Burning 2 - Rough Cut
Report 2 - Godalming Borough Hall 14 October 2014
As part of the film programme, we invited Dominic Lees and some of the crew from the short film "The Burning" to present an update and answer some questions about the film-making process. The text below is the transcription of that evening's activities.
The people identified in the text are:
- Michael van Koetsveld (MvK) - GFS Committee Member
- Dominic Lees (DL) - Writer/Director
- Jean-Pascal (JP) - Producer
- Rob - Director of Photography
- Bruno - Documentary Director
- Adam - Steadicam Operator and Props
- Rosie - Costume Designer
- Sophia - Costume Designer
MvK
Good evening ladies and gentlemen. It's just past the autumnal equinox and we're not quite yet at all hallows eve but tonight we're heading back in time to 1588 for a little while with Dominic Lees and his crew and some of the costume designers here who are going to be answering some questions from the audience after we've seen a rough cut of the film, parts of the film, and a behind-the-scenes documentary which lasts a few minutes, just to give you a quick taste of what it was like prepping and doing the film.
What I'd like to do is introduce Dominic, get him up to explain a little bit about what a "Rough Cut" means.
DL
Hi, so, we are half way through the post-production of "The Burning" so what you're going to see is the first few minutes of the film. The editing of the film is not yet finished. There are no pre-title cards, no credits at the front of it and certain absolutely essential things for you as film viewers are not there. There's no music whatsoever. Soundwise, there's only the dialogues and a few effects have been put on as well. In the process of post-production, we're going to add layer upon layer of sounds to create the kind of cinematic sound environment that you're accustomed to. But, at the moment, we're looking at the cuts, creatively deciding if the film is going where we want it to go, and making changes to it. So we're going to show you about 4 or 5 minutes and immediately after that, as Michael said, there's a little film about the making of "The Burning" which Bruno here made, and the only other thing is that, before the film begins, a little historical explanation will be shown. You won't see it today, but it will be on the completed film when we show it to you later. When are we going to show it?
MvK
On the 6th January. So when you come back on the 6th you'll have not only "The Burning" but another film made by a local director as well.
DL
It's a Tudor set film, and it's set on the day that Queen Mary, our Catholic queen died, and the time card will remind us that, to her Protestant subjects, she was known as "Bloody Mary", and her Protestant people know that she is dying and they're waiting for the queen's death, and the news of it to come. So, that's the historical context which we're going to set up and there are lots of fantastic film makers here to talk to you about it in a minute.
Rough Cut shown
MvK
Whilst we're waiting for the second film, the costumes you see at the back here were all made by a couple of people we've got here, designers from Basingstoke College, who I will introduce to you in a minute. There's a book of photos and other things to look at too. The costumes have all been historically researched and hand-made so it's worth having a look at the end.
Documentary "Making Of" shown
MvK
Right, so let's bring the first person up. This is Bruno, who made the documentary film that we just watched.
We have Adam here who was a steadicam operator and also in charge of all the props, sorting out the fire and helping make sure everyone was safe.
This is Rob who was the Director of Photography.
Next are Rosie and Sophia who are the designers of all the costumes that you've seen.
Let's throw the floor open to any questions. Have you got anything you would like to ask these guys about the experience of making a film?
Q1.
What gave you the idea of the subject?
Bruno
This would be a question best answered by Dominic, as he wrote the script.
DL
Ah, the subject comes from my murky imagination. It's about intolerance, as you can see, and it actually began as a back story for a feature film that I've been writing the screenplay for, and I kind of started working on this back story and suddenly found that it actually made a really powerful short film idea. What I wanted to do as a teacher of film production, since I had this particularly talented year group who i wanted to give something really hard to make, so I thought "fantastic, I'll give them a Tudor-set period drama" and they've done magnificently. So those are the kind of ideas and motivations behind it. Oh, and let us introduce the Producer, Jean-Pascal, who has been helping with the projection issues.
Q2.
Bearing in mind it's a period thing, did you have any problems with the old aeroplanes coming over the top or transmission lines suddenly appearing where you didn't think they were?
Rob
At the museum itself it wasn't too much of a hassle. We had one point where you could see power lines off in the distance, and also benches and signs... the props department had to do a lot of removal of signs and stuff and the sound team had to do a lot of waiting on aeroplanes... the majority of the film was waiting on aeroplanes to pass.
Bruno
We had the races too.
DL
We were right next to Goodwood races, which can get noisy.
Q3.
How many goes do you have at scenes? Do you get it right first time? Do you have several takes? Who decides if it's right or wrong? How does the combined artistic impact take place with all of you?
Rob
I think there was probably an average of about five takes to every one shot or maybe a little bit less than that, but it's kind of decided through heads of departments... one of the shots - Dom's not happy with the performance, another shot I'm not happy with camera movement, one of the shots props aren't happy with something and sound might have spotted an unwanted noise so it's kind of a combination. Obviously Dom has the final say of whether to move on or not, but, if we all agree that it's the right kind of shot... but it's really important to sit down as quickly as possible to watch back the last take to see if we have to do another one because we had some issues at first with unforeseen mistakes and stuff...
Bruno
It's also about compromise because we're running against time, so it's like, something that Dom had to decide - shall we go for the next one or carry on trying.
MvK
One of the things they had to deal with was the fact that the museum was open to the public all the time they were shooting, so there were also people herding public off the paths or holding them still whilst the shot was going on, and lots of radio communication going on amongst the team to make sure that people outside the set knew when to keep the crowds away. Certainly from the outside I saw a lot of this going on.
Rob
There are some difficult moments as well where you only have one chance to get it. For example, the tree falling down, and the same with other parts of it with fire and stuff where there's only one take you can do otherwise it would take a day or so to reset the whole thing.
Bruno
So we use multiple cameras on this kind of shot.
Rob
Yeah. A lot of it is multiple camera shoots.
Q4.
How is the budget going?
DL
That's really a question for the producer.
JP
College price, but we raised £1,600 and so far we are very tight on budget. We are going to post-production which means that we need more money to work on sound and music as well because so far we have been paying through fund raising and with your help. We are going out and trying to get something for educational purposes as well is quite hard because sometimes people say "you are not mature enough to produce something of good quality", so we try and show them the best and be professional in all matters. So, budget-wise we are still in there.
Bruno
I want to say that you saw that little bit without sound or effects or anything and it makes a lot of difference on the movie experience when you have good quality mixing and post-production.
Q5.
What happens to the splendid costumes after you've finished filming?
MvK
I get to wear them!
DL
Yeah, the costumes are quite something. When I first sent the rushes - the raw material - to the editor, I was eager to hear what he had to say about, you know, I was concerned about performance and all that kind of thing but the first thing he said was "Give an Oscar to the costume department!" They were amazing. You saw a shot in Bruno's film of, it's like the last supper, really their costumes are astonishing. It looks like a big budget period drama. What happens to them now... who knows?
MvK
On display at the college?
DL
Possibly on display but in a way we don't want to lose them in case we make the feature film afterwards... and also there's a stage in post production where you think perhaps we'll have to re-shoot a scene, perhaps we'll have to shoot some additional material, so we can't get rid of the costumes for a while. We're trying to keep them safe - with their bits of Tudor straw.
Q6.
What's the length of the final production and roughly how many days shooting time does that represent?
DL
It's running at about twenty minutes. How many shooting days?
Rob
Eight days...
Adam
Ten days...
DL
Between 8 and 10 shooting days. We had some half days, some long days, very, um, dotted all over the shop. The woods were the other side of the Hog's Back, round Normandy way. The Weald and Downland Museum you know. We shot on the downs at South Harting. The church location - the lovely parish of Hardham in West Sussex - does anyone know that chapel? It has the most complete set of wall paintings in any parish church in England and they're 900 years old. So, you remember the close-up you see where the boy is in fear of the woman coming in, that's Adam and Eve on the wall behind him, painted 900 years ago. So, at the time of our film it would have been only 400 years old! Obviously, a generation later, it would have been whitewashed, but it was a fantastic location. Anyway, the multiple locations meant that it was lots of days shooting here and there.
Q7.
You're going to bring this whole thing in at under £2,000?
JP
Yes
Audience
That's the right answer!
Q8.
What would that equate to in the real world, if you were calculating a real world budget where it wasn't a student thing, all professional? Would it be ten times that, or a hundred times that?
JP
Maybe ten times. Right now, as well, you see loads of the cloth (pointing at the costumes) it would have been more expensive getting the proper material. So, we use, like, fabrics from home, just stuff that we have available to us. In the real world the crew would have gone out and made everything from scratch.
MvK
So, probably more than ten times I would say.
Q9.
Do you need to pay fees to all these locations that you shoot on?
JP
Some of them we had to. We had to make use of what we had available. Like, the forest, that belonged to a friend of Dominic.
DL
We had a friend with a wood, and I said "we're going to have to chop down a tree" and he said "there's lots of trees, chop one down." It was quite lucky.
JP
We even hired a horse racer, and most of the venues we hired as well.
Q10.
Who were the actors? Were they professional actors?
DL
The key cast are professional actors, who were working for free for this production, they loved the script so much and they wanted to help in this project. George Watkins, the woodsman, has just finished from Exeter University reading Drama and he's just signed up to an agent and, um, the woman playing his mother, beside the spinning wheel inside the house, she's an old face you might remember from television drama in the 1990s. She was the leading lady in Jeeves and Wooster - Elizabeth Morton - and then there's some non-actors as well. It's my son, you probably noticed, he's a non-actor and the chap in blue, he's an ex-student from Farnborough College as well, who's a terrific performer. He's a musician performer, a singer/songwriter. I saw him on stage and his performance is absolutely manic, and I thought that he would be just right for this film. So, it's a mixture of professionals and non-professionals.
MvK
I think we'll take one more and then have to wrap this up as we need to watch our feature film tonight as well.
Q11.
Apart from finance, what was the biggest problem you had to overcome?
Rob
Rain!
JP
And, as well, the burning...
DL
Oh yes, the fire at the end...
MvK
Why was that a problem?
DL
Firstly, it wouldn't light because of all the rain. We were shooting at the end of June - you remember how wet it was then - with that traditional last-weekend-of-June-downpour, and safety when you're working with fire. When you see the completed film there's fire and torches in that hay field that you saw, which is a recipe for disaster. We had a professional stunt-man, who lives locally, who is another ex-student, and he was able to give a lot of health and safety advice on how to do it safely and we had no problems at all.
I did nearly get crushed by the tree though. I was chainsawing away with ear muffs on and I said to the actor "you stand there and, you know that crack when it's just about to go, when you hear that crack you've gotta tell me". So, I was chain sawing away and he heard the crack and shouted and of course I couldn't hear him. I just carried on sawing, sawing, sawing until he bashed me on the shoulder and I had to leap out of the way. That was our nearest thing to an accident.
JP
Health and safety is always a priority when you're doing film-making. As well, you have to have insurance because you can't break something, you have expensive equipment in your hands. There's a film where they dropped a "Red" camera into the water so like, if we have insurance, that's £20,000 covered.
MvK
These guys will be around at the end if you want to ask them some more questions, we'll just move the costumes out of the way of the screen, to the side, and I'm sure you'll join me in giving them a massive round of applause for letting us ask them questions about their film.
Oh, and just to clarify, I wasn't in the film, I'm just being a clothes dummy tonight.