This is the result of not blogging

Between my last blog entry and this there have been a lot of developments in my life but I’m sure you’re all more interested in the developments of my ‘the meeting’ production. As I disclosed previously I was faced with a rather large predicament when some of the members from Maidstone’s urban search and rescue team were sent to assist with rescue efforts after the tsunami that ran through Japan. Left not knowing what to do I was close to breaking point my cast was gone, my shooting schedule was therefore gone and unless they returned my storyboard would be rendered useless. Well what could I do? Not knowing how long the team would be in action I could only see that I was left with two options. Firstly I thought that I could create a totally different trailer to that which I had intended to create originally with the later half focussing heavily on the USAR team. Alternatively I could hold my breath and hope that the team would return in time for me to film and edit what I needed to before the deadline.

Looking back I probably shouldn’t have taken the more risky of the two options, but, that is what I did. I would watch the news daily to see updates about the events unfolding in Japan, one of those days I did see the men from the team that I had intended to be my cast being interviewed on the BBC South East today news program. During this time of not knowing I was asking my father who remained my first point of contact with the Fire service to find out how many members remained of the team remained here and whether he’d be able to talk them into being my new cast. Through this time the efforts in Japan where brought to its end but by the time I had been able to arrange to film with them again I would be in a great rush as I would be sharing the camera with other people from the course, as well as doing it before I went to Amsterdam. It was all getting very intense but low and behold before the team even returned home my father informed me that a temporary USAR team had been formed from members from various smaller USAR teams from around the county. Was my luck really going to be in? Yes it was the temporary team agreed very kindly for me to film them the Sunday of that week.

But you know that good old thing about life nothing ever did go exactly to plan because the problem I was now faced with was that this happened on the Thursday and I knew neither Simon nor Helen would be in on the Friday in order for me to get the camera signed out for me to film. PANIC! So I turned to this very blog to seek the Yoda like wisdom of Simon on my next step. He told me that Lauren Howard had a camera booked out and if I could get hold of the camera she was using BOOM my problem would be solved. So this is what I did, but it wasn’t until Friday morning that Lauren called me back ‘she was walking to the studios and as much as she wanted to the twenty minute walk from the home to the studios carrying both camera and tripod simply wasn’t going to happen. But Lauren being the diamond that she is said if I could get someone with a car to drive to her house over lunch she would had the camera and tripod over to me and I would be able to get the use of the camera over the weekend. So I turned to another diamond Fran who agreed that if I bought her some lunch that she would drive to get the camera for me and God bless both of them because that is what we did.

So Friday evening I convinced my father to come with me and my younger brother Luke who was to be the star of my trailer to Maidstone fire station on Saturday afternoon after I had finished work to film the outside scenes and he happily agreed. So Saturday afternoon went so smoothly I was given a renewed enthusiasm for the project. I got the shots that I wanted, so now secure in the knowledge that I had something that I could use in the final edit I was happy but I didn’t begin to relax no sir not yet as the next day I was going to have a onetime only chance to film with the members of the mish mash USAR team that had agreed. Happily the Sunday shoot went as smoothly as the Saturday and I got some shots that I dare say some people would have been sceptical about me getting if I had told them before shooting.  

So I had my footage and I had a sound track picked out I thought the next section would be the easiest of the whole process. WRONG AGAIN! I got my footage onto the mac and some of the outdoor shots were sadly over exposed, this is somewhat heartbreaking for me for two reasons. One I know that due to location, time, and permission I won’t be able to reshoot those clips and probably more heartbreaking is that if i had used one of the filters on the camera the footage would be as close to perfect as it ever could have been. But after a rough edit I thought that I was making the images work for the purposes of the trailer. It was at this point that Simon reviled to me that the soundtrack with to epic and grand for the images that I had created. Slightly disheartened I set about looking for a new piece of trailer music. This is where I made my second mistake I decided that the Batman - the dark night trailer music would work. “ERRR NO!” not only was it still to grand this piece was also to recognisable. Right being a little bit stuck for ideas as for music to use I though ... “hey why don’t I go for an emotional bit of music, that’ll defiantly going to be less epic”. So that’s what I did but rightly pointed out the footage I shot wasn’t for an emotionally trailer. So that brings you to the point at which I am at now. I still haven’t found that piece of music that will marry with my trailer but at least I have an idea of what I am looking for.