When asking our lecturer, “in terms of f**k ups, how have we scored?”
He replied, “Well you’re definitely in the top ten… in the history of the course”
This was in context to us corrupting a hard drive, which hadn’t been backed up and had our final project for our degree on it. The course has also been running for 60 years, so as far as f**k ups go, we did pretty well.
Our first film was called Perfect, which depicted the tale of a middle-class family of three and a creepy interloper trying to take over her sister’s life. After the successful planning, fundraising and shooting of the film, the worst thing imaginable happened - our hard drive had corrupted itself, resulting in the loss of over half the footage. Ironically, a major film such as Toy Story 2 had a similar issue and as former Chief Technical Officer of Pixar, Oren Jacob states, “over 90% of the movie had been deleted.” (Jacob, 2012). Although they eventually recovered the footage, we weren’t so lucky in the recovery process, which meant that we either had to reshoot or make an entirely new film.
Perfect stills
One of the most challenging aspects of losing the footage was the fact that we had no budget left to fund a reshoot. Perfect, had originally run a successful Kickstarter campaign and raised the money through crowd funding, which was all spent on the original shoot. Although our original Kickstarter was a success, we couldn’t do it again. This was due to the fact that we simply didn’t have enough time to successfully plan and market a fundraising campaign and secondly, we didn’t want to let down our original backers and ask for more money. This severely limited my options on what to do next, as not only did I have to be time efficient to succeed, but cost efficient as well.
Old Kickstarter campaign for Perfect
However, instead of working out how to resolve the difficult and challenging issues surrounding Perfect, I spent a lot of time procrastinating and watching the endless Top Gear episodes on Dave. This at first seemed counter-productive (which it probably was), however, in episode 1 of series 6, Richard Hammond talks about the latest cheap cars and whilst introducing the new Toyota Aygo, he states, “some cars are designed, and then built cheaply. The Aygo, was designed to be cheap from the start” (Hammond. 2005). This same problem had affected us, as unlike the Aygo, Perfect was written with a budget in-mind and it would have been impossible to do a reshoot on no budget and end up with a good quality film.
Therefore, after a lot of consideration into how the footage we had recovered could be used (i.e. flashbacks), I decided it was time to cut my losses and write a completely new film. This decision meant I had more creative freedom in deciding the new story, as I was not dictated to use certain recovered shots. However, the team and I would still have to produce, direct, shoot and edit an entirely new film in less than two months with no budget, an ambitious task.
To get inspiration for the new film, I watched numerous short films on Vimeo, Short of the Week and Youtube. The two main films, which caught my attention, were Lesley (Ainsley, 2016) and Real Gone (Worley 2015), as they used one actor, had simple storylines and were ten minutes in length. Real Gone however, became my main source of inspiration, as they had shot the whole film in two days, which given the amount locations used, was impressive. In a behind the scenes video, director Seth Worley stated that the film was “a lot like the other shoots we do, where there’s no crew, no safety, no money, no nothing and it went just as smoothly as any other shoot.” (Worley, 2015). This reassured me that making a film in such a short time was possible, however, they still had some kind of budget to spend on locations, actors and special effects. Therefore, like the Aygo, it was time to go back to the drawing board and go even simpler.
The next films I started to look at were horror films. This was because they were often cheap to produce and fairly simple to make. This can be demonstrated from the success of Paranormal Activity (Peli, 2007), which had a budget of fifteen thousand dollars and ended up making a staggering one hundred and ninety million dollars at the box office. Another factor that lured me into making a horror was that the majority of components (sound, lighting, acting) are often heightened to create a sense of hyperrealism. This would give the individual roles in the crew good opportunities to express their creative freedom, which I could ultimately use as a persuasion technique to get people to commit to such a last minute project.
To save time whilst I was writing the script, I told my producer, Christian Jeffcoat, to release a casting call for two female leads. However, as there were only a couple of weeks to organise the shoot, I decided to get another producer on board to assist Christian. Noora Hiekkaranta helped greatly in the casting process and we got huge interest, despite having an unfinished script. To save time on actors coming in for auditions, we conducted Skype auditions and despite the odd network interference, we had casted our two female leads.
After casting the actresses, I chose to use Celtx over the industry standard, Final Draft, to write my screenplay, as Celtx is based online and allowed the crewmembers to make and see changes in real time. This kept everyone in the loop and also made the process a lot more streamlined and efficient.
To keep the overall logistics simple, minimal locations would have to be used. In total, there were three main locations: a caravan, a car interior and a house. After I had decided locations, I did a recce of each location with my director of photography, Zack Langsdon and together we visualised the shots we would need. This was relatively easy, as Zack and I have worked together in the past and we both share a similar aesthetic.
To minimize our camera footprint, Zack and I decided to use the RED Scarlet mounted on a shoulder rig. This streamlined the process of setting up shots and allowed us to shoot in 4K, giving us a nice buffer for the image. However, we found that 200 ISO was the sweet spot of the Scarlet and we therefore had to pump loads of light into the scene, which was challenging when trying to create dark empty spaces at the same time.
Zack shooting on the RED Scarlet
We also used a hazer over a fogger, as this allowed us to give a more consistent layer fog, which was essential for continuity. This also turned our torch into a beam of light and added a whole new dynamic to the film. To light our scenes, we simply used LED panels, red heads and then used polyboards to bounce the light back at our subject. This kept our lighting setup as simple and as streamlined as possible, making life easier when setting up shots.
Film stills of Meeko
The £50 budget was all spent on food, as I feel food is the most important aspect on any film set, although finding good recipes to feed 12 people over 4 days proved tricky. However, I simply opted for tomato-based dishes, as this was cheapest and I therefore made dishes such as: tomato and lentil soup, ratatouille and rice, curry and then another vegetable soup. Having good food on set lifted everyone’s moral and also productivity, keeping everyone on form and working as efficient as possible.
The poor souls roped in last minute
To save time in post-production, I decided to adopt an unconventional workflow, meaning we could now simultaneously shoot and edit the film at the same time and I could view rushes and dailies throughout the production. I was extremely impressed by our editor, James Lee-Warner, as he had adapted to this new workflow and done such an exceptional job, that by the time we had finished the 4 day shoot, the film was already half edited.
The next stage in the process was to add the sound mix for Meeko, for this I worked alongside Bee Macneill. My main goal was to avoid using the clichéd horror sounds and to keep the sound design very minimalistic and atmospheric. This was because the film was so visual; I did not want to distract the audience from it and overcompensate with too much sound. Overall, I am happy with the sound mix, but if we had more time, it would have been beneficial to work alongside a composer to build on the tone of the film further and also mix it in 5.1 surround sound, to really immerse the audience.
Behind the scenes photos by Celine Brekne
All in all, I believe that similar to the Aygo, Meeko was a successful film that was “designed to be cheap from the start” (Hammond. 2005), which led to it costing just fifty pounds to make and being the most efficient film I had ever worked on. Although I wasn’t able to cover every aspect of the production, the obvious lesson learnt from this experience is BACK UP YOUR S**T.
Meeko will be released later this year, in the meantime please follow us on Facebook and check out the trailer below.