"Skinner" - response to the film...

A long time since I finished the film? Certainly, and I've been meaning to post some of the response I got to it on the blog, but I've kept forgetting to do so - but no more! No more I tell you, for below is some of the response I got to "Skinner" - you can watch it on my YouTube Channel, which you can find a link to in my links section, or indeed via the YouTube widget below that (which always displays my four latest videos).

Or you could go and see it here (in HQ too), if you're in the mood for direct URLs - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA0gD60edHI

Anyway, on with the response:

"Nicely done ... Dramatic and well written. Enjoyable little flick here."

"Shot very well, and I LOVE the font & the way you did the credits (that scrawled-on-a-wall look to the font was just plain kick-ass, as well as the movement of the letters)."

"I think he did a great job in this one. I think he was spot-on for the part." (referring to Sean Connell, who acted in the film).

"WOW! This looks fantastic! Nick is really making large leaps forward with his filmmaking ... I think this is the best looking thing he's done yet."

"Cool, nicely shot. I just wish I wasn't eating when I watched it."

"Nice work Nick. That was a damn interesting little film."

"Cool short film guys, very dark and Se7en-esque."

"It was atmospheric, interesting and enjoyable. Good work, man."

"Very entertaining dude, probably not as good as your last, but it was a nice length, gave me an "opening of Texas Chainsaw" vibe from it and I dug it man."

"Well done. The title sequence was quite atmospheric, kinda reminded me of Se7en. I like the noir-ish aspect of the weary detective voice over coupled with the appropriately hard-boiled dialogue when he describes the previous crime scenes. The music was decidedly sinister and creepy. Bravo."

So there you have it, took me a while to get around to making this blog post, but even still - thanks to those who watched the film, dug it, and gave feed back!

Not bad for a film that was conceived on a Monday and then shot at the end of the same week when I was still busy recovering from that hernia operation earlier this year.

...

I should hopefully be shooting the next DeadShed Productions short film sometime soon - so keep your fingers crossed.

"Skinner" is now online!

You can watch my latest short film online here (5:22 in length):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA0gD60edHI

"A forensic detective attends the latest in a long line of grisly, unsolved crime scenes - murders committed by the titular serial killer whose modus operandi remains so varied and vague that those tracking him have been unable to gain any traction on the case. It is here that we see a gruesomely festive tableau set aside for the detective - a tired-eyed, noir-like protagonist - replete with a note left at the scene; the product of a diseased mind that continues to goad those who seek to bring him to justice."


Write-up with screenshots coming soon.

Signing Off (2008)...

Following on a few weeks after “VHS: Long Play”, I set about putting together my next zombie-related film – although this time there were no on-screen zombies. Instead it was a one-hander, so the primary focus of this film was working with an actor who would convey a large story all through dialogue in a simple setting.


The UK has been ravaged by a virus that has turned the people into flesh-eating zombies, and this film’s lone protagonist is the sole survivor of the last outpost to fall to the undead – he’s the last human in the country – but he’s dying, and he now must deliver his parting message to whomever may one day find his body.


I was very pleased with this short, not only the performance (which was the first time I had been really able to work with someone who was a student of acting), but the visual presentation also.

View the film, posted on YouTube, via this handy embed here:

"Skinner" - some pre-edit screenshots etc...

Today I uploaded the footage from Sunday, so this was my first real chance to have a proper look at what we got - and I'm pleased.


Shooting wise I was aiming to be fast and loose and not meddle with too many camera settings, especially as I'd be really finessing the actual look of the film during editing (it'll be 2.35:1 with liberal use of Magic Bullet for colouring) - but I did specifically choose to go to manual exposure for a certain shot (to allow for a 'flood of blinding light' to appear on screen) - indeed I wanted the film to look a little bit like it was through your own eyes, and how your eyes adjust to different levels of light - so I generally let the camera automatically adjust throughout, save for that one specific shot.


Also, I decided to use manual zoom - and indeed I wanted to inflect a little bit of a 'grindhouse feel' onto the zooming in this short. I don't mean like great big crash zooms, rather the creeping manual zooms you would find in various euro-zombi sleaze flicks like Oasis of the Zombies, for example.


I've really been into my grindhouse cinema of late (it's all been 'cannibal this, and killer that' in my DVD player lately, haha) - so yeah, I've brought a touch of that to the visuals with the manual zoom, which is deliberately twitchy (but not MTV twitchy), and uneven in its pace - it really does help add to the creepy nature of the content too.


Also, I was just trying something out in the edit today - I was mainly starting to figure out what look I want to give it in the colouring procress, but while doing that I got a bit distracted and a bit 'grindhousey' and randomly took a small clip and did this with it just for fun (I haven't used a 'stop motion' effect before, so this is my first one of those ... although I don't know whether I'll use that effect in this particular short, but still) - I thought it might be a interest, it's only a few seconds long.

"Skinner" - the new DeadShed short...

Today I filmed the new DeadShed Productions short film - it's called "Skinner", and it's a noir-inspired horror piece about a forensic detective examining the scene of the latest victim of the titular psychopath.

(Click the image for a larger view).

All the dialogue is done through a narration - a noir-inspired voice inside the head of the protagonist, who is played by Sean Connel, who has previously helped me out on 2005's "Trapped", and 2008's "Signing Off".

The short itself - which I'm aiming to edit it to around five minutes max - was conceived on Monday (yes, as in six days ago) when Sean emailed me saying he was coming back from London for a week and was wondering if I had anything to film. He fancied doing a bit of acting in a short film, and indeed I fancied shooting a new DeadShed short.

Annoyingly however, I didn't have anything at the time - I most definitely wanted to shoot something, but what? I put my thinking cap on, and referred back to some of the wisest advice I've ever read - from Robert Rodriguez - list things you have at your disposal, and put those in your movie. Indeed that's what I did - I knew I had these gory props I was going to use for the as-yet unfilmed third entry in the Zombie Man series (one day, I promise), as well as a gas mask and boiler suit (for the same as-yet unfilmed project, actually).

I then thought about 'what kind of movie could contain these things?' - and there we go, it grew from there. That afternoon I started bashing out the short script, while consulting back and forth with Sean on the direction I was taking, and had it all finished up the next day.

Ahead of filming (on Sunday 2nd August 2009) I gathered all the props and such together and 'dressed the set' ... ... otherwise known (when you stop looking through the camera's lens) as 'putting things near each other in the garage', haha.

Indeed, this was a case of quick and sharp filmmaking - conceiving of the idea, writing the script, and getting it shot all in a week - and that's a very relaxed week too. If we'd compressed the time this is the sort of thing you could put together during one of those '48 Hour Film Festivals' - although I am planning to spend more time on the editing than such a festival would allow.

As for working with Sean again, it was great - he was spiffing last year when we did "Signing Off", and he was even more spiffing today. I could see how he has developed his acting (which is his chosen career path - I guess we've both chosen hard careers to pursue, ha!), and it was nice to (for myself anyway) put together another little narrative short.

It all helps in improving (and experimenting with) my writing, camerawork, editing and direction - indeed I felt more confident than last year when directing. I have improved my focus in what I'm looking for, and improved my communicating of those ideas. Of course each year has been a case of improving on those four key areas, naturally, it's just that this year I was paying attention to the development (for both Sean and myself) at the time of the shooting.

We were able to shoot the short very quickly, which is always nice, and as I'm beginning to wrap up on this educational DVD about the environment, I'll be able to fill the downtime with editing for this new short film (before we get going on another educational DVD, that is). Plus it was nice to get the DVX100B into action again, as of late I have been mostly editing - so it's nice to mix things up a little - and as a further bonus, I get to indulge my love of making horror-themed films.

More news on it as-and-when, of course, but I just thought I'd throw up a blog about it in the mean time.

Signing Off - filming done!

Indeed, remember that short script I wrote a while back called Signing Off, the one that was a prequel to another script I wrote called The End?

Well, I finally filmed it today with Sean "the zombie from Trapped who took a throat-load of fake blood" Connell.

Also, it was in fact my first return to the woods - where Trapped and my NIGHTMARE were both filmed - since the summer of 2005.

After navigating through a field full of cows (and cow shite), we found ourselves in familiar territory and then headed off to get back to the main area where both of those two other films were shot (in the summers of 2004 and 2005). Since then, it's a lot more overgrown, and the pathway towards a small reservoir (which led to the area where Knox got his throat 'slashed' by Emma's nut case murderer, in my NIGHTMARE), has seemingly been eroded by rain and time into a slippery slope that I didn't fancy traversing.

But never fear, there was plenty of space to shoot the bulk of the film (a few shots were gathered on the outskirts of the wooded area afterwards). The idea again was to shoot something fairly simple in structure, and indeed the majority of the filming came down to Sean's central performance as Mason Wood, Medical Orderly at the West Midlands Refugee Camp #3.

During the filming, being that we were in a wooded area where few seem to tread, and it's summer and generally damp in the air (we fortunately shot before rain which came a couple of hours after finishing, although I missed it as I was too busy editing for the Sex Education DVD at the time) - there were midges and flies everywhere.

I was damn near covered in them, particularly midges, and being fair skinned they absolutely love attacking me - not sure why fair skin is better than the skin of someone with, say, black hair ... but, whatever.

Anyway, after getting back from filming I glanced at my hand and arm, and discovered an absolute myriad of red blotches - bites - from those bastard flying ... bastards. I've counted damn near 40 of them ... fortunately they're not itching ... but I did manage to accidentally flick my fingers through a thistle and got stung (which hasn't happened to me in donkey's years).

Then my hay fever started acting up a bit, but otherwise it all went well.

Sean did a bloody good job, not only of memorising my script well, but of packing his performance with various emotions and moments of drama. I'll certainly look forward for editing it together.

Not sure of the length yet, quite possibly 10 minutes. It'll be in 2.35:1 (just like VHS: Long Play a couple of months back), and I'll of course be dribbling Magic Bullet all over it like the glutton I am for it's sexy colouring abilities.

More on Talk Talk Talk, Chat...

As mentioned a while back I helped out Sean (original zombie in Trapped, and brother of DeadShed regular Ben) with a practical video project he had to do for his course at uni. Myself and Ben played two chaps getting interview on Sean's Brass Eye style current events show, Ben was the government stooge and I was a film director and hired government advisor.

Sean uploaded it recently, so check it out via the link below, it runs for 7 minutes.

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