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 […]
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 […]
Given context and the development of character and story, a great actor will usually suggest removing dialogue in key moments. They know they can do just as much, often more, using silence and connection with other performers. While this clip (that has been doing the rounds on social media for some time) is not of […]
Attaching top talent to your screenplay doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get your film made, but it certainly increases your chances. The questions asked in 99% of meetings with distributors, film financiers, and sales agents after you’ve pitched your screenplay or they have read your screenplay is: “Who is the director?” followed by “Who is in […]
Why You Should Consider Virtual Filmmaking For Your Next Project Guest blog post by Hugh Hancock, filmmaker and author of Machinima for Dummies Everyone knows that it’s impossible for micro-budget filmmakers to make a CGI animated movie, right? It’s horrendously expensive. It’s brutally slow – hours of rendering for every frame. It’s so technical that […]
This year at the London Screenwriters Festival we ran a new initiative called The Actors Table Read. The idea was to take a sequence of three to five pages and workshop it with actors, a director and the writer. We ran nearly 100 sessions and the feedback was actually better than five out of five […]
I am super excited that Olivia Williams has agreed to come and talk at the London Screenwriters’ Festival this year. I thought I would share this interview I did with her, from the Guerilla Filmmakers Handbook ahead of our chat at the festival (below). I just got off the phone with her and she told […]
Your dialogue may be awesome, but an experienced director and actors will take it to another lever. This short video is a fantastic example of what actors and a director can do with your work. The scene is a direct re-enactment of a conversation between a two year old girl and her father, only the […]
Guest Blog by Andromeda Godfrey If you are an actor/actress I would highly recommend making your own work. In the beginning especially, you have creative control over what you make. What could be better for an actor than to find juicy roles for themselves or even better, write them themselves? There is the saying that […]
After so many actors have requested I design a filmmaking masterclass for them, to help them take control of their own casting destiny. I heard bout ’50 Pence’ made by actor Eric Kole and asked him to share his journey and experiences. Over to Eric… Being an actor, I have appeared in small TV idents […]
Here’s the problem. You go for the audition. You slay it. YOU ROCKED! But, you don’t get the part. Sound familiar? When you give other people control over your destiny, your career is going to be a very bumpy ride. It’s that simple. For years now I have been advising actors that the smartest thing […]
How do you go about casting your film? The first thing to understand is that there are two very distinct and separate parts when working with actors. The first is all business, it’s when you advertise jobs, approach agents, interview actors and invite them to be part of your film, then negotiate contracts and conditions […]
Everyone can now get a great camera and lenses. Post production at home in native 2k, with full After Effects integration opens up endless grading and VFX possibilities. Technology has transformed film making. A few hours on Vimeo will illustrate just how mind bogglingly sophisticated the world has become. So, when working in drama, how […]
I recently picked up on this interview with Canadian director David Cronenberg, about working with actors. His main point is not so much working with actors, but casting. This chimes in with all of my experience too. In the crucible of production, there is rarely time to spend ‘finding the character’, or workshopping the performance, […]
UPDATE – With 1 hour to go, John reached his goal! Thanks to everyone who contributed. Actor and Producer John Schwab has always been a great supporter of everything I have done. And he was one of the very first contributors to Gone Fishing. And so when I got this email from him today about […]
I got an email this morning from Oli Lewington. Some of you who have kept up with the blog may know that Oli suffers from Cystic Fibrosis and last year, before shooting Gone Fishing, he wrote to me. I had posted a blog about my fears of failure, and Oli wrote to me encouraging me, […]
One of the great things about Film Festivals are all the new friends you make. It’s a wonderful democratisation, where everyone, superstar or newcomer, can prop up the bar together and just share in the joy of movies. New allegiances are forged (famously Tarantino and Rodriguez met on the festival circuit), and that in turn […]
I just spent the morning with our lead actor, Bill Paterson, as we re-recorded the story of how his character Old Bill, caught the biggest pike in the world. In the narrative, this takes place in a car, so we re-recorded it in his car just outside his house. I used my trusty old Sennheiser […]
A few hours ago, the camera truck arrived and I took a pic of the contents for this blog. Blimey! Look at it all. Two 35mm cameras and all the bits. Not much like an HDV camera and tripod is it! Ok. It’s 11.30 and I will be up at 5.15 tomorrow morning. Breakfast at […]
So. The final day before the shoot. And so far, bedlam. Without doubt this is the most hectic day of any shoot, and it’s frantic. We managed to get our leading man, against all odds – Bill Patterson. I am over the moon as Bill is a warm and charismatic presence who is ideal for […]
Great News. We have just confirmed James Wilson for ‘Gone Fishing’, in the part of Simon. We auditioned James some time back, and when he came into the room, he just lit it up. We also interviewed about 100 other kids, most of whom were solid little actors who would easily take an episode of […]
Final organisational touches are now coming together. This is a kind of fluidity to production that is very tiring – dates, crew, cast, locations, all interdependent, all changing regularly. It’s most frustrating when people pull out knowing the huge impact it has on us, even though they have been involved in negotiation and things have […]
Great news. We have Lucy Joyce, a very experienced young actor to play Young Emily in Gone Fishing. She has a huge amount of TV and move credits to her name and it’s very exciting to be working consistently with very professional actors throughout the cast, especially as there are so many young actors in […]
Today was the first day that I really had that feeling of 100% immersion in the film making process. Where nothing else matters. It began at 8am, stage 3 at Ealing Studios, a huge sound stage that we managed to get for the sets for Gone Fishing. Set construction began with Mark Sutherland at the […]
OK, it’s time we started to reveal who some of our talented cast and crew are going to be… First off, I am more than delighted to announce that seasoned DP, no British LEGEND, Vernon Layton, will be shooting ‘Gone Fishing’. This is awesome news as Vernon truly is an artist. Among many others Vernon […]
