Bungalow Juggler

One sultry mid-august morning, and the bexhillian bungalows of suburbia awake to an unfamiliar sound. As the bolex whirrs through the first few feet of the day, Sam Lynas organizes primary coloured bowls on a lawn, well kept but seldom used, whilst another hoses the pebble-dashed pavement. The chimes of a pastel ice-cream van can be heard above the splattering of water against hot concrete. From the solemn serenity of old age, a small girl appears riding a bicycle. The ice-cream, freshly plunged, but held just out of reach falls past her outstretched hand toward the path, shimmering in the heat beneath her. Another unfamiliar sound, a singing bowl, resonates louder and louder. Olly Crowther mans the wheelchair I now perch upon as I rewind the bolex. In one back garden a man wearing an untidy beard, red trousers and green shirt looks with curiosity at the apples that lie at his bare feet. We roll around the corner just in time to catch the man curiously pick up one of the rosy red and green apples, with a swift flick of his wrist he launches the fruit skyward and as it inevitably returns to earth, he catches it with a solemn thud. As I withdraw my gaze from the diopter, I look with astonishment; the prim foliage of the garden has been replaced by an expansive corn field, undulating in the breeze and burning amber in the low slung afternoon sun.

This is the experience of shooting Olliver Crowther's latest surreal short 'Bungalow Juggler' the story of a man who's juggling gives him the power of imagination to escape the boundaries of his suburban habitat. The film currently resides in Soho images awaiting further finance to telecine, and it looks like Max McNeilley, sound design and composer for 'Perfect', will be applying his intuitive flair to yet another art-short, with cut and grade at Neon Films.

The Promo: 'Black Hole'

Neon Films' first independently produced pop promo for Pinprick records at the end of last year is now set to debut at the up and coming 'World of Benbo; The Black Hole Edition' This exciting new club night, launching mid July, will be held at a secret location, watch this space to be among the first to find out where. The kitsch, 70's, sci-fi spoof, of a promo was brought into production following discussions with Pinprick records last year.

The forthcoming singles title, 'Black Hole', immediately captivates the imagination and so it was this that became the lynch pin of the concept. I wanted to explore the term thoroughly and in doing so discovered that the origins come from the Black Hole of Calcutta, giving me the idea to have Benbo incarcerated for the duration. I also thought the K-Hole spin-off was a fun avenue, thus the administration of the generic medicine, sending him into his laser clad cell. And of course its set in an underground lair with a couple of scantily clad scientists conducting experiments on our protagonist.

http://www.blogger.com/www.worldofbenbo.com

'Perfect' Cut

Josh Cut scenes 1-6 in Bournemouth, whilst I cut scenes 7-12. Thankfully the two halves came together well with only minor tweaking. The footage from the HVX in DVCPro gave great results with very solid blacks and further grading was easy as no further compression artefacts appear visible. In the grade it was important to me to further enhance the existing pallet and most importantly try to retain a cohesive emotional journey for the viewer, which kept pace with the simultaneous progression of the edit and sound design.

Once picture lock was achieved, the cut was thrown downstairs to our in house audio mixing legend Maximilian Mc'Neilly who very quickly denounced all of the HVX's 6 audio channels embellished with the old Honda's drone. To the point where virtually every spoken sentence, trodden footstep or rumble of thunder was painstakingly dubbed and synced. A few quick compositions later, a master mix and a dash of compression brings us somewhere near to the finished piece.

Josh handed in the project for his final major project at Bournemouth and we now all eagerly and somewhat sarcastically await his mark. Meanwhile in preparation for the real premiere we are showing the film to people with no previous involvement, in order to get feedback and tweak accordingly.

'Perfect' Shot

Latest digital short collaboration with friends and colleagues Josh Lawson and Curtis Leonard.
Plan... to finally produce a script I had been working on and collaborate for Josh's final major project at Bournemouth University. So the project got a deadline, crew and kit straight away. Although the project had been solely my creation for a while I was glad to hand the role of Director over to Josh to enable me to realise the script specifically cinematically as DP. By the time the script was workshopped our excellent producer, Ellie D'Silva, had us holding castings.

The shoot itself featured a new and at times gorilla workflow, of rickety 1970's Honda generator, mac, firewire and camera. Our chosen camera was the Panasonic HVX200, able to shoot uncompressed HD to P2 cards.The only problem was that we couldn't afford to rent the extortionate P2 cards, so either we used a different camera and shot HDV to tape and encountered the old compression issues, or captures live over firewire. This meant that for the first time as a camera man I had the power to turn-over taken away. With the Director (Lawson) hitting 'Capture Now' when he was happy with the shot on his monitor. I would find myself setting up a static shot, shouting 'camera set', and then wandering off to look at a larger monitor whilst that angle was shot. This freedom from the camera gave me much more time to look at a scene from different perspectives as the actors were going for a take and in doing so, see new angles and spot where the light was fell on the actors throughout a movement.

We were glad to be shooting in February as the cold, diffused winter light was exactly the right feel for the exterior dystopian scenes, so as to contrast with the warm oranges and browns of the interior scenes lit only by candle light. The exterior pallet would be contrasted also by the Girl's long red coat, and too a reflection of the fairy tale influences on the film.

The shoot went very smoothly, much to the credit of Josh's Mother and Sisters cooking. Having a hot meal at the end of the day with cast and crew all together is necessary for any no-budget shoot.