The results are in....

So, that's that.

When I was sitting in the assembly hall almost 3 years ago, surrounded by strangers and being talked at by so many people I never thought this day would come. Also I never thought I'd absorb everything that was said that day. Well, I didn't. 

In fact there's only one thing I remember being told from that day, and that was that the time I was to spend at uni would fly by faster than I could say 'what the heck is a POV?'. It sure has, I've now officially finished university all together. I wish I could say that it was the time of my life and that I will remember it as some of the happiest days I've had. Sadly, that hasn't been the case, especially my final year.

I highly doubt I'd have made it though the second year if it wasn't for Chris. And I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have made it though the final year if it wasn't for the support of my close friends. There's no shame in admitting that it was a testing year in lots of ways. There was a distinct lack of support in some areas, as well as a ton of favouritism going in. BUT, that's not really what made it hard, after all, just like in Hogwarts, help is always given to those who...well, those who know where to look for it. It was this help, that came from the likes of Dave Robinson that helped me make it through the year.

It was the encouragement from David Fisher that helped me to carry on when all I felt like doing was giving up. And Thursday just gone (27th June 2013) was the day that made the last 3 years totally worth all the bad stuff we had to go through.

I'm proud to say I'm now officially Gemma Jones BA (Hons) 1st class :D and am setting up a new photography business in Cornwall.

Needless to say I was pretty chuffed, as were my family and friends. I'm not alone either, Dave got a 1st tool. Really, all my friends have done well (at least the one's I know/care about). The only sad part was that dad couldn't be there to see it, but I've a feeling that somehow he already knows. Hearing mother tell me how proud she was and how proud dad would have been was great. It will be a bittersweet moment donning my cap and gown come October knowing that dad won't be there in the audience, but I'd like to think he'll be watching me :)

So what's next? Well I'm officially job hunting, but a wise person once told me 'if you can't find a job, make one' so all systems are go for a few projects that seem to be going OK. On top of that, I've been able to rekindle a few old hobbies, like making videos for pleasure, re-learning to play the saxophone, reading, photography, writing and baking to name but a few. Also the new house is coming along nicely, just 2 more rooms to get sorted and we'll be having our long awaited house warming.

Thanks for coming along with me on this ride, continue to pop back, I very much doubt it'll be the last for this blog!

Until next time
Gemma :)

Ffresh Festival at Glyndwr

Ffresh is a moving image festival set in Wales each year.

Last year during Creative Futures week we were told by Berwyn Rowlands that Ffresh was going to be held at Glyndwr this year. I found this to be an exciting piece of news as Berwyn said there would be a chance to work behind the scenes and of course the chance of putting in some of our work into the show. 

Ffresh was held at the main campus between the 20th and 22nd of February 2013. Sadly due to family commitments, I was unable to attend the Wednesday. My friend Dave had managed to get a job helping out with ushering and handing out registration forms and badges. 

The first thing I did on Thursday was head to the Glyndwr showcase. We had been told by our tutors that our films had been entered into the festival so I was looking forward to seeing the showcase. 

I had been watching the showreel for around half an hour before I realised there was nothing of ours in it, let alone anything more recent than 2007. Steve Davies later explained what was in the showcase was everything he had been given. It was a little disappointing to be honest. Also while I was watching the showreel, many pieces had no names, and so I had no reference point. There was also three music videos by the same person which I don't think really showed the variety Glyndwr has to offer. 

We ended up leaving the showcase early and breaking for lunch. Afterwards I attended the British Guide to Documentary Film Making : Jes Benstock Masterclass. After leaving college in 1990, Jes has been responsible for several documentaries including The British Guide to Showing Off, The Holocaust Tourist and Orders of Love.

He specialises in comedy documentaries but stresses it is not cheap humour he goes for. The British Guide to Showing Off follows the Alternative Miss World pageant, which truly is something you have to see to believe. One of the contestants is a self proclaimed 'gun-toting life coach with a love of horses' and was dressed head to toe in white sparkly latex. There is a short video of it here. I was delighted to learn that Billy Conolly judged the pageant in 1985.

 Andrew Logan's museum in Berriew (image courtesy of Google images)

The man himself, Andrew in his museum (image courtesy of Google images)

British artist Andrew Logan is responsible for the pageant, he runs a museum of sculpture in the sleepy town of Berriew in mid Wales is the main star of the documentary. However, it isn't easy to film a documentary even if your subjects are extremely unique. Jes explains that when faced with a camera people can become entirely different. Initially they might feel as if they need to tell you everything, or show off for the camera. Documentaries work better after this period, he explains. 

 The random collection of people who enter the Alternative Miss World pageant are a constant source of surprise and inspiration (image courtesy of Google images)

The intricate costumes and stunning make up can take contestants a very long time to get perfect. (Image courtesy of Google images)

Another contestant, in a teacup.

Avoid bonding with the characters, unless you are filming alone. If you are part of the filming crew, make yourself invisible and become as unobtrusive as possible. People tend to lose interest in being filmed after a while, you will only get a window into their lives for a short time before you overstay your welcome. The British Guide to Showing Off spans almost 40 years and Jes had to sift through over 300 hours of footage!

The editing process can change the entire feeling of the filming and waiting can be the name of the came. Even having the camera filming at what might seem like a dull moment can yield unexpected results.

Orders of Love, another of Jes' creations is a gentile comedy about suicide. It also talks about how previous generations of our family have an influence on our personality. Find more information and part of the documentary here.

Holocaust tourist is a documentary about the people who work at Auschwitz today and how they feel they've been viewed as people. Jes describes himself as Jew-ish, and feels he was obligated to make a film for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. He was unsure of the angle he wanted to take on the documentary, but that he wanted to capture the uneasiness of the place and the visitors centre. More information here.

His latest project is called Where is the fish that never swam? Channel 4 describes it thusly

'Arnold Brown, a septuagenarian Glaswegian Jewish surrealist comedian with an overactive imagination, is forced to return to the city of his youth.

Shot in a noir style with extensive CGI, Arnold's 'Glasgow of the Mind' is a nostalgic 1950s Glasgow shot through with a 21st century sensibility.'

Find out more information here.

Jes Benstock 'minding the gap between expectation and reality'.

He finishes by saying people identify with humanity, with people, realism and people's stories. Look for and portray emotions you understand, but have respect for your characters. Remember to express yourself even if you have to justify yourself to your tutors. Very true words.

Dylan Kendle
Tomato Masterclass

Wow, I'll be honest, this was a very hard talk for me to attend. I felt Dylan really didn't want to be there and he was quite difficult to understand. Tomato's website can be found here.

From what I gathered, Tomato is a place for collaboration, they 'practice imperfect' and make things every day even if there are no clients, which isn't a bad practice in my mind.

Their most well known piece of work was the opening credits to Trainspotting. You can find a video here.

If I'm brutally honest, it was like looking through someone's awful holiday pictures, with really boring commentary. Sorry Dylan! 

Ffresh Friday
Chris Auty 
Producer's Masterclass

Chris came to talk to us about what a producer's role is, why be a producer? and how to become a producer. He teaches production as well as working in the industry. 

Producers finance the films. It doesn't seem like a massively glamorous job to be. I can be a lonely role and some producers feel the films belong to them and that everyone else is just a hired hand. This is rare as most people on set have very big egos of their own.

If you get it right, being a producer can make you a lot of money. A producer is infact a partner to the directed, they aught to be aligned, sharing fees with the director, working alongside each other. If you both have the same vision it can be fun and less lonely.

How to become a producer.

As with many instances, there's no simple answer. Chris explains he started as a film critic, and says it wasn't the most ideal route. You can go to film school, it helps if you have lots of money (not really what I want to hear!) and to read scripts, find one you life then enquire to get the ball rolling. Head to parties to meet distributes, actors and camera people. This seems a little unlikely to me though? You could also buy a cinema.....

It seems it is a case of 'it's not what you know.....' to me. 

A producer can face a lot of adversity, actors playing up and face many financial issues. You've got to show a lot of passion for what you do, and Cannes film festival is the most exciting place in the world to be if you are a film maker.

So why become a producer?

It gives you a sense of achievement, particularly if a film does very well. It offers pride at creative because it is so hard and mentally challenging at times. It isn't for everyone. Working as a film producer can often lead to producing for TV too, the two industries are often envious of each other. More and more people are doing both. 

It's a fantastic job. If you have the money apparently! Again, it was a good talk, but it seemed a little presumptuous to assume all students are sitting on a mountain of cash. I know if I was I'd be out producing and directing my own films.....

Steve Davies
The Insiders : How to get ahead in TV

Laura Cotton (script and development editor, Becoming Human), Eryl Phillips (Producer, Rondo Media) & Nick Goding (Producer, Shameless, Trolliled) came to join us for a question and answer session lead by Steve Davies.

TV is moving fast these days, most people want it there and then, and so On Demand and web services are becoming more and more important. With places like YouTube and Vimeo the goal posts have well and truly moved. Because of this, keeping track of finances and broadcasting is becoming harder and harder. People uploading content onto the net have a lot to do with this.

YouTube is useful for uploading your showreel to. Most people will use a more professional platform like Vimeo, this will give you more platforms than just sending on your CV. There is still a massive emphasis put on social media to get your name known. 

Several of the questions came from students in the performing arts department. Reality TV seems to be doing actors out of work, Britain's Got Talent, X-Factor, Big Brother being some of the examples. But this is what the public is demanding (apparently....I know I'm not!).

The BBC has a big responsibility to examine all social aspects, whereas the other channels are commercial companies. There is a possibility that Amazon may be launching their own TV channel

Once again it was stressed after a student asked for the best way into TV acting that there is no obvious route into TV. Showing limitless enthusiasm, working really hard, luck, being at the right place at the right time, networking, and doing work for free were all things suggested. 

University is a good place to be if you are a creative, as it allows you to fail in a safe environment. Unfortunately all the questions were taken up by performing arts students and so we didn't get to ask much about the practical side of TV, camera, behind the scenes jobs etc, but it was a very useful session.

Terror in 20 seconds

Entrants for this section of the festival had 20 seconds to pitch the scariest horror film to a panel of judges. The jury included Jason Davitt (Artist, Screenwriter, Director, Editor, Fitness instructor, professional Psychic and Witch), Gareth Bailey (founder and director of Abertoir Horror Festival), and Nia Edwards-Behi (assistant director of the Abertoir Horror Festival & a contributing writer to Brutal as Hell). 

The winner was to recieve £500 towards the making of their film. Those shown were of the 5 finalists. The winner was Laura Vanstone and Karl Rees with their film 'Hollow', their can be found at the bottom on this page. The other finalists videos can be seen here.

For me the only really scary clip was Nathan Moore's Talent Show 58 which was very jumpy! I enjoyed watching them, but would have preferred to see some of the entrants who didn't make it to the final also. 

Nick Henderson
Alternative ways to finance your film through stills
Printers Inc

I very quickly learned that this was little more than a sales pitch for Printers Inc who help artists sell their work online. The concept isn't too dissimilar to eBay or Etsy but offers better copyright protection. 

They started life in 2009 as the Button Factory, they had a printing house and shop in Manchester printing dissertations, essays, canvasses and binding documents. 

Opening a shop with Printers Inc only takes a couple of minutes, they offer printing up to A0 and you can post straight to Facebook as soon as you've uploaded an image. Your shop can also be embedded straight into Facebook, making it look like a FB page. You can also analyse your sales figures, set your prices and put your images forward as image of the week. Printers Inc take a set cut from any works you sell.

It is a good idea on the whole, as the cross over between artist and business is often weak. But personally I think I'll stick with selling them myself, after the copyright issues that have cropped up in the news lately I like to know exactly where my images are at all times.

It's My Shout screening 

We got the chance to see this years short films, made by It's My Shout and young people who write the scripts and direct, film & produce the 6 shorts every year. It is currently in it's 10th year. More info here and here. I didn't take notes from the shorts as they were all equally mesmerising.

Overall I very much enjoyed the Ffresh festival, I was sad to find out we had missed our chance to submit our own work into the festival, but fingers crossed for next years!

Acceptance. Our final project.

Well this is it.

It's very near to being over, and this project is meant to be our legacy at Glyndwr.

 Poster #1 I have learned a lot in Photoshop to make these posters, the line behind the word Acceptance took me almost 2 hours to create! They went down well, and we wanted to start to drum up some interest in our film.

Poster #2 Everyone likes this one best (me too) I like the simplicity of it. We went to Yale to get them printed to put up around the Regent Street campus and also at the performing arts department.

In all honesty, I think it's a pretty big legacy too! 

This blog is to document all the work Dave and I have put into making Acceptance. It is a project that spans more than 5 years, starting life out as a story I wrote about vampires. Most of you who know me, know that I'm a bit obsessed with this genre of film. Having read Bram Stokers take on events a long time ago I was hooked.

Since I've read and watched countless films and books on the subject, absorbing everything I can about this race of people? Monsters? Undead? 

Well anyway, here's an excerpt from my book called 'The Unlikeliest of All' (working title).


1

You know it's Monday when the sun is shining through the curtains when you wake up. Monday looks down on you sarcastically, allowing you to experience glorious sunshine when you open your curtains. Only to snatch it cruelly away when you finally force yourself out of the front door. Monday is facing the daily commute, rammed against the doors of a moving train somewhere deep underground with a trillion other sullen looking workers. One of whom insists on being near enough every single day to give you an overly-cheery ‘good morning’ and all you can do is grunt in response.

Monday is arriving into the office to find your inbox needs steel enforced legs just to hold it up and no matter how hard you work never seems to empty.

This Monday was no exception to the rule and after tripping over my cat, Trixie, on the way out of the door I said something no lady should say. But then I'm not a lady, at least not any more  My name is Heather and I am a vampire. And this is my story.

   * 

Rapidly cooling coffee in hand I rushed, as always to cram myself into an impossibly small space in front of the doors of the train. Despite having been un-dead as it were for almost sixty years I still couldn't get used to living solely on the red stuff. Besides it tastes like iron, washing metal down with metal is hardly the gourmet dinner a lonely batchelorette would enjoy. So I sipped my coffee and smiled apologetically at the flustered looking mother with a screaming child as we stopped at the next station. Her eyes followed me as the doors closed and the train chugged, reluctantly into the darkness. 

“Morning!” Came the cheery voice, from behind me. Without so much as a proper backwards glance I grunted something in return and swallowed a rather hot gulp of coffee.

As the train pulled out of the station and into the darkness once more, stole a glance at my reflection. A mistake. My impossibly curly hair was already breaking free from its grip and danced almost tauntingly around my pale face. Rolling my eyes I tucked it behind my ears, chugged the last of my now rapidly cooling coffee just in time for my dreaded stop to loom into view. Trying to escape the station is a mission in itself, you would think being some indestructible creature of the night that I would simply turn to vapour and flit aimlessly through them. But how many times have you seen someone combust into a mist and pour from your nearest station. If that was me, I'd have gone and checked myself into the nearest mental hospital there and then!

After a mostly unsuccessful escape from the station I walked the four-ish minutes to the office building, some kind of architectural reject from the eighties. Orange and brown carpeting in the lobby, the kind you'd expect on a some granny filled coach. Gives off very harsh carpet burns, as I learnt when my newest pair of Jimmy Choo knock offs broke on their first day.

The lift spluttered into life and played tinny music all the way up to the 17th floor. Every morning I get the feeling that the doors open up into the pits of hell. Each day I expect to see flames and a dark lord sat upon the copier, but today was no different than any other Monday. The lift doors opened to reveal the same thing they always do, over-buffed silvery walls with a row of buttons that glimmer hopefully while secretly taunting you. Several people filtered into the lift, slowly ebbing away to myself and another two girls who work in my office. I tend to keep to myself at work; it saves a lot of very embarrassing questions turning into several very big, elaborate lies. That and the office politics at my place can put the houses of parliament to shame. Not to mention the embarrassing ‘incident’ I had two years ago that makes me shudder every time I think about it.

As I headed to my desk that had long since been buried beneath a mountain of junk I have to reminded myself, like everyday, that I needed this job. Unlike many would have us believe, vampires aren't wealthy aristocrats who sate themselves off the blood of virgins. Ten worthless breaths later and my usual mantra of 'I can't kill my boss, I can't kill my boss' aside I plonk my size sixteen butt into my dented office chair and screw my eyes shut to turn on my computer. If I can't see my emails, they're not there, right? I guess I should also mention, that breathing has long since stopped being a necessity for me, but even having been technically dead for a long time I don’t have much trouble in keeping up this human part of my pretence. 

The only good thing about Mondays is that they are so busy they pass by in a blur. Each time I look at the clock several hours have disappeared. The epic struggle against the monster that is the inbox is soon over for a few more blissful hours. Then you get back on the tube and remember you live alone, with your cat, and the evening's entertainment consists of staring into an empty freezer, resorting to alcohol which wont get you drunk, and coming up with more and more creative ways to satisfy your hunger. And I don’t mean grabbing a McDonalds on the way home!

"Hmmm, would madam like the chicken or the fish this evening?" I asked my cat a few nano-seconds after getting through the door. She responds with an agitated mew that roughly translates to 'please just feed me'. So I opt for the fish and squeeze the foul smelling chunks into her cat-head shaped bowl and leave her to it. 

As for myself I go for the usual. I pull the black wine glass from the cupboard above Trixie's and open the fridge to look at the range of thick plastic bags clearly filled with blood. As predictably inaccurate a lot of films and texts about vampires can be, there are a few things they have got right. Like drinking blood, without it the virus that exists inside me would die and consequently I would live for a very long time growing agonisingly weaker and weaker until the virus turned on me. Depressing? Very. 

I watch the liquid splash around in the wine glass; it looks like ink in the dim light of my living room. I will have to wait for it to warm to room temperature before I can drink it. It will take me almost all night to get through the bag which is just less than a pint. Looking at Trixie curled up on the arm chair opposite mine I smile. Another thing that Hollywood got very wrong about us is the relationship between animals and vampires. Trixie was there when I woke up from being turned, and has stuck with me rigidly ever since. I’m not delusional enough to think that there is some other worldly bond between us; I didn’t really like cats to begin with. At least she doesn’t judge me for needing to drink blood.

*


So there you go. Heather (now known as Grace) was always supposed to be NORMAL, to dispel this idea that all vampires are perfect, rich and powerful. Although Grace can run really fast, jump really high and never ages, she DOESN'T burst into flames in the sun (although it's not stated in the film, she never leaves the house in the day without sunscreen on). Animals don't hate her, and because she was accidentally turned into a vampire a long time ago, she needs a job to live as riches didn't just fall into her lap.

During the summer of 2011, Dave Fisher and I agreed to start putting together the bones of a working script with the hopes of filming before the second year at university even started. A couple of months later we had the basis of our script, some potential actors in place and locations in mind. However due to personal and financial constraints it wasn't to be until the final year of university.

Because of our pre production work, we hit the ground running in October 2012 and after getting permission we agreed to work together on our final project. Right from that first day back we have been working almost non stop on Acceptance and it has been more than worth it.

So we had a script, what next?

We had ideas for locations, Grace lives in two houses in the film, her parent's house in the 1950's and then her own house later on in the film. Other locations we needed were that of the party where Grace sees her love Andrew kissing his girlfriend Victoria, the act that starts the chain of events that see Grace turn into a vampire.

 We approached local businesses to ask if we could film there. Alun Hughes runs a small book and DVD shop in the People's market, we needed something similar as Grace's friend runs her own book shop in the film. I was ill the day this scene was filmed, but it remains one of my favourite scenes of the whole film.

 Matt McHale allowed us to film in La Baguette after hours. The scenes in the coffee shop were the very first we filmed!

 Geoffry Williams allowed us to film in the Horse & Jockey.

 Gavin Jones allowed us to film at Gelicity, for the office scenes where Grace is at work.

 Several of the scenes were filmed at dusk, one of the bite scenes involving Grace and a homeless man is set in front of a silhouetted Flint castle, giving it a dramatic feel. The creative use of lighting and the ability to film at very high ISO (thanks to my 5D Mk3) meant we could film in the low light without losing the quality.

 Josh the homeless man sits under a street lamp.

 The night Grace is turned into a vampire she also loses her family. It is never explained what actually happened to them, but Grace visits a memorial to them each year. This graveyard was near to where we filmed the scenes in Grace's new home. It was also miserable and rainy on the day we filmed so it set the scene nicely.

In the opening scenes, Grace is sitting in a tree, for safety reasons we couldn't ask her to climb high up into a tall tree, thankfully we were able to film from a low angle making it look like she was high up.

So locations set, next we needed some actors!

Admittedly I didn't go to as much effort with this poster as I did with the ones for the film, but it just needed to be informative.

Many people emailed for more information, and we were sending application forms along with character bios and highlighted scripts to those interested. Here are the character bios:

Character Bios

Lillian Grace Vaughan (known as Grace) Lead Character.
Grace (no taller than 5’6”) has dark hair (approximately 21-22) (ideally curly), is curvy, and has a dry sense of humour. Ideally her actor will have pale or freckled skin She wears little makeup. She’s an animal lover and is a fast typer. She works in an administration style role and lives alone with her cat Sourpuss. Grace was turned into a vampire in the 1950’s by accident and so the actor will have to wear prosthetic fangs.

Grace is a bit of a loner, she has a close, but small group of friends who appear in the film. She tends to keep people at arm’s length because she knows she won’t be around them for a long time. A bit quirky, she likes to collect things, and is a bit of a technophobe. She’s wary of trusting people, and is a little standoffish at first with the man who greets her every day at the bus stop. Grace’s favourite colour is red, she likes to wear jewellery, odd little things she’s collected. She dresses in a casual fashion, with lots of dark colours and has a fascination with feathers.

Viktor/December – vampire who turned Grace.
December (at least 6’)(who comes back later on in the film as Viktor) is an old vampire, although he doesn’t look over 40. He dresses in a typical vampire sense, long dark clothes, and would ideally have long hair tied back with a brown leather thong. He wears big boots (think New Rocks) and trousers with buckles on them, he wears a long dark fabric or leather jacket and like Grace has pale skin. He wears a necklace that has a rune or steampunk feel to it. This is vital to the story line. He is suave and talks in a very old-world manner, he’s cool, calm and composed but has a very fiery temper.

Andrew (Grace’s love interest in the beginning of the film) Andrew’s part is only a small one. He is very tall and quite thin and is a shy character who’s friends with Grace at the start of the film. Will be wearing 50’s attire.

Andrew’s girlfriend (very small part)A’s girlfriend is a bit of a bitch, she’s very pretty and preened although not fake tan. She’s very possessive over Andrew and takes pleasure in the fact that she’s just broken Grace’s heart.

Grace’s friends Sam and Alexa (both females)Alexa owns a book shop and has been friends with Grace for the longest after she spent a lot of time in her shop. Alexa is quirky, petite and loves the colour purple. She’s outspoken and isn’t afraid to voice her opinion, she doesn’t need anyone or anything to validate her. Her dress is that of a modern goth, but with splashes of colour, especially purple. She wears lots of bracelets and has a nose piercing. She’s very intelligent.

Sam is a teacher, she’s blonde a little ditsy and loves Twilight (known as Afterlight in the film). Her dress sense is casual with little hints of her punky past, Doc Martin boots and thick rimmed glasses, and a few safety pins in her bag. She loves to read, and is anarchist but keeps it mostly secret.

Seth Jacobs (Grace’s love interest later on in the film).Seth works in IT, and is a bit of a geek. He loves coffee and like Grace he pretty much lives off the stuff. He takes the bus to work and usually has a newspaper under his arm in the mornings. He carries a leather satchel but it is often empty save for an apple and a notepad. He’s an aspiring fantasy/sci-fi writer and spends his free time watching box sets of programmes like Star Trek, 24, Lost, Stargate, CSI etc etc etc. He wears thin rimmed glasses and is quite shy but not painfully so.

Homeless fishing man (no lines)
This man is sitting near a river/lake at night fishing and is Grace’s first meal. Although he has no lines he’s scruffy looking and has on dark clothes, and gloves.

Extras
People in the pub, people in the book shop, people dressed in 50’s attire outside the prom venue. Grace’s boss.

Obviously there have been a few changes, Grace's friends are now Alexa and Eli, and Andrew's girlfriend is now Victoria. Here is an example of a page from the highlighted scripts we sent out.

DECEMBER (VIKTOR):

‘I didn’t mean to frighten

you. You seem as if you could do

with some company.’

Grace scoots away at turns to look at him.

December offers his hand and says

DECEMBER (VIKTOR):

‘Forgive me, my name is December.’

He kisses Grace’s hand

GRACE:

‘Grace. What kind of a name is

December?’

DECEMBER (VIKTOR):

‘It’s a very, very old family name.

But don’t worry yourself with such

trivialities, what sorrow befalls

you Grace?’

Grace sniffs, wiping at her smeared make up with a tissue.

GRACE:

‘I was going to tell someone I was

in love with them, but....I.....’

December takes hold of Grace’s hand as she talks, which

makes her falter.

DECEMBER (VIKTOR):

‘Please...continue...’

Grace slowly takes her hand out of his and stands

GRACE:

‘I....I.....should, I should go.’

DECEMBER (VIKTOR):

‘No, please, stay a while with me.’

GRACE:

‘My parents....they’re expecting

me.’

Grace turns to walk away and gets pulled back really fast

over the wall. There’s a brief struggle and December gets on top of

Grace, his hands around her throat.

DECEMBER (VIKTOR):

‘I asked you nicely.’

We wanted to make use of the more difficult scenes of the film, as well as the more wordy ones, as Grace has several long monologues to remember. In the end we held TWO audition days, as unfortunately despite the interest only 1 person turned up to the audition we held at Regent Street.

We contacted local amateur dramatic societies, and dance and theatre groups, and used the website Mandy to try and find actors. After that failed, we were disheartened. We were advised to approach the performing arts department at Glyndwr. It's suprising that we're not encouraged to work with the other courses more closely. Thankfully Huw and Elen were very very helpful and agreed to let us put up our posters looking for actors.

Dave went back to the PA dept the following week and much to his suprise all three years were in the hall and he was encouraged to speak to them all. The response was fantastic, 35 people put their name down to receive a script and character bios and a second date was set for the following week.

On that day I joined Dave in one of the halls to help set up his camera for the auditions. In a stroke of sheer luck we had the exact number of actors we needed turn up. The level of talent was evident and we struggled to choose who to cast as who. Still we were set on Laura Knotwell playing Grace from the very start, she had just what we were looking for.

Now we had cast our actors we could begin to put together a production schedule and begin thinking about smaller details such as hair, make up, costume and props. Unfortunately we hadn't picked the best of times to begin filming (it was around November by this point and we wanted to have all the filming done before leaving for the Christmas holidays). The cast were all taking part in the Christmas production of Blood Brothers and Laura was due to go to New Zealand between late December and mid January!

Examples of the shooting and wardrobe schedules, these changed fairly often. We knew to ensure we bunched similar scenes together so people we're spending all day waiting to shoot one scene. We came across a few issues with continuity but it's difficult with just two people covering cameras, sound (including ensuring radio mics were in place and turned on, and holding the boom mic), directing, make up, hair and ensuring no one and nothing was in the way of the shot! 

The filming itself took place in early December for 10 days before we had to cease due to the showings of Blood Brothers, and we were all exhausted. Dave and I would spend the days concentrating on the footage and the next days filming as well as writing our dissertation while the actors spent the days rehearsing for Blood Brothers. We would pick up the actors around 5pm, drive to our destination, film and usually finish around 9-10pm. We also worked right through the weekend. 

It was during the filming that the atmosphere changed somewhat. We were all tired, and getting a little too familiar with each other. Sometimes we were filming outside which was often extremely cold. By the end of the filming we were all extremely grateful to have our Christmas holidays! We had to stop filming early, and Laura was on her way to New Zealand so we agreed to finish the filming in late January.

It was only after the second lot of filming was finished that Dave and I agreed we should have spread it out a little more. Still we had all the footage we needed. In the meantime I had a photoshoot with the cast to have some promo shots for things like posters and for the production folder. 

 Lauren James plays Alexa Frost

 Joshua Ball plays Grace's boss and a homeless man

 Laura Knotwell is our lead, Lillian Grace Vaughan, and Rhys Owen Davies plays mysterious vampire Viktor Duisternis (aka December)

 Kayleigh Venables plays Eli McAthur

 Grace, Viktor and Seth (right played by Dan James)

It was the first of two photoshoots I did for the film, the second was for more promo shots, as I wasn't happy with the photographs I got of Laura as we had taken up too much time. All our shoots were done in the evening due to the actor's time restraints. Luckily uni is always open till 8pm and the photo studio is usually empty.

Here are some photos from the most recent shoot.

 This is probably my favourite shot from all the pictures!

 Grace and Seth's relationship is difficult at the best of times, and that's without him knowing her secret!

 George plays Andrew in the film, he did a good job too. He wasn't keen on the idea of acting at first, and his slight awkwardness in the film actually really helped with his character!

 It isn't all serious on set, and Dan was certainly a source of amusement!

The photoshoots were fun as well as being an important part of the filming process, and have come in useful for all sorts of design pieces.

As soon as we had finished all the filming, which was well into February as we needed filler shots, and shots that we didn't need the cast for. It was then up to us to begin the task of editing and bringing the film together. Whereas my main contribution lay in the pre-production, Dave's area of speciality is definitely in the editing. We both contributed fully to all aspects of the process.

We also created a short trailer for Acceptance so Simon Hall could make use of it for the art show the university put on earlier this year. Here's the link to the trailer: Acceptance Trailer. It doesn't really give much away about the film but it that was how we wanted to keep it. We've been encouraged to share our ideas with our peers right from the word go at uni, but unfortunately I (like many others) have seen ideas get stolen and so have had to keep our ideas for this film (and other projects) very close to our chests.

Over the weeks, Dave and I would sometimes meet at the Regent street campus, often with Dave Robinson (who's help and support has been invaluable). During the time it has taken to make this film we have found it hard to track down other tutors for their input. Luckily, with Dave's help several edits, and versions of the film have been created which meant we have tidied the film up and I feel it is looking stunning.

One of our main goals for this film was to make a student film that didn't look like a student film. Which meant making it quite a long production, the current run time stands at about 25minutes, which is very long for a student project. We also wanted to find authentic looking locations that weren't based around the university campus. We only have two locations in the film that were filmed at uni.

The first is during the opening scene where Grace is sat in a tree. We shot everything on a very narrow depth of field to give the film it's look, and so you cannot really make out the university buildings in the back ground.

The second is during the scene where Grace is turned into a vampire. This was shot at the back of the library building using a single light. Despite the low light I really feel it gives the shot an eerie and disturbing look, a stark difference to the softer scene that precedes it where Grace sees Andrew and Victoria kissing outside the party. I remember that night was extremely cold and Laura and Rhys sat in the car while Dave and I set up the equipment and choreographed the fight scenes. 

That was the night we were asked to leave by members of the security. We showed them our ID cards and they asked who had given us permission to film there. We told them our tutor had. It actually annoyed us all a little as we pay to come to university and to make use of the facilities, we weren't making a noise or a mess just doing some filming. I imagine it can't have been the first time they'd seen a bunch of students filming at night. Still we never heard anything of it after, and we went back the next day to do more filming and weren't asked to leave.

Unfortunately it was around this time that my life outside of university was becoming very stressful. Several very big issues were preventing me from attending often. I felt quite alone during this time, and struggled with the lack of support I was receiving from the tutors. Dave and I also live quite a distance apart, but luckily with the use of email, YouTube and Facebook we've managed to keep in touch with each other and the cast members. Life outside of university continues to be a struggle but I'm grateful for the help of Dave, Dawn, Claire and Elisabeth who've helped me immensely.

 As part of the pre-production planning for the film we created a page for Acceptance in Facebook. It has been a simple and useful way to keep in touch with the cast and followers of the project. I also created and maintained Facebook profiles for Grace, Seth, Alexa, Eli and Viktor keeping a dialogue between the characters. It was quite time consuming and difficult to juggle so many profiles (including my own, the Acceptance page and the Onyx Cymru and Onyx Photography pages) all at the same time. So the updates aren't as frequent as I'd have liked but it has helped to bring the characters to life a little more.

Back to the editing, after our Easter holidays we knew we were in a good place. We had both got good marks for our dissertations which was a good motivator to keep ploughing on with the editing. Talk of holding a Premier in the screening room at Regent street was met with positive feedback and so we decided to hold it before everyone left uni for the summer.

Being able to share our project with all our family and friends, tutors and of course the actors themselves is one of the things I am looking forward to the most. I designed an invite for the event. 

I've learned a fair bit about Photoshop during the process of designing things for this film, this invite wasn't too hard to create, just time consuming. Finding, downloading & installing the different film-related fonts and colouring them similar to their original uses. 

I took them to get printed at Staples as I wanted 50 copies and it would have cost me more in ink for my printer. I looked at several different types of paper, photo, gloss and matte and choose 300gsm matte paper in the end. They came out a little smaller than the A5 size I designed them as but otherwise the staff there did a wonderful job and kindly cut them all down to size for me too. I'm very much an all or nothing kind of person, and I also bought an Italics calligraphy pen to write on the envelopes and the invitations as well as envelopes to put them in. 

So far I've had a few people confirm their attendance, but we'll see how it turns out on May 30th!

My work is coming to an end, but I have been responsible for the opening and closing credits, a DVD cover and disc label, and a production folder to show at assessment. We toyed with many ideas for the credits including using stills from other vampire films to help dispel the Hollywood myths. However due to copyright we were unable to use the stills.In the end I created a very simple intro with moving images of the cast, a smoke pass plug in for After Effects and followed a tutorial to get moving clouds in a 3D space.

I am not great with editing programmes (except Photoshop but that's down to more than 10 years of practice!) and so it was frustrating to follow tutorials. Some were upwards of 20 minutes long, which takes you hours to complete for a few seconds of footage. One piece I made which turned smoke into lettering took me around 4 hours to complete and at 2GB was so big it wouldn't play smoothly. Luckily Dave taught me how to save a composition so it isn't so large.

For the closing credits, I chose a simple scrolling text approach. I went to the Archive where you can make use of royalty free and copyright free footage. I looked for adverts and videos from the 50s to scroll up the screen with the credits. Again it was a simple approach but what I didn't notice until the very end (after I'd rendered it) was that one of the clips is a little riqsue, luckily it gets X rated just outside the frame!

Dave was happy with the credits I gave and finally the film is nearing completion. Here are some stills from the film.

 Grace gets ready for her party, the one where she's going to tell Andrew that she loves him, and she's sure he feels the same way!

 A polite custom mistaken for a gesture of love.

 Grace at work, having a conversation with Viktor via Facebook

 My name is Grace and I am a vampire.

 First evening of filming, Grace and her friends Alexa and Eli talk birthday plans. Grace struggles with being asked how old she is.

 Andrew has something to tell Grace, he asks her to wait, she can't and ends up seeing them kissing, putting into motion the chain of events that sees her life change literally for EVER!

 Viktor (here called December) is mysterious and alluring in the wake of such heartbreak but his intentions are anything but innocent. 

 Excuse the yellow border! Viktor drops in on Grace. It's a bit of an unexpected visit!

 Viktor infiltrates, attracts and seduces, provoking Grace in the cruelest of ways, by getting to her friends.

What you need dear is Polidori, (according to Viktor) and so he sends Grace what he thinks she needs, only this isn't a nice birthday gift. It's a warning. Viktor likes to play with his food, apparently.

Finally I decided to make a DVD cover and disc label, as we hope to be able to enter this film into competitions and festivals and having a specialised cover will help. I looked at many DVD covers to get inspiration, and opened Photoshop to get to work. 

 I'm really pleased with the outcome of the cover, I tried to stick closely to what a DVD cover should look like but also taking some creative freedom with some aspects, such as the rating and barcode.

The V rating actually took me quite some time to complete and I had to watch a tutorial about repeating text to complete it. I couldn't use any of the BBFC's ratings as again we would like to enter this DVD into competitions and festivals and don't want to risk any copyright infringement issues.

I had to download special DVD label printing software to create this label, and printing it onto special stickers has been somewhat of a nightmare, however it all adds up to make an authentic looking DVD.

Our final assessment is on Monday, I'm not really all that nervous, and I'm looking forward to showing it to our tutors and of course seeing what marks we get for our efforts.

So what have we learned during this process?

Our project has spanned both negotiated study projects, and rightfully so. At this stage I realise the amount of work that has gone into producing this film at every stage from script to completion. It has at times been extremely stressful and testing with technical and personal issues. We might have done several things differently in hindsight, been a little less lax with our actors and a little more thoughtful towards one another. 

We wouldn't have used three different cameras (we used a 5D mk 2 and a mk3 as well as Dave's HD camcorder) as the difference in footage has caused issues during the editing stages. What was a great move was using specialist sound equipment, with the help of Steve Davies and a load of research, Dave chose radio mics which helped pick up the actors voices. We used a boom mic attached to a separate camera also which we borrowed from the university. It was faulty at times, and so we were lucky to have specialist audio equipment as sound has been one of the biggest issues we have faced with our films.

We have learned that films often run over time and budget and no matter how much planning you do, there's always at least one instance where someone needs to do a Tesco run be it for milk or brown Jiffy bags. Luckily we're both planners and because of this we have managed to avoid lots of little errors. Also a massive thanks to my partner Chris for being an amazingly patient and helpful runner!

Watching countless tutorials has been another learning curve for both of us. It has helped us to better understand the processes of After Effects, Premier Pro and Photoshop and how we can use them all make our film look more professional. Even text is extremely important when you're trying to convey a certain feel and so experimenting with different styles of font has been enjoyable (for the most part).

The freedom of being able to choose our projects seemed like a huge deal waaaay back when I was having my interview for a place on the course. Had we not already done some pre planning the year before it might have been more difficult, but I am really pleased with our film. I'm happy that I got to work on this final project with Dave who is a great friend and an extremely talented and dedicated film maker. My wish for this film is that the passion we've both poured into it over the last year or so is evident to anyone who watches it.

There are way too many people to thank who've contributed to the making of Acceptance that I couldn't thank everyone! If you were involved in any way with the making of our film, then thank you, we couldn't have done it without you.

Until Acceptance 2......