Sunday, 20 of May of 2012
A blog for all things Lacuna, by Graham Guy and the other members of the team
Just a quick post to say that we are casting for Isabelle right now through all the usual routes. If you are interested in any of the roles then please contact us at the address on the page below or through one of our casting calls.
UPDATE (27-Mar-2011): We are starting to look through the applicants now, and will make our first selections within the week. You will be contacted soon if you applied and are selected for audition.
As a spin-off from our Lacuna (Net)works meetings in Westminster, and following on from some requests we are putting together a plan for a meeting specifically for writers. Details are not firm yet, but we will probably start with a semi-formal meeting in a pub and see how it goes.
Right at the moment we still don’t know what sort of take-up this is likely to have, so if you are interested please drop us a line or comment on here and let us know. The location will be somewhere in central London, preferably with a similar vibe to the Red Lion.
The reason I haven’t been posting on here for the last month or two is that I’ve been working on a book. Through the Square Window is my first attempt at a novel, and features Detective Peter French, a character I hope to return to in future projects. For this first one though he is faced with a series of murders and a couple of very obvious suspects, but he soon realises that he may not have seen things as they really are.
Through the Square Window is available now on the Kindle platform. Search for “Through the Square Window” on Amazon UK or Amazon US, or you can click on the cover photo above that links to the Amazon UK store.
Hope you like it.
Graham.
At first sight, this is one of those things that really doesn’t deserve comment. Upgrading the hard disk on a Mac is notoriously easy, and with even basic skills with a screwdriver you can usually complete the process in a couple of hours (depending on how much data you have on your computer). But this time it was far from straightforward, and the problem was so weird that I thought it would be useful to post about it here in case anyone else has the problem.
Fundamentally, upgrading a Mac hard disk is as simple as copying the contents of the existing drive onto a newer larger unit and then swapping them over. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to make my duplicates, but you can also use Super Duper or any other copy utility that guarantees to make a bootable copy of your drive. Plug the new drive into an external USB or FireWire housing and start the copy running. For a 250GB drive it will take anything up to about four hours to copy (particularly if you have lots of small files) and so start it running and watch a film. Or two.
Once the copy has completed, shut down your Mac and disconnect the power. Flip it over, and then depending on the model you open the case or remove the battery to get access to the existing drive. Carefully remove the mounting screws and even more carefully disconnect the cable from the drive. This is very fragile… I’ll say that again… this is VERY fragile, so be careful. And if you break it, it’s your fault, not mine. You have been warned. Lift out the old drive, insert the new one, replace all the mounting screws, close the case or re-insert the battery and turn your Mac the right way up again.
Switch it on. The first time you do switch the computer on it may well take a long time to start up. This is because it is looking for the old drive and has to wait until it times out before looking for the next one, but after a while it will boot up as normal. Then, to prevent that delay every time, go into system preferences, select Startup Disk, and choose the new disk as the drive to use to boot. Click Restart, and wait for your Mac to shut down and start up again.
And that is all there should be to it. Simple.
Except this time that was not where it ended. After doing all that I found that my Mac would freeze for 30-60 seconds at random intervals. It was as if the computer was having to wait for the drive to start or to catch up in some way. I fiddled around for ages with various settings, and eventually gave up and replaced the old drive. In case it was a faulty unit I had fitted I tried again with two other 500GB drives, but they both had the same problem. The original 250GB drive was fine, but whatever else I used would show this intermittent freezing problem.
So I started searching the web. And searching. And searching. I found a few posts from people saying that this was always caused by a faulty replacement drive, but since I had tried three separate ones from different manufacturers I thought that unlikely. So I kept on searching.
And then eventually I found reference to a slowly emerging problem with the SATA interface speed. You may or may not know that SATA hard disks can communicate with the computer at two speeds, the standard 1.5Gb/s and the newer 3Gb/s. In almost all cases 1.5Gb/s is fast enough as the data cannot come off the disk itself any quicker than that, but newer drives all have the capability of operating at the faster interface speed. Some SSD devices can work take advantage of the 3Gb/s transfer rate, but they are still relatively rare.
When the mid-2009 15″ MacBook Pro was shipped Apple did not think that the computer was capable of operating at the faster SATA speed, and so in the EFI firmware – the hardware-controlling layer of software – the speed was deliberately limited to 1.5Gb/s. But a patch, a firmware upgrade, issued late 2009 added the capability for the laptop to use the faster 3Gb/s interface speed. However, this did not make the hardware any more capable, it just told it that it could be used, giving the laptop the ability to switch to a speed that would never work.
But at that point the computer continued to work fine, and this is because of another little-known fact, and that is that Apple factory-fit hard disks are themselves locked so they can only operate at 1.5Gb/s. So with the disk only telling the laptop it could work at the slower speed the logic board never selected the faster speed and normal operation continued.
Step forward a few months however to the point where I tried to upgrade my drive, and all of the larger units I had were fully capable of working at 1.5Gb/s or the faster 3Gb/s. Put them in the computer and they tell the logic board their capabilities, and the next time a large data block is requested it tries to deliver it at the fast speed. But the logic board cannot accept it, and so the computer freezes, waiting for the operation to time out. Once it has failed the system automatically steps the speed down, and completes the transfer.
Brilliant. So an Apple-supplied EFI patch does not function on the hardware it was delivered to.
The firmware version that caused the problems was EFI v1.7, but v1.6 was the one locked to the lower speed and that one reputedly worked fine. Unfortunately Apple do not support any downgrades of firmware on any platform. The official ‘fix’ for this is to replace the logic board, something that with the laptop being out of warranty would be very expensive.
But then I found that there was an unofficial patch. Whether it was leaked from Apple or reverse-engineered by someone else was unclear, but a tool is available that can create a firmware downgrader from v1.7 to v1.6. It was not simple to set up as there were no instructions apart from a single post on MacRumours (that was apparently translated from Russian, via Polish, into English), and so getting it working was part dark-arts, and part guesswork, but eventually I hit on the right combination of things and got it working.
I zapped the EFI, restarted the Mac… and it worked.
So I now have a 3rd party 500GB hard disk in the laptop (I’ll boost that to 1TB over the weekend) and it all appears to be working fine.
The problem appears only on the 13″ and 15″ MacBook Pro Unibody early and mid-2009 versions. The 17″ does not exhibit this problem, nor (I am told) does the normal MacBook. I can say from experience that the older white MacBook 13″ does not have this issue either. If you do find yourself stuck with this problem and you want to downgrade your Mac from v1.7 to v1.6 firmware drop me a line and I will point you in the direction of the instructions and the files you will need. But only do it if you are confident in what you’re doing and are willing to take the risk, as it is possible that if it goes wrong it may turn your Mac into a shiny laptop-shaped paperweight with no actual function. You have been warned.
Graham
Keen-eyed readers will have noticed a dearth of posts on here the last couple of weeks. This has not been through want of trying, but because I have been too busy overcoming production hurdles on the next segment of The Cobra Lily that we were due to shoot this Friday.
Yes… I said “due to shoot”… but more of that in a minute.
Firstly, what I wanted to talk about was a near show-stopping mistake that I made a few weeks ago. I assumed. I made an assumption that could have stopped us having anywhere to shoot. Let me give you some background…
The shoot needs a wooded location with a building of some sorts, preferably ancient. There are a few such locations near where I live, but knowing they are notoriously difficult to get shooting permission there I approached a few woodland organisations in the south east, including the Forestry Commission. I have used them on a number of occasions before and found them to be hugely helpful and extremely cheap so it seemed a sensible choice.
After a couple of days they replied and offered me the Bedgebury Pinetum as a shooting location. I went on a scouting trip and found it to be pretty suitable. For winter shooting anyway as it tends to fill up in the summer with mountain bikers, but as the shoot was supposed to be this Friday (26th Nov) that would be not much of a problem. I contacted them, said it looked good, and asked them what they needed next.
They didn’t immediately reply, but that was no problem I thought, as I have dealt with them before. The daily rate had been about £75, and the only instruction they had given us was “Don’t chop down too many trees”, so I thought they were pretty easy going.
But then, with seven days to go, I got another email from them saying they were pleased that I liked the place, and to see the schedule of charges. I opened the email, read the attachment, and considered (only considered, mind) fainting.
They wanted over £2000 to shoot there. Per day.
This was of course ridiculous, and on its own was about three times the budget for the whole segment, and I had to say “Thanks, but no thanks.” Bizarrely their PR manager then wrote back and said he understood, and that he had forgot to mention that the sawmill (the barn, that was the whole point of using the place) was out of bounds anyway as there were bats nesting there.
Disaster after disaster.
So what went wrong? The main thing was that I forgot to insist on a price break-down up front, assuming that the price I had paid before (£75 per day) was representative. The other thing was that I had clearly not explained our budget model to the Forestry Commission clearly enough, although I thought I had been fairly plain. Had he understood us at all he would have known that £2k was way in excess of our budget for this and not suggested the place in the first place.
I cannot take any responsibility for the bats, however!
I spent the next few days sorting out a new location for the shoot and actually managed to find something suitable. But then came my next mistake.
A key cast member pulled out of the shoot with only four days to go.
Now I can hear you all asking… “Why is that your fault?” Well, let me tell you. I believed that the person in question was fully committed to the shoot and left it to the last minute to get the contracts signed. So, with no contract in place I had no recourse to respond, no way to insist they fulfil their – albeit perceived – obligation. That left me with four days to the shoot day, and so I had no option but to cancel (or at least postpone) the shoot.
So, to summarize, things I learned this week:
We live. We learn. We get better. Next week will be fun.
Graham
You see this question everywhere on the internet and on the forums in various guises. Invariably it is from someone with a camcorder who wants to know the ‘trick’ to shooting a short and having it look like it was shot on high-end 35mm film. There seems to be an assumption from those that have never tried it that you can take a cheap consumer handheld camera and with the application of some sort of magic make the footage look as though it was shot on a high-end professional 35mm camera rig.
And the funny thing is that you sort of can. Of course no amount of wizardry that you can do in post will turn cheap HDV camera footage into something you can project onto a seventy foot screen without noticing the problems, but you can make your footage look more filmic by having a good eye for the details.
Home movies look like home movies because the person in charge of the camera generally picks it up and points it at whatever is in front of them. Films look like films however because huge budgets are spent on making the sets look right and getting the lighting just about perfect before anyone ever goes near a camera. And whilst the average filmmaker who is working out how to save money and not hire a 35mm camera and crew is unlikely to have a spare $10M in the budget to spend on set dressing, there are some things you can do for low cost to take things in the right direction.
Sets… Spending time getting your set right can make a huge impact on your audience. Attention to detail in the background can give your characters depth and a back-story without having to write a single line of dialogue. Imagine a scene where a student goes to see his lecturer for an after-hours consultation. This could easily be shot in an empty classroom or office but what would that tell us about the lecturer beyond the obvious? Instead, put your actor in a room filled with books a lecturer might read. He is supposed to be a lecturer in physics, so maths, physics, and engineering are obvious choices. But what about throwing in one called “Undetectable poisons” somewhere the camera will see it as the student arrives. Or “Unsolved Serial Murderers”. It would suggest that maybe there is more to the lecturer than meets the eye without either character saying anything at all.
Lighting… There is a thing called Dynamic Range, which is a measure of the difference from the darkest area of a scene to the lightest that a camera can record without resorting to everything being black or burned out. Good high-end cameras have a wide dynamic range that allows them to see deep into shadows and still resolve detail in the highlights, but even the best camera will still need some lighting thrown into in areas of deep shadow in order to resolve detail. It is not just for fun that large movies use large lights and lots of them. In your own low-budget productions you won’t be using the same sort of lighting as Hollywood does, but do invest in some small units, some reflectors, and learn how to use them (we will do an article on this soon). This will help you avoid those dreaded half-face shots, where your actor is illuminated from one side and so that side of their face is bright while the other is black. Use lighting to paint a picture that enhances your story; don’t leave it to chance.
Costumes… In the same way that sets are important to develop an emotion, so are costumes. Plan your costumes out to emphasise character traits. Is your character tarty? Conservative? Posh? Use the costume to express this, again without a single word being said.
Actors… Sorry, but your friends cannot act. Well, your particular friends may be able to act, but in general this is not the case. When casting your film choose people that suit the characters and that know how to portray them, rather than just choosing your mate because you promised him/her a role when you finally got around to filming something. Finding the right people is something that takes time and care, but if you get it right your characters will leap off the screen and come to life right in front of the audience.
So how do you make footage you shot on a camcorder look like film? You don’t. But you can make it look like a film by treating it like one before and during shooting. And that is what people really mean when they ask the question.
They just don’t always realise it.
Graham
One of the major costs in any film, whether studio or independent, can be driven by the locations used. Choosing the wrong location can cause the budget to escalate out of control in many ways. Administrative fees, permissions, insurance, transport, even time can all be affected by picking a site that looks good on paper but that adds little or no value to the finished film.
So what do you have to do to your project to ensure this doesn’t kill it before it starts?
Start with the script. Ensure that whoever is writing it knows that whilst it may be exciting to pick iconic buildings and tourist spots around London as primary shooting locations, the practicalities of filming there may well make the cost prohibitive. For shoots in public areas of cities or large towns local councils can charge high administrative fees for deciding if you can film or not, regardless of their eventual decision. Remote and wild locations can double the costs of a low budget production purely on logistics and accommodation. And picking a large number of cheap locations may look good on paper but will add considerably to your overall shooting time because of all the transfers.
Reducing things to the minimum might sound like you will be damaging your film, cheapening it in some way, but that does not have to be the case. The most important element of a low budget film is almost always the script and dialogue anyway, and so removing distractions of complicated location-specific shots allows the audience to become more involved in what the characters are saying.
Remember these things early on, preferably whilst still writing the script, and you will be amazed at how many savings you can make on your budget.
Graham
There are many ways to get started on your film. You can write a script, or get someone else to write one for you. You can base it on an original idea, or (with permission) can base it on an existing work such as a book or play. But however you start your project the first question you need to ask is “Am I intending this film to be commercial?”, and this fundamental question is one that is so often missed.
Film is art. So in one aspect it is true to say that the old expression “art is never wrong” can apply to film just as well as to a painting. But the difference is that in order to sell a painting you have to find one other person – ideally one with money – who likes it, but to sell a film you need to find thousands. Your film needs to have a degree of mass-market appeal, even if the market is genre specific or specialist, and this is something that needs to be thought about at the script stage rather than the marketing. Knowing your audience in advance is crucial to the project’ success, and yet filmmakers seem to often end up finishing their project and taking it on to distribution, only to find that no-one wants to watch it.
Once you have found your audience, you then need to work out your budget. First start by estimating the return expected from your audience predictions; that will tell you the gross amount your film will potentially make. From that deduct the cost of distribution, marketing, duplication, fees, and anything else you can think of that may cost you money after the film is finished, and what remains is the total budget you have to make your film.
It doesn’t look like much, does it? Right now you are probably thinking that you can’t make a film for that little, film budgets should be in the millions, not the thousands.
But actually you probably can. You may need to revise your script a bit and reign in your ambitions for special effects, but you can make a film for far less than you might think, and still have it look good enough to pass as a much higher budget. Choice of camera, locations, a small cast, all help to bring the budget under control, and over the next few weeks I want to look at ways to make this work.
Graham
No matter how you look at it, the budgets for most major Hollywood productions are huge. Not just huge in the sense of “that could take a while to raise”, but huge in the sense that California is huge. Tens or hundreds of millions are spent on productions that leave you wondering if there was a point, and sales have to be measured in terms of GNP in order for the films to return a profit. But is that the way it has to be? Do films have to cost as much as a hospital, and if they do then how do we make sure that they return sufficient money so as to at least break even after the first year?
I have made just a couple of films (well one is complete and the other is in post-production at the time of writing this article), so I cannot at this stage be considered any kind of expert in the subject. My experience is necessarily limited, and so I can only have an external view on the film making process.
Or can I?
What I lack in direct film making experience I make up for in project management, engineering, photography, design… you get the idea. Film production is not substantively different to project management when you boil it down to the essence, and when you include all the other elements of my background you have something which closely resembles the experience set of many producers with significant track records in the industry. I may not be able to say that I have worked with Tom Cruise, but I can say that I have managed multi-million pound projects across multi-national teams, developed creative solutions to non-traditional problems, and handled board room meetings as tense as any studio grilling session.
But all of those have a number of things in common:
Translate that into the film world and you have:
… and the most contentious…
Over the next few weeks I want to start looking at these – and other – ways to make great films on small budgets. Some of the ideas will no doubt be variations on things that you will already have seen out there. Some of the ideas will make you stop and think. Some may even seem completely insane. But hopefully they will at least get you considering the idea that good films do not need Hollywood budgets.
Graham
Over the last few months, we at The Lacuna Works have started to create content for various web sites and publications, and it is about time we started to collect it all together into one place. I did consider creating a space on our own web site thelacunaworks.co.uk for this, but the benefits of having it as part of the general blogosphere outweighed the benefits of having it all under our own control.
So here we are, right at the start of something new for us. I hope you find the articles we post here useful, interesting, or even amusing.
Graham.