#also rip the quality in the mario one..but i had to crop a lot so u could like..see mario

[thejacksmit]

Projection Room: Secrets of a Haunting- The Shoot

Between February 16th and the 23rd, the UCLan Film Production students I have been shadowing for the last few months shot the majority of their production on location at Borwick Hall in Carnforth. It is legitimately haunted, which made for a lot of humour across the Mad Vision production team as they committed their version of The Haunting to film. I joined the team on the penultimate day of their main shoot at this location, with the production getting very close to the end of principal photography. 

THE LOCATION

Borwick was chosen because of its history in the area. Built in the late 14th century (and mentioned in the Domesday Book, there’s a hot and fresh science fact for you all), the Grade 1 listed building is used primarily for residential visits for educational purposes nowadays. When I seen pictures of it back in early pre-production, it looked like the ideal location even with the potential for other groups of visitors to impact on the shooting schedule. But for the entire half term week, UCLan’s students had the main building booked to shoot this film. Upon my arrival, I had the full tour with lecturers Linda Sever, Mandy Langton and of course, the crew’s go-to guy for any help, Ed Greenberg, where there was a lot of talk about the history and the myths behind some parts of the location. The production team had kept the majority of the building as it was, adding some of their own pictures in the dining room set and rearranging some rooms (notably a few bedrooms, and a small part of the library area) to better suit the scenes they were filming.

SETTING UP THE SETUPS

Lighting a doll’s house is more difficult than it looks.

One thing I learned from my time on set is the amount of time that goes in to the composition of a shot. They’d rehearsed this bit to death in the Media Factory before arriving at Borwick, so they were on fire with this stuff while I was around. With two units, both only having a single Blackmagic camera each (shooting at a higher resolution than they need as a way to make the edit easier for any cropping and masking), a lot has to be considered- lighting, framing, the positioning of actors as well as a variety of other things for the optimal way of visually communicating the story that they are telling- which is vital with some of the sequences in this film. One scene that I witnessed being shot in the library area between Nell and Luke- who are being played by Megan Paul and Lex Simkin respectively, required several setups to be done in very quick succession to get close ups, extra dialogue and alternate angles. Seeing the lighting adjustments being made in less than 3 minutes gave me an idea for how difficult it is to get a production like this up and running- it’s a side of the industry not many of us critics get to witness, we generally get ripped apart for having zero knowledge of how a film is actually made, so it was a real eye-opener. Plus, knowing that the cinematography awards were very nearly cut from the Oscars this year, now I know why the industry got outraged about it.

THE NETWORKING: BECOMING A LITTLE FAMILY

For the cast and crew, this was a time to foster friendships and professional connections- for Lucy Marshall, who is playing Theo in this film, this was a project that allowed her to channel her passion for wanting to get into the acting industry full-time, something which I think will be evident in the finished product based on what I’ve been hearing from the directors and DoPs- one scene legitimately had two of the directors crying because it was that well executed by their team. She also spoke about a script she’s currently developing for a film of her own, so everyone had experience in the production side of things. While I didn’t get much time to speak with more of the cast on the day, the general consensus I found was that everybody involved in the production had that passion for film that can make an independent feature of this kind feel more polished, and having built this year’s blog theme around the lesser known indie features, those are the best kinds of people to work with when you’ve got very little time to make a professional quality film of this nature. 

BANTER WORTHY OF THE GREAT MEN AND WOMEN™

Even down in the green room, I got to see a lot too. Everyone felt like a family just wanting to see this film go well, and in between setups (as well as the lunch breaks), there was a brilliant atmosphere with everybody involved, and it was very reminiscent of a typical Friday night at the office as we’d say at Smit HQ. There were frequent visits to a local pub following the end of an evening shoot, a fair few games of Mario Kart and Uno (a good, consistent card game from what I understand) were played between the production crew, and surprisingly, when 1pm came around on my visit, a lot of jokes were made about me being on set rather than on the radio for Ripped Ticket! Obviously for me as someone coming at this from an external perspective, chatting with the other film production lecturers was a bonus; while only half of the second year students are doing this feature film project, the other half are broadening their skills with a variety of short films, documentaries and other practical modules that are enhancing their post production techniques ready for their solo projects next year, so even as an outsider looking in, I could tell that UCLan put a lot of effort into making these students into all-round filmmakers ready for when they graduate.

KEEPING THE CALLS ON TIME

The other thing I’ve seen from my time on set is the amount of administration that goes on in the green room. Seriously, the paperwork is insane even when you’re actually shooting a film like this. So are the call times. 8am on some days, 9am on others, with some days resulting in 12+ hours worth of shooting being done. How they’ve been able to make all of this work has been incredible, and having seen the shooting schedules being created back in the Media Factory last month, the production managers really did account for every eventuality- they were even ahead of schedule at some points too, and still within budget. And even though I wasn’t around for the big moment, just after 3pm the day after my visit, the guys wrapped on the principal shoot at Borwick. They really did plan this to perfection.

THE FOLLOWING TRAILERS ARE APPROPRIATE...

That’s the only spoiler I seen for that entire day.

But importantly, at the end of my visit to the set, myself and the lecturers who hadn’t seen much from the week of shooting were treated to 13 minutes of footage from the film. Even in its raw, uncoloured and very rough cut, the bits I seen are looking really promising. Obviously I’m not in a position to issue any form of rating at this stage, but based on those 13 minutes of footage, the film is on track for a very good review once it is ready for its first screening. And just to make one thing clear- even though I’ve had this level of access to the shoot, the film will be reviewed to the same standards as you’d expect from the main TheJackSmit.com First Take reviews just to make things fair for everybody. The next steps for the crew now that they have pretty much finished the second unit shoot is to head off to the edit suite to cut the film together, create that elusive surround sound mix, lock down the finished visuals and prepare this labour of love not just for grading by the UCLan team as part of their studies, but also for that elusive premiere screening.

#projection room #theuclanproject