Great Malvern Christmas Lantern Parade (2007)...

This was my first solo effort for the Arts Council, and it was one that came to me on the very day it was taking place. I got the call in the morning, and was at the location by the early evening, and then filming moments later. The whole day would prove to be a series of valuable lessons in the world of freelance filmmaking.


I was tasked with, at the last minute, shooting and then editing a five minute piece that covered the Lantern Parade and turning on of the Christmas lights in Great Malvern.


In the end the film turned out quite nicely, especially for the amount of chaos involved – the very last minute getting of the job, wrestling with trying to find the location without SatNav, then dealing with constant rain (which made the journey there ten times more stressful, confusing and occasionally dangerous), huge crowds, and a general sense of chaos … but like I said, the final product turned out nicely.

Sturgeon Moon (2007) & The Handless Maiden (2007)...

Acting as second cameraman for Silva Productions, these two films were my introduction to putting together documentaries for Arts Council projects.


“Sturgeon Moon” took place in Bridgnorth – all over the town during the day (in the blistering hot summer of 2007), and culminating in a multi-staged performance on the town’s sports field at night. It was an opportunity to employ those ‘shoot from the hip, as it happens’ skills that I acquired on all those videos I made at university, but it was also a robust experience in terms of patience and especially endurance.


“The Handless Maiden” was a Covent Garden Street Opera production (performed by, and aimed at, people with disabilities) at the Trinity College of Music, London. It was a further lesson in working with complete strangers (there’s a big difference between just being around strange people, and having to film and direct complete strangers). Additionally it was a continued lesson in filmmaking endurance – “Sturgeon Moon” was a 20 hour day, and “The Handless Maiden” was an exhausting 21 hours.


Interestingly, with these sort of projects, you have a sense of nervousness and anticipation leading up to the main performance – you’re obsessively going over the little, and even simple, details (batteries, tapes, camera settings, what’s roughly going to happen etc), but when the actual performance gets going time stops existing except for the time code on your camera’s flip-out screen. Everything comes together during the performance, and especially on outdoor shoots, it becomes a case of ‘run and gun’ filmmaking. Responding to everything happening around you every second and having to get a whole range of quality shots – indeed, it’s quite thrilling.

This first video is a little short piece I put together using my own footage from the performance:


Below are two videos about the "Sturgeon Moon" project, as put together by Silva Productions:

Show & Tell (2007)...

This was another chance to work with the Rural Media Company in Hereford, this time on a government sponsored research project (mediated through Bristol University School of Policy Studies) into rural poverty. It covered the following topics:

Necessities of Life, Isolation and Powerlessness, Accessing Services and Opportunities, Denial of Rights, Aspirations and Opinions.


The project involved solo teams getting video diary footage from those who took part – at this point the footage was handed over to me, acting as footage loader & logger. I was, put simply, responsible for getting all the footage (hours upon hours of it – there were around 50 tapes if memory serves) loaded onto the editing system, while simultaneously logging the content (what’s being said, quality of footage, overall score etc).

For my part of the job at least, it was a good lesson in patience and endurance. It’s really surprising how worn out you can get loading and logging footage, seriously.

Even though I was doing a fairly process-based job, it did allow me to see a hell of a lot of response to the issue of rural poverty from those affected by it - from their mouth, to my ears - every single tape, uncut. It really shows you what some people have to get by on, and how they struggle, and most importantly of all, how it affects them personally.

Via the Guardian link below, you can view a trailer of the project, or alternatively via the Rural Media link where you can watch a fuller version.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/video/2009/jan/07/show-tell-rural-poverty

http://www.ruralmedia.co.uk/index.php?nav_id_sent=3&page_id_sent=35

http://www.ruralmedia.co.uk/video-player/FlvVideo.php?video=636670039Show%20and%20Tell.flv

I Am Zombie Man (2006) & I Am Zombie Man 2 (2007)...

Inspired by the original idea for 2005’s “Trapped”, and following on from “VHS” a few weeks prior, I set about putting together this cheap & cheerful zombie comedy short. The film is about a zombie who now lives alone in the woods, and him telling us about his undead existence – how he dealt with becoming a zombie, and how he likes to pass the time.



It was a very quickly put together little short with its charm rooted in idea, rather than the presentation. The original “I Am Zombie Man” is an extra feature on the Tempe DVD release of American indie zombie movie “Deadlands: The Rising”, and appeared (alongside the sequel) as supporting material during the local theatrical run of “Deadlands: The Rising”.



Six months later, spurred on by the online success among fellow ‘zed heads’, I put together the sequel – “I Am Zombie Man 2”. By now I had bought my Panasonic DVX100B professional camera and equipment, and set about putting together a far better looking Zombie Man flick than the first. It was at this point that I was finally able to move on in my own filmmaking thanks to the new equipment (and a certain editing software plug-in called Magic Bullet), having gone as far as I could with my previous camera and equipment.


Watch "I Am Zombie Man" here:


Watch "I Am Zombie Man 2" (split into 3 parts) here: