production
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timeline for the shooting of the film by brett williams
The following is a journal of my experiences shooting Black Market: Adventure. In order to make things easier for anyone who was not involved that may be reading, below is a list of names and their roles in the film.
Tim (First Assistant Director)
Tony (Director of Photography)
Liam (Sound Recordist)
Georgia (Art Director)
Mark T. (Camera Assistant)
Mark F. (Karate Instructor)
Igor (Karate Instructor)
Nick (Karate Instructor)Actors: Kat (Vic), Steve (Jason), Jamie (Tony), Krystal (Pat), Dean (Mike), Scoota (Gavin).
day 1: thursday 12th february 2004
location: private residence, elwood, VIC
It was the first day of shooting for Black Market: Adventure. We were shooting the house scene where we see the Adventure Black Market and learn what is really going on when Jason's tent is stolen. The scene was going to be the biggest challenge for Georgia, being the Art Director, where this is the only scene with a set, and a helluva set too!
Krystal (as PAT),
placing a stolen backpack amongst the rest of the bounty!
Georgia gathered as much camping equipment as possible, moved pretty much everything out of her living room and bedroom into another part of the house and packed those rooms with camping gear. The place looked awesome.
I chose this particular scene as the first shoot for the film because it was relatively simple, production-wise, and would be a good warm up for the Expat Team before shooting any big fight sequences. We hadn't actually made any films for over a year and I didn't want to bite off too much on the first day.
day 2: saturday 13th march 2004
location: nioka bush camp, south morang, VIC
After the house shoot in Elwood was a success with both the cast and crew having a great time and getting some amazing footage, it was time shoot the main portion of the film, at Nioka Bush Camp.
Pre-production for this section of the film had been huge, with Kat and Krystal learning karate every week, Tim helping me bash out a schedule, getting permits and insurance, organising equipment and getting camera and sound departments up to speed on all the gear they would be using (remember we're ex-students), as well as costumes, rehearsals and storyboarding. For the week prior to the shoot, I averaged about three hours sleep per night (I was also working at the airport to finance this thing).
The first day of shooting was the fight scene. This was purely a logistical choice, as availability of the instructors made this the only day that we could do it. So we took the bull by the horns and plunged into this film shoot with what we saw as being the most difficult scene to accomplish.
Mark Farello showing Kat how to do the kickboxer stance.
We kicked off the day with Tim saying a few words to everyone how it was great that we were even standing there together about to shoot a film, and hoped that we have a good shoot. Then we got to work. Kat and Krystal were focussed the whole time on getting the fight choreography right and Mark, Nick and Igor did a great job of keeping their performance authentic.
Tony and Mark T. took to shooting on the Aaton XTR (which neither of them had used before) with enthusiasm, and Liam was already good with using the fostex DAT recorder and had AatonCode worked out before you can say "action."
Tim kept us on track for the day, and the absence of a boom operator gave Georgia yet another job on the film, in addition to art director and continuity.
By the end of the day, after getting through the fight scene successfully, we figured anything else would be easy.
day 3: sunday 14th march 2004
location: nioka bush camp, south morang, VIC
What we didn't realise, however, is that it's WAY harder to shoot big long dialogue scenes with actors walking back-and-forth and eyelines all over the shop than it is to do a simple bout of camping karate.
Tony Mott's car suited the film perfectly.
This was the car scene, where Jason comes along and fixes the thieves' engine, then recognizes Vic, which compels her to challenge Pat to a contest of their skills. Despite scheduling what we thought would be a generous amount of time per shot, we quickly fell behind, realising that this was more of a challenge than we anticipated.
Tim and I ended up compressing several angles into one shot, we had problems at one point also with a noisy mag on the camera, which we had to stop for to fix the load. All this stuff, however, still felt fairly common for problems on a film shoot and we overcame them and kept moving forward.
The worst thing, for me, was the stress of worrying if it was going to get done. This manifested for me in the form of two hardcore mouth ulcers that meant I couldn't enjoy ANY of the food we had, and it was pretty good food, for the most part!
day 4: tuesday 16th march 2004
location: nioka bush camp, south morang, VIC
After having Monday off, we returned to Nioka to shoot the scene where Jason and his mates wake up after being chloroformed during the night. This was one of the most exciting things for me to be shooting because it was the initial scene that I had written (modified as the script developed) from when I had first begun writing about a year earlier. To see this visualised now was awesome.
Also, it was great fun working with the trio of Steve, Dean and Scoota, who are all good mates. They had fun shooting the scene.
L-R: Mark Toyb (Camera Assist.), Tony Mott (DoP), and Tim Schumann (1st A.D.)
A useful tool in further conveying the shot I wanted to Tony was to use a digital camera to capture the scene before us, which could obviously provide a better rendering of what was in my mind than my dodgy storyboards.
This was scheduled as a half-day since we didn't have any actors for the other scenes in the film and it remained a half-day. Overall, it was a pretty easy shoot, the biggest hassle being waiting for the clouds so that we wouldn't get a dramatic lighting change mid-shot.
Dean and Scoota came up with a funny idea for them to be poking sticks at the esky and waiting miserably while Jason was off on this adventure. I thought it was cool so we quickly came up with two shots for it, a mid and a long shot and did them. During the second take of the long shot, I realised we still needed to find a location for the next scene, of Jason walking through the bush, so I told Dean and Scoota to do what they did last time and ran off.
Filming the scene where Jason finds his hat on the ground and then hears the car engine, I told Steve to think about "what would Indiana Jones do" if he found his hat just lying there on the ground. After that, Steve had it dialled.
day five: thursday 18th march 2004
location: nioka bush camp, south morang, VIC
Tim and I had been freaking out about the intro, the tent theft scene, which I wanted to shoot at first light. I had too many shots storyboarded to get in the amount of time we had, so we worked to get as much action in fewer shots as we could and also move a lot of the coverage to the interior of the tent, which we could shoot at a later date. I tried getting a faster film stock from Kodak for the shoot as well, but was unable to get it in time, so I asked Mark to bring along his portable light (can't remember how strong it is) with some blue gels.
The day prior to the shoot, I set up the tent at the location on my own, no simple process when the wind is howling at you. But I did it! Later that night, Mark and I returned to the location to test out the light and see how it looked, and it looked good.
Katrina and Krystal about to rip Steve out of the tent.
So we got there, punched out the scene as we fought a losing battle against the rising sun, hoping that we could adjust the light level a bit in the grade to not change too drastically.
After finishing the theft scene, we took a break then moved on to the scene where Vic and Pat meet Tony, and he says they have a problem. Then we continued to get as much of the gargantuan Scene 9 as we could.
day 6: sunday 21st march 2004
location: nioka bush camp, south morang, VIC
Initially we were not going to be shooting on this day at Nioka, but we fell far enough behind schedule to have to organise an extra day of shooting, and this was it. We began with shooting the dialogue scene between Jason and Tony as they sit and watch the fight. This proved relatively easy to shoot, and Jamie and Steve were on the money with their performances.
After a break, Kat and Krystal arrived and we filmed the end of the fight sequence, where Tony decides to return the backpacks to Jason. Again, performances were all good. The shot list for this scene had changed slightly as I had revised my storyboards and we shot from crude boards I had drawn in my notebook.
L-R: Abby Binnion,
Liam Porter, Tony Mott, Krystal Cox, Tim Schumann, Jamie Robertson, Katrina
Turner, Georgia Rose, Mark Toyb
Front: Steve Sparke, Brett Williams, Greg Rudakov
After finishing this scene, Jamie was wrapped for the film and we shot the scene on the hill with Krystal and Kat, where Vic admits she remembers Jason. We halted temporarily as one of the officers from Parks Victoria was passing by and I had to put on my producer hat and let him know how it was all going while the crew waited for me, then I returned to the crew and we got the shots we needed.
Finally, principal photography for Black Market: Adventure was complete.
The next morning, Tony and I would return to the location for about twenty minutes to get some insert shots of tent pegs being pulled out, the tent being rolled up and put into a sleeping bag. Because Kat was unavailable, we borrowed her jacket and got Abby to act for us, since the shots only showed Vic's hands. Following this, we returned the camera gear.
day 7: saturday 27th and sunday 28th march 2004
location: nioka bush camp, south morang, VIC
I count this as only a day of shooting because it was about two hours for each day. We were back on using the Bolex, which had previously only been used for the house scene in Elwood. Ideally, I would have preferred to shoot it in one day, but availability of the actors made it impossible, so I was forced to rely on the magic of editing!
The scene was the last scene of the film, where Jason and Vic return to the campsite and are reunited with Gavin and Mike. They play some hacky-sack and drink some beer. I wanted to shoot it in the style of a home-movie: all handheld, plenty of camera movement. Tony was also unavailable for the shoot so I decided to do it myself. Mark was there to camera assist and Georgia was also present to deal with the esky.
The first day of shooting was with Dean, Scoota and Steve, while the second day was with Steve and Kat. Obviously, Steve was going to be the link between the two and the audience would never see Kat and Dean and Scoota in the same shot. It took a while for the actors to get the hacky sack sequence just right, but when they did it worked wonderfully.
On the second day, it was only Tim and I as crew and we gave Kat a quick lesson in how to hack the sack. She got the hang of it quickly enough and we got the shots of her and Steve kicking the sack like they were part of the game with Dean and Scoota.
As Tim and Steve left to rush off so Tim could prepare his house for the wrap party, Kat helped me with getting the last shot I had to do, that being the slo-mo of the sack flying through the air. I over-cranked the camera to as far as it would go and Kat through the sack straight up into the air. It was an awesome shot.
At last, we were wrapped for Nioka Bush Camp, and the cast and crew met up that night at Tim's house for the wrap party.
day 8: tuesday 25th may 2004
location: private residence, montmorency, VIC
After a substantial break following principal photography, and after I finally paid off all the costs of that shoot and saved up a bit more from my airport job to continue, I organised to to the interior shots of the tent as Pat subdues the three campers and takes their gear.
What was REALLY outside the tent!
The tent was set up in my front yard, and I organised for Krystal, Steve and Scoota to act. Dean was unavailable at the time, so I got Liam to act as Dean's character and hoped no one would notice!
Georgia, Tim and Tony all showed up to crew for the shoot. It was a fun little shoot and when it was over, it meant that we had finally completed everything that had something to do with camping equipment for the film!
day 9: saturday 26th may 2004
location: montmorency secondary college, montmorency, VIC
It had been about a month since the previous shoot and it was time to finally do the flashback to high school where Vic rescues Jason from the bullies. Initially scripted as just one shot, I decided to expand the scene to help define Vic's character; that she was once a tough-as-nails chick with a strong sense of morality.
A weird moment
for me: being in a school uniform, at my actual old high school, shooting
my film.
I had cast two of my good friends from school, Graeme and Dave, in the parts of the bullies and decided to play the third bully myself. It was both something that I could do for fun and also made scheduling easier!
It was really weird being back at school, acting alongside old school friends but with a film crew from my uni life there too. Worlds collided.
Overall, the shoot was heaps of fun and worked out really well. The only problems we ran into later was a camera problem which meant I couldn't use a few shots I wanted, but that was it. My friend Chrissie, who lives in Sydney and is a filmmaker, came down to visit and help out on the shoot.
When we wrapped, we gave a brief applause for Kat and Steve, who were now completely finished for shooting on the film.
day 10: sunday 12th september 2004
location: middle brighton beach, brighton, VIC
Since the high school shoot, Tim and I had been working on a rough cut and Liam was getting closer and closer with a music score. Things were progressing but I still hadn't gotten off my ass to shoot this prologue yet. It was the opening of the film, explaining the origins and techniques of hacky sack.
During the Melbourne International Film Festival in July, my old friend from uni Jordy looked me up and we caught up for a film. This gave me the idea of casting Jordy as one of the hacky sack players, since he was better at it than anyone I knew. For the other hacky sack player, Tim had volunteered for the job back during principal photography.
The scene was set in the 1970s, and I wanted to shoot super 8 to make it look like an old piece of archival footage that we had dug up from somewhere. Tony and I both have super 8 cameras, and we opted to both shoot simultaneously from different angles to get some good, interesting coverage.
However, Tony was struck with conjunctivitis by the time we wanted to shoot, and it was too late for me to cancel. So I decided to just shoot it myself.
We were filming on a Sunday morning, so naturally Tim was hung over. I picked him up, and his girlfriend Faith, then after taking a few wrong turns I finally found our way to Jordy's house and we got him in the car.
We made it to the beach and I began by getting Tim to perform hacky sack kata (the moves of hacky sack without actually kicking anything) on some rocks over the water. Then I shot the meeting of Jordy's and Tim's characters for the first time and the development of hacky sack, and all of the different moves it can employ.
L-R: Jordy, me
and Tim after finishing all shooting for the film.
In the end, we got the shots we needed and headed for home. Shooting for Black Market: Adventure was at last complete.