Just a few days to go now to DigiFest, and the public premiere of House of Donn. I’d normally be getting nervous by now, but with a weekend of gigs to get through (watch out Cliftonville and Broadstairs!) I can’t quite get my head round it all.

Everything seems to be in place now. A gaggle of KFKers went down to Chambers yesterday with the DVDs and found out that the inhouse DVD player would in fact play none of them! I need to double check, but I’m sure my DVD player plays all of them, so well take that along and all should be well.

There was a fantastic piece about it in this weeks Folkestone Herald, a great big picture of Ken and the headline ‘Star Wars Actor to give lessons in Movie Making’. The press release has been sent off to loads of local press and radio, so I’m hoping for more coverage over the weekend. It should be a great evening. Big up to David for doing an amazing job with the publicity.

And the good news is that Clayton and Colin finished their short, Mr Bubbles, in plenty of time, so that will be shown as well.

We’re already thinking ahead to DigiFest II and III, and there seems to be quite a few people in the local area we might be able to call upon to be the ‘guest of honour.’

On the writing front, I managed to realise a techie Dramatica dream this week. For ages I’ve wanted a way of automatically parsing out the information from the Plot Sequence Report and Character Report into the somewhat convoluted structures I’ve developed over the years around which I write my screenplays. I finally managed to write a PHP script that would do it all automatically, saving me hours, if not days, of tedious manual work. Marvellous!

I’ve also been watching Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colours Trilogy over the past couple of weeks. I can see why Chris Knowles recommended I watch them after he saw House of Donn, there’s loads of stylistic shots and tricks I’ve used that Kieslowski also seemed to like to use (reflections, pauses, fades etc). It’s almost as if I was subconsciously channeling the man. It’s a bit freaky, really, but it’s given me huge confidence that some of the ideas that I’d thought might be a bit silly are in fact not silly at all and that I’m heading in the right direction.

They are fantastic movies – proper cinema in the Mamet-mentality almost silent movie type thing. The dialogue is very sparse, it’s all in the visual storytelling. Amazing, magical stuff.

Someone actually watched Secret Thoughts of Angels on YouTube this week and was kind enough to leave a comment. I was almost beside myself with excitement as I saw the automated e-mail sitting there in my inbox.

Ignoring my son’s protests, he was less than impressed that his morning glass of milk was being delayed, I could barely contain my excitement as I clicked the link in the mail to read what profound and wise words someone might have left me (why they couldn’t have actually included the comment in the e-mail, I’m not quite sure).

As Safari lurched into action (I really, really need to get a new Mac), the anticipation grew to fever pitch and questions tumbled through my mind. What would they say, who would it be? A top producer, perhaps, having seen the true genius of my work and offering heartfelt congratulations on a fantastic film? A Hollywood A list celebrity raving about the sheer awesoneness of the film and begging me to direct them in their next blockbuster?

It was from someone called Sotylover, who said…

“I don’t get it.”

Bugger.

Thank you Sotylover for watching the film, I appreciate you taking the time to do so. Sorry you didn’t get it. Not sure what else to say really…

Meanwhile, in the real world of flesh and blood and proper names,†things have been very busy for me of late. Three gigs in eight days with the band, plus a bit of a manic time getting stuff sorted out for the Digifest, plus family, plus work, plus finishing touches to House of Donn has left with barely enough time to think.

Denis came round on Tuesday and we went through the film, grading the image. He seemed pleased with some of the changes I’d made since his last visit, which I was in turn pleased about as I felt I’d pushed it perhaps a bit too far in places. Apparently not.

So now, as far as I’m concerned, the film is complete. I’ve run it though DV Film Maker (with the trusty h.264 codec) and it’s looks lovely. This week I registered it for Raindance, so I’ll pop it in the post to there tomorrow…

As part of the Digifest fun and frolics, fellow KFKers Clayton and Colin are preparing to shoot a 5 minute short and get it ready for the event. I’d not immediately jumped up and offered my services to help out as, when it was first discussed, I had no idea how much more work I’d need to do to get HoD complete for the same evening.

However, a rare appearance from David Motta at the KFK meeting on Wednesday resulted in him recommending me to edit the film (which I was reet chuffed with!) and with HoD complete, I couldn’t really say no.

Then I realised last night that it’ll all be down to me to get the thing finished on time. Zoiks.

I don’t think it’ll last much more than five minutes, although this is coming from the guy who thought House of Donn would be ‘six or seven minutes tops’ (it’s 14 and a half). They are shooting in one day, although with the tried and tested formula of Denis and David on Camera and Sound the results should be of a high quality.

I’m quite looking forward to my first gig just as an editor, it’ll be a strange experience coming in with no preconceptions about the film. Could be a very useful little exercise.

I’m also still wondering what the hell I’m going to do next projectwise. I’ve got loads of ideas but none really stick out as the next obvious thing to do.

There’s the joint book adaptation project, but the likelihood of that getting beyond the completed script stage is almost zero (but you never know!). I’ll just keep plugging away at that one, I guess. I’m still not even halfway through making notes on the book yet, but I do understand it a lot more now…

On the more practical filmmaking-I-can-conceivably-do-without-a-multi-million-dollar-budget side of things, I’ve offered to help another KFKer, Kadir, develop his short script, which I can see has a lot of potential. He’s also looking for someone to direct it as he’d like to act in it (which is good as it’s about an Iraqi immigrant who’s life falls apart around him, and I don’t know any other Iraqi’s apart from him!) but I’m not sure if I’m right for it. It would be a very powerful story, but it would need a lot of care not to descend into patronising cliche. I’ll see how the script dev goes.

Speaking of scripts, I really wanted to go down to the Screenwriters Festival down in Cheltenham next week (28th onwards). But with House of Donn using up the holiday days I had spare this year I’ve had to forego the pleasures of materclasses with such luminaries as Julian Fellowes, Jimmy McGovern and Guillermo Del Toro. Hopefuly they’ll do another one next year.

I now have perfect sound on House of Donn. Ben came round the other day and did a bit of ADR. I had an old radio mic which I’d spent 50 quid repairing so I could use it for SToA, but as it happened, remained unused. So I dug it out to use for this exercise. Ben sat in my lounge lip syncing to the film on the TV while I sat through in my little den recording it. It worked really well as my lounge is about the same size as the room we shot the footage in, so there is very little difference in room ambience.

The web work and development on the Digifest film festival continues at a pace (you can check out the work in progress at http://www.digifest.co.uk).

It’s basically boiled down to Ben, John Rackham, Lucy Lungley and Myself to organise the event. I’m working on the posters and web site, Ben and John are dealing with PR and Lucy is being generally very helpful.

The first event has been confirmed for Monday July 3rd at the Chambers in Folkestone, so get on down there if you can on that evening.

I’m really pleased with the line-up we’ve got. There’s the world premiere of ‘House of Donn’; John’s short, ‘The Liberator’; a couple of non-narrative pieces: Lucy’s ‘Up Close and Personal’ and James Newton’s ‘Readings’; a documentary about a nuclear (I think) incident in Iraq that was all hushed up back in the 90′s; and to top it all, Ken Colley talking about his life and career (and working with me!) and showing his short film ‘Nearly Silent Film.’

It should be a really good evening.

Sammy left a comment on my previous post suggesting I check out Iklipz, which I have duly done. I must say it doesn’t look half bad.

It’s still in Beta at the moment, but it seems to be very good. I’m not sure how it’llfair against sites like YouTube and iFilm. My big problem with those is that there is just too much stuff on them. At least, with it being early doors for Iklipz, there’s a chance of people finding my film on there! I’m uploading StoA as I write. I’ll do a fuller report a litle later once I’ve had more time to play with it.