Grace Accolades and Festival Circuit

Grace has made it as an honourable mention at Z-Shorts International Film Festival and will begin streaming in early September to over 4 different countries.

At this moment we are submitted to over 50 festivals and notification dates will start coming thick and fast in September. Most of the submissions are now based in the United Kingdom so we are hoping that are fellow UK supporters can drop by and see the film themselves on the big screen!

I myself actually won the “Best First Time Director" award back in April, this was quite a shock for me but I was very grateful for the recognition, we are now moving towards the creation of a feature film in mid October and the award and selection of Grace in my mind has built our confidence going forward.

Special thanks to Z-Shorts

There’s a possibility that Grace may be shown in Amsterdam,

Over 600 Actors apply to audition for Grace!

Over 600 Actors have auditioned for our Short Film ‘Grace’

It’s thrilling to get such an overwhelming response from many different actors, some of which have connected and resonated with the subject matter of being a carer. Auditions will begin on the 8th and 9th of February and we will continue into Production in late March. The one day shoot will be a co-production with our friends over at Galleon studios, this will be our second collaborative effort since the Season V trailer for YouTube Web Series: The Fragrance Apprentice.

Post-Production is scheduled to begin in mid April. Updates will be posted on here and on our new official Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EffortlessPictures

Season V, Trailer Campaign, Launched!

After 2 years almost to the day of me telling Rik, our in house Cinematographer about the plan for a “Exciting fast paced video of Colour!” Today 2 years later, Here we are! I cannot honestly believe that it is made and totally finished to near the exact specifications that we laid out for it. There would be many days where I pondered the idea and thought to myself: “Maybe it’s a little too wild? Maybe it’s too difficult?” However, I knew I truly and honestly wanted to do it, until in the end I felt that i needed to it. We set out with the first task of trying to match completely the Music which was created by Los Angeles artist “Machinedrum” song entitled “Spectrum Sequence” to different Fragrance of the appropriate Colour. This had always been the basic premise but we needed to flesh the ideas out, get them streamlined and appropriate for the different Fragrances we would select. Attempting to create mini stories for each of the Fragrances we succeed in creating a unique and differing world for each hit of Colour. The full video is now live on The Fragrance Apprentice’s channel which can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjWHG3nlY8Y

Steven Spielberg once said “If you can achieve even 50% of your intended vision, you’ve really done well.”

We made it to nearly 90%.

Principle Photography commenced over 3 days splayed over 4 Months, The bulk of the Fragrances where shot in October 2018 , then ‘Green Witch’ holding Theirry Muglar’s Aura was shot on Location in Merseyside in April 2019, the rest of the characters where shot the following month of May at Galleon Studios Heywood. https://www.galleonstudios.com/ Working with a larger amount of Talent was a daunting task but I must give credit to our absolutely excellent 1st AD: Tasha Welford, who is probably one of the most organised people i’ve met on the planet and i’m very glad that we have her for future Effortless Pictures projects. Me and Rik wanted to plan Ad nauseam, to get the absolute best Pre-Production in as possible. Many Painstaking Storyboards, deliberations of how each Colour should be represented. The music helped a lot and one of the goals was to capture the solid and inviting rhythm of the music with the visuals. I knew that if we played completely by the rules that the piece of Music had set out for us then we would create a synergy between the two where the viewer would not be able to detach the two, they would be meant for each other. If we could make something inciting and that would sweep people away for the Fun, the same way the track itself did that to me when I first heard it in 2016 then we would be able to create something that would be truly special

Editing and VFX was of course the Bulk of the project, I started out with the simpler singular shots of the Bottles and then slowly made my way to the Characters. Shooting in 4K Brought some new challenges but also some new advantages, instead of working with Millions or Billions of Colours in such as a regional 1080p format. Which despite what many articles say is still the norm. HD is still the designated standard for TV and Cinema, for now. . .The 4K footage holds Trillions of Colours which can be one hell of a thing to render, especially in working on a 32 Bit Float! But it means that the Colour Grading doesn’t have to be as harsh or contrasty, which is something that I had wanted to move to for the longest time. This allowed to give the Grading spectrum a much more real and balanced saturation which was needed especially when we were exploring a concept with such Raw and Vibrant Colours.

This shot with 12 variations Red Male Actor: Denislav took nearly 2 hours to Render.

This was the hardest shot to produce and render by far!

I’m extremely happy with the project, when the Edit was in it’s early stages, I was admittedly nervous and un happy with the first draft Edits, once I put my focus back to what ‘brought me to the dance’ as it were which was the rhythm and timing of the music heavily paired with the eclectic visuals I felt very motivated. I did pretty much all of the visuals myself. Something which in the future I want to change currently there is no one i know who has the qualifications when it comes to video compositing, After Effects or other wise in this early stage in the game. As our circle expands and we meet new people and continue to network however, this will change, I personally am looking forward to hiring more VFX people.

As we move forward from this project, we are looking towards future commercial projects with excitement and a motivated spirit. We got a lot of Contacts from this shoot and have opened quite a few doors for ourselves. For now I will be working to create content for the final Chapter of The Fragrance Apprentice, our short film projects and our commercials. No pressure right?

Again a special thank you to all and everyone who was involved in making this project become a reality, it truly has been a learning and motivating experience. We are all now excited and ready for the next one. The training wheels are now officially off.

George.