Having this camera was only possible thanks to the money made through my last film so thanks to anyone who attended the premiere or who bought a DVD. I shall be setting up an eBay shop in the coming weeks for people abroad to easily buy Corpses.

The next film is beginning to take shape. I will be writing over the next week or so and hopefully have a full script by August. The film is a teenage thriller and will be around 20 minutes long and we plan to shoot throughout August with an almost entirely fresh cast. The film will (and that’s a promise I’m making to myself) be finished before the end of the year.

And that’s it! I shall update when there is more news on the next film and, as always, if you want to get involved please get in touch!

The DVD contains a high quality (almost HD!) version of the film in 2.35:1 widescreen. The film’s runtime is approximately 36 minutes. Please consider buying a DVD, watching the film on your TV as opposed to a computer screen, and help us make money for the next film!

Yesterday was the premiere of my latest film Corpses & Other Teenage Problems! We had an awesome screening at the wonderfully quirkily old cinema, the Hebden Bridge Picture House in front of a 120-strong audience of friends, family and the cinema-going public. From what I gathered from the people I talked with afterwards the film seems to have gone down well (the projectionist said it was better than Colin, the indie zombie film I last saw at their cinema!) I’m so glad that people enjoyed it, including the cast and crew who liked the final result, and despite some worries that we wouldn’t make enough we actually made a profit that, combined with coming DVD sales, should help greatly with the production of the next film. If you want to read more about the Corpses premiere head over to the Corpses blog to read it in glorious rambling detail.

As part of our advertising for Corpses the cast and I were interviewed for an article in our local Halifax Courier. You can read the article here.

But that wasn’t the only part of our press takeover! Our 60 second Avatar spoof which made it into Empire’s Done in 60 Seconds competition top 20 finalists also got it’s own article in the paper. You can read that article here.

The film was also mentioned, along with the other finalists in Empire itself! It’s fantastic to actually be in print in the world’s biggest movie magazine, and in a fantastic 250th anniversary edition as well!

So please don’t forget to vote for our Avatar entry on Empire’s Done in 60 Seconds website, voting ends 12 March.

MINI-UPDATE: Continuing the press-takeover, I found this anonymous article praising the hell out of me. Thought I should post it. There was also an article in the paper covering how we made a profit at the premiere, but that doesn’t seem to have made it online.

I’ve long been a reader of Empire Magazine and for the past few years they’ve been holding a 60 second film competition in which you have to re-make an existing film. This year I decided it was time to enter and what better film to spoof than the now highest-grossing film ever, Avatar. After seeing it in IMAX 3D with my friends we were blown away and immediately had some great ideas as to how to recreate the million dollar effects for cheap. And so we set about making it – in 3D. The result is the most technically demanding and post-production heavy film I’ve made – much like the real film is in the real world. The 3D effect was achieved by gaffer taping two cameras together. We shot the whole thing on greenscreen and used practical makeup effects. So grab your 3D glasses and I hope you like the spoof (beware, it contains spoilers) and keep you’re fingers crossed for us making it through the first round of voting! I’ve included some behind-the-scenes pictures below the video.

Click on the player to open the video in a new window to see the video properly in 3D. YouTube’s 3D feature is not properly enabled with embedding yet!

If you haven’t already, please check out the full-length trailer for the film and leave a comment letting me know what you think! In other Rstudios news I’m still busy making films for my school, I’ve recently finished a film about our local town Halifax that was screened as part of a foreign exchange scheme in Estonia and now I’m working on a film documenting Year 11 life. I’m also going to be shooting some sketches that my friends have written in the coming months and will be busy shooting a 2-minute opening of a film for my Media AS coursework!

So it’s busy, busy, busy and work, work, work at the moment! Catch you later!

Three days ago I began shooting my latest live-action film. As of yet it doesn’t have a name but it is certainly going to be my most exciting, original and longest films yet. It’s a dark comedy drama with elements of horror and follows a group of teenagers who have to cover up a gruesome mistake. Above you can see a picture of Nathan Buckley and Matt McGoldrick who play the main characters in the film. You can also watch a teaser trailer for the film. I’ve had it scheduled for some time and finished storyboarding the entire film about a week ago and now we’re finally making it! Shooting with my new camera and an even newer microphone is great and it’s definitely the most ambitious film I’ve done! In just three days we’ve shot scenes in a car, in the town center, done a huge scene inside a house and shot a scene requiring some extras! As mentioned in my last post I’ve got a guy called James Green doing the sound and helping on location plus an absolutely fantastic cast whose performances so far have been breath-taking! It’s amazing the amount of commitment and enthusiasm everyone has! Everyone is really pulling together to make this the best film it possibly can be, and as I sit and type this – watching the footage we shot play into the computer – it looks like it might just be working! But we’re far from done and the shoot has gone far from flawlessly. We’ve had to skip shooting some scenes because of rain and move some scenes about in the schedule, but hopefully everything will come together. Of course, you can’t expect everything to work perfectly and I was expecting to have to reschedule some things. Overall I’m really enjoying making it and it’s going great! You can read a production blog I’m writing as we make the film here. We start shooting again next Saturday and if all goes to plan we finish up the day after. Then I’ll be busy editing!

Outside of the film this Wednesday I, along with most of the cast, start 6th form at school. This will be the first time I get to study media & film as an actual lesson, rather than just teaching myself and doing it as a hobby. It’ll be fun and I’m looking forward to going back to school after these long holidays. I’ll update again later on next month when hopefully we will have finished filming and the film will be in editing.

Thanks!

Yes, the next film is finally written and we’ll be shooting the last week of August. It’s currently untitled and obviously top secret but I’m thrilled it’s finally underway after a year of struggling writing and chuffed that I can confidently say “we.” I’ve got a brand new cast of 5 characters, including… wait for it, a girl! plus a friend who’s already started composing some great music and is going to do the sound on set. Everyone seems amazingly committed and excited to get going! It’s fair to say this is the most ambitious Rstudios film yet so I’ve been busy scheduling the scenes around everyone’s holidays, results day and the like, but hopefully it should all work out!

Scanning through this it seems like I may have overused the exclamation mark, either way I’m very excited about the next month and cannot wait to finally get shooting the film. I’m going to Spain tomorrow as well. I’ll update as things happen. Bye!