The Making of THE WAY FORWARD
Christine Collins FACI (Triangle Productions) Overall Winner
One of the hardest parts of filming is thinking up ideas for a film! In my experience they usually occur from an experience someone relates to you or a chance remark or joke. The idea for The Way Forward came from both....and spurred on by the approaching IAC 75th Anniversary competition to the theme 'The Way Forward'!
Triangle Productions is made up of three 'ladies' belonging to Potters Bar Cine & Video Society; Angela Stroud, Penny Love and me, Christine Collins. In October 2006 the three of us travelled to an IAC event in Chesterfield in Angela's small car. She had just bought herself a Sat Nav. Neither Penny or I had ever seen one working before and were intrigued by the voice, Angela called him KEN. 'Thank You, Ken' was our chant all the way there and back. We joked that perhaps Ken was really in the boot looking at the maps and could probably tell us of special offers in the shops that we passed. And so a germ of an idea was born.
Eventually I wrote the script that was filmed. Having written it it was obvious that filming a conversation between three women in a small car was not going to be easy! We couldn't, of course, have a full crew- cameraman, soundman, director and three actresses- so I would have to film and direct at the same time.
Filming of any story requires a lot of organisation; locations, props and meals as well as actors! So being a small group made this slightly easier as we ail had our jobs to do. We thought that it could be filmed in 2 days.....which is was. Locations were: 1 x house, interior & exterior, 1 x car, 1 x destination (in this case the local Scout hut arranged by one of our Club members) suitable roads and, of course, the man in the boot christened 'The Hunk’.
We intended to use three actresses from the local dramatic society but this didn't materialise, so Penny, Angela and a friend of ours, Heather Hawkes would have to do it..besides Angela had the car! We conned another member of our Club into being 'the hunk' (although we didn't tell him the story at all!) and the script was a goer!
We had a meeting the night before the shoot so that the actors could familiarise themselves with the dialogue and change any words to suit them. We divided the script into blocks, 1, 2, 3 etc, so everyone would know which bit we were filming and make the learning of lines less daunting.
The shoot took place on the two hottest days of 2007. The girls were great at remembering their lines which had to be repeated at least three times because I and the camera had to change seats to get the different angles. The camera was on the widest angle all the time and on a tripod. For the sound we used an omnidirectional lapel mic stuck in various places in the car which picked up the dialogue pretty well.
The editing was a bit of a jigsaw with so much footage and reaction shots available but my trusty Pinnacle Liquid Edition coped very well. Suddenly it was finished and was entered in a number of competitions culminating in winning the Frome Five Minute which was a wonderful surprise!
Any doubts that filmmakers have along the way.....and there are many; 'why did we ever
start this?'.... 'It's not going to work!...' etc; when eventually your film is enjoyed by the audience or if it is successful in a competition, it makes it all worth while. Triangle Productions thank Frome Film and Video Makers and all the other competitions for spurring us on to making movies. Oh, and by the way, Frome...we'll be back next year!...If we can think of a story, of course!
Christine Collins FACI (Triangle Productions) Overall Winner
One of the hardest parts of filming is thinking up ideas for a film! In my experience they usually occur from an experience someone relates to you or a chance remark or joke. The idea for The Way Forward came from both....and spurred on by the approaching IAC 75th Anniversary competition to the theme 'The Way Forward'!
Triangle Productions is made up of three 'ladies' belonging to Potters Bar Cine & Video Society; Angela Stroud, Penny Love and me, Christine Collins. In October 2006 the three of us travelled to an IAC event in Chesterfield in Angela's small car. She had just bought herself a Sat Nav. Neither Penny or I had ever seen one working before and were intrigued by the voice, Angela called him KEN. 'Thank You, Ken' was our chant all the way there and back. We joked that perhaps Ken was really in the boot looking at the maps and could probably tell us of special offers in the shops that we passed. And so a germ of an idea was born.
Eventually I wrote the script that was filmed. Having written it it was obvious that filming a conversation between three women in a small car was not going to be easy! We couldn't, of course, have a full crew-
Filming of any story requires a lot of organisation; locations, props and meals as well as actors! So being a small group made this slightly easier as we ail had our jobs to do. We thought that it could be filmed in 2 days.....which is was. Locations were: 1 x house, interior & exterior, 1 x car, 1 x destination (in this case the local Scout hut arranged by one of our Club members) suitable roads and, of course, the man in the boot christened 'The Hunk’.
We intended to use three actresses from the local dramatic society but this didn't materialise, so Penny, Angela and a friend of ours, Heather Hawkes would have to do it..besides Angela had the car! We conned another member of our Club into being 'the hunk' (although we didn't tell him the story at all!) and the script was a goer!
We had a meeting the night before the shoot so that the actors could familiarise themselves with the dialogue and change any words to suit them. We divided the script into blocks, 1, 2, 3 etc, so everyone would know which bit we were filming and make the learning of lines less daunting.
The shoot took place on the two hottest days of 2007. The girls were great at remembering their lines which had to be repeated at least three times because I and the camera had to change seats to get the different angles. The camera was on the widest angle all the time and on a tripod. For the sound we used an omnidirectional lapel mic stuck in various places in the car which picked up the dialogue pretty well.
The editing was a bit of a jigsaw with so much footage and reaction shots available but my trusty Pinnacle Liquid Edition coped very well. Suddenly it was finished and was entered in a number of competitions culminating in winning the Frome Five Minute which was a wonderful surprise!
Any doubts that filmmakers have along the way.....and there are many; 'why did we ever
start this?'.... 'It's not going to work!...' etc; when eventually your film is enjoyed by the audience or if it is successful in a competition, it makes it all worth while. Triangle Productions thank Frome Film and Video Makers and all the other competitions for spurring us on to making movies. Oh, and by the way, Frome...we'll be back next year!...If we can think of a story, of course!
The Way Forward Team with the AKM Music Cup
Left to right
Angela Stroud, Penny Love, Robert Ginter, Christine Collins and Heather Hawkes
Left to right
Angela Stroud, Penny Love, Robert Ginter, Christine Collins and Heather Hawkes