Professional Practice - Directorial Showreel & General Case Study Update

So today I finished my Directors Showreel, as part of my case study for my Professional Practice unit.

What I neglected to mention, is my project with The Nameless Foundation fell through at the last minute, so I have had to resort to doing the Case Study. For my case study, I am looking into the Director/Writer/Producer that is Tim Burton, and writing about his career, how he got to where he is, how the usual person would get to his level, and how I would apply it to myself.

I have found this relatively difficult, but have some interesting books that have helped. I have also found good quotes from websites such as the BBC Writers Forum, skillset and general interviews with Tim Burtons about each of his pictures. What has been more difficult however is writing about how to apply it to myself. Naturally I can say that I would take the same route as Burton if I can, but elaborating in more detail is proving difficult.

On top of that, a Directors CV and Showreel must be made.

I finished the showreel today, and am pleased with the result. To create this, I had to gather together all of the best of my past projects, and even some of the footage of my upcoming projects I have directed. I picked and chose clips from each of them, which I felt best showcased my talents, whilst putting fitting music over the top of them.
The music I chose is Gary Jules - Mad World for The Raven
Extreme Ways - Moby for Gullible
Superman theme for Behind the Cape
and
Guitar Flute & String - Moby for The Tale of Graham Beadle

I felt these fit correctly. It was difficult to choose the clips, and upon looking at other show reels, I felt I shouldn't include much speech. I was directed (ironically :P ) in the other way with this, and lowered some of the sound levels so it wasn't just clips of people with their mouths moving.

Anyway, here is the finished product. I hope you like it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohJ-N3BTTrI&feature=c4-overview&list=UU01lt6FJ5Lg9X4z-8BFFWeQ

2nd Year Major Production - Behind the Cape filming

From Saturday - Monday I did the filming of my Major Production, my mockumentary "Behind the Cape"
It kicked off quite well. After having spent £75 on costume the night before, I created the costumes from scratch, with the help of my housemate who is on the Creative Arts of Theatre and Film course at UCA Rochester. We created the Captain Justice costume. To do this, I got a green morph suit, printed off the Captain Justice logo, and stuck it on. We then fashioned a cape out of blue material, put blue boxers over the top of the morph suit, and used blue gloves. I was very proud with the finished product and my actor, Jamie Drabble, looked fantastic.

The costume was good and rather fitting. I also had to dye the lab coat over night for Doctor Z, the villain. Sadly, the coat was meant to be black, and the dye we got turned the coat a bluey/grey. It would seem the reason for this would be that the coat was made out of polyester, and it should have been cotton to dye correctly and turn into the Black colour I wanted. As much as I would have liked he coat to be black, it did work well having it grey. The red Z came out really nice on the back of the coat, and it didn't make the costume so monotonous, as if it was all black it could have looked quite bland.

On the Saturday, we filmed all of the Captain Justice scenes, his talking heads, and all of the bits of just him. We could not do the outside bits as it was raining. We brought a rain cover with us, but did not use it as it was too heavy. Checking the forecast, we waited for the next day, as it was meant to be clear skies.

Coming to the next day, Joz Norris, who played Doctor Z, arrived early in the morning and the weather was kind to us, and we were able to film the outside park scene, featuring the first confrontation of Justice and Z. We also did all the parts we missed the day before that should have been outside with Captain Justice.

The shoot went really well. We did run across a few problems however. The main issue, was casting.
I had enough actors lined up, mainly to play all of the villains come the Doom Troop meeting in Doctor Z's house. One of my actors, Dalton Mundell, had to drop out at the last minute. He was playing one of the Doctor's henchmen. As the henchmen was a necessary part, I recast the person playing the villain 'Jeff' and cast him as Fidel instead. Jeff was wiped from the script entirely, however, I liked his lines so much, I decided to keep them, and give them to the non-speaking role of The Terrorist. The other issue I suffered from, was my actor for the character of 'The Fiddler' - a gypsy pickpocket, had to pull out last minute as they couldn't do the Sunday when we were filming. They offered for the Monday, but all the other villains, I only had for the Sunday. This was quite upsetting as I could find no replacements and the character had to be cut, despite his talking head being one of my favourites. It was okay to cut him however as the part wasn't entirely necessary, it would just have been nice to have.

Every thing else in the shoot went well. In retrospect, I next time would sort my casting out a bit earlier, and have dates ready and sorted knowing exactly when I will shoot, so I can make sure people will come exactly when I need them (although to be fair, they were sorted a while before, it was just last minute pull outs).
Maybe I should get back ups just incase.

Here are some of the costumes from the day.