Little Low, Little High

 There's a high-quality Where's Wally poster on the ceiling of my dentist's office. Unfortunately Wally himself stands waving at you virtually in the middle, where your eyeliner naturally drifts to - a shame because I could have done with some kind of entertainment during my hour long appointment. Today was the day we prepped me for braces. I was in store for was a two stage process, first was attaching blobs of glue to my teeth and second was shaving the gaps in between some of my crowding spots. The latter was easily worse as they used what felt like a tiny bow saw to sand in between the gaps of my teeth. The dentist kept asking his assistant for suction to hoover up and liquids in my mouth, at first I thought I was just over-salivating to cope with the pain but then I started tasting iron. Once the procedure had concluded I glanced over to the dentist's tiny tool table to find that it was splattered with blood... All in the name of progress though I guess. I have the very first tray in now ready to endure my first night wearing it. They say the first 3 days are the very worst but so far they haven't been too uncomfortable.

It was also unfortunate timing because I feel like I'm coming down with a slight cold so my face is in a fair amount of pain in general at the moment. What I really didn't expect though was a phonecall from the director of the show I was just on calling to tell me how my short film blew his mind. I could barely get a word in edgeways as he was stumbling over himself complimenting my work, I find it hard to take praise on a normal day but this left me blindsided in the best possible way. He very sincerely suggested I enter it into festivals and should consider going into directing! Whenever I felt particularly rough today I reminded myself of that phonecall and that put the smile back on my face.

Nice Words

I submitted all of the short films for the competition at work and I shared it with a few friends and I'm already bowled over by the responses. Even the script editor messaged me out of the blue to drop me a nice message about it which I'm chuffed to pieces with. It makes the whole endeavour worthwhile knowing that people enjoy your work like that.

I was so busy writing about my short film yesterday that I forgot to mention that I've started my next gig! A nice long one that's super local to me which is always handy. Starting work with a familiar team so it already feels like a homecoming. Relearning all the Production steps is tricky after moving away from Script Supervising, it kinda feels like remembering a dance I saw in a dream once. It's mostly all there but I just need to do the steps a little longer before I'm fully in the swing of things.

No Show

Once upon a time, this blog used to be a secondary platform to drum up hype for upcoming Cafe Studios projects. Today I have the privilege of rekindling that purpose by unveiling our latest short film, No Show.

 

You can check it out here! 

It's Kyle's Birthday! He's got the snacks, the decorations and the hottest new video game to share with friends... But will anyone actually turn up? 

No Show was a real labour of love, shot by Rebecca and me over a couple days for a short film competition going on at work. Aside from ensuring my arm was never in shot, my greatest challenge with this one was crafting the end sequence which is meant to highlight the connection between ourselves, a video game controller and the screen. That interplay was really exciting for me to craft in the edit and I wanted to try and do it justice because alI genuinely feel that film and TV still have never quite managed to explore that space.

Special thanks go out to my Mum who helped bring our main character to life by crafting the puppet and his dapper party hat. Shout out also goes out to Mark Stopher for lending me the old Cafe Studios camera and providing tech support for the other side of a telephone.

Thanks in advance for checking it out, hope it's a nice surprise to see another lil film on the old Cafe Studios channel.

Film Festival Admin

I chained myself to my PC to finish up the edit on my short film, having only a short break to go do a dog walk with some friends after lunch. I tapped the mud off my wellies, then it was back to it but I'm happy to say it's all done and dusted! I did half forget that I'm also arranging all the data wrangling, uploading and presenting side of things for the film festival so after finishing my film I had to get on top of compiling everyone else's. That took a bit more time than I had expected so my short isn't quite ready for my grand, public reveal (which will be the first Cafe Studios video in over a decade!) That will come very soon indeed so stay tuned.

The only other thing I sorted today was repackaging my production rucksack. I dusted it off and crammed in all of my beloved stationery so it's ready to decorate my desk once more. I thought I'd be experiencing a full on identity crisis at this point but I actually feel more comfortable in my skin than I've ever felt.

Sacrificial Saturday

Sacrificed a most of my Saturday to continue trimming down and reshooting patches of my short film. Bless Rebecca, she was very patient and helpful being my camera assistant once again. I daresay she got the hang of it after learning how to rack focus between two subjects - somebody get her a day rate. 

The deadline for film submission is tomorrow evening so I'll continue scrambling to get it done in time. I've always needed a dose of time pressure to motivate me but it's already in a pretty good place - I've got to kill a few more of my babies and time cuts to my soundtrack a bit more, all manageable within my timeframe. Here a little behind the scenes picture for a few weeks back - full video hopefully here tomorrow or the day after!

 

Warm Wishes and Early Leavers

That's a wrap for me in this one! 149 shoot days of being an Assistant Script Supervisor and what a ride it has been - from the balmy heights of Summer to the freezing dead of Winter, I have seen it all. I endured it all alongside a stellar crew of immensely talented and resilient people. A couple of them I wanted to give thanks to - the best way I could think of was through bottles of wine and kind words. When they announced all the people that were leaving today my name was in the mix and I got a big applause from the gang followed by more hugs than I knew what to do with. I felt extremely loved and lucky in that moment, after starting this job feeling like an imposter I finally felt accepted and that I belonged. The show runner passed on a special present with a very thoughtful card inside, another one for my growing collection of correspondence of thanks. 

I dropped the mic, now I'm off onto pastures green. My new gig starts on Monday but my memories of this one will endure for a long, long time.

Ext. One More Time

This final block has been characterised by long stints of cold, outdoor work - something we've been avoiding a lot recently but old habits die hard. It's turns out that filming in a woodland, at night, in Winter can be marginally chilly and uncomfortable. But we powered on through like we always do, leaning on eachother for laughs and support. This marks my final big location day on set and I will miss it all in my own way. Being back in the office is naturally easy breezy, but the bonds forged in the dead of cold last all the longer.