Single Camera Production: Technical Deceit

Pre-Production
     The first essential thing we had to secure for the film was a location. The film centres around a theatre, but we needed somewhere that also had a suitable lighting rig that we would be able to use. I had approached The Garage (a theatre and arts centre based in Norwich) in January with the film concept - before the project had even been given the go-ahead. After some slight script adjustments, serious negotiations around health and safety and several re-structured production schedules, we got permission to shoot Technical Deceit over two days - the 25th and 27th of April 2016.
     I was then tasked with finding cast, as unlike some other groups none of us wanted a large role in the film. This was mainly conducted online through Facebook - finding friends of a friend - and by the Garage themselves promoting the opportunity to their drama students. As a group we chose Isaac Wright (15) to star as 'Dave', Bethany Lain (17) as journalist Kate Hamilton, and James Amey (22) as theatre director Damien Blake. I also cast Jordan Bushby and Connor Stevenson-Wright as the Macbeth actors, Adam Hunter as the voice of Damien's mysterious contact, Reuben Convery and myself as TV news anchors, and Robert as a cleaner.
     Meanwhile, Robert was made Director of Photography and began constructing a shot list and storyboard. This included management of the newsroom scene, which had to be shot prior to filming starting at the Garage. Alex arranged for and made props, and some costume where necessary. I gathered some lighting equipment from a local school to be used as props also.

Production
     Day 1 of production meant first meeting in Norwich, and collecting equipment from the Trett Films offices. Our first shots were up on and around the lighting rig itself - one of the only shots filmed in order was the opening shot (another was actually the closing shot which was admittedly filmed more as an after thought). For this whole day of shooting, we only required two of our actors so we shot all the scenes only involving Isaac and James. Alex acted as sound recordist for this day of shooting, whilst Robert and I remained in our roles as DoP and Director, with all of us taking a join role in production management to ensure it ran smoothly.
     ...It didn't! As with any production, things occurred which we weren't fully expecting, and some scenes took much longer to film than we were expecting. The main consequence of this was having far more that we needed to film on the second day, so for Day 2 of production we split our small team into two units. On the day off between days of shooting, Robert and I discussed at length what else was necessary to ensure we could produce a full film. We colour coded much of the shot list into categories of "completed", everything we were happy with from day 1, "essential", shots we had missed from scenes on day 1 and everything absolutely required for the edit, and "if possible", all shots that fitted neither previous category.
     Day 2: Robert headed up Unit B, working with our tutor and filmmaker Josh Trett and Isaac to shoot all the required shots in the theatre control room. Simultaneously, I ran Unit A. This was a larger group consisting of Bethany, James, Jordan, Connor and Alex. Connor was also a member of our college course at East Norfolk, so he was able to help considerably when not on screen himself. Robert and I therefore shared the roles of Director and DoP for each of our units. This process allowed us to get nearly every single shot that was on the shot list, importantly everything that was considered "essential", and some of the "if possible" shots too. Some small scenes - marked as "if possible" - were completely neglected due to the small amount of time we had to film.
     Over the two days, Technical Deceit took eighteen and a half hours in production.

Post-Production
     The scenes were divided up between the three of us for editing, Robert, Alex and I. Robert and Alex completed the first half between them, and I completed the second half as I had the ability to also edit at home - this included what is now the montage sequence and the final two scenes. The assembly process took the best part of a month, as we were still working on other projects and evaluation work for the course. Alex left the project at the end of May when we submitted a very early draft for assessment for the course. Robert and I, still unhappy with how the film looked, chose to continue work in our own time.
     The main issue we took with the first cut was the pacing. Honestly, it was boring. We started hacking away at the second scene, losing over a minute of dialogue. A lot of the first scene was scrapped, and the music edited to be faster to allow for the jump cuts. Then the montage sequence was made a lot quicker, and another section of dialogue towards the end also scrapped. With that dialogue went some of the final scene - we chose to make the character of Damien more ambiguous and suspicious at the end rather than showing his innocence as the script intended. The end credits were also made snappier.
     With an Offline edit we were happy with, we began the Online. Robert's expertise in editing is with colour grading and stabilisation so he began work on that. We had chose to try and replicate the style of Netflix drama series House of Cards in our cinematography and this is where it really started to appear. I also began work on the sound design and levelling which, for a script with not much dialogue, was quite difficult. The end result was finally published on the 18th July 2016 - 82 days after wrapping production.

Evaluation
      We could have worked for months more on Technical Deceit before I was completely happy with it, but that wasn't realistic given the time I had already put into it. Looking back on our scene recreation of Above the Fold, which was the first thing I had taken an individual active role in directing, I think I have improved.
     The cinematography of Technical Deceit is something I am equally happy about and unhappy about. I think the look of the overall film I had envisioned was realised to an extent in the final product, but not as consistently as I would have liked. The shot variation is interesting, 180 rule remains unbroken, and the framing is mostly good. I'd have liked to include some more dynamic shots to really amplify the House of Cards look into the film, but those shots take time to set up and were often sacrificed for the sake of just having something done. Being low on time also meant we sometimes ended up forgetting the basics, in this case too frequently shots appeared under-exposed and the process of trying to fix this has damaged the quality of the overall film. This wasn't helped by the fact we had incredibly limited lighting equipment, and relied so heavily on what was already available within the Garage.
     In terms of sound, I think I learnt a lot from the Above the Fold scene recreation task, and consistently ensured as a director that it was well placed. There was some necessary levelling to do in post, but this was largely due to how wide the shot was that changed how close the microphone could be to the subject. Frustratingly, the one thing I forgot to do was record an ambience track in the theatre; things like the humming of the air conditioning and buzzing of lights that you don't tend to notice in person are heightened by the recorder. The last scene was the only one really affected by this, as I was able to hide it in other scenes with music and ambience tracks from online.
     In the end, everyone we asked seemed to enjoy watching the film, and would ask us questions about whether Damien really had been breaking the law or not, and what happened to Dave immediately after?