1. Organization
The Ashtray was a script that had come to us through a previous actor in one of our films, Ross Mcewan; His brother James came to us with this script and asked if it would be something we could film/would like to film. This was new for us as previously we had only filmed scripts written by ourselves, but if we were eventually gonna take on work by other writers there was no reason why now would not be the time to do so. We had no problems with the content or structure of the script, and it seemed like it could be something we could pull off on our "no budget" system, and well, to be honest our previous 10 short films gave us the confidence that we could successfully pull off the shooting and the editing of the piece.
James Mcewan had the idea where he was going to organize all the actors, time and places to shoot and all we had to do was turn up and shoot and then later edit. This was new for us too and kind of took some of the normal load, of well, shit that has to get done off our backs and put it on someone else's other than Mr. Russell and myself.
So it was agreed, we would turn up at the location, after going over one of the possible shooting ideas with Mr Mcewan and then we'd let the actors run through the stuff quickly then go shoot it. This all went very well. We were fortunate to get some very qualified and some very talented actors for the piece (for the price of travelling expenses).
There were a couple of script changes and actor changes along the way but on the whole well, this is to be expected I guess and it all went fine (that's our story and were sticking to it!)..
2. Schedule
So Mr Mcewan organized the schedule of the shoot and the location. We turned up, met the actors and had sort of worked out by first shooting day how were gonna shoot it. This was going to be a problem; The camera through the narrative was supposed to only have one angle, one point of view. And trying to get this right on four occasions spread over four weeks was not going to be easy. But we took some Mini-DV stills of the way the tripod was set up and where on the floor in Harry's bar in Edinburgh we had positioned it and we thought that would do it. Of course we were way fucking wrong and in the change from one vignette to the next the camera shifted a little here and there. Hopefully with some snappy editing we could cover that up, well we kind of covered it up. Ok, for most of it, its only really noticeable in one shot, where our P.O.V. was a little, well, squint.
3. Hired hands
So this was us: Hired hands, turning up, and getting paid in coffee like everybody else. That the actors made more on this piece during production than Mr Russell and I did, which is fine, 'coz without their talents it wouldn't have been made and wouldn't have been what we deem to be one of our best pieces if it had not been for the brilliant performances by these actors in front of the camera. So well I guess when we get remunerated through festivals or broadcast or private sales of the movie or something, that will be fine. Well that's kinda the deal with all our stuff so far anyway!
4. New talent
The new talent worked out great and plans were made for getting them together again for some more work in the future. Some footage was shot in mid 2004 but as of yet was incomplete. But hopefully we will get a chance to finish it off or move on to something else with the talent that turned up to help us out on a project early in those summer mornings.
5. Music.
The Music for The Ashtray was composed and performed by Magicdrive, an Independent Edinburgh band, which we believe, because of their unique style, were unable to be easily pigeonholed & marketed by the UK music industry. We made contact with these guys through Wee David Robertson, who first worked with us on
Untitled Project Part 2 as an actor. We had been waiting for a chance to use some of his/Magicdrive's music ever since then, The Ashtray finally gave us the chance to do so. We used two tracks from the Magicdrive debut album "What's The Beef?". The first track (Very French...?) from the album, gave a great sense of urgency to the opening of our film and tied in great with the zoom through Edinburgh that our soul travels as he is looking for a new host. We also used track 3 "Pimento" from the album to assist our transitions from one scene to the next, with our sped up footage and character changes, this worked very effectively, especially in our break into the last scene and the piece finished us off over our titles nicely. David Robertson would continue to work his magic for us with his music, he created the effecitve soundtrack for
Pickles, and another track from the Magicdrive album will eventually be used on our short film
Billy, Biff & Scooter, which goes into production late 2005. David also worked with us as an actor on the as of yet unfinished
Auld Reikie and
Batteries Included, as well as working on composing the scores for these two shorts, which we hope to finish some time in the near future!
6. Budget.
The Budget was, well, next to nothing as usual. We got paid in coffee; which mind you I paid for, the actors got paid for travelling expenses, Martainn and I didn't, as usual, and we will all make some money off of it when the Pistachio Films DVD "
Check out Our Shorts!" comes out in the very near future, with this film on the disc, as well as five of our other shorts.
So budget, well a very rough estimate (as I am writing this well after the production is finished) would be around £70/80. Which aside for purchases on our first 2 movies that included and capture card, camera and some firearms, is well, probably our most expensive yet! But with future sales very near, will also be the first time that we have been paid!