My Wonderful Team

I could not have asked for a more wonderful team to have worked with on this project. We all got on swimmingly, other than the one time we had to lock Josh in the bathroom. Out of necessity.

There were a few issues in the whole process that did not go swimmingly, unfortunately.

One unforeseen issue that certainly was swimming was the weather. However, we quickly adapted our script on the spot to work with the rain, and have learnt that for future endeavours, our scripts should be adaptable to whatever weather the skies might decide to throw at us. Fortunately, the rain only added to the romance of skipping through the park with the boots.

Transport was also an issue. With only one driver in the group - yours truly - getting from location to location, then from location to chip-shop to location was a slight issue. We have figured out that for our next project, we will either ensure we have enough drivers in the group so that everyone can be ferried to and from locations in one journey, rather than waste valuable scheduled time making journey after journey. Either that, or make sure the location is near a main bus route. And, more importantly, near a good chippie.

A highly important issue is continuity. This is something that we did not even realise was an issue until we got round to the edit. Some scenes were extremely tricky to edit, due to the fact that arms or hair were positioned differently in two shots that needed to be put together. Thanks to the remarkable skills of Annabel, we managed to get through this due to her clever and canny editing imagination. However, we know for the next film, to keep a very focused eye on exactly - EXACTLY - what is happening in each and every shot, and how everything needs to be placed for continuity to work.

We were enormously proud of our finished product. According to Youtube statistics, it is now not only popular in the UK, but also highly popular in the USA and... Saudi Arabia.

The world awaits the next masterpiece from Team BAM.

Editing

We threw ourselves whole-heartedly into the gatehouse editing suite, and there we threw ourselves whole-heartedly into editing.

Logging and capturing an entire feature film is not a task I envy of feature film makers, as our footage took a good week to log and capture.

Tensions ran high on occassions, but this was usually solved by a little tea related trip to the Union or a head massage.

Final Cut Pro, although tricky to master at first, quickly became second nature to Annabel who worked like a trooper making sure the whole film was fluid and as stunning as it could be.

We even missed the university's winter ball in our dedication to perfecting Booty Call.

The soundtrack proved to be incredibly awkward as well. We were led on a wild goose chase by various members of the music department's administrative team, and in the end we bit the bullet and gatecrashed the main auditorium in the hope of not being discovered for as long as it would take to record the concerto movement.

Alas, we were discovered, by a man who I shall simply refer to as Mr D. Now, Mr D appeared at first to be extremely helpful by finding us some state of the art recording equipment. He did, however, snap at me at a later point, and I am ashamed to say that I was a big girl about it and cried a little bit. It was nearing the end of a long and tiring process, and, frankly, I wanted my bed. We managed to get the piece recorded, although being in Mozzilla mode I was very unhappy with the result, and it was only after a LOT of reassurance from Annabel that I was just being a perfectionist, did I eventually resign myself to the reality that the recording we had was the one we would have to use.

I borrowed a miniature copy of the score for the Emperor Concerto from the library, and pulled an all-nighter (fuelled by tea and chocolate) where I entered the entire orchestral part into GarageBand, alongside the piano recording, instrument by instrument.

I was very nervous about showing it to the rest of the group the following day, but we played it alongside the edited footage of Booty Call, and by some miracle, the music fitted the images almost perfectly. The scenes changed at the precise moments the mood of the music changed, complimenting each other perfectly.

So, with a little further work, our film was finished. We test ran it on some friends who had not seen the script and it was well received.

So without further ado, here it is.

Booty Call.

Be nice about it.

We went through a lot.

A LOT.

Production Weekend!

The time was upon us!

The time to film.

It was terrifying, and exhilarating, and also rather hilarious.

We had finally decided on the name Booty Call for our film, after lots of sniggering about bottoms.

Unfortunately, it rained for the majority of the weekend. This caused a lot of swearing; Adam, Josh and Annabel were concerned that the equipment may get ruined, I was concerned that my hair might get ruined (at least one of us has our priorities right). Despite our annoyance at the weather, it actually proved to be an asset in gaining some rather arty shots involving an umbrella and some swans. The swans concerned me. I have never known birds to be so perverted. They took a great interest in looking up my skirt as I put my leg up on a bench to clean my boot.

We also managed to successfully get all our shots we needed in the pharmacy, despite the torrent of customers who would inadvertently get in the way, the manager who would 'watch' us apparently oblivious that he was not helping proceedings by doing this in front of the camera lens, and the inevitable giggling fits at the incontinence pants.

Back at the Harris Palace, we managed to create a rather impressive tracking shot. This was the brainchild of Adam Tyler, who recognised that a skateboard and a pile of heavy books plus camera and tripod equals professionalism. So we piled the books onto the base of the tripod to anchor it to the skateboard, which Josh crawled along the floor with.

You don't get much more professional than that.

The following day, we soldiered on.

The scene that perhaps stood out most in my mind, which is also the scene I most wish to erase from my mind, was the saucy bedroom scene. As if getting dressed up in hold-ups and silky bedroom attire wasn't enough, it wasn't until AFTER the shot of me crawling across the bed towards the boots had been filmed that I was informed by my grinning crew that the footage was X-rated. The things we do for the sake of education!

Towards the end of the day, we were all exhausted and ready for some serious sleep. There was one more scene to shoot. The sliding down the door in floods of tears scene. Of course, as we so desperately wanted to do this shot quickly so we could go to bed, it took the longest of all. We corpsed. Enormously so. To the extent that we had to banish Josh to an upstairs bathroom in order to save our sanity.

But we did it.

Fuelled by vast quantities of chips, we had survived the weekend without resorting to violence.

Preparation

We successfully completely our training to use the posh expensive equipment without breaking anything and having to sell our bodies on the street in order to pay for the damage.

The next important step was to get our locations and props sorted.

Tragically, this meant an entire afternoon dedicated to looking through shoe shops. Sometimes university is really tough.

So Annabel and I heroically rose to the occassion and sifted - very reluctantly, may I add - through the shoe displays in New Look, Russell and Bromley, and many, MANY more. We examined boots of all shapes and sizes and colours, and spoke to various managers about the possibility of using their shops to film in.

The problem seemed to be arising from the fact that the shop managers were reluctant to let us use their shops unless the boots featured were FROM said shop.

This was a problem because all the boots that we could afford without having to sell our bodies on the streets again were, simply, not very nice. Russell and Bromley was clearly out of the question.

Just as we were about to give up hope and go and curl up in a corner somewhere and cry, we stumbled upon a little shop called Moda In Pelle. Inside this shop, we saw something that made out jaws drop and little bits of dribble trickle down our chins.

This is what we saw:

The only problem was that the above glorious boot was worth £99 even in the sale. However, being the crafty businesswomen that we are, Annabel and I had a plan. After the puddles of our drool had been mopped up, we spoke to the manager suggesting that in return for advertising their amazing shop of wonders and boots of holiness on Youtube and amongst all of our student cronies through our film, that perhaps we could have a discount on the boots? It worked. Admittedly, we only managed to get a £10 discount. But I am happy to announce that the most incredible, breathtaking, pant-wettingly stunning, jaw-droppingly gorgeous boots are now mine. MINE. ALL MINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lust. SHOE lust.

Well! Things are changing.

Jane has left the group!

We have also consulted Mike, our tutor, mentor, and overall hero, and he has informed us that we can change the script however much we like.

So, in light of the above two things, we decided to go with Adam's idea of the shoe / girl love story.

And thence we marched, notebooks and laptops in hand, to the Harris Palace (aka. where I live), where we sipped tea and feasted on chocolates in the shape of rude parts of the human anatomy. Which, quite frankly, is how every intellectual discussion should be conducted.

We have now worked out the general plot of our film, and have decided on which role is to be allocated to who. I will be producer, actor and musical director, Adam will be the writer and director, Annabel will be editor, anad Josh will take on the role of cameraman. Of course, we will all contribute to all areas of the film-making process, these roles are more to establish a person who will bear the main responsibility of their area.

After our hugely intellectual discussions, Josh and I both turned into Mozzillas. Josh turns out to be an incredible guitarist and his musical genius could prove to be very useful indeed. I showed the others some piano pieces as well, and we decided that the second movement ('adagio un poco mosso') of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto could be a potential piece of music for the film. The mood of the piece seemed to change with the mood of our plot outline and could fit well if we edited it very carefully.

Here is a video of Glenn Gould playing the piece. Obviously, I will play it much better than him. OBVIOUSLY. And I will not make any of the silly facial expressions.

From the depths of my sole.

I actually wrote an entire string of shoe-related puns to begin this entry. I then deleted them. They were atrocious. I am occassionally overcome by a desperate urge to pun on a massive scale. But I have spared you unfortunate readers the distress, and indulged myself only in the title. I am trying to HEEL myself of this affliction. Oops! Sorry. I am trying.

The ideas are now fast-flowing and juicy. We certainly have plenty of potential material.
There are two team members who have come up with substantial ideas for the film. Jane put forward the idea of making a film inspired by Thoroughly Modern Millie. Her idea was to make an adaptation of the title song (as shown below), and shots of the lead actress looking directly into the camera, showing her facial expressions (also as shown below!):

She suggested that we could do it in the style of a silent film with intertitles, but using a modern setting and language. There was a bit of dispute as to whether the language (of the intertitles) should be modern or not, as although it would demonstrate the point of the film, it would not be fitting with a silent film style.

Adam had an entirely different idea, which involved changing the plot of the script to a much greater extent. His idea was that the main character actually falls in love and has a love affair with the shoes, and is then betrayed by them.

Although most of the group members were excited by Adam's idea, we were uncertain as to how far we would be allowed to change the script within the module requirements, and decided to choose Jane's idea.

There was a short discussion about music, where I got into Mozzilla persona, and offered to re-write the theme song of Thoroughly Modern Millie, changing the tune enough to avoid copyright issues, and changing the lyrics to suit our film. We then decided to call it a day, as it had been rather an epic meeting, lasting for a good number of hours, and more tea and iced buns had been consumed than we were comfortable thinking about.

Although we feel we are now at least on track, the future of our film is still LACED with uncertainty...

(Apologies.)

Shoes

I am a girl.

We have been given a script to work on about shoes.

You would think I had reached the pinnacle of academic joy, no?

No.

The script we were given was OK, nothing more, nothing less. The language and plot were rather short of being inspirational, and even a script-writing novice such as myself could recognise that the formatting left a lot to be desired.

However, I can recognise that this script can, and most probably will, act as more of a springboard for further ideas, rather than an instuction manual which we must abide by.

I think perhaps that the best way to view 'What would you do for a pair of shoes?' is to look at all the things that need to be done to it to make it into something good. I feel that my fim-making group is strong and dynamic, and that between us we will create something out of this script that will put the original to shame.

I have also done a little research on the script. It was written by a previous 2nd year film student, and the finished result is on Youtube:

I thought the finished product was good, but not special. There are some good shots, but nothing that makes me gasp in awe.

Although I was, at first, concerned about the script we have been given, it has inspired me to do a better job - it has triggered my artistic competitive streak... which should be a good thing... provided it doesn't lead to arguments amongst the group!

I am well and truly ready to get my teeth into rewriting this script and making a great film!