http://www.aggmedia.com/bancjournal An improvised film maker's production journal. Wed, 23 Apr 2008 09:23:21 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Well, last weekend we had the final shoot for the first series of Bonny & Clyde. We haven't announced it on the site, because there's still quite a few episodes to come, but yes, there is an end upon the horizon. What was shaping up to be the most complex and ... http://www.aggmedia.com/bancjournal/archives/31 After discussions with the wonderful (seriously) folks at TVTonic, we've had Bonny & Clyde removed from their directory, and we're also blocking their clients at our end. It seems as though there is a problem somewhere with our hosting provider and not TVTonic, and considering we've had issues with them ... http://www.aggmedia.com/bancjournal/archives/30 Enough production rambling, time for some fun. If you remember back to July 2006, we ran auditions for each of the main characters. What? They're not real people? Not as such, no... The following video shows an improvised scene with Cale and Dave playing the characters they ultimately ended up becoming, Clyde ... http://www.aggmedia.com/bancjournal/archives/29 I don't want to set a precedent where all our production journal posts are about problems, but that unfortunately seems to be the theme at the moment. That and the fact that it has been quite a while since our last shoot, several months in fact. Trying to get all ... http://www.aggmedia.com/bancjournal/archives/28 The only expensive part of our production process, is the use of Final Cut, Apple's professional video editing package. Although these days it's cheap enough to be a serious option for hardcore hobbyists, so we're not too fussed about using it as part of our proof of process. One of the ... http://www.aggmedia.com/bancjournal/archives/27 Coming from an agile development background, I'm used to rapidly changing variables and the best of planning not always being appropriate once you get on the ground. Such is the case with Bonny & Clyde, with many of our early technical production decisions having to be changed once we started to ... http://www.aggmedia.com/bancjournal/archives/26 One of the problems with developing a weekly series, is producing something every week. Not out of laziness, but due to unforseen problems, like illness, equipment failure or resource availability. We had quite a few of these problems with our Frank and Dale machinima, because we would write and produce ... http://www.aggmedia.com/bancjournal/archives/25 Well, it's been a long wait, almost 18 months, and a year since we first put out the call for auditions, but it's finally on it's way. The first episode is out! The site is running a beta version of Splinter, a new microcontent platform we've developed, so it's kind of ... http://www.aggmedia.com/bancjournal/archives/24 On our shoot yesterday, we were hit by what I'm calling the terro-igno-copyright nazis, while we were shooting some footage inside Luna Park, Sydney's harbourside fun park. Luna Park is open to the public, so you don't pay to get in. You pay to go on a ride, but not ... http://www.aggmedia.com/bancjournal/archives/23 I've been a little quiet here recently. We shot a bunch of material late last year and early this year, and we've been spending the last month or so prepping for the release on 14th May. So the last few months have just been editing, plot writing, and creating the ... http://www.aggmedia.com/bancjournal/archives/22 Our second shoot, or first production shoot, had to be cancelled a few weeks back, because one of the cast members was sick. So it has been a long 3 weeks waiting for yesterday to happen, our first real shoot. We shot the first two chapters and some additional footage to ... http://www.aggmedia.com/bancjournal/archives/21 One of the big problems with improvised dialogue and to a lesser extent improvised blocking, is the amount of footage you need to shoot in order to get a good pool of dialogue to work with while editing. And in order to actually use all the dialogue you want for ... http://www.aggmedia.com/bancjournal/archives/20 Yesterday was our first real shoot, another milestone. We spent the first hour improvising back stories, so while we already had certain backstory elements that were necessary for the plot, we let the players make up the rest, but through improvisation. They got to actually act out their backstories, which should ... http://www.aggmedia.com/bancjournal/archives/19 So our first rehearsal was a little shakey, with some people turning up late, and us having to change the structure of the rehearsal around the late arrivals. So it wasn't exactly the way we would have wished it to happen. However, it was fairly exciting to see our characters, our ... http://www.aggmedia.com/bancjournal/archives/18 Its been three weeks or so since the last post, but that doesn't mean we're standing still. Our first cast rehearsal is this weekend, amongst a whole bunch of other unrelated shows that a lot of us are doing. We'd originally planned two rehearsals, to flesh out the characters to a ... http://www.aggmedia.com/bancjournal/archives/17 We've started locking in rehearsal and shooting dates for the coming month. While the characters are mostly written, we do want the actors to tune their characters themselves to a certain degree, but because there's no script, there's no need for script rehearsal time. This leaves us with just a couple ... http://www.aggmedia.com/bancjournal/archives/16 As it turned out, we had pretty much a complete cast at the auditions, with several less interested people having other commitments, which made the selection process easier. We've now selected our main cast. In fact we had 6 players turn up, so we've decided to write in an extra ... http://www.aggmedia.com/bancjournal/archives/15 With the auditions coming up next Sunday, we spent much of the weekend reviewing the series story arc and individual episodes, double checking for hero's journey plot points, comedic rising action/risk/tension and character variation and compatability. We also wrote a lot of the character backstories, which won't be used in ... http://www.aggmedia.com/bancjournal/archives/14 We finally set an audition date, 9th July 2006. I also took a look at Neutrino, an improv group who perform a Harold style improv show, but shoot their improvised scenes to video out in the street, edit in camera, and rush the footage back to the live theatre audience for ... http://www.aggmedia.com/bancjournal/archives/13 In the last week we've been filling out more of the episode narratives, but going has slowed due to not having cast the major roles yet. Unlike traditional casting to fit a role, we're picking a cast which works together best, and slightly adapting the characters to suit their improvisation ... http://www.aggmedia.com/bancjournal/archives/12