Here's the history page, a run down on the shorts that we've made, a time line
if you will, a time line of blood, sweat, tears and perhaps most nutritionally, donuts for breakfast. God bless you junk food!
Not About The Money - 2003
Our first film after leaving college. The basic plot centres on a hard as nails heroine,
a sassy young gangster lady named Vicky, who is out for revenge after her boss rapes her.
Looking back at it now years later, it's hard
to see where exactly we went right in the film. It and therefore by extension us, lacked the maturity needed to make the plot
work and bring the audience in.
It
would be a far better film if we'd just focused on the character of Vicky. Her, on a mission going after
a contract, but thats hindsight for you.
So it won't come as
any surprise that it is very difficult for us to watch these days, but let that be no reflection on the cast we had, they
all did a great job and gave up a huge amount of their time to make it happen.
Affinity - 2004
For some
strange reason, Adam and I thought we might try a move away from the whole guns and violence thing and have
a go at something a little more thoughtful.
The story was simple enough, a young woman coming to terms with a recent tragedy
in her life. As the story unfolds we find out that the tragedy was the death of her husband at her own hand, as
she was an assassin of sorts.
The spin we wanted it to give was
to show the inner struggle this woman was having with her darker side, the side of her that pulled the trigger on her husband
and how it was trying to take over her life.
We needed two
actresses to make things work, the Good Side and the Bad Side. We got our Good Side in the form of our first actress and
she worked great, did everything that we asked, which was a lot!
Sadly
there were no takers for the Bad Side, so we started the shoot with one actress, filmed everything we could and then were
left with half a film. However, being stubborn and not easily defeated, we took the half footage and put it together, the camera work and
the lighting were all perfect and the central performance was fabulous.
Out
The Back Way, In a Fast Car - 2005
The film that was never made, sort
of. We'd planned and prep'd for a film titled 'Dead Ground' over
many months and eagerly awaited the start of the shoot. We'd picked up the equipment early on the first morning and
then settled in to await the arrival of our cast. We waited - and waited - and just for a laugh waited some more. By a strange
set of circumstances, thought possible perhaps only in the pages of a bad movie script, it seemed none of the actors
could make it! Amazing, who'd believe it? The exception being Adam's old friend Terry and I'm sure he's just
gotten a little thrill at seeing his name in print on a website not hosted by the Police.
Luckily for us,
as we sat around at Barney's (you all remember Barney?) chewing the paint off the walls, a rather pleasant
chap called Tim popped in for a cup of tea and a biscuit. Upon hearing
our dreadful news and agreeing that all talking props needed a good shouting at, he leapt up and reached forth for
his laptop. Ladies and gentlemen, over the course of the next four hours
and with some furious tea drinking, 'Out The Back Way, In A Fast Car' was born! Having tried and failed miserably with the gangster
genre before, we thought it prudent to damn well have another go at it!
But, we had learnt the value of keeping the
plot simple and easy to follow. Given the conditions the script was written under, the film turned out better than we could
have expected and it gave us our very first squib shot, on Tim no less (a picture of which is on our home page). Looking back, O.T.B.W was a great learning curve,
it showed us what can be achieved when under pressure and it feels good to watch it back and see a marked improvement
over 'Not About The Money'.
No Sense? Nonsense! - 2006
The fun you can have with a camera, some
mates and a few dead things.
This was one of those
inbetween jobs that was so off the cuff it makes your head spin.
Technically
shooting started in 2002, but seeing as the final scenes weren't shot until 2005 and editing wasn't done until a year
later, we're slotting it in here!
It tells the story of a man who finds a small brown box. Overcome with interest he takes
the box home and opens it, sadly for him it is a box from an ancient time full of weirdy gubbins that warps his tiny little
mind and ultimately shows his own death.
Why it took so long to shoot and edit is anyone's guess. Adam keeping it all
to himself probably didn't help matters, but for an unplanned free for all it's actually rather enjoyable!
Just In a Story - 2007 Originally written by Adam as a straight hitman film, I took
one look at it and yawned with great disgust. Yes, guns, violence and gangsters are fun, but there was nothing that took
my fancy here, Adam, needless to say, was crushed. After some tea
and after Adam had wiped away those tears there was a spark of inspiration. We decided that we'd give it a little twist, the story remained pretty much intact but the idea to shoot
it as a docu-film, in the style of 'Cops' popped into our heads. So rather than the centre of attention
being on the hitman ((Justin)), it was the haphazard crew, led by Coral in her first starring role. This was a real blast to film,
once we got into it and got the cast together it was fun from the start, although the film was not without sacrifice, as tragically
our cameraman, Zenneth B. DeWalt was shot and killed capturing the finale. However his nearest relatives, Fish 1 and Fish
2 wanted us to complete the film as a loving memorial to the Big Z. May his camera live on.
The Pianist - 2008
Pre-production began
in early 2008, it was Colin who came up with this script and much to my surprise there was little gun play and no blood shed.
My heart sank. After a couple of tweaks I began to like the film and we set upon Coral to help us organise it.
We needed quite a few actors so Coral suggested we hold auditions, open to any actors out there and see who turned up. We
left Coral to organise the auditions and she did well! We had many actors flood through our doors and we watched them all
perform to us and a camera while Coral did the paperwork and took photos. Through this process we uncovered some marvelous
actors who came back and agreed to work with us.
To the shoot!
Our first day of shooting. Professional actors.
Tight deadline. And a small tribe of gremlins. We quickly resolved the teething issues with some of the equipment and began!
Having held copious amounts of rehearsals, within which the cast (and crew) had to got to know each other, the shoot
was fairly stress free. Hurrah! However, the week disappeared before it had began and soon it was time to wave goodbye to
our actors and sit in the edit suite. Hours turned into days. Days turned into weeks. Coral left us to it.
Using
our musical contacts (thanks Ross!) we lined a band up to compose a unique soundtrack for the film. Myself and Colin
spent a weekend in the recording studio with the band and watched in quiet wonder as our first original soundtrack
came to life.
After the stress of the edit suite and the we were proud of ourselves - we had conducted auditions,
rehearsals, an organised shoot, a soundtrack and had a good film as a result.
Here's to the next one!
Coral!
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