Skulduggery Pleasant Short - The Button

So the time is finally here guys and gals, The Button is going full throttle. I have a crew confirmed, a casting call has been put out on the website starnow (here’s the link if you want to apply: https://www.starnow.co.uk/listing/1035642 ) and location scouting is underway. If all goes well the short will be out on December 21st. 

If you have any question feel free to ask or PM me, and I’ll get to them ASAP.

Wish me luck.

SKULDUG EP1 UPDATE 1

Okay guys, here’s the very first update about the pilot, although it’s not really about the pilot (sorry). 

Firstly I want to let you guys in on a little update on the schedule I have. Remember the script for “The Button” that I mentioned. Well I’ve decided to use that as a test of sorts for the production of the Pilot. I am going to be making “The Button” short between now and November and I’ll probably put a starnow listing up for casting of the characters between now and August. Once production actually gets underway I’m hoping to wrap up filming >1 month after casting. This will hopefully work as a miniaturised version of what I want the production of the Pilot to be like.

Secondly I wanted you all to know that all future updates regarding the skulduggery pleasant pilot episode will be published on my sort of portfolio, sort of showcase account: vaikriya

I’ll be using that blog as a sort of production diary for when things get going so make sure to stay updated. 

You can also feel free to send asks or private message me on that blog.

Apart from this I imagine the next major update will come in July/August when or after casting the characters. 

Hoping all goes well, and I hope you’ll all wish me luck.

Okay so change of plans for the Tanith short film

Okay guys, I’ve decided to change my mind on the Tanith Low short film. I’m not doing it, people I’ve been speaking to have said that it would be too much work and I won’t be able to do it without the help of an actual vfx team and the like. 

So I decided to ignore everything they said and instead of dropping it I’m going to broadening the project and make a full 40-60 min Pilot episode of Skulduggery Pleasant. I am currently writing a longer script for the project and it will include what used to be the Tanith Low short film as an introduction to her character in the episode. While writing I am also trying to get in contact with Derek for his permission to make and submit this for university, and if I can’t I’ll have to delay until 2021.

However, if everything goes according to plan I will also be attempting to save a budget for the project and learn what I can to try and do some stuff myself (saving me money). I will also be pitching the project to my university’s project funding comity, or whatever it’s called, come November-ish, I may also start a crowdfunding campaign if need be. 

The plan at the moment is for the episode to cover from chapter 1 to chapter 9 of book 1, with a little bit of rearranging for it to work better on screen. I also have a few ideas for adapting more in the future if it goes well.

Apart from this project I was also sent a script for “The Button” short story from Armageddon out of here and will hopefully doing that alongside this.

And everything here will hopefully going into full production in January

I’m hoping all goes well and I hope everyone will support me on this.

And if you want to keep informed about the project I will be using the tags #skuldugTV and #skuldugep1 for all updates on this project.

Tanith Low short film

Hello peeps of the SP fandom. Just letting you all know a little about myself and what I want to do next year.

So, I am a university student studying television and next year will be my final year on the course. I am looking to create a short film for my final major project and what I have in mind is making a short film based on one of Tanith Low’s escapades in the books. The ideas I have in mind are to adapt either the troll under westminster bridge chapter from book 1, or the spring-heeled Jack chapter from book 2. At the moment the westminster bridge scene is looking more likely so i’ll focus on that for now. If all goes to plan and no assignment brief surprises occur then by this time next year the film should be in its editing phase, if it’s not already out by then. I am currently writing a script and I’m going to work with a friend few friends of mine that are on the same course as me to help refine it and what not. 

The main issue I see coming up within the production of this is that I know no one personally who can do VFX suitable for the films so if anyone has a contact that might be interested then feel free to message me. Also casting may be an issue if I don’t end up finding someone good for the role. I should be putting a casting call out on starnow at somepoint between the end of this year and the end of winter next year.

I hope all will go well and I’ll try my best to keep updating on how things go when production gets kicked into gear (which should be around September time). 

GORE/BLOOD, TORTURE, AND ANIMAL MURDER WARNING

So the next production I was a part of is this psychological horror-esque short film called “when you leave me”. For this project I had the roles of producer, co-writer, sound operator, and editor. The most stressful part of the whole process was definitely in the beginning, coming up with ideas for a short film with the brief being practically the same as for when we made “sex, drugs, and ice cream”. Originally I had the idea of making a spectacle film with mindless action and minimal plot, with my main inspirations for this idea being the john wick series, the kill bill series, and an anime short film called carnage. I wanted a dark, gritty, bloody action flick with enough fake blood to make Tarantino nod in approval. However, there was a limited time available to make the film and we had a budget of exactly £0. So that original idea was dropped and a new idea had to be formed.

To come up with the new idea I asked the director of the film, Tyler, if there was any genre of film that he wanted to give a go directing and we’ll write something for that genre. He then suggested a psychological horror. From there was the painstaking process of scripting came about. Originally I was planning to write this one solo but when I had finished a first draft and showed it to the rest of the team they all told me that it was generic, b-movie level, horseshit. So like any rational person I sulked about it for about a week before then starting over. It was while writing this second version of the script that I figured I could ask James for some assistance for coming up with ideas to shock the viewer and build tension in the scenes. We spent a couple late nights (or i guess it would probably be better categorised as early mornings) coming up with the groundwork for the film. It was then that we took this new idea to the team and they approved so we then began redrafting until we were left with a version that we were happy with. 

Now, something different from when we were making “sex, drugs, and ice cream” occurred. The university provided the actors we were to work with. Personally I prefer to cast actors myself as I can get to know them better, have them audition to see if they were right for the role and then after that hire them to a role. Instead they had one of the drama lecturers chose the actors for us and the roles they were meant to play. After meeting the actors we decided to switch the roles around because we felt that the lecture’s casting wasn’t quite right. We then had the actors read through a copy of the script and gave them some links to some material we wanted them to use as reference for the role (such as Guy, who played Elliot, look at Christian Bale’s character in American Psycho). We also told them that if they had any ideas about the script, such as changing a few lines or conveying a line in a different way to the script, they were free to call or text us any time and we could discuss it with them and amend the script.

Then after all of this there was only one week in which the actors were free to actually shoot the film, which just happened to be two weeks before the submission date. Then one of the actors had an emergency production that they needed to do to pass the year come up, so they were only available for 4 days. Luckily the team I had was very proficient in their roles and we all work together like a well oiled machine. on day one we shot the opening scene and the scene that takes place outdoors, on day two we shot all of the last scene in Elliot’s house, and on day three we shot the scene that took place in Ash’s house. We managed to film the whole project in 3 days. This required long hours from the cast and crew, as well as a lot of stress on set to make sure everything went well. Everything went according to plan and luckily we didn’t need to use the fourth day for re-shoots or pick-ups. 

After the actual filming was done it was pretty much left to me to make it look good with the two and a half weeks I had before the deadline. I used every trick I knew, from colour grading to simple re-scaling a shot to better position it, to even learning how to use the tracking tool in aftereffects in order to stabilize some of the shots that were especially shaky, I’m looking at you birds eye view shots (we didn’t have jib training so those were done handheld). I am particularly proud of the colour grade on this project as I believe it came out especially well for my first time colour grading a film.

As a whole I am VERY happy with what me and the team made for this module. We worked really hard on the film and I believe it shows. I would especially like to thank the director for the film, Tyler, for coming up with the shots that made the film look as amazing as it does. Maybe you could tell, but Tyler took heavy inspiration from the works of Wes Anderson with the (attempted) symmetrical cinematography and overhead shots present. I believe that with this mindset Tyler had given the film a truly unique flair that it just wouldn’t have if he wasn’t directing it. Overall, this production gave me a lot of experience for the future and iss the first production that I’ve put so much into.

GORE/BLOOD AND MENTIONS OF SUICIDE TRIGGER WARNING

So this was my next major project in university, it was quite a big jump going from live studio magazine show to pre-recorded drama. The biggest change was the actual flow of production. Instead of being put into large groups, that class was split into groups of 4-6. My group was a group of 6. The brief was to make a film that was 10 minutes long but with the main focus being on telling a narrative. So when we asked the Lecturer if the 10 minute thing was heavily enforced he said that it was more of a guideline and to use as much time as necessary to tell the story we wanted to tell. For this production module the whole class was given training on new equipment that we could use, those being the canon c100 mark ii camera’s and also learning more advanced premier pro techniques, with the only major thing being how to use green-screen (which we didn’t end up using).

My roles during this production were as a Co-writer, the Director, an Assistant Editor. My role as a Co-writer consisted of me and James spending hours coming up with sass and quick wit for Lucifer to have as well as deciding what jokes and religious references we’d put into the project. We were heavily inspired by the (then) FOX show ‘Lucifer’, the version of Lucifer from the Neil Gaiman Sandman series, and the version of Lucifer from the book ‘I, Lucifer’ by Glen Duncan. We wanted our Lucifer to be an amalgamation of the 3, having the anger at god that Glen Duncan’s version had, the childish yet very sinful version of from the FOX series, and finally the main inspiration for his appearance being the Neil Gaiman version. We also, much to our own disbelief, managed to actually write a copy of the book that Lucifer talks about during the interview in time for the submission date, which we are currently getting printed for the crew and cast as memento’s of the project. 

Now after writing the script for everything and got the teams approval that this was definitely what we were doing the next step was casting for the role. To do this I set up a starnow account to try and find some actors who needed to add to their portfolio or who were willing to work unpaid. However after setting this up and posting the ad for the search I was shocked at how many people applied ofr Lucifer alone . After only a week we had 86 applicants and after 2 weeks there were 114. We closed the ad after the third week because we believed we had enough applicants and we also were shortlisting as we went. and thought we had quite a good number of people for the project. After looking through all the applications and shortlisting we sent out a task for everyone to do, which was to read a section of the script and then record and send in a video audition based on how we described the characters. The deadline was set for two weeks after we sent the message. All people who didn’t apply were automatically sent a message saying that they didn’t get the role. The boy who got the role, Isaac, sent his application in on the day of the deadline. It had us worried as he was our personal top pick for the role, as he looked the part and his portfolio and theatrical background would add to the role. He sent in his application wearing the signiture purple suit that he wears in the interview and as soon as he began James and I looked at each other and we knew that he was the one. After casting Isaac as Lucifer we then put out and add for the role of the interviewer, not as many people applied but it was still quite a lot, with 46 applications in the first week. after doing the same process for shortlisting, instead of having them send in a video audition we wanted to actually sit down with them, with Isaac, to see if they had the right dynamic. And once we met Dani we knew she’d be perfect for the role. Then we put out an add for Interviewer 1 and done a similar process, with a phone interview instead of a video audition. after this we got Ben, who played his part exceptionally well.

After this all we asked the cast how long it would take them to learn the script, which they responded with 4 days, and so all needed to do was secure dates for the studio and book out equipment which didn’t take long at all. 

As a Director my role was to be in charge of pretty much everything while on set. The role as a whole was a very fulfilling one and luckily for me the cast and crew we had for the project were very very good at what they did. The whole experience was amazing. seeing the talent work had me mesmerised to the point that I forgot to call ‘cut’ a couple of times. The cast themselves needed little direction after the set was ready and all the camera and lights were in position. All I had to do was say ‘action’ and then let them do what they were doing.

During the actual set up process I have to thank my DOP Alex and my cameraman Matt for their amazing efficiency in setting up the camera’s and tripods while I dealt with the set and Lighting. I literally didn’t have to tell them anything apart from the type of shots I wanted and then just left them to it, It helped a lot and allowed us to get straight into filming when the actors arrived. 

We had 4 days to film so I decided to have the first be rehearsal and then get straight into it for the rest. On the second day we managed to film the entire first half but then when we went back into the studios for the third day, someone had moved our lights, meaning we had to preposition them even when we did the scene didn’t look the same, so we re-done the entire first days worth of shooting, leaving the last day for the rest. When the last day came round everything was left alone after I left some notes and had some words with the technician/studio supervisor. This meant that everything could carry on as planned.After shooting concluded it was an amazing feeling that we were almost done. 

We had about 3 1/2 weeks left to edit the project, which was more than enough time, but gave us more time to polish the film into a shining beauty it is. James was the head editor for this project, and I had the role of assistant editor. Even though I was the assistant editor, my role consisted mainly of me walking James through things that he couldn’t do or doing more complex things myself due to me being the more experienced and knowledgeable editor. The things that I walked him through were the ending credits and a few effects used for colour correction and the like. Things I did myself were the Opening title sequence thing and the effect on Lucifer’s eyes when he wakes up in the bath. 

As a whole I am very proud of the experience and filming the short was the most fun I’d ever had during a production thus far. I am very happy with the results or our hard work and I believe that I learned quite a lot during the production, especially in terms of directing. Before this I had little to no experience as a director of works and I had always said before I even got into university that I would definitely like to do it, or at least try it to see if i liked the role, and yes, I like the role. This gave me the confidence that I previously lacked in a leadership role.

So this was the first major project that I worked on in my university life. It was actually my first major project of all time. So the brief we were given was to create a 20 minute magazine show that would be recorded and streamed live. For this production module we learned how to use a variety of equipment with the most notable things being the studio camera’s and the studio gallery, and the sony pxw z150 camera’s as well as rode ntg1 & ntg2 boom mic’s and manfroto standard and heavy weight tripods. The class was split into 3 groups of around 20 people and each group split into 4 groups of five with the task of creating 4 VTs. My role in the groups were as the PA for the show as a whole and the Director of one of the VTs. 

As a PA my role involved assisting with every part of production, and for me that mainly meant that I assisted the Producer and Production Manager with their paper work and conveyed messages that they had to the whole team. I also had the role of keeping track of time for each segment of the show while recording and relaying that info the the Director who would tell me whether I should cut down another segment or he would tell the presenter to wrap things up.

As a Director of a VT my role was to mainly focus on the visuals of the VT and make sure that the VT fit into the allotted time. The VT that I directed was the Music performance at the end of the show. The way I decided to record that was live, rather than lip synced, in order to make the performance appear more natural on screen. To do this I had asked for help from the studio technicians that were available on the day to assist with mic-ing up each instrument and setting it up so that the sound from the mic’s would come through the studio gallery. I also had them help out with our sound guy in sorting out levels and while recording. It was shot live and I had a member of the team as the vision mixer, who cut together the live recording as I asked. I also asked for assistance from people who were finished with their VT’s in order to have additional camera people. we took a total of 6 takes to get it right and then after i put them all into adobe premier and cut them together using the best shots of each take.

As a whole the experience was an amazing one that I loved from beginning to end. Of course it had it’s downs (the stress everyone had while we were recording live, waiting for something to go wrong... yikes) but it had such amazing ups that I was a very positive experience. As a whole it was a very good learning experience and without it I wouldn’t have learned the skills or met the friends I have today.

Okay so here we practiced segment of a show that was going out live on air. My role was the PA, which meant that in essence I was the timekeeper (cool right). What I did was make sure that recording began when the director wanted it to begin, and that on screen everything stays within the allotted time for the segment.

This was the final take on the whole twister segment practice. This was where we perfected the segment and it was brilliant. Since we noticed that the times we had before were still too slow I gave them a broad leeway time of 6-8 minutes to complete their segment and as you can see we absolutely nailed it. The segment originally would have ended at 7 minutes but one of the stars had the genus idea of implementing a joke we made between takes into the story, completely unplanned, we kept the camera’s rolling and kept going, and this end segment became the icing on the cake.