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Necropolis Munro - Final Thoughts

To conclude - I am absolutely over the moon with the end result of Necropolis Munro.

The end result was obviously never going to be exactly what I pictured in my head, and regardless of a bunch of little nit-picks, I think it looks and sounds great.

This was my first time properly directing and I learnt a lot. One thing in particular I am proud of is how smoothly the set was run. The crew got on really well and everyone had a genuinely very good time (at least that's what they told me). We also finished on time every single time (thankyou Saskia!).

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The Shoot - Day 4 (Final scenes)

On our final day of shooting we were up at the crack of dawn, literally. I wanted the final scene to be at sunrise, to represent some sort of new beginning.

Despite the fact that I knew how unreliable it was to expect a great sunrise, I still got my hopes up way too high.

We got up at about four in the morning to head up Calton hill. We had two locations in mind - one that would be good for catching the sunrise, and another which was a more cinematic location overall but caught less of the sunrise.

We rushed up the hill with a skeleton crew, got our kit set up, and we looked to the sky to see...... nothing.

There was the tiniest bit of orange present in amongst the thick clouds for the space of about five minutes and then it was gone.

So, disappointed, we headed to the more cinematic location.

Despite the fact that there was no spectacle of an orange sunrise, the sun was still in fact rising. The light was changing very fast and we had to set up our shots and shoot them very fast so that it was consistent. We only took about two takes per shot.

Despite our speed, the lighting still ended up being inconsistent from shot to shot, which is something Owen the DoP had the pleasure of having to fix in the grade.

I think the scene still looks great. However, without the presence of a majestic sunrise, the tone of the scene is changed. Fraser's interaction on the hill, for me personally, was supposed to actually be a comforting one. Initially, it was going to seem like The Businessman was a threat. However, in reality he was just a man in a similar situation offering Fraser a cigarette.

With the clouds, however, the scene is a lot darker and gloomier. And due to this the scene changed a lot, especially when James made the score. The score has a very foreboding feel to it. And honestly, although a sunrise would have looked great, I kind of prefer it this way.

The way we had planned the day was to start at Calton hill, catch the sunrise, then go to the other locations and shoot them as fast as we could.

The sequence of events is that Fraser wakes up on the bridge where he got battered, he walks up Leith Walk, then the final scene on Calton hill happens.

We were shooting it out of order which seemed to make sense at the time when we were scheduling it (otherwise we would have had to have been shooting at about 2am). However, the lighting was very inconsistent between these scenes. The scene of him walking around after he wakes up looks like it could be midday, and its supposed to be before the Calton hill scene, which looks like it could be the evening.

We also had to find a quieter location instead of Leith Walk. By the time we were reaching the location, it was already so busy that we legally could not have shot as so many people's faces would have been in it. This was a shame, as the point of the shots of him walking are supposed to be other people staring at him doing his walk of shame. Me and Ben the producer were planning on cameoing as some random people staring at him, but we didn't end up doing that. So I'm not actually sure what my plan was there. That was complete and utter stupidity on my part.

I definitely should have thought this all through much more thoroughly. I'm not entirely sure what the right way to have approached it would have been, but it certainly was not what we did.

We wrapped the film at about 9AM. Despite my shortcomings in organisation that day, I was still happy and proud of myself.

[necropolismunro]

The Shoot - Day 3 (Graveyard scene and alleyway scene)

On the morning of day 3 we embarked on our most ambitious scene - the graveyard dream sequence.

We took all of our film equipment, the two prop house graves and the five homemade graves and carried it all up Blackford hill where we were going to be shooting.

This was absolutely exhausting, but definitely worth it in the end.

Originally, I had wanted to shoot up Caerketton hill. There was a specific location I had in mind which was so gorgeous that I was dead-set on it.

Here is a photo I took at that spot about a year ago:

I thought it was perfect for the scene. We would put the graves around the brow of the hill and possibly even play about with some SFX to make more graves way in the distance.

However, the climb up Blackford hill was gruelling enough with all the stuff. Normally, without stuff, Blackford takes about fifteen minutes maximum. The spot I wanted to get to up Caerketton takes about an hour and a half. So thank god people convinced out of that.

We got up Blackford and started setting up the production design.

Me and Robbie were quite anxious to see how the homemade graves would actually work.

The graves themselves up close did not look believable at all, so they had to be put in the background. We were also worried that they would simply fall apart if bad weather were to occur.

If they were to fail, we would only have two functioning graves - the prop house graves. And the scene would be pretty subpar if there were only two graves.

The ground was very uneven in places and so for them to not look like they were floating above the ground, we had to scourge the hill for dead plants and shrubbery to cover the bottoms of the graves with.

Luckily they actually worked really well and looked great on camera.

The shoot went very smoothly and we finished with an hour to spare.

I should have, however, been a lot more organised and thought more about the shot list that we had. There was not enough coverage of the entire scene. Most of it is just the one big wide shot, which does not build tension and was also very long. Because it was so long we had to edit in some inserts of graves so that we could speed up Fraser's ascent of the hill.

Overall, I'm quite happy with it, though. With sound design and score the scene works well.

The weather got worse when we finished the scene and started heading down the hill. A lot of the graves ended up falling apart on the way down - so just in time!

ALLEYWAY SCENE -

The alleyway scene (the scene where we meet the jakies) was quite smooth overall.

We had a few run ins with some locals who were wondering what we were doing, but aside from that had basically no issues at all.

I particularly loved blocking this scene. I've always really appreciated long ensemble takes, where every actor is in it and takes part and the scene progresses well because of their collective efforts, instead of just a two-shot where it gets closer and closer in as the tension rises.

I tried to take inspiration from the likes of Bong Joon-Ho:

Every character is doing a certain thing and has certain goals, and it is unfolds slowly and clashes and reaches a climax by the end.

I really wanted to capture Fraser's rising frustration and all the external irritating factors, mixed with his own withdrawal symptoms, that lead up to him taking that first drink.

Fraser's got Dawson chatting his ear off. Dawson is supposed to be his friend, however in reality he is trying to pressure Fraser into drinking. Dawson is spouting out nihilistic philosophy about how the world is awful and he is more than happy to die from drugs and alcohol. He is saying all of this in spite of the fact that he has had a very comfortable upbringing and does not at all comprehend the gravity of the things he's saying. Dawson is also pretty much oblvious to...

...Steenie. Steenie just wants a cigarette off of Fraser. However, instead of backing down like normal upon being told no, Steenie is trying to exert dominance over Fraser. Steenie is accompanied by his older friend whom he is trying to prove himself to.

Fraser just wants both of these people to shut up, however both of them keeping following him and keep irritating him. Eventually, he snaps, shoves Steenie, and marches off. Fraser gets to a breaking point with the pressure and finally caves in and takes a drink.

Something I thought that was interesting is that technically Fraser is the one who provokes Steenie. If Fraser had given him a cigarette, or even had just said no without shoving him, Fraser would almost certainly never have been beaten up. The reason Steenie beats him up is that Steenie feels emasculated in front of his friend.

The shoot went well and we again finished early. I made the stupid decision of not using that time to get more coverage, the same way I did in the shoot up Blackford hill.

The shot of when Fraser leaves the party is from really far away. Which, for a scene which is trying to build tension, is pretty ineffective. In retrospect I definitely should have got some more stuff.

Here's a nice photo we took of us all where you cannot see anyone's face.

[necropolismunro]

The shoot - Day 2 (Party scene and tunnel scene)

Necropolis Munro required a large-scale party scene. Now not only did we have about fifteen extras on set, I also had the bright idea of making most of the scene in one big long shot. In the future I will not write myself such difficult tasks.

We had test shot the scene multiple times, so the main actors knew exactly what they were doing. My main focus in this scene was organising all of the extras. It is unsurprisingly quite nerve racking as the director to enter a room of fifteen people and order them around, some of whom are friends, some of whom are friends of friends and some of whom who are random people off of Facebook. I had no 3rd AD so I had to orchestrate these extras all by myself.

My main goal was to make the party look active and have them walking around and interacting with objects and each other. I think I was probably about 40% successful. Partly due to just having a lot on my plate, and partly due to the restrictiveness of shooting in such a tight hallway, which I will discuss in a bit.

I think probably the only successfully active part of the scene is when the two guys open the bathroom door and walk away. Apart from that, everyone is pretty static. I should have thought it through more and planned it better. Without grading and sound, it looks pretty god-awful.

I wanted to have a lot more going on, however it simply wasn't possible at times due to the one-take. We had the actors, followed by Owen (DoP), Fionntan (1st AC), Jack (Boom op) and Leonidas (Script Supervisor). The way it ended up working out there was basically no room for extras to actually be in the hallway apart from at either furthest end. There were still little things I could have done which I really am beating myself up for not doing, but its all over now.

I am, however, very very happy with the shots that weren't the one-shot.

Because it was easier to organise, for the other shots I was able to get a bunch of extras in.

There is a POV shot of Fraser pushing his way through the crowd to see Dawson spewing on the floor. I think it looks incredible.

There is also a shot of Fraser's face as he does this. I also think this looks incredible.

I am very happy with those shots.

I am also happy with the bathroom segment. I think it looks good. When we shot it it went pretty smoothly.

TUNNEL SCENE -

For the tunnel scene we had a problem similar to that of the bridge scene. People would constantly be walking past when we were going for a take.

I felt very prepared for this scene, and I think all the shots look great. Honestly it is one of, if not the strongest scene in the film.

[necropolismunro]

The Shoot - Day 1 (First scene and bridge scene)

The first scene of the first day was probably one of the trickiest. I still think it went very well overall, however lots of little things went wrong that you would expect to go wrong on the very first day.

I personally realised that I had not come into the day of shooting prepared enough in a few ways.

First of all, me and Robbie the production designer had not communicated well enough with Owen the DoP. My idea of how the scene was going to be blocked was different to Owen's and so we came to a compromise of sorts. I basically made up the blocking on the fly, and I think it still looked good regardless, however I was very unprofessional to not know exactly what I was looking for, as that's pretty much the job of a director.

In terms of giving direction to actors, I also could have been a bit more concise. I don't think I was bad by any means, but I definitely could have been better.

There was also a few other issues overall. We realised the leg of a stand was in one of the shots after we'd taken a bunch of takes of the master. We covered it with a cushion and moved on, but this technically meant only one take was usable.

There was also an issue that one of the lights wasn't motivated. We had a bunch of extra time at the end, so we reshot the master with a motivated light, however didn't end up using it in the edit.

Still, despite these issues, and with Saskia's brilliant ADing, we finished with plenty time to spare and carried onwards!

BRIDGE SCENE

The bridge scene went pretty well overall.

The shots looked great and I had a lot of fun blocking Fraser getting battered. The two actors playing Steenie and Bambam (the two jakies) were an absolute pleasure to work with.

The sound aspect of Fraser being kicked was pretty fun as well. I had coordinated with Jack the sound designer prior to figure out what would be the best to do. Obviously Calvin did not actually get kicked. Instead, the two actors were kicking a pile of jackets and pillows. Specifically on the outside were denim jackets, which Jack thought would produce the best noise.

The main issue with the scene was that we kept getting interrupted by people wanting to cross the bridge. I swear on my life that we didn't see a single person for all of our setups, but as soon as we were going to go for a take about sixteen different bikes, scooters, prams, dog wakers and marching bands would appear out of the gloom and walk past as slowly as they could.

Other than that, it went very smoothly. And we still wrapped on time!

Overall, the first day went good. It was a little rocky at the start, which is to be expected when everyone hasn't got into the groove of it yet.

[necropolismunro]

Hair of the Dog (creative exercise)

Something else we did in relation to Necropolis Munro was for our creative exercise we made a short film called Hair of the Dog.

We made this in late January/early February.

The crew and I thought it would be a great idea to utilise one of the creative exercise as practice and team bonding.

The exercise was to make a short film with the usage of two silhouettes, one using natural light and one using artificial light.

I thought this was a great prompt. The two silhouettes thing really helped me structure the story (so if you're reading this Andrew thankyou!)

I wrote a short script which was basically about the aftermath of Necropolis Munro, where Fraser decides to leave Dawson and his previous life behind.

I thought this was a very bittersweet ending to these two characters. Fraser decides to get his shit together, which is a good thing, however we have no idea if he will actually succeed. Dawson, at the end of the day, actually really loves Fraser and the idea of him leaving pains him incredibly.

This was such a great experience for the cast and crew to all work together for the first time. We figured out a bunch of different things that we wouldn't have done otherwise.

Specifically in the production design, the costumes and the performances.

I mentioned previously the comment Andrew made on the production design. Although I think that the production design looks good in Hair of the Dog, it is a little shallow to just spread cans and bottles everywhere.

Nikola and I were still figuring out what we wanted for costume at this point, at this little film helped us do that.

And finally in performances -- there's nothing massively drastic between Hair of the Dog and Necropolis Munro. However, I can tell that there's a significant improvement in their performances.

Overall, I think making this with the crew was a good idea and I think it helped us make Necropolis the best it could have been.

[necropolismunro]

Production Design

I wrote quite a lot of stupidly complicated stuff into the script, which the production designer Robbie handled like an absolute champ.

The main three feats of production design were:

Fraser and Dawson's flat

The party flat

The graves on the hill

Firstly, Fraser and Dawson's flat:

Andrew during our pitch made the excellent point of not production designing their flat with just a bunch of empty Tennent's cans. We wanted to show who they were without just having a bunch of empties lying around. If we did that, we wouldn't have even had to production design, we could have just rocked up to one of our flats and filmed it as is.

Something we realised when production designing the room is that white walls look bad. Designing this was a balancing act between our posters and fake wallpaper and the actual wall. I think we eventually struck a good balance.

The party flat:

Robbie also had a massive job of designing the party flat.

The scene was always planned to be dark and gloomy, however he was still dead set on making the design very detailed regardless.

It took a full day of setting up and I thought it looked absolutely fantastic.

The graves:

Because I am an absolute idiot I decided to write a scene on a hill with graves everywhere.

For this, Robbie rented out two professional prop house graves. These ones would be the front and centre ones that you see the details of.

For the graves in the background, we were going to make them ourselves. Pictured above is me spray painting one.

These graves were made of cardboard which were cut out into grave like shapes. They were then taped together. We slotted an 'X' shape of cardboard in each grave so it would support it and keep its shape. We then stuck garden pegs through the bottom so we could stick it in the grass. A sand bag was also placed in it for stability. Then, it was spraypainted.

Me and Robbie agreed, upon considering about a trillion different factors, that we wouldn't be disappointed if the graves didn't work.

However it worked great!

This is what the graves looked like close up.

This is what the graves looked like from afar!

Overall, Robbie did an absolutely incredible job. I cannot thank him enough.

[necropolismunro]

Voiceover Recording for Angela monologue

Once me and Ben the producer had got into the casting process for the minor characters, we quite quickly found a very talented actor, Alyssa Munro, for the character of Angela Macavoy.

After conferring with Jack the sound designer, we decided it was best that we just record the voiceover straight away. For sound purposes it worked well, and also it meant that Calvin could react to the mum's words live on set.

I'm a first time director and this was my first proper taste of it. I had been directing with the main two actors for weeks. However, they are good friends of mine, so that makes it a lot less scary.

I sat in a recording booth with Alyssa and discussed the character with her for a while. Where she thought Angela worked, how she felt about it, how she felt about Fraser etc etc.

I then gave her a bunch of different prompts on how to do the monologue, i.e "strangle Fraser" or "push Fraser away" etc.

I also gave her different scenarios as to where she was calling Fraser from. Like driving home or sitting on the edge of the bed with a glass of wine.

This evoked a selection of different takes with varying levels of anger and sadness. I was mostly thinking sadness was what I wanted out of the monologue, however I wasn't entirely sure.

We eventually just went for a rolling take, where Alyssa tried out a bunch of different things. One of these takes were used and it was a nice mixture of anger and sadness.

I think overall it was quite a successful session. Although I was partly being open for the sake of seeing what the actor was strongest with, I definitely should have had a much more concise plan on what I was looking for.

[necropolismunro]

Location Scouting

The locations of Necropolis Munro were very important for establishing the dark grimy aesthetic.

Some crew members and I spent multiple nights essentially just walking around Leith, hoping to chance upon some good locations.

The location pictured above is Rodney St Tunnel. It is just down from my flat and looks cinematic as hell. In fact, as I mentioned previously in the blog, amongst the other cool graffiti is a specific bit of graffiti that inspired the reoccurring motif of flies.

This is Calvin, the main actor, standing in front of the graffiti.

I asked Reddit on r/Edinburgh for some cool locations as well. Most of the replies told me that I should move to Glasgow and stop irritating Edinburgh residents with my "gritty student films", however one vaguely foreboding commenter gave us coordinates to this location:

This is "The Bridge of Doom".

It is called that because the amount of blood that has been shed between football casuals there over the years, especially back in the day. If you look closely at the photo you can see the Hibs stadium in the background. Most of these clashes were between Hibs and Hearts.

I initially had a completely different idea for a location for the place that Fraser gets mugged in the film. I was originally thinking a grimy alleyway. However, upon seeing this location, with its cool cinematic look and its perfect lighting, we decided to use it. The history of the place added to it as well.

Overall, the location hunting probably took a good twenty hours total of just walking around. However, I think it was very much worth it.

[necropolismunro]

Getting performances out of actors

At the core of Necropolis Munro is the relationship between Fraser and Dawson. If this was not a believable friendship, then I felt that the movie would fall apart.

I personally have had bad experiences with actors from the likes of Facebook groups. You can't really blame someone for not putting too much effort into an unpaid student film, however it wasn't really a risk I wanted to take. So instead, when I was writing the script, I wrote it with two of my actor friends in mind. These were two guys who were already best friends, so the chemistry in their performances would already be there, I also knew that they were good and that they would put lots of effort into it.

Again, believability was something I was trying to nail down in their performances. I felt that the little dialogue they had in the 7-page script and a bit of improv was not enough to properly build these characters.

And so, I wrote another background script called 'The Gallows Dreich'.

It was a script of just over twenty pages. I combined a plot I had of a previous script I'd written but never made with the world of Necropolis Munro.

This script served the function of having details of the two characters, such as their world views and their family backgrounds. However, it also served the purpose of just being a lot of dialogue. The actors could just talk as the characters back and forth in conversations the same way they might actually have done if we were to have gone to the pub after rehearsals were finished.

The story of The Gallows Dreich is for Fraser's birthday, him and Dawson go to their local pub named 'The Gallows Dreich'. Fraser has received an aggressive birthday card from his estranged father, and this information being revealed serves as the main conflict of the plot.

I really tried my best to make this script airtight as if I were going to shoot it. I wanted it to be treated by the actors as an extension of Necropolis Munro. And through the character's conversations and actions in the script, I made sure to include all the different points of emotion that I wanted to practice for the actual film.

I think I probably even went a bit overboard in my descriptions of the pub. I pretentiously wrote a fictional poem by a fictional poet upon which the fictional pub was named after.

I still think Edmund Miller Ramsay is a convincing 1700s poet name.

For the first few weeks of meeting with the actors we barely touched the Necropolis Munro script. The meat and potatoes of what we were doing was running through the lines of The Gallows Dreich, experimenting, letting them sink into the roles.

When we weren't doing The Gallows Dreich we were doing improv. We would always practice in Calvin (actor of Fraser)'s flat. They would be their characters and I would be a friend of theirs named Kuba. We would walk around the flat and do this for an hour or so at a time. We would do the stuff we would have been doing if we were to meet up normally in Calvin's flat. Making a cup of tea, putting the telly on and making fun of the people on it etc etc, all of this but as these characters.

The events of Gallows Dreich were a prequel of sorts to Necropolis Munro, and the improv we would do was set in between the two. I gave the actors information about their character through both of my scripts, and through the improv they were able to add their own details and flares to the characters. This was important as I think that actors imbedding themselves and their own ideas into their characters makes the performance more authentic. Fraser wakes up on the floor hungover in the first scene of Necropolis Munro. I like the idea of him knowing exactly what happened the night before.

An interesting thing to note was that in the The Gallows Dreich, Fraser cuts his hand open after smashing a pint glass over The Cardinal's head. I wanted his hand to be bandaged in Necropolis Munro. It wouldn't have been addressed in the actual film, but I thought it was a cool detail.

After a few weeks of these sorts of sessions, we moved on to the actual Necropolis Munro script.

Now that they'd spent all that time as those characters, they seemed significantly more comfortable and could just switch the character on and off at a moments notice. We went through the dialogue of Necropolis Munro again and again and I gave my specific directions about certain things.

By the time it was time to shoot, I was very happy with the progress the actors had made and was very chuffed with their performances. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I would like to speak to a professional director and ask them if writing all that background content was actually a good usage of my time. Personally, I thought it was and had a great time doing it.

[necropolismunro]

Minor Characters

I've always had a real appreciation for movies that have interesting and memorable minor characters.

For example - this character in 'Apocalypse Now'. The man pictured above is only in one scene, the mission briefing scene, where the protagonist is told about his mission of assassinating a rogue colonel.

This character is actually played by the 1st AD of the film Jerry Ziesmer. We see his dishevelled appearance in a handful of lingering shots, where he says absolutely nothing and yet has an authority and a real presence. He eventually at the very end says one line, one of the most famous lines in a movie full of famous lines: "terminate with extreme prejudice." And then offers a cigarette to our protagonist, who takes it, symbolising the protagonist accepting the mission.

After you watch a scene with a minor character like this it leaves you with lots of questions. Not in a way where you feel as though the scene wasn't established well enough, but in a way where you simply want to know more. Who is this man? Why is he so foreboding? He is dressed in a shirt and tie and not army uniform, does that mean he's a CIA agent? Is he the one actually behind this mission and not the general who is giving the brief?

My aim for the minor characters in Necropolis Munro was to have them fleshed out and interesting enough that the viewer would ask these questions. I want the viewer to want a whole different film just about these minor characters.

So, for the minor characters in the script, I wrote background screenplays. These were partly for the sake of auditioning. It would be a bit of a struggle to have a character audition for a role if they only had a couple basic lines in the film, or in the case of one of the characters, no lines at all.

MINOR CHARACTERS OF NECROPOLIS MUNRO

ANGELA MACAVOY (Fraser's Mum)

Angela is an over-worked mother who is tired of her son's antics. Time and time again she has been disappointed by him and his refusal to clean himself up. It has gotten to the point of embarrassment.

On a very technical level in the way stories function Angela would be considered an antagonist, as she stops Fraser the protagonist achieving his goals. However, I didn't want her to seem like a force of evil. Although we sympathise with Fraser, I also wanted the audience to sympathise with Angela. I wanted them to understand how worried and strung-out she was purely through her performance over the phone.

I didn't write a script for Angela as she already had a lengthy phone call segment to work with. I quite enjoyed the idea of this minor character, through a voice over alone, had such a sway over the plot. I wanted to recreate that moment that most will have experienced, where they receive harrowing news over the phone and their stomach drops. Often times, because it was a phone call, you carry on pretending like something awful wasn't just said to you.

STEPHEN "STEENIE" FLEMING (Jakey)

Steenie is a young man who, faced with hurdle after hurdle, eventually falls into a cycle of petty crime just like his peers.

This was the audition script I wrote for Steenie's character.

The character of a criminal who tries to break away from the life of crime and fails tragically is not exactly an original one - however I thought it was fitting for the story of Necropolis Munro. It fits thematically with how Fraser tries his very best to quit on his own accord, however his mother uninvites him to the funeral anyway.

The backstory of Steenie is that his brother is in prison. Steenie starts hanging around with his brother's friends (one of whom can be seen in the film and helps batter Fraser). Eventually, it can be assumed that Steenie ultimately meets the same fate that his brother did.

WILLIAM CARVER (The Businessman)

After the previous night's bender, Carver finds himself on Calton hill watching the sun rise. He sees a young man on a bench down from him. They make eye contact. There are no words spoken and yet a thousand words communicated.

This is page 1/4 of the background script - 'Scholarship Boy'.

The story of William Carver is that of a working-class man who tried his best time and time again but the world seemed to have it out for him. Before the events of Necropolis Munro, he is used as a scapegoat at his place of work and is fired. This leads to him having a violent outburst and going on a drinking rampage.

Out of all the minor characters this is by far my favourite. I think he has a real dark and mysterious presence in the film. Although me and the actors know the exact reasoning for him being in the last scene of the film, the audience do not. I've had a few crew members give me a couple different theories on who he is, that he represents death or that he represents an older version of Fraser. I really love the idea of people bringing their own theories and meaning to the film.

[necropolismunro]

Fourth (Final) Draft

The script was pretty much finished from the second draft onwards.

There were minor tweaks to dialogue here and there based on what sounded best after practicing with actors, however for the most part it stayed the same.

The reason it barely changed was because this is an idea I've been fleshing out for about four years. I basically had all the material I needed, I just needed to condense it down into a seven page script.

[necropolismunro]

Second Draft

The second draft was where the script properly took form, from which point onwards would change very little apart from a few minor tweaks.

One of the major differences between the two drafts is the changing of the characters from Spack to Dawson.

I didn't think Spack was a very compelling character. He was like Sick Boy from Trainspotting but more boring and less fleshed out. The producer Ben had told me to watch a film called 'Withnail & I', which I watched, and it instantly became one of my favourite films. The film concerns two drug-abusing toffish out-of-work actors in London at the end of the 1960s. And so I decided instead of both characters being working-class Scotsmen, one of them would be an upper-class Englishman. Not only did I think this was an interesting dynamic, but it was a good way to put forward discussions of class (possibly however being a little on-the-nose).

I thought Dawson was very much a real character and was inspired by many people who I've met in University and elsewhere. If you've ever been to University you will know, at the very least, a handful of people who abuse a lot of alcohol and drugs and act quite crazy, however come from insanely wealthy families. Not that wealthy people magically have perfect mental health and aren't allowed to have addiction problems, however I always found it interesting to see. In many cases these people act like they do not have wealthy families. Some of the richest people I knew back in High School would dress up in tracksuits and pretend to be drill rappers from London. My aim was not to criticise people because of the off chance that they were born in a good family. However, I did want to discuss the difference in mentalities of people who come from different places.

The first draft had came to about nine pages and hence it had to be cut down. I really liked the scene where Fraser spits out the flies being at the beginning of the film. I thought it was a great way to grab the viewer's attention and effectively set the tone for the rest of the film. However, spitting out flies is quite a dramatic action and is probably best placed towards the climax of the film rather than the start. I'm still not totally sure where I would have preferred it, but it ended up in this scene for time reasons.

Another aspect of the second draft is the removal of the character of The Cardinal. I thought The Cardinal was a cool, interesting character. I enjoyed what the character stood for, as a man forced to sell drugs for money and regrets doing so. However, he barely served a purpose in the story, so it was a logical decision to cut him out when trimming the script down.

[necropolismunro]

First Draft

Necropolis Munro is a project I have been fleshing out, whether in my head or in paper, since before the start of University. The initial inspiration for the story was based off of a nightmare I had where I met my Uncle who had recently passed away from overdose.

I made many different drafts throughout the years, however most of them were intended to be a feature-length story. This trimester I decided I was going to take everything I'd done so far and whittle it down into a 7-minute film, which proved harder than I thought.

Overall, the structure and general story of Necropolis have remained the same. However, there are some big differences between the first draft and the final draft.

This is the first scene of the first draft. Inspired by some graffiti I had seen in Rodney St Tunnel, which we would eventually use for a location, I was dead-set on the motif of flies. The story discusses death and flies often buzz around corpses so I thought it was a cool symbol. I was intent on the flies being present in the more surreal scenes through sound design, and for them to be present physically in this scene. Him drinking and spitting out flies was a nice metaphor.

Also, the initial character that would be replaced by Dawson was a guy named Spack. He served the same purpose however instead of being upper-class English he was working-class Scottish.

Another thing that was included in the first draft was a character called The Cardinal. The Cardinal is supposed to be the main dealer in their area, whom Fraser and Spack have been buying off of for a number of years. I liked the idea of having a dealer character who, instead of being a slimy character, actually showed concern for Fraser's struggle.

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Necropolis Munro Synopsis & Characters

An young alcoholic attempts to quit drinking. However, his best friend is not as supportive as he would have hoped.

Necropolis Munro is set in the space of one night in the modern-day parts of Edinburgh that you don’t see on a postcard. Fraser is preparing for the funeral of his Uncle, who was also an alcoholic. In preparation for this Fraser decides he’s going to kick the booze for good. This is met with much peer pressure from Dawson, which Fraser eventually succumbs to as they make their way to a party. Eventually, Fraser gets a call from his mother, explaining to him that he is uninvited to the funeral as she thinks Fraser is an embarrassment. The night gets hairier and hairier, and Fraser eventually passes out on the street and has a horrifying dream about his own death. The film ends in the morning with a traumatized Fraser watching the sunrise, and it is left ambiguous as to whether or not Fraser will truly manage to kick his addiction.

FRASER MACAVOY (left)

Fraser, the protagonist of the story, is a young man who deals with his traumatic childhood through drinking. He decides, like he has done many times before, that he will quit drinking. However, following the death of his Uncle, it seems more critical this time. Fraser has no money and no family surviving that will help him. For him, this choice to quit is life or death.

HUGO DAWSON (right)

Dawson had a very comfortable upper-class upbringing. Although his addiction issues are very much real, he knows subconsciously in everything he does that he has a supportive wealthy family to go back to. When Fraser tries to quit, Dawson is outraged, as it seems as though his fun is finally over.

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Necropolis Munro - Writer/Director

Hello! This will be my blog documenting my process as the Writer/Director of Necropolis Munro!