This was written after the first shoot of Mortus Illumina, still very much believe in the point below.



bear with us on the slow load time on this, didnt realise the picutres were so big anyway
Right the more and more shoots I do, the more convinced that Rodriguez’s and the blair witch project and other low budget film books are all talking shite big time

And here how I reckon it works,

Right im a bout a 1/4 of the way through my first feature, and by this time next year the film should be well and truly in the can , and lets say ive taken it to a few places and low and behold cos its bloody excellent someone like MGM snap it up, they spend about a million quid on doing a transfer from DV to 35mm, give it a Dolby sound track, get the Mill boys on it to get the best quality for the transfer and low and behold it gets a theatrical release, at a drunken party someone from penguin books asks me to write a book on how I made the film for £10’000 and I say in my drunken state yeap

First of all, they want to give it a qwerty title, I suggest Rebel with a Hang Over, but they don't like it they decide to stick to ripping off old movie titles and they call it something like “Carry on Filming”

Anyway the first part of the book is a riot, read about how are cinematography team got involved in a 5 car pile up whule recciing one of the locations, how we nearly had all the finance in place but then me and jenifer lopez fell out, read how I got the money by making tea at the beeb and selling plots of land on the moon blah blah blah, a good yarn of a story, the it comes to the second part of the book tentatility titled “Chance’s Low Budget Film school”

I start this bit of the book of with a scene from my film , the scene I choose is a scene in my film where the priest goes to his car and suddenly our equivalent of the devil appears next to him in the car and they have one of those evil plot setting convesations, all shot at night and it looks f*cking Fantastic, all the reflections in the right place on the car, moody atmorspehric lighting on the interior, no camera reflections in the car and no flare and heres where I make my Rodriguez type Claim

I tell you that scene was lit with A Chinese Lantern from B&Q and heres a piccy,

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thats my lighting guy tony putting the Chinese Latern in the car, and I tell you that to light it cost only the bargain of £10, the same way Rodriguez tells you all you need to light interiors is a coiple of tungsten bulbs, same way blair witch tell you how they lit the woods with lights from a DIY shop. For good Measure I throw in another picture of the chinese latern and theres a picture of the priest getting into the car; all good stuff.

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You;’ve seen the film at the theatre or on DVD and seen the end result. So all it takes to light the interior of a car is a chinese latern and £10 and theres the pictures for proof, after all I wouldnt be lying now would I ?

On your low budget shoot, you take my advice when filming a scene at night in a car, you buy the chinese latern and put it in the car. Looking through the monitor your getting an effect which is good , but its a million miles away from what I had, you go back look at the book and scratch your head, you take your rushes home and watch them again and watch my film and try and figure it out

Well heres why you didn’t get the same effect, the bigger picture.

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Firstly what you cant see in that photograph is as well as having the chinese Latern, on the inside roof of the car is a giant gold reflector, also the Latern was covered in gels. And as you can see as well as the latern there were a few bigger lights, firstly there the Dado lights picking out the detail inside the car,

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following on from that theres the spill from a couple of 2 ½ K’s and three blonds lighting up the car itself, with a 8 ft by 4ft Polyboard killing the excess. On top of that the whole background is being lit by a couple of 5K’s


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Going back to Rodriguez going on about his bulbs, the bigger picture he must of had reflectors there at least as well as other lights , also being a film student it sureley couldnt of been to hard for him to get his hands on at least a couple of redheads. That whole no crew business, guy who pushed wheel chair = crew member, the person who fired the pyro’s = crew member , guys who erected death slide = crew etc etc Blair witch as well slight problem with there DIY lighting, where the hell did they get there power from ? they must of had a generator up there
Going on to rodriguez £7000 claim , well I told you that scene with the car cost a tenner, well on top of that tenner the rest of the lighting was about £300 quid for that night, along with a £100 quid for the hire of the car, plus we had to pay £200 quid to an electrician to fit a distribution box along with 100 metres of 60 Amp cable and a 32 sub distirbution box adding about another £100. On top of that there were 2 cast in that scene and about 10 crew all who I paid travel expensies plus provided accomodation and catered for adding easily another couple of hundred. Bit different from that tenner! I could go through my whole production like that saying this cost this etc exacltly like Rodriguez and blair wicth have done. On top of that theres always the £millions that the distributors spend in post on these films.
Even though both books our good for a read and a little inspiration I wouldn’t take there claims to seriously just think of the bigger picture , remember theres a reason why big productions have so much kit and crew its not just to look pretty! As film making books both stink buy yourself a role of gaffer tape instead lot more useful !

As for the usbourne book on filmmaking that says all you need is to ask an adult If you can borrow there video camera, I ask you !

Chance