A few months back I posted a series of blogs about DynamoPlayer, a cool way for me to rent my films or consumers online. You can read those original posts here and here. Soon after, I was contacted by a dynamic pair of Scotts film makers who had been beavering away at their own solution, […]
‘If you are going through hell, keep going…’ That’s what Winston Churchill said at any rate. And hell is what I was going through last Tuesday. Not because of a catastrophe on set or difficult actors, or even a crew that was making mistakes. On the contrary, everyone both in front on the camera and […]
I have been a little light on the blog front because I have been on set shooting a drama on Canon 5D MKII. It’s been terrific to actually be on the set of a major drama, shooting DSLR, just ahead of the Guerilla Film Makers Masterclass as it has really focussed my mind on […]
Attracting money ALWAYS begins with the question… WHY? Why on earth should I give YOU money as opposed to buying a car, building a patio, going on holiday, funding some inner city kids dancing project, investing in stocks and shares etc… you get the picture. And yet SO MANY film makers, myself included, rarely address […]
Last year I helped out in the making of a short film called Chasing Cotards. I add my help was minimal! Ed and Sam who made the film have kept in touch as they entered into the festival experience. And what they told me was heart breaking, submission after submission followed by rejection after rejection. […]
How did my short film Gone Fishing actually perform, and download the spreadsheet to use on your film You can see from the rough ratios from the chart here – ‘Win’ means a festival we attended and collected award(s), ‘Loose’ means we attended but did not win an award (though around 15% of these are […]
What a night last night! WOW! I presented Gone Fishing and gave a short talk in the biggest living room in London, at the Roxy Screen and Bar in Borough, South London. The room was crammed with sofas and arm chairs and provided a great environment for an intimate screening and chat. DP Vernon Leyton […]
Film making colleague Andrew Zinnes managed to make it to the screenings in LA this weekend, just to check them out, and he shot a very short 1 minute video, which you can watch here. We have been in touch with the Leammle guys who have told us that they will write us an official […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
