Filming The Pretty Things

[Al Tha Funkee Homosapien]

That reading room looks a bit 'All The Presidents Men'.
What's the potential outline of your latest work PT? Is it gonna be an orginal thing by you or are you gonna rip off someone else's story again?

[sick as a pike]

you have to go through ridiculous security just to read a book...". I suspect she may be right...

I don't know about filming there but I go to the reading room a few days a week to work and there's very little security.  It's great-you can feed your laptop on taxpayers' electric while imagining you're Karl Marx.

[Purple Tentacle]

That reading room looks a bit 'All The Presidents Men'.
What's the potential outline of your latest work PT? Is it gonna be an orginal thing by you or are you gonna rip off someone else's story again?

Heh. No, it's an original story, but not that original at all, probably a rip-off of The Omega Man and Red Dwarf.

It's yer "Last human on earth" story, but he really really IS the last human. All science-fiction apocolypse stories ever always have the 'last human' finding at least one other person, which I always think is a cop-out. The Omega Man is fucking fantastic until Charlton Heston meets the other survivors (although the luddite zombies are cool), of course it's because you can't have an easy narritive with just one person, so I thought of having the last human going through the archives for company, and finding out...something (I don't know what yet).  He dutifully spends an hour every day on a short-wave radio trying to contact one other person in the world, but the world is truly empty, all he can get are automated stations and a few commericial radio stations with the same piece of music stuck in an eternal loop.
Embryonic as hell, I just need to clear some space and just write the thing rather than faffing around with ideas, first drafts never look like the final thing anyway. It's all concept and no substance at the moment, which is no good to anyone.

To further complicate matters, I thought about ending the world in 1987 (oh, it's a deadly X-ray from a pulsar, not a nooclear war, so there's no expensive to film destruction), just so I could have post-apocolypic man using Atari STs and ZX Spectrums in the ruins of the world, which gives me the horn.

I need to watch and read a lot of apocolypic stuff to make sure I'm not overly-ripping off something else. Actually, the thing that I think I'm ripping off the most is that old Twilight Zone where the last man on earth goes to New York library, but breaks his glasses. It was also in 'The Scary Door' in Futurama.

I could do that, or I could do ANOTHER fucking fast-talking gangster film with capguns, like every other fucking film at fucking festivals.

[butnut]

you have to go through ridiculous security just to read a book...". I suspect she may be right...

I don't know about filming there but I go to the reading room a few days a week to work and there's very little security.  It's great-you can feed your laptop on taxpayers' electric while imagining you're Karl Marx.

Haha, they even let me become a member there. All I said was I needed to use the library for 'work' and they gave me a 3 year membership. I don't pop in as often as I should, but it's nice to go in there and look at, say, some bizarre medieval French music.

Again, I can't help with any filming advice but here's their page on it:

http://www.bl.uk/news/filming.html

[sick as a pike]

The picture is the old reading room in the British Museum- I think you're talking about the new British Library on Euston Road where security is extremely serious (I've heard).

[butnut]

Ah, yes of course. Well, I wouldn't say it was 'extremely serious.' You have to leave your bag in the cloakroom and carry all your stuff around in clear plastic bags. I imagine those things were introduced to stop people nicking books in the main. You can take laptops and things into the rooms.  But don't ask the staff to borrow a 'pen' - they'll go ballistic. Pencils only in all the reading rooms.

[Frinky]

If you've got no money, get someone who can drive, film the car from a distance and dub the conversation on afterwards. It's always a more interesting shot, it's easier, cheaper and less time consuming.

From what I made out from the script, it was a Very Important Shot and dubbing it wouldn't have cut it. All other avenues were fairly exhaustively ruled out by budget and the other things I mentioned above. I am sorry to have gotten you so angry, though. I think they might play the "comedy" card part of it if it doesn't work out well, although it may have been done so that it would look deliberatly comical. I don't know, not my film. Sorry.

[Becky T]

If you've got no money, get someone who can drive, film the car from a distance and dub the conversation on afterwards. It's always a more interesting shot, it's easier, cheaper and less time consuming.

From what I made out from the script, it was a Very Important Shot and dubbing it wouldn't have cut it. All other avenues were fairly exhaustively ruled out by budget and the other things I mentioned above. I am sorry to have gotten you so angry, though. I think they might play the "comedy" card part of it if it doesn't work out well, although it may have been done so that it would look deliberatly comical. I don't know, not my film. Sorry.

To be honest I wish I hadn't written all that now. Not exactly constructive criticism, was it? I understand what you're saying as well. Why would they go to all that trouble if the shot wasn't essential? Forgive me. I dislike that particular straight on shot of two people in a car to such a degree that I tend to get a bit overexcited when I see it!

What was your involvement in the film incidentally? Were you the production photographer?

[The Duck Man]

It's yer "Last human on earth" story, but he really really IS the last human.

Partridge's Love Child: Alone On Earth!
It's just him and the squirrels![/i]

[Frinky]

What was your involvement in the film incidentally? Were you the production photographer?

Not even that. Student films at my uni are usually dirty, incestuous affairs where everyone flits between projcets - I've DoP'd on some, done prop work on other, lighting on another. We try to share resources wherever we can (some of the props I've made have been in far more films than I would have ever imagined). In this case, I just happened to have a house with a drive in a quiet area, so that was that. I usually have a ton of stuff that people need but never think of (the foamboard panels in this instance), but I really just spent the time drinking tea and taking photos.


So what is your involvment with film, mysterious one?

[Becky T]

So what is your involvment with film, mysterious one?

If you mean me, then I watch them on video, that's about it I'm afraid!

[Frinky]

What a letdown! You talked the talk and everything.

At least I got the thread to a third page.

[sproggy]

Rule #01

Listen to the punters.

[sproggy]

Any clever whores got some advice or suggestions on CRT colour calibration?

My prints are coming out completely crap and I'm having a hell of a job getting the colours and contrast right.  A quick google shows an array of monitor calibrators but the huge range in prices is a little daunting.

Any guidance greatly appreciated, thanks.

[pandadeath]

Only just realised there's a filmmaking thread on here. Enjoyed it so far, a lot of interesting information and nice to hear other people thoughts on the subject. I'm at college at the moment, just finishing up the second (and final) year and will hopefully be starting a film degree in September.

Now I know what you're thinking - college film, probably poorly edited, poorly shot, showing every mundane detail of life in a painfully slow manner. Well, it's not that. At least I think it's not that.

Anyhow, last term the assignment was to make a short film, which I did and it turned out fairly well. There are a few things wrong with it that I can see, but I'd really appreciate an objective opinion of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNQLSd5mAe8

Enjoy...