Ebony & Ivory

Ebony & Ivory

Ebony & Ivory is the latest production from SharpDressedMenInc. Written by JD Burden, it tells the story of two time travelling detectives who have been brought together to stop the same criminal; Wheels. The series is a comedy and the pilot has been filmed and is currently in the post production stage. 

Ebony & Ivory is set to be released on 8th August online, so head over to www.sharpdressedmeninc.com to see the trailer, and check out all our other videos!.

SharpDressedMenInc are back! ...or SDMI for short.

So the small production company I am affiliated with have been quiet for a while what with me busy with uni, and other members busy with college. The last that was heard from SharpDressedMen was the teaser trailer for the pilot 'Devil's Day off' which is still in the post production stage. This time, a short sketch was filmed and put on the Youtube page.
This short scene was directed by myself, and starred fellow SDMI members Will and Rob. It was filmed in under an hour, and was edited and put on the page the next day. This is the first of many short films to be produced by SDMI, especially with the summer coming up. However, when September arrives, so begins my last year of uni, so things on the SDMI front will most probably be quiet until 2013.

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

No more group work!

So the group film project has finally come to an end, a painful one at that. On day of submission, our producer turned up incredibly late while the rest of us were sorting out the production folder and making sure everything was in it. This is meant to be the producer's job, but for some reason our producer did nothing to contribute to it throughout the whole assignment; our scriptwriter did all the work. The production folder was finally submitted at the very last minute. It was done, finally. Not yet. There was still the presentation to do. Shit. It was going to be like the Rebel Alliance flying to the Death Star and finding out it was a trap. And that's how it turned out to be. Like Hell, and humiliating. We got it over and done with, but still didn't hide our shame. The film was awful.

A few days prior to submission day, I finally recieved the final edit. Now, having a few days to do post-sound was a massive piss take, as I should have been given two weeks. I cracked on however, and had many sleepless nights trying to fix the sound, which was impossible in the time frame I had.

So yeah, another group film finished, and a disappointing outcome, but at least I learnt a lot, and discovered who never to work with again.

The painful group assignment continues...

So continuing from the previous blog, re-shoots were indeed added. They were desperately needed, and have now been put into the edit, and look a lot better, the film definitely flows better now. Although the re-shoots worked well, being on the set was a nightmare for me.

Two of the actors were very busy at the time rehearsing for their end of year show, so their availablity for us was constantly changing, and on days that they were available, they would only be available for a short time. So scheduling had to be planned to perfection. It wasn't. On the first scheduled re-shoot, all of the actors cancelled, maybe due to the fact that there was torrential rain and wind outside, so filming had to be pushed back.

When we finally got to re-shoot, my sound equipment decided to fail on me; the boom microphone didn't seem to work, so I had to do with the edirol's interior microphone. The next day, I was supposed to do ADR with one of the actors, and we only had him for 2 hours, so the plan was to film his scenes in an hour, then do ADR. This didn't happen. The crew seemed more interested in messing around, and the producer didn't even turn up. I didn't get to do ADR. I have to now do it in the next week, 3 days before the film is due in.

University projects

Sigh...

So for the past week me and my film crew have been filming our university assignment. I won't go into detail regarding the plot of the film though.

The first day went ok, despite me suffering from a killer of a migraine. The second day went ok too, although the heat was unbearable, and arguments in the group started to break out. The final day was pretty bad. Not a disaster, but bad. The actors were over an hour late to start with, then when we changed location, the majority of the group went into town to get everyone food while the rest of us set up equipment and prepared ourselves, but the 'lunch group' decided to take a ridiculous amount of time in buying the food and coming to the location. My Subway was freezing cold by the time it got to me. To add insult to injury, whilst filming, the cable connecting my microphone to my edirol decided to break somehow, resulting in me getting a few nasty electric shocks. I had to switch over to my trusty dictaphone (which I now carry everywhere with me) and recorded sound on it.

The shoot finished, and it was time to embark on the long journey back home in the hot sun with the equipment. Despite there only being three scheduled shooting days, there were definitely going to be more added.

Group work is the bane of my life. And technology hates me.

Finally, a breakthrough.

Or so I thought...

So it has been almost a year since my last film/TV related job, which was filming an annual fashion show. This time around, I was to film for a film festival in Wales. "Finally!" I thought, the chance to film for a company that didn't contact me through education institutions. This was going to be a great way to get my name out there. The only thing I didn't bargain on however, was me editing the footage. I was hoping for somebody to take the footage from me and edit it. I was wrong. 

Now I can edit, and I edit my own little videos all the time, but editing a video for a company with no proper direction was very frustrating to say the least. It was very stressful uploading a video to Youtube, (which took a couple of hours) and then being told to change things, then uploading it again and once again being told to change things. I was being told two different things. Was this the last time I had to 'correct' the video? No. I had to do it again, and once I read the two different forms of feedback from two different people and made the desired changes, the video was exactly the same as it was in the first place. So obviously, this made me want to throw my computer out of my window onto the concrete below.

As I write this, I am still waiting on an email I sent six hours ago regarding the video content. I don't know if they've decided to stick with the original video, or to just never contact me again.

I'm going to change my business cards to 'Sound recordist and camera operator only. NO EDITING WHAT SO EVER'.

Later.