The next large-scale project on the horizon is called Cancer Hair (title subject to change). This is another collaboration with Gail Hackston (who will make her directorial debut).
The project is best described as an “unromantic comedy”. What attracts me to the project is the fact it is much more uplifting and positive than the title might suggest. Rarely do we see what happens after “the battle is won” and the survivor is attempting to return to normality (which is the point of Cancer Hair). All of this has resonance being as my own mother has been survived through both breast/cervical cancer in the past – she is a truly inspirational woman!
We are filming the story in Gail’s local borough Redbridge which lead us to apply to Eastern Edge – who fund short films. They have shortlisted us alongside five other projects. Only one project can win the award however. I’ve attended some training sessions which I found pretty inspirational for several reasons:
1. It was interesting meeting the other groups who are also competing for the fund. Although technically in competition, it’s always good to networking with other film-makers. There is usually plenty of fun banter.
2. The Eastern Edge guys themselves are hyper-enthusiastic!
3. It’s been great seeing people who have been awarded in the past and hear about their projects. These were Kate Sullivan for Walking tall, Mark Downes for Stop and Ida Akesson for Moments and The Holiday. I had already met Ida at the Guerilla Filmmaker’s Masterclass. All three were wonderful inspiration!
Tomorrow we go and pitch the project to a panel at Film London. Wish us luck, and I’ll keep you posted on how things played out in due course.
Meanwhile, if you are film-maker that lives in the Redbridge area – it is well worth considering putting in a future application with Eastern Edge.
Felt it was about time I composed a new track, so here we go! Hopefully got a strong soundtrack vibe still, but also has a few more electronic/grunge feeling elements which is my style at the moment (thanks to Spare Change editing). I tried to avoid a few of the usual glitch-style clichés with this, but that’s the kind of style I was going for.
As a side note, I’d like to thank Arsenic-poptarts for letting me use his excellent artwork as the cover for this on Soundcloud – it fits very nicely. Check him out, especially if you love eye artwork.
As a side note, I need to get the popularity of the Ferny Films Facebook page up, so if you could take a moment to “like” this page if you haven’t already – this would be massively appreciated. In return, you’ll get wind of the latest blog updates here, the occasional bit of banter and freebies. Cheers!
I experienced a truly surreal moment last week. Whilst reading a Bond forum, I got wind of an Oscar “For your consideration” soundtrack which was doing the rounds for Thomas Newman’s Oscar nominated Skyfall score. The thing which piqued my curiosity was a couple of extra tracks which were not featured on the original soundtrack release. Naturally curious – I decided to try to check this out further, which led me to some less reputable web locations. I was very surprised to find on one of them contained a Thomas Newman demo tracks called East Meets West. Interesting!
On the one hand, it is extremely flattered that people might even consider my work in the same breath as an Oscar nominee (especially as the track itself was still a little rough around the edges – the brass definitely needed more oomph!). On the other hand, not only is this work free in the first place, I am not getting the credit I deserve.
Do we ever get the credit we deserve?
For the rough-cut of Spare Change I decided so many of the cast and crew were doing more than just their specified role it would be unfair to attribute them to just a specific role. We all mucked it, I appreciated all their efforts. Therefore I dropped roles altogether.
This certainly isn’t the done thing in larger production circles. However I do wonder how much hard work is taken for granted as a result, and how many people get perhaps more credit than they actually deserve!
Meanwhile, I’d like to wish Thomas Newman (and the three other Skyfall nominees) all the best for tomorrow evening at the Oscar ceremony. Fingers crossed!
Do you remember your first ever trip to the cinema?
For Your Eyes Only in 1981, my world changed. I became a Bond fan over-night, I still am to this day. It was a very special and overwhelming experience at the time. Skip 30 years or so, now I get to experience the whole thing again from a completely different perspective. Also overwhelming!
My eldest saw the advert for Wreck-it Ralph on TV and said “I want to watch that”. Naturally being a fan of cinema + retro-games myself (I even helped co-write a port of a cult retro-game back in the day with a mate of mine just for fun) – this wasn’t a hard sell.
(Video above: The Acorn version of Rick Dangerous – made just for fun and based on the Amiga version. Our remit was just to make it as close to that version as we could and better than the original PC version).
The film itself was superb, seemingly out Pixaring the past Pixar film. It had a charming little animation at the start (Paperman). The film itself did for video-games what The Incredibles did for Spy/Superheroes. So many references flew by – I probably missed half of them, they almost certainly went flying my eldest’s head. There were also weighty issues tackled which probably went unnoticed. But the truly magic thing was none of this mattered, my eldest was in captivated in awe. There were so many truly beautiful moments watching the little face light up, get sad, get scared, get excited, laugh. “Daddy, I want to watch it again” was perhaps the first comment. “I loved it” second. We stayed right until the very shots at the end of the credits which no-one else stayed for (this is cinema etiqutte for me – little one wasn’t phased about this at all). When we left, all I was hearing was how “small” everything now seemed in the world outside.
Indeed. Today was an amazing day which I feel really honoured to have shared with my eldest. It also completely re-enforces why I do what I do!
Oh, and courtesy of the lovely Lalya Mirmalek posting it on Facebook – here is Paperman. Happy Valentine’s day!
Last Thursday was the monthly 10×10 event where filmmakers gather to talk film, network, showcase and gather feedback about their projects. The event has an Oxford slant but any filmmaker is welcome to attend.
Kicking off the line-up, I offered to give a 20 minute chat about making Spare Change and screen a rough cut. It provided some useful feedback and I think overall the film is heading in the right direction. Showcasing to other filmmakers is even tougher than showing “your baby” to a general audience. Why? They are far more likely to be more critical, in particular about the technical side which most others would likely to ignore. The most important questions I needed to know was “Did you understand it”, “did it hold your attention”. With a sigh of relief, a “yes” to both! Continuity gaffes in the edit went unnoticed, which I hope is a sign that people were following the characters and the story more.
Next up was called a 6min short called Bound made by Michael Hawkes as part of the OFVM shooting video course. This was fully completed project unlike Spare Change – but it provoked an interesting discussion afterwards. Michael was the only personal who was at odds with the technical side of the Spare Change rough-cut. I am thankful for him to highlighting his criticisms. I take them onboard – one particular comment I am going to rectify in the final edit.
Michael understands all the technical sides of a film-camera and is clearly gifted with this aspect. Indeed it was a gorgeous film to look at and had a supremely strong opening – hooking the audience right from the start. Yet, I personally feel it soon got bogged down with the technical artistry to the detriment of story dynamic. The upshot was by the end – the majority of the audience seemed confused about what the film was actually trying to say and several people admitted they lost interest. It made sense after we were told by Michael after the film, but it wasn’t obvious during the film itself. The editor in me was shouting “cut down, re-focus and make it more concise”. But why not make your own mind up?
If nothing else this re-enforces the point that you can get away with a couple of technical aspects so long as the story and character dynamics keep an audience captivated. It doesn’t work the other way around. Good storytelling is the single most important thing!
Speaking of good story-telling, one of the highlights of the evening for me was the showing of Medieval Hunger, a charming CGI animation made by Ryan Harrison and Monica Nanglu. This took about 6 months to complete with a core team of 5 people behind it. It took a simple idea and was extremely accomplished. The main criticism (easily fixed) would be that the opening/ending needed some editing work. These things could be easy fixed and well done to both Ryan and Monica – I found this simply delightful.
Other things showcased items were:
66 Months
A trailer shown in tribute for local film-maker Gordon Wilson who sadly died of a heart-attack aged 47 just before the 10×10 event. Gordon had a tough life himself and concentrated on making films about people marginalised who are in society. This film was made in collaboration with another Oxford Film-maker James Bluemel and follows the abusive relationship between two alcoholics over 66 months in Oxford – not for everyone, but very powerful stuff indeed!
Martin Lipson showed part of a documentary he produced (I believe it was called Leaving Home). This was the charting the history of his Grandfather who disappeared for several years for reasons apparently unknown. He managed to trace things back and uncover some of the facts which lead up to and followed this disappearance. This was a very personal piece. The thing which I particularly loved about this was what a wonderful gift will be to share with future generations of the family.
On School
This video campaign aims to open a new secondary school in Oxford, something which long overdue and hasn’t happened for far too long. It was made by local film-maker/campaigner Zoe Broughton and teacher Eylan Ezekiel. You felt for Eylan, he is very animated and easy to talk with in real-life, used to talking in a larger group. Yet he openly admitted it is a whole different world once a camera is directed at him (something I think most can relate with). This was punctuated with nice clips of hand-drawn pictures.
Busy times! The next big thing on the horizon with Gail Hackston is called Cancer Hair (“an unromantic comedy“) which has been shortlisted for an Eastern Edge Film Fund award. We are one of five teams to be considered and recently we all met each other during one of the training events. It was not only inspiring chatting to the other teams, but extremely flattering that we might be considered worthy against such talented film-makers. The main difference on this film will be that I am going to produce whilst Gail will make her directorial debut. I will no doubt blog in more detail soon.
Meanwhile things have been trundling on with Spare Change. To focus my mind, I have agreed to showcase the current rough-cut and talk further at the OFVM film-makers 10×10 event in Oxford on 7th February (ie. tomorrow night – gulp!). This event is great if you are local to Oxford, it is where I got to have my first play with a Black magic film camera.
I’ve essentially re-edited Spare Change from scratch and thrown out all the audio captured on location. This was generally unusable as there were 100 or so students milling around on the street at the time, the thing which surprises me most is how calm the shots look considering the chaos happening behind the scenes. I must thank my student-wrangling team for this! I must also thank all the actors who came back in November to re-record their lines. I am pleasantly surprised at how well the ADR worked.
However my decision to throw out the sound was perhaps hasty and is now coming back to haunting me. It’s scary how many small sound-effects I need to source, little moments which add so much. The film being shown tomorrow will still be devoid of many of these (people seemingly float across the pavement without their accompanying foot-step noises for example). I am finding the whole process surprisingly time-consuming – but the results are rewarding and it is already sounding great.
If nothing else it makes me appreciate all the hard work that sound-editors do. It also makes me appreciate how much sound adds to a film. It’s been said that the visuals account for 50% of a film and audio for the other 50%. This film is a very visual one, but it could possible be argued that audio is even more important.
Ferny films 