3 came about because I never got sent the sort of scripts that you could shoot in just a couple
of days. In almost every short film there's some complicated location, difficult prop, animal or child
that you just know is going to be that nightmare element. I wanted a film which could be shot with no more
than an everyday location and a few good actors but which didn't skimp on a solid dramatic storyline. I
also wanted the experience of writing a real short; anything
short I'd written previously was really just a slimmed down feature, I'd never accomplished a true short
and it bugged me.
After a few nights of sitting with pen and pad staring into space I hit on an idea which all fell together
quite comfortably and got good feedback from a couple of readers.
How To Disappear Completely and
Dealer were in full flow
at the time so the script joined a mounting "in development" pile and stayed there for about a year.
As Disappear made it's way to the festivals David House suggested making another short together, 3
immediately came to mind and we agreed to shoot it. David's availability was all over the place but he had
a few days free about a month away so we hurriedly went about pre production.
I had most of the kit I needed already, planned to shoot on DV and edit with Premiere (something else
I really wanted more experience of as well), I'd also just bought an old Super-8 camera from Ebay that
had yet to be used so decided to kill plenty of birds with one stone and shoot with that as well.
David suggested Mat and Sarah for the other parts and everyone seemed to fit pretty well, we planned
a days shooting at my place in Kent with David and Mat, and a brief one hour shoot in London with Sarah for her
part.
Shooting with the boys came up first and we were joined by Adam Clements, a young local AD looking for some
extra experience who ably assisted me all day operating cameras and taking stills. Gelli Graham also put
praiseworthy time in dealing with the Coffee Arts and Media mascots: Coffee; 4 kilos of moody cat, and Baron; 50 kilos of excitable
puppy Akita, both fascinated as ever by the emergence of funky smelling camera equipment and new people. The
day went smoothly with David and Mat both grasping their characters quickly and
providing some great takes. Shooting on Super-8 proved to be a tad uncomfortable (no
tripod mounting) and stunningly noisy, but it was kind of cool to actually have to wait for the camera to
crank up to speed and so on; simple pleasures. We still used DV for rehearsals and as a back up in case the film
didn't come out (which was just as well, it did come out, and it did look cool, but in more of a Harold Lloyd way
than anything).
I'd decided to film Sarah just with DV, her scene was supposed to be a serious contrast in volume and pace
and it just made sense that the sharper picture of DV in full colour would contrast well against grainy
black and white Super-8. Rob Fairlie had secured a flat in London to shoot at and we met up with Sarah for
less than an hour to shoot some stills and get a few takes of her screaming into camera. By take 3 she
looked ready to grab the camera and beat me over the head with it, Rob looked pretty harrowed by the whole
thing.
Shoot over and done with in just two days I sent off the 8mm to be developed and started cutting the DV
footage to use as a guide. I planned to get the film transferred to something digital so I could just swap
the clips over in Premiere, plus we had the film market MIFED coming up and it was unlikely I'd have the 8mm footage ready
in time; we wanted to take something of the film along even if it was effectively a working print. The edit
went fine with my self-imposed 3 minute run time providing a few challenges. I was pleasantly surprised by
the amount of picture grading and adjustment you could accomplish doubling up Premiere and Photoshop, I wasn't
pleasantly surprised by the vast rendering time and repeated crashing but I guess you can't have everything. The icing was as ever in the music, I've known Ed for years and have amounted a vast pile of his mixes
and tunes,
"Now John" had always been a favourite and it fitted very nicely.
We screened the working print a few times at MIFED where it
attracted all kinds of attention, not least because the sound mix was still a little off, and every time it
played the collective burble of executives buying and selling films across several hundred square metres of
exhibition space would be silenced by Sarah's voice booming out of our huge TV set, several hundred decibels
above broadcast safe limits, with the immortal words "F*cking loser! You were the worst shag of my entire
life!"
Steve Piper
Director
Contents