In Closing

Much like the Cold War, our PP2 film is coming to an end quite slowly. It’s hard to get my head around the fact that we’ve gone through so much this year to end up with 14 minutes of footage laid out on a timeline. This entire year has been oriented around making a massive film, to go out with a bang, and much like the Cold War, the ending is rather anticlimactic. This is a good thing however, and not a reflection on the film itself. Contentedness is death, so I take it as a good sign that I’m not in awe of my own film. I think that over the last couple of months, we’ve outgrown the project we’ve spent so long working on. What was previously a mountain is now another step in the staircase. I often find myself talking about this film in an ultra-modest, almost dismissive matter, as if it was nothing. Just another crew of random uni students trying to make a silly film with a big shiny camera. On one level, it’s true. That’s what we did. If you look at the end product, it’s just another film. But I also see this film as the culmination of so much planning, conflict and replanning that it’s a testament to our abilities as a small group of RMIT film students. The scale of our production was greater than anything I’d previously shot, and I could start to get a taste of why the DP is a director of photography. You have to have foresight and confidence in every decision, as you’re in charge of so many highly skilled people and you can’t mess them around. Shooting on RED made being decisive even more crucial, as the camera is the antithesis of mobile. I think that our months of planning, in terms of coverage and camera positions, really paid off in terms of making quick decisions and powering through such a large script. We got through 99 shots in three days. Yes, the lights were mostly pre-rigged and the shoot took place in one room, but I still think it’s a fair effort.
And so on one level, while I agonise over two shots that I’m unhappy with and plot to cut large chunks of the film out to make it move faster, I’m proud of it all. Not content, but proud that we made it. We trapped 31 people inside two rooms in South Melbourne for three days, and for the most part we worked like a well-oiled machine. We had gear from RMIT, Key Lighting, Videocraft, Lighting Lab and Panavision.. we had production design, art department, continuity and a 17″ HD Monitor. It was all there, it was a highly stressful production to be at the helm of (well done Emma and Stevie and Eric), and no matter what happens next, we made something.
I’m not going to get all sentimental about whether this is the “final” PP2 blog I write, or whether it’s the “final” RMIT film I work on. This is not the end of anything. If all goes to plan, PP2 will be the tip of the iceberg — and I’ll be back at RMIT next year raiding the equipment supplies.

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