Wednesday 22 February 2012

Jenny Ringo and the Cabaret from Hell has officially wrapped!

Okay, technically we finished shooting on Friday night and I would have posted a celebratory blog but I was too busy gorging on beer and pizza whilst starting intense conversations with the production team about how awesome we all are.

Then on Saturday I was supposed to take a day off but decided to check through some of the footage...until I couldn't find a key scene, had a huge panic thinking we had somehow not filmed it, had an even bigger panic about what else might be missing, panicked a few other people involved with manic phone calls, started making crazy reshoot plans, then found the footage in question and realised I am an idiot. After that I decided to take the whole weekend off for fear of driving myself mad.

Went to see The Woman in Black and really enjoyed it, but found myself looking out for continuity errors and bad edits which means I have subconsciously entered post-production mode.

Since then I have been catching up on e-mails and sorting out MovieBar for March. Meanwhile I am also back at work and suddenly the shoot last week seems like something that happened to someone else. So partly for my benefit here's a brief summary of what we did...

- We started filming at 11am on Saturday 11th of February and finished at 7pm on Friday 17th.




- We filmed every day for seven straight days.

- I think the most crew members we ever had on set at one time was 9. The least was 3.




- There were 4 main locations, 1 in Brighton, 3 in Worthing. Plus a couple of exteriors in Brighton.

- There were only two real problems during the production - one was when a lens went missing and we spent too long looking for it and another was the day the owner of the pub we filmed in didn't turn up to let us in. As a result I had to cut a couple of shots but as these things go they were comparatively minor issues.




- We filmed an awesome musical number to go with the awesome song. Awesome + More Awesome = Super Awesome.

- The creature in the film is quite possibly the most disgusting thing you will ever see. In a good way. It was also my favourite part of the shoot. I will explain why when I get to blogging about that day.




- We shot on a Canon 5D and that's about as technical as I get. There were some lights, 4 I think, and some different lenses and some reflecting thingies. There was also a smoke machine we didn't use. And we did our best at sound recording without an official sound recordist. Oh, and we totally shot some steadicam stuff that we can actually use this time!

- There was one really annoying continuity error which I will not mention here but is clearly going to bug me forever now.




- We had around 15 extras in the end. Unfortunately not all on the same day.

- As a result of the above I am in this film far more than I would like to be.




- Directing actors is easy when you are working with people as super-talented as Rosie Duncan, Lukas Habberton, Andromeda Godfrey and Christophe Philipps. I will do more gushing in the production diaries, but I genuinely believe the performances in this one are rather brilliant and I feel very lucky to have been able to work with them all. Plus there were far less takes ruined by giggling this time (possibly due to the Haribo ban)! Which is good, but also means the outtakes reel will be a lot shorter.

- Most days started with Andrea and I making sandwiches. I can't quite be bothered to work out an exact number but we definitely made over 100. Also this happened...




- We shot 38 scenes and 28 pages of script.

- The most useful thing I learnt is to make lots of your own posters. They are great for covering up random signs and dressing walls with copyright-free stuff. It helps if you have awesome production designers like Peter Regan and Charlotte Cameron-Webb.

I am fully intending to continue my day-by-day, blow-by-blow account of the production, it just may take me a while to get around to it. And that's actually a good thing because if I'm not blogging then I'm most likely doing useful things like sorting out post-production stuff. Or playing Xbox. One of the two.

In all seriousness I have started reviewing the footage and will be meeting an editor this week so hopefully things will be moving on that front pretty soon.

Meanwhile I have a mission! At the moment we have around 200 people signed up to our mailing list, 170 'likes' on our Facebook page and the film has been viewed over 100 times on Vimeo. This is okay, but it could be loads better! So I've set myself a target. By the time Jenny Ringo and the Cabaret from Hell is finished I want all those numbers to be up to 1000. And I need your help to get there.

If you haven't already signed up to the mailing list please go do it now. You'll get a link so you can watch the first film...


How could you not want to see the rest of that?

We won't spam you or anything, you'll just get the occasional update about how we're getting on with Cabaret from Hell.

And if you've already done that and you've seen the film, then let us know what you think by commenting here, or on the Facebook page or even on the IMDB page.

That's it for now, but keep checking back for more production diaries and updates on how we're getting on with post-production!

3 comments:

JennyB said...

Just finished watching Jenny Ringo and the Monkey's Paw. My review will be posted on my blog shortly. Sorry it took so long.

Chris Regan said...

Awesome! Thanks for taking the time to watch the film and write about it, I really appreciate it.

Chris D said...

Loved the look behind the scenes but we are now dying to hear the music.