Marek Makes a Movie Blog
This is the running blog about the film making process.
December 20th 2018
The film is now uploaded to Youtube for the premiere on Sunday 4pm. It is far from perfect and could probably do with a better thought out script and a few reshoots. I have watched it so many times I can’t tell what is what any more so will be glad just to get it out there. I am very grateful for everyone who donated both their time and money to the film. It is really kind and much appreciated. Here is the link: http://youtu.be/Q8n3HnAULbE
Good luck
December 16th 2018 (* times updated 18/12/18)
The film is pretty much finished. I think it has many imperfections but will be putting it out anyway on Sunday 23rd December at 4pm on my Youtube Channel. There will also be a new Marek Makes a Movie podcast where I talk about it and I will be doing a Q&A from 7pm on the @mareksmovie twitter account. Skill.
December 1st 2018
I have no work now so will settle down to edit. My friend James is helping me edit round some tech mistake I made.
November 19th 2018
Where is this video you bald idiot? Alright dudes calm down. The aim is to get it done by Christmas then I will put it on Youtube and you can all watch it. I have to shoot a couple of pick up shots to try and get some bits to flow better and make sense. The problem is that of course it is winter now so I am limited in my choices of things I can film. Shit.
November 4th 2018
Hello cool dudes. Thanks to a series of small jobs and illness progress has been pretty slow on the film. It is currently thirty minutes long and some of it doesn’t make sense. It is pretty much a long extended vlog and a bit rubbish. Skill.
October 9th 2018
I am still doing a rough edit. This is going to take a long time. I would update more but editing is literally just me sitting at a computer shouting at myself.
September 27th 2018
Hello cool dudes, apologies for the radio silence, I have been ill for a bit. I am still miles behind on the film, so it is going to take a long while. I am off to do a couple of short films in October so will edit in between then. Also have been making a story podcast inbetween editing so that will be out shortly. Skill.
September 16th 2018
Here’s the latest podcast where I talked to Andy Wooding about his short :
September 11th 2018
I had to do a couple of days gardening work with my brother but this all went wrong when we accidentally strimmed a bees nest and almost got killed. So I am back to editing. It is going to take me quite a long while. But I think being away from it for a couple of days has given me some perspective. The current plan is just to edit it and put it on Youtube and send the link to the kind donators. I think that way I can use the Youtube music for some of it as that is free. Hope to get another guest on the podcast soon. Skill. I am also working on a podcast of short stories so I don’t go mad just doing this.
September 4th 2018
I took a few days off to edit all the footage for the Volfsball World Championships (the sport I invented), now shall return to editing. I think this should take me most of September at least. I think this film could well turn out looking like an awful home video. I can only apologise to those people who donated towards it.
August 29th 2018
Back in London. Spent the last few days on the Isle of Wight trying to work out bits I’d missed and trying to get a few pick up shots so the film makes more sense. I am now settling down to do a rough edit. I am just going to edit everything down as much as possible. I don’t think I quite managed feature film length.
August 22nd 2018
Shot hopefully one of the final scenes today down on Whitecliff Bay on the Isle of Wight. The sons of an old school friend kindly agreed to act in a scene down the beach, and I gave them £20 for their time. A bargain. There is not enough in the budget to pay people, but I am trying to give the equivalent of lunch to everyone that helps me. I even roped my Dad in to do sound.
My radio mics have been playing up so I opted to use the VideoMicro on the camera with my Dad picking up other sound on the Sennheiser 416 into a separate sound recorder.
One of the biggest obstacles with filming a vlog style film is that it is impossible to cut away from some scenes, so the takes are quite long which means there is far more scope for things to go wrong. Still fingers crossed I think we got what we needed.
I haven’t really started the edit yet as there was so much to film, so have no idea if it will make sense. It will definitely be very low-fi.
August 21st 2018
Got my old friend Paul Allen to help me out with some vital camera assistance for the final shot in return for lunch.
August 20th 2018
Spent the day filming with this cool dude. I say ‘day’ my Mum gave us half an hour before she had to be driven to her dentist appointment. These are the strict parameters we are forced to work around in Hollywood (probably just youtube).
August 19th 2018
I am on the Isle of Wight trying to make the second half of the film. Today I roped my niece and nephew into being in a scene in exchange for cash for sweets. I offered them £5 between them, and then my nephew wanted more as he had one line. We settled on an extra £1. He is six years-old and does not understand the tight budget.
I can’t tell if the film makes sense. Trying to do a three minute scene every day. I think the finished thing might only end up around 40 minutes long. It is a real pain in the arse having to monitor sound and trying to tell people what is going on as well as film it and act in it. I am beginning to understand the value of having a producer and crew. The sound is definitely screwed in places.
Here is a picture of the beach I took when I was walking around getting extra bits of footage.
August 14th 2018
Want to know what directing is like. Listen to the latest podcast with proper film director Iain Morris, we talk about ‘The Festival’ which has just come out.
August 13th 2018
With ultra low budget stuff you have to use pretty much locations you already know. The main problem with this film is that when I ask people if I can shoot in their location I have to explain that it is a film about a man who accidentally kills his vlogging partner. When I go on to say it is just me filming I look like an absolute mental case. I still need to find a DIY shop at some point, but in London people aren’t especially helpful. Problem is that all the actors are in London.
I am trying not to spend any money but you would be surprised how much food and travel for actors takes up.
Hopefully I will be able to shoot the bulk of the film this week and next week before summer’s over and everything looks completely different.
Here’s a picture of Simon and me from last week. 
August 8th 2018
Just finished shooting a day with Matt Skillington and two days with Simon Feilder for most of the start of the film. I am absolutely exhausted. I really wish I had a producer and a sound man, but I think the stuff we got is OK.
Shot lists are invaluable when you are doing everything yourself and even then I am not sure whether I got everything. Filming guerilla style is a bit of a pain in the arse, as the general public are generally pricks.
I’ve got a couple of days work, then it’s time for a change of filming location. Skill. Thanks everyone for your kind donations.
August 2nd 2018
The latest podcast in which I chat to Ben Adams about making shorts and the industry in general is out here:
Also his IndieGoGo fundraising scheme for his short film can be found here.
July 29th 2018
I am editing the stuff I filmed last week and trying to prepare for the shoot ahead this week. Here’s a picture from the edit of me burying a body in the woods in disguise.
July 25th 2018
New podcast out today. I chatted to Nick Coupe about producing stuff. You can listen here.
Also I filmed some stuff in the woods.
July 24th 2018
Hello cool dudes. Filmed some green screen stuff with Ben Adams today in the excruciating heat. Here he is as a Newsreader.
July 17th 2018
I have decided to start putting dates on entries as I wanted to give you more of an account of what is happening with the film. I haven’t got any work at the moment so I am just working on the film and aiming to shoot bits starting from next week. Hopefully I can shoot the bulk of it in August.
I’ve had to scale back things a lot as this is now ultra low budget, so my plans to pay the actors £50 a day won’t come to fruition, I am going to change the film to a profit share, with 20% of net profits going to everyone who helps out divisible by how many days they helped. Once I have paid back the cost of camera equipment I’ve bought (this has not come out of the donation budget but my own cash) I doubt there will be any profit, so I am just going to ask people to work in exchange for paying for their lunch.
At the moment I am trying to put together a film within a film, which is an instructional video on how to get away with murder. I’ve filmed some bits of this with my Dad on the Isle of Wight last week and I have just been trawling through the internet trying to find stock footage. I found a great site called Pixabay which has royalty free images and videos you can use for commercial purposes.
I have also just bought the murder weapon – a baseball bat, and a few other props. Already this feels like a titanic project.
July 2018
Here are the thumbs. Thank you to Keleigh Thomas for making them, she made three instead of the one I ordered, very kind. You can listen to my chat with her on Podcast number six. Also check out her instagram @keleightjhomasmua
I started filming some B roll with my Dad on the Isle of Wight with blood made out of treacle and red food colouring which was another tip from Keleigh Thomas. This is for a film within the film about ‘How to get away with murder’.
The expensive lense I bought is pretty unreliable for autofocus, which is a bit of a disaster, but I will just have to make the best of it. I bought some police tape and ingredients to make blood for some B roll stuff out of the budget. Pretty much all the budget has gone before I have even started so hopefully this won’t turn out looking like a home video. Here is a photo to cheer everyone up.
June 2018
I went out testing my lenses just to see the different focal length. This is possibly the most boring video I ever made, but I was trying to justify spending all my money on a really wide lense (8-18mm) so I could get more stuff in the background.
What? Two podcasts in one month? Yes. I chat to David Spearing from sketch group Broken Toaster about directing and film stuff. Hope you like it, and thanks again to anyone who has donated. Listen below or on the acast link here: http://aca.st/143a05
Here’s the other Podcast with Matt Skillington all about fundraising on Kickstarter:
Hello cool dudes. I have just bought the final pieces of equipment I need to make the film. Standard procedure is to have three back up drives for the film, but as this is ultra low budget I went for two. Two 4TB Maxtor drives, and some cheap cases in case I drop them – that came to £200. Also I have three 64 GB SD cards myself I had bought, so bought one more. This is so I can shoot dual SD cards in my GH5 in case there are any problems with an SD card corrupting. Pretty exciting update. I’ve spent £491 of the current £597 and fingers crossed everything else can go on the film.
For geeks who want to know what I am filming on, I am using a GH5 which I bought last year, and the 12-35mm lense and ultra wide 8-18mm. I spent money on lenses are instead of going on holiday. Ha.
May 2018
I spoke to my friend Simon Feilder about how he made his short film Renaissance – you can watch it here. Also we went off topic quite a lot and talked about his spare room. Listen to all the nonsense on this link.
April 2018
Hello April. I’ve got some work on this April, thank you god. But I’ve been spending the budget. £100 on a prosthetic finger and £112 on a Joby 5K Tripod that could take the weight of my camera for the vlogging, so it is sort of a prop and equipment at the same time. I spoke to make up artist and prosthetics maker Keleigh Thomas in my latest podcast.
March 2018
Yes blud, here’s another podcast. I went to see James Branch to talk about editing. We got pretty geeky about it, so some people might not know what we are talking about. Anyway here it is: http://aca.st/25245c . And here is an unflattering photo of James and I.
Also I met up with Simon Feilder and discuss the possibility of the film being about him being murdered. This picture was taken just before I told him.
Also budget fans will be excited to hear that I have spent some of the budget money. I was looking into making music and tried something that gives you loads of loops for Garageband. I spent £15 on a website called Macloops and it’s shit. I will play some in the next podcast. I’ve read that soundstripe.com is better from some sources. I hope that helps someone somewhere.
February 2018
Mid February and I returned to the Isle of Wight to scout out some locations and test the new sound equipment I have spunked all my money on. After sitting down with fellow film makers Paul Allen (ep1) and Bruce Webb (ep2), we chatted about what sort of budget I would need for my idea. A crew of ten people on minimum wage for about five days would be at the least £12,000. I felt a bit sick in my mouth.
Also Paul and I tested out my GH5 camera with sound on a windy beach. It was a bit fiddly. I decided after much deliberation to put my original idea on hold as it could prove too expensive. This was a massive pain in the arse as I have spent a month planning it and working on the script. I am instead going to develop another idea. Paul said to me ‘you need to think of an idea that will be perfect with the kit and budget restrictions you have’, so I am taking his advice. Hopefully just a minor setback in this epic struggle to make a film.
Testing sound on the beach.
Here is Episode 4 – Sound with Paul Allen.
In the meantime you can listen to Episode 3 of the podcast here with Tim Plester. Listen here.
January 2018
The Marek Makes A Movie podcast was launched in January. The plan being that I could not afford to make a micro budget film, but if I offered something that was of interest to people (i.e. a podcast interviewing film makers) listeners might donate towards the project and be interested in how it was coming along. Also I would get to meet and learn from people who had been through the process before.
I want to raise funds in a different way from kickstarter and was keen that the money from donators all went on the film, so pledge to use/borrow/hire all equipment used from my own money.
The first podcast was recorded in December with my old friend Paul Allen and released on January 20th. Listen here.
Meanwhile I spent most of January sitting at my computer and planning the film and just started the first draft at the end of the month.
Episode 2 of the podcast with Bruce Webb came out at the end of January. Listen here.