| Production Diary - Updated 10/08/05 The Tempus Fugit DVD is finally complete and available free of charge for anyone who wants a copy. The project is finally finished and this is the last entry in the production diary. The film turned out different to how I originally imagined but I consider it a success none the less and the general response to it was good. I've distributed a lot of promo copies to many different people, including Dear Deirdre from The Sun newspaper who requested six copies. The strange thing is that nobody ever gets back to me on what they actually thought of it. I'd rather they said it was plain shit than nothing at all. Maybe they were expecting a lot more and after watching it were disappointed and didn't want to tell me. All film work will now move to Binary, the next step in the evolution of Moonpie Films. At the current rate it will be a couple of years before it hits the screens but hopefully when it does it will make a bigger splash that Tempus Fugit. |
||||||
| 10/04/05 Tempus Fugit has been in circulation for nearly 2 months and its been quite well received. It didn't gain entry to the Filmstock film festival but I've still got a few more festivals to enter it for. I need to transfer it to NTSC format so I can submit it to US festivals. I've not really started working properly on the full DVD and we still haven't recorded the commentary. I'm going to hopefully get that sorted later this week. The problem with it is that it doesn't fit into any market, it's not professional enough to get into proper film festivals and its too long to get into the amatuer festivals. It still needs to find the right place to get a proper audience. I've probably burned about 80 copies which have all been distributed to friends and other interested parties. I've still got more to send out but haven't had time to get them posted. I've been spending time trying to the Doppelganger script finished which is taking longer than I thought. |
||||||
|
25/0/05 |
||||||
| 13/02/05 Time is moving so quickly and the release has overshot by nearly 4 months. I've not had much time over the past month to organise a screening or even sort out the DVD. Anyway, I'm fed up with thinking about the premier so I'm just going to start distributing it immedietely with a full dvd. It shouldn't take me long to put it together, I've been practising with Sonic Reel DVD and have got my head round it enough to use it to author the disk. I'll hopefully have the DVD ready in two weeks time and whatever state its in or if there has been a premier or not I'm going to make the film available for download. I may try and organise a screening for the end of the month, maybe a friday but a Saturday would be better. |
||||||
| 14/01/05 After three years since conception the final shot was filmed yesterday. All I have to do is add it and tweak a few of the credits and that's it. The sound is acceptable all the way through, everthing is audible and the music is all in place. I did a master but found a few tiny little problems which I'll iron out this weekend. Ascreening DVD will be available from next week. It will take about a month do the full DVD with all the extras. I'll be dishing out free copies of the screening DVD to anyone who wants one once the premier is out of the way and I'll also make them available for free from the website. Hopefully I'll be updating the site with some new graphics and stuff for all the new traffic that hopefully gets generated. Not sure if I plan to submit it to any festivals as I'm not sure its good enough. So far people have been impressed by what they've seen but I can't trust the opinions as nobody is going to want to rubbish it to my face. This is why the premier will be lowkey, I'd rather show it to people who know what was involved and its development and have it go down well rather than organise a big thing where it could be very badly received possibly even laughed at. It seems such a long time ago that this project was started that its original aim has been lost. This was supposed to be a short equipment test that would have been completed within a year to get used to using the camera and microphone, to doing some acting and to learn Adobe Premier. It's taken so long that now it seems to be something a lot bigger than it was originally intended. Really the film that will be important is the one that comes after this and that is what I'll hopefully be doing from next month onwards. |
||||||
| 29/12/04 A trip to New York and Christmas has really got in the way of editing. I'll be booking a day off to finish it next week so it should all be done in a couple of weeks. No plans for a premier yet. Fixing the contrast and colour has come into a few problems as the lighting in which the scenes was shot wasn't really taken into consideration. Certain scenes look a lot flatter than others and don't fit together or look as good. It's a learning process though so we'll know for next time. |
||||||
|
12/11/04 |
||||||
| 28/10/04 Lots of tweaking going on while waiting for the last two pieces of music. Still not got round to filming the destruction of video but its so nearly complete with hardly any tweaking left. It will take some time, once the final edit is complete, to go back and get the contrast and look right for every shot. November should be a definite release time. I'm hoping to submit the film to Moviesaskew.com but they only accept Mini DV NTSC tapes and I have no idea how I can do this with my PAL camera. Anyone who has an idea how I can get it onto one would be useful. |
||||||
| 19/10/04 I filmed the four cutaways to nearly complete all filming although Ive decided I need to film another small insert piece involving the destruction of a video player. I need the last two pieces of music as well and then that really is it. It will probably take time to get the thing looking right but it should definitely be ready to watch in November. I've also been working on the trailer which is looking okay but not too different from the first trailer, just a little more polished with different music and some additional shots. I really need to start getting some artwork ready and maybe some good poster designs. |
||||||
| 2/10/04 We are so close to completion, we've had a full test screening that went very well and will be filming the last couple of shots on Monday morning. I'll get the final piece of music from Jeremy and then that's it. It's just a matter of getting it looking right and mastering it. There are certain sound problems in small parts of the film with background noise changing between shots and some some buzzing over one or two pieces of dialogue. There isn't much that can be done about them so we're going to just go with it and hope nobody notices. I could spend weeks tweaking the sound but its not going to get significantly better so its going to have to be stuck with what its got. Despite this it still plays through beautifully and I was surprised at how well its finally turned out. Jeremy's music has boosted the quality of the end movie and filled it with a depth that maybe wouldn't have been there. Finally after nearly three years since conception it will be unleashed on a curious and unexpecting public. I'm looking in to places to hold the premier at the moment but it looks like it will be in Mike's basement and will be invite only. |
||||||
| 16/09/04 As we head in to the third year of production of Tempus Fugit the end is in sight. The film is technically complete apart from a couple of shots that are just a formality. It's hard to get the last pieces together to polish it properly and this is taking time, particularly getting the sound in a state that's presentable. Some scenes have been recorded poorly and there isn't much that can be done. I plan to get most of the polishing complete by next week and hopefully enough of the music to finish it off. It will all need to be rendered after that and have the contrast and picture tweaked so it looks as I originally intended. It's clear that the release will be slipping to October which is a bit disappointing but then again there is no real rush to get it out. The next film has been selected and a production page will open for that shortly as well as a website overhaul. |
||||||
| 26/08/04 Work has slowed somewhat due to a couple of technical issues but hopefully we're still on for a September completion. I've corrected most of the outstanding problems and added various sound effects and tightened a lot of the scenes up. I'm waiting for an opportunity to film about 5 very short establishing shots, the new logo and the final pieces of the music score. Once they are in my hands it should simply be a matter of days. |
||||||
| 17/08/04 The full edit is nearly complete and I'm just inserting the odd extra shot here and there. There are no character scenes left to film and only a few small cutaways. I've made a 25 point list of jobs that need doing which I'm currently working through. The new logo will hopefully be ready soon and I'll be putting together the official trailer in the next few weeks. I'll be putting some hours in on Thursday which should really complete all the filming and inserts. Its then a matter of tweaking it and sorting out the sound out which is quite a big job. Once that's done I'll master it in black and white and then rescan the whole film as one file and tweak the contrast and look of each scene individually. A September premier is still on. |
||||||
| 04/08/04 Went to Mikes this morning and turned his spare room into a hospital room for one small shot. It looks good, now I need to get some footage of the inside of where I work to double as hospital corridors and an exterior shot of a hospital. I have my eye on one down in Bow that looks a bit like a nut house. The other good news is I managed to find a piece of software that will sort out the sound problems on some of the badly recorded scenes. It knocks out a lot of the hiss or buzzing frequencies leaving nice clean sound. The voices themselves are altered very slightly but not really noticeable unless compared with the original and actually sound slightly better. It's looking even better for a September finish taking the production duration up to 2 years with a full DVD out by Christmas including a commentary, production gallery, diary and Mike's video diary among other things. |
||||||
| 22/07/04 It's been a slow month for Moonpie Films as the hardware failed on me again. Both drives went down which took time and money to replace and although I've recovered everything it seems to be glitching a bit so I may have to rescan some of the footage. This coupled with a holiday killed any chance of entering it into Raindance in time which was probably a good thing. As it finally shapes up to looking like the finished article my opinion on it changes drastically on every viewing. One day I'll think it's great, another day I'll think its amateaurish rubbish that will be laughed at by all who see it. Depending on how I feel will determine how quickly it comes along. I've got a few small bits left to film, some sound to record and then start polishing the rough edit up scene by scene. I'm hoping to have everything filmed around the beginning of August and everything complete and ready to screen by early september. Thoughts have started to look to the next project which could end up being the zombie film after all. A lot of interest has been shown by people wanting to be in it and with the right planning it may be possible to get the cast of four main characters plus twenty zombies together. |
||||||
| 09/06/04 Shot the final scenes of Crane's descent today at Mike's house. We didn't have the original house to shoot in so we changed a few things and had him putting himself in a small cupboard to hypnotise himself. It should look okay and maybe add to the effect of insanity a bit more. I've not looked at the footage yet and don't know how it will cut together, it may look shit but there isn't much else we can do. If its good we'll be about 95% complete. I'm aiming to get it finished by the end of June as I'd like to submit it to the London Raindance film festival. It may not qualify for entry but it will be interesting to see if it does. I went to see a Kevin Smith (Clerks, Jersey Girl) Q&A the other night at the Prince Charles Cinema which was good. He talked about how he got into film making and films for nearly five hours. It was very funny and entertaining. |
||||||
| 02/06/04 Edited together nearly everything now with only a few short gaps to fill in. It's looking quite good, all I need to do is iron out a few sound issues by inserting some background audio tracks, putting in the music and some sound effects. If I can film the last couple of scenes next week it could well be finished by July. |
||||||
| 01/06/04 | ||||||
 |
||||||
|
Day four of filming went ahead today after
a break of more than a year. A few months ago it looked like the project
may have collapsed and never get finished but now, after a day of complications
and compromises, the finish line is in sight. A later than planned start
didn't seem to cause any problems, Greenwich Park was virtually empty
by the time we arrived at around 10.45. We managed to find a spot and
set up quickly and the camera was rolling ahead of schedule but the
complications were about to start. Firstly we did some shots that had
to be scrapped as I had forgotten to wear my characters glasses then
we were told we had to have a permit to film in a Royal Park. At this
point it looked like it wasn't going to happen but a short word with
the very friendly park manager and a fee of twenty five pounds plus
VAT later we were ready to go again. Then the rain started which is
not such a bad thing but the views of Canary Wharf we were filming against
totally fogged over making a very bland view making it look liked it
could have been filmed in some garden somewhere. Despite the setbacks
we pressed on and got some good stuff, hopefully, including a brilliant
shot of Mike and Mario walking in front of the Observatory. |
||||||
| 25/05/04 Shooting is definitely going ahead on Tuesday 1st June. It's not confirmed which scenes we'll shoot, most likely the easier stuff, leaving the Greenwich filming until we have some experience in location filming. In other news, I've managed to get my hands on the missing voice over files which makes things a lot easier and I've also filmed two tiny cutaways for Cranes 5 Point Method of slowing time. My main worry now is getting the audio right as the voice recording in some scenes isn't the best. |
||||||
| 12/05/04 Tweaked the trailer a bit as the sound wasn't quite right. It's still not perfect as its not contrasty enough but that won't be a problem when it comes to the full edit. We have a tentative date for a day of shooting, Tuesday the 1st of June. It's good for me and good for Mario and should be good for Mike too so with a bit of luck and preparation we could nearly finish everything at last although an additional day will probably be necessary. We haven't filmed anything outside yet and its desperately needed as the film looks a little bland so far without the scope of exterior locations. I just hope we can do it but I reckon the sound is going to be really difficult to get right and we'll probably pick up tons of ambient noise. I should get my hands on a new 3D logo being designed by Eddie Niblett shortly too which I'm very excited about seeing. |
||||||
| 10/05/04 Possible shooting dates have been suggested, just waiting to see if we can go ahead on those days. Discussed the music score with Jeremy and will be sending a rough cut of the film to him this week so he can see how to fit the music to each scene. I'll also be putting up full versions of some of the music in MP3 format at some stage. Need to film some cutaways, should be able to do it sometime this week. Also need to try and recover the lost voice-over stuff or re-record it. |
||||||
| 07/05/04 Got lots more editing done today and I'm almost complete on what we've shot so far. The last stuff we shot of Mario and Mike is looking really good. I'm about to go through my diary to check dates for filming next. The 24th or 25th of May might be a possibility. If not it will have to be knocked back to June. |
||||||
| 03/05/04 Trailer has been tweaked and uploaded. So far just in Windows Media Format.but an mpg version may follow. |
||||||
| 30/04/04 I've put together a trailer for the film, it's only a rough one but it should give a good impression of what the film is about and the tone of it. I've just got to tweak it slightly and then encode it for the internet. Hopefully it should be up in a couple of days. |
||||||
| 28/04/04 Almost got to the end of editing the footage we've shot so far. Once I've got a rough cut of this I can go back and tighten everything up, sort the sound out, shoot a couple of close-ups I can do myself and generally polish everything before we shoot the last few bits. I'm also starting to put a teaser trailer together which will be available for download in the month hopefully. |
||||||
| 10/04/04 Editing is going nicely although I may have lost some of the voice over we recorded which may still be available somewhere otherwise we'll have to re-record some parts of it. I've also got to somehow make the hypnosis scene convincing using some time distortion which should be possible with After Effects 6 as it has some new features including keyframeable time distortion controls. Once I get hold of it I'll be able to see what it can do. The hardest dialogue parts which caused the biggest headache to edit have been finished as best they can, the scene is far from perfect but at this stage it will just have to do. Some of the edits aren't ideal but good enough considering the footage I had to work with. I've booked some time off work in June so hopefully I can set a date or two to shoot the last scenes. I'm going to try and get access to a hospital room rather than bodge it Mike's house for the final Crane scenes. The other job is to get a photographer in to do some promo shots of Mike and Mario to be used in artworks and promo material, hopefully we can do that in a couple of weeks. I'll have to dig out the Robert Crane costume from somewhere deep in my wardrobe for that. |
||||||
| 07/04/04 The editing process is back on track and should hopefully be completed in the next few weeks. The computer and software are actually working together better than they ever did which should make it a lot easier to catch up with the stuff that was lost. This time around I'm being more methodical with the editing and I'm also backing up stuff to digital tape as soon as sections are complete. With a bit of luck we could be ready to film the final scenes sometime in June or maybe even earlier. If all goes to plan it should be finished before I'm 30 and then we can actually think about another project. I'll be updating the diary regularly and adding more media to the site, maybe even a teaser trailer within the next couple of weeks. |
||||||
| 31/03/2004 It's been nearly a year since any work has been done on the project. A house move slowed production down but it was the failure of my hard drive that contained all my work that stalled the project for so long. Data rescue was impossible despite the efforts of costly retrieval companies and it looks like starting again is the only option. I still have all the original footage and a few edits but its going to take hours and hours to get back to where I was. The house we shot most of the film in is no more and we didn't get all the stuff we needed. However, I am now ready to go back and start from scratch and hopefully a slight change of the script will gloss over any problems. The important thing is to get it finished whatever the condition it's in. Once I've edited everything I've got, which is going to take days and days, we can shoot the final scenes. Everyone may be a little older and fatter but you have to make do with what you've got. |
||||||
30/04/2003 Day three of shooting finally went ahead today at the main location of the film. Set at the house where I currently live it was a race against time to get all the scenes involving the house finished as I move out at the end of May. With just myself, Mike, Mario and Steve Sudbury doing the sound we managed to finish up everything we need to do there. Mario and Mike both put in their best work so far particularly during the scene where Mario was tied up with gaffer tape while Mike threatened him with a knife. There is still loads to film but one more day should wrap up the majority leaving just a few cutaways left to shoot. However, the film is slowly evolving away from what I originally imagined as time, money and talent start to take effect. Hopefully it should be ready for a screening around Christmas time. |
||||||
 |
||||||
|
30/10/2002 |
||||||
 |
||||||
 |
||||||
5/10/2002 The second full day of shooting has been provisionally scheduled for Tuesday the 15th of October giving us only a week and a half of planning time. Getting everyone together in the same place at the same time is extremely diffiicult so when it happens we need to be as efficient as possible and get as much filmed as we can. If day two goes as well as day one we'll be about three quarters of the way through the shoot and well on course for it being completely finished before Christmas. With all of Matt's scenes, and most of mine, in the can, the whole project lies on the shoulders of Hartley and Pisano. 22/9/2002 Principal shooting has begun with a 9 hour shoot in East London. In the morning we managed to get through the entire Joseph Crane/Ben Gordon sequence from five different angles and in the afternoon filmed a huge chunk of Mike Hartley's solo scenes. Despite a couple of small things it all went really well and everything looks very good indeed. Jeremy Deacon also arrived on the day of filming with some tracks for the original music score which were pretty impressive to say the least. Further shooting has yet to be scheduled but there is a huge amount of work to be getting on with in the meantime. My main sore point lies in the fact I chose to wear my hair in an unconventional fashion to make me look different and all it succeeded in doing was to turn my head into a bizarre looking football. |
||||||
 |
||||||
| 6/9/2002 The first real shots from the new camera were taken yesterday, marking the official beginning of production. Although it was only some close-ups of clock faces for the opening scenes it is the first real footage to be shot for Tempus Fugit and the first new footage for a Moonpie production in over 6 years. Monday 16th or Tuesday 17th of September will likely see the first real acting sessions between myself and Matt Deacon as we film the detective interview scenes that tie the whole film together as well as some of the cutaways and inserts. I've also started knocking up a rough edit that will slowly take shape as we go along and its already looking promising. All that stands in the way now is the possibility of the acting being so shit production can't continue. 1/9/2002 The camera has arrived!! Finally all the equipment is back together after nearly 5 months delay. The first part of production started yesterday with work on the voice over. The first attempt was a complete disaster and it looked like the project would stumble at the first hurdle. Fortunately the second day was good and Hartley nailed the voice over as best as I think we could get with our limited experience and talent. Shooting of various small dialogueless sequences are scheduled for next Tuesday. Below are stills from the voiceover sessions. |
||||||
 |
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The following pictures show the locations
for the Greenwich shoot. 20/7/2002 |
||||||
|
|
