Continue reading »]]> Looking for money to fund your short film or creative project?

I’ve created a new web site, Help Me Fund It, that might be able to help you out.

It’s basically similar to the sites you might see advertised on telly, topcashback.co.uk or Quidco and suchlike, but rather than have users sign up and keep the money for themselves, they choose your project and the commission goes to you instead (less a small amount for admin).

It’s all very early doors yet and I really need some people to use the site, set up some projects and test everything out.  At the moment, I can’t progress any further with the development of the site until I get some real life projects in there.

So if you fancy earning a bit of money for your short film, head over to http://helpmefund.it and try it out.  I can’t guarantee how much you’ll earn, but it doesn’t cost you anything to try. I’ve got it working with Facebook, Google+ and Twitter authentication, so there’s no need to even register.

One caveat I should mention, I only have UK merchants listed on the site at the moment, so it’s probably not much use to you if you’re outside the UK. The plan is to get US merchants on board once the site finished and stable, probably in a few weeks.

As always, any feedback will be gratefully received.

Continue reading »]]> Late last year I started tinkering with the new Mobile jQuery platform and realised that I could try out an idea for a web site that had been floating around in the back of my mind for a while. I spent most of last Christmas holidays messing about with it only to find that the development of the Mobile jQuery platform just wasn’t there yet. The project was promptly sidelined in favour of festive activities and soon forgotten.

Fast forward to last week, when I had a little tinker and realised that they’d managed to iron out all the irritating buglets that hampered my attempts before, so now I proudly present AtomFic!

It’s a fun little mobile web app that allows you to write stories of up to 1000 words on your mobile phone or tablet (and PC if you use Firefox or Chrome (and possibly Safari)). The thing that’s a bit fun about it is I wrote a little Story Wizard to help you if you’re a bit stuck on what to write about. I also built quite a bit of Twitter integration into it too (including using it to authorise log ins). All jolly good geek fun.

If you want check it out, I’d be most pleased. To be honest it’s somewhat lacking in actual stories at the moment (I’ve been too busy messing about with the site to actually write anything!), so any brave souls who’d be prepared to put their reputation on the line and publish something would be nothing less than heroes to me.

See you over there!

http://atomfic.com

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Imagine, if you will, an infinite corkboard, that stretches away forever (into virtual space, anyway) and allows you to post notes, ideas, images, videos, and other cool content on there. That’s Spaaze, and it’s one of my favourite web sites.

I discovered it a few months ago and since then the developers have been working hard to make it even better. They even recently implemented a suggestion I made to allow you to change the note format into an Index Card (previously they only had sticky note or the default spiral bound notepaper).

I’ve been using it to plan a short film I’m writing at the moment and it works a treat.

I think you could have a lot of fun with it and create some really interesting site ideas, especially now they have implemented internal linking so you can zip about between areas/sections of the board.

Check it out, it’s very cool.

Continue reading »]]> It was appraisal time at work recently, and whilst having my review it was quite rightly pointed out to me that I tend to hold back on launching a project if I don’t think it’s perfect which often times it can never be. Both at home and at work I’ve left too many projects/screenplays/web sites half finished where I’ve got so far and then run out of steam because I wanted it to be perfect first time. Apparently it’s an INTP trait, but that’s not really much of an excuse.

As it happened I’d been looking through the cool ‘cube grenades’ that Hugh MacLeod (@gapingvoid) has done over the past few years. This one in particular really hit home in the light of that revelation:

So my new ‘rest of my life’ resolution is this: Get something done, be bloody amazing while you do it and don’t worry if it’s not perfect – nothing is perfect and it can always be improved later.

Amen to that!

Continue reading »]]> I’ve been playing a bit recently with Celtx, and finding myself pleasantly surprised by it. I tried it a few years ago and found it a little clumsy compared to Movie Magic Screenwriter and Final Draft and promptly forgot about it.

With Script Frenzy coming round a couple of months ago and not having Final Draft on my work computer, I thought I’d give Celtx a whirl again. I didn’t get very far with Script Frenzy, I think I ran out of steam on page 30, but I have stuck with Celtx for tinkering with other scripts during my lunch hours.

If you’re used to the flow of writing with Final Draft the Celtx takes a little bit of getting used to, there’s a few more hits of the tab keys to get everything just so. Also the default editing view shows as one continuous page, so you need to shift into formatted view to see how much you’ve actually written.

These two minor foibles aside, I really like it. The project oriented set-up means that it’s easy to keep all the information that I usually build up while writing a script in one place using the ‘Novel’ format for text docs and ‘Sketches’ of imaginary props and locations. The whole ‘Master Catalogue’ can quickly build up into a very useful repository of character information and production notes.

The formatting is great, easily on a par with any other professional screenwriting software, and the project management aspects of the programme seem very useful, although I haven’t signed up for a studio account, so I haven’t fully explored all of these.

In fact there’s so much to Celtx, that I still feel like I haven’t really scratched the surface, even after three months of tinkering. The Animated storyboard functionality (which looks fun), the calendar and the production schedule all remain un-twiddled with.

One thing I’ve found very useful is the Celtx: Open Source Screenwriting Beginner’s Guide from Packt Publishing. It covers all of the features of Celtx and is a great way to discover everything that it has to offer. It’s not a bad read too. If you’re getting into Celtx, some of the money you’ve saved not buying Final Draft or MMSW could be well spent on this little gem.

Having spent my hard earned money on both Final Draft and MMSW, I almost feel a little bad liking Celtx as much as I do. But, if you’re on a tight budget, Celtx is a brilliant alternative.

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Image via Wikipedia

So things are starting to finally pick up on The Man Who Wished. Balls set rolling last year are finally starting to pick up speed and I’m again on the lookout for a bit of funding.

As you may have noticed from my Twitter feed or from this blog, I created UK Hot Deals in the hopes that I might generate some income to cover the costs of the shoot.

Rather than go in with the usual ‘Please give me money’ routine, which I tried last year and more or less fell on deaf ears, I figured I should go with something that has mutual benefits.

To this end, if you would like to help out, rather than dig deep in your pockets, please just tell your friends about UK Hot Deals and encourage them to check it out and use it.

I’ve also created a little widget though Widgetbox which, like the Scribomatic widget, you could embed in your fab blogs and web sites.

You could also follow @uk_hotdeals on Twitter and retweet any groovy offers that might catch your eye.

Alas, yes, this is only really any use if you’re in the UK, but I know a lot of people here, so if a few of you (or more) could help out, y’know, we’d all be winning.

And if you really did want to save money on the older style iPad, Comet are selling them off cheap! (Yes, I’ll get a bit of money from that too – it all helps!)

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Image via Wikipedia

I’ve created an app for UK Hot Deals, but being an Android boy*, I have no iPhone to test it on.  If there’s anyone who’d be prepared to test out the app and give me any feedback on what they thought of it, I’d be ever so grateful.

The app can be found at http://ukhotdeals.isites.us

Once I’m happy with it, I can get it up on the old App Store.

*I’m still drooling over the new iPad though…

Continue reading »]]> I’ve created a new web site called UK Hot Deals to generate a bit of money to fund my filmmaking activities. UK Hot Deals blogs and tweets the latest special offers and discount codes from a vast array of High Street and Online shops. Everything from the latest fashion to the latest tech, there’s something for everyone in there.

Tell all your friends – it would be great to get a few more followers on the Twitter feed (by the way if you follow me on Twitter, UK Hot Deals will be knocking on your door, so let me in!).

You never know, you could save yourself a bob or two and help fund a great feature film!

Continue reading »]]> Yes, it’s umm, 2011 , and has been for ages. Well, well, well.

Just been doing some major updating of the Scribomatic web site which I thought I’d shout about. It’s basically the same old site, now all nicely WordPressed up and, hopefully, more useable.

Apart from that, it’s the same old stuff, different year, really.

Progress on all of my projects is painfully slow.  I’ve been working on editing a short demo reel for my good friend Ben Shockley‘s new film project, which is cool. I’ve also been tinkering with some new ideas for films (though once again I find myself in the shadow of Duncan Jones – I swear that bloke is me, 18 months ahead of me ).

I guess really I should actually do something this year, rather than just talk about it.

Here goes…