film – Page 4 – DEATH TO THE FLIPPERS

28 Days (in one day)

Well we’ve been threatening it for a while and this Saturday we finally did it, we made a video for our mates Cassette Electrik for their track ’28 Days’.

OK, when I say ‘we’ I actually mean me n jas trotted about telling people what to do while some jolly nice people did most of the hard work. One of which people was Peter Allibone who shot and lit the whole thing amazingly, no really, he did a bang up job and added loads of ideas that we can take the credit for later. We also had the unlimited help of make-up artist and stylist Wendy Oliver, who was supposed to leave a good few hours before she finally did (cheers for that Wendy – by the way, how do you remove that pink make-up?). Of course mum made too much food, but that’s what mum does, and dad let us invade his garage again. And the band jumped about, stood still, took half a pace to the left, no a bit more, back a bit, now a bit more to the left…etc.. without hitting us too many times.

We now have the simple task of editing nearly 5 hours of footage into a 4 and a half minute clip. How hard can it be? See you in a few months.

As usual, too many photos of the shoot can be found here

The fun begins

Now the dust has settled, the cameras have been returned, the plates have been washed up… we begin the editing. So far, all going really well. The very rough edit seems to hold together. This movie making gig is a lark. Also, it’s first real test of our new rig. It’s almost as powerful as the computer in Superman III. That glowing blue light behind G is the power supply. It’s pimp.

Shooting ‘All the Time in the World’

Well we did it, and it wasn’t that painful at all. 24 hours of shooting in 2 days, about 300 cups of tea (plus the relevant cakes) and the help of some lovely people (no, really, they were lovely) we done shot a lil’ a movie in our garage. It went pretty much to plan, with still enough room to improvise a few shots here and there.

‘Nuff respec big up shout out thanks go to the cast and crew, they really did a bang up job and bought so much more to the project. Here’s a quick name check:

Neil Edmond, male lead – This is the second time we’ve locked you in our garage, this time it was for 2 days, one day we’ll get you a key cut.
Rosemary Smith, female lead – You had to deal with between 1 and 5 directors, thank you for not hitting us.
Colin Butler, director of photography – man you’ve got some sweet kit.
Paul Parsons, sound – sorry about the flight path.
Nathan McLaughlin, make-up FX – dude, that looked so good.
Kyle, grip – I say ‘grip’ but you cheerfully did all sorts, cheers fella.

Many photos of the shoot are here

ooo haven’t you grown?

Nathan McLaughlin (a lovely special effects make-up guy working on our little movie this weekend) sent us these images of the finished clay sculpt of an 80 year old Neil Edmond (our lead actor). The boy done good me thinks. Very good maybe? He’s right now making a silicon do-hickey thing from this mold that he then has to punch a gazilion holes in it to hand place each and every hair, which an 80 year old’s face is not too short of.

Head cast

We’re directing a short film written by Richard Johnson called ‘All the Time in the World’. We shoot it in a few weeks and today we sent our star (Neil Edmond) off to Brighton to have our make-up special effects guy (Nathan) pour goo all over his pretty head to make a full head cast. How cool is that? Proper ‘Makings of Thriller‘ stuff.

Meanwhile you can see Neil in Contains Violence (until 10th May) which we’ll be checking out next tuesday, see you there.

Fangoria ’07 – The Movie

Ok, we’ve finally gone and done it, and finished the video of last year’s Fangoria. It’s all a bit swanky and shot in hi-def (I know, I can’t think of a reason why we did that either, other than ‘why not?’), so don’t get scared if it asks you to update your flash player just update the damn thing, welcome to the future. Click this shiny link to view it.

The Boob slipped strangely effortlessly into character, and did such an amazing job he get’s his own special cut, behold: The Boober real

Unto Others – finished and in the wild

It’s been online for a few days now but for some reason I’ve only just got round to blogging about it. ‘Unto Others’ is our entry into BAFTA’s 60 seconds of fame competition, and it’s online and ready for you to give it a 5 star rating right now! Hurray!

Right now it’s just voting for fun, your votes will really count once BAFTA have chosen 5 finalists from each region, so check back after 28th of Jan and see who gets through.

Of course massive thanks to everyone involved, we never thought it would turn anything near as ‘pro’ as it did.

Thanks as well to Oli Freke of Cassette Electrik fame, for not only composing the theme music for us, but also putting a link on his band’s mySpace site and getting us loads of lovely votes.

And thanks also go to OhSkyLab, or Paul, or whatever he calls himself now-a-days for linking us up on Anglepoised.

So far the film’s going down really well and we’re getting loads of positive votes and comments, stay tuned and we’ll let you know if we get through to the next round.

I already asked you to go vote for it right?

Unto Others, in production

Oh fancy, we’re making a little film. When I say “we” I mean us, our mate Richard Johnson, a director called Chris Klockner, a couple of actors called Roy Carroll and Frank Fitzpatrick, and a crew of about 15 people willing to give up their free time to make it with us. And when I say “making” I mean we shot it during Sunday night/Monday morning in a car park in Kilburn. We’re going into edit it tonight, and once thats done then we have somebody doing CGI and grading and music for us… so it’s not done yet. But even so, we only came up with the idea 2 weeks ago in our kitchen.

Here’s the obligatory set of too many photos of the night.

The film is initially going to be entered into the BAFTA 60 Seconds of Fame competition which has a deadline of 4th January, so we’re rushing to get it all done, but it’s all on track so far. I won’t go into any real details about the plot, we’ll save that surprise for later.

As I’ve already said in a few emails, thanks to all involved and all that jazz.

Unto Others

This is a short film we originally made for the BAFTA/Orange 60 Seconds of Fame competition. The brief was to make a 60 second film with the theme of ‘Unite’. We produced, wrote, and funded the film along with another friend of ours, we also did the visual effects and animation.

Mudfest Film Festival, Mudgee, NSW – Official Selection
Short Shorts Film Festival, Tokyo – Official Selection
Foursight Film Festival, Utah – Official Selection

Children of Men

So we finally got round to watching Children of Men last night as we taped it off the telly on our sky box thingy months ago, and oh my is it good. OK so the plot is a bit predictable, and some of the dialogue and acting could be better but the direction is sweet. A great attention to detail in the art direction (check out the 2012 Olympics jumper worn towards the end of the film by Clive and the Guantanamo Bay pastiche in the ‘fugee center) along with massive long hand held single shot action sequences make for a genuinely believable vision of the future. There are no sweeping CG aerial camera angles of cityscapes, people don’t all listen to ambient trance, America has blown up, nothing flys that shouldn’t fly, there’s no overly elaborate computer systems – ok, maybe a few odd looking computer screens, but nobody has to wear special gloves to operate anything… except that one guy on the games console, ok it’s not perfect but I liked it alright? sheesh, you people. It’s even got a dog track in it, and no, the dogs are not robots.