This week, the first volume of our Life Improvised series was released as a single anthology on Tubi. It consists of ten episodes of what began as standalone micro-shorts about the moments that make up human interactions and relationships. It is 49 minutes long and the episodes are grouped by themes: loneliness, a first date, betrayal, and change.
When we initially began filming these small short films three years ago, we had no thoughts of creating an anthology, or to even make enough episodes that such a thing was possible. For us, it was a way to explore small ideas between the bigger projects we do, to work with new actors, to experiment, even shoot in new locations. We released them on YouTube and that was that.
But releasing an anthology of Life Improvised made me pause and reflect on the power of time and consistency in filmmaking. If you do this long enough, if you create new content often enough, over time you will have a career as a filmmaker.
Reflecting on the CBI Workshop
Last week I sent off a private screener of Cats of Malta to our Kickstarter backers. The next day I received a reply from an actor/filmmaker I knew from my past life working out of Studio 106 in St Kilda. Katrina asked me about our improvised process of filmmaking, how we make films, and if she could see an example of my favorite improvised NPG film.
This request got me thinking and sent me down a rabbit hole of reminiscing about our improvised work and how we started producing and shooting films using this unique method. All this thinking led me to Tubi TV and getting lost within the first twenty minutes of Friends, Foes & Fireworks – the first improvised film Ivan and I produced and directed, plus shot in a single night.
Within the body of the email reply to Katrina I pasted the Tubi TV link to Friends, Foes & Fireworks and filled the rest of the blank space with our improvisation inspirations, directors and films we admire – one of which is Mike Leigh. His name led me to thinking about the whole improvisation journey and business transition which NPG has gone through since making Friends, Foes & Fireworks in 2017. Again this led to yet another fond memory – the five days Ivan and I spent in Basel during 2019 taking part in the Character Based Improvisation (CBI) workshop Robert Marchand teaches.
I also mentioned the CBI workshop to Katrina, then I hit ‘send’. Sitting at my desk I realized it's been a few years since Basel, and that realization brought on some wonderful memories.
What I’ve Learnt from Directing my First Documentary
I've been in this indie filmmaking community for over a decade, and I’ve been directing since 2013, yet it always amazes me how there is always something more to learn in this industry as a director with each project.
This year I fell into directing my first documentary, Cats of Malta, and man did I learn a lot as I researched the topic and subjects that make up the Maltese cat community. Right now as we edit the project I'm becoming even more knowledgeable on how producing docos work, thanks to Google.
I have watched a few docos this year too, standouts being Tiger King, which showed me a lot about how to interview subjects and that true to life characters exist, you just have to find the interesting and sometimes kooky parts of their story. Another Netflix doco, High Score, was entertaining from start to finish. Even though I am not a gamer, High Score was so well put together as a series, each episode explaining a different shift in the industry, that even I as a novice on the subject was hooked.
One of the first things I learnt from the process of directing a doco is that I had to know what I could legally film. People in the background, peoples faces as they interacted with our interviewees on the street, and I will confess that I was reading about the legalities as we were filming.
From Writing to Wrap: A Feature Film in Four Months
Just last week, on August 26th, we wrapped principal photography on Machination, our fifth feature film shot in the last four years. This was very much a film inspired by this new Covid-19 reality we live in, a story about a highly anxious woman named Maria who struggles to cope in isolation as a pandemic sweeps the world. Maria is forced to confront the monsters in her head, in the media, and in her past.
Maria in her bedroom, Machination Behind the scenes. Credit: Monika Kopčilová
We had the initial idea for the film during our own lockdown in April in Malta and spent a few days at the end of the month writing the first draft outline. May was spent redrafting and refining the outline. In June we approached cast, researched the equipment we would need as well as the VFX we wanted, and worked to fill gaps in knowledge for the story as well as the production, such as the specific mental health issues Maria was suffering from or how we could pull off a particular shot – a period that was a mix of development and pre-pre production. One month of official pre-production and rehearsal began from July 13th. Finally, in August, we went into a 10-day production period split into two halves – August 12th to 16th and August 22nd to 26th.
This was all done between Sarah working a full-time job and myself working on other projects, including still shooting our Cats of Malta documentary and planning a short film called Crossing Paths for the end of June. So until production, and perhaps the last couple of weeks of pre-production, we never dropped everything to simply focus on Machination, and Sarah didn’t stop working her day job until the first shooting day. That makes Machination a feature film done from first draft to wrap in four months, mostly part-time, during an uncertain time in the world where many productions shut down completely. And the budget was only €6000. And we still paid everyone.
This is how we did it.
Read More