Sophie On: The Wasteland Trailer!!
(Still of Scott from the Wasteland Trailer. Camera: Neil Oseman. Light Films 2011)
Hello friends and Film fans!
A couple of quick shout outs. Firstly to my new followers, Rachel Manson and my talented colleague Rik Winter. And secondly to Tommy Draper (Mr Writer!) who got married last weekend!!
I am a very tired Sophie. The cast and crew of Jar of Angels are now half way through production - we just finished a four-day shooting block and are having four days off before the next four-day shooting block (that's a lot of fours). I'm using the time to get the last of the props together and to do some office work. Hence tonight's update. By the second shoot day I had been up for 34 hours but when you see the production stills, it's all worth it. It looks so beautiful I could cry!
Remember you can still give towards the Jar of Angels budget here: http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/investment/jar-of-angels-a-short-film-275
I can also now confirm that I am doing the Production Design on Neil Oseman's next film, Stop/Eject. I've wanted to work with Neil for a while now (I give all my Directors nicknames so he shall have to be "The Ace") so I'm very excited about it. The script is brilliant (co written by Neil and Tommy Draper) and I'll be working alongside proffessional costume designer, Katie Lake. The first blog for Stop/Eject is on youtube now, so give it a look (and try to ignore the bit sticking out on the back of my hair):
The other news - and subject of today's blog post - is that the trailer for Wasteland is now online! The shoot lasted a full day and a bit but there was a lot more which went into it beforehand because we had to build a set. And so, for the first time since I started this blog, I'm going to share some photos of me on set (eek!) and talk you through the process behind it:
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| © Chrissa Maund for Light Films Ltd 2012 |
First is a photo taken the Wednesday before the trailer shoot of me, Director Tom and writer Tommy working on building the 'flats' to use for the walls of the set, based on my design. The wood was recycled from the set for 'Shelf Stackers', the first film I designed for Light Films. I think it's interesting that this photo proves how much everyone has to muck in on a low budget production - here is a writer and director happily helping the Production Designer build a set without credit. And to make things even better, the set was built and constructed in the director's (and producer's) garage!
© Chrissa Maund for Light Films Ltd 2012
Next set building day, and we had a little extra help from Lee Martin and Jason Andrasi (runner and make-up artist, respectively) with the construction so that I could get on with the actual decorating (above). All of the wallpaper you see in the trailer was literally found in my attic, behind a load of boxes. Half of it was rotting with damp and some of it was from the sixties - they had been there since when the house was built. Everything in the film looks rustic and scavenged so I layered up the wallpaper with torn bits over straighter bits to match the patchwork style of Scott's costume.
Then, once the boys had finished building and had some spare hands, I got to have a break and do something else I'm good at on set - order people around!:
© Chrissa Maund for Light Films Ltd 2012
When you see the trailer (and I will share it in a minute) you will notice that there is some archery in it. On my last blog post I showed you the bow in process but since then I had to make the arrows as well - I'd never done that before and I was actually pleasantly surprised with how well they turned out - but please feel free to judge for yourself!
So, as well as designing and making the bow and arrows, I also had to teach the lead actor, Sham, how to fire. But first I had to get the director's seal of approval (or 'green light'):
© Chrissa Maund for Light Films Ltd 2012
I'd spoken to Sham a little bit about the archery beforehand but the shoot day itself was really the first opportunity for him to get some hands-on experience with the bow. It was a very hot afternoon when we shot those scenes and I had designed Scott to be wearing a lot of thick layers but he managed very well in spite of those things. He even had to deal with me constantly saying "lift your arm up a bit":
© Chrissa Maund for Light Films Ltd 2012
(Note: in the second photo you can make out the safety pins I put in Sham's jumper to keep it in place)
(Note: in the second photo you can make out the safety pins I put in Sham's jumper to keep it in place)
But the thing about archery is it's damn near irresistable to have a go when you see someone else doing it - it's Legolas' fault I got my bow in the first place - so once Sham was trained and ready I couldn't resist taking it back and getting a little bit more practice in myself:
© Chrissa Maund for Light Films Ltd 2012
I also have to point out that the trailer shoot gave me the wonderful new experience of having a personal assistant all to myself! Her name was Gina Hames - she's an up and coming Costume Designer - and her help was invaluable (she basically got to do all the little random jobs I couldn't juggle on my own when I was doing the more stylistically interesting jobs!). Below is us working together to age the costumes for the Zombie extras, which we couldn't prepare beforehand because we didn't get the extras (or rather, one extra doubled up - Hi Carl Cropley!) until the day. For the record, we used sandpaper, a knife, grass and a cup of mud:
© Chrissa Maund for Light Films Ltd 2012
If you liked that (or if you want to help to pay for all the things that we need to make it even better) then you can donate to the indie gogo site below:
That's all for now. But once Jar of Angels is shot I will be giving blog diaries on certain little areas of the design and production as part of its promotion - so keep a look out for those!
Sophie
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