EYES Facebook Group

For the project I knew that I needed a single location where I could keep it relatively organised and keep the other members in the loop as to what was happening. I have found in the past that when all the members are not kept in the loop it can lead to problems and, certainly, I think this is one of the main problems Matt's organisation of Remember This suffered from!

However, a Facebook group seemed like a safe bet, as I had been part of a Facebook group for my second year short film submission and I had found it to be a highly useful communication tool. Another great thing about Facebook is that everybody is always on it, which means that I would be able to reach people fairly quickly and get replies just as swiftly. 

The EYES Facebook Group.

EYES Facebook Group

As I knew whatever I ended up doing as part of the Creative Enterprise Project module would require a great deal of my time and energy, I created the group on the 10/10/2013 and the group been continuously active since then! 

Initially the only people in the group were Matt Coot (co-producer), Letitia Ringshaw (Production Assistant, 'Ella') and myself. It was only after Christmas that I added Mykell Elledge ('Boris'), Claire Rowbotham ('Lianne'), Daniel Tapper (Sound Designer) and Kate Pullinger (my project tutor). 

The group members.

Before Christmas the posts and discussions in the group largely consisted of ideas I had for my project and online resources I had come across. If you want to see how the EYES Web Series evolved from a very vague notion into the web series concept proposal it is now, then look in the Facebook Group (and on this blog). I would say that I have done more communicating and organising via this group than I have done in the real world!

The group has a search function - the magnifying glass next to notifcations and the settings button!

I believe my use of the EYES Facebook Group is also the reason why my multitasking skills have improved, as I would often be communicating via the Facebook Group while
simultaneously doing other tasks. The group has also enabled the whole project to be much more collaborative for all involved and if you want solid evidence of where I have been enterprising in my project then the Facebook Group is a solid bet!

I consider the EYES Facebook Group to hold just as much weight as this blog and, as such, the Facebook Group forms appendix materials. 

EYES Feedback: Mykel Elledge ('Boris')

Solving 3 Rubik Cubes while Juggling

I came across this today. 

Three Rubik cubes, like we had for filming the Pilot, and the same make of Rubik cube we used for the Pilot. Above and beyond how amazing this is, I would hate to film it backwards! 

This is also oddly simbolic of my current workload.

Weekly CE Projects Sync

Due to our working together for One Door Opened, our second year assessed short film, Matt, Tish and myself have banded together to assist each other with our Creative Enterprise Projects. As such,  I have insisted thatt each week we meet up to have a meeting, no matter what!

An extract of the one of the meeting agendas I prepared.

I call these meetings our Weekly CE Projects Sync as it gives each of us an opportunity to discuss the progress of our projects and for the other members to make suggestions. I've found these meetings to be really useful because of their general support and, more importantly, for the feedback they generate. 

The Agendas and Minutes I wrote for these meetings can be viewed here.

EYES Overview - Postive Feedback

Feedback like this is always welcome.

As I wanted to get preproduction on the Pilot episode moving I put together a brief overview of EYES so that Matt (my Producer) and Tish (Production Manager) would know what it was all about and if they wanted a part of it. I think the screen capture speaks for itself. 

Ramblers

Ramblers - A web series about coffee, comics and geeking out.

Tom, Dave, Dan and Ben are four twenty-something geeks living in Manchester. Together, they exist in a world of comics, coffee, sci-fi and miniature golf. Realising the days between university and becoming a 'real person' are flying by, they ask themselves the question: "Did the Rebel Alliance send a medical frigate to the battle against the second Death Star as a propaganda stunt?"

No money. No responsibility. No problem.

  

Tish posted the Ramblers Facebook page link in my Facebook group. She knows the people who made it, which may come in handy in future! For the time being, though, I'm just going to watch it and start taking notes on the web series form.

CEP: The Module Criteria

Here I discuss marking criteria and my meeting with Mimi 09/10/2012.

One of the problems I have which is hampering the script’s development - I don’t quite know how to make a short film project work within the module’s criteria.

When I met with Mini on Tuesday, she suggested an alternative idea which would fulfill my wish to do a project concerned with filmmaking. As I don’t know what area of filmmaking I want to specialise in (I want to do all of them) she suggested my project could be an investigation to determine which area would suit me best. For this she suggested that I could shadow already established industry professionals in the areas of cinematography, editing, lighting, etc and then write up my experiences and my conclusions on a blog. While this is a tantalising idea and one which would build up my industry contacts – it’s not the idea I want to do. But I’m wondering if there isn’t some way I can combine aspects of it with my desire to make a short film. 

Me: doing the clapperboard on the set of One Door Opened.

Another potential idea comes from my desire to shadow Matt with a video camera so that I can document the making of Remember This. Matt has agreed to this but I don’t really have any definite plans to make a documentary from the footage, it's just something I've always wanted to try. I figured it would also make for an interesting experiment; as well as some good practice for documentary making. It’s also a back-up project if things go tits-up with my short film. However, even this idea I am now questioning whether I should do. Now that I have agreed to be Matt’s producer, I’m wondering how feasible is it for me to be both involved in the process of making the film and outside observing it? 

Tailing Matt while he films for SpaLife TV.

Another factor that has to be considered is to be very careful with how my project is marked. I've already been marked on my contribution to a short film in Planning and Making a Film so I have to be careful not to be marked on the same areas in CEP. Likewise, I’ll be making a documentary in Short Form Documentary Making so I can’t really be marked for making a documentary for CEP.

If I’m serious about doing a short film, my thinking is to concentrate on my role as the Director, as that is a role I didn’t do or get marked on in Planning and Making a Film. I could present my project as a means to focus on and develop my skills as a director by making a short film. 

Me: on the set of One Door Opened.

Then using the reflections I would have written on the process of directing (perhaps even doing some investigations of other directors) together with the short film that would have been produced I could package them together as a means of application for postgraduate study. Therefore, this directing/short film/postgraduate “super-package” could be my Creative Enterprise Project! 

I just hope I don’t actually have to apply for postgraduate study! Not that I’m adverse to it, I just don’t have the money. But I’m meeting with Mike J tomorrow so I’ll listen to what he has to say to my ideas.

Me: after I hit a brick wall in my Uni work.

I’m beginning to see that CEP is like wrapping presents. I hate wrapping presents and I don’t want to have to wrap my short film up in all the unneeded stress the module criteria demands! I just hope it gets me a good mark (without killing me). Matt, quite rightly, says I need to stop worrying. If I’m worrying my brain isn’t creating!

Eyes - The New Short Film Idea

Here I discuss my new short film idea.

Rather symbolically, I came up with my new idea, Eyes, on the same day as our first Creative Enterprise Project seminar. It is not a full-fledged plot yet, but rather just a starting idea that presents multiple possibilities of stories to be told around it. It’s an idea that very much builds on the themes of looking, watching and invasion of privacy that I explored in Busybody. 

The Characters spy on another character as we spy on them. From the first adaptation of Busybody.

The idea is of a character who likes to collect eyes and, when I say collect eyes, I don’t mean he physically pries them out of people’s heads. Rather, this character likes to go up to people and ask them if he can take a photo of their more interesting eye – he collects photos of people’s eyes.

The character is called Boris; he's a male photographer this time, because I had a female photographer in ‘Busybody’. He’s also named after Boris Karloff not Boris Johnson (although, he’s equally as legendary).

Boris Karloff, The Mummy (1932).

Boris Johnson, no explanation required.

I’m very keen to stick to this starting point idea! Like the hidden camera idea that I started from with Busybody, this idea is presenting just as many story possibilities that interest me. It deals with something I know: taking photographs on a persistent basis, as I’ve been doing with my 366 Project; it’s about looking, and I’ve always been more of a watcher than a talker. Also I think in general people don’t look enough; they rely too much on listening to all the crap that pours from the mouths of others. Rarely do people say what they’re actually thinking or feeling, but the eyes can always discern the truth – you just have to look! Obviously, it’s a very visual idea I can see it working very well in a story that is told with a visual medium – my mouth is watering with all the possibilities. 

A high definition image of a Human eye.

A key conflict that is stopping me from nailing down a plot is the fact that I don’t know whether the film should be a solid fiction film or a mocukumentary. Both avenues are presenting equal amounts of tantalising possibilities! It might be worth developing an idea for both avenues and then pick the one that is better?

I may not have a plot but I’m getting a feel for the tone of the story. The idea of someone who likes to collect eyes can come across as a very sinister idea but my instinct is telling me that Boris (like Geoff) is not a sinister person. I think Boris is a very admirable person who somehow encounters a complication due to his eye obsession. My subconscious is mercilessly recycling Busybody here! Maybe I should just make Boris an overtly evil character?

David Lynch on how narrow adult imagination is.

Matt has even suggested that it could be a love story where Boris meets someone who has an obsession with lips. Certainly, it makes sense that Boris would be attracted to someone who had their own obsession. It also presents potential for conflict through resentment. However, I have to be careful with the love story angle. It’s not that I’m adverse to it being a love story but there are countless examples where the ‘strange’ love story has already been done to death. 

Human lips.

I will keep working on it, though. I’ve made myself a deal - If I haven’t got a full-fledged plot within the next couple of weeks I will drop the project!

A&B - The First Short Film Idea

Here I discuss the first idea I had for my CE project.

During the Summer I was developing a short film script idea called A&B (Anxiety & Boredom). I like how boredom and anxiety are both negative forces but each contradicts each other. You have anxiety where your blood pressure is very high, you become over-sensitive and you’re jumping about all over the place trying to get things done but not really getting anything done. Then you have boredom which is just numbness, but is equally as counter-productive. As all drama is built on conflict, I figured anxiety and boredom could come together to create a very dramatic story. This said, the resulting ideas were all pretty terrible, cliché-ridden and flat. They didn't really solidify into any further on from the basic themes of anxiety and boredom, hence the title.

The first scene would have been someone answering their front door to be confronted by one of those really irritating, two-faced charity promoters. I tried to develop the script from this starting point with someone who was over-emphatically trying to sell their cause to someone who just didn’t care but doesn’t have the willpower to say no. On it’s own it would have made a nice scene but it just didn’t ignite a story I wanted to tell.

However, In terms of style and the feasibility of making another student short film, I invested much thought and consideration.

A&B I was very keen to be presented in black and white and that came from a film I had watched called Radio On, a British road move made in the 1970s. When talking about it, the director said the reason he shot it in black and white was not because he was trying to create a pretentiously artistic film but rather because he didn’t like the colour of Britain in the 1970s. By shooting the film in black and white he was able to avoid the brown blandness of the countries recession induced colour palette. 

Radio On Trailer

With A&B, as it most probably wouldn’t have been shot until after Christmas, my thinking was much the same. I wanted to avoid the very cold, lowlight look of winter. Also, using black and white allows much more freedom with the use of artificial lighting, because you don’t have to maintain the realistic integrity of the full colour spectrum (and I’ve always been a fan of film noir and German Expressionism). 

Film noir. Alan Ladd, This Gun For Hire (1942).

German Expressionism. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).

I was keen to use more outdoor locations! I don’t have access to many indoor ones and my thinking is it is easier to get your hands on outdoor ones (although, I’m sure the logic of that thinking would’ve been tested). Bath is full of varied of architectural designs and shapes and I was keen for the visuals of the film to convey the film’s mood and under lying themes as much as possible. Also, with Where will it all stop and One Door Opened the majority of filming had been done inside. I wanted to try something different this time. I wanted to let my film breath and give the visuals some depth of field!

I tried to keep the cast list to a minimum, at one point there were only three characters. I was keen to incorporate more improvisation into the performances to develop the story beyond the script. The smaller the cast list the better, because it would’ve given me more time with each actor.

I thought about how I could use the camera. At one point I considered setting a rule where I would only be allowed to use extreme close-ups and long shots to tell the story! I also wanted to use more movement with the camera. I was not keen on the very obviously handheld style (Paul Greengrass) but I still wanted to incorporate movement, while still trying to maintain the smoothness of a well-mounted static shot. Then I began to think about how I could use the camera to tell the story and be apart of the story more so than the main character, I liked the idea of a free roaming eye.

However, I’ve decided not to pursue A&B anything further as it wasn’t going anywhere and I’ve since come up with a better idea. But the technical and feasibility considerations done for A&B will most definitely filter through into the new idea.

EYES of a Stoyteller: NOW OPEN!

This is where I'll introduce you to my new blog!

My name is Peter O'Brien and I'm currently in my final year of my undergraduate degree, Creative Writing with Film and Screen Studies, at Bath Spa University. The modules I'm taking this year are Film Dissertation, Short Form Documentary Making and Creative Enterprise Project. For my interests check out my Pinterest boards. 

Me: looking smug (Ignore the name badge).

I've created this blog, EYES of a Storyteller, specifically to chronicle the development of my Creative Enterprise Project. The CEP module is pretty much what it says on the tin: you have to produce a Creative Enterprise Project for the module. As this blog will form a part of my final grade, I fully intend to put a lot of work into it. 

I've already written a number of posts for the Facebook group I created for my CE project. These posts will be re-posted on this blog in their original chronological order and on the dates I originally posted them in the Facebook group. 

I originally put them in the Facebook group because I wanted to spend a bit of time putting this blog together and I felt it was important to record my ideas and opinions down somewhere, opposed to just letting them float away. Putting them in the Facebook group also enabled me to share my ideas with anyone who was interested in getting involved with my CE project. 

The Introduction posts for the Facebook group

I won't spend any time detailing the ideas I have for my project in this post, as this is clearly laid out in the posts I have already written. I will put together a "About the Project" page which I will add to the navigation bar under the blog banner and which will provide a brief overview of my project (an overview which will probably change).

This blog should be thought of as a notebook (the blog design itself is still a work in progress). Therefore, as much as there will be well-written and thought-out posts, there will be an equal amount of not so well-written and thought-out posts (I seem to be leaning more towards abstract thinking and stream-of-consciousness writing these days). Although, I will make it as interesting and entertaining as possible. 

Me: writing this post and freezing to death - the joys of being a student!

I will post links, articles, videos, photos, etc - anything that I come across that has an influence on my CE project will be posted on this blog. This blog is the hub-notebook-chronicler for my CE project, do not expect it to be War and Peace!

If anyone happens to stumble on this blog and is interested with its content, then they are more than welcome to interact with the content and myself with opinions and suggestions (just comment on a post). I am also very interested in hooking up with other people and blogs that are running their own creative enterprise projects.

For anyone who is interested, I also have two other blogs.

366 FRAMES 2012: My 366 Project 

(this one is updated daily, more or less).

Something to do with Film 

(this one is updated not so daily). 

Check the side bar for my other online profiles, I like networking. 

Thanks for reading and keep those eyes open.