Achievement Unlocked - MAKING OF

Roles: writer, storyboardist, camera operator, lighting director, director, editor

The production of my end of year film (EOY) went rather smoothly. The pre-production phase was done on time and I could communicate shot lists, storyboards, call sheets to everyone ahead of the shoot.

I don't remember how I got the idea for the story. I was thinking something a bit sci-fi and the video game aspect came quickly. My inspirations are BRAZIL (Terry Gilliam) and SEVERANCE (Dan Erickson / AppleTV+ series):

• Brazil for the tedious aspect of office work with a tiny desk (I didn't go as far as sharing a desk with another employee on the other side of the wall). It had to be a small and cluttered office.
• Severance for the labyrinthic place of work and weird job (we don't know what they do).

I had ideas in mind with a moodboard I presented to my lecturer during the pitching session. It was supposed to be a bit more grey-ish, green-ish. I was also looking for a location with a white tortuous corridor. In the end, I used the admin section of NESCOL and cheated my way around to make it look like a maze.

The tiny office scenes were shot at Robert Gordon's College (where I was working at the time). We had to move furniture so we could have different shots with enough space to put the camera. If you pay attention, you'll notice the door doesn't look the same from the outside, that's because the corridor scenes where shot at Nescol. The doors are completely different.

The 38 page file (Joey's First Mission) is the word "GIBERRISH" Wikipedia page's source code. So, yes, basically, Joey is analysing giberrish.

I was lucky to have Marie-Angèle Lago, a fellow student and actress to portray the manager (She was really onboard with it and did a good job) and Warren, another fellow student, to be the camera operator. Warren has an eye for detail and good ideas, so he definitely added value to the final product. Joey is portrayed by a friend of mine, Sophie who does a pretty good puzzled face! Everyone was involved in installing lights, helping with sound, moving things around.

The introduction and coffee-break scenes were shot in Nescol library. I wanted a hall with booths and it was the closest I could get and it turned out alright. Warren and I hid the library logo with A3 paper sheets that read "The company" instead.

The final scene was shot in the atrium (Nescol tower block main entrance). It was supposed to be an outdoor scene, opposite Marischal Sq1 (Broad Street, Aberdeen), but it was raining so much that we decided to use the atrium during our lunch break. We had to move all the tables out of the way and put some chairs instead. It's the closest thing to "outside" we could do!

The only great difficulty was the sound. We had all the equipment, but needed a jack adapter to plug the microphone into the Panasonic Lumix camera. And when we finally found one, it didn't work, so we could not get the sound to work properly. As a result, we got the reverb of the rooms and hall. I worked on the sound post-prod to try to improve it, but if you can add reverb, you can't really remove it once it's there. Another thing I did is remove all background noise so the film would feel a bit weird, not real. 

I wrote most of the music parts (the labyrinth and the end credits). Only the success music is from someone else (credited), found on a free music website.

My lecturer showed me tricks on Adobe Premier Pro and Adobe After Effects - it's a side of the job I need to work on; edit and FX are not my strongest points.

Everything was finished on time, according to schedule. I feel I have learnt a lot from my 3MW film (It's a Hit!). I still have a lot to learn, and that's quite enthralling in itself.  At the time I am writing this making of, I am three weeks into my second year, working on an assignment about the Kubrick Stare, collaborating for a local band's next music video and working on my EOY film script, amongst other things.