Re-building Drama in Birmingham

Last night we all went along to The Bond in Digbeth to attend a night that was generously hosted by Screen West Midlands, SWM are a leading agency for all things television related within the West Midlands, and a company we have found very useful for us as a new independent television production company. Amongst other things they offer financial support for people in the area who are wanting to make a short film etc, and offer educational advice to further the film and media education available in the West Midlands. 

Last nights event was named "Re-building the TV Drama in the West Midlands", as Birmingham seems to be recently attracting high profile television dramas such as Hustle, Spooks and Survivors, how do we encourage this trend to continue and sell Birmingham as a perfect location for such series? 

A panel of professionals consisted of - 

• 
  
  Tony Jordan (Red Planet Pictures, creator Hustle, co-creator Life on Mars)
• 
  
  Peter Lloyd (Series Producer, Doctors)
• 
  
  Michael Eaton (Screenwriter, Fellow Traveller, Signs and Wonders, Shipman)
• 
  
  Lee Thomas (Executive Producer, Production & Development, Screen West Midlands)
• Claire Bennett (TV series writer) 
  
• Claire Parker (Kudos Executive Producer) 

The panel started by introducing themselves and giving a quick biography of the involvement they have had with television Drama, they then went on to discuss their opinions and views of how the West Midlands can start to re-build the drama content coming out of it. 

Points of interest we took away from the evening were - 

• Online Drama - there seems to be good investment for people within the Drama industry to create dramas for an online content. It is easy and cheap to do and means that the programme can be set anywhere as it is not having to necessarily fit to certain commissioning briefs. 
• The re-build of the Drama industry is not one large movement, it is a large jigsaw and all the pieces need to be gradually found and put into place. Hustle and Spooks being filmed in the area is one piece of this jigsaw, we now need a way to find more pieces and encourage them to come here.
• When nothing is being made here, nothing else will come. The barrier has now been broken and we need to ensure the stability of this industry and what Birmingham can offer.

There were many media professionals that attended the event; scriptwriters, production companies, editors and freelancers that all have a passion to explore Birmingham and want to increase the amount of Drama being made here. The floor was opened up to a discussion of the ways in which we can all work together to put Birmingham back on the map, as an ideal location for production. 

Contributions and decisions that were made consisted of - 

• How do we start? How do we get noticed? Something needs to be produced that makes the city globally sellable. 
• Online Drama content is a biggy! We must try and push this forwards.
• There was talk of setting up a site where we can all post our ideas and thoughts.
• Think of a way local companies can be helped and kept in a sustainable position to keep creating the content needed.
• Get everyone to work together, think outside the box - consider other professionals you can work with.
• With all this we can then work towards a specific collaboration. 

The night was especially helpful for us, as we feel Trainer is an example of putting Drama back on the map for Birmingham as we aim to showcase local talent and we have collaborated with professionals and people starting out, trying to break into the industry, as well as showing how diverse a location Birmingham is. We had the opportunity to network with these people, tell them of our project and get to know what others are doing in the area to celebrate Birmingham. 

It has also given us the opportunity to better understand where the future of Birmingham is heading in terms of television Drama and Drama shorts, and it is now clear to us that productions like Trainer are in high demand for the West Midlands. 

Jaguar

Yesterday Siobhan and Ash took a trip to the Jaguar factory in Castle Bromwich to record sound for Trainer. 


The site in Castle Bromwich is one of the few car manufacturing companies within the UK, and we were lucky enough to be able to see the site whilst recording there. Jaguar create up to 700 cars a week from this area, and at the moment they are working on their new model, The New XJ...exciting!! 


After using all transport available to man, bar an airplane, Ash and Siobhan made it to the site receiving a warm and friendly welcome from everyone there. We were given a health and safety talk, ensuring we were aware of the passage ways available for us to walk on whilst in the factory spaces. We were then kited up with safety goggles and high visibility jackets and taken to the area where the shell bodies of the cars are put together and secured. Here we were allowed to record any sound we thought would be useful for us. 


The sound we captured was exactly what we were looking for, we feel we have truly captured all the sounds that emulate a car manufacturing factory, this will aid us with a shot we hope will be one of the most memorable and influential shots within Trainer.    


We would like to thank Jaguar, and especially Amanda Horder who was our contact there. 


Also a big thank you to Brian who escorted us around the site, and captured Ash and Siobhan looking their best...

Social Media Workshop

On Monday 22nd March, we attended another interesting and eye-opening event hosted by Trinket Creative. The day consisted of a talk from Pete Ashton, the founder of Created in Birmingham, and all round social media guru, and then after a short mingling break we broke off into two groups and had discussions with other professionals with an interest in social media. The Mucky Duck Media team went along and helped film the day.

As well as filming the day we also took a lot away from it, the talk by Pete Ashton helped us understand the benefits of utilising social media, and the most effective ways of doing this. He is heavily involved with all things creative within Bimingham and so it was good to have the opportunity to meet him and hear his advice on ways in which we can use social media, such as this blog, to further our creativity and showcase our work and interests.

Other professional involved with the day were; Simon Partington who works for Kinetic PR, Kate Hughes from Wolverhampton Homes, Nicky Getgood who write a blog about Digbeth and Alison Smith from Pesky People. During the workshops we were able to sit down with these people and discuss the ways in which we use social media at the moment, and how we can learn and progress our skills to develop this further. Their advice was something we really have taken into consideration and since then we have an understanding of the way we can use social media to get our work noticed. 

Not sure if I have posted this before... but there's no harm in doing it twice. You can find us on Twitter @Muckyduckmedia, to keep updated with everything we are doing!!

Thanks again to Trinket Creative, we are all looking forward to the next workshop.   

Actors

After having a good response from actors interested in playing the parts of Kirsty, the swimmer and Jim, her trainer, the past couple of weeks we have been going through a casting process to find our perfect actors.

We spent a few days auditioning all our actors individually and then we managed to cut it down for call backs where we did a full read through of the script with both characters. For the individual auditions we spent a lot of time talking to the actors, finding out about them and their interests, as we were interested in them as people, as well as their acting ability. We also gave them the opportunity to express their thoughts about the script, production and to expand on their personal views about the characters, their back stories and relationships. All of this helped us get a feel of how they saw the character they were auditioning for, and this was great for us to have the opportunity to delve into and develop Kirsty and Jim's back stories.

We now have decided upon our two actors, and after auditioning them together, we feel they encompass everything we see within the characters, and we are excited to see the end result on camera!

Playing the part of Kirsty we have Maryann O'Brien and playing the part of Jim, Greg Hobbs.

Maryann is a third year student at Birmingham School of Acting, she is an enthusiast

ic actress who has completed roles such as Juliet in a production of Romeo and Juliet, as well as Hypatia within the production Misalliance.

Greg is an established actor, perfect for playing the role of Jim. He is keen to get involved with many areas of our production and is enthusiastic too about the script. Greg has experience within the field of feature length and short film. Productions he has acted in include both short films Rush and Lister.

Mucky Duck Media would like to thank them for all their help so far, and we really look forward to working with them on this project, and hopefully more within the future!

Maryann O'Brien 
Greg Hobbs

Funding

So when Mucky Duck Media started this project our main aim was to steer away from the stereotypes of a "typical student film", and to be able to do this, we needed the money, as well as time and effort into the piece. Money which, unfortunately we do not have. So this has been a struggle for us, until now...

St. Modwen, the UK's leading regeneration specialist and the largest force behind the largest regeneration project in the West Midlands - Longbridge, have provided us with a generous contribution. Having previously hit many walls in our approaches for funding, finally this one has paid off (excuse the pun!). This gives us the financial comfort of n ot having to dip into our pockets in the making of Trainer.

We would like to thank St. Modwen very much for their kind gesture. To find out more about the company and their project in the Longbridge area of Birmingham, visit their site here.

Swimming Pool Recce

We have now sorted out all of the locations which we hope to be able to film for Trainer, as the previous posts show we have found our bridge and have also decided the areas of Longbridge which we aim to film.

We also needed to find a swimming pool for shots within the opening sequence, and so Siobhan and Chris took a visit to The Munrow Sports Centre based on campus at The University of Birmingham. Negotiations are underway as we speak, and by the end of the week the location will be secured.

Here is a photo of the swimming pool...

Filming location - bridge

So this is our location for the main bulk of our short film.

It's in a nice secluded area of Birmingham and the size and amount of room around it will allow for some really interesting and creative shots.

Also the fact that it's above a river mirrors the theme of the short film in terms of the swimming coach and the characters connection with water. Should be good!

Location recce part 2

So after our successful recce to Longbridge our next stage was to look for bridges elsewhere in Birmingham to shoot the main bulk of our short film.

After scouting out bridges on Google earth Siobhan headed off to Aston for a walk along the canal to check out the Bridges, after which Alex and Adam did the same 5 mile walk to find the perfect bridge.

Here are some of the bridges we found.

This was an amazing group of bridges under the spaghetti junction flyovers

Unfortunately most of the bridges were too loud and would make filming a lot more difficult than we had thought. So we did find this bridge next to Alexander Stadium which was a lot quieter.

In the end we decided on this bridge which is in fact just behind our house!

(pictures in next post)

Script Event Video

Script Event from Muckyduck Media on Vimeo.

Longbridge Recce

Last week we all took a trip to Longbridge as this is where our film Trainer will be filmed, set against the backdrop of the old Longbridge Rover site. We aim

ed to recce for the day and decipher which areas we thought would be suitable for filming, this enabling us to compile a list of possible locations.

A route was set before we went, circling around the old Rover

site.

From script meetings we knew there were several locations we would need to find once there:

1. The old Longbridge Rover factory site.

2. A bridge (preferably a footbridge crossing a canal or rail track).

3. A main road, positioned in the heart of Longbridge.

4. Quieter roads/ walk-ways.

With each location we had to evaluate how useful it would be to us once

filming, we had to consider certain aspects such as lighting, noise pollution and c

onsent.

These are some locations we found and what we thought of them -

Quieter roads/ walk-ways

1

2

3

1. Many quieter walk-ways like this can be found in Longbridge, which are perfect for our opening sequence.

2 + 3. These quieter roads are also great for our opening sequence and has a backdrop of the old Longbridge site. The safety issues here are the traffic, however this should be solved once a thorough risk assessment is done.

The Longbridge site

1

2

3

4

1 + 2. These are images of the entrance to the Longbridge site. We feel to incorporate these into Trainer would be memorable and iconic shots, as they are areas where many of the campaigners stood. Our next step is to contact the company for permission...

3 + 4. These are examples of general shots of the Longbridge site, including the parts which are still up and those which are demolished areas. We hope to be able to film around these.

Main roads

1

2

3

1 + 2. Both of these roads are located towards the entrance of the Longbridge site. They both have the look of Trainer and encapsulate Longbridge.

3. This main road running through the heart of Longbridge has stunning yet shocking views of where the Rover factory site once stood.

With both of these locations we would need to be careful of traffic and noise.

Bridges

1

2

1. This bridge is located on the Longbridge site, and although it has the look we were wanting to find and has a perfect location, we feel gaining access would be a vigorous and time consuming task. However, we are looking into it.

2.This would have been suitable, however with the train track right next to it and as the bridge is used as a passage way for cars, we decided the noise pollution and safety factors were too risky.

What's next...

Next week need to carry on trying to find a bridge, as although the ones we have seen may be suitable, we want to locate as many as we can, to find the perfect fit for Trainer. We will also be researching in to swimming pools, which will be used for our opening credits, with a possibility of archive or amateur footage.

EXCITING!