Murder In Hi-Viz: The Making Of Black Spot...Part 1 - Pre-production

I'm a sucker for 3D films. I love the iconic image of people wearing the classic red/ cyan glasses in 50s cinemas. I know it's gimmicky, but I find them playful, silly but they can be immersive and thrilling.

As a kid I remember when a big deal was made about ITV showing a film in 3D for the first time. The only way to watch it was to buy the TV Times to get a pair of the red/ cyan glasses, but as we didn't get the magazine I wasn't able to appreciate it. I did of course watch a bit of the film in the hope that maybe I would be able to see something, but naturally it was just headache inducing and in all honesty to my 10 year old self it looked like a pretty boring period drama.

My next encounter with 3D was with the computer magazine Crash, which focused on my beloved ZX Spectrum. They ran a special 3D issue which meant the magazine was full of the usual fabulous Oliver Frey drawings but all printed with a 3D effect. I remember looking at one particular action packed space scene, of a spacecraft flying past leaving a trail with planetoids colliding and exploding. It had so many layers of depth and I would stare transfixed at this incredible optical illusion.

It wouldn't be until I was in my teens that I finally saw 3D in motion when on a family holiday to Florida we went to Universal Studios to the Alfred Hitchcock experience. Here I saw a scene from Dial M For Murder in 3D and again it was a spellbinding image - it felt like the bottle in the foreground was within my grasp. Then the film shifted, as the "screen" was pecked from behind, before the screen was ripped apart by a flock of birds causing chaos behind the scenes and an old style lamp on a rope swung towards the audience. Great fun.

So from these early experiences I've always held a fondness for the format and I would always be disappointed at being unable to see Flesh For Frankenstein, or Friday the 13th Part 3(D) in their original shooting format, though thankfully in the age of dvd and blu ray some of these have become available again in that format.

Then around October 2012 I was on a video games forum I frequent when I spotted a post listing a 3D camcorder for 28 pounds. As it was the run up to Christmas and my brother is always looking for suggestions for Christmas presents for myself, I suggested that as an ideal gift. The device did not have the best reviews - some dismissed it as being not much better than a toy - but as someone with dreams of owning a Fisher Price Pixelvision camcorder comparing it to a toy wasn't a bad thing! I decided to write a short narrative purely to be used as an exercise to check out the abilities of the camera.

I don't know where the idea for Black Spot came from - with the positive response to my previous horror short Creak I knew I wanted to make a 3D horror film, as that also tied in with the 50s horror/ sci fi iconography that I have such a love for. I'm not sure if I already had some shots in mind where I wanted layers of depth so was thinking of places where the landscape could feature as a backdrop, maybe I was thinking of people sat in a car. As I'd filmed in a layby around Fulking/ Poynings for my short film Stranded it's possible I had that in the back of my mind. In some ways it shares some similar compositions. Budgetary constraints were probably a massive factor in the script - I didn't want to, nor could I afford to spend much money on this film and as I was regarding it from the start as an experiment I didn't want to invest too much money in something which may simply not work in the end. I liked the idea that I may have a fun film that could stand out from other horror shorts simply by the format difference, but if it didn't work....it wouldn't be such a big issue.

The draft for the script came together very quickly and although it wasn't high art it wasn't something that I felt like I wanted to keep tinkering with and rewriting, as the point was to crack on with production as soon as possible to test the camera out. It must have come together quite quickly as I started writing it around mid December before I even had the camera and then started to try and cast the film immediately in the period between Christmas and New Year.

With one eye on budgetary concerns I knew I'd have to cast actors within the local vicinity to keep expenses costs down, so I posted on a variety of Facebook pages looking for cast. I had a good response back, but I made the peculiar decision not to cast or audition in person - again, worried that it would become a failed experiment I didn't want to invest lots of time juggling diaries to meet people which would drag the casting process out more than I wanted to - so I was looking at casting purely from showreel or portfolio photos. Certainly not a very good way of casting and I'll hold my hand up and say I was being pretty lazy, but I also know how difficult and the longwinded the casting process can be when fitting it around my work and family commitments.

I was very straight with all of the actors upfront and sent them a link of the camera that I would be shooting on and fully explained that I had no idea if the film would work or not, so there was a level of risk (or at least a potential waste of their time if they had nothing to show for it for showreel etc after it was made) I had one bewildering exchange with an actor who only wanted to know 2 things - what was I shooting on (er, already explained that and sent the link clearly) and would the film be on imdb...it seemed the script wasn't his main concern at this stage, whereas I thought that would have been the first question from any actor...

From the people on Facebook I was able to cast the lead of Paul with Raine McCormack, the role of Mummy McKenzie from Alexxa Charles, Jason Rhodes would play Junior McKenzie and after not really seeing anyone that suitable I was lucky to get Andrew Calverley, who I'd met on the set of local film House Trafalgar, to play Daddy McKenzie. Paul's wife Linda would be played by my wife's friend Helen Ball.

With the camera in my hand during the festive season I began to have a little play with it, but shooting some moving footage of my kids running around, or taking 3D photos didn't really seem to show me what (if anything) it was really capable of. Seeing the 3D capability on the tiny screen of the camera didn't give the best impression either - sometimes I could see the 3D effect, other times not.

I don't remember why, but the film just didn't come together at the start of the year - costumes and props weren't ready for starters - and I was trying to juggle also shooting another short Pick-Ups, which was proving difficult to line up with cast and crew, so it was probably as a result of that more than anything that it was more towards May when the shoot started to come together. I was planning a weekday shoot, which meant that Andy was only available to film during school holidays which also limited when I could shoot it. Disappointingly as I'd missed my winter shooting date the cold, windy, overcast day I was hoping to shoot on would most likely not happen as we went further towards summer.

There were several props I needed for the film, which with the no budget were an issue - there was a sequence where Paul comes across an old style roadside SOS phone, with a missing persons poster blowing in the wind taped to the back. Paul would have opened the box and found the phone line cut, replaced the phone and continued on his journey looking for help. However, you just didn't find the SOS boxes on  many B roads as they were all found on A roads and many of the old style orange boxes that envisaged had been replaced by modern concrete pillars. Even if I had filmed at one of them, it would have been unlikely that I would be lucky enough to have the road quiet and no doubt would draw attention to myself by attempting to film at one.

I looked into prop houses, but the nearest one which had SOS boxes were outrageously expensive and nowhere nearby. I was hoping there may have been some sort of highways agency scrapyard where I'd be able to get one, but all enquiries led nowhere. My friend and prop maker Jenny Ray suggested I try and make one - I was hoping to get hold of an old metal box with hinged lid, maybe something from a scrap merchants or army surplus, but had no joy. I was conscious that I had to place this heavy box on something that could support such a weight - a thick metal pole or something - and find a way to secure it to the ground so it looked right on camera.

All of this led nowhere, to the point where I used cardboard box as a starting point and built around it, with two thick tubes as the planned pillar for it to stand on. I stupidly spent a comparative amount of money on orange spray paint and tried to distress it with dirty water and brown paint, hoping that it would mostly be seen either from a distance, or out of focus close up (with the missing person's poster also covering one face of it) then I may get away with it being cardboard. I bought a metal handle to put on the box, picked up an old plastic phone from a charity shop and also spray painted that received orange. But my cackhanded prop making bodged the telephone receiver symbol and SOS lettering and numbers on the side, with the white spray paint running on the outside, or looking splodgy and badly defined. It didn't look good and when precariously balanced on the tubing pillar (also spray painted orange) it looked ropey and I also had no base to put the thing on.

Even though I was going into this completely no budget, I thought this looked a bit shameful and in the end decided not to use it, even though I was working on it very close up to the shooting date - I think I decided pretty much a couple of days before not to bother with it. In the end this unused prop ended up almost using the biggest chunk of the entire cost of making the film...

There was another prop which I was unable to make in time either - as I had the characters Paul and Linda I was hoping to put in a specific music reference to Paul McCartney, based on the conspiracy of him being killed and replaced by a lookalike...so I wanted the car that Paul walks away from at the start to have a nod to the LMW 28IF registration plate on the front of Abbey Road - but again I couldn't mock up a registration plate that would have looked plastic and flat enough to pass for the real thing, so this little inconsequential aspect didn't make it in either.

For the costumes it was a case of asking the cast what they had to suit the look I was going for - Paul was always supposed to be semi smart, but with a big of a 5 o'clock shadow implying he's slept over in his car, dressed in black shirt and trousers for that Hitchcock subtext of his moralistic side - as Raine wasn't married I was hoping to get a ring for him, or some make up to leave a pale band on his wedding finger for a reveal at the end of the film. However Raine didn't have any black trousers of his own, nor a black shirt...so in the end we ended up with his own grey trousers and I wasn't able to source a cheap black shirt for the role (plus I couldn't see a black shirt/ grey trousers looking right) so in the end had to get him in a white shirt. As he had a paid role coming up he couldn't guarantee the look of his facial hair either - it was a case of I had to accept how he came...

I envisaged Junior McKenzie as wearing red braces, which Jason was able to provide, but also a tight fitted black t-shirt and trousers  Daddy McKenzie would be a bit more respectable as head of the family, in suit jacket and trousers, but with a bloodied stomach area of his white shirt - as Andy was able to supply the suit all I had to supply for his costume was another white shirt which I could get covered in blood.

For Mummy McKenzie I really wanted some sort of evening gown, something quite classy looking, which would have looked quite out of place in the daytime, but then something dressy for afterwards for the finale but I no dress stood out when my wife and I searched the charity shops. We did however come across a dress which wasn't what I had pictured, but suddenly added a great subtext - it was a short sleeved and short length dress, but with black and white almost zebra like stripes. As Mummy McKenzie was supposed to be gutted open in this dress I loved the implication of a hunted and slaughtered animal that it gave, so that's what I went with. Alexxa's additional attire that she would bring on the day for the end titles wasn't what I had hoped for, but actually worked well - it was much more conservative and plain and provided a good contrast to the look in the rest of the film. I'm pretty sure I always saw Mummy McKenzie as being blonde, so I'm not sure how I ended up having Alexxa with her hair dyed red - perhaps she was blonde when I cast her - I vaguely recall her mentioning upfront that she'd dyed it for a specific purpose but it had faded somewhat since then and whether that would be an issue, but beggar that I was I couldn't be choosy so it was a case of she came as she came.

The zebra dress needed augmenting with the gaping wounds that her body was supposed to have, so I bought a handful of a variety of latex scar wounds from ebay, not really being able to tell upfront how big the scars were. When they arrived they were a bit smaller than I had hoped and putting a few of them together in a line didn't really give the impression of a thickness of flesh cut apart. I precut holes in the dress and stuck the wounds behind the dress material, hoping that it would look like it was cut and opening to reveal the wounds. A blood mixture that I made up which turned out to be very sticky from being overcooked so poured on the wounds and also on Daddy McKenzie's shirt - hopefully Alexxa would be able to just slip on the prebloodied dress, add a touch more blood to her hands and face and we would be ready to shoot with her.

Our washing line looked a bit peculiar one day...

As I was concerned with shooting on a lonely road but with a knife wielding maniac running around a car I figured it prudent to try and draw some hilarious "official" looking aspect to the film making for the sake of the general public, so I bought some hi-viz vests from the internet for myself and any crew to wear.

I knew that I was going to shoot this film and being what it was there really wasn't much point asking Darren, who had shot Creak and was due to be the cameraman on several other shorts in pre-production, to shoot the film on a camera which had no manual controls as such. I also knew that if I had a general assistant/ stills crew member then I wouldn't be able to get anyone else in the car bar all the cast except Raine...so basically I decided that the limited dialogue could easily be dubbed afterwards and removing a sound recordist would help speed up the shoot - I'd storyboarded a lot of shots and then we had to be moving as fast as possible, so not having a sound recordist was a gamble I was prepared to take.

Luckily my local film making friend Mark was up for helping out on the shoot filling in the assistant and stills photographer role, as well as a tiny acting role he'd discover on the day...

With the help of my friend Terry I was able to shoot some ridiculous test footage of myself brandishing a banana at him and running around the outside of my car parked near to our house. I'm sure the neighbours never batted an eyelid at such a sight.It still didn't give a complete insight into the capabilities of the camera and I wished I'd done more testing, in particular to see how close you could get to the camera before the 3D aspect becomes a blur, or whether zooming into the shot would allow close ups that would remain in 3D. I should have also had a look at editing this footage to give me some familiarity with the software which seemed to have come bundled in the camera as this would have saved some issues later.

With the usual cobs made the night before and a boot full of snacks and drinks for cast and crew we were ready on the 30th of May to commence shooting!

March / April

A failure to update each month again!  April has quickly flowed away so here I am two months later with an update on various things.

March was looking like a bit of a disappointing month – the fast food advertorial did not materialise and to date still hasn’t – my friend who owns the business has been too busy to script it and the person he had in mind to present the video is now unavailable, so he’s needing to find someone else.

I did chase another lead with the hope of doing a promotional video for a friend who runs a Volkswagon restoration firm but he felt a video wasn’t for him at this stage. I’ve also attended two Worthing based networking nights – one aimed at local businesses, one aimed at people who work from home, perhaps run their own business from home so are kinda isolated as a result – to try and drum up some business and make people aware of me. It’s still very early days on that front but it’s good to get out and meet these people in case they can help further down the line with the narrative film work.

My plan to have one sideline video a month is unfortunately not coming to fruition, but considering how busy I’ve been with other things it’s probably for the best.

On some of the films March continued to be a frustrating month – Knock Knock has still had no further filming done due to paid work commitments from my camera man – he can be offered a job the night before, or equally can have a job cancelled the night before – which has made any long term planning with respect to the tenants of the location pretty much impossible. Still, as the weather is now a bit better I’m hoping we can at least get the forest sequence shot…

(For some reason my updates remind me of a recurring line in Spike Milligan’s Transports Of Delight book that my dad had when I was a kid – “Meanwhile, in Ireland, nothing was happening.”)

Goodnight, Halloween has also had no new developments as such – I saw my make up/ FX guy around early April and he said that the costume should be ready for the end of April, so as I write this during the last week of April I’m hoping for some news on that front. Frustratingly I’ve seen some horror sites sharing a film which seems to use Skype as the basis for a horror film…I haven’t looked completely into it, but a bit gutted that Goodnight, Halloween could look a bit copycat by the time it is finished – annoying as it’s been 7 years in the making. Ironically I recently saw the third Hunger Games film and the dvd menu with the Pan Am/ Capital logo and the President addressing the viewer felt very close to a KRONA broadcast from the film…again, a shame if it’s perceived as copying what’s already out there.

I’ve also had a look at the footage as it was hoped we could cut the KRONA speech from the middle of the film and place it at the beginning to set the mood and to also avoid a sequence where the film grinds to a halt, but due to the layering of elements on the desktop footage this isn’t going to be possible. The elements are now somewhere on Nick’s (my animator/ designer) archived hard drives in Derby and as he is in South America it’s going to be impossible to reconstruct this properly, so it looks like the speech will have to remain in the middle of the film.

Funnily enough at a meeting regarding another project I’m involved in I did get talking about Goodnight, Halloween and explained the storyline etc and it was great to see a reaction from people who knew nothing about it – they seemed to find the story and the world really exciting, which has given me a new boost of confidence for when the piece is finally finished. I still very much believe in the potential of the world as a feature film and possible franchise in many media aspects….if only I could get the short done!

Following Mik’s departure from Pick-Ups I was luckily able to get the same sound designer on board who agreed to work on Goodnight, Halloween about 3 years ago back when I was hoping it was close to completion (wonder if the same can be said for the musician I was hoping to commission for Goodnight, Halloween who now seems to be getting a bit of Hollywood work so doubtful that avenue is still open to me, sadly) We seemed to have some confusion over some things in Dropbox folders, missing files and me completely and utterly misunderstanding how she wants a complete OMF file to start working from, nevermind issues with my Mac and it’s excruciatingly slow and temperamental internet connection when it comes to uploads and downloads. We lost some time on that but she sent me an initial version which still seemed to be using the camera sound as opposed to the sound recorded separately. I also had trouble getting back over to my cameraman to grade the film.

I have a bit of a ticking deadline as there’s a local film competition – South Shorts – which closes on the 1^st of May. Last year I submitted Stranded to the festival and got knocked back but this year I really think Pcik-Ups would play well being that a) it’s short  and b) it’s kinda funny. The sound designer thinks she can get a version of the sound to submit, even if it’s not THE final sound so it looks like it’s dependent on my cameraman’s workload this week. Eeek, it all seems very close to the wire as usual. There are also more festival deadlines popping up and there’s part of me that still wants to give this a chance at the festivals before unlocking it on the internet.

The “piece” for the cult actor has taken longer than expected but as I write this I have a dvd to post to him which is hopefully the final version.  When I last got back in touch with him he said he wanted to add a new voice over to the opening of the film to set the scene. As I now had my own sound recording equipment I offered to go back to his flat to record this. He seemed in fine spirits, grateful for my time and very kindly gave me a bottle of wine (his favourite) for all my work on this piece for him (it’s been waiting at home and will be opened as soon as he agrees the piece is complete.) We recorded the opening. I “fixed” his netbook (don’t ask) then got on my way for another arrangement…several hours later I get a text saying that he’s missed a line and is there any chance I can come back and do it? Luckily I was still in the vicinity but when I got there I realised that he’d already said it! While I was seeing him I did also mention an idea for a script I had for him in mind…I briefly mentioned the premise but couldn’t really tell how he felt about it…

With the additional narration I was able to send him another version with all other amendments he’d requested before Easter, but then I heard nothing again. Several weeks went by and still nothing. I chased up my contact for him who said he was apparently having issues with his Blackberry sending texts and would get in touch with me. Still nothing. Finally I called him and we went through the final final changes – one thing he wanted removing was the Faster Productions credit, as he was afraid it made it look as if some professional outfit were involved in it so that had to go. Some changes I could make, some due  to the way it was shot I couldn’t. I did the final amendments, realised there were some I still couldn’t make, waited for his response and finally exported out a hi-res version which took all night…but fingers crossed that’s the end of this project.

(As an aside to all of this, I was also slightly privy to some internet madness involving his Facebook page, the woman who runs it, political affiliation accusations, loss of earnings and as a result the involvement of police and lawyers – all very worrying and following the strange legal email I had  back in November with regard to working with him and the nature of the piece it has shifted my outlook on the internet.)

Well, it’s the end of this project, but the idea for the feature film still stayed with me. I also got this thought it my head that it seemed sad he wasn’t getting any work anymore, when similar actors of his era (Christopher Lee for example) have had a complete renaissance in their “twilight” years – for Lee, from the terrible Funny Man in the mid 90s to two of the biggest film franchises of all time – quite a comeback. But I knew I didn’t have the knowledge of the world, or the time, to write this script…

So I got in touch with Calie, a writer friend of my wife who we hadn’t seen for a few years – she’s also local, which is a good thing, and pitched the film to her – for some reason I thought she’d be the person for the job – she writes for a living in a press department and having read some of her blog pieces in the past she has a definite way with words. With the idea only ever existing in my head it seemed really good to get it written down and once it was out I was surprised how many aspects seemed to be there already.

Luckily Calie loved the idea and jumped straight in – within a few days I had a 35 page version of the film already. As I’d always planned it to be a feature I was worried that perhaps there wasn’t enough meat to justify a longer running time, but a few weeks later Calie came back with another draft, this time around 75 pages which felt very strong. It’s been strange being on the other side of the fence from a writing point of view, looking at issues, clarifications, suggestions so much so that I had 6 pages of notes for this draft, but it helped spark off other ideas and solutions and so far it’s been a really rewarding collaboration.

I was always worried a bit about the premise and any accusations which could befall the script, especially if being written by a man, so having Calie on board has legitimised certain aspects and she also came up with a brilliant solution to the ending, which in my typical fashion ended up being a bit of a dark finale (only way out – THEY ALL DIE) but she managed to turn something negative into a positive. I don’t know if it’s a shift too far, we’ll have to see when we offer it out to people to read.

She’s also written this absolutely amazing monologue piece that the actor tries to deliver in the opening – it was there in her 35 page draft and I was holding back the tears at how bloody fantastic it was – I could hear the cult actor saying it and most of all I really wanted to  capture him saying it. In the 75 page draft  there’s the full length monologue at the end and it’s just wonderful, I’m so desperate to make this film sharpish for him to deliver these lines, almost as a fuck you to the world at this fantastic talent that we’ve been missing out on for all these years. It feels like a swansong – I don’t want it to be his swansong but with his age and health I feel an urgency to get it made as soon as possible.

So assuming he does want to play the role, I’m mulling over crowdfunding – he’s got a fair few fans around the world and quite a lot on Facebook who seem particularly enthusiastic, who would hopefully support it and spread the word….including an odd celebrity fan….but when discussing the project with my cameraman he suggested I try and go the BFI/ Lottery funding route as it’s very much an art house drama – it’s a tempting route which assuming I can put a package together I will look at, but also worry their system could be very slow to work through, whereas crowdfunding could provide a much quicker route to screen.

So that’s all very exciting, but just as March was drawing to a close and it seemed that nothing much was happening on some things, I got an email. Ironically I’d just been thinking about the funding application that day, wondering when I would hear back and being realistic about the chances of a splatstick Muppet-esque  horror short being funded.

Amazingly. Adur and Worthing Trust to do want to fund the short, so I have got the £500 to cover the material costs for the puppets!

My first funded film!

Wow!

So it’s been action stations as I’m already aware of the end of year deadline, as well as my personal deadline to try and have it finished for the end of October for Halloween (I keep worrying I’ve bitten off more than I can chew with this and it’s most likely I will need those extra months to make it work)

Snore is off to a positive start already – I’ve got a few Worthing creative on board with the film, or if they aren’t they’re all keen to help out in whatever way they can. I’ve got Charlotte, a fantastic puppet maker who is on the prop making course at Northbrook College who is working on the designs and construction of the puppets and also has been a good sounding board to talk through the proposed way of making the film. I’ve also got Garry, a local illustrator from the Jumpstart Initiative, who has also been working on the designs for the puppets  - they’re already almost finalised and look fantastic, I can’t wait to see them “in the (foam) flesh” and bring them to life. Garry’s design for the landlord is so great (and sadly he’s so barely seen in the film) it’s set off ideas of a side film involving just the landlord and his lonely life…

We’re also ambitiously looking at shooting two different versions – the bloody, messy version that I hope will work at horror festivals, but we’ve also decided to see if we can do a family friendly version, as the violence isn’t really anything worse than a Tom and Jerry cartoon so it will be amazing if we manage to achieve that and broaden the audience.

I also had a plan of seeing if we can get a local(ish) Hammer scream queen on board to voice the female lead role – Garry has been designing the puppet with her look in mind in the hope that it will sway her to get involved – if she does that would be another strong element for approaching the horror crowd.

I’ve admittedly been procrastinationg about storyboarding the rest of the film – probably because the prospect of storyboarding all of this action seems so immense – but I finally made a start on it again the other night. It did make me wonder if I’d bitten off more than I can chew with this film, but as my wife hopefully pointed out, one change in a storyboard can take just a moment to actually film. Once the storyboard is complete I’ll be creating an animatic and using that as a bit of a pitch to the actress )oddly, as I started the storyboard prior to the designs being done the storyboard characters don’t resemble the film at all, there are even costume differences from the designs that I’m keen to write into the script)

(Admittedly my procrastinating didn’t help by avoiding storyboarding it by quickly creating an animatic for a martial arts trailer to be potentially shot on Worthing sea front for another project I’m sorta involved in…maybe shooting that one evening in May which might be a fun showreel piece too…also gives me chance to try out some new kit I’ve bought which includes a metre long slider.)

It looks like we may need to build a set to film in, which is worrying as we probably won’t have the material costs to cover that and I’ve no idea where we can get a central space for free where we can build this set, leave it standing and come back to shoot in it. That’s something I still need to look into. On the design front I also need to get the creature sorted quickly too – I had some great designs from the co-writer’s husband and my friend for the application process, but nothing else since, and despite pitching it out to Worthing creatives I’ve heard nothing back.

I do worry this is a stupidly ambitious film, with puppets, creatures, green screen, possible stop motion but I’m also really excited about seeing it come together on the screen and the collaboration process with Garry and Charlotte so far has been really fun. If only I could be paid to do something like this all day!

Funnily enough, even though there’s not been much in the way of shooting, looking back at these two months it looks like I’ve been massively busy after all.

January/ February

As ever, plans to keep this blog updated never seem to happen.

I was hoping to try and do a monthly update at the end of each month this year, but that obviously didn't happen at the end of January, so here I am at the start of March looking back on the first two months of the year.

The first two months of 2015 have been equally rewarding and frustrating - in January I shot a commission for Worthing artist Jessica Gill - I randomly met her before Christmas in the fabulous pop up bar "Bar Zaar" on Worthing seafront above Coast cafe and near to the East Beach Studios where Jess has her workshop and sells her creations.

She needed a video making for her crowdfunding campaign, which was to raise money to create an interactive art installation on Worthing seabed - in effect a circular table and bench which would be covered up by and revealed by the shifting tide. I loved the idea of something in the sea slowly revealing itself, the air of mystery it would give to anyone who wasn't aware what it was and why it was there....there are also some incredible bronze heads in Worthing town centre near the Laura Ashley shop, which I had heard were originally intended to be placed on the seabed and would have been revealed by the tide. As these bald heads are imposing and enigmatic it would have been incredible to see the tide slowly reveal the top of the head, then the brow, the eyes then the rest of the face...

So I offered to make this video for her at a reduced initial rate, as I wanted to do it to help get the ball rolling on doing promo/ corporate videos but especially for local businesses, artists etc. Luckily over Christmas thanks to my wife, family and friends putting some money in a pot (along with selling some vinyl on Discogs) I was able to buy a Canon 70D, a digital recorder, microphone and some other small bells and whistles with which to start this video.

After some discussions with other people, Jess decided that she wanted the video to be in the style of a news feature, like something you'd get on the local news - a bit of q and a, talking head, some manufacturing footage, shots of the seafront, maybe some artist impressions or CG mockups of what it would look like - which I was happy with, as it's a pretty formulaic template and so easy to follow - being my first production of this style and knowing I'd be the cameraman etc I wanted it to be as simple and clear as possible.

There was some back and forth over who was going to be asking her the questions and she wanted to shoot it at low tide, which meant we were restricted on when we could shoot. Eventually we shot on the Lido boardwalk above the beach, firstly shooting with David Sumner from the Worthing Society, who was to appear as a talking head offering the society's support, then we did Jess' answers, even though we had no official interviewer, so the plan was to shoot these at a later point.

Following this there was an hour spent at the manufacturing plant in Lymington, which felt quite fraught - I had no idea what to expect but there was some pouring of metal happening that I had to race to try and capture, which involved me fighting back and forth with aperture and ISO to get the footage, very run and gun and handheld...made me realise I needed a monopod for such circumstances! Nonetheless, I managed to get a good overview of aspects of the manufacturing process and towards the end I also got some footage of molten white hot metal being poured, which looked good, especially the fierce red glow when they first opened the small furnace. There was an interview with one of the heads of the company who Jess had been dealing with and then we were done.

Jess decided she wanted to reshoot her interview footage as she felt she'd missed some important details, so we attempted a rescheduled reshoot which again was difficult due to weather and tidal conditions. One particular day was scrapped but I still used the time to get some b-roll footage of the seafront with the tide out - even if it didn't all get used it felt like good footage to have, possibly for another short which I'd written over Christmas ("Early Birds") which I thought would have been my first test with the camera.

We then managed to do the interview on a very windy day, which had me concerned about the sound - it was also bitterly cold and uncomfortable by the end of the shoot, with my shaking fingers barely able to press the touch screen of the camera. Afterwards we scuttled off to the Lido cafe for a coffee before Alan Presencer, a local art expert, came to do a small talking head piece.

Plans for further talking heads of random members of the public were scrapped for the time being and I got to work editing it. The sound was an issue but with the help of Audacity I managed to remove some of the noise without it sounding too weird (noise removal software seems to create a strange autotune/ mechanical underwater effect if not fine tuned, which was beyond my ability but seemed to do the trick enough.)

I'd hoped to have used some of the 3D pdf which showed the cad drawings of the installation which were rotatable and zoomable - I'd hoped to use some of the seafront footage I'd got to show the installation from various viewpoints of the beach, but in the end I wasn't able to do that. I was able to crudely add the artist's impression of the table over a shot of the beach and I was pleased that the pier in the background of my shot pretty much lined up with the same angle of the pier in the artist's impression.

I used some royalty free music from www.bensounds.com which seemed to fit well. Jess had written "Decide Before The Tide' in the sand at the end of the last shoot - unplanned and I filmed this and it seemed to fit as the ending for the piece as a nice coda.

Jess was happy with the finished video and within a week it had received over 300 views on Youtube, so fingers crossed it helps her achieve her fundraising target. Myself and film making friend Mark Tew, who helped with the video, pitched to Jess a documentary covering the making of the installation should it go ahead, so if she gets the money that's another project for the future.

All in all, as my first commission as such (although I guess I did do a video for the RSPCA but that was over 8 years ago) I'm pleased with how it came out and Jess' positive response is a real confidence boost. The previous weekend I was back in the bar where I met Jess before Christmas, where Tom (another local artist and who runs the bar) gave his approval to the video, where he said there was a real art and eye to some of the footage, especially the manufacturing sequence, which again is a boost and suggests I have got the skills to do this! Phew!

Here's the finished video...

I was hoping to try and have such a project every month so by the end of the year I've built up a good showreel of a variety of work, but unsurprisingly February has come and gone swiftly with no such project. However, I have hopefully got a project lined up for March which is for a Brighton fast food company who want something bright, positive and very fast - their reference points are Man Vs Food and the Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives so it should be a definite contrast to the Decide Before The Tide video. There are a few other leads I need to instigate, but off of the back of the February Worthing Creative Entertainment Movement meeting there's a chance I maybe involved in something for the council in the middle of the year, which would be a fantastic opportunity to cover for this aspect of my film making.


Back on the usual film shenanigans, things have been slower. The post production on Pick-Ups hit several bumps - I'd been very very keen to try and get the film finished for the end of January, then that became apparent there wasn't much chance of it happening. I signed off on the score, but sadly Mik, the sound designer and composer, told me he had an issue with the dialogue we'd recorded and that there was a strange knocking sound across the files, as well as an issue with the fish tank in the background of the sound. I'd also re-recorded the sound for one small but important line of dialogue for the film (in fact THE last line of the film) but he said my recording sounded weird...guess it was in a different flat, different microphone and I don't have the skills to match it up.

As a result of all of this Mik bowed out as the sound designer (an ever recurring problem for me - hmm, perhaps I should look into that) so I quickly did my best to try and find a replacement. After a few dead ends of some composers getting in touch despite me clearly stating that the score was spoken for I've hopefully got a replacement on board, ironically a sound designer who I asked to be involved with Goodnight, Halloween about 3 years ago, but as that's never come to be finished we never got to work together. Fingers crossed with her now on board the film can get moving and, who knows, could be finished for the end of the month...

Goodnight, Halloween is still....somewhere....luckily my make up/ SFX artist is now up and running again after a car accident though it's taken some time for us to get together to discuss the project, but having now had that meeting I'm hoping he will be able to get together the full pumpkin head latex mask and costume for a mid April date ready for filming in hopefully May.

Knock Knock...well, I knew that January into February was a bit of a no go as my lead actress has fantastically been in a West End play in London (bizarrely with Katie Price's ex-husband in an X-Factor piss take) and I'm hoping to be getting back on with it next week, though worryingly news of access from the location has been a bit difficult to confirm...and after a blip with communication at the end of last year I'm very worried I'm running out of favour with the flatmates, despite my best efforts to keep them happy.

Lastly, I've submitted a film for a small grant - it's only £500, but with it I can pay for some much needed props and costumes that without would mean I couldn't do the short film as intended. It's a short splatstick horror called Snore, one which I've had rolling around my head for a few years and which I'd hoped local writer/ actor friend Simon Messingham was going to have a go at, but due to his own massive commitments it never happened. Luckily I met a local horror author and fanatic Gaby Robinson-Wright at a Worthing creatives exhibition in September, so she has come on board to co-write this and hopefully another short. At the very last minute I managed to get the submission form, a 2nd draft of the script, some creature concept art courtesy of Gaby's husband and my good friend Richard May and my ever rudimentary storyboard as a PDF which covers up to the appearance of the creature. I was hoping to submit a small animatic of the same sequence, but as I couldn't find anyone at short notice to do the voices of the characters I instead tried using some free speech synthesizer software which, unsurprisingly, sounded flat and very odd...and in all honesty the lack of time crashed the animatic idea too, but I will look at completing the storyboard and animatic ready for if the funding does come through and if it doesn't, well, the film is prepped and ready to go, I'd just need to find the cash to cover the sorta unique approach I've got for the film.

So the next month is potentially busy with hopefully more filming on Knock Knock and maybe the fast food video shoot towards the end of the month...and as I write this I've been waiting on footage rendering from my shoot with a cult actor from last August, a project which ground to a halt around November time and which I haven't been allowed to speak about...I wasn't entirely sure if the project was dead in the water but after re-communicating with the actor I'm hopefully having this project boxed off and finished in the coming weeks. Somewhere amongst this I want to also start writing the other short for myself and Gaby to work on - another horror/ comedy-ish film set in a barbers which I think could have some League Of Gentlemen type peculiarity to it.

RIP Steve Strange...soundtracking my childhood and forever more

I wouldn't normally post something like this on here. I'm barely posting anything as it is. But I am very sad about the news about Steve Strange, the singer and frontman for the band Visage. I have such scattered but fond memories of the music of Visage across my life and I've ended up in a bit of a reminisce.

I remember seeing Fade To Grey performed on a Saturday morning kids show, either performed or some part of the video shown....then my mum's hairdresser taped us the album which I remember listening to so much at a very young age. My brother got The Anvil on vinyl but I never really remembered that much about it.

I have a particular memory of listening to that first album so much especially in 1985 when I was in my 2nd year of juniors at primary school...lying on the lounge floor in the early winter dark, small lamp on top of the TV on, doing a topic book on COMPUTERS and recreating pictures of ZX Spectrum games (for some reason doing a wobbly hand drawn picture of the isometic game Fairlight comes to mind)

About a year later, in my odd little Cubs/ Scouts diary that I got the previous Christmas there was one entry which went on about making a compilation tape of singles and tracks and I was particularly buzzing from Night Train.

Probably around 86/ 87 my parents got me a Visage VHS video comp (think it was the Woolworths own brand of retail VHS, Channel 5 - I had Escape From New York on the same label) which I absolutely watched to death - The Steps felt like some strange abstract apocalyptic mix of the end of the world meets a fashion show...then there were tracks we'd never come across, the Pleasure Boys with The Wild One/ borderline gay bikers black and white video but such a fabulous pompous driving track...then basically a jolly for Steve Strange going to Egypt, dancing on top of pyramids and polishing a bald man's head in an airport (not a euphemism) before swanning off to Africa. Record companies in the 80s, eh? Money to burn...I must have watched this VHS endlessly - oddly, the opening of the video was all a bit mangled, so it was about 20 years later when Universal re-released the comp on DVD that I was able to see the opening 20 seconds clearly.

The band always remained a mystery - who was Rusty Egan? Was it the strange peroxide blonde woman in some of the early videos? It would only be after the rise of the internet that I would finally get the answers.

I finally got a proper vinyl copy of the debut album around this time and found the front cover, almost nostalgic 30s/ 40s with a cold modernism baffling and wondered whether it was the correct album. I also got a singles comp, which has the Pleasure Boys on it and the first time I heard In The Year 2525. Visage's version unsurprisingly is better than Ian Brown's.

With no idea of how many records they'd done, I'd ask my parents to get me any albums when they were in Nottingham and they got me Beat Boy from Selectadisc (where I would end up working nearly 10 years later) at a very knocked down price apparently. I listened to it so much.

By this time the band was gone and Steve Strange had started Strangelove - I regret missing out getting this on an ebay auction several years ago, as I think it was quite hard to get at the time....recall my dad tracked it down in Tower Records in London for my brother.

Then I guess it went quiet after that peak, I would go back to them over the years, aware that sometimes they sounded a bit naff and a bit dated, but strangely some aspects and tracks and have gone full circle and sound better now than they did in the 90s.

Around the time I was at Selectadisc I realised that the first album was pretty much a supergroup, with Barry Adamson and John McGeoch involved in it, which seemed to give it a bit more credibility to my mind.

After I really got into LCD Soundsystem I genuinely felt that Visage's debut album was the equivalent of that album but 20 years earlier. I still sorta stand by that, but I probably couldn't explain why. I still adore the bizarre Moon Over Moscow and Visa-Age is an abrasive cold electronic classic full of the romance of travel.

A couple of years ago I watched the online spat between Steve Strange and Rusty Egan (who was definitely not a peroxide blonde woman) over the ownership of the name, which all seemed very sad.

I'm so glad I got to see Visage play two years ago - they weren't amazing (ironically I thought the instrumentals were some of the best bits they did) but I was so glad I got to see them. I got to meet Steve briefly during one of the instrumentals when he ran over to the signing table and I got my records signed - some chap near to me said that Beat Boy was apparently rare now, ironic that it was bargain bin at Selectadisc. I gave Steve a copy of my short film The Crunch, as I'd had his Fade To Grey make up on a mood board for my friend and make up artist Debbie (also a big Visage fan) when we were designing the look of the film - Steve looked at it, puzzled, then sort of threw it back at me, until I told him it was a gift, at which point he seemed enamored and grateful for it, hugging it and being over the top grateful. I got some pictures with him, he ran back on stage with my film sticking out of his pocket for a completely knackered version of Fade To Grey - he was so under the weather the audience basically had to sing the song for him. It doesn't sound like a great show, but for me it was.

And if nothing else, Steve Strange definitely remains cool for pissing Midge Ure off for wanting to ride a camel through New York's 5th avenue to promote The Anvil...which ironically inspired the lyrics to a breathy tranny disco-go-go meets Spagna song my friend Jim and I recorded one night on my Mac.

RIP Steve.

Here's the photo of me, him and The Crunch dvd...

Tara, 'tino - looking back at Tarantino, the era of Pulp Fiction and beyond.

Over at the Strange Things Are Happening website, the ever reliable David Flint decided that reviewing a film as well known as Pulp Fiction is a pretty pointless exercise, so instead expressed his own thoughts and feelings about that Tarantino time (you can see David's post here - http://www.strangethingsarehappening.com/pulpfiction.html)

This got me thinking about my own feelings about Tarantino and this post is in no way a reposte to the Strange Things post, as for the most part I agree with a lot of what he says, but I thought I'd put my own thoughts down.

I was at college, 17 years old, when the Reservoir Dogs phenomenon hit the UK and it seemed that there was suddenly a new wave of film makers coming through in the UK and abroad. I'm probably mixing up timelines and release dates, but when reading magazines like The Dark Side and Shivers there was a new breed of no/ low budget film makers determined to make the films they wanted to see on UK soil - I'll paraphrase Chris Jones, who wrote the Guerilla Film Makers Handbook as "we wanted lots of muzzle flash." These were film makers, like myself, who had grown up on 80s VHS action and genre films and they were the sort of films we wanted to make ourselves. In The UK it still felt like the British film industry was a stuffy affair, making period films of the aristocracy, or at least that's how it felt to me...so seeing people like Richard Stanley make Hardware and Dust Devil, (despite it's problematic post production), Stephen Norris with Death Machine...hell, even the terrible Funny Man was inspiring that people were making these sort of films.

(I can't find a proper trailer for Funny Man so this will have to do, which actually makes it a lot more stylish and inventive looking than I remember it...)

So Reservoir Dogs came along with a bunch of style press support - the now defunct UK music magazine Select often had free posters of bands and movies and they must have had a freebie of the UK poster for Reservoir Dogs. I hung this up on the wall in our room at college and it stared down at us for over a year. We were sucked into this being the epitome of cool and cutting edge cinema.

Ironically, none of us had seen it.

After a brief cinema run Reservoir Dogs got caught in a censorship hole regarding its video release - there seemed to be a wave of hyper violent films which the BBFC in the UK had a problem with - Man Bites Dog, Henry'Portrait Of A Serial Killer, Bad Boy Bubby...in my head they all seem to exist at the same time as sort of forbidden fruit that were difficult to see, at least uncut (though Man Bites Dog probably snuck through as it was a foreign language film, though the UK artwork had to be censored, losing a baby's dummy ricocheting from the gun and blood blast.)

Much that I'd read of midnight movies and films running for years in New York etc, that didn't happen in lowly north Notts - the Mansfield Cannon was unlikely to do such a thing and so the only way to get hold of the film was through pirate video channels. Eventually a friend of a friend, or something like that, managed to procure us a copy and several of us made our own copy to keep.

Having seen clips of the film on various film and cultural shows, read so much about it I finally got to see it.

In all honesty, I found it a bit boring.

I'm pretty sure as a result I've only ever seen it through once or twice.

By this point I think I'd seen John Woo's The Killer and Hard Boiled (two other films the style press had picked up on and ran with, making Chow Yun Fat instantly iconic) and although I know Reservoir Dogs wasn't an action film this may have played a part. No doubt my expectations were ramped up in anticipation of finally seeing this film and possibly nothing could have lived up to them. I guess it just wasn't the film I was expecting it to be.

I can pick one very early point where somehow the film wasn't delivering what it was in my head - the opening titles. Having stared at that poster for a long time, big dramatic type and a splatter of blood beneath it I was expecting something similarly hard hitting. Instead I got a slow motion walk of the robbers, with a smokey yellow Times New Roman font rolling up the words RESERVOIR DOGS.

This might seem ridiculous, that the marketing should reflect the font and design of the film, but I genuinely thought it would be reflective of the style of the film.

(On an aside, that UK poster is actually a bit cack when you look at it in retrospect, like a 6th form project with the terrible shadowing on the text. Even at the time I thought some of the cutting and pasting of the characters was a bit rubbish, Tim Roth's character's stance in particularly looks goofish rather than cool. I would say that the American screenprint type poster is much better and sells a much cooler image.)

What else can I say about it? Harvey Kietel duel hand guns blasting the police in their car still packed a punch, but perhaps I presumed that a lot of the film would be like that - I knew upfront it didn't show the heist (which seemed to be a point many articles made about the film) but perhaps I wasn't expecting so much of the film to be backstory. By the time the film got to Tim Roth's back story I felt quite bored, that it was really dull. There had also been many articles about "Who shot Nice Guy Eddie?" that, in the absence of a film to watch, I'd read but when it came to the actual stand off it seemed to be over very quickly, probably realistic but felt somewhat ironically anticlimatic. Perhaps I was expecting more of a Leone type stand off, as opposed to a load of bickering being instantly cut short.

No doubt my limited film knowledge as a teenager, expecting visceral shallow thrills, possibly didn't grasp some of these film making choices, but in the end the film was a disappointment to me. I don't say that to appear cool now, it was how I felt.

Looking back I don't think it was a pretence I kept up about my thoughts about the film, perhaps more that I deluded and lied to myself that I thought it was a great film and that I did love it and SHUT UP LUTHER AND SHUT UP ABOUT IT BEING A BIT BORING...as it felt like it was "our" film and "our" cinema I didn't want to feel let down by it, perhaps there was some sort of self inflicted peer pressure, possibly out of not wanting to admit that it didn't live up to my expectations after all the anticipation.

Timelines, releases and events all merge here but following Reservoir Dogs we had True Romance and Natural Born Killers - I don't recall when or how I got to see these films, I know NBF was another film which suffered with delays with the BBFC so we went on any snippets we could get - magazine articles, soundtracks, posters, clips on film shows...the pre internet world sounds like such a drag at times...for some reason I was snobbish about Natural Born Killers, perhaps I think critically it seemed divided, I'm not sure if part of me had a problem that it wasn't Tarantino directing it, but I didn't have a problem with True Romance. True Romance no doubt endeared itself to me and probably a similar generation with a lead character who works in a comic shop (my own particular favourite hang out) and loved martial arts films (though I'd never seen or heard of Sonny Chiba, it was all Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee round our parts) - to have someone who seemed so like "us" on screen was a massive deal, even though films and comics was as far as it went - we didn't get prostitutes, guns, drugs or dodgy dealers in my life (though there were some dodgy white dreadlocks) nor was there a smidgen of romance, true or otherwise.

Ironically, when I saw eventually saw Natural Born Killers many years later I really admired all the fourth wall stuff (the Rodney Dangerfield sit com for example) and quite liked it, it was what I thought brave and dynamic film making should look like. Arguably it's like a student film too, but perhaps it's the style I expected Reservoir Dogs to have. (When it comes to the documentary approach in the latter half of the film it reminded me of a script I was working on where much of it was TV news crew footage to justify the shaky cam look, so I felt some sort of affinity with Tarantino in terms of thinking how you could justify a low budget documentary look.)

The other thing which endeared me to Tarantino (the man) was that he'd visited Nottingham with Reservoir Dogs as part of the Broadway Cinema's old Shots In The Dark crime film festival. I read a great interview with him in John Martin's wonderful Giallo Pages fanzine - here was a director talking about his love of Italian genre cinema, about Fulci, about Castellari, all these film makers I'd come to love and HE LOVED THEM TOO! All the other directors I'd read about never spoke about these people, most likely would not have even been aware of them, but here was Tarantino talking about them, which reinforced the idea that HE WAS ONE OF US. Of course, his story of video shop clerk to lauded film maker was also an inspirational story for someone like myself...so factors like these helped to bury my negative feelings about Reservoir Dogs but increase my love for the man.

In the lead up to Pulp Fiction I caught a TV show, may have been a Culture Show special on BBC2 all about Tarantino, which offered some glimpses of Pulp Fiction, with its  bigger budget ($8 million!!! A VERITABLE FORTUNE!) and showed the Jack Rabbit Slims set, which I'm sure I was amazed at how it seemed to be mostly flats giving the impression of the space. I think it also had some of the footage from his Sundance workshop video, which showed a rough improv/ work in progress of Reservoir Dogs, which didn't seem to resemble anything in the finished film. I remember feeling a bit disappointed about seeing this, somehow it took the tarnish off the media story of video clerk writes script and becomes a star, when in fact he'd got into one of Sundance's workshops...somehow doesn't seem as instant.

Nonetheless, by the time Pulp Fiction hit I was so psyched for it and I loved it, I still recall that initial blast of Link Wray as the screen filled with yellow and the film's logo slowly fell back. Finally it seemed to be delivering on what I expected from Reservoir Dogs, that the marketing and the film and everything were all in synch. I just remember being enthralled by it, hanging out with the characters, riding with the twists and turns of the storylines, the playful time shifting of John Travolta's character dying but still being there for the finale. Fabulous fun.

I even went to see it again at the cinema, which was a rare thing for me.

Like many other people of my age, I had the soundtrack, I had the poster on the wall and when it was available to buy on VHS I owned a copy too, though oddly and tellingly I really don't know if I watched it more than once on video.

(On an aside I wonder if a UK filmic equivalent for this hype and culture plough is Trainspotting, another film where everyone was caught up in the buzz for it.)

As touched on in the Strange Things blog post, cinema changed in the wake of Tarantino's quartet of Dogs, Romance, Killers and Fiction. Many imitators, for better or worse, were following in the wake. Unsurprisingly everyone at college wanted to make gangster films, which involved shades, shirts and ties. Cool gangster culture became prevalent. Cinema seemed that it was becoming more self aware, characters could and would reference real life pop culture, which all felt fun and cute...initially...but then would begin to grate as the imitators began to pile up.

(On another aside, I wonder if the result of all of this real life awareness and references tarnishes the "purity" of cinema sometimes existing in its own world - Prometheus amongst many faults, felt sullied further to me by the Lawrence Of Arabia footage, which planted this film and therefore by association Alien and Aliens in OUR world, which feels like it removes the uniqueness or mystique somewhat, I like that these films exist in a vacuum with no cultural references. The less said about Stephen Stills and his squeezebox the better...)

Initially the shared universe of his characters felt to me at the time something really fresh and reflected the crossover world of comic books - back then the idea of a Superman Vs Batman film, or 20th Century Fox just getting on with adapting the Aliens Vs Predator comic book was something we wanted to happen and couldn't understand why it couldn't happen, so for Tarantino to create his own world with this, even if it was a background element, was a cool little gimmick to me. It was something which I didn't pull off in my own post college relationship films but sorta existed in my head.

Looking back at some aspects of Pulp Fiction, I find the "hanging out" with characters amusing in that all those screenplay books you can read usually say that all dialogue should move the story on, when I'm not sure if some of the dialogue between Travolta and Jackson falls under that "rule." Is this rule breaking from Tarantino, or indulgent? Possibly the latter, if subsequent films are anything to go by.

In retrospect I think Travolta comes across as a bit of a dweeb, with his slicked back almost mullet-esque hair, it's weird how he was held up as being iconically cool. I guess I've never been a fan of Travolta and find him equally dorkish in Grease when he's supposed to be badass hot rodder. Maybe it's because he's always reminded me of Andrew Cook, a kid from childhood who seemed a bit goofy too.

But as cinema changed, so did I. Perhaps it was post gangster culture fatigue, but by the time Jackie Brown had appeared my love for Tarantino was waning. I really didn't like Jackie Brown. I found it completely over long and indulgent - yes, it's all very clever that you can show the money exchange from several different view points, but I questioned whether that was to the detriment of the film. I had a real problem with the casting - it felt like Samuel Jackson had been typecast into being the attitude big mouth and felt I'd seen it before, Robert De Niro didn't seem to add anything memorable...what I think disappointed me most about the casting was that I presumed Tarantino was a big enough name to sell a film regardless of casting (I'm sure the studios and execs didn't agree) so was hoping he would almost put his money where his mouth was and fill the film with all those straight to video or forgotten actors that he used to love. I genuinely think that Pam Grier and especially Robert Forster are the best things about the film, Forster in particular gave a warm, sympathetic performance (maybe my love for him was skewed by having him on my bedroom wall for 10 years as it was covered in Black Hole wallpaper as a kid....)

References which once seemed cute now seemed a bit naff, or tiresome, as if there wasn't anything original Tarantino had to say, perhaps all he was every doing was riffing on things which had gone before, finding his own interpretation of something else, but never really saying or creating anything truly new. I found the praise for the opening sequence in Jackie Brown baffling - they were praising Tarantino for using a song from another film, written especially for that film, for the opening of his own film? Watching Pam Grier on a travelator while Across 110th Street played out didn't seem particularly iconic to me, just utterly vacuous.

Over the years whenever I brought up my lack of love for Jackie Brown with some people they thought I was crazy, that it was a great film and I was missing the point. I guess I'd "matured" enough to finally hold my own opinion on a film without feeling the need to say I loved a film because others did. It only took about 21 years.

As we slip through the rest of Tarantino's catalogue, Kill Bill was a film I finally got around to seeing. I remember very little about it, I certainly found the first part a fun thrill ride, but nothing sticks in my mind about it...I came to it a little later than my friends who were already swept up in the hype and excitement about the film. Again, the reference points had soured so much I now found his magpie referencing grating - stealing Bruce Lee's iconic yellow jump suit from Game Of Death, instacool, just add water and stir - why couldn't Tarantino come up with his own jumpsuit design, something that would create a new filmic icon, instead of riffing on the past?

As for Kill Bill pt 2, I recall other people really disliking it, I didn't mind it, but I can remember barely anything about the film. This probably speaks volumes about how much love I had for Tarantino and his films by this point. Whenever I saw an interview with him I'd just find him really annoying.

I never saw Deathproof - I saw Planet Of Terror, which I enjoyed, but disappointed in a way as it seemed too big, too lavish, too epic for the style of film it was trying to imitate. I've never seen Inglourious Basterds or whichever spelling he gave it...and I've no interest in seeing Django Unchained.

As a big fan of Enzo G Castellari and the original film I'd been following Tarantino's plan to remake the I.G for years. I guess what I find most annoying about this all is that he seemed to just steal a pretty raucous title and discard pretty much everything else of the original film and, although the original did get a dvd release cashing in on the Tarantino film, I can't imagine it got that much notice, or whether the majority of mainstream reviews felt it was even necessary to point out that it was a "remake" of an obscure Italian WW2 action film. I very much doubt Tarantino's film has such marvellous train carnage achieved on a shoe string budget with miniatures and inventive camera angles.

Similarly, with Django I find it frustrating that he has now "stolen" Django from Italian genre cinema and for the mass market he will now be synonymous with the name, not a classic spaghetti western that spawned endless cash in sequels, nor Franco Nero.

I probably shouldn't get so wound up by his theft of Italian genre cinema - in theory his films should have helped promote them more to the masses but I guess for the most part it starts and stops with his own films, with very few people wanting to look at the films he is referencing/ stealing from.

A strange I thing I find, looking back that Pulp Fiction is 20 years old, is that the iconography of Travolta and Jackson continues to permeate our culture as a shorthand for "cool" - I've seen Virgin Media vans with quotes and artwork referencing the film, HMV's rolling animations in their shop windows use a simplified cartoon image of Travolta and Jackson - and I find this all a bit sad. Has cinema really not produced anything equally iconic in the last 20 years? I'm sure the people now in charge of creative decisions in these places are similar people of my generation, swept up in the Tarantino wave, possibly still hold them in high regard, know with home broadband and cable they're selling to a demographic who grew up with Pulp Fiction, recognise it, still think it's cool....when to me it now seems a bit...tacky...and what would the equivalent have been in 1994, using Godfather II or Blazing Saddles to sell Playstations?

I wonder if myself and the whole Tarantino "fad" aren't symptomatic of some sort of...juvenilia (I don't think it's a word, but it might sum it up) - not to belittle my teenage self, but just looking at it in a bit of the cold light of day - was it a shallow bit of teenage love, something I won't forget, but in the end it was no, well, true romance?

So, despite my initial love and rush for Pulp Fiction, I don't feel any desire to sit and watch the film again. The prospect of a 20th anniversary boxset full of, well, tat, in my opinion, isn't very appealing. 

But to be a little bit fairer to Tarantino, many directors I loved at that time no longer mean much to me - as a huge Woody Allen fan, I think the last film of his I saw was Sweet and Lowdown and bar an odd title I couldn't tell you much about his work from the last 15 years. Equally with Scorsese, since Casino I'm not sure if I've seen anything beyond Hugo and his Infernal Affairs remake (so memorable I've forgotten the name, well, I'll never forget Nicholson blowing a load of coke on an ass, or did I imagine that?)

I don't think my diminished love for them are signs of maturity, more growing old, "passions" fading as time passes, not feeling obliged or compelled to keep up with a filmmaker that once meant something to you and eventually finding that other random obscure films and filmmakers currently provide a bigger thrill than your old heroes ever could with something new.

Hammer Time - Revisiting Hammer's (Horror Of) Dracula

I could mention that I haven't written anything to my blog for a year again. After not writing anything to it for a year again.

I've decided the best thing to do is just ignore that fact and carry on.

For some reason a few weeks ago I watched the Hammer Horror original version of Dracula (or Horror Of Dracula as it is in the U.S.) - the BBC had been running a Gothic season, I saw it was available to view on the iPlayer in HD and decided to have a watch.

I'll admit my knowledge of Hammer film is very very scant, more that I think by the time I was getting into horror they weren't showing them as often late night on TV anymore, or I perceived them as very dated.

As a teenager I picked up a book, one of those "Best 50 Horror film" type things - I've no idea who wrote it, or where my copy of it is now, I'm pretty sure I probably picked it up from the old Virgin Megastore or Another World in Nottingham. This particular book chose one horror film from each year from around the mid 50s up until around the late 80s - there was definitely some Hammer in there with their adaptations of Dracula and Frankenstein, perhaps Plague Of Zombies, quite a bit of Ken Russell with Lair of the White Worm taking the spot from '88 or whenever that was released. So in my typical unquestioning teenage manner I presumed that these were GREAT horror films.

But both the Hammer Dracula and Frankenstein films were barren and completely lacking in thrills to me, so I couldn't quite see why they were seen as so great and that's probably tarnished my view of Hammer for all these years.

I have to also admit that I don't know the source material that well - I've never read Dracula, I recently went to see a fun theatre performance of it in Worthing which I think was quite authentic in covering a lot of the aspects - Renfield and the asylum etc. Many years ago I did see the Francis Ford Coppola adaptation, but perhaps sullied by The Dark Side's dismissal of it being "Mills and Boon horror" I had huffily low expectations of it. I think I found it a bit of a confusing mess, I didn't understand Tom Waits as Renfield, I didn't understand the transformations of Dracula...I just didn't get it.

But with that recent theatre production in my mind, the Hammer one feels like an abridged, simplified cut to the chase adaptation, which really took me by surprise. It seems to move swiftly along, bumping off Harker and taking quite a few liberties with it all. I was also quite shocked by the first stake seen hammering into a body - I guess in my head I thought the film was pretty bloodless, but the first bleeding stake came as quite a shock, Harker's actions seemed genuinely shocking as he desperately hammered away - it just felt much more visceral then I saw it as a teenager.

I undoubtedly didn't appreciate Peter Cushing's performance as Van Helsing as a teenager, but watching it with adult eyes it was a genuine delight to watch. He seems really on the cusp on madness, a real twinkle in his performance, a joy and determination to complete the task of Dracula's annihilation. Again, this took me by surprise, he seemed so spritely and it didn't feel dry in the slightest.

Much has been made that Hammer were the ones were brought the erotic to Dracula with Christopher Lee's seductive charms and again, with adult eyes, I can see why many feel that way. There's a sexual implication to so much of his performance which is charming and dashing, which makes his appeal to the women so believable. There was also a great moment where Mina returns home having gone missing overnight and looks so knocked for six from a night of pleasure that it's like she's just been done the walk of shame home. (After watching the film I read on imdb that Terence Fisher actually told the actress to pretend she's had the best sex all night long - she certainly gives that idea!)

The most shocking moment had to be the finale - I'd seen clips of it many times over the years, of Peter Cushing pulling the drapes and trapping Dracula between two beams of sunlight - but I hadn't seen the build up, the pursuit, the chase...again with Cushing's spritelyness, bounding on to the table, jumping up at the drapes to pull them down. It was exciting to watch, though nowadays it would have probably been drawn out much longer - here it felt very quick, abrupt but action packed. Then the meltdown and destruction of Dracula happens - first his foot melts away, nothing too graphic but the implication still seemed quite grisly to me now, then his hand similarly peeling apart....but then I watched as Dracula clawed his own flesh off his with shriveled hands until he turned to dust which really had my eyes wide open. I certainly didn't remember anything as primitively graphic as that as a teenager, it's like the flesh peeling sequence from Poltergeist 25 years earlier (which ironically also looks primitive now in the modern light.)

Here's the sequence...

For once my memory wasn't deceiving me - the graphic flesh peeling wasn't in the version I would have seen as a teenager as this was a sequence previously thought lost but only just restored in 2012. But with this sequence, along with an admiration for the performances from Cushing and Lee, gave me a new appreciation on this film and why it holds such a strong reputation. It may take big liberties with the source material, but it holds up as a great 50s horror film.

I'm curious to see how other Hammer films hold up now looking at them from an adult - I never managed to get through Plague Of The Zombies, struggling with the Cornish tin mine setting especially being so used to and fond of zombies in Romero and Fulci films, but I'd like to check that out. I'd like to see some of the other Frankenstein and Dracula entries...however, I've got an indelible memory of seeing Dennis Waterman in period authentic red briefs dashing out of bed from Scars Of Dracula, which I can't imagine any passing of time has made any more appealing.

When Wrong Is Right

As I'm sure most people know, film trailers are peculiar beasts. With skillful editing and a great piece of music they can make the dullest film look exciting. The trailer mash phenomenon of a few years ago showed how a well known film can be turned on its head into something it isn't. So it's easy to see how a bad trailer can give a very wrong impression of a film which really deserves another chance.

My case in point is Speed Racer.

I saw the trailer for Speed Racer in the cinema and thought it looked like one of the worst films ever made, designed as a video game as movie for people with attention deficit disorder. I had found the Wachowski Brother's Matrix sequels increasingly horrid, and in particular the 3rd film was just awful. So seeing their name emblazoned across this film didn't warm me to it at all.

Naturally I avoided the film and was not surprised upon hearing the film tanked.

Then a month or so ago I came across a topic about the film on a forum that I visit, where many people felt the film had much more going for it. One person felt it was a love letter to the history of animation. I'm always curious about films which are reviled upon release but later find an audience of diehard fans (which I'm sure goes back to watching Moviedrome so much as a teenager) who say a film is unfairly tarnished with a bad reputation - The Postman is one such film I'm still curious to see in that regard.

So I finally picked up Speed Racer and I thought it was just wonderful. Eye melting visuals, a fun playful look and design and, at times, thrilling. Not what I was expecting at all.

I'm not sure that I buy into the history of animation, but there are several moments which were so playful that I wouldn't have expected

Oiled the hinges, oiled the machine...an aftermath of Creak

Creak picture test at the Kino-Klubb screening in Nottingham

Probably the best thing to come out of the last two years has been the response to "Creak." After putting so much heart and soul and other cliches into "The Crunch" and "Stranded", for them to fail to gain any screenings at any festival worldwide, the "instant" success of "Creak" was the sort of positive response that I needed to give me a little more faith and conviction to carry on film making.

After submitting it to a countless amount of horror blogs, I would say 90% of the response back was positive, with most people getting what I set out to do - tell a simple story, with as little fussiness as possible and, hopefully, give you a jolt and a little sense of creeping dread along the way. It was very gratifying that almost every week I would be getting some blog mention or review and for once felt like some people were actually checking out my films.

This response did seem to confirm my plans to do further horror shorts with similar running times was definitely the best place for me to go. I'd always had concerns that the 20 minute running times for "The Crunch" and "Stranded" put people off -that they couldn't find the time to fit that in to their day - but a quick 5 minute film while the kettle boils, well, that can find a home. Although I didn't have any joy with the few horror festivals I submitted "Creak" to that didn't concern me - it was continuing to receive views every week online - and so my decision not to hold it back for a year or so for festival submissions seemed the correct decision. Again, that instant response to it, rather than a year of plodding submissions and morale sapping rejections, was something that I desperately needed at this point.

Not all the responses back were positive, even from some friends. I had a particular voracious diatribe with a detailed breakdown of exactly what was fucking wrong with "Creak", my approach, my promotion of the film, my bullshit shrugging of the shoulders with the "Disposable Screams" moniker and my attitude towards my film making. Reading this was, to me, the written equivalent of experiencing this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkcKQmr7kRc

Oh well. Can't please them all.

I did have the pleasure of a big screen showing of the film in Nottingham, courtesy of my good friend Brian Mutton, who in the past two years has been running a rather great cult film experience night under the Kino-Klubb name. So "Creak" got a big screen showing at Screen 22, the country's smallest cinema (I believe) with just 22 seats. "Creak" was shown before a screening of Lucio Fulci's "The Beyond", a film very dear to me and I also got to write an essay about the film to go in the little book of Eibon which was given out to the viewers. 

(You can read my essay about The Beyond here: http://kino-klubb.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/beyond-beyond.html)

Although the proper cinema sound system did show up the failings of the sound design of the film, Paul Sharman's score sounded fabulous cranked up loud and the actual picture image stood up really well - it looked really sharp. It was a great experience to have it shown in my home city and I got to talk about the making of the film beforehand...though I think my patter seemed to go down like a lead balloon with the audience. Oh well.

One of the most positive long term things to come from "Creak" is that it has resulted (almost) in me having a benefactor. My entrepreneurial friend, who came to the "Creak" premiere, called me the next day saying he wanted to discuss with me the prospect of investing in me and my films. What followed from this was a frustrating 6 month delay due to business shenanigans getting in the way before we actually got to sit down and chat, with the end result for now being that he will, within reason, cover the below the line costs of my films. Annoyingly after this incredibly positive news it's taken me 18 sodding months to get some more films shot and nothing finished since this deal was laid on the table, but the long term benefit is that I know there is someone wanting to invest in me, help me seriously finance something (possibly of a feature length nature too) and have a long term plan with me.

So "Creak" resulted in some instant ego massaging and some potential long term gain of an iron in the fire. I'll go with that for now.

Re-opening the shop

You know that shop in town, the one you walk past and wonder what's happened - why is it never open anymore? Is it open but I just keep missing the odd hours it's open? Or have the owners died and the property hasn't been claimed by anyone? There's a second hand bookshop in Brighton that's run by a very doddery old couple and seemed to be closed across the summer for a very long time, with a handwritten note saying they'd be closed for a few days...and I presumed that something had happened to one of them...

It feels like my blog has become one of those shops. But that egotistically assumes anyone is walking by this end of the street and noticing nothing happening here, which I very much doubt. More a dusty dirty doorway to something forgotten.

It's felt a touch embarrassing over the last year or so when I've continue to submit and share my work to various people and places, with a link to the blog "if they want to know more" and at the back of my head I know that the last entry is very close to two years ago now.

That's not to say I haven't been doing anything, more that the blog has been neglected due to a lack of time and priority...and if I did feel like writing something, it wasn't really for the blog - there were more important things to be trying to write.

So here I am now, washing down the windows, blowing the dust from the counter...especially as there are hopefully new film making stories to share.