THE CRY OF THE WORM
The journey of a free thinker
REPORT
INTRODUCTION – The concept behind the film
Cry – a loud vocal sound to express pain or fear and to appeal for
help
Worm – a wretched or spineless person
Lemming – a small rodent of artic regions, noted for rushing into the
sea in large groups and drowning.
The Collins English dictionary
This film is a cry against the fact that modern society expects certain
things of you – i.e., that you must have money, lots of material possessions,
dress a certain way, live a certain way, do certain things, and that if you
deviate from these “normalities” even though you live doing no harm
to anyone, in fact less harm than you would living the “normal”
way, then you are an outcast, and it is made almost impossible for you to exist.
In this way while we are not being physically killed off, free thinkers are
being stifled, abused, and stamped on at every turn, to the point where a large
percentage commit suicide, and this is a form of genocide, against freedom and
long-term progress.
Modern society is almost lemming like – like a self destructing ants nest
that consumes everything, and with the control exercised upon people through
their need to associate with other people, and propaganda through the media,
everyone seems to join one mad rush to the point where scientists say that at
our present rate of consuming and not replacing anything, we will need two more
earth-like planets by 2050 in order to survive. Yet if you speak about this
you are an outcast. Society, like a horde of lemmings, is rushing to its own
destruction, and through the afore mentioned mind control most people are too
spineless to stand up and say “yes but how about..” or “this
might be more ethical…”.
There is nothing wrong with ethical capitalism; I will not go so far as to say
that communism is the way forward, although there are many elements of communism,
which I admire. The way forward is capitalism, on a small scale, with the possibilities
freed up for all people, regardless of their race, parentage or wealth, to contribute
their skills to society, this might be in the form of working in the same way
a s we know now, or it might be in creating art to expand the mind, or healing
spiritually – healing the underlying problem not just patching the physical
symptoms or documenting history as it is made, or caring for someone, or whatever.
This should be encouraged and supported as contributing to the world and a sustainable
existence, and not just for how much money can be made out of it!!!!
War while fine for movies and entertainment which appeals to the violent nature
which we all have, should be banned in its “real life” form, world
wide, and people should be encouraged to understand that all faiths are intrinsically
the same weather we worship God, or Allah or Jesus or Buddha or Gaia, or whoever.
What we all worship is the intelligent force of nature and the multidimensional
grid of conscious energy of which we are a part, and it makes no difference
what we may choose to call it.
In this grid, the only sin is harming other living things, or Gaia (Mother Earth),
or anything, physically, mentally or psychically. The entire grid is living,
and we should work to sustain existence in this, our dense physical form as
well as in all others.
The Film
The character in our film, the unnamed businessman, is a metaphor for all those people who are for whatever reason dissatisfied with their existence in this world, and like our character suddenly wake up and come to realise why. In our film, the businessman has a good job, and nice house, and is all that modern society expects of a person. However he is dissatisfied deep down and one day all the hubbub and noise of the city becomes too much. The work in the office seems pointless, he thinks of the people who have not got a job/ nice house/ nice car, forgotten and abandoned to beg in the rain, and then he sees people like himself in the city centre actually protesting against the injustices and cruelty in the world. Normally he would dismiss them as idealistic dangers to the “establishment” but this day he stops to find out more. His rage overflows and he joins the protest, and afterwards walks home, having found at last other people who care about the world, and who value freedom and human life and he comes to realise a little of how much more is out there than the 9-5 office job and that there are more important things in life than having material possessions.
The film is being shot on October 31st when there is a big demonstration in the city centre to campaign against the war on Iraq. This while an unintentional co-incidence makes an ideal backdrop for the film, so we are going to make full use of it, and I want to challenge myself by filming a drama in the middle of real and unpredictable events taking place around me, then successfully setting it to the music.
The sound on the film is to be edited sound recorded on mini DV and some effects off Internet sites that offer copyright free sound effects. The music that the film is cut to is The Battle and Elysium from Gladiator, this music seems to fit so well with what I am depicting in the film that it seems well worthwhile to use this, as I will not be showing the film outside of college and the actors and my cameraman getting a copy on video for their records.
PRODUCTION – Oct 31st 2002
Due to the nature of filming outside in public a lot, I decided that
it would be best if I didn’t use my mini DV camera but instead used a
college DV-cam. They are bigger and look more professional. So, I booked a DV-
cam out of Scooby’s store first thing at about 8.30 AM. My idea was before
the other people with whom I was working met me at lunchtime, I would go out
into the city by myself and film all the cutaways, and point of view shots.
The sun direction didn’t matter, as Oct 31st was dark, damp and foggy.
I filmed a lot of the traffic approaching Charles Cross for shots, to be speeded
up in Premiere, and did various sequences around the Barbican, and I also did
the cutaway of the homeless man on the Barbican at this time, paying him £5
for letting me film of course as that was only fair. I then returned to college
to review my footage, because I had 1 ½ hours to wait before the first
anti war demonstration began at the sundial at 12.30.
I arrived at the sundial soon after 12, and my first priority was to get permission
from the demo organisers to film there. In spite of dire warnings I had received
at college, the organisers proved friendly and only too pleased to have someone
there documenting events! The deal I negotiated was that the two main groups
organising the demonstration (the Stop-The_War Co-olition, and the Socialist
Workers Party) would each receive copies of the uncut footage of the demos for
their archives. Again, this wasn’t required, but I considered it fair
to make that gesture of thanks.
I filmed a lot of footage, both cutaways and POV, and I recorded some very good
speeches by the demonstrators, and it was a very exhilarating experience!
Part way through the demonstration, my cameraman finally arrived, and he also
did some filming of the demo.
We then went to his house and set up for the film, then I returned to the college
to meet my actress Daniella Gray, who plays the businessman in the film, and
to film the office scenes in the schools office, which had been approved by
Dave Hotchkiss 5pm – 6pm. We pounded through the shots that I required,
within an hour.
It was then an hour before we were due to go to Marks (my cameramans) house
to film and since the second anti war demonstration was just starting at Charles
Cross we decided to go and film Daniella there. Since I already knew the organisers
I foresaw no major problem and so Daniella and I went and joined in the demonstration.
This was all unplanned but later formed a major part of the edit; I have shown
the raw footage to some people who have informed me that the atmosphere of the
footage is electric. I also felt this and am very proud of what I filmed there.
We had to leave the protest at 7-ish and we went down to Marks house where I
had to film the businessman “coming home” and “leaving for
work”but soon time was running out as we still had a lot to do along the
Hoe and Daniella had about 45 minutes left before she needed to return home
to her children. We took our leave as soon as possible and went along the Hoe,
filming as fast as we could, but part way along the camera tape ran out and
at past 9pm there was no quick way of buying another mini DV tape and going
back to film so Daniella and I wrapped, and went home, praying that we would
have enough footage to make the film with.
POST PRODUCTION
Began on November 1st, when I spent Friday in the edit suite on Premiere
1, really just to import the footage into the computer ready for editing the
week after, but this went well and I actually got a lot of time left over so
I began to edit. By the end of the day I had the film visuals over ¾
finished, and the sound about ½ way. While of course the film was not
as originally planned, it was cutting well to the music, the general theme was
still the same, and in some ways better than what I originally had planned to
cut to the music. The footage was a bit jumpy in places this is because so much
of the filming had ended up smash and grab, and we had not taken a tripod –
tripod filming is not a viable option when dancing in front of cars with the
camera at Charles Cross waving anti war banners!!!!!!
Editing the week after proved more of a nightmare. I was in the edit suite Monday
afternoon, Tuesday afternoon (when I found that current affairs images and elaborate
title animation of the sun coming up around the Earth which I had created for
the film could not go in as the computer crashed every time that I inserted
a CD Rom) and all day Wednesday, and it was only upon completing the edit on
Wednesday morning that I discovered that the computer could not play back the
video in colour to video, - it played in colour on Premiere, but something was
wrong with the Pinnacle breakout box and when I tried to play the film out to
VCR, DV camera or the monitor, the film came out black and white with weird
colour lines strobing through it. (Simon did try to re-install Media Player
to see if that would work, but the computer also refused to accept that CD)
After spending all day trying to get help (the technicians were most dismissive
of the problem) I finally at about 5pm made contact with Tim who came to help
me and finally I had to burn the film onto 8 CDs and take them into Premiere
3 to get the film onto video properly. It also transpired that before the summer
a student had apparently reported the same problem with Premiere 1, and obviously
nothing had been done about it. I was very annoyed about this and the fact that
the fault appeared to have been ignored until now, when I suddenly had to spend
one third of my food budget for the week on CDs, to get around the problem,
which should have been rectified long before I booked the suite. I have made
a complaint to Teresa about this fact, as I had come to the point during the
day of wondering if I should withdraw from the HND if I was to be so totally
prevented from handing in half decent work. The computer not accepting my CD
had already wrecked part of the film as I had to substitute an inferior clip
of footage (the clock) to cover the syncing with the music. What annoys me greatly
is that we are constantly told about how in the professional world, a film has
to be finished on time, and yet the college facilities prevent this so often.
While the course deadline is much later, the deadline I had set, as other people
want their copies of the film in short order was lunchtime Thursday, and if
it hadn’t been for Tim , I would not have made it.
WEBSITE
After the editing I then returned to creating the website which you can now view online at https://www.angelfire.com/movies/movieproduction/worm.html, this was also the easiest method of making my stills available to friends, and the anti -war campaigners who had so aided my film, rather than sending massive emails out and crashing people’s inboxes. I have also released my college report in this medium for other film students to read, and see more about what is actually going on with this film. The whole is linked through to my main Rebel Films website. I took the stills off the raw footage in Premiere, onto CD, the first day of editing, and saved them as gif formats. Then I created the webpage using Dreamweaver MX and inserted my images through the use of anchored layers, which I prefer as they are easier to move and lay out than frames.
VIDEO COVER
This was created through the use of Adobe Photoshop 6, and the editing
of various images that I created through manipulation of the various tools in
Photoshop, and the use of a few high impact images from the web, as well as
two of my film stills.
This actually took longer that I had planned as I spent ages fiddling with the
layers until I was satisfied with the layout. I created the front, spine and
back of the cover separately, only bringing them together into one file after
completing all three, so that I could print out into one sheet. This is the
way that I have found works best for me to make video covers in the past.
CINEMA POSTER
This has had to be handed in on CD Rom as after research on UKScreen.com
I was informed that a cinema poster is AO size, (see http://www.ukscreen.com/board/General/0/7695)
and since no printer in college will handle the size. Basically the poster is
a re-worked version of the video cover, with extra text and images, it makes
sense to do it this way as if The Cry Of the Worm was a real cinema release,
people would see the poster at the cinema and it would be easier for them to
recognise the video when it came out, if both the video cover and the poster
look similar.
