It’s time to take your filmmaking game to the next level… After being asked what fells like 1,000 times, I am bringing the Guerilla Filmmakers Masterclass back. And with an eye watering deal for the two day rollercoaster that will arm you in your heart, mind and soul to make your movie NOW! I used […]
Ahead of the Impact50 re-launch on Dec 18th (and you will likely see lots up changes going on across the site right now), I thought I would share the video of the whole show for The Impact50 Awards at the British Screenwriters Awards 2018. It really was a night to remember and a very special […]
Next week we release the short film Never Too Late in time for Christmas. It’s a wonderful little festive gem than explores the need for physio over the colder seasonal months, especially for the older people in our lives. The story evolved from the idea, what would happen if Father Christmas needed physiotherapy? And we […]
by Brian Barnes As seriously independent micro-budget filmmakers we need an edge. Any little thing that will make our projects more likely to survive and thrive in the big, cruel marketplace that is feature film distribution. In pursuit of that edge, before making my first feature film, I did my due diligence and performed as […]
I love my job. I’m a semi-abstract expressionist artist. That means that I create paintings and illustrations that don’t look like reality, but you can kind of tell what it is. I love to create a painting for someone that expresses something they didn’t feel able to express for themselves. It’s a wonderful moment when […]
Last night the team behind Meet The Nativity took the stage to accept their award for their hard work in making the time travelling Christmas rom-com that went viral last Christmas. The four part webisode series took the offbeat premise of ‘what would happen if you discovered the actual first century nativity taking place the […]
Twenty-Five year television veteran Frank Spotnitz is a big believer in luck. He was lucky that his parents never supervised their son’s voracious and indiscriminate consumption of 60s and 70s television, allowing him to build up a vast catalogue of narrative strategies in his mind. He was lucky that Chris Carter hired him for his […]
Guest post by Jude Poyer, images by Tom Cheshire Playing to your strengths and embracing your limitations helps get your film made, and making it fun. My name is Jude Poyer, I’m a stunt coordinator and action designer from London, England, and I’m an action movie addict. Less than two weeks ago, before we’d even […]
Last Friday we shot the opening scene of The Impact, written by Joe Eszterhas and starring Olivia Williams. We shot in an extraordinary White House Oval Office reconstruction in Norfolk at RAF Coltishall in the sets owned by October Films. We are SOOOO excited to share this short film about the shoot with Olivia Williams, […]
The Impact50 Trailer Has Been Launched… Get involved and make your micro-budget apocalyptic short. Watch the trailer here for the crowd created feature film project #Impact50, about what would happen in the last few hours of humanity before an asteroid impact. And if you are a filmmaker, there is still plenty of time for you […]
Guest post by Andrew McGee Who’d have thought making a film set in space would be so tricky? The Watchers was shot in late 2016, and through the hard work of an amazing cast and crew, the pre-production and shoot itself went extremely smoothly (even with my own laptop almost falling off the set, see below). […]
https://youtu.be/ykZjEfWQtkg I met filmmaker Miklas Manneke at the Tampere Film Festival a few years ago and he recently shared this video he has shot on his travels. I asked him what he learned making it… (and check out his impressive Instagram too) Why did you choose to do this? This is a passion project that […]
Last week I directed an extraordinarily ambitious short drama for a charity. You will hear more about it in the Winter as it’s a Christmas family film. Stupidly, on this project we broke all the long established and sensible rules. It had kids. Lots of kids. It had a story spanning five decades. It had […]
Nothing bothers me more in a film than a REALLY bad photo prop – you know where they show you a photo from wayback when, and it’s a terribly photoshopped image. Fail! I have made several films now with historical photo props, some of which are featured ‘hero’ props on which plot revelations revolve… And […]
I recently saw a staggering short teaser for a sci-fi epic called KIDDO and made on a shoestring with tons of love. I asked the filmmaker Tito Fernandes more about why and how he went about it. Q – Why did you choose to make this epic sci-fi short? Tito – First of all I […]
Actors are extraordinary and courageous. I just spent a day casting a film we are making in a few weeks time and saw scores of for several parts. I will be posting more on this next week but I wanted to share two insights that struck me, one about writing and directing, the second about […]
In just over 100 days, the Impact50 filmmaking challenge will close. The closing date is April 30th at midnight UK time. Can you make a short film from a two page script about the end of the world? If so, invest a weekend and become part of the Impact50 feature film challenge. Teams from around […]
By Brian Barnes I have a confession to make. I’m a terrible producer. You’d think that after making films day in and day out since 1987 I’d have learnt the one key skill a producer needs. But, no – still no further along that road. That key skill? Raising money. That means that, as a […]
I had worked with director Chris Jones previously and he called and asked if I was available and explained that there would be four days of principal photography with an additional pickup day later in the process. We would finish editing an episode a week, then grading and mixing later in the week for our […]
This short is a FANTASTIC example of what makes a successful film and filmmaking team. Emma is a creepy 15-second horror film, created by director Daniel Limmer of Nemada Film Productions that won first place in the international 15 Second Horror Film Challenge. What can we learn from this short? Got to be in it […]
I asked DP Don McVey to share how he lit the recent series of short Xmas films that I directed – essentially recreating both the first century nativity as well as a modern day Xmas, all on a micro budget. Here’s what he just posted for us… I was recently DP on a series of […]
Episode three of our Xmas Nativity film that we made for Speak Life has just landed. You can watch it above. Onwards and upwards! Chris Jones My movies www.LivingSpiritGroup.com My Facebook www.Facebook.com/ChrisJonesFilmmaker My Twitter @LivingSpiritPix Sign up to my mailing list for updates on events, books and free film making tools
Impact50 is the latest feature film project from Create50 whose last film, 50 Kisses brought together several thousand creatives, writers, actors and filmmakers globally, the feature film ending up on the big screen and also entering the Guinness Book of records! How does it work? We have 50 cracking scripts, all around two pages long. […]
Last week we premiered the first of four Xmas films we made, that film, episode one, is about to sail past 200k views. Here for your pleasure is Episode Two, The Girlfriend. Expect a blog soon by DP Don McVey about how we created the Nativity in the most extraordinary of limited conditions. Onwards and […]
Over the last few weeks we have been making a Christmas film, commissioned and funded by Speak Life. It’s kind of what would happen if Meet The Parents bumped up against actual first century Nativity, set in Richard Curtis World of London. Episode one just went live (watch on this page) and has at this […]
