Or Something Similar

Writer & Filmmaker Mike Histon's own little corner of webspace

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2015 and a New Series of Posts

Hey all, happy 2015! Time for new things, and one of those is a proper return to blogging, with the start of a series I’m going to be running.  I’m in the process of potentially changing hosting sites so this may end up being shifted off Tumblr in the very near future, but until all that is finalised, it’ll be here.  So, here we go:

  A Big Narrative Geek 

I’m a big narrative geek.

I should probably clarify – I’ve been a big fan of stories and storytelling for as long as I can remember.  I’ve always been a reader, but when I was introduced to film, that was the point where I thought I’d found “my” medium; its entire approach to a story just hit that perfect synchronicity in my mind. But I didn’t quite get that same rush you see brimming out of dyed-in-the-wool Star Wars fans, or Trekkies, or LOTR lovers, and it made me wonder if I wasn’t as big a fan as I thought.

When I sat down to think about it – fair warning, there’s a lot of overthinking on this blog – I realised the things I loved about film were also prevalent in other mediums I’m a fan of – TV (naturally), video games (to a much debated degree), graphics novels (I’m something of a neophyte here, but I’m working on that) – and I got the same buzz from seeing a story well-executed in these different formats.

So I’ve come to the conclusion that, while film may be my favourite medium, it’s actually the storytelling that appeals to me the most.

Hence, I’m a big narrative geek.

Before I explain what this is in aid of, I want to clarify that I don’t consider myself an expert in storytelling, and that this whole business here is more an account of my experiences overthinking some of my favourite stories than it is intended to be an academic text.  I hope there might be some stuff here that is of interest to you, but it’s in your rights to ignore any and all conclusions I draw.

 So, what’s this longwinded introduction actually introducing?  Well, starting today, I’m going to be talking about a number of different stories I’ve read/watched/played, and what they’ve taught me about storytelling along the way.  Even though there are some huge differences between mediums and how they approach the stories they are telling, there’s also a lot of crossovers in the building blocks of a narrative, and I feel all of these have helped me improve my understanding of stories in the process.

I’m also going to take a moment to point out that this is going to be a very subjective walk through my experiences, so these are more likely to be jumping off points than a set of strict rules – more importantly, here, is that a big appeal of storytelling to me is that the pillars that build your story are potentially flexible.  Not every rule with apply to every story, but these are patterns that I’ve seen and wanted to talk about.

I’ll be looking at as much of a range as I can, to try and find as diverse a selection of stories and approaches as possible, but I won’t claim to show the complete range – there’s more stories out there than any one person can keep up with, but hopefully, you might find a story that you want to check out yourself, or find a topic that I’ve missed a great example of that you can point me towards. 

So, time to geek out on a good story!

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Song of the Sea Teaser

An animated feature film from Oscar nominated Tomm Moore SONG OF THE SEA tells the story of Ben and his little sister Saoirse -- the last Seal-child -- who e...

Tomm Moore's The Secret Of Kells is an absolutely beautiful animation, and I cannot recommend it enough, particularly to folklore fans (the sequence where Aisling sings to Pangur Ban is one of my favourite ever). And now his follow up, Song Of The Sea, looks to be in coming in the not too distant future.

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Wolf Children (2012) - The Lateral Tracking Shot

Looking for a unique lateral tracking shot? Consider this example from Mamoru Hosoda's excellent film Wolf Children (2012). NO SPOILERS. Happy (Late) Mother's Day. For…

Tony Zhou's brilliant video essays have been circulating a bit recently (there's a great one on Edgar Wright's comedy cinematography that was the other contender for this report) but I geeked out very hard when I saw he did this piece on lateral tracking shots, particularly the one from Wolf Children, Mamoru Hosoda's beautiful anime from 2012.

It's a lovely film that I won't spoil but will recommend to Ghibli/anime fans (though it is not from the Ghibli stable), but this shot is absolute genius - tracking the school experiences of Yuki and Ame as they go up in grades, it's a single unbroken shot that highlights animation's ability to present impossible shots as "real" - I would imagine that with a lot of prep and rehearsal, you could attempt this in live-action, but I doubt it would have the same veracity to it.

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Game Of Thrones cordially invites you to take a damn seat at the kiddie table

Most of us are accomplished watchers of TV and film, so we intuitively understand some of the concepts lurking in dense film-theory tomes. You wont need them for Internet Film School, The A.V. Clubs column about film and television. In each installment, we explore a basic element of visu

Thanks to the AV Club, I recently found Scott Kaufman's blog about framing and composition - absolute recommendation to other filmmakers, this stuff is gold!

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From this week's brilliant True Detective comes one of the best shots I've seen in a long time, and thoroughly nails how to use your cinematography effectively to properly immerse your audience. SPOILERS if you're watching/plan to watch, but Matthew McConaughey's cop takes part in a raid that goes horribly wrong and is forced to escape across a housing project, and it's all captured in a single unbroken shot.

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Great video from Slash Film featuring Edgar Wright discussing his use of Close Ups. Very interesting and useful points raised in this video.

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I'm a huge fan of Bryan Fuller's Hannibal, and looking at the trailer for season 2, I cannot wait for it to return.  It's atmospheric, full of great performances and writing, and really delves into the characters' psychologies. I hugely recommend it (plus the deaths are beautifully macabre, if not for the squeamish!).

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Girls Who Read - The Crew

Happy 2014 one and all! 

First of all, I’m very pleased to announce that just after New Year, Girls Who Read pushed through the 3 million views mark on YouTube.  Once again, thanks to everyone who watched, liked and shared the film, we are very proud of it.

And with that as the case, what better time than to introduce you guys to the very talented people who were involved?

First off, our camera department – Matt, Ben & Max.

Our sound Recordist Mark

Our Art department, Lucy & Tania, in their Art Dept booth at the pub.

Our Make Up Artist Kelly, and our lead actor Amy.

The next few photos are of crew members who it seemed to avoid appearing in many photos.

One of very few photos of our Stills Photographer, Joe.

Our Live Shot Logger Ada.

Our 2nd AD Sherice.

Our runner Elspeth,

Martyn, our editor, post prod supervisor, extra and many more.

Myself and, last but not least, our director Guy, mid-decision.

Please note – due to size restrictions on Tumblr, I’ve had to use some photos of more than one person; ideally, I’d have liked to do an individual one for everyone.

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Short post today - first official teaser trailer for Godzilla.  Scale is very impressive.  Fingers crossed for this one.

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Girls Who Read - 2 Million Views in 1 Week

Apologies for the brief nature of this post, but I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has watched, shared, linked, discussed or told others about Girls Who Read before the week was out.  This would not have been possible without you.

One week ago, the Roundhouse uploaded Girls Who Read onto YouTube and it got an overwhelming response.  To be honest, I don't think any of us involved in the film were quite expecting the response it received. It’s been something of a surreal experience to watch the hit counter in the past few days.

We were very fortunate to be picked up by a number of web sites in the process, and I’ve included some of the screenshots below.  We are very grateful to everyone who publicised the film, as you all helped us reach a wider audience.

From myself, and the rest of Or Something Similar, we’d again like to thank our incredible crew for all of their efforts, the Roundhouse for all of their support, and our director Guy Larsen and writer/narrator Mark Grist for collaborating with us on this project.

Some, but by no means all, of our crew.  I'll be running a post next week about our team and how you can keep up to speed with what they're up to in the future!

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And here it is, ladies and gentlemen, Girls Who Read, the finished film.  The Roundhouse have just uploaded it, so I can officially share the film. Thanks again so much to everyone involved - I'll be finishing off my GWR breakdown next week detailing our very talented team, and sharing some of our on-set photos, but for now here it is. GIRLS WHO READ Narrator – Mark Grist The Girl – Amy Burrows The Boyfriend - Mixy Lead Lad – Daniel Brock Lad #1 – Adam Felman Lad #2 – David Faust Lad #3 – Martyn Graham Mum – Debra Clapp Dad – Frank Clapp Written by Mark Grist Director – Guy Larsen Producers – Mike Histon & Guy Larsen Editor – Martyn Graham

Director of Photography – Matt Camlin Camera Operator – Ben Kwok 1st Assistant Camera – Max Skach Sound Recordist – Mark Williams 1st Assistant Director – Mike Histon 2nd Assistant Director – Sherice Griffiths Art Director – Tania Clapp Art Assistant – Lucy Workman Make-Up Artist – Kelly Hodges Live Shot Logger – Ada Long Stills Photographer – Joseph Kent Runner - Elspeth Fisher Post-Production Supervisor – Martyn Graham Sound Designer – Mark Williams VFX Artist – Ben Kwok Colourist – Matt Camlin With thanks to: Marta Sala Font The Roundhouse The Last Post Any Amount of Books Sarastro Restaurant Friern Barnet Library The Barn Theatre “Girls Who Read” was filmed in London and Southend, Essex, UK. The characters in this film are fictitious, any likeness to real people and events is purely coincidental. The Producers and the Roundhouse share all rights to “Girls Who Read” including, but not limited to, the screening and/or distribution of all preceeding visual and audio film content © 2013.

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Girls Who Read - Post Production

Good news, ladies and gentlemen, today is going to be a double-post day!  I’m not going to elaborate for now; hopefully they will explain themselves.

With the footage in the can (or, in our case, on the hard drives), we began the post process.  The first stage was the offline edit – assembling all of the shots into a single timeline.  As the film is essentially a music video montage, it is more comprised of shots than scenes, which meant a faster turnaround – much more a case of picking the best take for the intended shot than building a scene organically from the prep and the rushes.

Once the offline edit was complete, the locked-picture version of the film could then be passed out to the rest of the team, so that everyone could start working on their sections as soon as possible. As our head of post, Martyn oversaw the entire process, ensuring that all sections were constantly moving and everyone was communicating.

As I mentioned in the previous post, we had some trickier camera moves in the film, and, in order for them to work as intended, they required compositing from parts of other shots.  Fortunately, the preparation and testing of the shots before hand paid off, as the footage we achieved worked, and the shots fitted together smoothly.

A key aspect of the film is obviously its sound, so a lot of work went into ensuring that the sound was properly handled.  The balance that needed to be found was between supporting Mark’s performance of the poem, and creating a world through the Foley sound – there’s a balance to be found with Foley in and of itself, as you can get to the stage of trying to apply sounds to everything, and in fact rendering a very artificial sounding world.  The end result, I feel, hit the balance exactly.

One of the last additions to the film was the 8mm shots, which took a much longer time to process as they need to be converted into a digital format.  As such, the majority of the post process took place without knowing whether or not the shots would be ready.  Once they were incorporated, the last stages of the colouring could be completed, and the whole thing was put together for review.

The post team did a fantastic job, and I hope they’re proud of the end results, because we truly are.  And you guys will get to see very soon the work they did.

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Girls Who Read - Principle Photography

When it came to shooting, we ended up with three full days scheduled to shoot Girls Who Read, across nine different locations (and two separate counties!), so we had a lot to get through in the time allocated.  Normally, we’d shoot consecutive days to keep momentum going, but due to everyone’s availability, we ended up with three days across a week – which, on this occasion, worked better for organising and reviewing the footage in between days.

Our first day covered our two main locations – the studio and the pub.  It was important to us to get our main locations shot first, because it essentially gave us the backbone for the film, particularly with regards to the studio (and our main audio track for the poem itself).  Highlights included listening to the stories of some of our extras in their “lad” roles, customers of the pub deciding to wander through filming and the throbbing bass lines of a Lady Gaga sound check when we reached the studio!

The second day saw us braving Central London to film the book shop and the restaurant, before heading up to North London to film the kitchen and the library.  This was our last day with Mark, so we prioritised his shots, and also the day of our trickiest camera moves (you’ll know them when you see them).  Highlights of day two included the early morning car journey into Central, transporting dining room chairs on public transport and matching camera moves across different locations.

Our third and final day saw us knocking off all of the remaining shots, and trekking across North London to do so, including the theatre and the remaining “house” shots.  There was some last minute shuffling on the final day, as we came to the conclusion that a couple of the shots were unfeasible – which justified the backup shots, and also allowed us to revisit one of our locations for The Rise, a lovely place to bring the shoot to a close.  Highlights include the gusto performance of our extras, the periodic switching off of our cables at the theatre, and sitting down to review the on-set photos with the crew.

We were very pleased by the way it came together, and were lucky enough to not have any major issues that derailed the shoot.  From myself and Or Something Similar, I’d like to thank our cast and crew for all their hard work and I will elaborate a bit more on them in a future post, but they did incredible work, and, as the final version of the film gets ever closer, we’re immensely proud of all of their efforts.

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Girls Who Read - Pre-Prod

So, as work on the post for Girls Who Read comes to a close, I thought I’d explain a little more about our experiences with making it, specifically the preproduction process.  Guy contacted me a couple of months ago to say that he was proposing to make the film with Mark, and asked if I wanted to be involved.  I’ve known Guy for some time, and the project sounded appealing, so we started to discuss how to put the whole thing together.

Guy had already put together storyboards to go with the poem – a document that ended up being our script (I’ve been working off the same printout of the locked version throughout the entire shoot) – which was potentially ambitious for a two minute film (the final tally came to 9 locations - some of which doubled for more than one - and at least 30 slates), but I can’t say we’ve never attempted anything ambitious – The Wardrobe will be a testament to that once we finish off the final pieces of post.

We applied to the Roundhouse’s Emerging Artists’ fund, which we were very fortunate enough to be awarded.  We’ve had great help from the Roundhouse throughout the shoot, particularly our adviser Marta, with loaned equipment and paperwork advice (my Risk Assessments have never looked so professional), so much thanks to them for that.

With the Roundhouse onboard, we assembled the core team – myself, Matt and Martyn from Or Something Similar, and Guy and his friend and colleague Ben.  We sat down and talked through Guy’s proposed storyboard and how we would intend to go about it – as essentially a music video, the film has a large number of quick cuts across different set ups, which made it vital for our Heads of Department to get together and discuss what was required.  

From there, we started bringing on the rest of our team (who will be getting a blog post of their own) and prepping everything.  Thanks to the involvement of the Roundhouse, we were able to use their studio for our test shoot (and one of our main locations!), which allowed the team to get a proper feel for some of the trickier camera movements that were required, and allow Martyn to put together a pre-viz so we knew what we would be working to.

We had initially proposed four days – an unusual prospect for a film the length of this one, but with the number of locations we were intending to shoot in, it became necessary to spread it out.  Ultimately, circumstance cut us down to three but we still managed to get everything we needed, including safety shots and back up options (always a sensible plan – that master wide can save you in the edit if you find yourself with unsuitable shots).

From there, we got everything together and began shooting!

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Girls Who Read - with @guylar (and many of our friends)

Things have been quiet in recent weeks on this blog, and I’m just now at the stage to start explaining why.

Over the past couple of months, I have been working with @guylar on a short film, based  based on one of the poems by stand-up poet Mark Grist – if you are not familiar with Mark, then may I please draw your attention to this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp4wEewrQdU, or one of his many other battles on Don’t Flop.

The poem we have been working on is called Girls Who Read – it’s no more than three minutes in length, but it is Mark’s most well-known poem (you can see a version of it below).  We’ve been working in conjunction with Roundhouse in Camden as part of their Emerging Artists programme, and are currently in post-production on the short.

There’ll be a couple more updates about the short as I look back at the development, the shoot and our lovely cast and crew, but expect to see the finished project in the not too distant future.  We’re very excited to show it to you all.

Girls Who Read:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWwXJT4LA5A

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Gaming and the Female Character - A Conversation with @LunaticsBox

Hey all, The other day I tweeted Cracked's article http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-sexist-video-game-problems-even-bigger-than-breasts/  I felt that it was helping to highlight a number of ingrained sexist issues that we as a gaming audience need to be aware of and demand from our developers. This led me to a conversation with my friend @LunaticsBox, who is a gamer and games developer, who wanted to add his voice to the conversation: he wrote an eloquent and in-depth rundown of his issues on his blog: http://www.lunaticsbox.com/?p=88 I disagreed with some of what he said, as you can see in the gigantic reply I left him.  I'm finding it a very interesting experience, and it's making me work hard to justify and explain my views.

... DISCLAIMER - I would like to emphasise that @LunaticsBox is a friend of mine, and this is a conversation between two friends about important issues that affect both of our areas of work; we don't agree on all of our points, but it is discussion, not an argument, row or flame war. Also, I am a big fan of The Last of Us (although I feel Telltale's The Walking Dead did the dynamic and narrative better) and it did a lot of things right, but I feel we're still a long way from balance yet.

...

Also, most stories and other posts are in the pipeline, I promise!

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Hey all, apologies for the lack of posts, lots of stuff to follow very soon! Today I'm posting a short by Riley Stearns called The Cub which looks simple, but is pretty genius.  His short MAGNIFICAT is worth watching too, but this one is just great.