"Zhombeez!" (2000)...

I dug this out of my vaults today and uploaded it to YouTube.



Many years ago now - during the summer of 2000 - I made a simple stop-motion experiment with zombies that I crafted out of clay. Inspired by George A. Romero's "Day of the Dead", I also created an army figure styled somewhat after Captain Rhodes and did my own - rather basic (it was my first, and pretty much only, attempt at stop motion animation) - re-enactment of the infamous scene from Romero's landmark horror flick.


Click "READ MORE" below for more information about "Zhombeez!"...

Obscura (2012)...

This experimental short, about someone who may, or may not be, a Crime Scene Photographer, was inspired in-part by Michelangelo Antonioni's 1966 film Blow-Up, as well as the book Another Way of Telling by John Berger and Jean Mohr.

The main theme of the short is the idea – as proferred by Berger and Mohr – of the clash between the photograph, and the memory of the moment that the photograph resembles, as well as the connection between the camera lens and the human eye.

 

 

The film is pieced together from a variety of disparate fragments of footage and photographs that I have gathered over many years on different formats. In addition to newly shot footage and images, there are pieces of footage originally shot for other projects from years passed by, as well as photographs (and light-sensitive photographs) dating back to 1999. Stylistically the film is a sort of 'visual collage', that combines the new with the re appropriated old, which speaks to further themes of the short – namely the idea of fragmented memory, how a picture is not viewed in the mind's eye as a whole, but rather in individual elements that make up that whole picture. For example – an alleyway is broken down into key images: the height and close proximity of the surrounding buildings which created the alleyway, the old exterior light on one wall, and the tangle of steel and barbed wire atop the locked entrance to the alleyway.

 

 

The idea for the film initially came about when I dug out from a drawer, an old stills camera that belonged to an uncle – a Zeiss Ikon Contina I from the 1950s. I drew intrigue from the classic styling of the device, as well as the mechanical consistency of the lens, shutter, and winding operations, which ultimately fed not only into the editing of this strange little experimental short, but also the underlying ethereal plot.

 

 

View the film embedded below, or directly via my YouTubeChannel HERE.

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Obscura - a new short film...

This is an experimental mood-piece about someone who may, or may not be, a Crime Scene Photographer. It was inspired not only by Antonioni's "Blow-Up", but also "Another Way of Telling" by John Berger and Jean Mohr, in which they wrote about, and illustrated, the idea that there is a friction between the photographed moment, and the memory of the moment itself, which the photograph resembles.



It was pieced together from a disparate range of various photographs and footage that I have gathered over the years (specifically, in this case, between 1999 and the present day). Enjoy.

"Obscura"...

Today I was fiddling around getting a few shots for a new little short experimental film I'm working on called "Obscura". It was just a little idea I had, and having realised that I'd not shot any new short films (that are fictional pieces anyway) for my YouTube Channel in a while, I figured it was about time I put something together - so I had this idea involving an old stills camera from the 1950s that we've got in a drawer somewhere.

The film won't be anything fancy or too involved, but just a bit of fun playing around with some cool/creepy visuals. I'm thinking it'll be 2 minutes long (or no more than 3 minutes), and I'm going to use a variety of photos and footage - some new stuff shot specifically for this, and some old stuff from my archives that I'll re-purpose for this weird little film idea ... sort of a collage of various stuff from the last few years, and even as far back as 1999. Anyway - that's something I'm chipping away at in some spare time - but the big thing at the moment is getting a new educational DVD (titled The Problem of Evil) finished off.

Frieze Film 2008 - "Memories of Falling Ash"...

So I'm perusing around the internet, as you do, last night and came across this thing about Frize Film doing a thing about short, experimental films related to The Road, a book by Cormac McCarthy.

http://www.friezefoundation.org/film

I find this out on September 13th, and the deadline to get your films uploaded to YouTube is September 15th. I ponder over night what I could do for it, and revisit the site today - the 14th - and decide to have a go. So I went away, looked through a bunch of my previously shot, but as-yet unused footage, and put together a short experimental piece, in high contrast black & white.

I used music previously provided to me by Brian Wright (I've used his music previously on a few of my shorts) and just dived right in and put it together quite quickly as I was quite enjoying the immediacy of it all - especially getting to use footage I'd shot ages ago for projects that either went nowhere, or shots that were simply never used on other projects, or simply footage that was shot to just have - just in case they were needed, such as now.

So, with the project being about a post-apocalyptic road journey, I decided to follow the 'ashen landscape' route (which is one element of the visuals mentioned in the book - so I've read about anyway, I haven't read the book - but now certainly plan to do so, as it sounds right up my street).

I took footage of driving along a road, which was fortunately mostly empty (so I cut out any passing vehicles) on a rainy, dull day and combined it with footage I'd shot a good couple of years ago now of when we last had snow - which, in high contrast black and white, looks like falling ash upon an ashen landscape.

The notion of the film, is that we're seeing the perspective of a passenger who is journeying through a barren landscape, but keeps having flashes of memories (that appear almost like photographs) of the ashen landscape - these memories denoted by quick fades between the road and the memories, to signify the person blinking in and out of reality.

So indeed - that's what it's about, and I'm currently uploading it to YouTube - so check it out there within the new few hours (it's September 14th at 6pm as I'm writing this).

I've certainly rarely put something together so quickly, and rarely had as much fun and sense of freedom as I have done with this little experimental short.

*Additional*

Just thought I'd mention the tractor with trailer at one point, in case anybody thinks "er, post-apocalypse with a tractor, you wot?" - well, for one, it's not an apocalypse where everyone has died, and for two it's a reference to an idea in the videogame STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, in which they have "death trucks" that bring dead men out from the centre of the zone - so the tractor and trailer in my little experimental short, that's supposed to be a sort of death truck if you will - that's the idea behind that shot, so just in case you were wondering, there you go.