Built & Crushed

A 30 second animation that I made in the space of about 10 minutes.



Not much to be said about this really other than I made it in college whilst we were looking at animations. I can definitely say now though that I don't think I'll be going into animation simply because, even though the animation was fun to make, I'm more of a live action person myself. I'll leave animation to the likes of Nick Park. Although I have been thinking a lot about motion capture film recently. I'm not sure I'll be making motion capture films until I'm an established director though because of the availability of the technology. But who knows, experimental motion capture shorts could be just around the corner. I doubt it though!

The Making Of Juno Judo

This is just a brief 'making of' video which just lets you see a little bit about what went on during the shooting stage of Juno Judo.

The Making Of Juno Judo


I got the idea to make this half way through shooting Juno Judo. Although like all of my other videos so far this too is just an experiment, and so for a 'making of' video it is pretty shit. But I learnt from it which is the main thing.

Juno Judo

My next film Juno Judo was a real big step for me as it was when I made the jump from using one camera to directing two cameras. I found this quite challenging, but it was also very rewarding and I was quite pleased with the end product. Now my opinion has changed and whilst I still am pleased with it I do feel that there is still a lot I could do to improve it.



Originally this was intended as a music video but I don't think that the video really did the music enough justice. (The music is a track called Conga Fury by Juno Reactor.)

I still quite like the first 2:15 because all of this was choreographed. The fight was choreographed by myself and the two fighters, whilst the camera work was choreographed by myself. It was all very much like a big ballet of some sorts. (Although a rather ugly ballet!) However, from 2:15 the fight is all improvised up until when one of the fighters loses, which was what we knew before we started that we wanted to end with.And whilst the camera movements weren't choreographed from 2:15 I still gave instructions to the other camera man.

Sadly you can hear some of my instructions in the video. The idea was that I would cut out all the diegetic sound when it came to edit, but it just didn't work when they were thrown and there was no bang. Although when I came to edit it I did think that I had managed to get rid of all the talking in the background. Tip for the future, if you know you've captured some sound of the crew talking even by accident then listen back to your video with some good headphones because they make such a difference and are so much better than crappy speakers.

I'm still quite fond of the first couple of minutes of this video, but it is a shame the rest of it is rather shit. I think that a completely choreographed fight would have looked better, but I always knew that 8 minutes of fight footage would be hard to keep going with the limited fight knowledge that I have. I probably would have been better shortening the track that I used.

Waltz Of The Flowers

The next video I made was simply sparked by my need to film something. My western idea wasn't making any progress and after I'd gotten a taste for filming I just wanted to film something. It didn't matter what it was I just needed to film something.

So after watching the New Year's Day Concert In Vienna, I wanted to have a go at filming some flowers. It would have been nice to have filmed a live orchestra as well but since I didn't have one of those I just stuck with the flowers.

Anyway I think this is very simple an yet very effective.



I really tried to edit the images to the music with this. You might notice if you look at the camera movements. They speed up and slow down as well as drift in or out and side to side. This is most noticeable where there are the critical changes in the music.

You might have noticed, but I'll bet that you didn't, that the music to this is actually about 6 and a half minutes long. However, I managed to chop out a section of the music when it came to editing. I would only notice it very slightly when I used to watch it back though and to be honest now I don't notice it at all.

I've actually managed to get loads of views of this video on YouTube, but I must admit that it is all down to the music I chose. Otherwise it definitely wouldn't have as many views. One advantage I've found to this video having loads more views then my other videos is that I've used it to advertise my latest video Captive by means of a video response. This is the reason behind most of the views which I have got for Captive because when I put it up people just weren't looking for it and therefore no one was watching it. But by putting it as a video response has enabled me to get Captive out there.

Western Shootout Trailer

This trailer is more of an experiment than an actual trailer. The basic story was that two cowboys met in the middle of a desert and had a shootout. It was inspired by the track "Tazarine" from the soundtrack to the film Babel. However, I don't live any where near a desert and so that changed things right from the start.

The adapted plan was to film it in my village and instead of using actual guns, the cowboys would use their hands to make a gun shape. However, I did want to use some cowboy costumes in the film but since I didn't own any I would have to buy some. I started to realise that if I was going to film it then it would take a while to get everything together.

But I couldn't wait. The reason being because I wanted to use a big tracking shot to open the film with and I couldn't wait to try it out. However, I had to figure out how to pull a tracking shot off since I didn't have any special equipment such as a dolly and when you walk with the camera it shakes around a lot which would completely destroy the image I wanted to create. I ended up sitting in a wheel barrow with the camera and getting a friend to push the wheel barrow.

This is how the trailer was born. I wanted to try out the method I had come up with and since it was very short notice I couldn't get any one to star in it and so used my mums dress making dummy as the main cowboy. I dressed it in some of my clothes and used a balloon for the its' head.

The second cowboy I found in the garage and was less of an effort to put together which is why the second cowboy looks pretty rubbish. However, realism wasn't the point of making the trailer, the camera movement was.

The opening camera movement in the trailer from 0:00 to 0:35 is pretty much exactly what I imagined the opening shot of the actual shootout to be like. However, I would have extended the beginning back about another 10 seconds. The rest of the trailer isn't an exact copy of the actual film idea but instead is just stuff I thought up on the day of shooting the trailer.

Even though I did put "coming 2008" at the end of the trailer, therefore giving myself lots of time to actually put it together, I've decided to trash this project since I've moved on to bigger and better things. Ultimately not filming the real thing has worked out okay anyway because I've gained experience from making the trailer.

So instead of being a trailer this was actually an experiment to increase my film making skills. And I for one think that it has definitely worked, and I now find experimenting is often the best way for me to learn, instead of having to come up with story lines every single time you want to try something new. This way I can make mistakes and it doesn't really effect the finished thing in the end because they aren't really made for an audience anyway.

However, saying that I would still like to make the full short and there is still a possibility of me revisiting it in the future.

A Welcome Brave Story

Welcome to my monthly blog where I am going to show my films and talk in depth about how they came to be and what I think of them now.

BRAVE STORY

This was the first solo project which I made and is about a year old now. I have to say that I actually hate this film but it is for that reason that I think my next film improved dramatically and why I try so hard to improve on every film I make. With Brave Story though, there are so many mistakes in it and whilst some people have asked me whether it was a true story, I must say I am shocked when they do because I don't think the acting is that good. But I guess she did pretty well considering it was all filmed in 4 hours, which includes travelling to the different locations. Also, she didn't have the script until the day when she actually read it off a piece of paper help above the camera.

Time is a big factor when it comes to making films and I feel that this film was very rushed. Although saying that I don't think that it could have been much better if I did have more time since it was the first solo film I made and in a way I am kind of glad that it is so crap because if I didn't make all those mistakes then I wouldn't have learnt as much as I did.



I actually made this film for one of my media projects. The brief was that it had to be a sports related video, which it obviously is. I got the idea for it from the music that you hear in the opening sequence which is a piece by Hans Zimmer called Preparing that he composed for the film King Arthur. I heard the music and the opening sequence just popped straight into my head. Don't ask me where it came from, it just appeared. But to be honest, that is how all of my films/ideas come about.

I'm always looking for new music to listen to and every now and then BOOM an idea appears. Then I just listen to that piece of music again and again to develop the idea. Some ideas are doomed and don't go any where, although luckily I've only had one of those, and some ideas are too good that I don't want to make them in fear that I will ruin them. I won't always have this fear, but for now it is still there simply because I don't yet have the skill required or the resources like cast, crew or equipment. My latest film I am very proud of though and think I have made a big step forward with it. But I'm still storing the good ideas for use later on in my career, simply because I like them and want to do them justice.

When I look back at Brave Story though I can definitely see an improvement in my work and I can only spot one mistake in my latest film. Where as with Brave Story I could be here listing them all day. They are just simple things though like the shadow of the camera being in the shot or the images not being in sync with the music. Things that just make the film look... well... shit. Well I'm sure it is not that bad, but I guess the only way you get better is if you are your own worst critic. Plus it is a lot nicer to hear it from yourself then from someone else.

I think also that because I didn't have a written script for the whole video I used music to film in the gaps and whilst it works great sometime, for my video I don't think it worked, simply because the music has too much of a variety. Ideally I would have had someone write the music to it and then there could be a theme running throughout the film making everything link together much smoother.

I think the warm up scene is the one that really doesn't fit because I tried to give it this comedy effect, but the rest of the film is quite sad so it just really doesn't fit in. I think I was trying to create some comic relief, but unfortunately it just didn't work.

My favourite scene is probably the race scene because it just flowed really well and was pretty easy to film and edit. Plus it looked pretty good as well which is always rewarding. I also like the shot where she jumps over the camera and when my friend asked me how I did it, I felt quite proud. But of course I didn't tell him and left him wondering. Although it was actually quite simple and I don't think there is much to wonder about. But hey I made it, so I'm bound to say that!