Troy Road

Stop

2007-08-21T13:29:00.000Z

Frame.

No posts for ages... This isn't us, but it is cool.

Stop Frame Animation

The Attic - The Trailer

2007-05-23T21:20:00.000Z

The idea of doing a trailer for a 4 and half minute movie does seem weird, but I thought it might be an interesting experiment. So here goes:

The music is by Muse in case you're interested and don't know.

The Attic

2007-04-29T14:56:00.001Z

Medium Roast

2007-04-23T07:14:00.001Z

Alien Overlords

2007-03-28T19:09:00.000Z

Lets Review

2007-03-27T05:20:00.000Z

We have had our first review. It is of Detective Alberton: The 4 minute ReEdit and here it is:

This is pretty awful. The lighting is bad; the set is obviously a front room; and the music drowns out the dialogue. The American accents sound sub-Woody Allen. I'd guess that the actors are lower middle-class English kids; maybe undergraduates. The bartender delivers his lines with so little conviction that he seems ashamed to be there (an understandable emotion, in the circumstances).

He also chose to give it 1 star (the lowest you can go).

Well this review made me laugh a lot. Not least because the thought, "what's wrong with Woody Allen's American accent" flitted across my mind. But yes, it's a pretty funny review. I think we can take from it, "must try harder", and get ready for the next one!

Learning Aloud

2007-03-14T08:00:00.001Z

One of the things that's been interesting for me during the Troy Road process so far has been the process of learning how to make films with no safety net. Whenever we make a film we stick it up on the internet to see how it goes.

Some might argue that it would be safer to practice in the quiet of privacy and wait until you were really happy with what you had before you unleashed it. But that I think is a mistake. This version of a strategy means that we can literally chart our progress. As we get better you will be able to see that and appreciate the leg work that went into that rather than seeing a finished work and thinking - hey that looks pretty easy.

In fact I'm pretty sure Nick and I thought that it would be easier than it actually is. Luckily it's also fun and something that we both have always wanted to do. But it is tricky, and massively time consuming. It probably works out at about a day a minute! (this is counting the detective drama at four minutes not twelve.) It's about a day of filming and then lots of grabbed hours in the editing booth.

It was only while editing some of the up coming film on Sunday that I really appreciated the time involved. And wondered why I hadn't remembered this from my film making exercises in my youth? But then as I thought back I did remember the long hours editing (with video tape back then) so why wasn't it imprinted on my brain? Well it was simple I was having fun and I didn't have a job. On those long summer holidays it didn't seem to matter if you needed to lock yourself in a room for a three day stretch. Now it's much more tricky but still just as worth it. Even if what's coming out seems a little raw. We've all got to learn somehow.

The Hardest Cut - The details

2007-03-04T10:58:00.000Z

The edit here had three new elements which I hadn't tried before.

Under the inserts there are often multiple cuts even between one actor. So I might have said a long string of dialogue with an important part at the beginning and the end but there was a lot of waffle in between. Well under the insert I would just cut out all of the waffle.

Second even when we are in the two shot I am cutting seemlessly the audio. This allowed me to turn up your dialogue. Not quite as much as I'd liked because there wasn't as much differential between your dialogue and Radio 4 in the background as I'd hoped and it was simply making that louder too. But I think it makes a big difference. And the worse excesses of the radio were hidden by the music. We should really use those tie mics next time.

Third, and perhaps most subtly, the footage is out of order in places. When I was editing the thing at first I was basically trying to save as much of the footage as possible. Basically I was just editing out the fluffs and so on. Whereas once I wasn't restricted by this I could make some pretty big cuts. So under one of the inserts we go to (from the master edit, a clip from 2:20, a clip from 12:30 and then back to a clip from 4 something). Because I knew I wasn't going to use the bit at 12:30 but I had a piece of dialogue that would make two bits I wanted to go together go together it worked really well. Although it seems obvious now that you can do this it really was a revelation to me as I was working because I had been working as a restorer at first trying to take each scene back to the it could be in isolation, rather than a storyteller in the edit room who could completely revise the script (not that there was one).

As an additional note the music in the film is from 1950 and is called All the things you are and is by Charlie Barnet. Because it is from back in 1950 the rights to this music have now expired and so we are legally allowed to put it into our music without paying royalties. I think that we should try wherever possible to use this kind of music (or our own).

The hardest cut

2007-03-03T14:50:00.000Z

After a week of trying different things to get Detective Alberton to work and after having published that yesterday I decided today to try a violently re-cut version which takes us down to around 4 minutes.

I think it is massively improved by this even though most of the plot is left on the cutting room floor.

Let me know what you think:

Detective Alberton

2007-03-02T14:17:00.000Z

Part 1

Part 2

Animation

2007-02-23T09:33:00.000Z

One way of making short films that we haven't really explored yet here at Troy Road is animation. An aquaintance of mine, Antonia, has just completed this masterpeice which I thought I should share:

Two Phones Redux

2007-02-15T22:05:00.000Z

The Two phones video now with a few extra outtakes and a few extra shots. Redux because this isn't the Director's cut as unfortunately I was working alone on this edit.

Funny how?

2007-02-07T09:19:00.000Z

Why are short films always funny? Or why, at least, do short filmmakers attempt to make little jokes, puns, clever twists, or weird occurences rather than serious movies? Perhaps to make a minute long film serious would just seem too pretentious. Also, you have to really grab someone's attention and the easiest way to do that is through humour. To engage someone's emotions seriously takes a lot of time. You can't get someone to care about a character in a minute. Or can you? Anyway, it is definitely a dilemma between the how and the what. You obviously don't know how to film if you don't have a what. And the what will only allow a certain amount of how.

The Pope

2007-02-07T06:35:00.000Z

Following on from what Nick said about scripts being the least important. I do think that they allow us a framework in which to create a lot of film much more quickly.

On the day we spent filming we spent a lot of time dealing with learning / not learning the script and actually executing the shots rather than the parts where we were blocking the shots, and making decisions about the edit, decisions about the music and so on.

So while I agree that the script is unimportant, if we have it locked down early I really think we could shoot much more film per session.

A tight script learnt, means a tight shoot and a much easier edit. And if it's funny people might be interested in watching.

That said your comment really helps me this morning as I had had an idea (following on in the vein of sayings etc) for which I hadn't written a script (I had to go to Ikea last night!)

The idea was a reporter who is asking an average person a question, the person's answer's "Is the pope a Catholic", which the reporter takes literally as a question. Suddenly he spots the pope in the background and runs after him shouting, "Mr the Seventh, Mr the Seventh!" When he catches up with him and he asks the pope if he is indeed a catholic, the pope says, "Does a bear shit in the woods"? Jump cut to our reporter pushing through the undergrowth. And then perhaps some inlaid footage of a bear. A sound effect while we are looking at a reaction shot from our reporter. And then the reporter looks directly to camera and says, "It appears the answer is yes".

Obviously this would require the new elements of outside and movement so we might have to wait a while for this one.

Scripts

2007-02-06T22:45:00.000Z

I've written a few short scripts, including this one. I thought a fun idea would be to film an insignificant scene from an assumed epic disaster movie, and make it seem far more banal than the larger events taking place around them. The particular one above I've actually written two sequels to already.

However, it seems that the script is probably the last thing we should worry about. What we have to master is how to tell a story, not what story to tell; collating the skills of directing, editing and sound rather than writing. What do you think? I think this is what the Kubrick quote you mentioned on my blog hints at.

Tripod Heads

2007-02-05T12:42:00.000Z

It seems you don't have to buy an entirely new tripod if you want fluid pans and tilts. You can get a tripod head attachment which has these abilities.

Also, there is some guy who builds his own Steadicam type things from everyday objects, and has a book explaining how: http://www.dvcamerarigs.com/index.html

The Fig Rig does look very good: http://services.manfrotto.com/figrig/, but it also looks eminently replicable.

Old Wives Tales

2007-02-05T09:11:00.000Z

How about doing a series of short information films (a la goververnment information films - we could even make it just black and white) and in it have sort of old wives tales being enforced.

eg. Somebody spills some milk on the floor and starts crying. Big text swoops in and says "STOP"!

Then a government inspector comes in and explains that "No, you aren't supposed to do that. Yes Milk is a valuable resource, which Britian shouldn't waste, but that your tears could very well dilute the milk on the floor which could always be reused in a cake or drop-scone".

I immagine we could do quite a number of these pretty simply as they are quite formulaic, and probably don't require as much dialogue. We could even do some of the governement stuff in voice-over.

Two phone or not to phone

2007-02-04T11:25:00.000Z

The road less travelled

2007-02-04T10:40:00.000Z

So maybe the best thing is to start quietly and build to a crescendo. Peak too early, and only disappointment can follow.

Nick and I have decided to start a film production collective and we are calling it Troy Road. It might be Troy Road Productions, it might be Troy Road film. It could, honestly, be anything, but the truth is all of the details haven't yet been worked out.

If you are interested in details being worked out then you have truly come to the right place. Because this is where we'll be working out what we're going to be filming, how we're going to film it, and where. We'll also be posting the movies, and working out the lessons we've learnt from the process.

We made our first movie yesterday so we're bringing you, our dear readers, in on the ground floor. You will literally be able to chart our progress (lets hope there is some - Ed).

Anyway, enough of this rambling. Hope you enjoy it.