fluffy sheep productions

Okay then, I will (in my own "oh, woe is me, feel sorry for how busy I am"-type way).

The past week and a half has supposed to have been my mid year break for university, but it's felt like anything but (except for the odd part-ay). I've been stupid enough to try and produce two television pilots at the same time (not by myself, but I bear a reasonable amount of responsibility for both) and this, along with the shock that my employer has decided to start giving me shifts again, has caused this period of time to lose any semblance of a "break".

I've even been insane enough to miss a friend's house party because I decided I had to get some work done for the show (including my last blog entry) and make sure I got a decent night's sleep so I'd get to the shoot on tim in the morning. Oh why must my perfect plans be thwarted again?

After my little rant about people turning up late to the last shoot, I knew that I couldn't let this happen to me. But of course, it did happen. I woke up late, missed my train and rocked up to see Michael and Carlos smiling at me. In conclusion, yes, this first part of my blog entry was to justify my tardiness on Monday, despite still getting there before Stewart, Dan and Steve.

As I said in my last entry, we worked on the pool table scenes on Monday, and that proved a more difficult task than any of us expected. These two pool table scenes involve (funnily enough!) a fair bit of us playing pool and require certain actions, such as Michael sinking the 8-ball. In writing the script, Carlos felt that these shots should be real, so no funny cutting showing Michael taking a shot and then another angle of the ball sinking (next time you watch a television show involving basketball, take a close look, does that ball really go in the hoop?)

So, if it all went to Carlos' (and to a certain extent my) plan then there was one of two ways this could turn out: 1) it could cost a fair amount of money or 2) the pool table people could be real nice and unlock a table for us. So we brought our gear into the pool table area of the cafeteria and set down our gear, just as the pool table minder-person (who, for all intents and purposes shall be named Phil from here on in) arrived. And that's when it all went wrong, about as wrong as Hitler deciding to attend a bar mitzvah... Well, it just went very wrong, but I don't mean in a disgusting fetish kind of- well, just keep reading.

Phil started talking to us and, although having a bit of a northern-suburban WOG accent, seemed alright. He had seen us last week filming and commented on Carlos being punched over and over. He also spoke to us about getting a Certificate II in Acting (I wonder why that came up...). Phil didn't seem to mind that we were filming in the room.

He then called his boss (who will be called The Boss). Phil told me he wasn't informed by the university that there'd be people filming in that area so he wanted to check it out with The Boss. He had no problem with us filming there, he just wanted to take some things into consideration. I told The Boss (over the phone) that we just wanted to use a table for our shoots and had no intention of obstructing his area in any way.

The Boss was kind enough to suggest unlocking a table for us, which I was extremely delighted to hear and I mentioned the possibility of us compensating him for using his space and that we would credit his business at the end of the show. He thought it'd be a great idea and wanted to talk about it later.

So, it seemed like all was good and we could start shooting. I gave Phil his phone back (which I'd been speaking to The Boss on) and he continued to talk to The Boss. We started to set up our shots, and then Phil got off the phone.

It's at this point that everyone's opinion of Phil changed, but I was too blind by my feeling of power after negotiating with The Boss to see. We were told it was going to cost us $40 an hour to have the table unlocked while we were filming. I was later told by Phil that he could bring it down to $25 an hour.

I was shocked to say the least. Here was my good friend Phil, who only moments ago was sharing a story with me about the talent agency he was a member of, but now he was asking me to empty my pockets! I knew it was fair enough that we should pay them, but $40 (even the $25) was just too much. I asked Phil to leave us to discuss the matter for a little.

Everyone else's reaction was well... less than favourable. Dan and Carlos almost punched Phil's lights out, convinced he was trying to cheat us out of our money. I thought he was just doing what he was told (this situation reminds me of the stupidity that made me open the car window that night on King St... now that's another story for another time).

We discussed our options as a group, but before we could finish, Phil approaches me again, asking me if we'd made a decision. It was here that I realised he was trying to screw us over. As Stewart said, "If you pay him, make sure you get a receipt". It dawned on me (finally), how the hell do I know where this money would be going? And how the hell can he tell me it's $40 an hour and then bring it down to $25 (without any haggling I might add).

This bastard was trying to take advantage of a desperate student film crew to make some quick cash. This pisses me off to no end. Only minutes before I was told by The Boss that payment would be discussed later, but now I was being hassled about what we were willing to pay this schumck.

We managed to get out of this without paying any sort of exorbitant fees, just by promising we wouldn't get in the way and that we'd just pay for the "games" we played. Now we were finally able to start filming...

Over the next three hours we got through the pool table scene in the script, with some added bonuses. Carlos in his comedic genius had written in a part where he gets slapped by a girl he tries to chat up and this was an extremely entertaining part of the shoot, especially when it was my girlfriend who got to slap Carlos.

I'm so proud of Anne-Marie, she did a fantastic job considering I'd never seen her act before, or slap anyone for that matter (yeah, I'm a faultless boyfriend). Now I know to watch what I do, because she ended up hitting Carlos so hard that his earring popped out! And yes, the outtakes will be uploaded for your viewing pleasure.

We continued with the second pool table scene, moving through the script surprisingly quickly. In this scene we decided to (despite it being extremely unadvisable) block one of the pockets with Steve's gloves so that we could keep sinking the ball in the pocket and retrieving it. I'm not even sure I should write about this considering it will probably invite another torrent of abuse my way, but what the hell, it's a funny story.

We had to do quite a few takes of this one shot, with Michael sinking a certain ball on purpose and blaming it on me. We had to keep retrieving the ball after each take and being the intelligent one that I am, when I retrieved the ball, I reached from the other side of the table, and my grip caused the ball, and the gloves, to drop into the pocket.

The First Casuality of On Campus: Steve's gloves. May they forever rest inside the pool table, until some lucky pool table minder-person decides to open it up and find a free pair of gloves. I just hope that they don't go back over the camera footage to try and find out who the hell put them there.

And here endeth my lesson: When you're on set, just sit tight, shut up and do your lines. As I've said many times already, "anything can and will go wrong" and Monday was a perfect example.

Despite some hiccups we are now ever closer to finishing principal photography (God, I love that term) and the end of the road smells sweet. Thursday will hopefully be our last day and then it'll be the long road of post-production! I'm hoping to get little tidbits of stuff online while we're getting it all together, and hopefully some new stuff if we feel creative.

The revolution is kinda engaged at the moment, it's stuck in between the 4 and the 12, waiting for the next game,

Antonio

If you've ever worked in the entertainment industry in any sort of capacity, whether it be in theatre, television, film and live striptease, you'll probably know about Second-Show-Syndrome, or in the case of a film/sitcom, Second-Day-Of-Shooting-Syndrome.

It's this phenomena where, after the first show/day of shooting, where all those involved are finally over the nervousness of starting something new and worrying about anything going wrong because, chances are, nothing has gone wrong (despite the fact you always think that everything can and will go wrong).

If you aren't confused by that last paragraph, I'd like to continue. What then happens is the second show/shoot is an absolute shambles, or one single thing goes terribly wrong causing the event to seem subpar. This has happened to every single production I've ever worked on which has had the chance to happen a second time (in some cases, it?s been held off until the fourth or fifth show).

Unfortunately, On Campus wasn't the exception to the rule. The first hour of our schedule consisted of myself and Carlos waiting for everyone else to arrive. Their reasons for not getting there were highly plausible, however. Stewart had to try and find a place to park his car, and Steve "I say 'twot' not twat" Ward and Daniel "Got my Facebook account hijacked and subsequently want a cock-sandwich" Jones had to wait for Michael to get ready before they left the house.

Yeah, that's right, Michael, I'm basically blaming our late start on you, and don't bring up the fact that I played pool during our shoot. I just had to show Stewart I could kick his ass at a game of pool, and that I did. By the way, Steve, you owe me a dollar. And Dan, you owe me a game of pool.

Ok, and now back to business. Our second day of filming subsequently seemed to resemble our first day of filming, but instead of finishing ridiculously early, we started ridiculously late. Despite the slow start, to everyone's credit, we had a very productive day, filming much more than I thought we could.

We started with the opening scene of the pilot which also happened to be my first chance to be in front of camera, and I managed to cock it up at least twice. First I bumped into a couple of friends during the shoot, and spoke to them while we were doing a take (thinking I was out of "earshot" of the microphone) but unfortunately I totally ruined that take. I then messed up my very first entry, totally fucking up my cue.

But from then, I like to think it was just peachy.

We also had to film a couple of scenes which I was very nervous about shooting, especially considering we didn't have proper permission for one of the locations. My location "permit" stated we had access to the corridor (which we needed) but said nothing about holding up elevators or using a whole toilet block.

If you've seen the photos (www.facebook.com/fluffysheepproductions) then you'll have a general idea of what I'm talking about. A couple of our scenes take place in a toilet block, because our material is of a high-fallutin' nature and extremely high-brow.

Thank goodness the toilet block was on a level of the building which was lacking in any sort of activity, so no one entered the toilet at all while we were filming. There was also a scene involving a whole bunch of us exiting a lift and then entering another (riveting television). This created quite an amusing situation involving Steve clapping his hands like a seal with down-syndrome shouting "WOW, A LIFT OPENED" and Dan looking like a complete idiot. It?d be too complicated to explain why Steve didn't look stupid.

Despite the fun and games of these 3-4 different scenes, it was nothing in comparison to the last scene we shot. It is a pivotal scene, showing how blindly ambitious Dan can be (hmm, recurring theme with the man?) and giving an example of the brotherly love that Michael and Dan share (or lack thereof). It also was an example of the sort of improvisational skills some of us wield, which I must say impressed me and left our second crew member gob smacked (I think James has been scarred by Michael's thoughts).

So, I think it'll be one of the funniest scenes of the episode, but as the saying goes, "no pain, no gain" and filming this scene did err on the side of "painful to the point that self-mutilation is more comforting". Or maybe just hurting Dan, he was the main culprit for the pain. Basically, Michael had to bag Dan for not having a girlfriend, and he did a fantastic job coming up with multiple lines playing on the same theme, mostly to do with Dan playing with himself, alone, in a bathroom, involving a certain type of lubricant and some very disturbing fetishes.

Every one of these lines caused most of us to crack up with laughter (and keel over in disgust), but Dan had the worst job of having to stare Michael directly in the eyes and be straight faced about the whole thing while on camera. Dan couldn't contain his smirk, despite knowing what was coming after the 12th take, and had to be removed from the shot after what I would guess as the 23rd take and estimate was almost 12 minutes of tape being used.

All because of two lines of dialogue. As you can imagine, this has created some great behind the scenes footage which we were going to release on Thursday night, but decided against it because it would reveal far too much about that scene, spoiling it when the whole episode is released. I would also like to give Michael credit for his creativity (or maybe I shouldn't, because some of that shit was just ridiculous).

At this juncture, we look toward filming all the scenes that involve pool tables, which is going to be extremely difficult. Much of the direction in the script indicates people sinking balls in specific ways, so I imagine this is going to cost us all a fair amount of money and a fair amount of strife. Being the purists that we are, Carlos and I wanted to veer away from using clever editing to make some of these shots work, much to the chagrin (I imagine) of Stewart and possibly even Steve.

You'll hopefully next hear from me in the middle of next week, and I recently saw Transformers 2, so expect a review coming soon. Until then, go to youporn.com and type in "hot lesbians" to try and find Dan's video. Michael told me it's there, but I haven't found it as yet.

The revolution is going really well, but we don't want to spoil it,

Antonio

If you’ve spoken to me in the past two weeks, and you’re anattentive listener, then you’ll know what I got up to yesterday, and also knowthat I’ve been pretty damn excited (and extremely nervous) about this event.

Ever since we finished up production on ‘Vin’ last year, wedecided we would try our hands at television and at the same time, go back intocomedy, because it was where we felt most comfortable (because we have such anextensive body of work that there is some things we like to stick to).

It’s a strange thing starting a filming project, or any sortof media project for that matter. If there’s anything I’ve learnt so far it’sthat preparation (pre-production) is the key to success, especially for aproject as large as this sitcom.

Before I move on, to make things a little easier, I shouldpoint out that we finally have a name for our bastard child of a production andit’s been officially released in our latest video(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMlycFAPygobetter quality version coming soon), which I’ll explain later. The name wedecided on last Wednesday is………

On Campus: The Life And Death Of Our Comedy Careers

*Cue rapturous applause* Thank you, thank you very much!Yes, we know the name is indicative of great success, but we swear to live upto that name, and take the world by storm with our revolutionary comedy.

Moving on, Monday got off to a fantastic start with Dan and megoing to Audio Visual Services hoping we’d be able to bullshit our way past thepeople at the desk to borrow some equipment. We’d left it a little late to bookequipment for the first shoot but we’d dealt with AVS before, and most of themare usually pretty laidback.

Why did we then have to talk to possibly the oldest man toever hold a digital video camera? The man who attended to us at the counterlooked like he would’ve taken his first date to a silent film back in the day,with a jaunty pianist playing accompaniment. As we all know, young people aretolerable of the screw ups of most other young people, but, when you get anoctogenarian(Burton is an exception to this rule however), anything that comesout of your mouth is considered “rubbish, lies and filth” because of theirhorseshit-19th Century sensibilities.

To be fair, Dan did start our negotiation with a lie, onewhich I felt was EXTREMELY transparent, but ran along with anyway. We sent theold man off to look for the “email” we’d sent, and he disappeared behind thecounter for about ten minutes, half of which I’m assuming was spent trying toturn on the computer, “what does the flickering light mean? Is that good?”*smacks the computer case* “STOP FLICKERING” (I should say that when reading whateveris between quotes, put on an old man’s voice, whether in your head or out loud,it makes it much more entertaining, try this (matter-of-fact-ly)“I think I’lljust relieve myself on the pavement”. See?)

Funnily enough, he couldn’t find the email and eventuallyreferred us onto the young guy whom I recognized from my previous visits tothis fine establishment. He was much more accommodating and was able to give usthe stuff we needed. No dramas.

We strolled away with a microphone boom pole, two microphonestands (one of them barely serving its function; that is, barely standing) anda mike lead. From here, we began our first day of filming.

Steve is directing this bad boy, so we all left it in hiscapable hands to run the shoot, and a fine job he did. Considering he had todeal with Stewart “I-crack-wise-but-get-shut-down-by-Michael” Fairweather as a cameraoperator and Carlos “my-arm-is-a-bruise” on set, Steve had quite a task aheadof him. On the other hand, Maz “I-have-experience-and-can-actually-act”Corrales knew what she was doing and was able to do her job professionallywhile fitting in with the carefree atmosphere.

I guess I can’t go on about anyone else’s inadequacieswithout mentioning my own. The last scene we shot had Antonio “I-really-should-learn-to-roll-tape”Cafasso behind camera causing a whole world of problems. But that doesn’tcompare to Michael “I-have-to-giggle-like-a-bitch-during-each-take” Jones whorendered several takes useless. I guess I’m being quite bitter though, and Ican’t really comment until I’ve had my turn in front of the camera. That remindsme, I really should learn my lines…

We ended up shooting for about 3-4 hours on Monday, whichisn’t very long in retrospect but our days will be getting longer as weprogress. Because we cut our day short, Carlos and I decided to edit together ashort video to showcase what was done (there’s a link to it somewhere up there^). We all headed back to FSP Headquarters to get a little bit of work donebefore we headed home, and for one reason or another, Carlos and I were leftalone, in someone else’s house, so we couldn’t let that opportunity go towaste.

Well, we didn’t do much, Carlos just wanted to get back atMichael for punching him so hard (that hit in the ribs was particularly brutal)and you can see what he did. After hours slaving over Daniel’s Mac trying touse Final Cut Pro (and convincing myself that piece of software isn’t all it’scracked up to be), Carlos and I were able to upload a day’s work for yourviewing pleasure.

Now we look to Thursday where we begin another day offilming, which may include loitering in a toilet. For those who haven’t read thescript (Michael, I know you’re included in that group), please believe me whenI say that it’s all part of the show, otherwise we’d leave toilet loitering toStewart.

The revolution has started, you just can’t see it yet,

Antonio

I’m sure many of you have had that feeling when you startsomething new and you reassure yourself that it’ll all go ok, when really, inthe back of your mind, you know that there?s every chance this will all go to shit.There are just so many factors which hinge on this being a success that it willonly take one small fault for everything to just fall apart at the seams, crashand burn into a heap and leave you standing naked in a room of your peers whoare laughing at your inadequacy.

Oh, so I’m the only one who’s had that dream?  You know the whole “naked in front ofeveryone because you forgot to put on your clothes” dream? Right? Moving on,today was a remarkable step forward for FSP as it was the first time the castof our new sitcom were together in the one room. Everyone got to meet our gueststar, Maz, who I was afraid would be a little put-off by the amount of male testosteroneflying around the room, considering what us FSP boys are like.

Suffice to say, we all squeezed into the lounge room of whatI now call “Fluffy Sheep Headquarters” to have the first rehearsal of the pilotepisode for our sitcom. It’s amazing to think that we are so far into pre-productionfor this thing and we still don’t have a name for it. It’s like a couple havinga son and just referring to it as “boy” for the first few years of its lifebecause they haven’t been able to give it a creative name that’s short, easy toremember, and has a lot of cut-through, sizzle and traction. All the while thisyoung boy grows up as a character-less shell, becoming just one of the crowdbecause he has nothing to separate himself from his fellow toddler, except thefact that HE DOESN?T HAVE A NAME.

But I digress. It was fantastic for us to hear the scriptout loud for the first time, and hear how some of the jokes worked great and ironout the kinks in some of the less successful ones. Mind you, we didn’t get offto a very good start as today turned out to be a prime example of the lack oforganization in our group (me included).

Just yesterday I had printed myself four copies of thescript but didn’t notice until late last night that I had printed one of theearlier drafts of the script, rendering the 84 pages totally useless to me. Imanaged to print a couple of copies of the most updated script this morning,only to find out that only two other people had printed their own copy of thescript.

To give you an idea of what it was like, there were seven ofus packed into that small room. Only four of us had chairs, the others havingto opt for bean bags (and not very conventional ones either, who the hell makesa cube bean bag? A soccer ball bean bag is just as inefficient). If we weren’t readingthrough the script, we were discussing the finer points of comedy, like tryingto find a more poignant word for “tosser”, figuring it out whether Michaelshould say he wasn’t gay or admit he was just pretending and putting a new spinon an old classic comeback line.

Somehow we managed to get through the script twice in thespace of 2 hours, even with Carlos and Michael wrestling on the couch orchatting away totally ignoring what was happening in the room while Stewartsupplied sound effects by calling my phone at the most opportune moment and Mazsat quietly in her armchair, slightly distant from the cacophony in the smallroom.

Despite any pessimism that may be coming across from thisrecount of today’s events, we got a lot done and the sitcom shall be all thebetter for it. Were also currently looking at creating a little more contentfor you all to see in the very near future (like, next week) to keep you hookedon the Fluffy Sheep’s flavour.

Stay tuned for more updates on this project, we cant wait tomake it, and for you all to see it!

The revolution is coming,

Antonio

I would like to take this oppurtunity to formally welcome you to the brand-spanking-new website for Fluffy Sheep Productions. My name is Antonio Cafasso, one of the members of this illustrious production group, hoping to invoke untapped emotion in our audience through our brilliant skills in television and film production.

But then again, who am I kidding? We're just a bunch of young blokes (and one not-so-young bloke) who enjoy playing with video cameras and occasionally being lucky enough to produce comedy gold.

To give a bit of background, Fluffy Sheep Productions started in November 2008, when Daniel Jones and his brother Michael, Steve Ward, Carlos Ingles, Michele Iannello, Stewart Fairweather, our friend Karolina and myself entered Melbourne's first 48 Hour Film Project (see the Films section).

After spending a little too long together underground in a noise filled room trying to make Dan look tough and Carlos seem evil, 'Vin' was born and became the first child of this odd relationship.

Despite not earning any recognisable accolades, we were proud of what we'd achieved for the first time as a team and found we enjoyed working together. From then we've endeavoured to work together again and soon this will become a reality.

Over the next three weeks, we'll be filming the pilot of our first ever sitcom which is, as yet, untitled. Carlos has been writing this bad boy in his spare time over the past 6 months and I'm impressed with what I've been reading.

So, I invite you to stick around, become a member, send one of us a message or start writing some bullshit on the discussion boards (I know I have). I'll be writing regular blog updates as often as I can to keep you filled in on our progress (and I promise they'll be more entertaining).

Baa,

Antonio