This post goes into a reviw of the entire process of producing a book trailer inspired on the famous cult horror book "Ring" by Koji Suzuki.
Pre-production
As soon as the brief was introduced to us my Director, Deborah, already had an idea of what genre she wanted to focus on. This being horror. And me not ever having done horror, much less watch it, was actually quite excited to do it if it were at all possible.
A few days in, she decided that the "Ring" was the book she wanted to do and we sat down and started discussing the scenes that we could properly recreate.
We dabbled quite a bit and I found he notion of the location we used, respective mise en scene and the actors' physical appearance was vital to the proper portrayal of the scenes since the time period it focused was in Japan in 1990. So from a producer's point of view, I was very excited to bring it all to life.
The finding of the location was fairly easy, since a couple of my friends have a rented house 5 minutes from university and I knew that the house could work to our advantage and that they wouldn't mind us to film there. So both scenes were shot hours apart, in the living room and kitchen areas of said house.
With finding actors, that took the longest, because the original idea was to find Japanese actors that could actually speak Japanese fluently enough so that our book trailer would completely embody Japan in the '90s.
But after much consideration on my part, I decided that for this project it wouldn't be possible to find an unpaid professional Japanese speaking actor and actress so I just focused on finding Asian performers.
That's when I came across Amba, she's originally from Nepal and both me and Deborah felt like she would physically fit the role we intended to create as well as being the most professional actress I could find.
Then Anthony, came along shortly after, being originally from Korea and having a good show reel was what made it a 'no brainer', on the decision to cast him as Asakawa.
After this, the crew was assembled and then the hunt (and request!) of equipment was underway!
I started booking the equipment quite ahead of time so I knew we would have it by the time we needed to pick it up by. It took two round trips by car to transport the whole of the lighting and dolly track equipment to the location minus the sound and camera equipment that each individual crew member would then bring.
Production
On the day of the shoot, 15th December, I arrived at the location after 2pm and my Director and Gaffer were already there. I went over the shot list and schedule with Deborah and I was going to pick up Anthony shortly after that.
Right before I left, Mariam and Sid finally arrived so I just proceeded to organize and brief everyone on what scene needed to be shot first and they were setting up the equipment whilst I went to meet with Anthony at Costa Coffee Shop next to Hendon Central Station.
When we arrived, Anthony was introduced to the crew and he quickly changed to his suit and Deborah started to brief him on the scene that was under way.
I was not only in charge of keeping everyone in order but I also functioned in the roles of location manager, since I had to be mindful of my crew not bothering or damaging anything in the house as well as keeping the tenants of the house happy by checking him on them regularly; 1st AD, since I was filling out camera reports for every single shot as well as keeping everyone on line for each shot and also as a Runner, because I dabbled a bit in helping with the lighting set up and also when Deborah or any one from the cast and crew needed something since I had my hands free when we weren't recording.
The crew got along really well with one and other and it was a quite enjoyable and fun shoot, to be honest. We worked well together and understood each others point of views and opinions without any egos being involved. It was my first time working with Sid and I have to say he surprised in the best way, not only as a DoP but as a person by being very fun and friendly. Same to Mariam whom would, in between takes, record with the spare Canon 650D that I had taken out to be used to take production stills, Anthony and the rest of us whilst actively doing our jobs in a comedic documentary style which was hilarious!
So, after Anthony's scene was finished me and Deborah paid him for his transportation costs and I took him to the bus stop. When I returned, the agreed was that he crew would shoot the inserts that we needed to get covered whilst I would go and pick up Amba from the coffee shop as well.
The inserts can be seen below:
When we came back, the inserts were nearly all done and I helped Amba to change into her clothes and brief her for her upcoming scene.
Out of all of the things during the shoot, the lighting was the most important thing to get right as to give the moody, scary environment we wanted to portray. So Sid, Alex, me and Deborah worked quite a lot for the lights to be as low as possible as to still give a clear defined look to Amba's features.
We first positioned a redhead light outside of the window as to further intensify the natural moonlight that came in.
Firstly, Alex used a blue gel to give that evening glow but after various attempts of working with the gel, it looked too much like the scene was set under the ocean and that Ariel would pop in, any minute! So the idea was ditched and we just used diffusers. Then we positioned a softbox on the side to work as a key light on Amba and a third light on the other side to fill in the rest of the shadows.
That probably took around 30 minutes. Then we started shooting the sequence which ran quite smoothly but with a lot more interruptions because we constantly needed to change the intensity of the lights as well as changing camera positions.
I gave the actress a blanket to cover herself with in between shots because the house was freezing since the back door had to be open because of the lighting equipment, and she handled it quite well.
Overall it was a big learning curve for me that made me realize that I want to focus more on producing for the upcoming projects as well as focusing on trying to find production intern ships for the Summer.
Post-production
For post production, the editing role was shared between Alex and Deborah so I wasn't present during that time because I wanted to give Deborah the free range for her to try out whatever she felt like doing, within previously agreed parameters.
There were also two distinct days where two voice overs were record with Anthony and another girl stepped in to the voice of the girl heard over the phone. On both sessions, Deborah worked with the actors in the recording studio since we also needed to recreate some sounds on the foley for both the living room and kitchen sequences.
The main issue I had was that last minute on the day of the presentation, I had to quickly put in the title of the book in the trailer because Deborah forgot and also to properly export it to a Quicktime file which wasn't the format it was in.
But thankfully after that last minute struggle, everything turned out smoothly.
Here are the documents that were used during different stages of production:
Treatment
Cast and Crew list
Equipment list
Budget list
Locations, Costumes and Props
Risk Assessment
Location Release Forms
Actors release forms
Call sheet
Shooting schedule
Camera reports
Sound list for recording studio session
Public Liability Insurance 2015
And some behind the scenes photos:
