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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Guest post by Alex Kyrou Try letting your actors improvise inside the character during the audition, rather than just sticking to your brilliant script dogmatically. The results can be astonishing. As a filmmaker that has started out directing music videos, I wasn’t sure how to approach making a short film that had authentic characters an […]
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, […]
I am spending the weekend building and updating my presentation for The Guerilla Film Makers Masterclass on June 4th and 5th. (90% sold out now, so don’t wait if you want to come, and use the discount code CHRISJONESBLOG to get it for £60, reduced from £119.00 – go here http://www.guerillamasterclass.com) And I wanted to […]
Over the last few days I have received over 100 congratulatory emails. Thank you to everyone who wrote, it was touching, and also great for other cast and crew members to hear just how much you appreciated the design, costumes, makeup, image, music, sound… I don’t have space for them all, so here are a […]
I have been collating the titles for the end crawler. This presents a number of practical problems. First off is just how do you format it so that you can easily use it in other programs once all typed out in MS Word? The big thing is to NEVER use tabs. Just write the test […]
I am starting work on one of my favourite parts of the film making process. The pickup shoot. This is a one day shoot with minimal crew where you get all those little shots you didn’t get during the main shoot, or new shots you thought up in the edit, so as to help tell […]
