Of Location Recces, Pt. 2, and Going Back to the Drawing Board: Resetting Gilly
In my blog entry “A Field Day For The BMPCC4K: Location Recces for Pillars and Gilly” from last month, I was already writing about the location recce that we did surrounding Crimdon and Hordon Beach in order to procure a location for the beach scenes in “The Pillars of Creation” and “The Tragic Case of Gilly O’Connor”.
And although “The Pillars of Creation” is already done location hunting (the benefit of a studio set shoot), “The Tragic Case of Gilly O’Connor” is still lacking locations for a house, a garden, and a hotel room.
Location Recce, Pt. 2: Brompton and Wynyard Hall
Thus, Chloe, Lynley and I went on another location recce already on 22 January. The itinerary of this day was to drive to the house of Chloe’s grandfather in Brompton and to capture some test shoots there before then venturing to see Wynyard Hall.
PLACEHOLDER EVIDENCE BROMPTON – PLEASE BEAR WITH ME UNTIL UPLOAD
Already upon arrival at Chloe’s grandfather’s house, it was obvious that this would be a very promising premise for at least the scenes that were to take place in front of the house. Not only our director Lynley was happy with the setup of the front garden and main entrance, but I was also positive that we could make this work. This first impression was furthermore fortified upon seeing the back garden, which seemed suitable for both a fairy tale in the style of The Chronicles of Narnia as well as a horror film.
PLACEHOLDER 2 EVIDENCE BROMPTON – PLEASE BEAR WITH ME UNTIL UPLOAD
Since especially the garden turned out to be a perfect fit for the sombre tone and mood that we wanted to go for, we settled for this location. This was further aided by the fact that the garden itself offered a lot of bushwork and hidden corners that would make it easier for us to re-create the demon’s POV shots that were essential for our production.
As such, we managed to take two script locations of our list by visiting one location. This also prevented any continuity errors compared to having separate locations for both front door and back garden. Thus, we lost no more time and ventured into visiting Wynyard Hall:
PLACEHOLDER EVIDENCE OF WYNYARD HALL – PLEASE BEAR WITH ME UNTIL UPLOAD
Although Wynyard Hall was a lovely location to behold, I immediately knew that this would not be our location for our short horror film: Firstly, it looked too posh for the story itself, causing more irritation for the audience than making the story more believable, and secondly, due to it being this prestigious, it was way too expensive for our budget. Whilst they would have been happy to let us film in their premises, their discounted price for a week’s worth of filming (which we would definitely require), would have landed us at £700.
So since Wynyard Hall turned out to be no option for us, we regrouped for lunch and sought for a different location to scout. As such, we found another manor house, Rushpool Hall.
PLACEHOLDER EVIDENCE RUSHPOOL HALL – PLEASE BEAR WITH ME UNTIL UPLOAD
And this hotel turned out to be the perfect fit for our script, both in tone and in the offered facilities. After a quick scout around the premises, we immediately enquired whether we would be allowed to film in there and possibly have a look at the hotel rooms as well. We not only received permission but also a lot of assistance and were even allowed into one of the hotel rooms that we would be booking. As such, we were also given preliminary permission to film in there until the manager filled out the official paperwork.
And to top it all off, we were even being told that we would be able to film in there for free; in return for credits. This was substantiated by the receptionist claiming that they had a lot of downtime during this time of the year being off-season for them and them having filmmakers filming in there regularly. Since this promise would have made our entire film shoot financially viable, Chloe agreed to sending over the paperwork immediately and await the manager’s response.
Things Don’t Always Turn Out As You Expect
However, on Saturday 8 February and less than two weeks before the commencement of principal photography that was set on 20 February, our permission to film at Rushpool Hall was retracted by the manager.
Thus, Chloe and I had to research more hotels in the North East and North Yorkshire area that would not only fit the brief and tone of our script, but would also still be affordable, and free during the time that we aimed to film for Gilly’s. Since everyone in our group was set to film on at least two productions, and since all three projects are ambitious in their own rights, we had a strict schedule across all three FMPs to guarantee that none would fall through the cracks.
As such, “The Tragic Case of Gilly O’Connor” could only ever be filmed until 15 March at the latest, as “The Pillars of Creation” were set to start principal photography on 16 March. Since the latter could neither be moved forwards nor backwards in time due to our collaboration with our Production Design student and the restrictions surrounding their hand-ins, it was obvious that “The Tragic Case of Gilly O’Connor” would either have to be filmed until then, or alternatively during the Easter break.
However, this turned out to be quite a challenge as the limited amount of time (and the subsequent rise in hotel prices, even the reduced ones) forced us to limit our search to local resources. This was further amplified by the fact that travel costs and/or overnight stays for cast and crew in other areas – even if we limited everything to the most basic standard and looked at dorm rooms in hostels for ourselves – would have blown up our budget.
So after half a day of research, we mostly found hotels, hostels, or manors that were either way beyond our budget or did not look the part of what we needed at all. After some more research, we just about managed to limit our results to three hotels that would somewhat fit. However, after Chloe approached them, it quickly turned out that they either were not able to give us a reduction, or allow us to film with them in general.
How to Save a Project: The Big Script Rewrite
This caused us to run into a major problem:
Our script at that point consisted of 27 pages: Equalling 27 minutes of film if formatted according to industry standards. 17 minutes of them would take place in the hotel alone. And 17 pages of script aren’t shot in less than a week, at least not on a student production.
Furthermore, since we could neither procure a befitting hotel(room), nor have enough budget to mock one up that was convincing enough, it became quickly obvious that in order to make Gilly’s feasible, we would either be looking into a replacement location for the hotel scenes, or we would require a complete rewrite of the script to make it work.
Informing Lynley of the issue, it was decided that a relocation of the action itself would make several plot points and characters – such as the bellboy Tom – completely obsolete. Since this posed to be a continuing problem that spawned only more problems the more we thought about it, I proposed a drastic measure:
Kill all the hotel scenes and have Gilly instead be sent to the Void directly, having to fight in there in order to get herself and the kid out.
Whilst this would kill a lot of the initial story, I proposed that this story could be replaced by a competition or game of riddles between her and the demon instead; much like the chess match between the knight Antonius Block and Death in Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal” (1957).
The main plot idea would then have fashioned the demon as a lonely and bored character that toys with the main character Gilly in order to be entertained, and furthermore, to be able to Gilly as a hostage, should she lose the games against him.
Lynley agreed to this idea and since we were running out of time, she immediately started the rewrite to be handed out after the weekend.
So far so good, right? Well, we are not quite there yet.
Back to the Drawing Boards: Checking on Cinematic Style and Storyboards
Since we were essentially taking a step back to the very first steps of film pre-production with this film, most of what we prepared for our production – including the genre considerations, colour template and storyboard as well as filming style – had to revisited at least, if not completely rejigged in order to ensure that they were still matching the new story.
As such, I had to go back to the drawing board and reconsider my creative decisions and applications on top of re-actualising the lighting that I had conceived up until this point.
Luckily, revisiting some of my previous research and references as well as colour palettes, I realised that they were still topical. This held especially true for the film Gone Girl but also for the TV series Stranger Things. As such, and after conducting some additional lighting tests for the Void on Wednesday to ensure that we can pull off the lighting scenario, especially with the scene where the demon introduces himself by emerging from the shadows.
However, the same did not hold true for the storyboard and shot lists. Since more than half the story changed, it was obvious that our storyboard had to change along with it. However, since we only had a very limited amount of time left after the involuntary re-jig, Lynley and I took Hannah as our camera operator on board. This was done to help speed up the conception, drawing, and decision-making process in general, including a quicker means of assessing whether the shots that we wanted to include were doable by her.
Furthermore, and because of this reason, we decided that Hannah as camera operator would take care of devising the shot list for this project. This not only helped her in wrapping her head around the exact workflow of each shooting day, it also freed up more time on my end in order to ensure that all the required equipment was available, ready, and in working order for principal photography, and that pre-production for “The Pillars of Creation” could still happen despite the hick-up.
So in order to conceive a new storyboard to go along the new script, I was tasked to put everything from page 12 onwards to the end of the scene into a new storyboard. Following that, Lynley, Hannah and I scheduled two more meetings to discuss the new storyboard, the individual shots and the shot order. At last, our combined storyboard looked like this:
With the layout of my contributed shots looking like this:
Looks like a pretty good turn-around for such a tremendous setback, doesn’t it? Let’s just hope that this was the last unwanted surprise for this project.
References:
Bergman, I. (1957) The Seventh Seal. [DVD] Svensk Filmindustri (SF): Sweden. Image taken from: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050976/mediaviewer/rm3589845504 [Accessed on 15 February 2020].
Fincher, D. (2014) Gone Girl. [DVD] USA: Twentieth Century Fox et.al. Available at: https://film-grab.com/2015/02/13/gone-girl/ [Accessed on 15 February 2020].
Flear Films. (2020) Quick Test | Black Blanket Shadow Test. [online] Available at: https://youtu.be/m7B3W_djS_Q[Accessed on 15 February 2020].
Hartle, S. (2020) A Field Day For The BMPCC4K: Location Recces For Pillars and Gilly. [online] Available at: https://sveahartle.wixsite.com/sveaexmachina/single-post/2020/01/12/A-Field-Day-For-The-BMPCC4K-Location-Recces-For-Pillars-and-Gilly [Accessed on 15 February 2020].
Rushpool Hall. (2020) Homepage. [online] Available at: https://rushpoolhallhotel.co.uk [Accessed on 15 February 2020].
Stranger Things [Netflix] 15 July 2016. Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4574334/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 [Accessed on 15 February 2020].
Wynyard Hall. (2020) Homepage. [online] Available at: https://www.wynyardhall.co.uk [Accessed on 15 February 2020].