"I hope I didn't wake you, but I really want to show you something."

Suzie Templeton is one of my all time favourite directors/animators. I came across her work fairly recently actually while researching various markets, and it was love at first sight. If you have heard of her before, you probably best know her for her animated adaptation of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf.

Templeton made her first animation Stanely (1999) a student film on practically no budget. It tells the story of a man obsessed with his 'prize-winning' cabbage. What sets Templeton's film aside from the other student films is not only the quality of the animation, but her talent for story telling. It is sensitive and dark, Stanely has all the components that make up a strong film; a beginning, development and a conclusion, stitched together with humour and suspense.

Her first puppets were inexpensive armatures made from balsa-wood with latex layered over the top, and to shoot her 360 degree tracking shots Templeton set up toy train set tracks. To make parts of the sets Templeton roughed up collectors furniture pieces made for Barbie.

Templeton's second short animation Dog (2001) dealt with the suffering of a boy coming to terms with the death of his mother. This was Templeton's final graduation piece from the Royal College of Art and won her a Bafta.

What inspired me so much though was looking at the huge jump in production between making her films low budget to spending $2 million on Peter and the Wolf. I admire the fact that her style doesn't significantly change, yet the quality of the entire production is heightened. One of the things Templeton said she loved so much about animation was its solitary nature, and how dramatic a change it was going from pretty much working on her own to working with a crew of 200 people.

The set from Peter and the Wolf is literally mind blowing. I had never realised that animations could be made on such a large scale. Below are some pictures I found of the set during construction.

I could easily just go on adding some of her concept sketches and raving about how beautiful I think her work is, but I should let you decide for yourself.

And finally a clip from the Oscar winning short itself.... enjoy!

The Industry (Pre-Production)

Being part of Team B:AM! (who filmed Booty Call [2009] dir. Adam Tyler), I was slightly skeptical about working with friends, as everything becomes a lot more personal. I was worried about ideas clashing and people taking offense to suggestions being thrown out. If someone isn't doing their job properly or not putting in as much work, it's much harder to make decisions about confronting those issues. When there is already an established relationship; it is difficult to remain professional sometimes. Generally speaking I prefer to keep my work and my social life separate, but I have really enjoy working with Team B:AM! despite the technical issues.

We began work in February, it took us nearly two weeks to pick a script. All the submitted scripts were really interesting. We were advised not to pick a script written by anybody in the group as it would be difficult to look at it a fresh.

I personally really liked Josh Gimblett's script "The Legend of Gary Parsons", my views on it were that it's very ambitious and has great originality. Also, each time I've read it through it's made me laugh out loud. So I think that's very positive. The storyline is similar to Zelda or even Mario is the sense that the protagonists girlfriend is abducted by an evil gaming character and he has to go into the television to save her. But because I was working with Josh this script wasn't an option.

I also enjoyed Elspeth Wilds script "Two Sides of Every Wall", a romcom about a couple who meet but circumstances pull them apart, however they soon find out they live next door to each other. This one would have been very easy to film I reckon, and we could have done something very stylish with some of the scenes.

Luke Philips script "Treatment" would have been very interesting to make, but a lot more ambitious. Treatment tells the story of a man suffering from schizophrenia and how it affects his daily life. The end of the story shows that his girlfriend is just as important in his treatment as the medication he should be taking. This script worked on many levels, but while we tried re-writing it we felt as though we spent too much time changing it, that it was almost unrecognisable. This was a shame really because I felt as though we shouldn't have been trying to change it too much. I think this happened because nobody really felt comfortable on the script choice.

As everyone had different ideas, eventually we managed to agree and decided on The Industry written by Liz Scott. Rewriting the script took almost another two weeks. The re-write was a group decision but personally I didn't feel as though much re-writing was needed. However the script was changed quite dramatically. Characters were executed and new scenes written, but I feel as though the changes that Adam, Josh and Annabel made, added depth and humour to the story. Our script was then re-named Dans L'Esprit: The Vision. (translated as In The Sprit)

The combination of Scott's script and our own resulted in the birth of a moc-k-umentary style film, reminiscent of the well known This is Spinal Tap bred with some of the special behind the scenes moments from I Heart Hackabees more commonly known as I Hate Huckabees due to the fact that Lily Tomlin loses it with director David O. Russell. See below...

This Is Spinal Tap (1984) [Dir. Rob Reiner]

I Heart Huckabees. (2004) [Dir. David O. Russell]

Originally Adam Tyler was meant to be directing but as he wasn't making himself available, I took over the role with Adam as 'Assistant Director' and Stage Manager. Rosie Harris did a great job as producer finding our amazing location, and Josh Gimblett & Annabel Rudd made a fantastic crew as cameraman and sound(wo)man.

But as the filming weekend drew closer things began to get more stressful with the regular disappearances of Adam. We organised various trips to the location to work out where we wanted to shoot each scene, and to arrange with the owners what hours over the weekend we could film. In the week leading up to filming we held meetings with the cast on location to run through the script, which were successful but let down by the fact our props weren't ready.

If I could have changed anything about our pre-production it would have been the pace. I would have liked for everything to have been carried out a lot faster and been more organised. I feel as though we all could have been more prepared for our filming weekend, making sure costumes were professionally organised in time, and that our set was ready plus props. But understandably this is very difficult when everybody has such a heavy work load on top of this module. Our actors were brilliant though having already learnt their lines by the time we arrived for rehearsal on location.

Auditions

It's not long now till our shoot, and yesterday evening we held our auditions. I'm not going to lie, I was very excited by it all. Josh contacted Chris Jury who distributed an email to some of the performing arts students, and fortunately we had a great response. We booked out a room in the Newton building, and invited them to show us what they could do.

It was a brilliant experience. I'm feeling really confident that we've got our casting spot on.

I also contacted some of my friends from home and begged them to come up and play extras, so fingers crossed we should get a good turn out.

We held an open audition on 11th March for anybody interested in the roles, and thankfully had more than enough actors attend. I found the whole casting process really fun, but also found it difficult trying to give each actor the right part. Eventually, as everybody started to relax (including the crew) the characters really started to define themselves. I think our decisions were correct, and I was really pleased with our final cast.

Just a couple of films to pass the time

I discovered a couple of days ago, after waking up with a swollen jaw and thinking that I'd had an allergic reaction to something - catching the bus to a walk-in clinic, sitting in a waiting room full of people for an hour - and after finally seeing a doctor; that I have the mumps.

What is this, like sixteenth century England? Excuse me for being a little naive but I thought we didn't get that anymore thanks to the MMR?

Well anyway, as I'm bed ridden and avoiding all possible human contact for the next week, there really isn't any better way to spend my time than catching up on 'those' films that somehow complete your life. (I sound a little cynical, I'm just feeling sorry for myself).

I remember seeing 'Sherlock Holmes' a month or so ago and thinking how unlike Guy Ritchie the nature of it was, but I had made that assumption having never seen 'Snatch' (which I finally watched today).

Well obviously I was blown away. I know people have been talking about it for years, but I'd just never got round to seeing it. The cinematics directed by Tim Maurice-Jones are inspiring, I think he's working on that new 'Kick-Ass' superhero film by Matthew Vaughn. The entire look of 'Snatch' is so glossy. I wouldn't say that it glorifies crime but it certainly makes it funny. It still keeps it quite chilling. I actually came out of it feeling quite uplifted, and wanting to spend the rest of my life with Bullet Tooth Tony. Marry me please?

'Memento' on the other hand... I was not so impressed with. I remember discussing our shorts and deciding that even though they were only shorts the audience doesn't want to feel cheated. They want to feel like they can take something away from it. Well Christopher Nolan, I would like all the 109 minutes of my life back please.

I don't understand it, because the concept was great. It was such a good idea, and the way it was put together... the whole repetition thing, I thought that was really clever. It reflected his character's condition perfectly. But the ending is just such a cop-out. Whatever happened to Natalie? Did I miss something massive there, because I'm sure she was just forgotten about. He killed her boyfriend, we presume that she has figured that out since he's driving her boyfriend's car and wearing his clothes. Yet she starts sleeping with him because it's gonna mess him about? Seriously love? He has a 5 minute memory... he doesn't care.

I got really wrapped up in the 'who can you trust' element, but I was then let down at the finish line. We knew all along why he killed JG so we had no sympathy for the character... it was never created in his make-up anyway. I was just left feeling hugely disappointed, and I would love to know if anybody else felt the same, because the people who recommended it to me raved about it.

Scriptwriting: R.S.V.P.

I really enjoyed the scriptwriting part of this module, more than I had expect actually.

As we approached the 2nd part of this module, we knew what was in store for us. Everyone had to write an original script, that was to produced a 5-8min film. I guess I hadn't expected that to be too difficult in terms of length, but I found the context extremely challenging. Writing a student film is potentially one of the hardest scripts as there is no budget. Everything has to be film-able, especially as it is to be shot over a weekend.

At the beginning of the year I was inspired by a music video for the Cinnamon Chasers called "Luv Deluxe" (2009) [Dir. Saman Keshavarz]

What captured me in this film was the amazing way in which it is cut together. Despite it only being 5min long it manages to tell 3 different stories.

What I then decided I wanted to do was take that real, fast paced element from Luv Deluxe and combine it with a party atmosphere in which the story is told through two separate characters; the 'Host' and a 'Guest'. The visual idea being that each time their paths crossed physically the story-line switched character perspective too.

Of course, there is no fun in that, unless it is the party from hell. I was thinking, Rules of Attraction (2002), Donnie Darko (2001), Skins (2008) all squashed into one. Keep it really messy and absolutely abusive; sex, drugs and rock'n roll to its extreme.

Hopefully the party will bring the two characters together, minus the love interest. We've seen it before.

I think in total I spent about 3 weeks writing my script. One week researching; I appealed to loads of my friends to share some of their party horror-stories with me. Then two weeks writing, drafting, and re-writing. Eventually titling it: R.S.V.P (Original, i know!)

I felt as though the script I wrote was ambitious as a student film, mainly due to the vast amount of cast required. However I thought the nature of it, might have been quite appealing to some.

Rules of Attraction Unofficial Trailer

Skins Trailer

Post Production: Editing & Final Cut.

Editing

This has to be one of my favourite parts of the filming process, putting it all together.

Luckily I’ve been brought up using Mac’s and final cut pro so this wasn’t foreign territory for me. We uploaded all of the rushes onto one of the Macs at Uni. But because everyone in our team had different weekly commitments we did most of the editing on my laptop using final cut express. This just allowed us more freedom for when we could get together and work, and then we weren’t restrained to booking time in the editing suite on campus.

Everyone in the team seemed to have similar ideas of how we wanted our film to look and feel, so making discussions was easy.

A mutual friend of Elspeth and I is a musician and he very kindly wrote the main piece of music. We did also use some music from K.P.M. Music Company, which we needed a licence for. Unfortunately this licence hadn’t cleared before our film was uploaded to you-tube. So these 'corporate bastards' were surprisingly quick to catch onto this, and flagged us for copyright. Hopefully this is all sorted now.

Also when we came to export our final copy of the film we discovered that a few scenes were letterboxed whereas others weren’t. This was only so weird because we hadn’t adjusted any of the settings between edits. The looking at the original footage they were there too. So perhaps this was something that actually happened whilst we were filming. It only occurs during the bedroom scenes, which was the first location we shot in.

I felt really pleased with the final cut, and I believe everybody else in the group did too. I think we got as much out of the film as the effort we put into it.

And for something a little bit different.... Here in all it's glory is our finished piece.

Script Writing

Now that the editing process is over, I have already started considering the next project, for which we write our own scripts. Until this year, I had never written a script in my life. I was encouraged by my creative writers workshop tutor Joe Roberts to start reading and writing scripts now to help me focus my ideas. I was also really excited when my screenplays from amazon came through, Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards, Ritchie's Snatch, Curtis' Six Weddings and Two Funerals (a collection of Love Actually, Notting Hill, and Four Weddings and a Funeral) and Singer's The Usual Suspects.

I have been researching other directors and their work/careers. Floria Sigismondi particularly fascinates me. I have become such an avid fan of her style. Sigismondi began her career as a fashion photographer, and then made the jump to directing music videos. Her clients have include artists such as David Bowie, Marilyn Manson, Bjork, The Raconteurs and Christina Aguilera to name a few. This year she brings out her first feature film The Runaways (2010) based on the story of the band of which Joan Jett was part of. The Film stars Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart.

Below are a couple of her videos, Postmortem Bliss is a short film she directed in 2006 and Sigismondi's music video for The White Stripes Blue Orchid (2005)

On shoot

Our filming went really well. Better than expected I believe, considering the weather conditions were so awful.

Over the 48hour time slot we were given, I think in total it took us 15hours to get everything we needed, and all the crew members did a brilliant job with their assigned roles.

Being director was more challenging than I'd anticipated. I've made a few films in the past, but they were all solo projects and animations. Actually having to express my ideas and to the rest of the crew I found quite difficult. It forced me to think about shots, and set-ups a lot harder. Also I think continuity nearly blew my mind.

Working from our shotlist and schedule, we managed to keep good time, and got more than we needed for the editing too. There were certain things which I think we hadn't taken into account during our meetings which then became a bit of a surprise during the shoot:

Firstly, whilst writing the script we'd meet up at Elspeth's and decided that her room would be perfect to shoot the bedroom scenes in. However when we actually stuck the camera in there (on our first day of shooting) we discovered it would be impossible to get any of the wide shots we needed as there wasn't enough room. In the final cut this is very clear.

Then we had our tripod break too. Quite a lot of our scenes ended up being hand held, especially where there wasn't really enough room, or when we needed a particularly high angle.

Our lead actress Evie McGuckian Jones was excellent and really easy to work with (despite her diva demands). We got a great performance out of her despite the nasty weather conditions and not letting her wear a coat.

I personally found the weekend draining, but this was mainly due to traveling to London sat night, and consequently having to get up at 5am in order to be back in Bath to start filming at 10:30am