"Dislocation" Horror/Thriller Film: An (Almost Completed) Evaluation.

Like the documentary, even though the process isn't exactly over, I wanted to write about my experience and what I have learned throughout.

Hearing Andy's idea from the start was interesting: it wasn't something I completely understood at first but I think if you understand something the first time, it doesn't give you time for it to grow on you and develop into something much more. I was surprised but happy when Andy asked me to be his producer, he trusted me to help him carry his project from beginning to end which was quite a big responsibility but it helped my confidence massively because I had done a number of things that I hadn't done before, in quite this capacity. I organized meetings with the crew, I posted the advertisement online and communicated with a large amount of people about auditioning and in this, I set up auditions giving the actors the time and a place to turn up and audition for us. We had over twenty people email us altogether and had around eight people turn up for auditions, which anyone else would think was quite poor but when you get people telling you they will be at the audition, not many decide to show up, so eight was a large number for us and Andy and I were very impressed with everyone that came.

Andy is a very creative guy so when he came to me with his pitch idea (which I have written about before), I was over the moon because it was so fantastic. Again, like my documentary, we were going for a pitch that would stand out and would be memorable, and we achieved that. Everyone knows "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" and I feel because we did a pitch that was out there, that gave our tutor the confidence that we would pull off this film off. If we were able to make the pitch fun, our idea for the film would blossom just as the pitch did too.

Our shooting days went well in my opinion. The first day we did run out of battery which wasn't the best thing to happen and we didn't end up shooting as much as we wanted that day. It was my responsibility to make sure we had at least two batteries and I didn't deliver on the first day but before we went to shoot on the second day, I went to our college technician to pick up another battery to be on the safe side, and while we missed out on a few shots towards the end of the day, another battery would have been good, but we thought two batteries would have been good enough. The shots we did get on the first day however, were great thanks to our camera man who specializes in getting beautiful shots. All the actors got on great, and cast and crew got on well too. There was a lot of standing about on the second day for a few of the actors so I made sure I was with them for the majority of the time (when I wasn't doing sound) just to be there and make sure they weren't on their own, but there was always someone talking to someone, so the waiting around didn't seem like too long.

This was my first true experience of being a producer and taking control on certain aspects, it was scary and out of my comfort zone but looking back, I'm glad I done it because it's given me the confidence to do more things like this. When Andy and Conor tried to get the contact information for the man that owned the house that we wanted to shoot in, I finally got through the man's wife the next day and I tried to explain to her what we wanted to do. This meant explaining the situation a number of times, she didn't seem suspicious of us but I would have felt a little strange if I got a random phone call out of the blue from students wanting to film in my other property too. She gave us her husband's mobile number and I explained who we were, where we were from, what we were doing and what we wanted to do and he was completely fine with it. He came up to see us filming along with his wife and they were totally at ease with the situation because they could see we were doing no harm and I made sure to let them know that we wouldn't be there too long and we would clean up and obviously be respectful of the property. I'm usually the person standing behind the person giving other people information, just there as a backup so to be the person asking to use this place and reassuring this couple, was a big step for me.

Being producer, sometimes you do have to balance on a fine line and some may think I have crossed this line when communication with the camera man had almost been cut completely. We couldn't get through to him, no number of Facebook messages, text messages or phone calls we made to him where going to get him into class. I had asked for a shot list weeks before we shot, and still on this very day, I do not have one. I understand that everyone works differently and sometimes people don't use them, but when you're on someone else's production and you are asked to make a shot list and give it to the producer even just for the production folder, I don't think it's too much to ask and should been done because it will help both the director and producer, in this case. I have had to send a few messages over Facebook to the camera man to get him to send me this list but it still hasn't appeared. It may not seem like a big deal but I asked him to do a job and not a particularly large one at that, it still wasn't done. The same can be said for the edit and when I sent another message about the edit, we were told by the camera man that he wasn't editing and why did the director think this, even though Andy has proof that he would do a rough cut for him. There was a brief deadline for the rough cut last week and Conor did not deliver, or even come in to explain. I understand completely that he has his own film to do; if I didn't understand, I would have to be very unreasonable, and I'm not. But to completely not reply to us both, then tell us when the director isn't in the country that he didn't know he was doing that, I personally think is unreasonable. I would rather that he had told us that he couldn't do it because he had too much on his plate or he didn't want to, rather than leave us in the lurch and only give us information when we had to badger him for it. It is my job to get information out of both my cast and crew and I don't think Andy or I were unreasonable, but we have both learnt a valuable reason from this experience.


Overall, like my documentary, this has also been an exciting but stressful experience but I am quite happy with how this production went, despite the problems. We had the majority of our actors nailed down quite early and we only had to get one person last minute but she turned out great. We had been organized from the start with sending out the advertisements online, sending scripts out, setting up casting calls and talking with the actors throughout the pre and actual filming process. The footage that Conor shot was fantastic, and that's why Andy chose him because he is so good at cinematography and bringing the right tone and visuals on screen. Andy knew what he wanted from the start and sometimes things just happen; most of the time you yourself can't control them and that's how the film and television industry works, so I don't believe that the things went wrong could have been controlled 100% but I'm very happy with how Andy held the production together. He didn't lose his cool, he has kept a calm and cool mind throughout even if he did feel frustrated at times, it is a real testament to how he works and I would happily work with him again.

Vegetarian Documentary: An (Almost Completed) Evaluation.

Even though we haven't finished editing our documentary, I would like to reflect on this experience and talk about what I've learned and how we got over problems we faced.

I have been passionate about this idea from the start; however, I wasn't sure which part of the vegetarian lifestyle I wanted to delve into because I think I washed over the fact that there is so much information but at the beginning, I didn't want to believe that. I didn't want to feel like I had to pin myself down to one particular area of vegetarianism, which is why the range of questions I asked are quite broad. So throughout this process, ideas have constantly been thrown in by myself, Caoimhe my producer, and our tutor. It wasn't until we actually started editing that we were able to pin down exactly what we wanted to the audience to know. I don't particular think this is such a bad thing because I was learning so much throughout this process and I feel if I had of pinned down a certain area at the beginning, I wouldn't have learnt as much as I have done.

Our passion came through in the pitch which I had posted about before. We wanted it to be a pitch to remember so having our t-shirts with our ideas on them as well as food and beauty products brought into the meeting, done this. I do feel like we were given ideas to push us away from our original idea and while I do very much appreciate those ideas and they were great, I had a vision in my head from the start and I didn't want to veer from it too much or I would feel like it wasn't what I wanted anymore.

When we first put the ad up online at the beginning and we got two responses, I personally didn't think we would get any so when we got two people, I was over the moon. We were very organized and got to meet with both Richard and Lindsey a few weeks beforehand, we showed them the questions we would ask them over coffee and this gave them the chance to ask us any questions or express any concerns they had about it. They were both really interested in what we were doing because they've never had the opportunity to talk about or vent about being a vegetarian before. When we shot with Lindsey, we were quite happy on the day of shooting but I think Caoimhe and I both knew there was something not quite right but because we only had Lindsey and Richard, we both pushed it to the back of our minds, hoping that it wouldn't be as bad as we expected. When we went to watch the footage it was clear that no matter how much we tried to colour it, the lighting was going to be an issue as well as it not being the look I was looking for. We didn't use different angles so if we were to use the footage, we would need a lot of cutaways to cut the interview up or else it would just look like the footage was jumping, and whether that is on YouTube or a big cinema screen, it wouldn't look good and I wouldn't want people to remember "the documentary with the jumping shots". This show is the building block for us all as film makers so we wanted to make the best film we possibly can with our skills, budget and time, that we can, so I don't want my mistake of using the wrong person, dodgy camera angles and not the best lighting to ruin that. I would rather not show my work if that was the case.

I feel like both Caoimhe and I were organized, we were one of the first groups to film but we ended up being one of the last groups to film too. This definitely struck a cord with me because we had been so organized, we got an ad set up, we had our coffee meeting with both interviewees, we had very regular meetings even over Easter and whenever we were off, and both of us were very reliable. We can't say that everything goes perfect when making a film, but I think I thought that because we had been organized, that things would go smoother for us. A few people had actually said that "documentary was the easy way out", they did mean it jokingly of course, but doing a documentary is just as difficult as doing a fictional film. We may not need so many actors, but we still needed people who were willing to talk about the subject, as well as finding locations to film as well as the same problems as filming a fiction (Lighting, camera angles, people's appearance etc. etc.).

I have never been the best at taking criticism and I have had to deal with it more in this particular unit than anything else. Not necessarily against me, but ideas that we've had, footage that we've shot; when we talk about it in our blog or we say how well it went and then we're told that we can't use it or that we should try it this way, it does make you feel a little silly and makes me think "am I just trying to put a positive spin on everything even though it wasn't that positive". I'm not sure if I've gotten any better at taking criticism but I have learned not to take everything so personal, which I still think is a bonus.

I'm really happy with my producer Caoimhe, she has been there for me from the get go and even though she is producing some one else's film too and she has her own projects outside of the Final Year Film area, she has been very supportive and offering up suggestions to help make our film better. Speaking of reliability again, because we both know how people can let you down on shoots and having to work around people's schedules (In both of other projects that we are producing, we have experienced this), we thought it would be best to shoot it and record sound ourselves and I'm very glad we chose to do this. We only had the three of us to worry about, the interviewee was able to book it off work, Caoimhe was able to work us around her work hours and because I don't work, as long as I wasn't shooting something else, I was good to go. This enables Caoimhe to gain more sound experience for our sound unit whereas being on camera has always been one of my favourite things on this course to do, and even though I'm not the best camera person in the class, I think my camera ability was made better because I played around with shots and angles and didn't have to ask permission, I could just do it and if it didn't work, it didn't work, I wasn't wasting anyone's time.


Overall, this has been an exciting but stressful experience for me. I got to work with someone who I'm very good friends with, who was reliable and who was there to back me up when it came to talking about our documentary. The situation with Lindsey and the problems arising there did make me feel like I had done something wrong but I soon learned that this is just the way the business works. I have had different problems to this arise in past projects so I'm not totally oblivious to sorting problems out. I believe that I researched this subject quite well, I could have researched it further but due to other projects, I didn't have time but if I ever felt like I wanted to expand on the documentary in the future, I would know what other research I would like to go into to further the information I want. I'm extremely happy with the second interview footage we have and editing is one of my passions, for the majority of the time, it's quite relaxing so I don't find it a burden. Both Caoimhe and I are producers at heart you could say. Some just think about the story but don't think about the pre or post production work, whereas we thought about the pre and post as well as filming itself and this helped us greatly. The edit isn't finished yet but I can't wait until it is because so far, we are both very happy with how it is shaping up and when it's on the big screen, I will probably still be a little embarrassed, only because it'll be weird seeing my work up in the cinema, but even if it hits home with one person or if it makes one person think twice before making a vegetarian joke, then I feel like I have done my job: made an informative documentary that is still enjoyable and that people remember.

Editing problems and a sneak peek!

For 'Dislocation' Andy had planned to go home over the May Day break and edit for a few days while we were off, making good use of some much needed time off before we go back to mayhem. Unfortunately the hard drive that we use to store the footage on only works on the college Mac computers and with college not being open over May Day weekend, this left Andy not being able to edit at all. He also lost time when the camera man failed to bring in the footage the day after the shoot.

However, Andy wasn't at a loss completely; he made a mini trailer for the film which I'm very impressed with, so even though we don't have a rough cut in (which we were promised for the deadline, but that didn't happen despite Facebook messages, numerous phone calls and texts) we have a mini trailer to show for the time being (which is shown below).

Starting to edit (again!).

Last Tuesday (6th May) began the editing process again. I imported the clips onto Premiere Pro which took longer than expected, then I sorted the interview into bins, so when I was going back to each clip, it would be a lot easier to find it. So Tuesday was more of a logging and organizing day for me.

Wednesday afternoon (7th May) after another class was when Caoimhe joined me and we started clipping and cutting pieces together. We're both really happy with the footage and the way it's visually told on screen that it sometimes kills me having to cut something up, even though I know I have to do it due to time constraints.

We have a lot of information from Richard's interview that we can't all possibly fit in to five minutes which is a shame but as we were editing, we decided to try and keep in the information about parmesan cheese in because we are assuming that most of our audience don't know that this particular cheese isn't actually vegetarian, despite restaurants serving it as vegetarian. We want our audience to walk out of the audience finding out something new, and we think this will do the trick.

We also have some really nice shots of Richard talking about the Vegetarian Society and labels on food and as I was shooting this on the day, I moved in to see the labels and it auto-focused for me. We're using these shots because the audience will be aware of the different types of labelling in stores and we think it's something that some people may not be aware of.

On the Thursday (8th May), we showed Sharron our rough edit and I would say she was quite pleased with it. Caoimhe and I came up with some other titles because we personally didn't feel like "Green Beans and Everything In Between" fitted the documentary anymore. These titles were "Suitable for Vegetarians", "Vegetarian Options Available" and "A Vegeducation". However, talking with our tutor, she thought the title added quirkiness to the film and if we made the start quite quirky too, it would fit in quite well. We also had a lot of footage of Richard talking about the cheese which I didn't really mind but after our tutor telling us that the audience may start to think the film is about cheese, we thought it was best to cut it down but still have an appropriate amount of information still in there so the audience can understand why it's not vegetarian. 

Because of other on going projects during the week, we know from Thursday, we will not get any time to do another edit or go out filming apart from possibly next Wednesday afternoon so we do intend on editing more next Thursday (15th May) during class while the tutor is going over other people's work. 

Extended Research.

Over the month of April, I went vegetarian myself, to see what the life of a vegetarian would be like, the food challenges they face and the questions they were asked. Because I was only doing it over a month, I probably got more questions than your average vegetarian who had been doing it for quite a while, would get within one month.

My family questioned it and asked me why and when I explained my reasoning behind it, they were considered that I would have even less to eat because of the amount of foods I already have to take out of my diet because I have to live a gluten-free lifestyle (which I have talked about briefly before).

I got a lot of questions from my friends in class, and some weren't so much questions, more questioning why I was doing it. A lot of it was joking and usual class antics which I didn't mind; if I said something was wrong with me like I was tired or something along those lines, someone would say "well that's what happens when you're a vegetarian". Of course I know these were all jokes and I'm totally fine with that, I didn't get offended, this was part of the process that I wanted to explore while going vegetarian. I got told a few times that "we all need meat, it's essential" and because I wasn't 100% on the nutritional benefits on eating meat and not eating it, I couldn't exactly agree my point to its full potential. However, I did have my producer on my side the entire time, chiming in and defending vegetarianism whenever she could. Even though she wasn't doing the vegetarian month with me, she also feels quite passionate about defending vegetarianism because we feel that it is criticized too much and for no good reason.

With coursework and filming giving us hardly any time to do anything else, I didn't feel I had the time to fully prepare for my vegetarian month, which is a shame, because if I had've prepared, I think I could have made some really nice recipes throughout the month. I had beans on toast at least every other night, which could really boring, really quickly. I still ate my salads with either pasta and quinoa, I just didn't have meat in them. I never ate a heavy meat lead diet so nothing changed dramatically, but when I was missing meat from my plate, I just added more vegetables or side salad. Most of the food I ate regularly like fruit, vegetables, porridge, milk, beans, bread, muesli and smoothies were already vegetarian, so as I said before, I didn't have to change anything too dramatically.

It was quite an eye opening experience; with the comments from family and friends, combined with looking at the back of foods (more than I already have to) I was surprised to see what foods were and weren't vegetarian. I did slip up a few times during the month but with the same food; I had a milkshake a few times during the month with mini marshmallows and all three times, I ordered it, drank it and only after I had drunk it that I realized that I shouldn't have had the marshmallows. Normally I would have given up at that point but I wanted to stick with it because it wasn't a huge slip up, and it was a learning curve for me too.

I'm really happy that I went vegetarian for the month. I learnt a lot more doing it in actuality then just reading about it online, I was able to experience first hand some of the questions Richard had been asked before too, and I was able to discover foods that I thought were vegetarian but weren't, and vice versa. It really helped me understand my subject more and I wouldn't rule out being vegetarian in the future either.

Richard's interview.

On Saturday 3rd May, we finally had Richard's long awaited interview. I went to Tesco the night before and bought quite a lot of food to have in the background including pineapple, apples, coconut bites, peppers and almond milk as well as having bananas, strawberries, pasta and melon in the house already.

In the picture above, we set everything out on the cooker to have in the background of Richard but once we actually had Richard sit down, we realized that the food would look much better on the right side of the counter, so everything was moved to there and then Richard was re positioned.

Both Caoimhe and I think the interview went really well, much better than Lindsey's had went before. We took our tutor's advice and changed angles every few questions so when we came to editing, we had a number of different shot variations enabling us to cut in between different questions if a certain answer was spread out within other questions. 

We're both really happy with the day and we can't wait to start editing!

"Dislocation" Filming.

The filming for "Dislocation" is complete! We started on Monday 28th April and finished on Tuesday 29th April. For the first guy, we had Richard (Josh), Ryan (Dan) and Patrick (Old Man) on set and we filmed in the car park of Hillsborough Forest Park and in the park itself. The first day we ran out of battery so we didn't get all the scenes done that we had scheduled to shoot for that day but the footage we did get, we were very happy with. For crew, we had our sound recordist Pearse, our camera operator Conor and our director/writer Andy on set.

Ryan and Richard got on really well and had fantastic chemistry that you were able to see on camera right away, which we were all very pleased with. Below is a photograph (taken from Andy's Facebook) of Richard (left) and Ryan (right) on set.

Tuesday was slightly different. Crew was changed around slightly, both Pearse and Anya had to go and shoot part of Pearse's film the same day, which I had known about. What I didn't know however was that Anya would be helping so we had to find out from Pearse, and not Anya, that she wouldn't be there on the Tuesday. The only thing I'm thankful for is that we were told a few days previous and not the night before. I still wasn't very happy though, because throughout meeting with Anya and recalling the last big production meeting we had, she didn't seem to have a strong interest in what Andy had asked her to do, even though she aid she was up for it weeks before. I volunteered to do make-up that day, I didn't think I would be any good at it, but we needed to have someone doing it. I only had a few days to find out what I had to do in regards to applying gashes and make-up to actors, and it simply wasn't enough time. I didn't do a very good job of Melissa's make-up, I dabbed in white paint which in hindsight I shouldn't have done because white make-up is normally zombie, and that wasn't the look we were going for. Andy then said to me to take the make-up off Melissa because it wasn't what he was looking for, and I got her to apply dark eyeliner around her eyes and smudge it in. Applying the gashes was a lot easier and looked the part a lot more than Melissa's make-up. I wasn't annoyed at Pearse for not being there, he was the one that told us and he apologised a number of times for not being able to complete the shoot, so I stepped in to do sound recording and this enabled me to do sound work too and I could use it for another module on the course. I just wish Anya had've told us herself that she wasn't going to be able to do it, or that she wasn't really into doing it in the first place. Maybe she was, but previous meetings and constant requests to play about with the make-up and test out the gashes before the shoot that had gone unheard, told me otherwise. For cast on Tuesday we had Richard and Ryan again, along with Dave (Groundskeeper) and Melissa (Dead Girl)

The previous day Andy and Conor went up to see the old house that we wanted to use but they couldn't see anyone about, so they went over to the house across the street and the woman who they were talking to, her brother owns the house that we were looking at. She gave us his number but we couldn't get through until the next day. I rang around lunchtime on the Tuesday and I got talking to his wife who was unaware of what we wanted to do, so I explained it to her and she passed her husband's mobile number on to us. I then rang him and explained what we wanted to do, which was just to film a few scenes near the house. Thankfully, he said that that was fine and we came up to see how we were getting on a few hours later. They were both really nice about it, and they were really interested about what the film was about, and we couldn't be more appreciative.

Overall, I'm really happy with how both days went. Everyone was a professional on set, everyone got along, and we all ended up swapping details afterwards.