About 80 people turned out to enjoy six short films in the cosy comfort of the Chambers last night.

First up was the epic, effects laden extravaganza that is Secret Thoughts of Angels. Nuff said about that already…

Then came ‘Petals Fall’, by Michelle Goessen (dir) and Lisa Newman (dp). Through the clever intercutting of dream sequences and dance, ‘Petals Fall’ tells the story of a woman jilted at the altar. I particularly liked the music in this film, mainly piano, but well written and setting the tone perfectly. Some of Lisa’s visuals were particularly effective too, giving the piece a very dream like quality and effectively conveying the confusion, sadness and anger of the main character.

Continuing the theme of struggling females, the third film was the Camera Girls, ‘The Return’, the tale of a woman trying to come to terms with the loss of her baby. Although the Camera Girls are North Kent based, David Motta did the sound and James Newton (see below) did the lighting. There were some rather nifty tracking shots which I thought were quite good too.

After the break came Shane Record’s very short film, ‘Water Portrait’, in which Shane literally paints a portrait… with water! The whole process of painting (in this case onto blue sugar paper) and then the ‘paint’ drying (yup, it evaporates) is compressed into just under two minutes. I thought it was a very interesting exploration of the concept of impermanence (so much so that I drove home humming ‘Removables’ by the Manic Street Preachers).

Then came the premiere of James Newton’s ‘The Crusader’, which was, I thought, jolly good. It tells the tale of Ritchie Pritchard, a young, somewhat impressionable Christian keen to make his views known. However, his studies in the Good Book go somewhat astray and he is drawn to darker material such as Nietzsche and Nazi Propaganda. As the film progresses, the posters on his bedroom wall change (images of Hitler and the Third Reich begin to pop up) and he sinks into a dark world where he begins to think that he is the cure to peoples problems. The film is on the whole quite humorous, with a dark ending.

Zachary Cooke’s ‘Mis-happy’ rounded the evening off, another tale of woe and misery, but this time with a nice upbeat ending, it tells the tale of a woman in an abusive relationship. What really sets this film alight is Clayton Thompson’s music, which matches the emotional ride of the lead to perfection.

The thing I really liked about this film (and both Petals Fall and The Return) was the strength of the visual story telling. Totted up, there’s probably 45 minutes of film between them, but none of them had more than a handful of lines of dialogue. Excellent stuff.

All in all a top evening, only marred by the lack of availability of Old Thumper (bah!).

Big thanks to all the filmmakers for showing their films and turning up to talk, Chris for compering and Zach and James for organising everything.

There’ll be more Digifests very soon, so if you’re a Kent based filmmaker and would like to show your short, contact info@digifest.co.uk

Next monday evening (25th) sees the return of DigiFest, the second evening of short films held at the Chambers in Folkestone.

For all you filmmakers and screenwriters in Kent, this is a great place to network and see what other filmmakers are up to.

Monday’s event includes Mis-happy by Zachary Cooke and The Crusader by James Newton along with films from Lisa Newman, Shane Record and the Camera Girls… oh, and me.

See you there!

I spent the evening attempting to tidy my study and ejecting some of the dross that’s been hogging space on my bookshelves. My filing system now goes something like this:

Top Shelf – Religion and Philosophy – more a hangover from my college days than anything else. I keep whittling this section down so it’s much more philosophy based than religion (which now amounts to the core texts of the main religions in their native languages (I want to learn Arabic one day – but I need to get my French much sharper before I start that)).

Middle Shelf – My pride and joy – the complete Robert Rankin collection, with signed copy of the Antipope. And I’ve read them in chronological order. Which is a bit sad. Also my Umberto Eco collection and highlights of Terry Pratchett.

Bottom Shelf – Neil Gaiman selection, Screenplays, Screenwriting books, French language books, Winemaking books. My long term goal, once I’ve mastered the art and craft of filmmaking is retire and run a vineyard here in Kent. I’m hoping that in about fifteen or twenty years the climate will have warmed suffently to grow some decent grapes like the French do now (rather than the German stuff that traditional English growers seem to think we should grow here).

Along the back of the desk – General Filmmaking, Directing and Editing – A fine selection of books, all well thumbed.

I’ve also been typing up Ken Colley’s hand written notes into something that looks a lot like a script which will, after a few rewrites, become his next short film. I’ve been helping Ken with some other bits and pieces for this little project in the past week, but if I told you what they were, I’d ruin the story somewhat.

One of the things I really liked about Ken’s script, and learnt a lot from, was the dialogue. I guess as an actor he’s had his fair share of dodgy lines to speak, so his dialogue comes across as very natural. He’s also good at writing around the subject and injecting heapfuls of subtext without ever being on the nose (something I struggle with).

It’ll be interesting to see where he takes it. I know where I would, but I’m only playing secretary for him while the lady who normally types up his stuff is away on holiday…

I thought I’d have a go at starting up a weekly poll to garner general attitudes about films and stories, and generally what people like to see.

I wanted to do it so that the poll would come out as a new blog entry so you clever people who read this through their RSS readers could click staight on it, but I haven’t worked out how to do that yet, so for now could I ask you to kindly pop over to my site?

For those of you reading this on the web page… it’s over there -> on the right hand side…

Via Shooting People I found out about a really good new magazine out there about filmmaking – MovieScope purports to deliver articles on ‘Movies from the insiders point of view’.

The thing I really like about it is the breadth of topics covered; directing, producing, writing, and acting all genres and budgets – all covered by top people within the industry – Guillermo Del Toro, Robert Altman, Richard E. Grant, Alec Balwin etc.

I got it through the Screenwriters Store, and is well worth a read.

And you can say in years to come when it’s huge and the gospel of filmmaking – ‘I bought the premiere issue, you know’.

Being the good scriptwriter I am and attempting to live the good life as defined by Tim…

…tonight I had a Blue evening.

Miscommunications meant a significant foreshortening of this evening’s scheduled FTV meeting, so I spent the rest of the evening chewing the cud with Chris, David and Gabby about all things film.

Chris, it turns out has shot a feature film, and has yet to finish it, so I offered my services as editor, which he has accepted.

I get to put together my first feature film! I think this’ll be an important stepping stone moving from shorts to feautures and my plan is to work on my screenplay alongside it.

P.S. What do you think of the new layout? I’m still not entirely convinced, but it’s growing on me.

Just popped home for lunch and was excited to find the latest copy of Scr(i)pt magazine laying on the doormat. My eye’s lit up even more when I saw the headline promising an article about how fellow Screenblogger, Josh Friedman, adapted The Black Dahlia.

Having followed his blog since the early days I’ve often wondered what he looks like. I always picture him in my head as a cross between Chris Moyles and other fellow Screenblogger Dave Anaxagoras, in grey sweatpants, walking his dog up the road to poop in John August‘s garden*.

The thought of actually confirming/dispelling this mythical presence in my head and perhaps getting a glimpse of those infamous sweatpants was enough for me to completely ignore my son for a few seconds while I ripped open the package and flipped quickly through to the article.

My excitement rose as I realised the sweatpants would also be in colour.

But there was no Josh. Well, there was a Josh, but of the Hartnett variety.

And an attractive lady called Scarlett.

But no Josh.

My disappointment was abated only slightly by the humourous subheading, ‘Bottom Out.’

Still, the article looks fascinating.

Go forth all of you, buy it and learn from the master!

*Sorry Josh if you look nothing like either of these two!

Got a big fat NO from Raindance today, which I’m a bit disappointed about.

It makes me laugh, they try to make you feel better by saying things like, ‘the competition was tough, this is no reflection on the quality of your film’. No? If it’s good, blinking well show it!

Ho hum.

Met up with Ben Shockley for lunch to chew the cud and set the world to rights. He’s been flitting about getting a few roles in various films. He recently did a few scenes for a film with Claire Goose which is cool.

Still, he did pass on some complimentary feedback about House of Donn from someone who saw it at DigiFest the other week, which boosted me immensely as I haven’t really had a great deal of feedback on it at all so far.

All this festival submission business kind of puts a bit of a mockers on the feedback situation as you kind of want to get it from people you don’t know and preferably not directly to your face so they feel they have to be nice.

So if anyone has seen House of Donn (so far – those people at DigiFest in Folkestone and those who went along to the Eleventh Hour Pictures Short Film night at the Reading Fringe Festival), please let me know what you thought of it. Good or bad, but preferably constructive – I can take it!

The nice people at Propeller TV e-mailed me yesterday to say that they will be broadcasting Secret Thought Of Angels on SKY Channel 195 on Thursday 7th September at 20.21.

If you can’t wait until then, and don’t mind watching it is all it’s webby small screen glory, you can see it at the SToA web site – streaming courtesy of iKlipz, which get’s my vote so far as the best video streaming site out there.

Not only do they have the very funky feature of fading the rest of the site out when you watch a clip, they also seem to be focussing on attracting the slightly more serious filmmakers, rather than your average joe with a video camera and an amusing kitten.

To reinforce this, they’ve just started an ‘Ask the Guru’ section up, which seems like a mighty fine idea. I have no idea who the guru is, or whether he really is a guru, but kudos to iKlipz for trying to keep some integrity to the site.