Every film has its 'thing'

As anyone who has ever tried to make a film will tell you, filmmaking isn't easy. On top of all the creative and technical difficulties, there are also issues of logistics: filmmaking is a group activity and trying to line up everyone's schedules can turn into a nightmare, especially on a microbudget production such as ours. It is therefore with sadness that I have to announce that Jamie Di Spirito and Hannah Tointon have had to leave our team, despite their enthusiasm for the project. Jamie has contractual obligations to fulfil, while Hannah has personal commitments which render her unavailable for our shoot.

Needless to say, we were disappointed to have Jamie and Hannah leave the project, but on a brighter note I am extremely excited about the new additions to our cast: Jack Gordon and Fiona Ryan.

Jack Gordon Pete

Fiona Ryan Claire

The casting for Life Just Is has not been easy. From overwhelming choice to scheduling conflicts, every step of the way has been fraught with tough decisions. But in the end it has all been worth it, and I know that we have a fantastic line up of extremely talented and passionate actors on board. As a debut feature director, it's everything I could hope for and everything I've always dreamed of.

-Alex

Workflow

Things are hotting up as we head into our final stretch of preproduction, and we're all very busy trying to pull things together for the shoot. Although there's far too much going on for me to write about everything in detail here, I thought I'd write a quick post to mention a meeting that we held yesterday: Yosuke, Murat, Jason, Tom and I got together in the downstairs bar of the Curzon Soho to talk about workflow. One mistake I see independent filmmakers make time and time again is under-planning their postproduction route and underestimating the potential difficulties involved. In this respect I'm lucky as I have a very dedicated and experienced crew who agree that it's vital to make sure we have our game plan finalised before the shoot – and hence the meeting. We discussed a range of aspects, from kit to codecs, from paperwork to timescale. We still have a number of decisions to make and details to finalise, but the plan is certainly coming together.

-Alex

Tech Recce

Yesterday Tom, Alice, Emily, Yosuke, Niina, Jason and I spent the day on a tech recce, visiting all of our locations to discuss the logistics of the shoot and the production design, and to try and finalise our shot list. Since my post on storyboarding, Yosuke and I have been through all of my sketches, talking through them shot-by-shot, on location, with a viewfinder in hand. Off the back of our discussions I've made a written shot list, added illustrations to it, and tramlined a script so that we know which part of which scene each shot is going to cover (this is also very useful for giving Murat a good idea of what footage he'll be getting in the edit room, allowing him to suggest further changes before it's too late). Yesterday's recce also gave us a chance to talk through the shot list from a sound point-of-view, a production design point-of-view, and a schedule point-of-view. I'm sure things will change once we're on set (inspiration will hit, the actors will want to reblock, the light won't be right, etc, etc), but at least now we'll be prepared and have a lot of notes to fall back on.

-Alex.

YouTube a-go-go

Thanks to some great work by Justine, we now have a YouTube page! You can check it out at http://www.youtube.com/user/LifeJustIsFilm or watch our first batch of videos below. Enjoy!

Storyboarding

Over the last few days I've been spending time sketching out shots for the entire film. Almost right from the inception of the project I've had a pretty clear vision of what I want from the film stylistically, so it's been interesting to sit down and actually try to flesh those ideas out properly. I had some notes and sketches that I'd jotted down during the scriptwriting phase, and it's been interesting to revisit them. Some of them were good, some of them were corny, and some were simply no longer relevant to the latest draft. Even though my new ideas have stayed true to my original intentions, I feel like the style has evolved and developed over the last few weeks. In putting together the talk I wrote about previously, in which I outlined my ideas to the crew, I was forced to really think my ideas through, and having to articulate them in that way was certainly a helpful part of the process.

I feel good about my ideas, though I know there's room for improvement. Tomorrow I'm going to meet with Yosuke and Murat to talk through the film, shot-by-shot, and make sure we're covering all the scenes in the best possible way. It's great that I'm able to include Murat in this process, as having his input and advice (from both an editor's and a filmmaker's perspective), means that we can go into the edit room prepared. I always think about editing when I sketch out my films, cutting the shots together in my head as I draw them out.

I'm really excited about the style that we're going for with this film. We're aiming for a total synthesis of form and content, which I believe should always be the aim of the filmmaker. Hopefully we're going to create something a little different, something which draws the audience in and really takes them all the way into the characters. I've written pages on all this, but I'll spare you that and just give you the paragraph we used on our one page pitch sheet, so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about:

'Life Just Is' will be understated and naturalistic, shot largely in long tripod-based takes punctuated by carefully planned camera movement. The editing pace will be meditative, while the soundscape will be calm and unaffected with little use of non-diegetic music. By using this style, the film will go beyond the realm of surface narrative and delve directly into the lives of its characters.

As anyone who knows me knows (and no doubt much to my crew's dismay), drawing isn't my strongest point – but I wanted to include one page of my sketches to give you an idea of my process. After the meeting tomorrow these sketch pages will be turned into an illustrated shot list. Whether the images are redrawn or not will depend on time and how many changes we make to them. We're still fairly early on in this process, so no doubt there will be many – starting tomorrow.

- Alex

The first page of sketches made for Scene 7 (page two not shown)

David

We are very pleased to announce that we have now recast the role of David with actor Will De Meo! His details are below, along with Hannah's, for those of you who have not yet seen them over on our website.

Will De Meo David

Hannah Tointon Claire

Production Meeting

Last night we had a production meeting. Our schedule is coming together, we are finalising our locations, and things are starting to fall into place...

- Alex

The crew at the meeting (l-r): Jason Creasey (sound), Yosuke Kato (cinematographer), Lisa Smith-Milne (makeup artist), Alice Caronna (1st AD), Emily Lomasney (production manager), Niina Topp (production designer), Charmaine Parram (costume designer), Alex Barrett (writer/director).