Silly Hours

I've been working on set on another production for the last two days and they have very silly hours, well normal hours for the film industry, but when your trying to plan another film at the same time, it really doesn't help! Any way i'll have lots of news to announce over the weekend, as i'm back at the main computer system will put some things online and have all the documents (that i can release) avalible for people who are interested to see how its all working.

What i can say now is there are 10 dates scheduled for the winter, the actors are currently checking them for any innacurasies in my calculations, and overall once everything is confirmed in regards to that, its all aboard back to buying and editing extras clothing, Jenna getting in touch with over 100 extras, prop buying, set visiting (with the production designer), and buying the odd tape stock for shooting!

For the Weald and Downland shoot we had everything sorted about 4 weeks before, we now have around 4 - 6 weeks (depending on which date your thinking of) to make sure everything goes to plan! I can tell you that the most heavily penned dates are the first and last which go from October 25th 2006 - December 5th 2006....with most of the shoot days happening from November 20th - 30th 2006.

Other than confirming dates and what not there its been a slightly slow week for Roanoke, sadly nothing can move on until it is all confirmed so we just have to wait for that!

I'll update tomorow (Friday) with some more info about this, but look out for Saturday when i'll be able to fill you in exactly!

Bertie

18 - 22 mm

I've always wanted a DSLR. The quality, clarity and creative control you get from the many photographs I have seen are amazing. I thought it was time to own one and I think this movie would benefit from better stills.
So over a week ago I bought myself a DSLR camera at the London Camera Exchange on the Strand. It's a great little shop and the staff there are all photographers who know the craft very well. It's a big step from the compact IXUS 500 I normally use.
I haven't had a chancce to take any on-set filming photos as we have yet to find out our confirmed shooting dates. When we do we'll post the photos on the blog.

I've been lucky enough to be given constructive feedback by Murray Close who has seen the first three [shooting] days of stills. He is a professional still/set photographer who has been in the industry for many years and is currently working on the fifth installment of a well known boy wizard. His advice has spurred me on to improve my skills.

What goes on in my mind when I take photos?
There's a lot actually! You look at your surroundings, lighting conditions, what you want to cover, where your subjects are, what speed they are moving and then go about composing your shot and adjust the many settings: aperture/f numbers (depth of field), shutter speed (exposure), wide or telephoto, focus, white balance, ISO speed etc on the camera. Eveything should be done manually as this gives you total creative control. There are presets and full auto too incase there isn't enough time. There's a lot of thinking involved to get the right photo and I like that.

I now have a date...

Some may call it sad refering calender shooting dates to the illustrious guise of going on a date, but wait until the dates for Roanoke: The Lost Colony are confirmed, then i'll be in a relationship with the date, then it'll be sad. hey, you gotta have your fun somewhere huh.

Actually the last bit above is a lie, i'm having lots of fun, and what increased the fun meter yesterday is the kindness of West Stow to allow us to film there. It seems we'll have to film a bit after our intended desire to finish shooting, however for the location that West Stow provides (our recce can be seen below) it'd be worth waiting a loooooong while.

As it stands it looks like we'll be shooting over the following shooting windows:

October: 26th - 27th
November: 1st - 3rd
November: 20th - 30th
December: 4th - 6th

Now we're not going to be shooting on all those dates, but that is the window. I'm not waiting on some dates i'll be getting on Wednesday to see which days we'll be shooting. It is still true as I said earlier that we'll have from 8 - 12 days of shooting within these windows, the October and December dates look pretty set in stone (touch wood...or stone)

Well until i'm in a full blown relationship with them, i'll let them be, we really should get on to casting a few of the needed cast members!

How hard is it to get a date?

If Mr. A can make one day but needs to be around when Mrs. G can only do evening and weekends then we need to make sure the weather is fine for Mr. B and Mr. C to accompany Mr. F at a certain location while it is day......If Mr. A can make Tuesdays, how many sausages does it take to make a Toad in the Hole?

It may sound as likely as your average GCSE question (although these are obviously getting easier hehe, so maybe A-Level) but its the sort of fun I'm having with the winter shoot. It's great to see the principle cast all out and working and I guess it gives me a bit of a job to do. Currently I'm sorting out the exact dates for winter, now I know the amount of pages, scenes and locations. In order to do so I must sort out the cast needed per day, length at location, time at location, day/night shoot, weather conditions and extras. To go with that some of the cast can't make certain days and they overlap etc....It's a lot of fun, or will be when it's solved....Who said you don't use what you learnt at school when your older!

Currently on the very brief outlook we are going to have three sessions for the Winter filming of Roanoke The Lost Colony, from the end of October, mid November and end of November!

On a seperate note, if you already haven't, you can check out a video of our location recce last week below. I'm thinking of doing another on Monday and possibly Tuesday morning too...wohayy

Recce - in pictures

A mini photoblog of West Stow location:

Roanoke Recce

By Dan 1st AD

So today we visited the wonderful West Stow Anglo-Saxon village in Bury St. Edmunds, somewhere in England (well it was far away and i wasnt reading road signs).

As promised we recorded the day and produced a video blog to show you guys, the main purpose being that you can see a possible shooting location.

Note to remember: As this would be the setting for the fort in Roanoke, they wouldn't have had the building facilities to create structures of the time i.e. 16th Century, so would have built more simple structures with simple tools, thus the reasonin that the 'potential' shooting location is an 'anglo saxon' setting.

So you can play the video below, WOHOOO!!!!

Few Stats to Go By

So i've finished the sorting of the winter shoot for Roanoke The Lost Colony, in all fairness i really didn't have that much to go i'm just a teror to myself and like to stop before finishing the final hurdle. It's pretty much as expected and i've come up with a through stats below, some of which i'll go into more detail after the list:

Total Length: 86 pages (word version)
Length to Go: 47 pages and 1/8: aprox: 54%
Scenes: 78
Settings: 16
Locations: 8 - 12
Charecters to cast: 25
Extras Needed: 100+

Generally scripts are devided into their pages by 1/8th's, this helps producers colour code different areas that are needed for hair make up etc. A small scene is 1/8th long and generally (for roanoke anyway) constitutes 1 shot, and for 2/8 and 3/8 likewise. This is not a set rule however. As expected we have 50% of the script to and alot of 1/8 scenes that make up the 78. The charecters to cast are very small and may be extra extras on the day, but larger importance charecters such as Older John Smith etc will be cast within the next few weeks.

With shooting still a month or so away things seem to be picking up now as we begin to scout out the locations (rece tomorow), find the props (meeting yesterday) and search for the cast.....

more later

ece ece RECCE

So we're back to recc-e-ing locations for Roanoke. This week we're going to look at a primitave settlement set in the East-Side of England, well not that East, but enough to give us a good 4 hour round trip. We'll be documenting the day on both camera and video so you should have a good idea of what we got up to on the blog by the next day. The aim is to edit the footage on the drive home so we'll have it by the evening of or next day.

If all goes well (and by the pictures we have already it could very well) it should finish all but one locations that we need to find before the winter shooting. The other location is a very basic Dock. The West Country may come in usefull for this (I say that becuase I can think of a few that might exist from past visits).

The stats are still coming, i know i promised today, but it looks like it will be tomorow, don't want to go publishing mistakes now!

speak soon,
bertie

Cutting and Pasting

A lot of paper has been cut up that used to be a nice clean script of Roanoke The Lost Colony, and a lot of glue extracted from rather helpful pritsticks. Actually if anyone can find a shop that sells pritstick these days I'd be very interested. WH Smiths, local supermarkets, garages, local corner shop....all failed in my bidding, finally the shop that resides about 10 meters from my house proved to be the key (why I didn't start there I have no idea).

Either way we now have a new folder (making 5) that has a compilation of Winter scenes to be shot, along with scene numbers, actors needed, size of scene, etc... Hopefully I'll get it online by a bit later on tonight or tomorrow morning so anyone interested can take a peak. I'm meeting up with Gary (sets, props and what nots) in order to discuss the future shooting set designs and props (suppressions). Next week I also aim to scout a few locations that I have in mind and would be perfect but permission could be a challenge.

In the mean time here are a few unseen pictures (thanks to Angela): as allays click to enlarge.


Andy Sweet (white) and I try to work out where the sea is :-D


Andy and James do their pre-scene prep


Bernadette (make-up) prepares Charlotte for action


Extras begin to arrive on set, Sam tries to count them but can only get up to five.



Dan overlooks shoot


preparing the next shot two days later, Sam is still trying to count the extras.

Our Youngest cast takes the stage...

Another news article for Roanoke: The Lost Colony, this time in the Newbery Weekly News. Myself and Jack Juniper (young John Smith) who is from the area, gave an interview last week to the paper and they have included a lovely article for the film on page 5. Jack has done a fantastic job on set for the first set of shooting and we look forward to shooting him later on....filming that is before anyone gets worried...

As i'm away until Sunday evening, I can't update the Publicity page but below are two images from the paper. I'll make sure this and the Fleet news are online (text versions) by the end of the week.





In other news we should have finished the paper work section of pre-production by Sunday night, leaving a few location scouts and negotiations to be done before we're in place to shoot again. Shooting is scheduled to be finished by December 1st 2006.