Promoting Ren at London Comic Con May 2015

The other weekend I travelled to the Excel in London to visit Comic Con to represent Ren with some of the team.  We had been invited onto a panel of New British Webseries at 1pm on the friday 22nd May.

It became quite eventful getting to the panel in time because by the time we traveled down, parked and got everyone dressed and then tried to find out where to go to actually get our wrist bands it was ten to one!  Eventually we managed to get our bands and got to the panel in time.

Myself and costume designer Miriam Davies represented Ren, while Ren DoP Neil Oseman had a conflict of interest as he was there to represent another ambitious webseries he was DoP on, The First Musketeer.    The other panelist was Chris Stone representing his new series Year of Spies.  Susan E Clarke, who is herself the creator of a webseries called Chronicles of Syntax, helped moderate the panel.

While we were doing the panel Edward Morley (dressed as a prison guard),  Tindi Lewis (dressed as a villager), Ivan Moy (dressed as the Kah'Nath Commander) and Robert Myles (dressed as a Kah'Nath Soldier) wondered around the Con dishing out flyers and showing the trailer to as many people as possible.

We had a great day and below is a video of our time there. 

Check out the Ren blog for some more information about our trip www.rentheseries.com/ren-at-london-comic-con-video/

As an extra bonus I popped back to ComicCon on Sunday where I managed to watch Felicia Day's panel and then briefly speak to her about Ren and hand her some boar coins :-)

HobbitCon 2014

Over the Easter weekend I was in Bonn Germany for HobbitCon 2014.  I was there with Christopher Dane and although we did a bit of work promoting Ren we were mostly there to do some filming for Legendarium with Artist Jay Johnstone as the interviewer.

Here's the first video we produced from the event.  Hope you like it.  There are many more to come including a load of interviews with some of the special guests. 

New Hobbit Production Diary

As a filmmaker with a real respect for Peter Jackson and his work I love watching these behind the scenes videos almost more than the films themselves.

  

Post by Peter Jackson.

New Fantasy Webseries!

I've launched my brand new fantasy production and I need you to help me spread the word.




http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mythica/ren-a-brand-new-epic-fantasy-series

When Kate's fan prequel to the Lord of the Rings, Born of Hope, was released in December 2009 it instantly raised the bar for fan film productions and was hailed as an accomplished and in every respect a worthy addition to Peter Jackson's trilogy.

Three years and 23 million online views later Kate is now planning to raise the bar for fantasy web series.

The new project is a web series called REN after its lead character, who lives a quiet life in a small village until dramatic events, involving an ancient powerful spirit and the ruling warrior order of the Kah'Nath, forces her to leave her safe existence and find the truth behind the web of lies she's believe in all her life.

The inspiration for the show is very much rooted in great fantasy stories like The Lord of the Rings, but epic books and TV series like Game of Thrones and the more lighthearted Legend of the Seeker have also influenced the creation of REN. One of the most important features of Born of Hope was the fan base that helped finance, design and even act in the film and we are keen to involve the fans even more in this project. The series is in the very early stages, with only the first season written, so we will look to the online fan community to influence what happens... and yes, even be in it!

www.rentheseries.com/

Portugal

4am wake up call. I'm leaving the country again. Doing that a lot this year but this is probably the first truly relaxing holiday. Five days in the Portugal sunshine just chilling. I have my Game of Thrones book number 2 and hope to finally break the back of it. Having said that I have also brought my laptop so work is not far away and it's very tempting to get back to writing and tweaking the Ren episodes, and planning the live launch party. 

Ok well I promise to take some sun and sea photos to make you all jealous, then I'll be back in the UK before you know it. :-)

Cannes Film Festival 2013

Last night I arrived back in the UK after 5 days at the Cannes Film Festival.  I hadn't been since 2010 and it was so great to be back!  The weather did try to destroy our spirits with torrential rain for 3 of the days but when the sun did shine the place came alive.

The crazy edible chocolate cactus display at the Brazil party.

Baptism Spec Trailer Shoot

So today I headed off to the Pump Museum in Walthamstow, North London.  It was a cold day but unless we were on set most of us could take refuge in the warm cafe.

Today I was acting in a spec trailer for a film called Baptism.  Based on a novel by Max Kinnings and produced by The Philm Company.

This was day 3 of the shoot and the set was a tube carriage. As the carriage was outside but needed to look like it was in a tunnel, a big black marque had been erected around it.  The team could then add lights and smoke to create the effect that this one carriage was a whole train stuck in a tunnel. 

I was there to play one of Hugh's group.  The character of Hugh persuades myself and two others that we need to take back the train.  As you can see from the photos below, it doesn't end well.

The four of us were rigged up with a squib each which is basically a blood sack and small explosive which could be triggered by the SFX guy sitting just off camera. 

I've always wanted to try this although I had heard that they can hurt. We were all given ear plugs as the squibs can be quite loud.  After a few rehearsals with no bangs we got ready for the real thing.  There were a lot of nerves bubbling.  We had to run a few steps, hit marks, react to being shot, fling ourselves back and slide down to the floor.  We also only had one take so no messing up!  On top of all this, would it hurt?

Before

Well as you can tell I'm still smiling so no, it didn't hurt at all.  Scott the SFX guy did a great job.

After

I had such a great day on set and it's incredible what they managed to accomplish in just four days.

Here's the 3 minute spec trailer.

But if you want to see more then here is the whole 8 minute extended cut.

My Christmas Countdown

I've set myself a challange.  I'm releasing a video everyday until Christmas and possibly until the New Year if I can! 

Here they are.

CRUSOE : An overview

For anyone who doesn't know Crusoe was a TV series from 2008/2009 which only lasted one season, and having now bought it on DVD and watched 4 episodes so far I can see why.

If you haven't actually seen Crusoe then this will probably mean nothing to you. However I've decided I will review each episode as I am despairing while watching them and want to voice my thoughts in more than the odd tweet.

The implausibility of everything:
So we are meant to believe that Crusoe has been on the island for 6 years. This deserted and isolated island that he can't escape from. But then when the show starts the island seems to have a new boat arrive every other day.

Crusoe can build elaborate tree houses, juicers, hamster wheels to get him over a river but he can't build a simple boat. Oh no that's far too hard.

He also desperately wants a compass so was clearly never in the scouts to do the pin on a leaf in water thing.

He's desperate to go home to England when all his flash backs show a horrible place that I can see no reason to return to except for his wife and child who after 6 years have probably moved on. Oh I'm cynical.

To be continued...

Location! Location! Location Scouting

Everywhere you look there's another great location

I can't speak for other filmmakers but for me I find that I'm almost always location scouting.  Sometimes it's unconcious but often it's a very concious thing.


This month I've actually been doing it 'officially'.   My good friend Emily came back from four months in USA, NZ and OZ and went straight up to the Peak District to be the Location Manager on a low budget feature film called The List.   Well this film has a lot of locations and Emily was basically on her own and in need of help.   So of course she gave me a call and suddenly I found myself up in Whaley Bridge near Manchester as her Location Assistant.  I was only meant to be there for 2 days to help with the recce but ended up staying a week, plus I'm still helping by doing the daily movement orders.  Anyway it's quite a story so maybe I should put it all in another post.

Emily Blickem, Locations

Shooting a Western in the East

Cowboys bring the West to East Anglia.

 

Yesterday I was 1st AD on the short film called 'Rustlers' which a group of us had produced for the Reed Short film competition along with another short called 'Being Mr Abernathy'.  

So at 5am the alarm went off and it was time to pack the car and head north to Horse Creek Farm, the home of Sovereign Quarter Horses.   David and Sarah Deptford had very kindly agreed for us to not only film at their place but also to use three of their wonderful horses.  David even played a starring role as one of the three cowboys.

So our day at the farm started at 7am getting the actors into costume and the horses too.  We were outside all day and it wasn't the warmest even with thermals on.  Now I've not done much 1st ADing, especially on a film with horses and with a mostly unknown crew so I was feeling the pressure a little, however a fair amount of prep had gone into this shoot which really helped. 


I had spent some time doing photo storyboards which the DoP, David Hands took and added to with Michelle Golder the writer/director.

My storyboards on the left and David's on the right.   I then created my shotlist for the day.

Robert Jezek as Bart (left) and Christopher Dane as Deke (right)

Losing a friend

Why does it have to take a death to remind us to live?

Today I drove up to Norwich to attend the funeral of the wonderful Lucy Harvey.  Last year Lucy was diagnosed with Cancer and last weekend, as too often is the case with Cancer, it took her away from us.  She was still in her 30s.


I knew Lu from various film projects I've been involved with since 2007 and although I only really saw her on about 6 or 7 different occasions in those 5 years, the world is an emptier place without her.  She had the ability to feel like your best friend in the first few minutes of meeting her. 

The first time I met her was when she produced NFN or Normal for Norfolk.  It was a kind of 'preditor' short film.  Lots of guns, blood and a big green monster. Fantastic fun!  :-)

Cast and Crew from NFN (Lu is wearing a green scalf and standing next to me)

The next film was Fracture in 2008.  A week in Norwich filming a sci fi short with FX Home.  Lu had only just joined the company and was an integral part of making this film happen. 

The last film I did with Lu and FX Home was a couple of short scenes for their new software Hit Film.  I got to be an evil Belatrix style witch and a silver terminator.  Lu got me the great costume and helped to make the night shoot a fantastic experience.

Thank you for the great memories Lu, I will miss you.  You will always remind me how precious life is and how I should live every moment of it.