day of the shoot for I Love Luci.  It's been a blast so far but we have arguably our hardest stuff to do in the middle of the night tonight so it's very far from over.  I am happy so far but we have a way to go.

Here's a wee snap of our fantastic focus puller, Derrick Peters, checking the gate.  For those of you unfamiliar with film we check the gate (the little window where the film is exposed to the light from the lens) after each take to see if there is any crap in there that could have interfered with the quality of the image we're trying to get.  This is one of the focus pullers jobs.

I am looking for musicians / composers from the West Midlands.  If that applies to you or someone you know please feel free to get in touch.

clyderidesagain@googlemail.com

We have had some very helpful responses to the Tattoo post so maybe people might be interested in the music side of things too.

ADDENDUM:
After a little digging last night I came across a magazine called Bearded, it's looks quite interesting.  You can download it here in pdf form:

issue4.pdf

Pardon the pun, couldn't resist it, one of the key parts in this short film, Luci, is played by a dog. 

We actually cast this part a good while ago, a number of months ago in fact.  The reason for this is the dog needs to be trained to do certain things so the earlier we cast the part the more chance we have of this working out.

So here is our dog, the wonderful Wilson (he has now been trained to respond to Luci).

We are currently looking for a tattoo artist to get involved with the film.  Anyone who wants to suggest some contacts or put an artist in touch with us please feel free to comment on the blog.

The current line of thinking is that there will be a tattoo on the arm of one our leading lady which will also be the title of the film: I Love Luci.

If anyone is a budding tattoo artist or knows of anyone who would like to submit a a design for potential use in our little film then send in your designs.  There is no brief other than it should fit in the bicep / upper arm area of a lady and it should manage to say "I Love Luci" in some way.  The style of design I will leave up to your imaginations...

This is the last week of British Summertime.  Not that you would know it here in Scotland as the weather continues to be persistently bleak...

When the Script for I Love Luci was initially conceived I set it in the summer or early autumn.  As it transpires we are gearing up to shoot at the beginning of winter.  We had hoped that we might be able to get things moving fast enough to get the stuff shot before the end of British Summertime when you do at least have a reasonable amount of light in the day. 

I am not overly concerned about how this affects the story.  I think we can use it to our advantage if we apply a little creativity.  There are some serious practical implications.

I have talked a bit about schedule in the past and one constant is the tightness of a shooting schedule.  They tend to be lean by nature.

This Sunday the clocks go back one hour.  Gaining an hour sounds useful on first impression but the reality is that all of a sudden it start to get dark at about 4 in the afternoon which takes a considerable chunk out of your working day if daylights important to whatever you're up to.

This coupled with what looks like an expanding production schedule means that we are heading towards the abyss of Scottish winter and some new thinking on the shooting schedule.

If there's one thing I have learned over the last few years working at Sigma then it's that you have to remain flexible.  Too often you can make a decision and have it robbed from you for reasons you could never predict - although the schedule is frequently the perpetrator.

The very exciting part of having our first chunk of funding in place means that we now have tentative shoot dates and casting and crewing to start pulling together.

At one point it looked like we had all the HoD's (heads of department) in place.  However, the nature of the project is that even though we are a funded operation we still can't pay high fees and we will be in production for a short period of time.  The upshot of this is if people get jobs that will take them up to Christmas or just pay a lot more money then economics take priority. 

We are forever planning and re-planning and changing and alternating and reconfiguring and swapping things about.  I expect things will chop and change some more before we shoot.  I suppose if there are people out there in a similar situation to mine then you should be aware that things are rarely set in stone before the camera rolls.

Tomorrow we have our first casting day.  It's for the part of Tommy.  The male lead in the film.  This is very exciting.  We have a bunch of guys coming into read for the role all of whom look like interesting options for the part.  I love the idea that tomorrow I will be able to see some life coming to the script for the first time.  I hope the schedule doesn't get in the way of anything that feels right tomorrow.



 

The current intention is to shoot I Love Luci on 16mm film.  This is for a number of reasons.  I am very keen to shoot on film for the quality of image.  To get a comparative image digitallly the camera we would have to use is very big and we have a number of tight locations and a lot of handheld work on this film so 16mm will save on space and get the best image.  Secondary to this is the amount of light we will need.  It seems strange to me but we need more light to shoot on HD than we would to shoot on film now that the stocks are so good (for the uninitiated: stock is the term for the film that goes in the camera and you get all sorts of makes and speeds, mainly Kodak and Fujifilm).

BTW, if you are thinking of shooting something on film you should try and buddy up to the reps for Kodak and Fuji to see if you can get a good deal on your stock.  If you have absolutely no money and you still want to shoot on film then try going to production companies that shoot on film and asking for some of their shorts ends.

So we're thinking of shooting a standard 16mm gate with anamorphic lenses.  This will give us that classic 2.39 or Techniscope image.  As I understand it though, anamorphic lenses are expensive and light hungry.  Yesterday our exec producer, Gillian Berrie, asked why we weren't thinking of shooting on 35 and I explained that I didn't think there was a camera small enough for us to use that would fit all the criteria we need for an 'A' camera.

So I've had a very fun day looking at all the options for 35, having previously discounted it as not possible because of the size of the camera.  However, after a little research into new cameras that are about I have found two cameras that are perfect for the job and could in fact save us quite a substantial amount of money for another reason that isn't available to 16mm.  If we shoot 2-perf on 35 we would half the amount of stock we need because it's a far more efficient use of the negative.  I think this is a technique we used on Hallam Foe, but I didn't go into much detail about it on the blog because I didn't have time to research it properly.  Another benefit to this is that a mag lasts twice as long so you would get about 9 minutes out of a 400' roll, this is lighter for the camera operator too and roughly equal to the time you get out of a roll of 16mm.

The upshot of all this reading and looking into different cameras is that I have found a way of potentially saving us money that could be well used somewhere else as well as improving the versatility of our camera department.  If it checks out well in the money department for post-production as well as the shoot then we are quids in and would only have to clear it with our financiers to get the go ahead.  We'll see what happens.

Today is a pretty special day.  We (Brian and I) made a significant leap towards making our film.

We got the good word from our major funder that we would be able to secure the finance we need from them.  I am speaking in mildly coded terms because this is the first step in funding and it won't be made public (i.e. announced to the press) until we have closed finance.  That said, this is the foot up we need and our hope is that the rest of the metaphoric dominoes will fall well for us over the coming weeks.

This is the starting point for I Love Luci so it's eyes down now for the next few months and fingers, toes and all other appendages crossed that we can put together a great little film over the days and weeks to come.

Thank you to all that have supported us thus far, it means a lot.

Stay tuned for the ups and downs.

As the application approaches readiness (it's currently in the hands of our development executive having a thorough going over to make sure all the elements are in place) I thought I should publish the synopsis for the film here.

I know people are not keen to see such a spoiler as the script but a little more detail might be nice.  So here it is:

I Love Luci is a comedy of missing teeth, an inappropriate paramour and one dog's ability to shape the fortunes of a couple destined never to be together.
 
Today is the last day Tommy has to win Marjory's heart before her man returns from another stint in the clink.  But things aren't looking good.  Marjory is totally pre-occupied by the fact she's lost her teeth, and it's about to get a whole lot worse.

ADDENDUM:
I wrote this entry quite some time ago but didn't publish it because I didn't want to influence the decision making process for our application.  Things were very sensitive back then.

I have had the video that we made for We Are The Physics up on this blog before but I was asked to take it down by the record label.  I think that any concentration of hype they may have wanted will surely have passed by now so here it is again for those that missed it the first time round.

I should add that if anyone is interested in having a music video made by Sigma Films then they should get in touch with the office.

Money, money, money...

As soon as you start down the road of trying to make something that looks the part, will be professional and stand up to the competition, you inevitably have to start talking about money.

I believe people should get paid for the work they do, even if it's just a token gesture, a little something for time and effort is an important nod to the fact that a large part of film-making is about making a living too.

The thing about shorts is that there isn't a lot of money to be made once the film is complete -  no-one's going to get rich off the back of this.  Who knows what the future holds with the development of online viewing platforms and the long-term decline of terrestrial television, but none of this will happen in a time-scale that is useful to us and our film so I shall have a debate about the changing face of broadcasting at a later date.  (Although it does make me instantly think that there should be a clause in any contracts that the film has to be charged for when people view it in a capacity other than terrestrial TV and that some of that should come back to the filmmakers... to be continued...)

This, of course, all leads back to the same place: funding.

I mentioned previously that we are looking for the lion's share of our funding from Scottish Screen, our local funding body, and part of that process is putting in an application for funding.  I am pleased to say that our application appears to be getting closer and closer to completion.  The outcome of this will have a massive bearing on how we progress.  Without the funding I am not sure we will be able to go ahead.

Whether approaching your local funder or looking for private investment it is apparent to me that there are certain things that would help with any potential investor.  We're being very clear to identify all the people we want to work with up front, all the things that we predict will be problematic and trying to pre-empt as many of those problems as possible and, most importantly, making it clear where other investment is coming from and who those partners are.

This is conjecture but film making is an expensive endeavour and if the risk needs spreading then that's what you have to do.  The more people I talk to about funding short films the more parallels I see with the way independent films are financed, namely patch-funding.  For the uninitiated this means exactly as it sounds; funding is patched together from various sources in order to match what you have worked out is going to be the cost of making your film.

Of course this is by no means the only way of going about making a short film.  I have made a number of shorts with little or no money and pulled them together using a huge number of favours and some of the best films I have seen have been done in the same way.  This time, however, I am keen to finance the work and it's about time I took this step.  I should also point out that I am trying to make this film outwith the framework of a scheme.  This makes life a lot harder because many of the potential funders (government bodies, broadcasters etc) are not interested in spending money outside of their schemes.  I think they feel they already make a significant contribution to emerging talent.  However, there are always exceptions to the rule so why not try and batter the door down anyway. 

I am pleased to say that we have got some interest as a result of conversations in Cannes so perhaps I should retract my remark about it not being a useful place for people interested in making shorts, it looks like it might have been very useful for us.  We just need to firm things up now and get it all into our application.

Fingers crossed (as usual).

Recently Brian and I did a fairly comprehensive tour of Glasgow's west end looking for locations for I Love Luci.  Although this hasn't had a direct impact on the writing there were always a couple of locations that have been present in the script right from the beginning.

I remember David quoting Wong Kar-wai as saying that he likes to find a location and then a story.  David followed somewhat similar principals on Hallam Foe.  I have to admit I am not entirely following their lead but I am trying to apply my story to some locations that I have always wanted use, so my approach is not totally dissimilar.

Before being a filmmaker I studied painting, at that time my environs always had a big impact on the work I made.  It seems this is still the case with my current projects.

One of the realities of making a short film is that there isn't much money involved - i.e. you don't get paid for your work, certainly not initially.  It is a labour of love, or a compulsion at least.  The knock-on effect of that is things have to slide a little when the offer of paid work comes along.

To this end Brian (producer on I Love Luci) and myself are making a music video.  Again, not a particularly lucrative profession but any little contribution to the coffers is always welcome so this will help while we're getting the script in shape.

We are working with a fantastic young Scottish band from Glasgow - We Are The Physics - on their next single release You Can Do Athletics.

If you like fast punky pop then these guys are for you.

Of course, this has involved a good bit of writing and research to get to the point of commission and I am now about to write a detailed script.  Once the script is in order the next steps will be scheduling, budgeting and crewing up for a shoot in the very near future.  Exciting stuff and very good fun, if a little on the stressful side as with all film making.

The production company is Sigma Films and the record label is Fake DIY Records.  I'd also like to put a little nod towards Gill Mills and iCast for making the introductions.