Charlie Productions : How We Made It

From The Ashes

A short film can be written incredibly quickly. This was the case in point with the very first draft of Old Man Dies. Chris overheard someone on the news talking to a representative of "The Ham and Fish Association" and a song began to run through his head...

Three pages later he printed out the finished script and gave it to Ben, whose response was less than forthcoming. Basically, he hated it. The start, with the Old Man in bed introducing his family, has remained fairly constant since but the first draft moved on to him climbing out of bed and break dancing to a tune only in Chris' head. It deliberately had no real narrative - a result of an argument between Chris and his then girlfriend Alex at the Edinburgh Film Festival earlier that year about the short films they had just seen - and this left Ben cold. However, with Ben not wanting to be utterly negative, and with Chris not really taking no for an answer if he thinks he's onto something, it was roughly agreed that Chris would redraft it.

Not that the second draft really allayed Ben's fears. At this point Ben would sculpt his scripts until he felt they were perfect before showing them to Chris. Chris' ideas usually come out far rougher and far less understandable to one or other of us. Such was the case with Old Man Dies. Neither of us really understood it, but the new sequence with Old Man standing outside a succession of identikit homes claiming each one to be his old house struck a chord with Ben, who, feeling guilty that we were only making his (far more well-developed) scripts into 'our next big film', agreed that we would shoot it next after Bernard.

Around this time Chris was insisting that we should try and shoot a short film every month: like Shane Meadows. However, without wishing to sacrifice what professionalism we had mustered by this point and with Chris in full-time employment, this was an ambitious and foolish pipe dream. It did mean, however, that we went into Old Man Dies without having Burnt Bernard edited.

PRE-PRODUCTION

By now we had fallen into an easy routine of Ben holding the casting sessions, with Chris watching the tapes back afterwards. This, we felt at the time, meant that Chris would have the necessary distance from the actors' charms whilst also having the benefit of seeing whether they really translated on the screen. It also meant he didn't have to get time off work. If you forget the fact that most audition tapes are badly shot and with poor sound and that actually how an actor is in person is incredibly important, then this system might actually work. Whatever, it meant that usually Ben made the decisions over our leading actors.

Ben began to thaw to the script as he saw the oldish actors Chris had plucked from the pages of Spotlight. Then along came Nick Simons on his bicycle with a roll-up cigarette and a big grin and he stepped right into the part. Suddenly it was all there for Ben - here was, at last, a film he could believe in - a film he wanted to make. It was moving, dramatic, comic - it would win awards. Nick's performance showed Ben a depth and honesty he had completely missed in reading the script. With Nick in place it honestly felt like we would finally sweep the board.

PRODUCTION

The original version of the film was shot over a weekend in December 2000. We filmed inside Cooper's Croft Residential Home and also in two different rooms at Brenda Lewis' house, as well as some exterior shots in Baker Street and Darkes Lane in Potters Bar. In this version the Old Man's Wife was of similar age and was played by Beryl Nesbitt, the Children were also older, played by Ed Hamer and Hannah Lee. Apart from Nick the only cast member who was to return in the reshoot was Harvey Ward as Cousin Frank, a role which, frankly, he has made his own and doubtless will be taking up when the production transfers to the West End as the musical 'Old Man Dies!'

Behind the camera we were still convincing ourselves that we could cope without a crew. Phil was back doing sound for us but Chris was still operating the camera, which left Ben and Katie to do that weird mix of line producer/co-director and first AD/PA which they were slowly getting more adept at, with Zee driving around picking up costumes and pieces. This was also the shoot where we met Tracey Gifford who aged Nick from a healthy early sixty to near-death. Considering how ill her make-up job makes him look it was surprising that he was so happy to see her when we did the reshoot but there we go...

In that we were able to shoot everything we had to and did so in a day and a half you could say the shoot went very well.

In that Chris had a load of trouble with Phil's sound connections going into the back of the camera and unbalancing the steadicam and that we were both off in our own worlds you could say that the shoot went very badly.

Chris had become very involved with camera position and movement as to what effect it had upon the film. Burnt Bernard had not been edited yet but it was apparent on the shoot that the way it had been shot, almost line by line sometimes, had interfered with the actors' performances. Add to this that Old Man Dies was a monologue and it seemed like a good idea that a floating steadicam doing continuous scenes of Nick's performance would give the correct sense of dislocation the film wanted, whilst also getting the camera in the right place for the right lines.

Unfortunately, with the camera unbalanced by the sound cables out the back - something that can be solved either with radio links or, more simply, by someone holding the cables up so they don't weigh the camera down - the camera was difficult to operate. Add to this that we were trying to do rather complex moves with the camera in incredibly small rooms and the result was awful. It being Chris' script, he should have been the main one looking at Nick's performance, but instead he was sweating profusely as he tried to get the steadicam round the bed without it knocking into anything/

POST PRODUCTION

We learnt some of the most important things we ever have thanks to the first shoot of Old Man Dies. It all came to a head in the edit room.

Fundamentally it all boiled down to communication - there had been little between us and so it was impossible for there to be any between us and the audience. In this version every time we go back to the Old Man he is in a different room. Ben meant for this to heighten the audience's understanding of his confusion - however it just didn't work. The confusion was the audience's as they worked out why he kept moving rooms, which gave his static presence in bed an erronious sense of movement, destroying any sort of impact the ending might have had. Then there was the question of the Old Man's wife being dead. This was something Ben had presumed from reading the script and something he had conveyed to both Nick and Beryl (and frankly anyone else who asked) - and was something Chris had never intended at all... the push-me pull-you had finally stopped moving altogether.

It wasn't a good time for us. Bernard wasn't going as hoped in the edit room and resentment and bitterness started to fill the Boiler Room. The cut for Old Man Dies was even worse. Whilst each individual segment worked just about alright, as a whole it did not add up. All those who saw it were left feeling bemused and let down. We retreated to our friends and loved ones and tried to get them to back us up but in the end a big argument was inevitable.

This was the first time that an entire project was to be condemned by one of us. With a big breath Ben told Chris that he felt no amount of re-cutting or extra shooting would change the fact that it was a bad film that made no sense. In filming Nick's performance we had managed to obscure everything that was good - we hid all the light that Nick had shone on the text and overall it was just wrong and should be abandoned. 'Cold' had been a little like this, except there was no money and no edit suite to bear proper testament to the fact it wouldn't work in the way it should. With no restrictions on edit time it was patently clear that Old Man Dies did not work - to Ben at least.

There are really only two ways things can go after a fiery argument like that.

Thankfully, after very quiet day and a half went by, Chris finally accepted what Ben was saying. This was a bit of a turning point for the both of us: before this point, we hadn't really been working together, more alongside each other; we ran off with our own idea of the script and our different ideas would hopefully cut together in the edit. This time, instead of sullenly sticking to our guns, we had had a huge argument and found agreement.

Well, almost. Ben wanted to stop bothering with the whole idea. Chris didn't.

PRE-PRODUCTION 2

Whilst we were butchering 'Bernard' and shooting the deification of Keith in 'Danny's Found Jesus', Chris went away and started a long process of redrafting the script. Over the summer of 2001, in the dark confines of The Cruet Company kitroom, Chris let the characters of the Old Man and his wife grow and develop. At double the length there was proper space for the characters to evolve and a proper story for the audience to be led down.

Continuing the silly pace we were working at, we were looking at shooting both 'Old Man Dies' and 'The Recording Angel' as proper, full-on short films and then two of Chris' smaller ideas, 'Go On' and 'Dunbar' over consecutive weekends whilst also fitting in some completion shooting on 'Danny's Found Jesus'. Ben refused to do all the production work. Chris took up some of the effort for 'Old Man Dies' whilst Zee was to help on 'The Recording Angel'. This meant we continued to develop the production relationship we had had on the first weekend of 'Danny's': Ben would concentrate on the actors, Chris on the crew and kit, with the rest split kind of halfway.

Ben got back to auditioning again. Caroline Stoker took the part of the Wife - she had actually sent her details in regarding 'Good Morning Who Are You?' all those years ago and had been unable to audition because of a tour of 'Midsummer's Night's Dream's, but Ben always keeps the CVs he thinks are worth looking at again and this time she proved perfect for the role. Auditioning a silent part looked to be a tad difficult, but the Old Man's monologue was the perfect thing to use as an audition piece and Caroline was great in that role too, leaving us with few worries that she would be able to make the few brief silences she has in the film utterly compelling.

To find the children Ben rang round local acting schools and we ended up going to see the class at Act Now, a Saturday class run by Susan Russell. Here we had a great time with all the kids running about and screaming and generally doing stuff. The overall quality of the kids was excellent - leaving us wondering what all the fuss about working with children is about - and we'd found the perfect kids in Daniella Aston and Joe Bignell.

Thankfully their parts are quite small and our schedule wasn't that taxing for them as we were only filming on weekends to let the cast and crew get on with their day jobs. Their mums came along (that's Daniella and Joe's mums, not the rest of the crew, although their mums would obviously have been welcome) and looked after them and apart from the loss of a blue frog toy it all went smoothly...

PRODUCTION 2

The first thing we actually shot were all of Old Man's jobs, which we did on a Saturday towards the end of August 2001. This was just Ben, Chris and Nick driving through London looking for suitable locations - not all of which were planned. We started as intended outside Highbury for the Arsenal Groundsman shot and then drove homewards in the idea that we'd see everything we needed along the way - and their were some other ideas - like the Flower Seller - that turned up as we went along. Nick came up with the line of "I sold one copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica!" in the car and we went round to Zee's to shoot that on his doorstep. Chris decided Nick had to have a briefcase for this to work and spent about half an hour bartering with the man in the leather shop over the loan of a case. This is the sort of detail and dedication that neither of us would have shown earlier - this film was going to take time and we were going to get it right.

It's only really thanks to The Cruet Company that this plan could work, however. Thanks to their largesse we were able to use pretty much whatever equipment we wanted over however many weekends we needed. We still had long days, but there was never a time when we had to rush because we wouldn't be able to come back.

We shot the boxing sequence at the Finchley and District ABC on Saturday 13th October with Nick fighting Mark, the son of the guy who ran the club. This was all shot on Super 8mm by Oli with Ryan there to record all the sounds of Nick's breathing and the punches flying. In the ed however of course the final big punch landed by the boxer on the camera never sounded large enough and we had to re-record one with Chris punching Ryan in the chest, something which took a good seven or eight takes - you see, that's the sort of dedication we demand from our crew. Oli took a hit too, getting punched to the floor by Mark whilst shooting the Old Man POV: this left him with a scar under his eye for a while after the shoot. The traumatic atmosphere was completed by Nick's subsequent revelation that the last time he had boxed had been at school and he had hated the whole thing deeply and the day had been a series of rather unpleasant flashbacks for him...

The next day's shooting was Sunday 21st, when we were hoping to shoot all of our 16mm footage for the film. The idea of working on many different formats to emphasize the random memories was cemented by the ridiculous reaction to Russell Square once it was finally on 35mm. It became clear that despite all the talk of DV being the future of filmmaking, there was still no getting away from the fact that in the eyes of the British Film Industry film is still the golden palace of the Gods. We knew we couldn't afford to work on film all the way through but this wasn't needed anyway - the nursing home section needed the feeling of video, and we could put S16mm down as the format we had shot on and if we forgot to mention any of the others... well...

Originally we had intended to use the left over stock from both 'Crowd Scene For Existentialists' and 'Cold', which had been lying around in our fridge for the past four years. However, once the lab had tested a small clip of the film, it soon proved that all of this stuff would basically be unusable for our intentions. We had to face facts and buy some more from nice Marj at the sadly-now-deceased Blanx and someone we contacted through Shooting People.

The plan was to shoot the pool-playing scene first. This was to be on film to bring out the lovely sunny warmth of the scene, however as it turned out we chose one of the wettest, coldest and most bloody awful days of the year. In the end the sun was a light out of the pub window with poor Mark getting soaked to the skin standing outside holding polyboard over it to stop it getting drenched. If you listen carefully you can hear the rain falling outside through this scene.

We then dragged our drenched crew to the Potters Bar an District Scout Hut which was going to act not only as a suitable alternative to a traffic roundabout for the dancing scene but also as heaven.

We had recorded the 'Man Of The Ham And Fish Association' song about a month earlier at Earthworks Studios with Ashley Ward on drums and the last scene was shot with Nick and Caroline dancing in time to the CD of this. The music was originally written nearer the start of the year, with Chris singing the original tune (or what he could remember of it) and Mango Don (Ben, Adam, Zee and Dan, now known as Baby Grand) doing their best to follow it. Ben also plundered some of Zee's best ad-libbed lyrics from stuff we'd done earlier to fill it out.

The plan had been to start with the film sections because these were bound to be the most complicated to achieve, and they were, since in the end it took us two and a half days to expose about twenty minutes of footage to be cut down to about two to three minutes in the finished film. This was in complete contrast to the first shoot, in the can in less than a day. However it set the right tone for shooting the film. We were forced into working slower by the largest crew we had had since Cold.

On the 21st we had Oli, Ben Liddell, Ryan Chandler, Karen Fraser, Mark Scott and Greg Duffield who had originally agreed to be focus puller but had been hit by a car the previous week, breaking his wrist. He became a bit of a Sergeant Major, keeping the crew going and making sure that we were making things clear so things could happen as quickly as possible. This was a first to us, indeed Greg was the closest we had had to a First AD. This was a magical way of working for us. Finally we were surrounded by people who actually knew more than us about what they were supposed to be doing; and fortunately in the space between Cold and Old Man we had learnt enough to gain their respect.

This is one of the good reasons people are biased towards film: it's what the execs call 'production values'. Film forces you to work slowly and forces you to have a larger crew - meaning you have to think things through, meaning they are thinking things through, meaning a higher quality of output. If you are determined to shoot a pile of shite then nothing in the world can stop you but it takes a lot more effort to make a bad film on film than a bad film on DV.

The day went smoothly. Karen made the step up to focus puller magnificently - she'll be able to tell you whether we told her before the day or not, but either way, it was a big step up and the first shot we had in the Scout Hut was the long and complex track at the end of the film - not an easy way to begin your focus pulling career. Every single shot was sharp. We reached the end of the day without completing all the shots required however - but, again, showing our maturity, we didn't rush, even with the knowledge that we didn't have the money to be able to hire the VFG S16mm camera again...

We had a couple of weeks before shooting again on the 4th of November - this time using DigiBeta and a 16mm camera Chris had borrowed from a talented young cameraman called Jamie Cairney. Thankfully we weren't going to be getting a neg cut as this was only a standard 16 camera as opposed to the super one we had used two weeks before (super16mm gives you a wider frame and therefore more resolution, it doesn't have a cape or wear red pants).

We shot the exteriors of Cooper's Croft Residential Home on Digi and then went back to the pub to wait for the weather to change. It had been beautifully grey and overcast for the old people's home exterior but this was precisely what we didn't want for the pub. We hung around for the best part of an hour and then, just as things were looking hopeless and Ben started saying we had to move on and pick up Nick and shoot everything else, out came the sun, giving us one of the most beautiful shots we have ever put to film or video... and a shot which didn't actually make it into the final cut...

We went back to the Scout Hut and started setting up for the shot we hadn't managed to get - Nick walking out of darkness and up the stairs. Despite our larger crew we didn't have any runners and as Ryan found out his radio mics didn't have any charged batteries, Chris went off on a trip to get some more.

A director should NEVER leave the set.

As Chris drove back he realised the sun was lowering dramatically and we still had two exterior locations to shoot. The panic was on as the crew packed the kit down into his car and drove down onto Darkes Lane.

Setting a tracking shot takes time but they flew through the setup for Nick walking past Woolworths and Chris barked orders to run back to the car so they would just get the setting sunlight for the shot outside Old Man's home - the perfect light for the scene had gotten Chris in a frantic mood and he shouted at the crew as they walked to the car. RUN! FOR FUCK'S SAKE! COME ON!

He then spent a good five minutes trying to fit the tripod into the boot.

Upon arriving outside the house chosen to be Old Man's home, the crew set up quickly and efficiently while Chris apologised profusely for shouting. The sun set just as we wrapped the scene - we had a beautiful part of the film in the can, with golden sunshine on Nick's face as his face lights up whilst he talks about his old home.

Getting back to the scout hut we shot the rather difficult up-the-stairs shot, made more difficult by the fireworks going on outside, something we hadn't thought about when scheduling Sunday 4th November. Ben cringed with this oversight. Chris on the other hand bounded off into the street like an over-excited flat coat retriever, imploring the crew to film some explosions - mainly because he thought they might come in handy, which of course they did, fitting into the film perfectly as if this had always been the intention.

The rest of the film - all the DigiBeta footage of the Old Man's bedroom and the short but powerful scene in the front room with his wife crying - were shot on two separate Sundays, the 11th of November and 2nd December, all back at Brenda's house. For this the crew stabilized as Oli, Ryan, Mark and Ben with the wonderful Susan-Anne Lees stepping in at the last moment as Tracey's replacement/assistant when she was unavailable on the first day. Susan-Anne was still at college and this was one of her first professional jobs which she had arranged off her own bat. She was fantastic, ready to pitch straight in. Ben found her through Shooting People, as with Suzanne Parker who had the task of playing Nick's nurse. Due to various accidental complications we messed Susan around and frankly she'd have had every right to not get back on the train and come back - however she did and does excellently in a largely thankless role.

The final day wore on til late, wearing patience thin, but on consultation the crew stuck with us until the film was done rather than trekking back up to Potters Bar on another weekend. We took the back off a cupboard and Oli somehow managed to light the short hallway so that Nick could come in and out of black for the end sequence. All in all, it looked fantastic and we were both very, very happy.

POST-PRODUCTION 2

Ben put together the first cut which was substantially the same as the script and the storyboard. It went together in the way intended and it worked, something we had grown unused to. We put it on the shelf to give us some distance from it and Ben once again set about re-editing Cold, whilst Chris went to Hull for a month to see his girlfriend and work on a script for 'Faster'. It was at this time that Bernard was put on the long list for the BAFTA Best Short Film award - something which made us both laugh a lot. We'd just shot a film which makes Bernard look like amateur night... well, you can fill in the blanks as to what we were thinking.

Coming back to the project, Chris' girlfriend Alex pointed something out: Old Man's confused thinking was not coming across - he seemed perfectly in charge of his faculties, we needed him to have lost his mind: that was the point of the film.

We recut the start of the film to bring out his confusion, cutting the film down from fifteen minutes to the magic ten (without credits) in the process. As we polished the film, taking our time grading and doing our best-ever sound work, we felt sure we had an award winner.

SOUND POST-PRODUCTION

We had a large amount of fun doing the post on the sound for Old Man. It demanded we played around with sound effects and the like, we needed to do some voiceover and there were several times we were going to have to do ADR (Something beginning with 'A' (I think it's 'Automatic') - Dialogue - Replacement), due to difficulty in getting a boom mike into place and getting rustle on a radio. Ryan and Nick gave up another day for us and we 'borrowed' a DAT machine to get our sounds.

Professional voice-over, ADR and foley (sound effects in time with the pictures) work is done in a sound-proofed studio with lots of faders and effects to make it sound just like the environment it's supposed to be in. 'Lawrence Of Arabia' has laughable ADR: it's all perfectly lip-synced but you can hear it click in and out of the location or studio. However times have moved on and studios today charge a lot of money to make it sound just how you want.

We obviously didn't have any money and we went about it in a way I think is perfect for the low/no budget filmmaker.

Voiceover was done in a 'sound booth' we created out of putting black drapes up on stands to create a tent in the middle of a room (you can use curtains, actually, I wonder if a tent'll work? Probably the material's not heavy enough but I dunno...). To get a dead sound you need to stop the sound bouncing and black drapes do that very well. We put Nick very close to the mike for that 'in the head' feel for the voiceover and put that side of it to bed. The only thing I'd do different is record it somewhere further away from the railway track.

For the ADR we edited the stuff we needed to re-record and looped each line so that repeating the phrase would become like singing along to a chorus of a song rather than the hit and miss "try it once, try it again on another pass" way we had done with 'Russell Square'.

We had this on a DV tape and a portable DV player and a battery-powered monitor. Nick then talked in time with himself in locations which had the sound we wanted: replacing the stuff from the room was fairly easy - Ryan's flat had a room which was of a similar size - doing the stuff outside his home less so. We went deep into Richmond Park to get the birds and the countryside yet still in a town feel. It might have looked a bit bizarre to the passer-by but it worked a treat, and we got all the birdsong we'd need to add if needed.

Foley work was done in the same way, mostly at Ryan's flat. With Nick finished for the day, Chris and Ryan recreated the rustle from his clothes as he walked before getting on to redoing the sounds of the punches - Ryan manfully choosing to take the hits as he held the boom to his stomach.

We didn't need to worry about getting the right ambience for a too-dead dialogue track, it all simply slotted in. Having had this fun on Old Man Dies, we jumped at the chance to do the sounds for 'City Spirit' which, being an animation, requires a whole lot of fun to be had.

POST POST PRODUCTION

We applied for Completion Funding from the Film Council to polish the film yet further, giving it an online (using the original tapes rather than DVCAM dupes, giving us better quality), a better grade and a far better sound mix than we could possibly do at home (plus the hope that we could get a film print). We were shortlisted and went along for a day's seminar on how to make films - a free bottle of warm beer, some fancy lightweight catering and lots of people from the industry telling everyone how "you will not make money and it is unlikely you will succeed" - and got to meet the people at MayaVision, who run the scheme for the Film Council. We think that MayaVision quite liked Old Man Dies, but the Film Council chose to go with something about a Rocketboy - can't remember the exact title ('Jet Set Willy?' I know that's a computer game...) but the director was a nice chap. Our heads slightly bowed but still feeling confident, we sent the film off everywhere.

There was a long silence.

No-one really seemed to get Old Man Dies. We did get a meeting with a producer who liked the writing, we did get support from the British Council and we did get into the California Independent Film Festival, the Mikrokino Festival in Serbia and the Fargo International Film Festival, but that was it. Nowhere else. And certainly no BAFTA nomination, shortlisting or even longlisting. In our usual stance of overbearing arrogance, we decided that it was because this story of love told via fractured memories was far too ahead of it's time for the numpties of the British film industry to understand. Still, no-one was eager to return our call, and we stopped making shorts for some time...

Then in 2004 we went to see the eagerly-awaited 'Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind'. A weird feeling came over us as Jim Carrey walked out of the darkened library with the lights fizzing out and straight into a different building at a different time. 'Eternal Sunshine', a story of love told via fractured memories, is one of Chris' favourite films of the year.

Charlie Productions believe passionately in doing things and always trying to stop in time for tea.
Brook House Design Studios, Bluebridge Road, Brookmans Park, Herts AL9 7SX
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