So I didn’t even come remotely close to even getting a mention in John August’s trailer competition. I think mine was one of those that played it a bit too safe. Ho hum. It was an interesting exercise nonetheless. Gotta try these things…

The writing has taken a bit of a hit these past few days as I’ve embarked on a little project for our local council, editing some footage shot at the Street Athletics event held up in Manchester a few weeks ago.

Even so, I’m still mulling over the idea of cracking out a short which could act as a prequel to The Trimes. Chris Knowles and I discussed it over lunch the other day, and he suggested perhaps putting it forward for the Digital Shorts scheme, but I’m not sure I could get something that good that quickly, especially with all the other things I’ve got going on at the moment.

Anyway, here’s something for the Hendrix fans…

Top chap that he is, John August has been running a competition on his blog/official web site for The Nines, where he’s made footage available for people to download and edit into a trailer.

Here’s my attempt:

Check out the forum at lookforthenines.com to see what everyone else has done. It’s fascinating to see all the different takes on the material.

I got the music from Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com. He has a load of excellent royalty free music there which is definitely worth checking out.

Aaah, I treated myself to a double helping of Heroes tonight, which was incredibly splendid.

So how’s you all? Life in the fast lane has recently found me helping judge a screenwriting competition, which has been an excellent experience, if not a little daunting. The standard of writing was amazingly high, and having to choose which ones were better than others was a nightmare!

I’ve also been helping out sort Ken’s and my films out for sending off to this distributor that’s interested in House of Donn and Alligator. I’ve been back into my old Avid set up to make various different versions with no dialogue and titles for later dubbing etc. Luckily Ken has employed the services of a very nice man called Paul Miller who’s been touching up Greetings and has given me a few pointers along the way.

One interesting point we’ve come up against is the problems involved with showing your film at a digital cinema. Ken has hopefully arranged a showing of Greetings at the Kino in Hawkhurst, but we’re having a Dicken’s of a job trying to find out what sort of format they require to show it. I’m sure it’ll all come out in the wash, watch this space…

I recently uploaded House of Donn and Secret Thoughts of Angels to crackle.com, the video sharing web site owned by Sony (it was previously Grouper).

Last night I got a rather splendid e-mail telling me that Secret Thoughts… had been selected as an Editors Choice and is now being featured quite heavily on the site, which is very cool.

This honour entitles me to enter their competition to win the chance to pitch to execs at Columbia, but as I’m not a resident of the US, I can’t enter, which is a shame.

Still, it’s cool to be recognised for something. If you haven’t watched Secret Thoughts of Angels yet, why not sit back and enjoy…

I’m still particularly proud of the opening sequence…

Life is quiet now Greetings is out of the way. Rewriting the Trimes is staring to pick up again. I submitted the first ten pages to the Red Planet prize, so I need to knock the other 100 into shape quickly, should the miraculous occur and I get asked to send the full script.

There’s also work to do on Tolerance, although I’m finding geting hold of a DVCam player a little on the difficult side at the moment so I can get the higer quality video onto my Mac. Hmmm.

I’ve also been tinkering with editing music video’s – cutting a multiple camera video from a single camera shoot for our band. If you’re on facebook, you can watch the video by joining the Scary Mary group. I think it’ll be on MySpace before too long as well…

I’ve been reading a lot as well, David Mamet’s ‘Bambi vs. Godzilla’ and David Lynch’s ‘Catching the Big Fish’. I watched Lynch’s ‘Inland Empire’ last week and was completely blown away by it. There are a lot of similarities in what the two Davids say in their books, and it all coalesces quite nicley in Inland Empire. To me that’s what proper filmmaking is about – giving the audience room to think, to wonder, to enjoy the mysteries and perplexities of the images they are seeing.

I really didn’t get Inland Empire when I watched it, but at the same time, I did. It was a strange experience and one that affected me on many different levels. I loved it.