So, tomorrow, I’ll be focusing on the the areas I was mainly involved in within the production of Trams, Rentals & Instrumentals, which was getting permits for shooting, camera work and the issues we encountered with lighting and inadequate battery lives.

So, basically I’ll be saying that initially, it was our plan to shoot as much as we possibly could within the Carlton North area around Steph’s house, which was going to be the filming location for our Valentina character. I had filled out a low risk filming request for a few streets around Carlton North, and handed it in the City of Melbourne council. They responded quite quickly and kindly and let me know that Carlton North is not in their jurisdiction. So that created problems seeing as we were planning on filming tomorrow. So, I figured I might as well try and do everything as legally as possible, so I tried to look for Yarra City council’s permit form. I found it, and found that, unlike City of Melbourne, it didn’t have a low risk filming permit, you had to put through a full filming permit. Thats a 7 page document, outlining immaculate detail, with ABN’s and fax numbers. Seeing as that is a pretty ridiculous process to go through for filming with 6 people on a few streets.

I decided that apart from Steph’s place, we shouldn’t film in Carlton North. I quickly got back on to City of Melbourne council, put through a request form at very last minute and they said we can film in Carlton for a few scenes with our Martin character. So, at this point, I think I’l show a photo of the permission email we were sent, which I’m sure will bring the crowd into a frenzy. It turns out for both days we didn’t actually need to film as much on the street, Stephs house had so many different and unique rooms and outside areas within her house that we ended up shooting a majority of it at her house, for both Valentina and Martin.

I’ll then quickly elaborate on the new process of camera-manning (pun intended…) for me, something I hadn’t done before. That shone through however, as I had a battery which was inadequately charged. So, on our day of filming for Valentina, we were basically filming most of it on a red, flashing battery. Also, we had to shoot in the direct sunlight almost, which we were quite worried about at first, but for some reason didn’t end up being much of a problem, the camera picked up everything to a fairly nice lighting standard. Despite all this, we were able to get the shots we needed, literally just however, as the battery ran a few seconds after we completed our final take. Despite this, I feel like the documentary, hand shaky feel was an easy one to learn and adapt to. We learnt quite a lot in between the two days of shooting, and were able to pretty much perfect everything for Friday, we had decent battery life to use, we shot in nice lighting conditions.

After all that, I feel like we all learnt quite abit, and I hope the culmination of these findings can be seen in our next character, Martin the character I wrote, who I think we’re all proud of.

Basic outline of what we’ll be all focusing on for the Presentation tomorrow.

Coming soon.

Friday the 1st of October was the day of instrumentals. We all gathered at Steph’s place again, and discussed how we would be shooting for the day. I initially thought we’d be spending a large amount of time outside, which is why I got the permit for the 3 streets in Carlton. I initially had written the shooting script, which you can have a look just below, with this in mind, Martin as a character was to be just on his own, in my mind. What I found when we got to Stephs was however, that we could utilise Steph’s pals in the shoot as the 2 other band members, and we could add a level of comedy by adding this character in interaction with his bandmates. This really shows his pretentious side, and gives his character a lot more humorous interactions. I’m quite happy with this, as we were able to come up with many new ideas on the spot, which could really enhance the character to being slightly more complex, yet more funny at the same time.

With this in mind, we set up for the confessional scenes, which for the most part stayed quite the same as in the script, a part from a few new/revised lines which worked better in a natural conversation. Seeing as I had forgotten to charge the battery, I learnt my lesson, so on Friday, that was no longer an issue. I resolved this further by making sure that in between takes and the framing of them, the camera stayed off. Anyway, moving on to something more interesting, we realised that seeing as we had all the band mates together, we would revise the script so that as Martin is giving his story of how the band members meet, we could show how he interacts/treats his band.

A big win with Stephs place was that she had a massive variety of areas we could film in. She had her Hallway/outside/kitchen which we used for Valentina the day before, and she had even more areas to film with for Martin. She had a small table area which we used for filming the confessionals for Martin. It had a really unique look, just like every other room in Steph’s place, and we found that there were props which enhanced the strangeness of the character which we could utilise. For instance, in the background of the confessionals, Martin not only has a stereo player but a sewing machine also in the background. Because why not. We were also able to utilise Steph’s loungeroom, which also had a really distinct and separate  look from all the other scenes. 

It’s fair to say that if we didn’t say anything, you probably wouldn’t notice that over 95ish% (probably inaccurate percentage but anyway) of this filming was done at Steph’s place, and each scene had it’s own distinct look. Finally, we improvised a scene so that instead of filming the entire band in Carlton as the script called for, we could film them in Stephs Back yard area seeing as two of the band members (the ones that aren’t Martin) couldn’t come along to Carlton. Despite this being filmed only about 5 meters away from the confessional, it too, had it’s own distinct look and colour palette. The brick wall even look like it could be on a street somewhere, and that the buskers were warming up for a show in Carlton. Again, Steph’s place was crazy adaptable to almost every purpose we needed it.

Finally, we packed up our gear and headed off to the land of Carlton. We’d filmed many pretty much all of the scenes, car the last page and a bit of the script, and we also improvised some. I found that to be really helpful. We were able to get a lot more insight into the character, and of course the improvising on both our part, and Harry/his bandmates really supplemented the comedic feel and humour. I really think this’ll turn out well. But anyway, in Carlton we quickly filmed Harry playing the recorder, and didn’t bother about marking the takes with slates in etc, seeing as we didn’t want to get beaten up. It turns out a recorder makes a really annoying noise. Even more so on a public street. We did have permission to be there though.

By this point I’d gotten used to the using of my camera, so things were all fairly well framed and in focus. Although, as was with the issue the day before, the sun again was in my eyes in a few shots, which made it difficult to see what was going on on the camera viewfinder. Overall though, I feel like we got a better variety of shots, compared to the day before. don’t get me wrong, we had enough on the Thursday shoot, however seeing as my battery had enough charge, and that we’d all found our stride technically and didn’t need as long to set things up, we were a lot more efficient on Friday.

Another key thing I learnt from Friday is that Harry, our character playing Martin, had a very unique look and style, very different to the character I had envisioned as I was writing it, however he really gave the character a believability and a level of integrity. You feel like you can almost be sucked into what he’s saying, even though most of it is at a pretty high level of idiocy. Overall, he contributed a fun, charming take on the character, he also improvised in some hilarious ways. He really utilized the recorder to great effect, he used it in a way which made it complement the humour of the character, who would honestly believe that his recorder playing skills were something brilliant… Anyway, the point of that tangent was to show that the ideas that he brought were in line with the character, yet it was still quite different to how I imagined it. I feel that if I pictured Harry, who you can see playing his recorder, as Martin it may have changed the style in which I wrote it. I wrote him as less cheery and perhaps less loveable than how Harry portrayed him. But I reckon that can also be a good thing, it gives some variety and I think it’ll seem more realistic, it’s more of a personal performance in that respect when a character isn’t reciting words from a page, but trying to make it relatable.

Rentals you ask? That is the segment we filmed on Thursday the 1st of October. We decided that seeing as one of our main three characters, Valentina, is a real estate agent, that we’d be filming at Steph’s Carlton North Abode. After some planning and pouring over the script, as seen below, we head off to Stephs place.

So at Stephs place, we realised that we had the perfect home to film in. We had to film 3 things with the character. The confessional, her getting out of her car awkwardly, and her walking into an open house, which of course is left in a terrible, messy state. Steph house fit the bill quite perfectly. She had a really long hallway, which we outfitted with beer bottles. She had a kitchen bench, which if we filmed at the right angle (and I think we did), which would look like a place where the comedically professional Valentina would have for her confessional. It worked out quite great. Steph most likely would have written these things in mind, and I feel like it really showed. So next came setting up. We had quite a while to set up before Alex, our actress, showed up to film, but it turns out we needed it.

I’m definitely not a tech wizard, and that kind of showed up. We had to figure out how to put cameras on tripods, how to use technical equipment we loaned from the real tech wizards of building 9, and in the end we just gave up on the lapel microphones. We lacked the wizardry. However, we eventually set up to an adequate standard by the time Alexandra came to get ready. I really feel like its a valuable experience, to have a fair bit of time to set up before the talent comes, it’s fairly unprofessional and can waste time.

That doesn’t mean we didn’t waste time. Even after Alex did show up, we spent a fair bit of time getting the focus, the lens and the framing to a good standard.

So, we eventually got we needed with the confessional, which we shot first in order to have Alex look a lot more chilled out, and within her own space without looking so professional, which is what we were after for the confessional. We then moved out on to Stephs porch, where we began filming her getting out of the car awkwardly. That was where the troubles began.

Firstly, theres the sun. Not only was it glaring at around 4 in the afternoon, and burning my fairly pale skin, but it was potentially a shot ruiner. I haven’t shot in almost direct sunlight before with my camera, I was a little nervous about how good the shot would come up. But, that turned out okay. The real problem was time. As it turns out, my cameras battery life isn’t great. And I didn’t plan for a full day, so I went into the day with a battery that wasn’t fully charged. So each shot was a stressful one.

We got the bare amount that we needed, but we really could have used a few more shots for safety. We literally ran out of battery during the take we hope to use (I hope it didn’t wipe the take) But we found our stride during this time. I was the camera man, and seeing as it’s mockumentary, it required a fair few amounts of crash zooms. They took a while to get used to, especially with the need to focus afterwards but I think I figured it out. It was a real (pun coming up) crash course (do you get it? I said crash earlier…) in how to direct (along with  and be a cameraman. It was kind of good to be thrown in the deep end in that respect.

Anyway, we got the scene we wanted. Ozzy got his mnms, and he went and did a great show.

Shout out to Ashton Peck, for his black and white photography.

So heres the request I sent through to City of Melbourne Council. We initially had planned to do filming within the Carlton North area, however unlike City of Melbourne council, City of Yarra doesn’t have a low-risk filming, one page sheet to submit. What it does have however, is a 7ish page, extensively intense release form which requires highly meticulous detail… even for just a few people to have clearance to film in a few streets. Basically they have no low-risk filming work around. Melbourne city does. Oh and they require 9-10 days notice before you film. We had to film tomorrow when I was sending in request forms.

It turns out, as you can see in the email screen shot, that I thought Carlton North was apart of Melbourne City, and submitted our request form and public liability insurance wiht this in mind. When I got a reply from the lady from filming@melbourne.vic.gov.au, who kindly told me that the long, very carefully considered email (which of course has typos) that I’d sweated over was useless, I decided for us to film somewhere in the city. At this point, I thought that we’d be filming the very next day on the Carlton North Streets. So, I improvised and asked the kind lady at filming@melbourne.vic.gov.au, if we could bypass the usual 48 hours notice you must give before filming. I was also required to find some more streets, re-fillout and resubmit the low impact filming form with Carlton Streets within half an hour. That was that little bit stressful.

But sure enough, I got the mnms and Ozzy went on stage and did a great show. I also got the permission to film in Carlton, not Carlton North. I’ll upload the confirmation email in the next post.

I have to say, that this really taught me a few things. Firstly I think it really helps when you know how the system works. Next time I really should consider submitting a request form more than 48 hours before, even though I did it 24 hours before. I didn’t really do the research that I should of. In saying that, we had to organise on quite short notice with the actors, so that was probably the main reason. I’m quite happy that City Council was considerate that we were not filming excessively, and it was just on footpaths. So, you go City Council. Also it may pay to learn the geography of the city, so I don’t have to scramble at the last minute. Although now I know it can be done. Anyway, it was also a good exercise to writing emails formally, and that’s a pretty darn good skill if you want to look professional.

So as it turns out, We’ll be needing to get a permit for filming in Melbourne. We will also be needing some heavy duty equipment to use. Such as Tripods. And zoom recorders. I feel as if in this consult, I realise that we’re currently in the calm before the storm of filming. We’re all still trying to get organised to a point in which we’ll be ready for filming everything. Jess has her script done, Steph probably is really close, and David and I are pretty close to getting Martin, our man who busks, done and dusted.

I’m thinking that we’ll be right. We’re thinking, at Pauls suggestion, that we should commit to filming over the next 3 Sundays. Hopefully we can organise amongst ourselves to have enough crew each sunday to get an adequate amount of filming done. I know for a fact that I’ll have to miss the 11th because of a going away party, and I’m also fairly confident that not everybody’s going to be completely available, but I think we’ll be able to manage if and most likely when our numbers are fewer.

We also should consider rehearsals as well. We probably need to allocate times to making sure not only the actors have got their actions on track, but also the camera person. Seeing as we’ve written the camera’s actions, and zooms into the script and that we’ll also be adding some in for comical effect (as is standard in mockumentaries) we should really preactice that.

Otherwise, I think we’re good… We’ll be right.

So heres the messages Stefanny sent to the two actresses who performed, its a very easy way of communicating key details that re a part of our production to the actresses. As you can see, Steph worded them very professionally and really clearly. And that’s important. And also, here are some of the dates we are thinking of shooting on.