The Friday Feeling

The Friday Feeling: The making of

‘The Friday Feeling' started out as a bit of an experiment. The idea was simply to film a group of friends on a nightout, then have opinions from another group of people appear at key points to coincide with the situations that the lads found themselves in. This combination would hopefully deliver an honest portrayal of a nightout, one that rarely gets seen but one that people could relate to. On paper the concept for ‘The Friday Feeling' was a simple one but the making of it was something else.

The evening began well enough, the guys were nervous about being filmed and at times it really showed; that was to be expected though. But as the evening progressed and the ‘ale' began to flow the lads became less conscious of the camera and more concerned about having a good nightout; this is when things started to fall apart. I realised I had lost control and the guys were now calling the shots on what would happen next. At the time I felt I had no choice but to just ‘go with it' and hopefully I would come out at the end with some decent footage.

When filming was over I didn't see the footage for about two months, I just couldn't bring myself to look at it. As far as I was concerned the filming of the nightout was a complete disaster and at the time was thinking I had just wasted my time (and money). All I could remember about the filming process was loads of stress, loads of arguments and loads of finding ourselves in very awkward situations. In the end it was my girlfriend who suggested I took a look at the film, saying "you never know, there might be something you could use". Watching the footage was not as painful as I thought it would be. In fact some of it was really ‘laugh out loud' material (well, it made me laugh anyway), and most of it was also useable material. O.k. some of the footage looked absolutely terrible and at times you couldn't see what was happening, but to me it didn't matter how it looked. You could just tell what was going on and I didn't want a nice crystal picture anyway. I was always after a really ‘rough' looking image and that's what I got (I did get ‘slated' later for the poor picture quality, but those people who criticised it still enjoyed it). After the viewing I finally decided to continue with the project even though I had no idea how it would all come together.

One of the first problems I encountered was trying to get people to give their opinions on the socialising aspects of a nightout (reasons for going out, on the pull etc). Most people who originally said they would do it became ‘camera shy' at the very last moment (typical). Originally I wanted 20 lads and 20 girls for the interviews. Then I dropped the required number to 10; in the end there were only 4 lads and 3 girls who stepped in front of the camera and looking back I'm glad that these were the only ones that did. They were intelligent, funny and confident; their opinions were everything I wanted and more.

After the interviewees had been recorded it was time to start the editing process, this is when everything started to fall apart… again. When converting the footage to computer format, I realised just how bad the sound was. Because the cameras and ‘mics' had taken a bit of a battering during filming, the sound in places was chronic. Sometimes there was no sound. I just left it in the hands of my sound engineer (who was also composing the music) and hoped for the best. The next day he phoned me up telling me not to worry, the sound could be salvaged. It wouldn't be perfect but you would be able to hear people speak; that was good enough for me. Within five minutes of putting the phone down I then received another call. It was the guy who was going to do the narration for the film. He had been beaten up and a few hard punches in the mouth had made it difficult for him to talk properly, so we had to delay the recording until the swelling went down. Five weeks later we were ‘ready to go' but then a main piece of sound equipment we were using ‘blew up' in our faces!! (Literally). So after waiting yet another month for the equipment to be replaced I thought we were ‘ready to go' again…I should've known better. My narrator was now going on holiday for two weeks. At the time I thought "oh well, another two weeks won't hurt", but two weeks later it did hurt. My narrator had met someone when he was away and had now decided to go back and marry her; he would not be available for another couple of months. Even though I had been roughly editing the project, I could not make a final cut without the narration in place. At this I decided to record my own voice as narration and then re-record the other person's voice at a later date.

Even though I sounded terrible as a narrator, I was able to make a rough cut of ‘The Friday Feeling' that I was able to show people in order to get some feedback. As I was completing converting the footage from one format to another, disaster struck (again). Suddenly the footage was missing from the editing suite on my p.c. The film was gone!! I phoned up my technical guy straight away asking for advice. He tried to calm me down and explain certain procedures I needed to do, hopefully the files were still there. Unfortunately I couldn't hear him too well as I was smashing my head off the filing cabinet. He came round immediately and after about three hours of him ripping his hair out and my lame attempts at suicide I had my film back.

Surprisingly the feedback from the rough cut was really good. Obviously there were a few things that needed to be changed (like my narration) and a few things I couldn't change (the image) but on the whole people were suitably impressed. When it was time to re-record the narration again, as usual disaster struck (I was used to it by now). My original narrator was not going to be available for a very long time (the way he was talking it sounded like he was being carted off to prison; I didn't ask too many questions) and I was not able to get access to the sound recording equipment I needed. It was about this time when I met Prof, Dr, Roland Rotherham, a scholar and someone who was actively involved in the media. Upon hearing him speak I recognized his voice immediately (he has done loads of voice over work in the past) and asked him if he would consider doing a voice over for me. I sent him some footage and a script and couldn't believe it when he said yes. There was one small problem though. Roland is a very busy man and various commitments made it near impossible to get him into a studio. Roland only had found one morning free in a few weeks time, but after that we might not be able to meet up for another six months, maybe longer. At this I decided I would drive up to his estate in Lichfield and just record the narration through my laptop.

Two and a half weeks later it was voice recording day. As I looked out upon what I expected to be a glorious morning I found to my horror it had been snowing. It was still snowing and it was getting heavier. At this point I was thinking "I am not supposed to complete this thing". But I got my things together, cleared the car windscreen and prepared for the worst.

The journey was awful. The few cars that ventured out were either left stranded where they'd got stuck or were skidding all over the place… and that was on the road I live on. Coming off the motorway at the junction I needed I found myself behind a large gritting vehicle that seemed to be going my way. My luck had changed…sort of. Driving behind the gritters van had made driving conditions easier but travelling behind one of those things for long periods is not advised if you value your car's paintwork (or windscreen, headlights etc).
Just over an hour later I pulled up outside Roland's place. I got my things together, admired the new paint job on the car (courtesy of the gritters) and knocked on the door.

Roland's narration was better than I could ever hope for and the whole thing was done in a couple of hours. Now I had everything I needed to complete ‘The Friday Feeling'.

A few months later I had my final cut. The finished item came in at 57 minutes, which I thought was about the right length for this kind of project. I could have made it a lot longer by showing footage of what happened after the Friday night, but thought that by keeping it quite short, people might want to see more (which is what happened). I started passing out copies to anyone who wanted to see it. Straight away people were getting in touch with me saying how much they liked it; there was a small problem though (I was getting used to these small problems by now) because of the way ‘The Friday Feeling' ended people wanted to see the next part, but of course there wasn't a next part and there probably never would be. As well as the copies that were ‘going around' I also put the film on the internet where people could download it for free. A lot of people didn't agree with this decision but I felt it was the only way to get it ‘out there'; I was concerned at the time that I had gone out and made a little film that no-one would ever get to see (which happens a lot).I had tried to submit ‘The Friday Feeling' to film festivals but didn't have much success in doing this (there was only one festival that accepted it…the festival was then cancelled). I had also tried to get copies to people in the industry but nothing came of that either. Putting ‘The Friday Feeling' on the internet gave it the audience it had been looking for.

Since ‘The Friday Feeling' was put ‘out there' (only a couple of months ago) I have received e-mails from all over the world supporting the project. A lot of them saying "when can we see the next one", because of this I decided to continue the project where it left off. At the moment I am going through my original footage and am currently piecing together the next two instalments where you see what happens to the ‘lads' after the Friday night; of course the interviewees will return giving more sound advice to the ‘masses'. I am also in talks about expanding ‘The Friday Feeling' further and have had a lot of interest in other projects I am working on. Whether or not anything comes of these things remains to be seen...I'll believe it when it happens.


For more information about the friday feeling please go to http://www.thefridayfeelingfilm.co.uk