UNIVERSAL EARLog III: Day 32

Shoot day 01. It starts promisingly as we are warmly welcomed to the Chapel by the building's guardian, forced out of bed on a Sunday - it makes a big difference to get a smile and some kind shrugs about my French language skills rather than the tuts and sighs I probably deserved. Next, an upbeat meeting between our assembled crew, all together in one place at one time, and augmented by Lockwood, our leading man. I establish some rules: clean up after yourself; one take for each shot; never forget where you last saw me put my folder (because I will). 

As regular readers will know, the UNIVERSAL EAR set opens each day with a performance of the L'Institute Zoom company anthem, Fat Larry's Band's 'Zoom'. The French contingent take to this ritual with admirable enthusiasm, although it is a crime of culture that none of them have heard this classic before (leading lady Tuesday Betts, who arrives in the evening, puts the British familiarity with this song purely down to the ubiquity of Smooth FM in our cafes, streets, schools and prisons).

Only once the song is finished do things start going downhill. It turns out I have forgotten to bring not only the clippers to do Harley Byrne's 'do', but his entire uniform; Leray and I are dispatched in different directions across Bourges to rectify this. The guest cast begins to arrive in my absence, little suspecting the wait they will have ahead of them, since on my return our efforts to perfect the hologram effects that we require for all of today's shots prove unsatisfactory. Over the past few test weeks, we managed to get the fx to what we considered to be something like 70% perfection; today, it proved a gross overestimation.

The complexity of the script was another mis-judgement; naturally, it's pretty hard for the French cast, with mostly a limited grip on the English language (though far better than my French, as the common and disingenuous disclaimer goes), to understand the esoteric and pretentious dialogue, let alone memorize it and perform it with the required (albeit limited) level of nuance.

While the togetherness and doing-ness of the day was still very valuable (we're not here to make a movie, after all, but to make a movie), it was a huge blow to lose the time that could've been spent with these wonderful performers figuring out how to best create their characters - instead we just wound up trying to get the shots. We'll try to use these shots as a skeleton and add some flesh together in the week, where schedules allow. After months of script work worrying about words, it turned out to be light itself that we had neglected.

One nice touch: Robin-Tyrek steps up to be our smoketographer; she buys a vape machine and fluid from a local tobacconist, and it is magical to discover the smoke in our movie will be of the 'Berry' variety. It turns out that this refers to the flavour of berries rather than a specific vaping blend local to the the Berry region in which we are stationed, but sometimes authenticity is in the eye of the beholder.

In the evening, Tuesday Betts arrives via both Liverpool and Manchester airport, having turned up wrongly to the former and caused a security alert at the latter, and having eaten nary a Wagon Wheel since 11am. Believe it or not, more mischief and chaos may be just what the production needs. Niemczyk, whose lunches and dinners have fair sustained our bellies and souls since long before the Canon 814 rolled today, does not disappoint with her baked roots.

UNIVERSAL EARLog II Part 2: Day 4 (10)

The final day of the final reschedule of UNIVERSAL EAR: Banned Insubstance. It's Tuesday.

Today we are joined on set by Daniel Glynn who has been drafted in to play two roles: Linus, a disgraced former jockey (most character descriptions in this episode are prefixed by "disgraced former") and his disgraced former he-horse Gloria. In our excitement at Mush and Ravey's weekend work on Glynn's horse costume, we've completely forgotten to find him a jockey costume; we scour the area for a jockey shop to no avail, but a trip to Primark and a lucky tweet for a riding helmet see us right. We're against the clock today with Lockwood due to fly out of Manchester on the National Express at 15.00.

With every element now in place, we gather in the 'Zoom Room': a plywood-partitioned storage area of the Takk basement we have been using to perform our company anthem, Fat Larry's Band's Zoom, each morning before work - the idea being that the plywood will absorb unnecessary waves before they reach the paying customers upstairs. This precaution is particularly welcomed this morning as Glynn throws himself wholeheartedly into his performance, leaving no doubt as to his allegiance to the cause.

There is only one functioning movie light remaining, our other vintage bulbs having blown (and somebody didn't think to ebay 'new' ones as back-ups instead of waiting until we needed them as replacements). Boom shadows are almost unavoidable as I've fashioned our lone lamp into an unforgiving Mediterranean sun for today's horse stable scene; soundie Martin Salomonsen has no place to hide as miking from a distance tends to foreground the chatter, MacBook tapping and Scandi-pop from the cafe upstairs. Through a combination of Salomonsen's ingenuity and my turning a blind camera-eye to straying shadows, we line something workable up. There's something beautiful about an unintended boom-in-frame, like a dropped accent or a disappearing-reappearing wristwatch. If you want to see it as a negative thing, you aren't welcome in my cinema: such flaws are, in fact, wormholes into parallel extended filmiverses. Still, this isn't mentioned to Salomonsen as the set requires a certain (albeit upbeat) tension to operate.

The drama between Linus (a former sports-doper now strung out on street-dope) and Byrne (who wants to get his hands on the sports dope but recognises in Linus a tragic echo of his own degenerate brother, Santiago) is moving: Lockwood (playing Byrne), who has by now given up on pretending to have read the script, compares it to Shakespeare. Byrne tries the straight approach, flattery then empathy to get the required information from Linus until finally resorting to slapping the blissed-up wash-out repeatedly in the face. Still, by the end of the scene, they are in each others arms in one of the few non-libidinous shows of intimacy from Byrne that we've seen in the series so far.

With Linus and Byrne's scenes shot, the priority now is to get Byrne's scenes with Gloria the "mixed-up" horse before Lockwood has to leave for his coach. There is a delay as I struggle to frame a shot in which Gloria puts his hoof to his head in shame: deputy art director Mush has followed my precise instructions on which horse parts we need, and improvised beyond my wildest dreams in the execution of this horse-from-the-future (tigery!) costume, but there is a flaw in the plan: on creating the brief, I pictured the horse hoof, beak and ears as being worn by an actual horse, but as is to be worn by a person there is the difficult matter of framing out Glynn's human shoulder. The solution may be the closest thing Glynn has ever come to Yoga.

With the horse shot, we send Glynn on his lunch and casually set up a missing insert of Byrne first discovering the newspaper article which alerts him to the Linus-and-Gloria lead. It has been hand-drawn on the back of an unused (Lockwood's?) script this morning, by Takk Joe. Everything is ready, we've recreated our fine noir-window-frame set up from yesterday, when I decide that the light, that movie lamp with the one remaining vintage bulb, could be just a smidgen higher. In the farce that follows, the bulb is blown and we're left in the dark: Lockwood is sweating over the departure of his coach, I am overcome with self-loathing at having brought the production to its knees by simultaneously failing both as producer and cinematographer, and Salomonsen is philosophical - something along the lines of "it's in the nature of bulbs…"

Fortunately, this corner of the studio is brightly enough lit that we are able to get some, albeit unstylized, exposure for Lockwood's final shot. We pack him up and send him on his way. He has worked hard this weekend; he has ignored the script; he has seriously compromised the iconography of the character he has the honour to regularly personify by refusing to have his hair shorn into Harley Byrne's signature undercut for this episode. I suspect he won't get much sleep on that coach.

There is one final shot to get with Glynn alone: how long can it take to get this one shot? Quite long, attempting to again light the shot with just the studio's floating fluorescent tubes. Unable to get a flicker of recognition from Doris the Super 8 camera's internal light meter, we surround him with white cardboard and the Strig-Rig, shine our mobile phone torches at these and him, and finally, get some mechanical acknowledgement of our efforts when I hold my bicycle headlamp in my teeth and direct it straight at Glynn's face (one of my hands is holding a mobile torch and the other is needed to operate Doris).

Expect to see this one in cinematography textbooks in the near future

It's unconventional; it's unprofessional; it's probably ineffective. It's a wrap. The fourth episode of UNIVERSAL EAR has finished production. Next time I'd like to scale back the narrative and scale up the resources. The restrictions are becoming restrictive. Meanwhile, the rest of the afternoon is spent sweeping straw out of the studio, the rest of the day spent picking straw out of our hair. Byrne will be back.

Salomonsen, who were it not for his good nature might be pre-fixed "the long-suffering", attempts to mic a scene and be a lighting rig

Institute's company anthem receives prime-time television coverage

As followers of this blog will know, each morning the employees of L'Institute Zoom gather to sing our company anthem - Zoom by Fat Larry's Band. Although the song fell out of the charts some years ago, it seems the opening up of our working processes for public scrutiny at the Institute's temporary Universal Ear Studios complex over the summer has drawn attention back to the R&B classic, as it was recently selected for performance by one of ITV's talented X-Factor participants.

Elitists among the Institute's staff have discouraged me from sharing the video, but X-Factor is a family show with high production values which, whilst I consider it a little racy for viewing by my own offspring, is nothing to sneer at. And just look at Simon Cowell's displeased face! Priceless. My only reservation is the alteration of the lyrics from "sunrise shine in a midnight sky" to "sunrise shine in a morning sky", apparently just so that it makes sense.

Thanks to Nexus Steph for the tip-off.

Next couple of days at UNIVERSAL EAR + acoustic ZOOM

A busy bank holiday weekend for the UNIVERSAL EAR crew begins tomorrow. With series regular Tuesday Betts in town and guest star Jonny Addy on set, there are 35 shots to get before the close of play Monday. Join them to help out at Nexus Art Cafe Sunday 12-6 and Monday 10-6.

Here's another interpretation of our anthem, which is sung on set every morning. MC Acoustic makes the controversial choice of leaving out the coda - but he is performing his own accompaniment, so perhaps he didn't know the chords.

UNIVERSAL EARLog: Day 20

"Bloodless Offering in B Minor": an artichoke sacrificed to the heavens: duplicity: a greengrocer dressed as a priestess and a radish trader who won't get his/her hands dirty: an omnisexual love triangle between five identity-shifting Greeks, many of them not even Greek. The role of the Real Ianthe is to be played by Marie Louise Cookson, the Future Films engineer who blueprinted the episode for us - Cookson flunked an audition for previous episode "A Flea Orchestra In Your Ear", but has included her own performance as a vital component of the blueprint for "Bloodless". Cookson claims that parts of the signal she received through the modified 2D Quantum Propagada Engine were so obscure, the only way to render them useable was for her to interpret them using Acting. This EARLog is not the place to cynically question the engineering techniques of the Institute's hired help or hint at the use of professional blackmail.

Morning production meeting, and Lockwood takes the thespian context of Cookson's presence as an excuse to further ridicule my Bourbon technique for directing actors (more to follow on that). Cookson nods and smiles, and I sense that she is unwilling to compromise her screen chemistry with him by disagreeing. Cookson - and this is just my intuition - sees there is something in Biscuits, and I make a mental note that should we ever work together without Lockwood, Cookson may be the actor to try my salad dressing method on. 

I cut Lockwood down to size by having Strigner trim his hair: our production designer has never used clippers before, but I assure her "hair's just another material". It's a pity Lockwood can't see Strigner's face, as the range of emotions she journeys through during the process would put a Youtube tutorial on screen acting to shame. Eventually, though, Striggers finds her rhythm and I have to switch the clippers off at the mains when she sails past "Harley Byrne"-style and veers dangerously towards "Travis Bickle" territory.

 

The Nexus Art Cafe 'secret' garden is dressed as an ancient Greek marketplace, Cookson is dressed as an ancient Greek radish trader. The weather over the garden is changeable, making doubly unfeasible the use of direct sunlight for the scene, as the garden forms a petite rectangle between four imposing 5-storey walls. Given that the ancient Greeks did not have glass, is using light reflected from the Nexus windows going to look inauthentic? As the crew ponder this, shivering self-consciously in our al fresco fishbowl, Lockwood thoughtfully finds a fake fur robe to drape over Cookson's toga'd shoulders. We admire the look, and - like many of the problems the production has brought up - the window issue is soon forgotten, driven away by the current of superficial concerns. We'll see how it looks in the cut.

This morning we are also joined by Adam and Sam, film grads who have wandered into Nexus and - I can only assume - been wowed by our underground movie studio set-up. Adam is quickly put to work lowering in a digital caption from Lockwood's "Stew-Cue" (the latter was pretty jealous at Elly's Strig-Rig getting a proper name), and dusting Lockwood liberally with talcum powder (on film, it looks like dust!). Sam is trusted to manage our most complex sound set-up so far with the addition of an external mic to the cassette-dictaphone we've been taping with, but first he must toss some radishes into shot - a delicate duty which he nails first time. 

Ianthe is torn between her heart and loins (longing for Harley Byrne) and her brains (which have been told he is a veggie fiddler). For reasons of 2-dimensional geometry and the politics of screen pace, "hearts and loins" will be expressed in long shots, brains in close-ups - often cutting between the two during the same line. It should be noted that when Cookson - as the radish trader (a high-born priestess in disguise) - is asked to express desire towards Harley Byrne, she finds the posture technique that Lockwood has previously scorned is in fact really effective at getting her loins aflame. (If you remember, one should imagine the object of desire on a rug which must be dragged towards you, fists hip-high, whilst struggling with one's shoulders not to be dragged in the opposite direction; if - like Lockwood - the eyes still appear terrified, imagine you're at the end of your life and an old friend is walking towards you with his hand outstretched. This technique should not be attempted in nightclubs).

After lunch we cower back in the studio hoping that no-one will notice the carpet of talc in the garden. Crowd scenes next, utilising the home-made gaggle that Strigner (design) and Lockwood (therapy painting) put together yesterday. Cookson is due to stand in front of the crowd but as we are only able to get it a couple of feet off the ground, she has to "stand" perching on a cushion atop two large paint cans (the only combo that works), an adjustment that adds a peculiar tension to her performance. Cookson's technique is uncluttered: we tick off shot after shot until  we find we can progress no further without giant asparagus leaves, which Strigner quickly cooks up out of fiber-optic cables and cloth. There is to be a rare bit of camera movement in this shot but, still startled by the evocative clunk of ad lib leaves, I accidentally tilt Doris too far and take in not only flying veg and Radish Trader's heroic catch, but two cans of paint and Cookson's sport socks. There are no second takes on this shoot, so I devise another angle the sequence requires and am careful not to get carried away this time.

Cookson quivers admirably for her finale, and it's a wrap on today's special guest star. It's also the end of Elly Strigner's last day on the UNIVERSAL EAR set, an emotional moment as we'll miss her instant clunky designs, insults, mischievous interpretation of her 2012 alter-ego Edith Downing and all-round fine company. It feels sort of like the beginning of the end of UNIVERSAL EAR at Nexus, although we still have one and a half episodes to shoot here and over a thousand episodes unrealised beyond that.

Lockwood and I spend the evening at Contact where Dominic Berry is director and compere at Outspoken. As we stand to leave I notice a peculiar halo hovering around Lockwood's head. It is a million tiny talcum powder particles dancing in the limelight.

Scott Bradley performs our institutional anthem

Following on from yesterday, here's a more modern take on the Zoom anthem. The pop artist Scott Bradley doesn't seem to have truly expert control over his diaphragm - but he's having a lot of fun, and that's not a bad place to start.

Zoom Anthem

Every working morning at the Institute, we all get together to sing our anthem - Fat Larry's Band's "Zoom" - before the day's business begins. Whilst our Future Films department is temporarily relocated at the Nexus Art Cafe studio, they continue to fly the Zoom flag and can be heard performing "Zoom" ahead of the ongoing production of UNIVERSAL EAR each day. If you're in the cafe, please feel free to join them, or listen from your table with a cup of tea.

In the meantime, here is the first in a series of cover versions for the sake of appeal. You might particularly look out for Stevie D's choice to whistle through the instrumental section, and to punctuate the number with a kiss at the camera. Stevie D, we at L'Institute Zoom salute you and your interpretation of our official anthem.

UNIVERSAL EARLog: Day 1

Lockwood is rooming with me for the duration of the UNIVERSAL EAR shoot. He and I rise at 8am for probably the last time, and he makes us eggs, possibly for the last time. We mount our company bicycles to head in for the first day of production, and then dismount as Lockwood's Raleigh Pioneer has a puncture. He gets the bus instead, and while I wait for him outside Nexus I am joined by the department's Physical Welfare Enforcer Fran Higginson, and our First AD Rowan, who is already busy making calls at 10am. It quickly transpires that there is no-one on the other end of the phone (aside from in her imagination), but Rowan looks professional and I don't know who she'd need to call anyway, so we let it pass. Aside from her frequent breaks for "mummy milk", Rowan will prove to be one of the most energetic ADs I've yet worked with.


Lockwood joins us on the street and we all talk about the situation we're in. Ten minutes later, I call Nexus to ask if we can be let in, and they apologise for forgetting to open the cafe. The schedule quickly takes on what we will explain away as an "organic" evolutionary imperative, with warm up and the performance of our anthem (Fat Larry's Band's "Zoom") postponed whilst we arrange the two spaces into a production office/dressing room (which Rowan, with no little marketing savvy, christens as the "Snuggle Office") and studio space.

Higginson leads us in a combined warm-up/anthem/exploration of temporal cubist space-time. Our Physical Welfare Enforcer has been training with a Soviet martial arts expert who seems to know the secret of most things. We are shown some speculative photo-montages illustrating muscle-use during temporal cubist-based time travel, and we attempt to warm up some of same.

Later, we spend some time developing Harley Byrne's screen fighting technique. The real Byrne, in 2012, had developed his own technique based on a personal biophysics of twenty years in the postal service. In order to make these acceptable to cinema audiences, a special trainer was employed to refine his moves: however, the trainer was 8-months pregnant, and Byrne took her demonstrations rather literally. Fortunately, we have planned ahead and Higginson is well into her third trimester. In just a few hours, Lockwood is punching like a knocked-up parcel vet: indeed, like Harley Byrne.