Hello gang, time to dust off this old thing and get posting again.

We’ve been very quiet, in fact we’ve done very little. But, as has become a bit of a tradition now, we are once again entering the 2 Days Later Short Film Competition. As much as we enjoyed making last year’s short film our original effort is where our hearts lie, and due to the fact there are still stories to tell in this world we are returning to where it all began: Get Dead.

We’ll be talking about it more in the coming weeks but for now we’re putting the word out that WE NEED ZOMBIES. We will most likely be shooting around the end of July or start of August depending on when we get script writing and pre-production finished so there’s no pressure to commit to anything just yet. But if you are interested let us know and we’ll keep you up to date with how things are progressing.

Thanks!

Don’t you know what’s goin’ on out there? This is no Sunday School picnic!

Hey film fans! Tonight we’re attending the Mannin Shorts Writer’s Room to discuss the scripts we’ve entered into their scheme, and talk about some of the finer points of script writing. This is followed on Saturday by the Filmmaker’s Workshop where we’ll learn more about the film making process, and finally we get a one-to-one session to help us refine our scripts ready for submission to the judges.

I can’t tell you much about the script for a short film I’ve submitted but it’s pretty good and a bit different to our other stories. If it wins, it will be great to have the opportunity to make a proper short film with a budget and everything.

I’ll let you know how we get on!

I’m not sure what it is about zombies but they’re very accessible.

I bought a new camera (replacing the Canon XM2) this month; a Canon 550D DLSR so it doubles up as a stills camera too (check out some photos taken with it on Flickr). To get stuck in shooting some video with it we decided to do some test shots which weren’t really connected narratively but would look like they were from the same film. Naturally, we chose a zombie outbreak as the background to our “film”.

Since it was at late notice we didn’t get a great amount of zombies but we did get some conventional footage that looks great and we can definitely use. Hopefully we’ll be shooting some more zombie action this weekend, and maybe there’ll be some way we can stick it all together for everyone to watch. Who knows!

It has been a while since I last posted but we’ve now put our latest film , ‘In Mourning’, is now online for everyone to watch.

Head over to the Videos page and click on the film title to see!

Just a quick post to say we have, bar one or two short external shots, wrapped! It’s been good fun working on a film again and even better having a bit more of a crew to get everything done (Simon Talbot working the sound was a blessing). I started editing last week after the first two nights shooting so for the next few nights I’ll be getting it polished, on top of which we also need to score the film and have it sent away by the start of next week. Busy times!

Maybe one day we’ll make a film to a sensible schedule with no time constraints. I doubt it though.

In other great news Mannin Shorts had their filmmakers’ extravaganza the other week where a video interview consisting of us and other Manx filmmakers was shown. You can see the video below.

Hopefully the next blog post will say “We’ve Finished!” as there’ll be little time for anything else, so see you then.

Well the first day went well, our small group arrived on set and we got stuck straight in.

As well as our own gear we’ve also been very graciously lent some kit too, and it was this we got set up first. We were lent a dolly and track kit by Glenn at http://www.yourmoviecrew.com (which is a lot of fun, by the way, and we’ve had to restrain ourselves from over-using it) and a lighting kit from Christy and Dave at http://www.anotherdam.com. Muchas gracias to them! Here’s a photo I took of both of those along with our tripod, to the right.

We have two cast members in this film; John and Nic play two characters coming to terms with the death of one of them and who was ultimately responsible.

You may remember John from last year’s entry ‘Get Dead’, now he’s back and showing he’s not just a zombie-slaying booze hound! This is Nic’s first role and he’s getting into it with gusto.

We’ve got some great shots down so far and it’s looking like the film will come together quite nicely - although that’s always the deathly blow to something going well. We’re back on set tonight, we’re optimistic we’ll get the rest shot tonight but we have next week to film any extra stuff or do any re-shoots if necessary.

Fun!

A couple of little things of note here. First up, this evening we commence shooting our film. And you are correct, there is still no title for it. Our working title is too ridiculous to mention in public but we have come up with a concept idea for the title (don’t worry, it’s not as pompous and trite as it sounds) which potentially could make this film the first in a series of shorts. But that is a discussion for another time. Right now we’re really concerning ourselves with getting this film, you know, made.

Lists have been made, equipment gathered and talent poached and now we begin the fun bit. Well, the first fun bit. Tonight and tomorrow are the set shoot evenings with next week also available for any re-shoots or missed scenes. It’s a very small cast and crew this time round so everyone will be pitching in to get it finished, but we’ll try and get some on-set photos so you can see what we’re going for.

That just about covers everything, I’ll blog later in the week with how we got on and what is (inevitably) left to do.

Here we go!

Last week we did an interview with Christy and Dave at DAM Productions for their latest venture MannIN Shorts (also follow them on Twitter) which, to quote their bio is “a platform for hopeful filmmakers, young or old, to develop skills, ideas and make films, right here on the Isle of Man”. It sounds great and I hope loads of cool things come about because of it.

Needless to say we’re so brilliant at RDF they just had to get an interview with us, so we obliged. It will be shown along with a bunch of interviews with other brilliant local filmy bods at their Grand Isle of Man Film Makers Show-Down on 9th September. Check out their website for more info on that.

As for our own project, well we’re gearing up to get the next film off the ground. With only a month to go before the deadline for submissions for this year’s 2 Days Later competition we’re cutting it finer than last year (I think I was editing by this point - cripes) but we are working on a much smaller scale so hopefully that will work in our favour.

We, pretty much, have all our gear sorted for the shoot, you can see a couple of photos to the left and right. That’s my MacBook. It’s what I’m writing this post on and what I edited Get Dead on too. This will be used (along with Final Cut Pro 5, Cubase 4 and various other tools) to put the final film together.

This is our camera. It’s a Canon XM2 on a swanky Manfrotto tripod. Since we spent all our money on these items there was nothing left to buy anything in the way of lenses, so we’re making do with what we can get for a reasonable sum. Initially we just tried one of those ridiculously cheap and obviously rubbish wide angle lenses you can get off eBay for buttons but their limitations soon became apparent. Visually not bad, my main issue with them was the terrible vignetting that occurred. That and the fact there was a macro lens you had to always have attached, which just didn’t sit right with me.

Now, as can possibly be seen in the photo, we have a bigger and better wide angle lens (this is the extent we’re going to with lenses for now, they’re a whole other money-sapping beast entirely) and since we couldn’t afford the Canon-branded one (WD-58H) we picked up a decent one from Digital King for about £60ish. It’s a 0.7x wide angle for those who are interested. Not enough to really cause obvious vertical line distortion (shame though as I’m a massive Terry Gilliam fan) but enough that we can get a decent amount of stuff in shot and not rely on lots of panning or tracking.

Aside from these main things we also have a nice light reflector to go with the lights we’re hoping to borrow for the shoot, some condenser mics from a drum mic kit we’re using for overheads and some other miscellaneous bits and pieces we’ve managed to lay our grubby mits on.

I hope this has interested you! We’re looking at meeting up next week to discuss the shoot then will immediately begin shooting. Hurrah!

Work is progressing well with the new film (of which we have yet to come up with a good title, we’re working on that) and we now have a script ready for production.

There are a bunch of other things we need to sort out before we can start filming though; some of the less wordy scenes have been storyboarded and we’ll make some photo storyboards for more general scenes - we don’t really have the time to produce full storyboards so a lot of it will be made up on the day. Some of the best ideas come from improvisation!

We also need to get our gear in order. After last year’s competition we went all out and bought a load of cool equipment, initially to make the film ‘Hello, My Name Is Rick’ (which has now been put on hold whilst we make this year’s 2 Days Later entry), and now will be used to make this film. I’ll be posting up a blog entry showing you all our gear in a bit, plus what we’ll be editing on and scoring with. Although we’re pushed for time I’m hoping to get some time to get a nice score down, as Get Dead missed out on that stage of things.

We’re away for the next week or so (on and off) so we’ll post up after that, and hopefully have some news of the filming schedule too.

We have news!  It comes in two flavours I’m afraid; we’ve got some good news and some bad news regarding our entry for the 2 Days Later Film Competition.

The bad news is that unfortunately we won’t be making our planned sequel to 2009’s Get Dead. I know, it’s very sad and we’re aware a lot of you wanted to get involved with it. The reason we aren’t making it for the competition is because our ideas are too grandiose and outlandish to be shot and completed within the time constraints and with a maximum film length imposed. We felt we would do the film a disservice if we tried to cram everything we wanted to do in and didn’t want to pressure everyone with the lack of time available.

For all those folks who were looking forward to getting mucked up and zombified - don’t worry, we have every intention of making this film and hopefully we’ll be able to next year depending on everyone’s availability, etc. We came up with a lot of ideas before postponing it and we don’t want them going to waste. In fact it makes me giddy just thinking about some of the things we came up with.

Okay, onto the good news. As we’re all a bit pushed for time this year anyway (what with our other hobbies like being in bands and having to work full-time jobs, etc) we’re scaling right back for this year’s film. Obviously I don’t want to go into too much detail yet and ruin the story but in the spirit of keeping it vague for now we’re taking the psychological/suspense path (if that’s a path) and have a cracking good idea we think will really work. If I say much more I’ll end up telling you everything, so I won’t, but we’re going for a very different feel with this film and it should be an interesting and creepy story to boot.

I hope you aren’t all too disappointed in our decision, it was a very hard one to make and we’re really hoping to get the sequel to Get Dead made in the near future with better production values and more time and care taken to make it.

We will be blogging here about our filming as and when we commence production with some behind the scenes stuff, the equipment we’ll be using and more info on the story as it develops (not too much though heh).

Stay a while, stay forever!