OVERTIME - and Fan Films
|
interview with Geoff Harmer, England |
Geoff's film Overtime won Best Fan film in the 2008
American International Film & Video Festival. Set in the back offices
of a large bank it sees two members of staff battling with lightsabers and
meeting some familiar characters.
| Fan Films - what do you like about them? Why do you make
them?
The thing about Fan Films is that a lot of the ground work has already been
done. Most people who make Fan Films just create their own stories in a world
that was devised by someone else. My initial attraction can be dated back
to the first film I ever made when I was roughly 6 or 7. My Dad and I made
a 30 second stop motion film on Super-8 with my Star Wars toys.
From here I got hooked and after a number of cine films, I went on to make
my first proper Fan Film in 1986 with Alien 3, which I again
shot on Silent Super-8. I've made 5 Fan Films in my time, paying homage to
certain main stream films, all of which now have huge fan bases. One particular
film of mine, Hellbent, made in 1993, is now hailed as the
first Hellraiser Fan Film made. This has given it a sort of
cult status and a recent revival. It is now getting more attention that it's
ever had, including a screening at a film event in New York.
I particularly like Fan Films, because its great to see what people do with
other artist's ideas. Its especially interesting if you are a fan of either
the universe or the characters that are being portrayed. I've had various
reasons for making specific Fan Films in the past, and all of them have been
different. So if you ask why... then I would have to answer on each
separate film. |
Do you work with the same group of friends each time or do you mix
and match with each new project?
I used to work with the same group of friends, but it's been over 10 years
since I last made a fiction film. My recent projects have been
travelogues/documentaries, so I haven't used that same group. Plus we've
all grown up and gone our separate ways which hasn't helped.
My latest film Overtime is the first film I've made where the
cast is almost 95% new to me. The only straggler from the original days is
Andy Gray.
Overtime - where did the idea come from?
It's every boy's dream to have a Lightsaber fight (isn't it?), and I've always
wanted to shoot one. Due to restrictions in the visual effects department,
I have never attempted it until now.
I purchased some software by a company called
FXHome, and the sole purpose
was to see if I could recreate Lightsabers. After a few test attempts, I
realised that I could pull it off, so I set about writing the story.
The whole thing evolved from a simple idea of a bored employee working late,
who decides to have a Lightsaber fight with someone else. The rest just became
padding for my excuse to film a Lightsaber fight. |
| Is Star Wars considered a bit old fashioned in the Fan Film
world or is it still a firm favourite?
Star Wars still has probably the biggest fan base of any film
in the history of cinema, and to go with it, it has one of the biggest Fan
Film bases too. There are hundreds of Star Wars Fan Films out
there, and some of them are incredible! Because the original films have had
such an effect on young wannabe film makers, it has just inspired some of
the most fantastic pieces of work. |
Examples would be:
What helps people to make these films is that George Lucas actually encourages
it. He doesn't sue for copyright breach, or remove your video from YouTube.
The fact that people are paying homage to his films and characters ensures
that the fan base stays alive. |
How long did the preparation for Overtime take and what did it
involve? (script production, fight training for the actors, advance planning
of the effects, costumes, etc.)
| I started work on writing the script towards the end of
February 2008 and by the middle of March I had cast the film. I wanted the
film finished by the end of May because I had heard of a Fan Film competition
that has George Lucas for a judge. (The Ultimate Star Wars Fan Film competition
I guess!) So I had to work everyone really hard. I set 3 phases for making
the film. These were fight training, filming, and post production.
I gave my fight choreographer Gavin Herbert, just 2 weeks to get our principal
actors up to a certain speed with the fighting. In retrospect, this was rather
ambitious and they could have really done with more time. I allowed a month
for the second phase, filming, starting on the 2nd April. I wanted it completed
by the end of the month, so that I could spend the last month working solely
on the post -production work (visual effects, editing, etc).
Being a No-to-Low budget film maker, I only wrote sequences in the film that
I knew that I could pull off. So I made sure that I didn't go too over the
top on anything. There are no costumes in the film to speak of, apart from
the Jawa, which a colleague Richard Hart and his family cleverly created
at home.
The original script had Darth Vader halt the fight, but I wasn't really prepared
to make the outfit, or pay for a decent costume. How we overcame this problem
was to pay homage to the Chad Vader series by Blame Society
Productions. In a couple of their episodes (especially episode 5) they have
Chad working in an office wearing a suit. I thought this would work perfectly
for us, by 1) getting round our costume issues as we already had the helmet,
and 2) we would also be sending up a an already existing send up. It turned
out to be the perfect answer. |
 |
How long did the shoot take?
The shoot was initially going to take 4 weeks. My plan did go a little over
by a week or two, but because of my strict time parameters, I didn't want
to be too slack. Everyone involved was doing it for the love and not the
money, so you have to remember not to annoy anyone.
| We had a few constraints whilst filming. The first thing
was that as we were filming in a huge open plan office, and the story was
set at night ... it had to be dark outside. Being a high rise building, we
couldn't just drop blackout sheets over the windows from the outside! So
we set our filming schedule to start at 8pm, this allowed late workers and
cleaners to be done and dusted before we came in. We were also reliant on
the sun setting in time. As the month progressed, the sunset got later and
later, which caused us to be creative on occasions.
We didn't finish shooting until midway through May. Luckily the last of the
shots didn't involve any visual effects, so that didn't hold me up too much. |
 |
How long did post production take?
| I started work on the editing and some of the visual effects
pretty much the day after our first day of shooting. I did set aside the
whole of May to do this, but I wanted to make sure I got it finished in time.
I edited the film using
Pinnacle
Studio 10 Plus, and as it was my first project using it since I upgraded
from version 9, I wanted to make sure I got the hang of it quickly.
The editing went really smoothly, and I found myself doing a few firsts.
Half the film contains completely created soundtrack replacing what was recorded
on set. It's all sound effects and ambient sound collected from the Internet,
and other sources.
Another first for me is that the film became an international piece of work,
with the voice over work for Chad Vader being done by a guy in Texas, and
the score being composed by Martin Westlake based in France. I even had the
film poster, that I used for advertising the premiere, created by a guy in
Brazil.
So pulling all this together in the space of 3 months from start to finish
was a mini-feat in itself, especially as we've all got full time jobs and
families. |
 |
| How did you find the international contacts (Texas, France,
Brazil)?
I wasn't actually looking to work with people from various parts of the world,
it just happened that way. While making the film, I used the Fan Film Forums
at www.theforce.net
heavily for help on how to do certain things, and to bounce ideas. I published
a post asking for someone to read a few lines in the style of Darth Vader
for the film, and a guy called Bradford Granath II answered my call.
Martin Westlake, the score composer, found me via my own
Fraught.net website.
He emailed me back in 2007 asking to help with my next project. He sent me
a demo of his work, which I liked, so I kept his details for my next project.
I'm also into my photography and display my work via a website called
DeviantART. I posted
a journal there asking for help with creating a poster for the film, and
a guy called Sam in Brazil replied with a few ideas. I ended up leaving him
to it, as I was wrapped up in working on the visual FX. |
Was it hard to work that way i.e. with people you presumably have
never met?
Not really. I found it surprisingly easy. Bradford and myself exchanged a
few emails on how I wanted the lines to be said. He then recorded the lines
from his studio in Texas and emailed them to me as MP3s. As he nailed it
first time, there was no further room for more work.
The score, was again very easy. I had a copy of the film posted on YouTube,
but tied down so that only Martin could view it. He would record his score,
then email me an MP3 of the track and where it fits. I would put it onto
the timeline, we would exchange notes, and he would amend where necessary.
When we were both happy with his music, he created final mixes of the files
and emailed them to me.
So my experience with working with these people was great, and I found no
issues at all. Perhaps I could just have been lucky to have found such great
people to work with. |
How did you do the effects (just the software if you want to keep actual
technique to yourself)?
 Rotoscoping
is the process of outlining by hand part of each separate frame of a movie.
That can then be used as a mask which allows other images to replace the
outlined areas.
The sketch shows the Rotoscope device created by Max
Fleischer. It is a patent drawing from 1914. Here a projector (on the
right) throws a single frame of film onto a frosted glass panel. The artist
places a clear cell over it and draws round the parts of the image he wants
to manipulate. Nowadays video images are manipulated in computers to achieve
the same result.
The technique can be used to create animations over
live performances. (Think Gollum in Lord of the Rings or all
of The Polar Express.) It can also be used - as in
Overtime to replace just part of the image. |
The Lightsabers were made from a long length of white plastic tubing,
with some foam pipe insulation covered with a cricket bat grip as the handle.
I used some black electrical tape to tidy it up, and a small metal ring (used
in lamp shades) to act as a hand protector at the top of the handle. With
my Lightsaber created, I added the glow using the fantastic software VisionLab
Studio by FXHome. First I edited the fight using Pinnacle Studio 10 Plus,
then exported the individual shots as an AVI file to import into VisionLab
Studio. I then rotoscoped each individual frame covering first the background
lightsaber, then the foreground lightsaber, and then finally adding in the
'clash' in the frames where the weapons touch.
I also used the software to add the smaller touches like sparks and smoke,
and then render the final shot back out as an AVI.
The visual effects were the hardest part of the process, and I ended up spending
5-6 hours a night for a whole month on them. In fact towards the end of the
effects process, I found myself feeling rundown and sick. I suffered for
my art. :-)
Any problem getting permission to film in the office?
Absolutely none. The Facilities Management Team at the office were very helpful,
and as long as we all followed the correct Health & Safety measures,
we were all fine. There is also 24/7 security at the office, and they kept
a watchful eye on us. |
How did management feel before and after?
Were they pleased with the publicity?
The whole publicity rollercoaster the film has experienced in Britain, has
been very strange, and packed full of ups and downs.
I'll start at the beginning. On the 13th June 2008, we held a Charity Premiere
in the same building where we shot the film. The money raised went to our
chosen charity, the
Nystagmus
Network. We raised about £850, which my employer then matched
through a matched funding scheme, which enabled our donation to the charity
to be just over £1,600. The film then sat on YouTube while I entered
it into various film competitions.
Fast forward to 18th September 2008, where we had the local newspaper do
an article on us to talk about the film and the money raising. The article
was slightly factually incorrect, but on the whole it wasn't too bad. The
following day, I was informed that the story had been picked up by the Nationals
and that they may run a story on it. We were all obviously excited, but nervous
as we were now in the public domain with no control.
The Daily Mail were first on the scene with an article that wasn't
particularly fair or accurate, calling us "bored bankers laughing off
the credit crunch." This annoyed me as the spotlight had been shifted
to my employer rather than the charity, which felt very wrong, especially
as the charity wasn't even mentioned. The Daily Mail eventually altered
their story to reflect more of the truth, but the damage was done. Other
newspapers picked up on the story. This should have been a great moment for
us and the charity, but due to the credit crunch, all focus was put on the
bank. |
Obviously my employer wasn't particularly happy, as they felt the same
way as me, that these articles were in effect robbing from the charity by
not mentioning it.
As the days passed, more and more articles appeared all over the World Wide
Web (ranging from the USA, to India, to Italy), with the hits on YouTube
rocketing. The day before the Daily Mail article, the film had something
like 250 hits on YouTube, within a week it went to 33,000. Two radio interviews
later, and after a brief piece on BBC News 24, all things have quietened
down.
The publicity experience has been sort of a double edged sword. If it hadn't
been for the credit crunch, I doubt the national newspapers would have run
the story, but in the same breath, they didn't depict a true story. So is
it better to have had the wrong sort of publicity, or none at all?
Any tips for others on getting publicity?
If you want the publicity, then just get in contact with your local newspaper.
Get them to run a story on you, and see what happens.
Did you manage to enter the competition? Any other competitions?
We did enter the Atom Films
Festival, but sadly it was not a finalist. I've no real idea as to why
it didn't make it through, but an insider said that it was too long for them.
Never mind.
I have however entered many other festivals this year, and the film has been
shown at CON*CEPT08 (Science Fiction and Fantasy festival) in Canada, the
S2F2 Festival in Sefton
and the POL-8 in Poland
to name a few. We are also the proud winners of the 'Best Fan Film Award'
at this year's AMPS film festival. |
Geoff Harmer November 2008
This interview between Jan Watterson and Geoff Harmer first appeared
on the IAC website
and is used by kind permission.
 |
