I am a great believer in what you give, comes back to you. But that is often in ways that you don’t expect. A friend of mine just, last weekend actually, swam the English Channel. Each year about 800 people manage to climb Everest, but only 200 manage to conquer the Channel. Lynn is one […]
Something I have been very fortunate to have in my life is a group of experienced and passionate film maker friends. I cannot stress how vital this is both to the execution of my own personal ambitions as a film maker, but also on a nitty gritty story development level. I just had a short […]
Things are going very well here at Living Spirit. We are just four weeks away from the shoot for ‘Gone Fishing’, (shooting on 2 perf 35mm), and now up in glorious Scotland. We are still a little short of cash, so if you want to contribute, you can get more information here… If you are […]
I am getting very close to locking the storyboards now. I will be done by tomorrow. If you want to see how some of them look, I have put a few up on our site here. I will be pleased to get this behind me as it’s eaten up a whole load of time – […]
I have spent the whole day on Storyboarding again – not working with Gabrielle this time, but planning the shots and ordering them so that next time we meet, I am clear about every single shot and how it will cut with each shot on either side. I am used to doing a shot list, […]
The last couple of days has been spent storyboarding with one of the most talented guys I have ever worked with, Swiss storyboard artist Gabriel Schucan. He is a very fast sketcher, and it’s wonderful to see the story come to life visually. The process itself has precipitated a script re-write as little problems are […]
Music is always a vital element of any movie, and I have often felt that it’s all too often used to prop up dodgy drama. There is that great Alan Parker cartoon that says something like, ‘the script is terrible, actors incompetent, director an idiot, editing is terrible – right we’d better fire the composer!’ […]
Today has been a big day – the final prep meeting before we officially move into pre production, lock down and head out. Some big choices have needed to be made. Producer Ivan Clemments and I, sat around a table and worked through the script, budget and schedule. Passions ran high – after all, I […]
I am delighted to announce that the production company, Bradgate Films, have come on board as a co-producer for ‘Gone Fishing’. Through their excellent connections they have managed to bring £5k of private investment to the project, which is excellent news. Here is what Bradgate say about themselves… ‘Bradgate Films are an emerging, midlands based […]
As we hit the tarmac running today – Monday – just a recap on where we stand money wise. Over the weekend we received a further £500 in donations. So thank you to Paul Nugent, Huw Jenkins, Hazeley Wilson, Jurgen Wolf, Rod Duncan, John Basham, Steve Payne and Simon Reglar. Splendid. We are in the […]
As many of you may know, stunt co-ordinator Terry Forrestal was a key element to us getting started here at Living Sprit. In the very early days of The Runner, he was an industry professional who was instrumental in giving us credibility. He also added huge production value by doing amazing stunts and bringing in […]
Yesterday I sent out a mail to my mailing list, asking for crew help and specifically a storyboard artist. Boy! I got about 250 responses, so it’s going to take me a little time to get through everyone. It struck me, there is enough enthusiasm and passion there to make five short movies! I think […]
OK so fund raising is continuing, and we now have a rather spiffy graph, to show us all where we are at. In the last day we had four more people contribute, raising the cash figure to £2,200 – they are Mike Mindel, Ross Edwards, Martin Bowen and Harriet Barbir. So thank you very much […]
I have just spent a frantic week, working on casting and all sorts of other stuff. There will be a script redraft very soon, and this little tweak I hope to be the final one. Most important though is that cash has started to flow into the production- pictured is a post card that came […]
Yesterday I spent the whole day auditioning kids. With the help casting Director Catherine Arton, and her two helpers, Sammy and Janna, we managed to get through an astonishing 65 children. We worked in small groups, which Sammy would take through their paces with fun and games ‘warm up’ routines. In this first stage, the […]
‘Gone Fishing’ moved a step closer today when Production Manager Stephanie Wrate joined team Living Spirit in their offices at Ealing Studios. Stephanie has worked in the production department on over 20 films and her experience and professionalism will be a great asset to the movie. She was thrown in at the deep end today […]
This weekend I had a great directing job – STAR WARS! Yes, I know! Actually it was at the Star Wars show, but we got to shoot little movies with people in costume and on set, who on minutes earlier, were in the crowd of onlookers. It was more theatre than movie, for sure, but […]
OK – Here is a brief update as to where we are at with Gone Fishing. From this point onward, we plan to make regular updates to this page, but for now, here is a potted history of how we got here, to July 12th 2007. Back in May, Marc Samuelson from Samuelson Productions, read […]
Finally, the funding proposals for ‘Gone Fishing’ have arrived from the printers. In the next few days we are going to be approaching everyone we know to help out and get involved. We will almost certainly be contacting you too! And if we don’t know you, but you are interested, you can contact us at […]
Now that the three part Total Film Articles, written by team Living Spirit, are no longer on the shelves, we have uploaded the whole lot to our website. That’s 26 Pages of starter tips and hints for making your first short film. It’s a 12mb PDF download and you can get it here… Onward and […]
Out of the blue, I got a call from the publishers of The Movie Blueprint – they are shifting printers and have lost the digital files for the cover. So I seized the opportunity to redesign the cover, adding some of the quotes we got from reviews. I also thought, ‘I wonder if anyone has […]
I am working on the screenplay for Rocketboy today, and going over my notes from the reading last weekend. Two further things have since struck me. I can’t express just how valuable it was to hear my dialogue read out loud. It really does take on a new life – on the page and in […]
I am just putting the final touches to my investment proposal for my short film, ‘Gone Fishing’, before I send it off to the printers tomorrow. It’s a fairly bold and unusual way of funding the movie, but I am hopeful that it will pay off. We are making up a full colour folded A4 […]
Yesterday we did an actors read-through for Rocketboy – organised by my good friend, casting director Cathy Arton, it was a long but revealing and emotionally overwhelming day. At Ealing studios, around 15 actors of all ages, sat in a large circle and performed the script. One actor read the ‘narration’ (descriptions and slug lines) […]
I have been researching into private rocketry for Rocketboy and saw a wonderful doc about Burt Rattan and his SpaceShipOne, and how he won the $10m X prize. This was a privately funded group of dedicated experts who built the first private spaceship, got it into space and then brought it, and it’s passengers back […]
