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The making of MONTAGUE JACK part two

A still from 'Montague Jack'.

Recruit actors

Finding the right actors can be quite a challenge. I had formed quite firm ideas about our central characters and was determined that so far as possible the actors should be authentic and not obviously "amateur". With the approval of Wimborne Drama several auditions were set up.

We used our clubhouse as an audition and rehearsal room. We are fortunate at Wimborne, that we own our own clubhouse. Although generally set up as a cinema, we can remove several rows of seating and turn the building into a small film studio. This was to prove doubly useful later as we used the area to rehearse and block in all the stage moves prior to filming on location.

After several auditions we had all of our major adult actors except one: Emily Druitt. She is a pivotal character in the story and although there were several good candidates I was not totally happy. Then quite by chance I saw Tanya Alexander performing in a Shakespeare production on Brownsea Island. I told her about the project and thankfully she agreed to take part.

Location shoot for 'Montague Jack'.

That left one further problem. Part of the story explores the early life of the young Druitts and we needed some good teenage actors. Help was at hand from Michael Medwin who was an old boy from nearby Canford School. He put me in touch with their head of drama, who was most enthusiastic and set up auditions with interested young people from their Drama Group. Thus young Montague, Emily and their siblings were recruited. We now had a full cast.

All the contact data and availability of the actors was logged into Celtex and linked to the sequences.

Finding Locations

Crew and cast at the landing stage shooting 'Montague Jack'.One thing I soon found out: it is very easy to write a great location but quite another thing to find it in real life. As most of the original London locations no longer existed, we agreed we would shoot everything locally including the River Thames shots.

Peter and I spent several days legging it around the local area looking for suitable exterior sites. Also, I contacted various people/organisations who had suitable interiors that we could adapt for our film.

Fortunately the Wimborne/Poole area is rich in old buildings and backstreets that could easily be London in the 1880's. Also part of Poole Quay could be shot to represent the River Thames. The Wimborne River scene was easy because we were able to use the same stretch of water that the Druitt family would have visited as it has been relatively unchanged for 100 years.

The Priests House Museum in Wimborne together with Scaplens Court and Upton House in Poole provided the settings for all of the interiors. Permission from the various property and land owners was obtained and the locations photographed and scanned into Celtex.

Terry Hopwood was also involved in discussing the sets, any set dressing and furniture required. He then went about finding the items and persuading people to loan them for free. In the end he managed to conjure up everything from a pig's innards to a coach-and-horses and a number of priceless antiques. All key to the production values of the project.

Plan Rehearsals And Shooting

This proved to be the most challenging part of the project. When you have around 30 actors plus a shooting crew all of whom are giving their valuable spare time to the project the logistics can be daunting. The general approach for each sequence/scene to be shot was to first obtain the availability of everyone involved and work roughly as follows:

Week 1. Send out script sections to actors. Book costumes for filming.

Week 2. Actors study scripts and raise any questions.

Week 3. Clubroom. First rehearsal read through and block in moves. At this point I would go through the back-story of the character if this were the first time that they appeared in the film. We also engaged with the actors and their reading of the script and they were able to incorporate suggestions for improvement. Michael Medwin came to several sessions and gave advice. The work area was laid out as per the film set to be used. i.e. chairs and tables etc. We also used these sessions to devise our lighting plan and set camera positions. Some exterior shots involving a moving camera were rehearsed in the nearby car park.

Week 4. Clubroom. Second rehearsal. By this time actors were almost word perfect and we concentrated on the mood, emotion and emphasis of the sequence. Camera positions and lighting were finalised.

Week 5. Clubroom. Final rehearsal, costume fitting and agreement on shooting arrangements were discussed. Visit location and finalise access and power arrangements etc.

Week 6. Filming. This usually took place over one or two days of a week-end as this was the time of maximum people availability. By having blocked in all the moves, planned the camera positions and lighting we were able to move into the location and set up with many of the key questions answered.

Filming each scene followed a fairly consistent pattern.

Firstly we would arrange the set and define the working area. I would be working with Carl or Eric depending who was available. Then the camera would be placed for the first shot and a feed taken from it to a full-size monitor or in some cases the little Swit 7 inch HD monitor. While this was happening Peter would be setting up the lighting with Bill and Neil. We would all then review the final result adjusting as necessary.

We would then introduce the actors and run through a final rehearsal checking that everything was OK before doing the first take. Neil would also be finding the best place to put the mic for sound recording. This procedure was then followed closely for each subsequent take and shot.

Doing a shot with Michael Medwin for 'Montague Jack'.
Preparing a shot for 'Montague Jack'.

As filming progressed Neil and Bill devised various ways of allowing us to use the full-size monitor in many differing locations - even exteriors. This included using a radio link for both the gun mic and the monitor. It was a great boon.

At all times we were working from the script and the storyboards and the pre-planned camera and lighting positions.

Naturally the above had to be highly flexible with the ability to cope with last minute changes and unforeseen problems. Also, in the case of filming exteriors we had to have a contingency day set in case of bad weather. An added complication was that during some periods there were two or more sequences being worked on at the same time. This process was greatly helped by a combination of Celtex scheduling and a good old-fashioned paper-based time chart on the wall.

To help the post-production process the narration was recorded very early in the process as this was used as a guide to timing and linkage shots required.

Post Production

The post production process broke largely into the following phases: graphics and motion sequences, cut film to script, fine tune edit, sound edit and colour grading.

Graphics and motion sequences were all produced using Apple Motion. After the initial steep learning curve this proved to be a brilliant product. A vast number of stills had been collected by two of the team and further local pictures borrowed from a Wimborne based collector. Also there was a great deal of material in the public domain obtained from the Internet. Each sequence was carefully planned and matched to the pre-recorded voiceover. Photoshop was used extensively to clean up shots and also produce overlays, which were needed to cover modern items in some of the moving shots. The ability to pin a small overlay and track in with the motion in the shot was most useful. (e.g. blanking out a TV Arial and a modern house.) Late nights and lots of coffee were the order of the day here.

Still from 'Montague Jack'.

Cutting the pictures to script was a fairly straightforward process. As we were using a single camera we were able to film each element of the shot (CU, MS, LS etc.) individually and then cut them to script. The first cut produced a film of some 80 minutes.

Fine tune the edit - we reviewed the cut of each sequence, concentrating on the interaction between characters and the overall pace of the project. The running time was now just over an hour. At this point we previewed the film to our crew and took on board a number of comments and observations.

At this stage we were concerned about the overall length of the project and we took a step back and reviewed our target audience. This was a film not made for competition or for our club. It was a film for and about our local community. It would be easy to cut out a lot of the background information and hack the plot right down to the bare bones. This would be great for a general audience but not for the people of the town who were keen to hear the story in great detail. It was also felt that to shorten it would be to trivialise the story, which happens to so many projects today.

Sound editing was carried out in Apple Soundtrack Pro that is part of the FCP suite of programmes. In this process the pictures and original sound are taken into the programme and sound edited there. This consisted of sweetening and noise reduction, the addition of ambient and spot sound effects, music and narration.

Noise reduction was quite a challenge at times with not only extraneous wind and traffic noise but also a fire engine and loads of aircraft. Fortunately Neil Horder had recorded some excellent sound in spite of these difficulties. A lot of time was spent auditioning ambient noise, spot effects and of course music and in the latter case decided that less is more and used it very sparingly. In hindsight I think that some of the ambient noise could have been mixed at a very slightly higher level. But that's hindsight for you.

Colour Grading - the mixed soundtrack was moved back into FCP and then re-exported to Apple Colour. Here again the learning curve was quite steep and it took me quite a while to get the look that we wanted. Some of the early exteriors we shot were at very low light levels and proved difficult to lift without losing quality. The lesson here was to shoot at reasonably good levels with plenty of detail that can more easily be brought back in post production.

Part of our final process was to show the film to the crew once more and incorporate final comments.

Final presentation

The premiere took place on 22nd October 2010 in a local hall, which had just installed a new digital projector, sound system and large wide screen. There was an audience of nearly 300 invited guests, club members and local residents. The response was better than our wildest dreams, the audience loved it and the local press were very enthusiastic.

All in all it was a very worthwhile project and provided all of us involved in a glimpse of real film making. The only problem now is, what do we do next.

- Ray Joyce, April 2011


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Page updated on 23 April 2011
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