One Night At The Tables

A short film written, and directed by Chris Fallon. Royal College of Art (1984).

My first year at film school. Fuji were running a competition at the time. They provided 4 rolls of 16mm, plus processing, and you had to produce a 10 minute film -- so shooting on a 4:1 ratio.

I wanted to do something that would allow me to experiment with camera moves, and image size, and -- especially -- to play around with editing and sound. So I wrote this snooker film.

We found a pub - The Harrington -- just round the corner from the RCA, and they generously allowed us to use their upstairs snooker room for three days. But those three days coincided with major road works taking place outside the pub -- non-stop drilling and hammering. The sound was unusable -- so every single line of dialogue, and every sound effect, was done in post-production.

I had no "lip-synching" technology, so all the dialogue was done by recording the actors after the film was edited, and then trying to make their words fit the images. This would often mean trimming a few frames of sound tape between words -- or adding a few frames. It took forever but it was the only way I knew how to do it.

Richard Fallon, my cousin, and Steve O'Donnell, were my two acting collaborators. They'd just performed together in a stage version of "A Clockwork Orange" at the Man in The Moon Theatre in Chelsea, and were incredible!

Beautiful lighting by Mark Plummer, and great camera operating by Philip Shotton.

Brian Eno... I used his music, without his or his publishers permission. Apologies -- and thanks.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Chris Fallon
• One Night At The Tables
• Short Film
• Steve O'Donnell
• Richard Fallon
• Mark Plummer
• Philip Shotton

[cakesizcakes]

nice film