Dole Warriors Production Continues

Wow!

It’s been an incredibly busy month! So busy in fact that there hasn’t been time until now to update you guys with our activities.

We’re almost finished with production, which has been a great amount of fun an we’re super happy with the results. We’ve welcomed on board our other key members of the cast, Jonathan Hill, Jackson Leivers, Pete McHugh, Bryn Oldfield and Steven Kelly.

We’ve been shooting both on location and also on set, and there has been a lot to get through. Our biggest challenge throughout production has been scheduling – with such busy people involved, production days have to be carefully selected, and the shooting schedules have to be very tightly made. Nevertheless scenes are being ticked off one by one and there’s only a few more shots to do before we wrap principal photography.

We’ve already begun the edit; with so much VFX work awaiting, it has been crucial to start cutting the footage we already have and begin the massive task of post production as early as possible, in order to make our deadline. Another reason to get editing straight away is so that we will be able to release a theatrical trailer ahead of the film’s completion, to give everyone a taste of what we’ve been working on.

In the meantime, here’s a few production stills from our most recent shoot, and some sneak-preview stills from the edit so far:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Commended for Animation by BUFVC!

So I produced a short animated story called ‘Gertrude’ which was nominated for an award by the British Universities Film and Video Council, as part of their Learning on Screen Awards.

Although I didn’t bring home the win, I was awarded a Special Commendation and I did get to go to swanky awards cermony in Southbank. It’s as close to a very close 2nd place as I could get and I was thrilled that they actually made the effort to award a commendation at all!

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I was up against 3rd year entries from Goldsmiths, Westminster and the London Uni of Arts, so I was thrilled with the result of my little 2nd year piece.

You can watch the animation below.

Permission vs Forgiveness

For a good solid 6 months or so, every week Sammie and I would turn our house into a film set whilst our Landlady was out at work. She’d leave at 7:30am and return at 5:30pm. During the time in between we filmed numerous short films, scenes and shots throughout the house and had it all cleared away by the time she walked through the door in the evening.

Naturally she had no idea and we don’t know if she’d have flipped out about it if she’d known that we had organized ninja fights in her hallway, shootouts in her kitchen and digitally exploded the whole house front. Our room was filled with guns, green screens, cranes and costumes and she was none the wiser.

Ordinarily I’d make sure correct permission was sought before engaging in a film shoot, but as tenants we knew we had some right to do it so long as it didn’t piss our landlady off too much. To remove the risk of her getting so pissed off that she forbade us to do it, we just made sure she never knew.

And that’s half the trick. Even if we were still hurriedly gathering the evidence away at 5:25pm there was not a speck to be seen when she arrived home. We never really asked what the rules were about visitors, but there was no issue with that so long as our sizable film crew were gone by the time she got back.

There’s a saying, and from what I understand it’s one that filmmakers take quite to heart: “It’s better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.”

I’m not sure it’s really an appropriate mantra to live your life by, but when it comes to shooting films it applies quite well.

That said, it does often pay to check who owns the property you’re about to shoot on and just make sure it’s OK with them for you to use it, even if you don’t quite explain to them the full details of what you’re going to do.

There’s no finite rule, it has to be judged on a case by case basis. There’s always the chance that if you ask, you’ll be told no. But equally, checking before you just go on out there with your film crew does avoid awkward run-ins with the police.

We didn’t bother asking our landlady because we wanted to avoid the argument where she wouldn’t be happy about it, but we’d tell her to jog on because as rent-paying tenants we had a right to use the house for our needs. If we had no right whatsoever to shoot there, we would obviously have asked first. Probably.