1. Making our first short film.

2. Troubles in the editing room (tech talk for computer editors).

3. Inspiration.

4. The meaning of Second Time Around.

5. Budget.

1. Making our first short film.

The desire to make a short film for Martainn and myself had been there for a long time, the change from desire to actual action was simple, and we just picked up the nearest video camera.

Yup that's it folks, a video camera, no funding from film companies, no lottery money, no backing from any organisation whatsoever. And most important of all no film school! Neither of us have been to film school, and nor do we intend ever going. We are of the belief that the auto-didactic way is the best. Ok so we may not get as deep a knowledge of how everything works as some people in film school will, but we don't see the point of sitting around for two years or whatever when we could be out there shooting. With film school you get one tutor teaching 20 students the same thing. If they are all learning it from scratch, everything they will learn in that school is from one person. One person's point of view, on persons experience.

We believe in tapping into as many people points of view and experiences as we can. Thousands of films watched from all over the world. Hundreds of books about films about filmmakers read. And most importantly picking that camera up as soon as possible and experiencing the process of shooting a film for yourself. If you want to be a top Hollywood director, then feel free to go to film school, as for Martainn and myself, we love films, we love making them and we love seeing the finished product. Though eventually we would both like to make a living from it, we get so much pleasure from it at the moment from picking up the camera and shooting what we wanna shoot. Not being interfered with or dictated to what we can and cannot shoot, or how we can or cannot shoot something. Like someone once said, necessity is the mother of invention. Wait until you read Martainn's notes on how we did our steadicam shot, and mixed our own realistic looking blood, all with no previous experience, we just said try this, we did and it worked.

When we think about it now, the process is pretty simple really, the hardest part is coming up with the stories, we were having no trouble doing that, so there was no reason whatsoever why we shouldn't stop sitting on our asses and get on with making a film. How many people do you know who own a video camera? Borrow it, pick it up and shoot, let them be in your film. Once you write the story really the hardest part of making the film is over. We believe so anyway.

Martainn had never written a screenplay before. For Pistachio Films #2 "Flipwreck" he just put his mind to work and wrote out what he knew he needed to see in front of the camera. And that was it, we were away again on our second venture into filmmaking.

Now your first short films may not be saleable to big production companies, but there is nothing like the feeling of actually picking up the camera shooting something you wrote, and editing (which I'll talk more about later) it into a wee film. You wrote it you shot it and you edited it, it is every bit your baby and you have the right to be proud of it. Worry about production companies and film festivals after you shoot it. If you have not started, already get pointing that camera now.

2. Trouble in the editing room.

Trouble in the editing room, fuck me, did we have trouble in the editing room. First of all there were all these programs that say they can do this, and computers that say they can do that, but it aint that simple, as my ulcers will attest to.

Ok so we had shot our first film in three days, yup three days totalling about 15 hours of shooting, now we had to edit it. We were using a program called Lumiere Video Studio, which looked like a very nice program, the editing interface looked good, and it had lots of bells and whistles on it, only one problem, it would not load captured video files over a certain size. Either that or it would load the video and no the audio into the program, after we captured the footage sound and all with another program.

So since there was no way on our home computer that we could re-synch sound and video or have the time it takes to shave of bits of video and audio to make them fit. We eventually got round to buying a new program, from a computer shop, where the sales staff were of no help whatsoever. Anyway what we bought was Videowave version 4.

Now I did not like the look of the interface on this as much as I liked the Lumiere video studio, but Videowave, can capture your audio and video into the computer together or separately, whichever you choose. And once I had it in the computer, it was a long uphill struggle, of a whole three hours to edit all of my footage into our seven-minute film. Yup a whole three hours, I'd only spent six months pissing around with Lumiere video studio, and here we were £70 and three hours later we had our finished film in the computer. I edited together a wee trailer, which Marti could not see how I was gonna do that for such a short film, but the laddie has faith now.

So here we were with our finished film, titles music, trailer and all, sitting on our computer. So now came the next problem like a kick in the ass. We could not get the bloody film out of the computer. Yup what we had captured the video into the computer with was a TV tuner with capture card, and we did not know what we were lacking now. So after some asking around, not in the previously unmentionable computer shop I might add, what we found out we needed was a TV out card. Yup I was clueless at this too, so we find out that TV out comes on a lot of graphics card so we were off to spend another £100 or so on a new graphics card.

Idiot that I was I went back to the same shop I got the software from, hoping that maybe they had a salesman in store who would have a Scooby Doo what I was talking about. But hey bit short on miracles today aren't we? So anyway we ended up with an ATI Rage Fury Pro graphics card, this all looked nice enough, until I tried to install the software for it, and it all went to hell, well I'm sure they are not supposed to sell peripherals with copied software now are they? Anyway after two weeks of downloading programs, installing and uninstalling, consulting the one or two people we know who really know about computers, my ulcers decided it was time for the ATI board to go back, and it did.

So we go and buy a new board, a little more expensive than the first one (£160). We bung it in and give it a go, after few minor teething problems bingo it bloody works!

So now we have a new board and finally we can complete the full circle of making our short films. From video camera to Videowave edited and back out to videotape again. So what is our new board I hear you ask, well it is an ASUS V7100 Deluxe Combo, and it works, the output format is not perfect, i.e. we are getting black bands at left and right of picture as well as at top and bottom. Now the top and bottom ones would not be a problem, and we kinda guess that the left and right ones are because we are shooting on 8mm videotape, anyone who knows any different feel free to let us know huh?

So how do we do it? Ok we have finished editing our film with Videowave, we have produced our film to the computer as avi or mpeg film, now what we do is close down the Videowave program (even though it does have output to tape facility on it), as it needs a different screen resolution than is used for the TV out which is on our new board. So we have our video machine connected to the out for the video, we have our sound card (where your speakers are connected) connected to a lead which has a 3.5mm jack on one end, and two audio phono plugs on the other end, these and the video phono straight from the ASUS board are plugged into a scart plug in the back of our video machine.

Then all you have to do is press Control Alt & T, and what happens is your monitor goes off, and your computer desktop comes up on your TV. You locate the video file of your film one your computer, play it, and make it full screen and then just press record on your video machine. And well that's about it, now we aint geniuses with computers here, I had to bring in just a little help, so if I've missed anything out that you think I may be able to help with then let me know, and ill try my best. But until then happy filmmaking and I hope to see your web site with loads of info up there and your films out there sometime soon too.

3. Inspiration.

Well I guess the first inspiration for the film came from the song "What becomes of the broken hearted". It was 4 am and rainy Scottish autumn morning, and here was me sitting on my ass going through some old audiotapes. And up pops this song, listened to it once and thought about it, rewound it listened to it another twice, then sat there on the floor and in ten minutes had turned out the script for "Second Time Around". Ok so it was not all complete, I can write two pages quickly which I can then organise into a script with everything written down there in the order my instinct tells me to put it in.  So I had two pages of the idea. The next morning I typed it up and turned it into an eight-page screenplay. And I was onto Marti telling him to bring his camera.

The inspiration for these things can come from anywhere I believe, a song, another movie, what the director of another movie should have done, a saying or a simple word. And there you have the basis of the idea for your movie, all you have to do after that is the hard part of laying it out so that you believe you have everything you need in your film set out on paper. Your screenplay does not even have to look like a screenplay, if you can't write in the format one is supposed to be set out, just write out all the information you need, to remind you of what you wanted to do this or you want to try this or that. If it is not in screenplay format, and you are going to be the one shooting it, then fuck it, it doesn't have to be. Don't let not being able to write in screenplay format stop you, you are the writer you are the director, as long as you can explain it to your actors, there will be no problems. Now I'm not saying don't ever try to learn and lay it out in screenplay format, you probably should and will be able to, the whole process of making your movie is a learning process, and learning to write in screenplay format is just another part of that process. For me it is easier to write in screenplay format, you can use fewer words, and if it is all set out right it will be easier for your actors to understand it. And if you are going to keep on writing stories and making your movies, eventually it probably will be beneficial if you can write in screenplay format. But for your first few short films that you are going to shoot yourself, and direct yourself, it aint all that important.

4. The Meaning of the Film.

Well like I said earlier the film was inspired one early morning by a song, a good song mind you but one that got me to thinking about it. And well I came up with the answer to the question in the song. Not of course the answer to the question for everybody, but well I believe for most what actually does become of the broken hearted is that they recover. So I wanted to get this across quickly and easily, and the way I came up to do it was through an endeavour into suicide.

Filming it and making the method of suicide a gun was the only way I really felt that the character would maybe get the point almost immediately. The point being that at the particular point in time he was not supposed to die. Now whether you believe that that would be an intervention by a hand of a God, or by fate or something I don't know, and don't want to get into, but if it gets across the point that, at that point in ones life you are not supposed to take your own life, then you can think it to be the choice of any God or whatever, that you wish.

So I guess what I was really trying to come up with was a positive film about suicide, still with the feelings of complete deflation and desire for an end to all the pain, but with a different ending. That's why at the end our character is strolling down the street with a happy face on, as he is supposed to have received the message, bang wallop right into his head like a motherfucking thunderbolt (instead of a bullet of course), and well I know not everybody will agree that this is what actually becomes of the broken hearted, and like I said not what becomes of all of them, but the recovery period being a usual slow one or a quick one of realisation like this, is what I believe comes to most of them.

5. Budget

• 1 Gun £50
• 1 Editing Program £70
• 1 Graphics Card £160
• 1 Phono to 3.55mm Lead £10

A Lot more than we were expecting, but if you do not count all the editing equipment, which will be used for all movies after this, that just leaves the gun.  And since Martainn and myself are of the opinion that if you buy a prop use it in as many movies as you can, then the gun will be getting used again.  But this means we are going to have some funny props turning up in funny places when we get to re-using the props from Flipwreck, oh well.
So people lets go make movies huh!!

Giovanni Pistachio.

© Owned By Giovanni Pistachio 22/09/01 14:55:41
Giovanni can be contacted at:- giovannip@pistachio-films.com
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