So what have I been up to the last week or so in watching movies, gaming, school and more? Well, I’d thought I’d write a small article concerning some of this, and hopefully giving you a few nice insights in movies and games you might want to look into trying out. First of all, I’ve been thinking more about some future updates on the website, which I should be able to work on this Saturday, unless I get some kind of homework overkill from school (which, in a way, wouldn’t be very unusual). Anyway, here are some future ideas for the website (looks at web-guru Johannes):

So I’ve been thinking about the new crew pages I’ve talked about several times here before. I’ve now got the basic design done and are just beginning to make everything run as smooth and fast as possible on the website. There probably won’t be a lot of different people in the crew list, I’m just thinking about featuring the people who have a major influence in my filmmaking, instead of putting all of my friends on there, as I’ve done before. I’m trying to give the website a bit more professional approach in the crew and equipment pages. It’s all pretty old as it is right now, going to categorize everything a bit better, which will hopefully make more sense to everyone coming on the website. More pictures will be featured directly on the site in the Equipment section, as well as some tips to new aspiring filmmakers. The links section in the sidebar will also get a complete overhaul, featuring more links to other friends’ and fellow filmmakers’ websites. Will also try to get some kind of streaming functionality for my films. This would help loads since I would then be able to show people my films without having to post them in multiple parts to YouTube (“16″ style), but just having them load directly on the page or in a pop-up window. I have some other thoughts about the comment system and some minor changes to the design of the website, but nothing that interesting worth writing about here. Well, let’s move on to more…interesting news!

School begun last Tuesday. It was great to meet up with all my friends (most of them had been gone ALL summer) and talk. We got our scheadule in which our teacher had managed to put six math lessons in five days, which is quite an achivement. Two of the subjects I liked the least was removed after the 1st year (one of them being replaced with a course you could choose yourself, and I chose one about movies), which means that so far, things havn’t been as extremely stressful as they could have been some other times, especially towards the end of last term. Not much else has been going on in school really, just the usual stuff with homework and studies. “Malmöfestivalen” (sort of like a thing where a lot of people gather here in Malmö for a week to eat, drink and watch rock concerts) finished last Friday, and since I’m living in the thick of it, I couldn’t be more glad (they had ultra-loud music on until the earlier hours). I’m not saying it isn’t fun, I spent some fun evenings with some great friends just walking around in the city checking out rock concerts and watching weird people. I’ve also been meeting some old friends from my old schools and talking to them quite a bit. Everyone looks and behaves pretty much exactly the same, atlhough everyone seems to be 20cm taller.

I havn’t really been watching a lot of movies the last week, I’ve mostly been thinking about my new film “Derby” (which you can read more about in the previous news post) as well as just playing games, but more on that later. I saw Silence of The Lambs again the other day, and it still holds up after four (or is it five?) viewings. I really like the mood of the film, and it is in my eyes the perfect thriller/horror flick. Actually, come to think of it, I’ve mostly just been re-watching old classics that I havn’t seen in a long time. I saw Shaun of the Dead for what I believe is the seventh or eigth time but I still love it just as much as the first time I saw it, since I notice new things every time I see it, so compliments to Mr. Wright for making such an awesome film. I’ve also started to re-watch “The Office” (the british version, obviously) which I havn’t seen in about 2 or 3 years. I found them in my DVD collection the other day, and I realised I couldn’t remember a single thing from the whole series. So it’s basically just a brand new experience wathcing it all again. Of course I also pick up on some of the jokes I might not have understanded when I was 12 or 13 (which was when I frst saw it). Anyway, it’s a great series, pick up the two seasons if you can find them. As I’ve said, they’ve been out for a while so you should be able to find it in your video store’s variation of the bargain bin. I also saw “Shooter” with Mark Wahlberg about a week ago. It was really a nice surprise. While not being a fantastic film, it certainly was above average. I had imagined it would be the old usual, PG-13 action flick, when it turnes out to be a very violent film (not as violent as the death of Murphy in RoboCop 1, which I still can’t watch without wincing). NOt sure if I’ll go to the lengths of recommending it, but it might be worth a rent if you’re looking for a pretty mindless, high-octane, adrenaline-filled ride. I had my second class in my movie course in school today, and it seems to be a great class that all enjoys the same thing: movies. We actually watched the opening to Silence of the Lambs there as well. Still fantastic, even on VHS and a lousy TV. And just so all of you know, new reviews are coming for films, it’s only that I’ve found it’s pretty impossible for me to write what I think about a film I’ve only seen once if I don’t write it pretty much exactly after I get home from the theatre…Also, I was going to see “Planet Terror” (Rodriguez’s “Grindhouse” film) the other day, but appearantly it doesn’t screen anywhere in Malmö! Now what’s up with that?

Two games have been dominating my free gaming time the last weekend. First, I got “Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2″ for the Playstation 3 last friday (I managed to get a used copy, the same day it came out! Yay!). I loved the first one when I bought it early 2006 for my Xbox 360, and so far this game is even better in every way. Better graphics, better missions, better sound, better controls. It really feels great to use the motion control in the PS3 pad to control your character on screen. But again, the abscense of vibration/rumble in the PS3 controller is very noticeable. Get to work, Sony! But bigger than that game, and what influenced this news posts’ title, is “Bioshock”, which I got hold of through Steam just last Sunday. It’s pretty hard to describe this game without giving to much away, but I’m about three or four hours into the game, and so far I think it’s actually just as good as Half-Life 2, which is my favorite game of all time. They say the game is about 15-20 hours long, which will probably mean 30 hours for me, since I die a lot in games. Still, I’ll write a longer piece about this once I’ve actually finished it and can tell you if it lived up to the massive hype that’s been surrounding the release of the game. First impressions is a clear “yes”, but since I’m only about 10% through the game, things could change.

That’s pretty much everything I can think of to write here right now. Make sure to check out the news post below this one for some details on my upcoming filmmaking projects. I’ll speak to all of you again in a couple of days I reckon. But until then, take care everyone!

Hey everyone! First of all, I want to extend my apologies for not updating the website for about a week now. I think the reception of “16″ has been pretty good, and I’m now already counting over 1500 downloads on it. Not bad for a half-an-hour film! As you may have noticed, I’ve removed the splash page with the download links. All links can be found on “16″‘s page in the “Movies” section, and on various other websites, such as FXhome.com, Gamespot.com, Myspace, YouTube and Facebook. So I’ve started to think about two new things I’m going to do, filmwise, now that 16 is finally done. I got some interesting ideas while both in the pre-production, production and the post-production phase of “16″. I guess that happens to every filmmaker, but it’s pretty annoying when you think of something you’d rather do right away than to wait until the current project’s done. But I guess that’s how it is with most things in life. Well, without trying to completely bore you with endless philosophical monolouges, let’s get right on the two new projects, including a small synopsis and some behind-the-scenes info!

First of all, my upcoming project will be called “Derby”. It’s still in the planning and early scriptwriting phase, but it’s essentially a classic love story with some twists. I want to create something I really havn’t made before, and I thought it’d be fun to get away from blood, horror, guns and splatter. I won’t act in it in any way or form (might have a small cameo somewhere though!). This should allow me to focus more on the cinematography and directing the film, as well as keeping a close eye on the other actor’s and actresses’ performances. I have a few ideas for it, and I’ve got most of the story fleshed out in my head, and I will begin the real script-writing process within the upcoming week. I’ve got some friends who are going to help me with writing dialouge and also provide some ideas for the story. I’ve been thinking it’s often good to get more than one input (that being your own) on what you’re creating. Even if I had a few screenings of “16″ before it was released and trimmed some scenes down pretty dramatically, I still feel a lot more could have been done if some plot things could have been corrected earlier, before starting filming. This is pretty much the next project I’m going to spend my free time on both writing, directing and editing. Actually, I seriously can’t wait to begin the real process of making this film! I bet it’s going to be a lot of fun (one of these reasons is not having to film everything at night as we did in “16″…that was pretty tiring to say the least). More on that as the work on it continues (going to start scouting for actors/actresses soon).

Another project I’ve been working for some weeks now with the good friend of mine (Martin Emson) is a new sci-fi/horror thingy which is still in scriptwriting process. I really can’t tell you more at this stage, but the first draft of the beginning is pretty much completed and from the looks of it, it will be pretty awesome. That’s really all I can tell you on that right now, but expect more on this to pop up here on the website once proper production on that starts!

Stay tuned later this evening for a rundown on what I’ve been doing in school, gaming and movie-watching the last week or so!

Hey guys and girls, sorry I wasn’t able to write more articles on the 2th, as I had promised. It was just that I didn’t expect the Behind-The-Scenes of “16″ article to be so big…

Anyway, I’ll be able to write two articles tomorrow (if I don’t experience massive school overkill in homework and whatnot): firstly, one about what I’ve been up to the last week or so, and secondly I’ll give you the first insight into my next two upcoming projects, including new pages in the “Movies” section!

Until tomorrow, take care everybody!

I started thinking of creating a movie like this one time after I had been on the countryside, in early May. I really wanted to make something in the same genre as “Cell”, but being a bit more inspired by more “direct” horror rather than thriller movies I decided I’d create something a bit different. What then started as a short film project that would be finished in a couple of weeks, turned out to be a much, much longer and bigger project than I had anticipated.

Before even creating the script for the film, I shot the car scene in the beginning of the film, featuring my dad as the driver. This was done on the 17th of May and we shot the whole scene in about an hour. The car scene was originally about double the length it is in the final film, but due to some issues with pacing (i.e. it got a bit boring after a while) and some help from fellow filmmaker Marco von Moos I cut the scene down a lot. Later the same week as when we had shot the car scene, me and Johannes sat down one or two hours after school and tried to think of a reasonable script, which would be pretty different from what I had done before. We both had some general ideas and I had some music cues that should be used in various points in the movie, to achieve a certain mood. A big inspiration for this movie, at least for me, was the not-so-critically-acclaimed film called “Dead Silence” (done by James Wan, who did “Saw”, which I think is a great horror/thriller). That film really had a certain mood to it, and also a very eering feeling to it. When we actually wrote the script, which was actually more of a synopsis, we thought the movie would still be the longest I had ever made, only we thought it’d be close to around 10 or 15 minutes.

But before we could start shooting I had to get some stuff for the film, like relatively cheap lightning and practical effects, such as special flickering lights and blood make-up (which I used in one scene, but we never got around to use in the film) and some 5 picture frames so I could hang up the photographs on the wall, which was an idea I had thought of ever since I started making the film. I bought most of it a place called “Clas Ohlson” but also various things such as UV lightning at a place called “Teknikmagasinet”. On the 23rd of May I shot photos for the picture frames of my fellow friends Johannes, Anton, Amanda, Mattias and Ida. Not very surprisingly, both cameras I tried to use ran out of battery, but fortunantly I managed to find an AC adapter. So the next two days I sat down and heavily photoshopped the photographs I had taken to give them the crazy look they get towards the end of the film. I also shot the short news segment with Christoffer for the TV in the studio scene, featuring a sock on a stick as a microphone! To check out the raw versions of the crazy photos I made for the film, click the links below:
Crazy photos: Johannes – Anton – Amanda – Ida – Mattias

We had planned to shoot every single scene in a weekend, something that proved highly unlikely, if not completely impossible, which was a thing we noticed when we had filmed for one single night, and only been able to finish two or three scenes, instead of the five we had planned. The first thing we shot for the movie (since the car I had used when filming the journey to the house wasn’t available) was the running up the stairs of the house knocking on the door. We actually managed to get some pretty realistic rain while filming using a garden hose, but because of grading, it didn’t show up that well in the final film. Johannes had to repeatedly run up and down the stairs to the house while getting soaked in ice-cold water, which I don’t think he enjoyed a lot to be honest. We shot the rest of the entrance and introduction scene the same evening. We forgot to shoot the thing where I take a photo of Johannes, so that was shot a whole week later (but more on that later!). We shot the bathroom scene also, which is actually the scene where I cut out most from the film. There originally were a conversation between me and Johannes there (with quick flash-frames of me blood-soaked). But it just didn’t fit with the film since you didn’t really learn anything new from the scene, it perhaps only said some things too early in the film. So I quickly got rid of that, and the thing that remains in the film today is only the flickering-lights scene.

Next day we shot some more interesting footage, among these the basement scene, the yellow field scene (in which Johannes thought the whole scene felt like Band of Brothers, due to a specific in-camera grading technique I used ). We also shot the dinner scene, the last scene for the film (the one in the gardening shed) and the interior of the drive to the house (it took about 40 minutes to set up the lights and the rain and the camera to get everthing to work without getting too much weird shadowing and stuff like that. We shot some footage from outside of the car as well, but that didn’t work in the movie, since I would have needed to carefully mask and replace the background with a real road, and I just didn’t have time to do that really.

We didn’t film anything that Sunday, because if I remember correctly both me and Johannes had some kind of huge Biology test in school the following day. So since we weren’t able to film everything, only about half of, what we needed, we decided to go back another weekend to complete the filming. Originally it was planned that we were going back just the next week, but due to various problems we couldn’t go back to filming until the week after that. We went back on Friday the 8th of June to continue and hopefully finish the film. The first day we shot some minor scenes such as the lawn scene (where Johannes wakes up after tripping on the doorframe), the running scene in the beginning, a small scene we forgot to shoot just after the basement scene (leaving and going to bed) and most important of all, the studio scene, which took about two hours to set up with lights, a television, some paintings and whatnot. We felt that we were well on track to actually getting the film done relatively on schedule.

Saturday the 9th of June we shot some other scenes such as the complete escape from the house, the small segment where Johannes’ get’s the odd drink in the kitchen and the short scene where the power is lost to the house. After Saturday, only two scenes remained that could be shot on the countryside, which was really cool, so we decided to watch “Equillibrium” which Johannes had brought in HD on his external Harddrive. Things didn’t go that well, since we both almost fell asleep in our chairs after about ten minutes. This wasn’t at all a comment on the movie’s quality, it just proves that filmmaking can be very tiring sometimes!

So on Sunday, only two scenes remained. This was the first scene on the second day in the film, which I called “The Radio Scene”. The weather was extremely hot that day and it was quite tiring to film that scene, even if it only took about 20 minutes to set up and about an hour to film. Directly after that, we shot the scene that comes directly after the one with the radio, the harbour scene. It was great to actually shoot something in the right order, as it was going to appear in the film, and I think that was a great help to both me and Johannes, since we were both quite tired from what had been essentially non-stop for whole weekends, and this during the most hectic times in our school, with all kinds of crazy tests and exams.

I had edited the first 5 minutes or so after the first weekend shoot, but since we didn’t shoot any of it in any kind of logical order it was really hard to cut together, since it was hard to logically see where everything would fit in good. Well, the end of my first year in high school approached fast, and that meant more time hanging out with friends before everyone’s going abroad to various exotic locations. Anyway, I continued to edit the film as much as I had time to during the last week, and the first full edit was done the 14th of June. The first thing I started working on was the driving scene, with lightning effects and some stock footage that had to be inserted in the film (kindly provided by Marco von Moos). After that was done, which was some time close to June 20th, I directly started working on the grading for the movie, including various digital effects. I started with the basement scene, since that was the first scene in which I fully knew exactly how I wanted it to look. I finished the grading for that scene in about 4 hours, with another hour to keyframe the flickering working light, which I think turned out totally ok, considering how dark it actually was. So what I had to do was to raise the brightness of the frames that needed to be fully lighted, and lower the brightness, gamma and colour levels on those that needed to be darker (i.e. when the light is flickering). The next following week I finished all of the effects and grading for the film. Because of Johannes had been away in various exotic locations throughout Sweden we never had any time to film the opening scene in front of the computer, so I grabbed him one afternoon and we shot the whole scene in about an hour. It is also the scene I’m most happy with, since I tried some new interesting camera moves I had been thinking of and a new lighting technique. I finished the grading for that scene as well and started working on something I really hadn’t spent that much time on before: sound. Always when I had done movies before this one I just took whatever sound I recorded on set with my on-camera microphone and just pasted it on the movie, raising and lowering the volume of that one source track to try to make it fit well with the actions on screen and the background music. I decided during the shoot that I wanted to re-record every single line of dialouge, to have more control about pacing and panning of seperate sound sources during my editing process. So I bought a pretty good (but absolutely no top-of-the-line thing) USB microphone. We recorded all of Johannes lines one day, which took about 2 ½ hours, and I later recorded my own lines in about three or four hours. Me and Johannes then spent an entire weekend (and I’m talking morning til evening) just recording various sounds such as doors opening and closing at various speed, footsteps and running on various surfaces, how rain impacts sound different on different materials such as glass and asphalt and more. I think we stacked up close to 550 different sounds, and I felt we had everything we needed (even if I had to record various stuff later during post-production, such as the breathing both while running and in the basement scene.

The sound mix was finished around the middle of July, and now only the music remained. I tried to use a mix of my own composed small musical scores, as long with some other friends, and soundtracks from not so famous films to create the mood I wanted. The first musical piece that I had figured even before production was the credits theme, which is from the main title sequence of “Dead Silence”, where Charlie Clouser (one of the best composers out there, according to me) made the music. I really had a hard time figuring out the right music track for the middle of the film, as some scenes, especially the basement scene (where I wanted to create tension, while not using a track that wasn’t fast) which was the last scene I figured out the music for, and it now uses a mix of short scores I’ve made myself, and some of the slower tracks from “Saw” (also composed by Charlie Clouser). The music score was close to finished in late July, when I decided to recut parts of the movie quite heavily which improved it quite a lot (I removed about 10 minutes of unneccessary scenes, including the bathroom dialouge, loads of “walking to and from the room to/from the stairs” scenes. I also removed quite a bit of the basement scene, shortening it by one minute, to create a bit more tension. I edited some other scenes too, but mostly it just was trimming some shots a couple of frames to make it a bit faster. I finished the new, and final edit August 1st, then I spent the rest of the time tuning the music and balancing the audio so that the dialouge and sound fx would be approximately the same volume, and not change dramatically.

So what remained now? Well, I had to render the movie (the process where the editing software takes all the work you’ve done and puts everything into one AVI file containing all video and audio data). The only problem was, my editing software, Sony Vegas, isn’t too happy to work with Windows Vista 64-bit. So it just wouldn’t work, and quit randomly loads of times. Then Vista completely crashed, forcing me to re-install it and therefor, making me have to re-install all of the software on the computer. This was just last weekend, on Saturday the 11th of August. I finally got it fixed very late that night and was able to continue trying to render my film. I finally managed to get around it, only it would only render at a maximum resolution of 640×360, instead of the 1920×1080 I had intended to render it in. When Vegas gets friendly with Windows Vista again, probably when they release their next software version, I’ll have to render it all out in HD so I can finally be able to put it up here in all it’s HD glory. I might make some small adjustments to the movie itself, but since the new version of Vegas isn’t out until at least October, that’s a story for another time. The film was finished, compressed and uploaded on August 15th, which is also when I announced the release date of August 17th. It’s been the most fun, but also most tiring and sometimes frustrating project I’ve worked on to date, but I can’t wait for future projects! Because you see, this is just the beginning!

Hey, just wanted to let you know that because of some scheduling problems, I won’t be able to post the thingy today, as I had promised some friends earlier today. But what I will do (if nothing weird gets in the way) is write a bunch of articles tomorrow! I’m aiming to tell you about the progress of creating “16″, what I’ve been up to the last couple of days and also, tell you a little, little bit on my next project (yeah, already starting to work on my next film, free time are for weak people ;D).

So stay very tuned to the website tomorrow, and I will post some interesting and exciting stuff!