FWOAN at SMHAF2019...

The Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival has selected "For Want Of A Nail".

The Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival will take place across Scotland from 3rd-26th May 2019. Led by the Mental Health Foundation.  A significant event in Scotland’s cultural calendar, the festival takes a positive stance on mental health, celebrating artistic endeavour by those with experience of mental health issues and connecting audiences to creative and innovative work. Together with a wide range of mental health organisations, arts bodies, community groups and artists, we aim to challenge stigma and promote social change.

You can find out more by visiting their website HERE, and by following FWOAN on Facebook.

Sabrina and the Engineer video now online...

You can now view the musical montage of footage I shot during the Bewdley portion of the 2008 live street theatre performance of Sabrina and the Engineer.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6edixabJgA

Sabrina and the Engineer (2008)...

Similar to “Sturgeon Moon” the previous year, this was another town-wide performance from the Arts Council. It was great to bring the experience from previous Arts Council projects onto this one and further hone my ‘run & gun, from the hip’ filming skills.

It was also a great opportunity to get some fantastic looking shots – giant water jets shooting into the air, dancers, fireworks, the whole kit and caboodle.

Below is a video about the project, as put together by Silva Productions:



Visit the below links for more information, and lots of pictures of the event.

http://www.severnproject.com/2008/home.html

http://www.severnproject.com/2008/bewdley.html

http://www.severnproject.com/2008/bridgnorth.html

And here are some screenshots from a musical montage of some of the footage I shot during the Bewdley performance.

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: