Live Brief 2 - Conversation with Marc de Launay

I was able to recently talk with British filmmaker and writer Marc de Launay about writing and how to improve and get in to the industry, this was great research for my professional studies report but quite an insight and good knowledge to have about the industry I'm trying to get into and about the role I'm working on now for the Urban Legends production.

How important do you feel gaining feedback on you work is, and has it lead to improvement in your own work? 

feedback is paramount in improving any work period...BUT the real question is where the feedback comes from...if it is my mum it would not be that useful..it may be positive or negative but would not contribute or really critique...so the SOURCE OF FEEDBACK has to be justified...but i never nullify someone who is not seen as a professional giving feedback, BUT it has to be at the correct time to be justified ie at a particular stage of the writing also is important as to what feedback is best and from whom...idea generation stage can be creative producers or colleagues   or partners or whatever....at times though you need to just write and not listen to others critcal quotes or feedback...the paralysis of analysis...it can be a block to writing so sometimes a writer just needs to believe in their own voice and write...then get feedback as taking notes is an art in itself as a professional writer it is part writer, part analyst, part psychiatrist, part warrior, part manager etc etc...sometimes feedback from people who are talentless and clueless is pointless apart from the fact these arses are paying your salary so you have to at least pretend to listen and not to cry in to ya cappuccino and crack on...so answer is YES and overall it has ALWAYS led to a general improvement in my work and processes and relationships...tho sometimes it kills the actual project...

Is there any advice or recommendations you'd give to younger screenwriters that you yourself received early on, or wish you had received that would've improved your skills as a screenwriter or filmmaker? 

I wish I had found a true champion or yoda...but i didn;t although i found some great advisors...best advice as a writer isto do two things....READ and WRITE..okay that sounds shit but here i mean voraciously consume books and articles and videos or any source about writing and see what works for you and your own voice...finding your voice as a writer sounds the usual bullshit answer you get from writers but in essence it is know thyself...and you NECER STOP LEARNING NOR ADAPTING YOUR SKILLS AS A wWRITER...ie you have to never be an anachronism and know trends and the market you are selling to as in essence as a writer you are actually a small business, a brand almost, so you need to understand how the market works...how the publishing industry works or film and thus not waste you time and effort on pursuing cul de sacs creatively or commercially...best advice received ever was from my old dad who simply said make sure you get an education as that can never be taken away from you regardless of what you choose your path to be...that and don't stick ya dick in the hoover until you are at least 18...basically simple advice is to keep learning what is a craft...learn enough and that craft can then become an art form...anyone who says it is only art and not about craft is a deluded narcissistic talentless creep as writing and certainly film making is a collaborative craft where there are no such thing as auteurs or genius directors...a genius director knows he works with a crew who can do their jobs better than he or she could but the directors job is to communicate their vision to the crew and the cast in order to attempt to create the film that exists in their head....

Do you feel screenwriting is something that can be 100% learned, or does it require say creativity, personality and passion from the writer? 

It can be and should be 100% learned BUT NOT TAUGHT!!  ie it takes the individual to learn how to write and how to best convey their own stories and voice...but this cannot be 100% taught as it needs the total involvement and desire of the individual to learn....i know people who are not natural writers at all but have learned to write and are very successful indeed...it is the same with music...you always need the technical basis to be correct and once you have mastered that it means you do not need to consciously think about that and thus are free to then be creative..ie only once you know the rules can you break them with abandon....BUT for any writer who feels it is their calling it is all these things that I would simply call 'soul'...same with music...there's some thrash death metal that i don;t like but i appreciate the skills involved in production but also the soul of the musicians playing ti and that can be appreciated and admired...passion and personality and creativity do shine through but ONLY if it is allowed to in that it is not hidden by not being professional or the hubris that is all too often accompanied nby those who call themselves auteurs..hubris in relying on others to actually create the film for them then they get the glory not deserved...and let's not forget that writing and film making has very low entry level requirements ie you say you';re a writer and suddenly you are...but it's like if you call yourself an artist it does not mean that you are..get a job first is better advice for some who simply do not have even a spark of course...

Do you think they key to be recognised as a screenwriter is more down to talent and the quality of your work, or more to do with connections and they people you know? 

I'd love to answer positively...but i know too many utterly brilliant but unknown writers than i do well known and well paid ones!!  It comes down to this one phrase that applies to writers and actors and any creatives...talent is NOT enough but it is the talent for having talent for the most part ie treating yourself respectfully as a professional so that others do too....personally i think you have to have at least some inert talent and everyone does really and it is all about communicating...but in the industry where you are a professional you do also have to know the right people...eventually...eventually as it takes perseverance too, look at JK Rowling who was rejected by so many of the publishers and how many billion is she worth (regardless of the PR spin shite that is her life story single mother etc...she was never really in any poverty ever but that doesn't give good copy or fodder for the life story and let's face it the victors write the history...)...so you have to be ready for greatness, chance favours the ready man as the saying goes but if you don't recognise these patterns and connections then more fool you, amazingly opportunistic things happen as long as you recognise them.....in a children's story about a girl called Milly Molly Mandy that i read to my four year old daughter her mother said that "good things are happening all the time as long as you keep your eyes open for them" and the sam eis true of any career in the creative industries including writer...but who you know obviously helps and the genetic lottery still exists in any creative industry...daddy say I'm a director and with my trust fund i can call myself one too etc...and as a writer it is often no good hanging out at hairdressing conventions when you shoudl be hanging out at film festivals to writing festivals if you want to meet like minded people or possible connections...BUT HERE IS THE MAIN THING...it is you who should look to help others, about connecting someone else with a useful connection...why...well it may be karmic credit but it is also the fact that give something to someone means they are way more likely to give something back to you and help you and it is far better to be nice and not a dickhead only out for themselves, looking over the shoulder of the person who is talking with you in case you see someone else more important to your own desires or career...okay, that's my personal viewpoint that hasn't got me global stardom or riches but at least I'm relatively happy about my chosen career(s)!!!

Is there any advice you'd give to screenwriters on how to gain more recognition, and the importance of networking within the industry? 

Networking remarked upon above is important...it is no good writing for a dreamt audience who will never read your work...but networking as long as it is done as a transaction ie it is not just take but give and take then it can work well if you are able to leverage some of these connections but if you're too desperate it is like a date and you'll put people off...go slowly and wear protection!!

How to gain more recognition...difficult as some writers should be actively discouraged as they are ignoring advice and relying solely on their talent (I've nurtured many younger or less experienced writers who simply ignore advice on learning and developing their craft and end up in either quitting or in jobs they hate but deservedly so!!  Though a few have ignored that advice and make good money but are still crap writers but like the emperors new clothes the established decision makers keep boosting their self fulfilling prophecy until they sometimes get found out..and sometimes they don;t but i won;t name names!!)...I think the bets way for early writers and established ones is to enter competitions as these are a great way of getting you r work out there to recognised readers and producers and publishers etc...i still enter competitions and having won a few now have gained actual options and commissions so these work initially...gaining an agent can be a great way to gain recognition as they do a lot of the lewg work for you BUT at 10-20% so they should and that relationship is often skewed weirdly towards the agent but writers should remember that hey employ their agents and not the other way around...i;ve left three agents in my time as in essence they are there to tie the shoelaces for contractual negotiations but as a producer i do all that anyway so why pay someone to do that...when i;ve got lawyers who i use (always good to have that buffer in negotiations of course as many british writers are the worst promoters of their own work, the worst presenters of their own work when pitching and embarrassed talking money and what they are worth etc...)...in essence again it is about doing the research in to the market and what competitions may be useful and even looking at which companies are producing the types of movies you write or which directors would like what you write etc etc...being focussed rather than throwing the pages out to the wind in the ridiculous hope that someone will find one of these pages and love it, so respect what you do and apply accordingly....BUT THIS IS ALL POINTLESS IF YOU ARE A WANNABE WRITER AND DON;T EVEN WRITE...WRITERS WRITE, PERIOD.  So you need a body of work as you do all this too of course and you need to be open to developing your craft and finding your voice and always be learning...failing that, go get a job slicing bread in Greggs and be happy..;-)

Live Brief 2- Aren't You Glad You Didn't Turn On The Lights Shoot

Aren't you glad you didn't turn on the lights is the third and final short film in our Urban Legends short film collection, and the second shoot I was on due to my absence on The Hook Man. AYGYDTOTL was filmed Wednesday 13th April at Student Accommodation in Lime Crescent, with Dan Whalen, Gary Davidson and Jack Hammersley acting in it. Set dressing and equipment transportation took place early on in the day around 10 am and the rest of the morning was used to make sure everyone was ready and to go over any last minute issues any one may have. The cast and crew was to meet at the uni at 12:30 and then to head over to the location for shooting to start at 1:15-1:30pm. Due to the script taking place at night, we had to black out the windows and act like we were filming at night, a lot of the shots take place inside a flat so its easy to disguise it as night and was more practical to get all these shots during the day and then get any shots that need to be done outside, on the night once we finished the inside shots.

I acted as driver, runner and due to John's brother not been able to make it, I took over as BTS camera man to capture the film been shot and the whole cast and crew behind the scenes. The location been someones flat, was quite small for the whole crew and equipment to fit in which was a little challenging but we made it work pretty quick. A lot of the early shots were just between Gary and Dan and were dialogue heavy, it was good to get these out of the way first so we could move on to any more complicated shots later. A poster for the fake radio show Tales From The Other Side was produced for this short and we created and used some fake blood to write on the poster the final scene of the short Aren't You Glad You Didn't Turn On The Lights. We took our time and made sure we covered quite a lot of coverage with our shots and the plan was once we finished with the inside shots, hopefully it would be dark and we could continue on and get the night shots, but the sun was still up once we finished filming inside and we decided to take the cast and crew out for something to eat while we waited for the sun to go down.

We got to the end of our meals and the sun was only just starting to go down, so we made our way back to the location and began setting up and waiting for it to get darker. I also drove on camera for a few shots of picking Gary's character up and dropping him off again later. There wasn't too many night shots to film and we were doing good on time, so we made sure we covered everything and got a few extra shots here and there that might come in useful. With this been the third shoot in our series, the crew had become more comfortable with each other and knew exactly what to expect of each other and it was good and felt nice to work consistently with the same crew instead of it changing every now and then. I think we've all definitely got better at our job roles thanks to this production and it's helped us improve many areas that we may have not considered doing before, so it's had a positive effect on us as crew members and filmmakers. All the footage we've captured seems to be to a quality standard and good enough to be used in the edit, it's been real fun working on this production with this crew and will be really interesting to see the final edits to see if our work paid off as much as we feel it did on set.

Live Brief 2 - Killer in the Back Seat First Draft

The third script in the Urban Legends series is called "Killer in the Back Seat" and it takes place after "The Hook Man". It's quite a short story and serves as a break up and link to the next story, it focuses on a takeaway delivery driver almost finishing her shift getting murdered by Jack, so he can steal the takeaway and gain access to his next victim.

The story starts with Kath, a delivery driver talking to her significant other on the phone as she pulls up to the takeaway. She runs into the takeaway and collects her last two orders before she can finish. Jack sneaks in the back of the car and she drives away unaware to the next order. Jack waits for her to make the first delivery and then murders her when she gets back in the car. He then takes the remaining order and goes to deliver it, leading in to the next and final story.

It's very short and sweet and doesn't really give much to the characters as much as the story. There might be a way to lengthen the story but it may just be dragging it out for no reason, and could ruin the story if it consists of unnecessary dialogue. Drew and John have had a read through and agree with many of the points I've made. It's a very short script and might not even be worth filming due to it's length and in some ways unneeded for the whole progression of the story, it may be easier to merge to scripts into one. Well have Di take a look at the script and see what advice she can offer and an changes she can find, and we'll work from there. Visually there is some interesting and powerful shots to be captured here, so i guess theres a positive to keeping it green lit, but it does feel so different from the other scripts and it may break the style and theme throughout which might ruin it a little.

Live Brief 2 - The Babysitter Shoot

The Babysitter is the first of our short films for Urban Legends, and is the longest therefore we decided to film it first, giving Chloe more time to edit it, and getting it out of the way early. The shoot took place Saturday 27th February and was filmed at Drew Brockbank's home. All crew arrived for 2pm and began setting up Drew's house for the shoot. This included moving furniture around and making mini sets for the actors, as well as setting up equipment and finding out when we can and can't do in the space. Actors arrived at 5pm for a script breakdown and some food and the shoot commenced at 6pm. My role on the shoot was to act as script supervisor, runner and secondary cameraman. I was in charge of the secondary camera which we used mainly for static cut away shots, I also was the main dolly operator for the few shots we used with that.

The shoot started off really smooth, the actors were great and comfortable, and we spent quite a few time on the first shots to get into the groove and they were also quite heavy dialogue shots so it was important to capture it correctly without any inconsistencies. There were three actors on a whole on set, but we made sure all Terrence's shots (Who plays the father) were out of the way nice and early. He only has a few lines at the beginning and once they were out the way he was able to get going and we were able to focus more on The Babysitter played by Cassie. Drew got a great performance out of the actors and always made sure they were ready and knew what they were doing before we started filming. There was quite a lot to capture and only given one night to do it, but we didn't feel like we were rushing it all, we moved a comfortable pace and in hindsight, maybe moved a little to quick over a few scenes that  needed some more attention. Jack who played the killer only made an appearance near the end, as its revealed he's outside, and this was quite the tricky shot to capture due to the complexity of the shoot and space provided to do it in. The crew bonded well on set and helped each other out a lot I'd say, just making sure every shot got done right.

Filming completed around 11pm on schedule as we got the last shot for the shoot. Considering this was our first shoot as a crew and the longest short we have, It feel like it went quite well. There were no hiccups production wise or problems with the location. Once we were there we were able to crack on and just get the job done. An issue we might have had was having too many people on set and location at one time. As the whole crew was there which was good but, space wise it could have done with maybe a few less people as there were a total of 10 people on set at one time including actors. Other than that the shoot was great, I was able to help out on multiple roles and get more experience with camera equipment while shooting, and see the crew work together after weeks of pre-production. It was weird and great to hear words you wrote starting coming out of actors mouths, It was quite a surreal moment and look forward to it happening on the following shoots.

Live Brief 2 - Equipment Rehearsal

We recently had an equipment rehearsal for all the crew to come fully to grips with all the equipment they will be using on the shoot. This way everyone will be comfortable with using their equipment and know what they will be doing on set. Drew wanted to run through some scenes that he thought might be complicated so we all rehearsed them so we had a better understanding for the shoot. We ran through a few of the scenes and had Abby film them so we could see what it looked like and what we could improve upon. Specifically we worked on one of the last shots, where our character is sat on the floor talking to the killer in fear and realises that he's close by. Drew wanted to use a dolly zoom moving in slowly on the character to build tension up until the moment she runs off to check on the kids.

This shot is most famous for its use in films such as Jaws (1975) and Vertigo (1958) and used in similar scenes such as our own for the same reasons. We rehearsed this a few times so there would be no complications on set and we would be able to get the shot nice and smoothly without any kinks. The footage was given to Chloe to edit who put together a little short of our equipment rehearsal. We repeated the shot a few times because it was quite hard to get the hang of. Once Abby came to grips with it, we focused on how we would light the shot and had Jacob record sound, with myself and John acting while Drew directed us. I was able to offer help to people who needed it and acted as script supervisor when needs be.

The equipment rehearsal was a good idea, because not only did it help the crew come to grips with the equipment but it was the first time our crew had worked together filming something as a team. It was good to see how we all acted and got on together as well as in our respected roles.

Live Brief 2 - The Hook Man First Draft

After working on "The Babysitter" for sometime now, I was confident enough in the script to move on to the next short we will be working on. As "The babysitter" was the largest production, we worked on that one first, but chronologically it is last in the film, the first micro short is called "The Hook Man". I started and recently finished the first draft for "The Hook Man", which gives us our first introduction to our killer Jack. The story is about Jack and April who have driven up to a remote area to spend time together, like in many cliche horror films. April hears a sound from outside the car and sends Jack to check it out, after he leaves she listens in to Reggie Reynolds on the radio and then is attack by The Hook Man in the car and it's revealed to be Jack. Jack walks away and makes a phone call which links into "The Babysitter"

This first draft was very rough and was to introduce the characters and find a basic structure for the story. With setting up a lot of plot lines and characters in "The Babysitter" it was important not to contradict or mess up any of the timeline and keep things the same in tone. This story is much shorter than "The Babysitter" and has considerably less characters involved, so it's quite a short and tight script.

Characters:
April- Love Interest/ Victim
Jack - Killer
Reggie Reynolds- Tales from the Other Side Host

This is the audiences first introduction to Jack and the overall tone of the short, so It needed to set up both with enough interest to keep the audience wanting to watch. Who he is and what is motive is, is very unclear at this point and it creates quite a bit of intrigue which I'm hoping will pull in the audience. April is perhaps too cliched in her role and only serves as another victim to Jack, another risk he's taking throughout the story. Her role maybe needs more understanding developed and a little backstory to why she's her and what she's doing with Jack.

The producer and director have both had a read through of the draft and annotated changes and notes for the next draft. I have small changes to the dialogue to make and a few motivations for characters to incorporate to give a bit more believability to their actions.

Live Brief 2 - Visual Effects for Guerrilla Filmmakers Course (Week 1)

With being editor for Glenn's Maniaframe project, It's best I continue research into new editing styles and techniques, and keep my skills busy and ready for editing. Norwich University of the Arts is using a website called FutureLearn, to distribute and give a course online for free called, Visual Effects for Guerrilla Filmmakers. It's a four week course and is all online, it helps to introduce and develop new and effective editing techniques in the visual effects area.

Week one has just started on the 8 February and the final week will start 6 March. The first week has been very much an introduction to the course, the ideas, the software and whats to come. Early on it discusses the differences between visual effects and special effects, and how visual effects are more digital and something done in post-production, whereas special effects are your practical, on the day stunt styled effects. We were also introduced to a software called HitFilm, and it's a free special effects software like Adobe After Effects, but one that everyone can download and have access too. There is one tutorial this week using HitFilm that focuses on tracking. I've used tracking before in After Effects and used it recently in our Think advert but it was very amateur compared to this style. There was a video walk through on how to use tracking effectively in HitFilm and they even provided us with some high quality footage to use for tracking. It slowed it down and went through step by step and made it easy to understand. They also made it so you are able to transfer these skills into over software such as After Effects. It was quite fun and successful using this tracking tutorial, and gets you thinking about more than just the edit, and the preparation as an editor you need to do for filming, so everything is in place for the edit.

We were also introduced to a few independent guerrilla filmmakers, such as The Blaine Brothers and Haz. They discussed their work and passion for visual effects, and in some cases how important the tracking technique we just learned was during their films and careers. There are also little tests here and there to keep you on your toes, to see if you remember details from previous articles or videos. So far it's been quite a fun and educational learning experience. In week two there will be more to read and learn about, as well as the introduction to green screen tutorials in HitFilm, which will come in helpful because a few ideas Glenn has for his final piece, include green screen of some sorts.