Arts University Bournemouth: first two months

Lately the last weeks have all been about the subject of Specialism, Where the students are going through different specialism so they can learn about them and make the right choice for the 2nd year.

I started January about Directing, Producing and Documentary. And all three of them are very interesting directions to go.

The Directing specialism also had an assignment about a shooting a short 3 min film within 3 weeks.
With a fast written script and a talented cast and crew, I managed to shoot a short film about selective muteism that I am very pleased about he result in the end. We filmed in the Alum Chine Park, and is very recommended area in Bournemouth to take a walk or even take beautiful pictures.

Later helped with three other short films, this time acted in all three of them. Which was a lot of fun, since it was a different experience being in front of the camera instead of behind it.

The 3rd one was a outside of uni shoot, and did involve in being a whole day at home at the sound recording house, a shot where I was just in underwear and drink water with foodcolor in it, which tasted worse than it sounds like. I yet have to see the final edited film.

The next days will involve in finishing off and handing in one or more storytelling scrips, and will also visit Stone Henge for the first time!

Arts University Bournemouth: The Return for 2015

Traveling back
This trip back to England reminded me of everything I hate about flying as a way of transportation. I ordered a plane in the evening because I though I could use the day to finishing of packing my stuff. I had totally forgotten that this was the time of the year where it seems like EVERYONE travels home after the Christmas holiday, which of course makes everything more complicated. More people, more waiting, and late planes. So together with all the checking, scanning, qeueing, waiting, and so on, the plane had also need to be late, and therefore the planned traveling from the airport to Bournemouth was impossible to catch.

Luckily I met a fellow students with the same problem, and in both our misery we took the closest train to Bournemouth, and shared a Taxi to get home. She was able to make the long and boring trip a more fun and adventures one.

Coming back in a dream
Finally coming "home" again to my flat was a weird feeling. It was the feeling of suddenly reliving a dream, and suddenly realizing that it was real all along. Cold, hungry and tired it was time to sleep, and use the next day to get comfy again.

I suddenly found a Facebook statues and was really shocked, because there had been a fire in the flat of my student friend. I sat there, staring at the screen, with the strange feeling one get, when an serious accident occurs with someone close you care about. Luckily the Facebook post stated that she was fine.


Starting up
Tomorrow will be the first day of the rest of the school year, so I have a lot to look forward too. I still have some homework that needs to be done though, but the deadline isn't until May.

Arts University Bournemouth: the last days of 2014 and the Christmas holiday

the doomed Computer
a week before the Christmas holiday started, my computer didn't want t start up properly anymore. So I was walking on walls to figure out what to do with my life. The most annoying thing was that I had a hard time doing my school work. I was so lucky getting a tablet for Christmas some years ago, so I could steel update myself with any necessary information. Of course I could also use my phone.

The last days
the last days of University before Christmas was all about finishing off the lecture we had started a couple of weeks ago. The best one was the last "working with actors" workshop, where we were taught how to cast actors properly. I also discovered in the lighting-lecture that being a 1st Assistant Director falls very natural to me.

The weekend before the school ended, I was so lucky to help a fellow student in her short film. I worked as an extra, playing a paparazzi attacking two celebrities with flash-lights. It was really fun and I enjoyed it a lot.

The other project I was almost a part of was a cool story of rebirth, but sadly the shooting was canceled because of illness of the lead actress.

Traveling home
I felt it was time to get home again, take a new deep breath, and maybe discover Bournemouth with new eyes again after the holidays. It's almost weird getting home again and feel that nothing has really changes. (accept that we got a new family car).

early winter in this part of Norway is pretty boring. Mostly because of it only being cold, windy and full of rain. But that's how it's always been!

Finally my computer works again, and I am ready to enjoy an evening with my family. God jul to all of you!

Arts University Bournemouth: Film Theory and Christmas

The time when you think that you finally been good and have written a lot in your blog, and suddenly notice that it was 3 weeks ago. Again!

The last three weeks
So the last three weeks haven't really been that interesting if you're interested in practical film work.
Earlier we had a our first big hand-in, and there was a lot of students stressing about to get their journal finished. Now we have come to that time of the year where there is a lot of theory going on and the students prepare for the Christmas holiday. As the time flies, we suddenly notice we haven't done anything practical yet, and more and more students realize that they should gather together and make some small projects here and there to keep up the practice.

Fundamental practice units
In this unit the course is split up into different groups to have separate lectures about the different jobs within a film production. I am currently having lectures about Cinematography and Production design, and I realize there is a lot I don't know about these jobs. Much time is spent now on researching and learning about these different topics.

Storytelling Unit
in storytelling we are currently exploring different methods in screenwriting, film structures, themes etc. It is meant to be preparation and exercises for our next assignment that is about writing screenplays. I have realized that writing good stories is a whole craft of it's own that takes years to master. Even though I have a lot of concepts in my head, it is hard to write them down as an interesting story. Visualization is my stronger side.

We have finally figured out how the heat works in my house, so I am pleased with the warmth and homely feeling I have being here. So close to Christmas, it is weird to not have the typical Christmas mood, even though all the shops downtown are full with decorations. I am starting to get to get tired of my winter depression, and am looking forward to get home for Christmas.

Arts University Bournemouth: Girlfriend, Visual Continuity and Bolex screening

Hello my dear blog readers. I totally forgot to blog the last 4-5 weeks. So I've got a lot of catching up to do!


Visual Continuity preparation
We started pretty fast as a group to figure out and plan the different roles and story for the next Project. Finally we could add sound, witch I'm sure Mark was over happy about. We decided that we all should change roles from the last shoot, to make it more interesting and get new experience. So I became Producer, while Rae became the Director.

I felt it went pretty fast. As a producer I felt totally like a fish out of water and had no idea what I was doing. Cramming through page after pages o read about the producers role and so on, to make do the best job I could. In the end I discovered more and more that most of the producers job was totally unnecessary to read about, since our project was so small. I've got slightly depressed a period because I didn't really know what I was supposed to do, and what not to do.

In the end we got studio 2 as a good location, got the actors and had a pretty well rehearsing :)


Girlfriend visit
The day before the rehearsing I got a happy visit from my girlfriend from Norway. It was a pretty chill long weekend, mixed with a constantly had the feeling I had not done my job as a producer properly.
We spent most of our time going to the movies (Interstellar and The book of life) and wandering around Bournemouth, and went to a pizza restaurant with my other two flatmates, and one of the theirs boyfriend. The day she was supposed to finally leave again, she had forgotten her phone, including money and ticket, so she had stay another day. Witch was a big bummer for her, but lucky for me! Now she had time to visit me at school at see part of the visual cont. shoot.

The Visual Cont. Shoot. And editing
The shooting day was finally there, and surprisingly enough everything worked pretty well. I think the whole cast and crew did a very good job. we met up at 9am outside studio 2. Took 45 minutes to rig everything up and start the camera rolling. It feels good to have a shoot where everything goes according to plan, but it is pretty boring to blog about.

The day after my girlfriend left, Mark and Rae started to edit the movie. And it wasn't that much for me to do anymore. I realized I hadn't done anything with my Production notebook in a long time, so I decided to work on that one. The final edited film looked great, and I am looking forward to he screening :)

The Bolex Screening
The day of the class screening of the Bolex movie was finally there. After so many weeks I had almost forgotten about it, but the good memories came back when it was time to screen it.
We started of showing all the Bolex films in a sequence, and afterwards the director had to present them a new, before we watched each film again and commented on them.

The most fun part to me was listening to peoples surprise when "the bed-shot" happened, I was pretty pleased with the effect it gave. It was hard to stand in front of the whole class alone and present it as my film, because it wasn't only my film. The whole cast and crew had been involved.
Happily we only got only positive feedback on the film, witch totally made my day. Even thought I had my own small issues with it, I can be proud of the whole time for making both a good short-film, but also a happy experience!

Arts University Bournmouth: Bolex project: The Film shoot

I am currently enjoying my off time after an intense shoot for the Bolex-project, before I will start to write down my documentation.

The day after the 2 hours of rehearsal-day with the actors, we got together to shoot the our film. It has been quite a journey, from developing the idea from my one still-project, to planning the shoot, and to finally rolling the camera.

We started the day at 9, where we split our crew into two units. The actor unit, and the crew unit. While the crew unit drove off to location to prepare for the shoot, the actor unit stayed at the university to put on make-up and costumes.

It was a thrill to keep track of time. We needed to get all the shots done and delivered at 1630, but also hope the weather stayed the way we wanted.

When we finally arrived at the location, it took some time t set up the first shot. It was almost ironic, we had been worried about the rain, but because it was perfectly sunny and nice it was too bright for the film camera, and it was therefor really hard to expose it properly. It didn't help that we had to wait for clouds to fly buy, to get the sunlight back.

After finishing the first scene, we where far behind our shooting schedule and we started to rush through the shots of the 2nd scene. and mostly only filmed one take for each shot.

In the end we discovered we had plenty of time, and plenty of film, but the sun had become so low, that continuity with the light would have been a problem, if we wanted to shoot pick ups.

In the end we where all happy and pleased that we where finished, and celebrated with eating chocolate and fooling around with the rest of the film we had left.

It felt almost unbelievable to go from being original 6 people in the group, to suddenly be 10 people, and all of them very good and talented people that it was great to work with.

I must say that I am very thank full for every single one to step in to make the film, and that they also allowed me to post some of the picture from the shoot in my blog.

The next thing that happens will be starting the next project, and the edit of the film. Lets hope everything goes well!

Arts University of Bournemouth: The Joy of film-making

The One-still Projcet

After finishing off our one still project we are finally starting with the pre-production of our Bolex-camera project. With both changing and developing and reinventing the original story, you would all ask yourself "what's the reason of all this work?". I say it's all about knowledge and fun!
I am pretty pleased with my still image, even though it turned out to be quit un-filmable on a bolex camera. I told my current Main-Producer: "had we just had another day to shoot, and if we just could use light and/or a digital camera, the scenery would have been perfect!

But since that's not the case, the location was scrapped for the Bolex-camera shoot, and an (maybe) even cooler idea ans concept was developed with in our film crew. I'm very exited to see if everything turns out the way we want it.

The final one still is still a pretty cool image, and I have to thank all the people who helped me achieve the final result. Maybe the lights (and some of the colours) could be t tweaked a little bit, but the costumes and the angle is awesome. Please let me know if I should post my process in developing this image.

The Bolex-Project
Since we just started, the Bolex project is still under pre-production face. I have to say that I'm awfully happy that the producers in the crew are masterfully handling the paperwork. I got so lucky that my storyboard was chosen democratically in our group, and therefor also got to direct my small piece of fantasy. The production is currently one step away from getting green lit to shoot, we only need to sort out costumes, props and actors, rehears with them, and then we're should be good to go!

The last days we've been discussion how we could change the location for our opening scene, to make it easier for us to shoot. And I am happy to say that the final verdict has given us opportunities I could not have dreamed off.

I am sadly to say that I can't post the final film online, because of product placement and similar issues, but will happily show it to any individual who comes and asks me personally.

In the end I'm adding a Small teaser from our behind the scenes for you. This is a part of our pre-shoot, where we test angles, counting shot duration, all without actors and props. Just to give us a visual reference. When we're finally able to roll the film, we have a good base. combine that with a shot list and a well made storyboard, and in we know exactly what to get when we pull out the Bolex camera.