Chris

The best laid plans…!

After attending the funeral yesterday of a fellow re-enactor from the Medieval Siege Society I’ve decided to put off my rather trivial planned show (Hairspray) and film (The Lovely Bones) review for a word or two about Christopher John Broome-Smith (1951 – 2009). Chris was a founder member of the MSS and his death leaves the society the poorer. Anyone, who is a member of any organised group of people, will know that there are doers and watchers and Chris was one of the best doers that I ever had the privilege to meet. He had time for everyone and lived his life to the full. A dedicated family man, his wife Sheila (a fellow member of the MSS) is surrounded by the heart felt best wishes and support of her family, friends and the society membership. Goodbye Chris!

Cinema & Television Benevolent Fund - Royal Film Performance

Once again it is time for the CTBF Royal Film Performance. This gives me the perfect opportunity to promote the charity. So if you are not already a member go and see what it is all about by clicking here.

Prince Charles & the Duchess of Cornwall were in attendance this year to see The Lovely Bones, but I'll report on the film tomorrow. For now the slide show below is a little taster.

Disaster on a grand scale 2012

Many years ago realistic "disaster" movies (eg The Towering Inferno ) were ridiculed by such films as Airplane! and almost disappeared from our screens. Of more recent times the disaster has returned contained within other genre (eg Titanic – Romance and Independence Day - Science Fiction ) but recently the disaster itself is beginning to return to the classic structure with such films as the fact based A Perfect Storm and on a grand scale with the science fiction/dubious science based The Day After Tomorrow and 2012 . The disaster is centre stage once more, pitching ordinary people against the destructive forces of nature. 2012 may be a special effects masterpiece (which in my view it is!) but it’s also a very good example of the art of genre writing. Go see!

On another subject I’m toying with changing the name of my short A Martian Eclipse to "The Triumph Of Venus". Some how the calligraphy
of The Triumph of Venus looks pleasing to the eye and rhythmically more enticing. This may sound trivial but an effective title is a very import part of any project. For example, had the Baktun cycle of the Mesoamerican (Mayan) calendar ended in 2013 rather than 2012 then the title of the film above would have been more symbolic to the superstitious amongst us but may have been misinterpreted as comic or cliché by those of a sceptic nature. Lucky for the filmmakers that it ends December 2012, giving them a nice neural number to work with!

A Martian Eclipse – Techno run-through

At the weekend we had a technical run-through of my short A Martian Eclipse (the shoot is scheduled for the first weekend in December). Once again we reviewed the need to use the Red Rock M2 film effect filter (see last year’s blogs for A Question Of Content), but this time connected to Jack Marshall’s new HD 1080p camera. The camera itself is tiny (due to the lack of moving parts) but very effective (having been used on the shoot for the feature film Crank series when multi-cameras were required during action sequences) and it comes with a “cinema” setting to give a “glaze” to the digital footage. As we are filming in a relatively small space we don’t really need the depth of field offered by the M2, so for all but one shot will be using the tiny camera alone! This also has the advantage that we don’t have to deal with a large rig for the point of view set-ups.

Sound was also an issue and we have decided to purchase a better quality mike for AME.

Running through the script, from the technical perspective, also revealed some changes we could make to the script which will improve the filmic effect of the story, so we are almost set to go.... watch this space!

PS: Many thanks to Jack and Diane Williams for the weekend's work.

A Martian Eclipse Added To Withoutabox

I’ve created a project page at Withoutabox (this is the main online portal which eases the process of festival entry - with a few exceptions like the Cannes Short Film Competition) for A Martian Eclipse, now I’m ready for the technical run-through next week of the short. The shoot is scheduled for early December and the aim is to have the post finished so that we can enter AME into the Cannes 2010 short film competition (less than 15min) and possibly the Cannes 2010 sfc (which can be done via withoutabox!).


The update to my IMDb page has been accepted by the adjudicators and I’d welcome your clicks on the link (this improves ones movie-meter ratings) and also the page for last years short A Question Of Content. Every little click helps!



PS. The photo above is Jack Marshall's new mini-HD camera on it's rack with the M2 film effect filter attached... teeny isn't it!

A Martian Eclipse

My short film for the 2010 Cannes sfc "A Martian Eclipse" looks set to 'go', in December, now that we have our cast in place.... Helen Rynne and Andrew Franzkowiak and Jack Marshall is available again to make the images special. Using Jack's old Canon XL1 camera we managed to make an award winning short (A Question Of Content) last year so I'm expecting great things from his new HD camera.

More good news.... after chasing the ISP my web forwarding is now functioning correctly, so if you'd like to visit the brokenarrowfilms web site you can either use http://www.brokenarrowfilms.com/ or http://brokenarrowfilms.co.uk/ .

I've also updated my IMDb CV to include my involvement with the short film Lover and the soon to be realised feature film Round Ireland With A Fridge... these updates take about 10 days to become active so I'll add a link shortly.