I finally made it along to a meeting of the Kent Film Kollective this evening. It’s a group of about 12 or so local writers, directors, actors and editors who are up for pitching together to make some low budget features (I think the vague game plan is to try to make four over the next couple of years).

Initially I was a little wary as I’ve seen groups like this before that are a lot of talk and little action. But I get the feeling that under the leadership of Chris Knowles this group might be a bit different. It’s early doors yet, but they all seem like a good bunch of people with a lot of good connections, (except, it seems, to producers who might be interested in stooping down and helping out with films that are being made for less than a £1,000,000). They also seem to have some good ideas to boot and Chris is very much for doing proper development on the scripts, to ensure that when we do get some interest from Producers, we have something really quite decent to show them.

Initially I was thinking that it might be an idea to pitch my full version of Secret Thoughts of Angels, but having discussed other peoples ideas, I’m not sure if there isn’t a better, more original route, to take. So it’s time to dust off the old thinking cap again.

I fear that with the release if the Da Vinci Code later this year, there’s going to be a plethora of carbon copies hot on it’s heels, so I’m thinking that the whole religion/mystery/secret society vibe is probably going to be a bit passe before too long. Which is a shame as, with my backround, it’s probably what I’d write best. Ho hum.

And, unlike the rest of the ‘scribosphere’, I shall not be submitting anything to the Nicholls Fellowship.

The past few evenings have reaped great rewards in the work department, so I thought I’d share…

First off, I got playing with the Cafe Press web site and knocked up some rather nifty Secret Thoughts of Angels merchandise. So if you’re in need of a fab new t-shirt or mug, why not support the global filmmaking community (well… me) by treating yourself to one of my fabulous wares.

I’ve also been tinkering with graphics for House of Donn. The results so far can be seen on the holding page of the new House of Donn web site.

The second edit pass on House of Donn is now complete and I’m fast running out of things to do to it. I’ve yet to show it to Ken, who I guess will have some good feedback.

Music maestro Daz came round last night and we went through it a few times (the film, that is). He had some excellent suggestions for improvements which I’ve implemented now.

We’ve set ourselves a deadline of the 15th June (Venice Film Festival submission deadline day) as it seems like a reasonable target.

Feedback so far on the first cut of HOD is on the whole, very positive. I’ve an ever growing list of changes I want to make but I don’t quite feel up to it yet. Perhaps Tuesday I’ll have a go at a second draft.

I wasn’t happy with my initial efforts at grading SToA, so while I was fixing the few foibles I had with the mix (the strings were too loud) I thought I’d have a go at tweaking the grading as well. I ended up starting again from scratch, but I’m much happier with the result. The whole concept of colour is starting to make more sense to me now I can see it in action. So now red hues = activity with the book and Dr Crabtree has his own yellow world (hopefully echoing the ‘is he, isn’t he bad?’ vibe).

I also added a bit more motion, subtly moving in at various points to add tension. I think it works, but I’m going to have to see what it looks like at work on the big projector. Speaking of which, I checked out HOD for any duff shots on the big projector (after having noticed one glorious shot in SToA that shifts in and out of focus ever so slightly after watching it on there). All seemed to be well, though it did point out a couple of slight concerns which I should be able to fix very easily (better now than at the first public showing, as it was with SToA!).

I’ve set myself up a YouTube Directors account so I can stream SToA once I’ve shown it at a few local film festivals. I’ve come to realise that without the big name it probably isn’t going to get very far at the bigger festivals, and HOD is soooo much stronger as a short there’s no real point pushing both of them. But without some film festival activity, I’m not going to get that IMDB listing… It’s a tricky line to walk.

I’ve also just forked out for a copy of DVFilm Maker. I tried the demo out on both the HOD rough cut and SToA (even though SToA was shot ‘progressive’) and was mightily impressed with the results. My wife laughed when I showed her the interlaced version of HOD saying it looked like an old episode of Crossroads (thankfully she still liked the film though). Lack of grading aside, she had a very good point, and was impressed when I showed her the de-interlaced version.

Conservative estimates on my part gave a rough running time of HOD to be about 6-7 minutes.

The first cut is 14 minutes 23 seconds and that’s sticking exclusively to the script with no additional material thrown in for good measure.

Granted it’s a bit flabby at the end, but even so, if the final cut drops below 10 minutes I’ll be surprised.

Whoever said a page of screenplay equals a minute of screentime was blatantly lying!

Still, it seems to work. I’m a bit jaded at the moment, so I’ll reserve further comment until I’ve watched it all the way through with a fresh pair of eyes.

BTW, if anyone reading this knows what Fine Line, the subsidiary of New Line, are doing with Foucault’s Pendulum, I’d love to know. I’d give my right arm to have a crack at that screenplay (and just about anything to make it!).

I worked out a Dramatica storyform for it earlier this evening. It’s a complex book, but there’s a cracking film there waiting to get out.

Apprently Kubrick wanted to make it into a film, but Umberto Eco had reservations about giving the rights away after the hash they made of The Name of the Rose. Fine Line acquired the rights to it in 2000, but seem to have simply sat on it. I wonder if they’re struggling to find the right writer?

OI! I’M OVER HERE!

I just finished reading it again yesterday. I haven’t read it for about ten years, and hadn’t realised what a huge impact it has had on my life. SToA rose out of it, as did several other crackpot ideas I’ve had for web sites and films.

Awesome book.

I’m about half way though the first cut of HOD now, and it’s shaping up nicely. I’m pleased with the way the first sequence has turned out, and now I’m deep into the main scene with backgammon games and psychological warfare being waged. Tricky stuff to edit, but very absorbing.

Anyway, just a short one as I want to get another minute or two done before bed tonight…

Here’s a still to whet your appetite…

All together now – durn durn durn, durn de durn, durn de durn!

I really must stop having these delusions of Lucas…

I sat down this evening for the first time in what seems like days to start putting together the assembly edit for House of Donn. It weighs in at about an hours worth of footage which I need to study, absorb and ponder over how to whittle it down into decent short film.

I was worried that it was going to be hard to edit but reviewing the footage tonight makes me think that the bestest bits are fairly obvious (the bits where the acting goes from excellent to awesome) so they tend to stand out quite well. I’ll make the first edit about these bits and see where I end up.

I had a whole weekend of gigs with the band, which served a useful purpose of clearing the shoot from my head. I also did a little bit of work on Architurus, and managed to invent a new character at this late stage, a young child. It was very peculiar. Perhaps watching Narnia and Finding Neverland these past couple of evenings was a mistake…

I never got to see Narnia at the cinema, so I must confess that I was a little disappointed in it once we sat down to watch it last night. I think it was the editing mainly, far too many cuts for the sake of cutting it seemed…

We wrapped the shoot at four yesterday afternoon, and then spent a manic few hours getting the lights back to Canterbury and my mum’s house back into some kind of sensible state.

I’d woken in the morning quite glum, being that it was the last day of filming, but by the end of the day, felt a lot happier about things, especially after reviewing all the footage.

I even got Ken to sign my copy of the Empire Strikes Back screenplay and got him to say, ‘Bounty Hunters, we don’t need that scum’. I nearly hootled my socks off, I was so excited.

Everyone seemed very happy with the way the shoot went. I asked David, the sound guy, how I compared to Bernardo Bertolucci as a director. He grinned and said, ‘You’re a damn sight faster!’. But then Bertolucci didn’t have to take three days holiday from his day job to make Little Buddha.

I went to review the footage and do some tests with Avid on importing it last night, as with SToA we’d shot progressive, but the DSR-P170 doesn’t do that terribly well, so we’d shot interlace. Once I’d worked out which order to get the fields going on import, I realised that the H.264 that had served me so well on SToA didn’t seem to like the interlaced footage – it’s kept going all jagged. I’m sure I’ll suss it out, but I was up ’til 1 o’ clock trying to figure it, before rolling into bed still puzzled.

So now I’m off to go through all the footage and make detailed notes before I start cobbling it all together in the edit.

Onwards and upwards…

The shooting is going exceptionally well. I’ve spent this evening trawling through the footage looking for blips and bloopers and missing bits that we might need to reshoot tomorrow, and have found hardly any.

We’ve shot about 90% of it now, so I’m hopefuly we should be wrapped by tomorrow lunchtime, or thereabouts, which is excellent.

The quality of the acting is outrageous, especially from Ken, who leaves me astounded on every take. It’s like having a masterclass. Amazing stuff. I’ve learnt more in the past two days than I can ever hope to remember. It’ll take me ages to process it all.

My favourite actor/shooting story told so far – Ken’s one about the two crates of Dos Equus beer Clint Eastwood sent him and his friend during the Firefox shoot.

I got a note from the nice people at Cannes saying that SToA hadn’t been accepted. I was disappointed for about ten seconds, then I saw the rushes from today and bounced right back again.

Will try and get some stills up for you to enjoy soon.

So all is set. Camera, tripod, lights, cremation urn, everything. The only thing I’ve forgotten to sort out, as far as I can tell, is biscuits to go with the tea.

After a frenetic ride round Folkestone to pick up the urn, I met up with Denis the DP at the location this evening and worked through a few logistical issues. He went away content, I hope. Then I popped over to Ben’s place to pick up the camera, a nice Sony DSR-PD170. It seems to work nicely with DV Rack.

And now to bed to get my beauty sleep, for tomorrow I take another big step closer to my dreams…

Oh yeah, as promised, here’s the (more or less) final version of the script… I’ve plumped for the title, ‘House of Donn’.