Category: Projects

Home work III -nearly there

thegirlinthecafe 5 Comments

Bedroom with Pirates of the Carribean blue wall

Mini garden

There is progress.

All the paint work is done, wowee! Except the stripes in my living room, but that’s not a lot of work and will be done next week.

I have assembled 4 closets. There are two more Billy’s to assemble, that should be a breeze (with a name like that).

The floor has been installed. (Color: weathered oak (grey-ish))

I have a livingroom with a pink chair and two glossy white coffee/tea tables. My dinner table is waiting to get up and my dinner chairs (I ordered an ice blue, purple, orange and grey one – to keep it colourful) are hopefully delivered next week too.

I have a sleepingroom with a Pirates of the Carribean blue wall and 4 closets. And funky curtains!

I have a terrace with flower bulbs, the snowdrops are nearly blooming.

Tomorrow the movers will deliver the rest of my things so I will be reunited with my stuff.

Tuesday my (grey) sofa will be delivered.

Hopefully on Wednesday it will look like a real (ish) home. I really look forward to have some relaxing time on my new sofa having a tea and watching, well Inspector Lynley perhaps on Wednesday? Making a new place your home is a big job but the end is in sight.

How are you all doing?

the-this-is-not-an-xmas-card-exchange

thegirlinthecafe 21 Comments

I admit that I am a little late this year but it is that time of the year again:

The annual this-is-not-an-XMAS card postcard exchange

I will design a brand new Girl postcard which I am going to have printed in a card shop in a special very limited edition. It is not going to be your typical Christmas card, there is no Christmas tree on it nor any other Christmas references. It’s probably going to be more of a New Year card to be honest, but I am not sure yet. It can be anything.

It will be a double card in full colour and it is not going to be the image you see on the top of this post by the way.

Now, you want one of those extremely-limited-edition-due-to-be-a-collectors-item-cards won’t you?

Current card counter: 10

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Freebie to download: Free notecards and envelopes printables

thegirlinthecafe 12 Comments

I have distracted my brain a bit and designed four small notecards and envelopes to go with it. (See the not so great photo above, they look better in real life!)

I kept the design simple (I like simple designs) and am quite happy with the result.

If you like them, you can download them here for free and print them on your printer, they are free for personal use.

There are four different cards, and they both come as a single card and as a double card. And there are two types of small envelopes to go with it.

You could use them as a card to go with a present, or you can hide them in the lunch box of the person you love, or hide them inside a book the next time you swap one! The possibilities are endless really!

All files are in PDF format and can be printed on most (colour) printers.

You can download all files in one handy zip file :

download the zip file (ca. 800k).

I can recommend to print them on a little bit thicker paper. If you are making the envelopes, fold the foldable parts along a ruler or even better, first carefully cut (carefully, don’t cut through the paper!) along the fold marks with a hobby knife or pair of scissors for a sharper cut.
Use a bit of glue or double sided tape to put the envelope together.

Let me know if you like them!

A first timelapse experiment – and how to do it

thegirlinthecafe 8 Comments

After my Adobe Premiere course last week I really needed to go and use it for something. I have long been wanting to experiment with time-lapse photography, so I took a couple of test shots around Trafalgar Square and glued them together into a time-lapse sequence.

Just a couple of notes:

1. It feels good to make something again, even if it is just a simple thing like this.

2. The photos

The camera I used for this is my small pocket camera (Panasonic Lumix TZ4). It was handheld so there is some shaking. It also doesn’t have a built in timer so I used the “burst” option in stead. Also – not all photos are sharp.

If you want to do this properly you will have to use a tripod, and to make things easier for yourself, a good camera with a timer.

I am going to try it again with my Nikon D80. This camera should take better pictures. It doesn’t have a timer either, but I bought an external timer which can be connected to the camera. This sort-of remote control will then take pictures every x seconds. (where x is the interval you have set it to).

But basically what you need to do it to take lots of pictures with very short intervals of the same subject. (And that subject should, obviously be moving/changing etc.)

3. Editing
It was really easy to turn this into a video clip in Premiere. It was a breeze to add a bit of music to it and adding some titles is very easy too.

I set the duration for each photograph at 0.2 seconds. (one fifth of a second, 5 photos per second)

(Note: you don’t need Premiere for this, you could probably do the same thing in Windows Movie maker.)

And I can hear you think – why did you not just shoot a video clip in stead?
Well I kind of like the quirky way in which people or things seem to move in time lapse videos, there is an odd look and feel to it. So I want to experiment with it a bit more.

To do some more practising with the editing – next weekend I am going to visit those two lovely dogs again and I will try to shoot some video clips of them to cut together some sort of “A day in the life of …” clip. Stay tuned.

Update: Uploaded a new version. It is slightly longer with some more footage of people on Trafalgar Square. And I put in transitions between the different sections. And it is slighly better quality.

Film production: To Wales

thegirlinthecafe 9 Comments

I should be packing by now, but a short note here before I am off. All is prepared for my trip to Wales, well all that I could think of that should be prepared.

There are a couple of changes to the original plans:

The school children will not be there. The school has withdrawn from the project because they were in involved in too many other things so they did not have the time anyway. This makes my life as producer a whole lot easier. In stead of school children we will use some more actors. It is not completely the same, but with some creative camera work, I am sure it will be fine.

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Production planning – one step at the time

thegirlinthecafe 7 Comments

Red and White

I am very busy planning the 4 days film shoot in Wales in February. I have never really done serious production planning before, and this is a great opportunity for me to get experience. Planning this shoot is not very different from planning a four day film shoot for my own short film, should I ever want to do the production planning for that myself.

But what I got was a script and what I was told was: go do it. And I thought – oh shit – where do I start. The way to do it I learned is to take a small step at the time.

Read on if you are interested in the film making proces »

SweetArts, Crowdspring and Chewinggum actually

thegirlinthecafe 13 Comments

Yes it has been a bit quiet and I also sometimes wonder myself if this film ever gets made but things have started rolling again now. I had a production meeting yesterday and while we still haven’t found a Dan yet we are now also working on confirming locations. We also know that the shoot will take 4 days, which will probably be a part of the weekend and some working days. Finding Dan is probably going to be a nightmare (there is only one Bill Nighy in this world and he is way out of our league and also the busiest man on earth) but let’s see.

There are so many loose ends to this film at the moment that I just try to take it one day at the time and trust that my producer knows what she is doing. She does because she is good. I relax while thinking about how I want to shoot things and drink tea, lots of tea. While nibbling on a Jammie Dodger.

I’ll keep you posted.

Apart from the film, I am trying out Crowdspring because I want a decent logo for a business card and other purposes. Crowdspring works as follows: you pay them the money you want to spent, you set a time limit (next Monday is the expiry date for mine) and designers around the world can submit their design. I pick the one I like best, designer gets paid – simple. I like the idea of it, the fact that people around the world can submit their work.

Choosing one I like is more difficult than I thought though. Actually there aren’t many that I really like just yet (I am quite picky) so I hope some more suggestions will come in. If you want to give your opinion (please do, I could do with some second opinions) have a look at what has been submitted so far.

And the Chewinggum actually, well what can I say. Love is all around.

Oh, and Stephen Fry on Twitter will brighten your day if you like the man. He is currently in Africa filming Douglas Adams’ book Last Chance to See as a documentary. If you are on Twitter too, let me know, I would love to follow my readers. You can follow me here.

SweetArts: It’s not fun all the time

thegirlinthecafe 7 Comments

Just in case you thought I am going through this whole make-a-film-process with 2 fingers in my nose having nothing to worry about – it is not like that. It’s tough, it’s difficult, it’s hard work and some days I want to give up. Today is one of those days.

Did I write that my script was ready to shoot yesterday? I take that back.

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SweetArts: Script readthrough

thegirlinthecafe 2 Comments

The Script

No they are not really pink! But they have been read out aloud by two actors. It went well. Apart from some minor changes and a change to the opening scene, the script is ready for the shoot.

A script supervisor and a potential (not confirmed yet – but award winning!) DOP attended too. If this sounds like things are taken very seriously then I can only agree. That’s what happens when you are lucky enough to get a person like M to produce your film. Me – I am trying to just follow along while all those things are happening.

We are seriously working on getting a cast on board now, which is a bit of a challenge. Mostly because we are trying to get some people who are a bit known.

Next production meeting is tomorrow in Notting Hill. Yes there are a lot of meetings, but there is a lot to organize. There are a lot of balls in the air at the moment, and we hope that we can catch some of them so things start to fall into place. End October/Beginning of November shoot is still on. It’s a busy time.

Tea time

thegirlinthecafe 2 Comments

After 4 hours in the Electric House I got send off with some home work and now I have the rest of the weekend off. Nice. The home work consists of compiling a list of festivals I am going to submit the film to. At this moment Cannes and the UK Raindance festival are the two major ones we have in mind but I will have to do some research. Yes M is taking all this very seriously, I better start to do that too.

Oh festivals by the way, here is how it works: you send your film, you pay them a fee (Cannes f.ex. was 75 Euros last year), they will look at your film, you cross your fingers and hope they decide it is good enough to be shown. So it has to be pretty good.
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SweetArts: Script readthrough and first cast member confirmed!

thegirlinthecafe 8 Comments

Rewrite

If you can’t stand reading about my short film you are going to have a tough time, it will probably be the most written about subject here, mostly because I want to document for my self how this all came about. If I don’t write it down now, I will forget how things went. So bear with me if you want to read about other things, November might be a good time to come back.

But: Things are really starting to happen now.

Apart from my next meeting with M on Saturday morning, I now also have a script readthrough appointment on Tuesday.

M has invited two professional actors over who are going to read the script out loud. There are two reasons why we need to do this:

  • we need to time the script. We need to have a fair idea of how long the film is going to be.
  • it will tell me as a writer if the dialogue I have written works, if it sounds right, if the sentences are natural to speak for an actor, all that kind of stuff. I will probably be cringing hearing my own script read back to me, but it will be a major learning experience. I will make notes of the actors’ comments and improve the script after that so it is in tip top shape for the shoot.

So that is all very exiting.

Just as exciting is that I have my first cast member confirmed! It’s for one of the minor roles but he is very experienced, he has done a lot of film and tv work and he is very, erhm, handsome! So all good news!

Sweetarts: finding the right production manager

thegirlinthecafe 4 Comments

Where have you been?

Yes, sorry Daniel. It has been quiet here for a while. This is mostly to blame on my writer’s block which I think is caused by me waiting for the results of my bearaBill operation. I haven’t heard anything yet, which is a good thing. But the waiting kind of drains my energy and creativity and I am mentally exhausted. I have never slept this many hours before.

Today however, something sparked me into action: I have finally found a production manager for SweetArts. YAY! Not only is she very experienced, she is also the nicest person and she is really cool too! She is slightly older than I am and I feel so very lucky to have her on board.

I had spoken to her in the beginning in August, but my schedule seemed to clash with hers which is why it ended there. She suddenly called me last week to ask me how things went, we talked again, and she said that she loved the script and the project so much that she is going to squeeze it into her calendar. A shoot in October is now more than likely to happen.

I have spoken to a lot of experienced producers/production managers the last couple of weeks. It amazes me how interested (feature film) experienced people are in short films. I was about to settle for paying one to do the work and they don’t come cheap, but I just wanted to move on. And I also really want to pay the woman who I recruited now, but she doesn’t want any money – much better to put the money in making the film better – is what she said. See – she is such a great and generous person!

I need to start pick up things like casting, and finding the last 2 locations again soon. I will try to see what I can do before my holiday, but if all goes well I will have a good rest in Ireland and will come back ready to go and make it really happen.

If there is something I learn in this process – it is to be patient. I am so not patient by nature, but I am glad I waited for the right production manager to come along.

Oh, what is Daniel Craig doing up there you wonder? Nothing in particular. It’s just something nice to look at, and if you want to see more new stills from the upcoming Quantum of Solace, then here you go.

SweetArts: Locations and Friday Fessing

thegirlinthecafe 5 Comments

Art school
In between everything, I have actually written 5 pages of brand new (feature length) script. There is no chance that I will finish this script anytime soon, but the beginning is there.

My mind is thinking about the story a lot, there are a couple of options and I am trying to figure out the best one. I think it will be more rom and less com this time, even though there will certainly be things to laugh about. I actually look forward to return to my writing in a cafe life style. Billy Mac(book) hasn’t been out for a while so he is eager to get back out there too.

Next week I hope to have a break through on the search for Producer/Production manager mission for SweetArts. I don’t dare to count on anything for certain because I have seen too many people come and quickly go again, but something tells me that this might be the real deal. Maybe I am just ignorant, or maybe with a little luck, it falls into place.

If that is the case, I need to get back to focusing on casting. I watched the audition tapes again, and there are certainly a couple of women I can see as June. But I am not too sure I have spotted Dan amongst the men yet.

And look at the above snap shots: it is very likely that this is going to be the location for the art school. The pictures are not very clear, but there are easels (they are leaning against the wall folded together on this photo), brushes, paint and all kind of other art school stuff around in this place. And seeing as it is in fact a place where they teach art, it seems perfect to me. It is also pretty spacious so enough room for a camera crew. So I think that location nut is cracked. That leaves a bookshop and a park to sort out still.

This weekend I have been invited over to wonderful Devon by my good friend. I look forward to some fresh air, the sea, excellent company and to meet her two lovely dogs.

Enjoy the weekend wherever you are.

SweetArts: Down is Up

thegirlinthecafe 8 Comments

I have long struggled taking this decision. I was jumping between the following two options:

No! No! No! Don’t be bloody ridiculous. Are you insane? Don’t do it. He will think you are stupid. It’s just not done. You can’t do things like that. Do-no-do-it. No! Don’t!! You will be doomed forever and he will never ever want to hear from you again.

and

OK. What have I got to lose? I don’t want to spend the rest of my life thinking: why did I not at least give it a try? What is the worst that can happen? That I don’t hear anything in return? Or that I get an angry letter from his agent telling me to bugger off, or saying “How dare you! Who do you think you are?”. Would that weigh up against the fact that I then don’t have to wonder about it the rest of my life?

Thoughts like these have played ping-pong in my head for a long time. I think the thing that eventually made me make my decision was the fact that all the people I have met the last couple of weeks, the very experienced producers (who are used to reading scripts) and the casting director: they all loved the script. It gave me confidence.

So last week I decided to risk it. I sat down, wrote a letter and posted it. Today I got the answer from his agent, and this is what it literally said – *he* would *love* to read the script. Shall I repeat that – *HE* WOULD *LOVE* TO READ THE SCRIPT! No I don’t quite believe it either.

Now *HE* is also a very busy man, so it surely won’t get any further than him reading the script. But bloody hell – *he* (the best actor in the world) is going to read my script!

(I won’t mention his name here, but people knowing me just a little, know who *he* is)

Oh and one more thing: there will 24 actors coming for audition tomorrow. 24!! I just checked a few of them and these are people that have been in things like Dr. Who and James Bond movies. I think I am going to pack my bag and run away now, this is becoming way too scary! Scaring the willies out of me this is!

SweetArts: Delayed, moved to October

thegirlinthecafe 4 Comments

Yes Viktor, I feel a bit like that too

There are a couple of reasons for this:

  • I can’t find a producer just yet. I don’t want to make this film without being properly prepared. And I simply need a producer who can help me with budgets, contracts, release forms, locations and things like that. I don’t want to make the film without someone like that because it will turn into a mess.
  • Also I have some holiday planned in September so the best thing really is to move the shoot to October. That way I can take some extra time to prepare. I am putting quite some money into this, and it would be a shame to rush it for no apparent reason.
  • Maybe moving it away from the summer holiday will improve my chances of finding a good producer too.
  • And as a last – I need to do what Ewan McGregor did, which is having some moles removed. It’s planned for the 20th of August, it’s a minor procedure and I try not to worry about it too much, but I would lie if I said that it is not spinning around in my head. I am not too worried about the procedure itself, even though I am not looking forward to it, but am slightly worried about the potential badness of them. Let’s see how it goes.

Back to the film.

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