A Devon Made Christmas...
Viewing a post on Facebook by chance led to the discovery of the ITV Nativityfactor competition - a competition to retell the nativity story with a prize of £5000! Now usually it's best to weigh up the odd of success before venturing into any endeavour so a quick assessment of last years entries showed that whilst they were fun, Blackout Productions would be able to put together a serious contender for the competition!
Now the problem was we had no idea what to do! Normally we can create a story on the spot and have a pretty good idea on how to make it real but not this time. Fortunately our friend local author Laura Quigley was able to suggest a theme that saw the figures of Mary and Joseph elect to go into the barn as it was thier party which had create no room at the inn. Brilliant! now we had our idea. |
To make our entry stand out we decided that it should have a John Lewis Christmas Advert style song which sounds Christmassy, has nice words but isn't really about Christmas at all! Alex was able to come up the words and a basic tune but not being a musician he needed help! Lee, a DJ on phonic FM was able to hook us up with Hannah who is one half of the award winning duo Sound of the Sirens who has a voice that can be best described as a young Bonny Tyler! A few hours with a keyboard and guitar and the song was just about there but we still needed a guitarist to make it sound right.
Whilst the search was going on we put together the details of the shoot. We knew so many people who could be in the video but there was on about 160 seconds of screen time to be had and so we had to concentrate on core characters:
Whilst the search was going on we put together the details of the shoot. We knew so many people who could be in the video but there was on about 160 seconds of screen time to be had and so we had to concentrate on core characters:
The video follows a formula which helps the audience get used to what they are seeing and allows them to expect what they are going to see next. Then by altering the visual it results in something familiar that is unexpected. It also helps filming as the shots can be broken down into sets - The exterior front door scenes, interior reverse, entrance to the party, then the shed scenes. To save time on a shoot you'll want to move the camera as little as possible so we used these sets to film all the scenes at each location before moving on. Due to the slope on the front garden of the location we were using we actually used a boom to get the camera into the right position. We lit the porch with two daylight bulbs to balance the natural daylight to just knock off the shadows as when we shot the reverse of entrance scenes facing out toward the sun behind the clouds.
To add some extra flavour to the visuals we used a lovely old pentax lens to give some great depth of field. We were also able to take advantage of the setting sun as be got towards the final scenes. As we lost the daylight, the colour begins to pick up a blue tone so when some yellow light is shone from with the shed we have a nice contrast between colours. It was a very short shoot as it was November so we started loosing light at around half three, and also the attention span of our two year star was very short so we had to get her scenes done as quickly as possible. So with the scenes shot it was off to editing and the small matter of a song to finish up!
Working with a good few people over the years has it advantages! We spread the message that we were after a guitarist to work with us on this little non-Christmas song. Director John John Tomkins contacted us and suggested Neil Rich who had composed the theme for his feature film 'They're Coming'. Neil was very helpful and able to spend some time with us putting the song together. We then brought Hannah into the studio to add vocals to the track. One amazing tool that is often scalded when it's use is mention is auto tuning. As we were very pushed for time we could only have a few takes but when we listened back to them Neil's keen ears could tell that Hannah was very slightly off note in a few places. Rather than come back another day, Neil was able to auto tune the notes up the fraction that they needed to make the song as perfect as Hannah would normally of had them given proper time to warm up and of course rehearse!
With the song added to the edited footage we put in our competition entry to a good response getting to 4th place before the voting system was changed. We then slipped down to 14th and out of contention to be put in front of the judges. It's a shame the judges couldn't look at all the entries but it's not about the winning it's about the taking part - mind you £5000 would have set up us nicely for the year but there were go. Thank you to everyone involved and those who voted for us we really couldn't have done it without you! We had a great time making it and you can judge for yourself our entry! Remember to play it full screen!
With the song added to the edited footage we put in our competition entry to a good response getting to 4th place before the voting system was changed. We then slipped down to 14th and out of contention to be put in front of the judges. It's a shame the judges couldn't look at all the entries but it's not about the winning it's about the taking part - mind you £5000 would have set up us nicely for the year but there were go. Thank you to everyone involved and those who voted for us we really couldn't have done it without you! We had a great time making it and you can judge for yourself our entry! Remember to play it full screen!
Devon Made Christmas 2013 from Alex White on Vimeo.