I’m in the bathroom one morning trying to think of a new idea for a script, and came up with the story about three teenagers who suffer from the same nightmare all about alien abduction. I go into work and write a page synopsis. Over the next few weeks I write the script and work out a cheap way of shooting it. Here’s the story. . . . .
SHOOTING ON VIDEO AND EQUIPMENT
The film was always planned to be shot on video from the start and not film due to expense. The question was what quality video, originally I wanted to use a beta camera but to hire one for the length of time to shoot would have been incredibly expensive, so I talked to one of Hibbert/Ralph animation ( Were I work ) director’s about borrowing his Hi8 video camera. The quality of Hi8 is a step up from normal home video and is reasonably cheap ( £15 for Sony 90 mins ) so it seemed just right for what I wanted. He agreed to lend me the camera. I then needed to buy some extra equipment, camera tripod, boom, video tape etc. I spoke to Paul and Steve who work in Hibbert’s editing department about using the professional microphone on a boom, they agreed. But in the end we used the professional mike for just one day, due to its availability. So I bought a £10 mike from Argos! which seemed to do the trick. I even bought the tripod from Argos for £20. Lighting was never a problem as my Dad is the owner of a Rostrum Camera company, so he lent me two huge lights with stands, light diffusers and polly board.
CAST
In a NO BUDGET movie it’s unlikely you’ll get Harrison Ford, so I relied on my friends and family. The first person I approached was my old school friend David Vogwell. I hadn’t seen David since I left sixth form the year before so I didn’t know If he’d be interested. I sent him a script asking if he would play Daniel and he agreed. I met Vicky through a friend of mine and pictured her as a perfect Christina, so I gave her a script and she agreed to do it.
I wanted to act in the film as well as directing it ( greedy, I know ) so I chose to play Julian. Jack was played by my girlfriend’s sister’s boyfriend, Simon. Daniel’s mum was played by my mum, Christina’s mum was my mum’s friend Sarah and Jane was played by my little sister. So casting was easy and everyone did a great job.
17 AUGUST 1997 : FIRST DAY OF SHOOTING
The first day of shooting probably had the biggest crew, there were eight of us on that day. It was the kitchen scene when Vicky shuts her eyes and remembers the dream. The thing we learned that first day was it’s difficult to keep a straight face, it took ten takes to get that shot right! We shot that scene on a hot Summers day, the window had black plastic taped over it to make it seem like night time. This was done in a few scenes including the scene in Daniel’s room when we all meet. We chose to shoot that scene first because everybody had never met before and had never worked on something like this before. So it was an introduction for everyone and an introduction to all aspects of making the movie. Each shoot was short ( The longest was five hours ) and had different cast and crew members working on it. The smallest crew was in the scene when Vicky introduces me to David, It was only us that day so every shot when someone was missing they were ether behind the camera or holding the boom! A lot of the movie was shot this way, minimal crew and some days minimal cast. The scene when all three of us are getting ready to sleep in the living room and I’m putting the camera on the tripod was all shot separately. I shot Vicky on her own, then a month later we shot David, then two weeks later we shot me! It all cut together perfectly you would never tell we weren’t there at the same time. Each shoot was planned out on the script, small drawings jotted down to show how a scene would be shot.
One of the most fun shoots we did was the scene when David and I run into the backgarden and see the spaceship hovering above us. Apart from it being cold and wearing thin T-shirts, we had a good time. The spaceship, to us, was represented by two lights on their stands raised as high as they could go. We felt like right idiots standing there staring at these lights but the final scene looks very believable and effective. That scene was shot on a Sunday night, but not all the evening scenes were shot at nightime. All the forest scenes were shot during the day and digitally darkened down, that explains why David and I are walking around in thin white tops. The forest scenes where interesting to shoot. The entire forest sequence was a three day shoot spread over three months! The scene where David and I are digging up the alien ship was not a forest but an area in my Nan’s backgarden which was only four meters by four and had a road and a canal next to it. This made shooting difficult as every shot had to be tight in so you couldn’t see the road or the canal, that’s the reason why the scene looks so cramped. The forest shots were done at weekends, so a member of the crew had to keep a look out for people walking there dogs, just in case they got in shot! There where three grey baby aliens used in the movie, all made out of plastercine. The reason we ended up using three was after each shoot the models where ruined, plastercine doesn’t stand being thrown around forests!
The dream sequences were shot in my living room, for the dark shots each actor had to kneel infront of a piece of black polyboard and pretend to be in a dark space.
The light shots were done in the same way but there was a white diffuser and light behind the actors. The Hi8 camera had an exposure capture button, which enabled us to lock the level of exposure to shots. We used this to make the light in the dream sequences and the living room sequence brighter, giving it a ‘burnt out’ look. The technique was also used for the ‘alien floating from my hands’ shot. The alien was held up by fishing wire tied to a wooden spoon which was held by my Dad. I was kneeling in front of a big light diffuser gently resting it on my hands, slowly my Dad began raising the alien making it float up and out of shot. Simple, cheap and effective.
POST PRODUCTION
We began post production on ABDUCTION before finishing all the photography. The first thing I had to ensure was I could edit all my rushes on the Avid editing equipment at Hibbert Ralph. I spoke to Steve the editor at Hibbert’s and he agreed to teach me how to use the system so I could edit in my spare time ( At weekends ). The first step was to transfer all the raw rushes from Hi8 video tape to professional quality Beta tape, Beta is thicker than normal video tape and can withstand continuous playing without loss of quality. After this was done I started rough cutting various scenes and working out how the film would look. The first problem I encountered was sound, the mike we used was fine on the Hi8 tape but after the transfer the quality deteriorated so much you could barely hear anything. The sound had to be re-recorded and dubbed onto the picture, all the sound in the final film is re-recorded, none of the original soundtrack was used. Effect shots took time to produce as Animated Opticals ( Animops ), my Dad’s Digital Rostrum company, had to slot working on my effects in-between real jobs. My Dad, Phil Campbell, became Digital Effects Supervisor and Executive Producer, without his help this film would never have been completed. The most notable effect shots in the film are the spaceships, the ship was in fact a £22 pound plastic model I bought from a shop. The model was set up on a rig and shot by a rostrum camera, three takes were shot of the ship in its different positions. The shots were then compiled together using a Quantel V series paintbox. The paintbox allowed us to do all sorts of digital effects, these included darkening down the dream shots, forest shots, the eye effect and making the entire Title sequence.
MUSIC
The music in ABDUCTION is all original, Written and performed by Richard Wake.
Rich Wake is an animator where I work, he writes music in his spare time.
I spoke to Rich about doing a tune for my Kung-Fu movie, which he kindly made for me so when that film fell through I had an unused tune. During the making of ABDUCTION I thought about using music from other films but decided that using other soundtracks would not only be breaking copyright laws, it would be unoriginal and dull.
So I approached Rich again, he said he would let me use some of his other tunes if I liked the sound of them. I listened to a tape he gave me and picked three tunes, one is now the Title track, another the Forest track and we sampled the solo piano from a track. The End credits music is the tune Rich wrote for my Kung-Fu film. The music was transferred from Rich’s sampler to digital DAT tape, which could be taken into the Avid editing system and gave crystal clear sound quality. Also on the Abduction soundtrack is ‘Year of the tiger’ by the group Bumbleflea. I met Matt Baker ( The lead guitarist ) when he did work experience at Hibbert/Ralph Animation. I listened to his demo C.D and fell in love with the song, So he agreed to let me use it in the movie!
EDITING
Editing was a long process for me, I could use the Avid system at Hibbert/Ralph at weekends. So every Saturday or Sunday I would travel up to London to work on the film. Avid is basically an Apple Mac computer which can take information from any form of video tape and store that information ( Sound, picture, timecode ) in the system as digital media. Once you’ve ‘Digitised’ your media into the system it enables you to edit it together in an easily manageable way. Avid also allows you to do thousands of things to your edit including wipes, picture in picture, colour effects, add sound from C.D’s etc. At first I edited all the scenes roughly using the original sound from the tapes as a guide, with the scenes separately rough cut I could return to each scene to dub the re-recorded sound. Re-dubbing the sound was one of the reasons the film took so long to make, My actors were unavailable for long periods of time ( University , work ). We re-recorded the sound in my bedroom with the microphone and DAT machine set up on a coffee table. The finished film was transferred from the Avid to a Beta master which allows me to make as many copies required.
FINAL NOTE
ABDUCTION the final film represents a lot of peoples hard work and dedication. When I started making the film I was told it was too complicated, I realised this when we started shooting so parts in the script were changed in order to shoot it. The truth be known I feel the film was saved in post production, because of time and availability of actors the shoots where rushed and not properly thought over. Only when I was sitting in front of the editing system watching my rushes did I truly think about what I was doing. I have to thank everyone who worked on the film and those who offered their support. Thanks go out especially to Vicky, David, Simon, Sarah, Angie and Tiffany for playing their parts in the film and HUGE thanks go to Stuart, Brian and Ray the digital effects team behind ABDUCTION. The person I owe the most thanks to has to be my Dad, Phil Campbell for lending me the money needed to complete the film and supervising the digital effects done by his company Animops. Thanks everyone!!!
Get your own Free Home Page