Made In Britain Production Notes

If I didn't already know making films was a slow, difficult and sometimes painful task then I certainly do now after shooting a short scene from the film 'Made In Britain'. I walked off the set with my confidence shot to pieces, unable to look some of my collaborators in the eye and large feeling of self pity, I sat at home for a short while fighting the urge to call it a day. I kept asking myself 'Do I really want to do this as a job?' At that moment I didn't really know the answer, but once I'd beaten myself black and blue and rebuilt my fragile ego I understood that the shoot was just a workshop, a chance to fuck up without consequences and I wanted another go, to do it better, to inject new ideas that had suddenly presented themselves far too late.

The project was built on very shaky foundations. All the students had barely got their feet under the table and we were all thrown into the frying pan, very much a sink or swim situation. As a small production group we only had a week to plan the film, read the script, storyboard, brief the actors and camera crew. It would have been a hard thing for any new student to do but it was made even harder when I found our team to be made up of people with very different methods of working. I was the director, I needed everyone to pull together, to turn up on time to meetings, to provide the necessary work, the simple, basic elements of any project. That did not happen. Its fair to say that my relationship with the second most senior member of my creative group was sour from day one, the one person who would be critical to the success of this picture was soon to be a little thorn in my side. Instead of pulling in the same direction and giving each other a helping hand we just didn't work, mainly due to the fact that we just didn't spend enough time working on the storyboards even though there was plenty of time available. I also felt a slight lack of respect from her towards myself in particular even though all the students had earned the right to be in the film school.

Once the cameras started rolling I felt blind, it was a new situation for me, filming in a studio set with actors in dialogue, directing a camera crew when I've been so used to manning the equipment myself. Filming on location is so very different from filming in a studio and it took a little while to understand how things should be done in that kind of environment. The tutors did their best to push me and the crew, asking questions and putting us on the spot. That was fine and understandable what I didn't want to happen was for a divide to form in our crew, for us to loose faith in each other, to panic and not listen, to not talk respectfully to one another, for the most part things were fine but as I've mentioned before my relationship with my DOP just kept getting worse. The storyboards were thrown out the window and improvisation was the name of the game however neither myself or my DOP understood one another's point of view and instead of talking about it and dealing with it the right way we just broke down and each one of us were completely out of sinc for the entire shoot. At this point I felt weak and I kept getting weaker, I started to notice the eerie silence on set and that everyone was listening to me, I'd lost confidence in my own ability, I'd lost confidence in the shots that we were aiming for. I felt small, exposed. My mind locked up and ideas that usually flow so easily evaporated. I was looking for reassurance somewhere on set, someone to lean on, anything to bring back a little confidence but all I had was my DOP and I knew I'd receive very little from her. So I stuck at it, I'm surprised no one (maybe the tutors and my DOP) noticed that I'd lost it and so I kept going until we'd got what we needed and I could get the hell off the set. A forced and weak shake of the hand from my DOP at the end summed up our opinions of one another and the tone of the atmosphere.

Not all of the shoot was difficult, I really enjoyed working with the actors, they both responded well and I allowed them some freedom to do as they please during each take which in turn relaxed them and brought out relativity natural performances. Our camera girl was deaf so explaining the movements of each take and what the actors were about to do was a little difficult at first, speaking to an interpreter the entire time added an extra body onto the already crowded set, but we got there, we were both patient and I respected her. She clearly was familiar with the camera so I gave time to make sure she understood what I wanted and the end results are fine, I'd be more than happy to work with most of my crew again.

It was also my job to sit in during editing and piece the film together, surprisingly we had very little difficulty. Some shots don't cut to cleanly with each other and perhaps we did just have one to many angles but the end result is somewhat far from terrible. The feedback from the other students has been positive. I looked around and I saw plenty of groups becoming frustrated with the images they had but my group was relaxed and pleased with what we were working with. My comment after we'd watched the final cut was, 'its just like watching Eastenders'. Maybe that's a slight exaggeration but I am relativity pleased with the outcome considering I felt like I'd lost the floor during the shoot. I have to be pleased with the film, I certainly want another crack at it, I want to keep directing.