SEARCH THE DARK Part 1 (BUILDING A SET FOR £12)

It's amazing what you can do when you just think about it logically. Over the last few months we have been trying to organise the shoot for the new Subject Seven video for the track 'Search The Dark' (Due for release this Halloween). From moment one I knew it was going to be tricky, The song had always been a bit different from what we had done before and the video should follow suit. 

Early on I had come up with the basic concept for the video whilst listening to the rough demo's in Autumn last year, it was always a matter of finding the right location to sell the concept and that where things became unstuck.

Finding a run down old apartment that hasn't been condemned and has a feature window is not easy, and in a small town like preston, it's close to impossible. Anything I did find was unsuitable for various reasons, The view, Space, People living in it, Asbestos, Giant Rat-Men plotting to over-through man kind.

In the end what I realized when we were at the studio one day is that we had the perfect windows in the open plan space up there but the space around it was basically a warehouse. Making it unsuitable. Then I had a thought, "What if we built the room?". The concept was simple, what if we made the rest of the room to match the preexisting window? Sound's expensive though right? Well actually no.

See Sam (Our guitarist) works in a wood yard as a day job and so it was easy for us to get hold of enough materials and props to build two walls either side of the feature window, and before we knew it we started to have the shape of a room.

From there it was a matter of wall papering the walls with some basic textured wallpaper (3 rolls for £10) and then finished off with some skirting board (£2) and what we essentially had done is built a smaller room in a warehouse for the grand total of £12.

The set also needed a bunch of TV's that were to be used as monitors to show another image whilst the video was being shot. This came early on in the development when I was looking for a TV for my old flat and found that people were simply just giving them away. Not liking things to go to waste I started to think "What could I do with a bunch of TV's?". So I worked a kind of japanese Horror/Whitenoise element into the video and it all seemed to gel.

From there it took us about 2 weeks to organize collecting about 20 TV's for the set simply based on distance travelled to get them. During this time we were also pasting walls and figuring out how the whole thing would stand up.

I suppose my point here is this. People think (I'm referring mainly to the low budget world), that building sets is beyond them or that it's expensive, But the trick is always to use pre-existing locations to turn them into what you need them to be. A little bit of thought about what you have access to can make all the difference. 

I'll write a second part about the pre production shoot and how we did the stuff to go onto the TV's as well as revealing the reason of why our shoot ballooned to a grand total of £32 ;) But until then...

MJ

PRE-PRODUCTION IN 2 EASY STEPS...

Ok so Down to business I guess. It's hard for me to think of anything but sound design at this moment in time as that all I've been doing for the last month for my second feature Slasher House. But I figured it makes very little sense to jump to something about post so early on, So I used the last few days to reflect on what I was mixing sound for and realized that probably the first thing anyone want to know about how I make movies is how I start out, Here I'm going to break down Pre-Production into 2 very easy steps.

Once you have a script or story (I know there are some people who just like to make these things up on the spot) then there are two steps you need to take in order to be ready to film.

1. GET HOLD OF EVERYTHING YOU NEED BEHIND THE CAMERA.

2. GET HOLD OF  EVERYTHING YOU NEED IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA.

Thats it.

Honestly thats all you need to do. Obviously there is a little more to it than that, But I find that looking at it like this makes what is quite a huge task, feel smaller and much more manageable.

Now at this point you should have a list of

1. People who need to be in front of the camera (actors)
2. Items that these people need to interact with (Props)
3. A place for these Items and people to be placed in (Location)

Then you should look at getting a couple of people behind the camera

1. Someone to Shoot it for you (You)
2. Someone to Direct the shoot (You)
3. Someone to Record sound (Sound guy)
4. Someone to help out (Sound guy)

I always tend to have a couple of people (P.A's) running around, but even then these are usually made up of people who don't have a job or anything better to do or my close friends and more often than not my girlfriend.

It's quite simple when you start looking at it like this and it makes the daunting task that is pre production a lot easier, just make a list of things you need and get it together.

Trust me, enjoy pre production, because quite honestly on a no budget production, Pre Production is the last chance you'll have to enjoy making your film until you're finished in the editing suite.

I know I've skimmed over a lot here, but it's good to figure out your own way of doing each thing, Of course I'll go into every step here in more detail of the coming weeks.

But so far this approach has worked on 3 short films, 2 features (albeit with a couple more specific crew) and countless music videos.

Of course it's hard, it's a challenge, but lets be honest, if you don't like challenge's, The last thing you want be doing is making no budget movies.

MJ

ITS A WONDERFUL LIFE...

It is (Most of the time)... I figured I would try and keep these post titles named after movies, which fits in quite nicely with what I wanted to talk about this week. You see this week I got to work with one of the best Bands that we've had through our doors at Mycho, Wigan based Sinnergod. But also featuring on their track 'It's A Wonderful Life' was Ex-Iron Maiden singer Blaze Bayley, which any of you who know me will know that this was a huge deal for me being that Maiden are one my biggest inspirations when it comes to my own Metal outfit Subject 7.

But thats enough name dropping from me ;) This blog is mainly about sourcing locations and getting the right one. It's fine if you are shooting your own projects, but when you've been hired to do a job, and there's a chance you could be removed from your set at anytime, the pressure is well and truly on.

Cut to : 
The woods in Longridge last Wednesday, I had been to scout the place about a week before and everything seemed OK. A filmmaker friend of mine had tipped me off about the location and where to find it and so we headed up there to take a look. Of course as I knew it would be, it was perfect for what the band had asked for, so we knew it had to be here.

It was at this point that we hit a problem, I had ben told that there was a 'caretaker' of sorts that patrolled the area, so we decided we would need permission to use the woods, even though it was public land. So we tried in vein to find the man who could give us permission. We failed. So without a better plan, My other half, thanks to a husband of a friend, managed to get us written permission from the police in the hopes that we would be able to use that to convince the 'warden' that we should be allowed there should he appear during the shoot.

So the morning of the shoot arrives and of course the forecast was thunder and lightning, still we braved the woods. Which btw was nowhere near where we had to park, and so it was down to us to carry everything and a generator up to the inaccessible woods. 

Oh yeah, that right, a Generator. Generators as a rule are not very light and to add the fun we had to then get it up a hill that was difficult to climb to begin with. You see, the reason I realized that we would need permission was because of 2 things. Generators make a lot of noise, which I knew would draw attention and of course the other thing that was louder than a generator were 'drums'. If it hadn't been for these two things, I would have just let the cops know that we had replica guns and shot then just kept my head low whilst we were shooting, as the last thing you want on a professional shoot is the police turning up ready to shoot you. But of course keeping a low profile is hard when you have an entire band playing in an open area situated next to a public foot path.

Luckily with a bit of praying to the gods and a lot of help from my team and loved ones and the band who sourced all the costume elements and even some very talented make-up artists and with the added elements of having one of my heavy metal heroes appearing on set whilst we were behind, We came out the other side with some of the best stuff we have ever produced.

And no one got shot... not in real life anyway... or did they? ;)

MJ

A NEW HOPE....

A New Hope? That pretentious, really? Well to be quite honest with you its always nice to follow a good cliche every now and then and Starting anything with a Star Wars reference always helps. At least in my book it does. But actually it also make sense to me as technically this not really a brand new blog but more of something that kind of starts half way through the story, something that Star Wars : A New Hope eventually decided it was ;).


This blog was created (Or rebooted if you will) for two reasons. The First being that I have always had a thirst for knowledge in my chosen field (Filmmaking) and as a result when I learn or discover something new and exciting I feel the need to share it. The second reason is that sometimes I find it difficult to even understand why I'm still doing any of this, it's hard, it calls for long days, stress, failed relationships and tension amongst those you can actually maintain one in the chaos. I decided that maybe the best way to try and deal with these tougher times was to put my thoughts here, so that they have a voice and aren't stuck in my eternal monologue that is making my life more and more like an episode of 'Scrubs' everyday.


So heres to Filmmaking and Life lessons. I'm sure it will be tough and I'll rant, But the plan is to also impart some information about what I get up to and what I discover on this journey.


MJ

SOMA DARK - RESOLUTE (NOW ONLINE!!)

This week sees the release of our Newest collaboration with our good friends 'Soma Dark' for their song 'Resolute'... which is taken from their debut album 'BEGIN'. Which you can buy HERE.

You can check out the video here right now. A special thanks goes out to everyone involved (and that was a lot of people) its some of my favorite work to date and it couldn't have been done without the help of our friends and family, chipping in to make the whole thing work. Thanks again to everyone. 

Mycho

SA-DA-KO Video Online!!!

This week the sees the release of Sa-Da-Ko’s new video for their song ‘Forced Evolutionary Virus’. 

The video had been the hardest thing we’ve ever worked on, and as a result had the longest production time of any video we’ve done to date. The team pulled everything we had access to together and managed to forge something that has turned out to be incredibly impressive.

It would be impossible to list the amount of friends and family who stepped in to help us getting this to the finish line. But Mycho would like to thank everyone involved in bringing the Huge, robot scorpion of a video, to life.

It was the video that nearly killed us… But in the end it has given us a brighter look towards the future.

Mycho

LOOK TO THE FUTURE…

It’s been a while since the blog was updated… but its mainly because over the last few months we have been taking stock and figuring out what the future of the company is. This of course has taken a lot of organization and effort against a mountainous work load. So here it is, what going on with everything?

Well…

I get a lot of hassle about this ALL the time “Where is it?”, “Whys it not finished?”, “Is it ever even gonna come out?”. And I’m sick of the same thing over and over again.  So here is the skinny.

Creepsville is finished, at least as far as we can go. It now is waiting on actors, who need to dub lines, scoring which takes a long time and then the inevitable final screws turning once everything is in place.

“So why don’t these people just do it?”. They ARE doing it. But the simple fact is that we shot a film on ‘nothing’, nothing but blood, sweat and human sacrifice and as a result it difficult to demand that people who are gracious enough to do these things for us in their spare time to work faster. It will be done when it’s done and believe me… no one want to see this film out more than we do.

Everyone who has worked on this has done an outstanding job, FOR FREE, and to get the quality we want and NEED this film to have… we are willing to wait as long as it takes.

Slasher House is doing just fine… It all on track… we were hopeful for a Halloween premier this year, but life gets in the way and that was always a long shot either way. Slasher House is much more a case of something that is being taken care of by the current team and me ‘personally’ and although we have a lot of other projects constantly being juggled, it is a definite priority and is going very well.

There will be news about Slasher House and its release and such in the next month or so.

WHAT NEXT?

Well believe me… all the cool shit we have planned is about to kick you in the face piece.

Unfortunately some projects like I’VE GOT BETTER THINGS TO DO TONIGHT THAN DIE… well… died. The project just needed the right weather and living in North West England, we just didn’t get the weather we needed to shoot it during the summer. Instead of trying to catch up and adding more to the pile, we decided it bets to put it on the back burner, but we have plans for it so you’ll see the film head into production at some point in the future.

In place of that though watch out for the announcement of our brand new features for 2012.

A lot of people ask me what happened to Mycho TV. Well quite simply, we had a lot of plans for it and everyone (including ourselves) either got too busy or moved on to other things and the shows development kept heading in so many different directions just keep up with the flux and change of life, not to mention the time it was taking to put together something of quality EVERY WEEK.

In the end we decided to regroup so that we could pull the show back together to the quality we wanted it with a regular cast and crew and a higher production value. We have some plans for the show and it will be returning early Spring 2012.

All in all Mycho as an entity has taken a hit this year for many different reasons, it should have killed off this little organization that I've been trying to build since I landed in Preston 7 years ago. But you can't keep a good man down... and I plan to prove that... again.

MYCHO