test shoots…

It’s been a little while since I last posted and for that I apologise profusely, I started a new temp job recently so just been adapting to my new schedule, but this blog isn’t about the boring, dull, mind numbing, office based part of my life…it’s about the fun film based part.

So, the good news is that we have almost finished the test shoots and we have sorted out all of the locations, the bad news is that we still can’t decide on an actress. I’m starting to think we may be setting our sights to high and that we might have to settle for an actress that isn’t exactly what we had in mind. Once we have an actress we’ll set a date for filming, that said we will definitely film this month so that we have enough time to edit before submitting to the Raindance Film Festival which has a late entry date of June via Withoutabox.

The test footage is looking fantastic and we are feeling very confident that this will be by far our best short to date. The locations we’ve gotten so far are great as well, we found the perfect place to film our Russian Roulette Deer Hunter parody scene and a great spot to do a Fight Club style scene as well.

We’ll probably have our next production meeting on Tuesday at the local Weatherspoons pub as we usually do (Tuesday is steak night afterall) and I’ll see if my film-making partner can send me over some of the test footage so that I can post some of the stills up. So expect another post from me in the week! Thanks for reading guys, it’s much appreciated!

 

time to dance?

Saw this earlier in the week and thought it was great, check it out because it’s a really impressive short film/music video

my favorite films…

I thought about doing a post like this before, but here’s the thing…I can’t decide which films are my favorite, there are just too many.

There is only one film that I know would make my top ten list no matter how I’m feeling, every single day of the week. That film is The Graduate. In my opinion it is the closest there has been to a perfect film, everything about is amazing.

I find it easier to make lists of my preferred filmmakers or actors. My top director list will always include; Wes Anderson, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick and Francois Truffaut. There are of course countless other directors that I’d add and take away depending on what my opinion might be on that day (Quentin Tarantino, Jean-Luc Godard, Edgar Wright, Chris Nolan, Mike Nichols, Hal Ashby…to name a few) but those five are the ones that always stick.

I’m the same with actors, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Montgomery Clift, Johnny Depp, Marlon Brando, Peter Sellers and Harrison Ford have been actors I’d list as my favorite’s for years now. They have recently been joined by Ryan Gosling, who over the last few years has shown himself to be an actor of great range (see Half Nelson, The Believer, Lars and the Real Girl, Blue Valentine and Drive for proof of this) and all round awesomness. Actresses as well, I’d list Audrey Hepburn,  Helen Mirren, Kate Winslet, Michelle Williams and Diane Keaton are long standing favorites of mine. Although over the last few weeks I’ve come to realise what a talented actress Imogen Poots is, she’s only young but she has already shown considerable range and believability in a number of roles.

But for some reason when it comes to films I just can’t decide…so today’s list is just that today’s list.

The Graduate, Shaun of the Dead, Rushmore, Sweet and Lowdown, King of Comedy, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (yea I’m counting it as one), Dr. Strangelove (to be fair I could have put anything with Peter Sellers here, he is AMAZEBALLS), Superbad (it’s my generation’s teen comedy), Rebel without a Cause, On The Waterfront…

I’ve just read that list back and already feel like changing my mind….

why is Sofia Coppola doing this to me?

as if I wasn’t in love with Imogen Poots a weird amount already…

 

This is why Nic Cage is my favorite Coppola, he makes me feel more normal and less freak like…

In actual news – having a production meeting tomorrow, should be the final one before we have the test shoot and then hopefully we’ll be able to shoot this thing by the end of the month!

so you all know how much…

I love Ryan Gosling right? Well I saw and tweeted this earlier but felt like sticking it on here as well…

My Next Short Film…

okay so myself and my good friend Eugene Risdon are currently deep in pre-production for our next short film, tentatively titled The Break-Up.

As you may have guessed from the title it is about a couple that are in the midst of a break up, but there is oh so much more to it than that (so much more that I will not spoil for you good folks here). We have re-drafted and finished my original script(ish) and are currently casting, finding locations, planning shots etc.

In fact Thursday night we met with a mate of ours whose going to be drawing up the storyboards for us as neither of us can draw…at all. I might at some point post up the preliminary storyboards we had done, and if anyone thinks they have seen a finer stick man I want to see it! So it goes without saying we are eternally grateful to be friends with a talented artist who is willing to help us out for free. In fact it’s the same guy that did this…

www.paulmcnamaraillustration.co.uk

that is our title card/logo which you will see at the beginning of all of our films. But, where are these films I hear you scream? Well we have three completed shorts, but to be honest they were more practice shorts where we honed our skills and figured out what was the best way for us to work as a group. This next film we are currently making is going to be our first attempt at “going public” and we are planning to take it to film festivals, which means we won’t be able to post it online, as a lot of festivals don’t accept shorts that have previously been released on the internet. But that said, there is another idea we are working on that I think will end up being the video we use to launch our website/general web presence.

So keep an eye out for Eject Films, as it’s a company (I hope) you’ll be hearing a lot more from in the future.

So Last Night I Watched…The Artist

I finally got around to watching The Artist and I thought it was…

Brilliant! I thought that absolutely everything about this film was exceptional, but the performances by the actors are what make it for me. Jean Dujardin deserved the Palme D’or and Golden Globe for this wonderful performance, Berenice Bejo is captivating as the beautiful Peppy Miller and of course Uggie the dog is hilarious!

It was just brilliant, I absolutely loved it. I was worried going in as I was sure it could not possibly live up to the hype, but I was wrong.

I’m sure it will go down in history as a must watch for any film lover and if it cleans up at the Oscars I don’t think anyone would disagree (that said I do hope Hugo wins big on the night, as it was one of my films of 2011). The Artist had that rare quality in that as soon as it was over I was thinking about seeing it again. If you haven’t seen it already I can’t recommend it enough. Stop reading this and go see it now!

Sherlock creator Steven Moffat Radio Times Interview…

Okay so Sherlock series 2 has been over a couple of weeks and I don’t think anyone is anywhere near to being close to figuring it out. Steven Moffat did an interview with the Radio Times this month, the following is what I thought were the most interesting bits.

“Get used to a bit of starvation. We’re making movies – those six films we’ve made could go in the cinema. You can’t factory produce that – it’s a different kind of show. So, when we’re good and ready – it won’t be that long – but when we’re ready, you’ll get the follow-up.”

“I fondly imagine it’d be nice to stop it for a while and come back and see what they’re like in their 40s or 50s. Because normally these two characters are portrayed in their 50s. So we’re actually at the beginning. It might be interesting in a couple of decades when they come back and [we] see what they’re like.”

“We knew we had this cliffhanger coming, we knew that we were doing ‘The Final Problem’, and we did not want people to know that he survived. We wanted to wind the audience up so that the final shot would have the impact that it evidently did. We were commissioned for series two and series three at the same time, but we decided to keep it under wraps that day that series three was in the bag.”

I’m glad they plan to take their time with it, I’d hate them to rush out a third series and for it to suffer a dip in quality, because for me it’s the best thing on telly. I also really love the idea of bringing the cast back in 20 – 30 years to see how the characters have developed and what they are up to. Let’s just hope that when series 3 does eventually hit our screens that it’s as good as (if not better than) the first two!

 

What’s the deal with…David Cameron’s Film Policy Review

So David Cameron’s film policy review was released today and it’s better news than most expected

Films like Submarine meant British Cinema had a great year

Okay so a government commissioned report into the film industry was released today and it’s not all doom and gloom as some (including myself) predicted. The main point appears to be that the report calls for ITV and Sky to do more for British Film. The 56 point report put together by the Film Policy Review Panel also suggests an annual “British film week”, a new programme to bring film education to every school, screening equipment put into town halls of places without a cinema and a renewed commitment to combat piracy.

Last week David Cameron has proposed that public funding of film should focus on “helping UK producers to make commercially successful pictures that rival the quality and impact of the best international productions” and it was even suggested by some that the report would effectively end Mike Leigh’s career. But from what I’ve seen online today seems to show that that is not the case at all and the panel wants to advocate “as wide a range of films as possible, from the overtly commercial to the overtly arty and much in-between”.

So that sounds good to me. Will it be harder for filmmakers like myself to get funding from the government? Probably. Will it stop us from making films? Absolutely not. I think I’m in a fortunate position in that I wasn’t counting on government funds to make my first feature anyway and that I and the people I work with have enough contacts/resourcefulness to get the funds ourselves. We actually decided this weekend that we will commence production of our first feature around June 2013, which gives us a good 18 months to get everything ready and release all the short films we’ve made/are planning on making online over the next few months. So watch this space!

So Last Night I Watched…The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

The Live Aquatic is the other Wes Anderson film that seems to generate a lot of hate, well I’m here to defend it!

“When his partner is killed by the mysterious and possibly nonexistent Jaguar Shark, Steve Zissou and his Team Zissou crew set off for an expedition to hunt down the creature. Along with his estranged wife, a beautiful journalist and a co-pilot who could possibly be Zissou’s son, the crew set off for one wild expedition”

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is a hilarious Adventure Comedy starring Bill Murray on top form as the the titular Steve Zissou. As you have probably guessed by now I am a huge Wes Anderson fan, I love all of his films and get extremely excited when a new film of his is announced (see my Moonrise Kingdom post for further evidence). So this week I already watched The Darjeeling Limited and as the Moonrise Kingdom trailer has been released I felt in the mood for some more Anderson action.

In my opinion the Life Aquatic is his funniest film, mainly due to the fact that it features Bill Murray’s most prominent role in a Wes film. Murray’s pitch perfect dead pan delivery is a perfect match for Anderson’s writing style and to be honest I will never understand how anyone can hate something that has Bill Murray in it, the man just has funny bones, he oozes comedy at of every part of his being. He is hilarious. Having said that I don’t want to forget Willem Dafoe, he is brilliant as Klaus the “B squad leader” who’s childish jealousy of Steve’s supposed son Ned Plimpton (played by Owen Wilson) is both touching and amusing in equal measure.

Everything about this film is top quality. The set’s, costume’s and especially the music. One of my favorite parts of the films is at the end when Steve and Ned have been arguing over Jane (Cate Blanchett) and they walk through the whole ship talking, as they do they are follwed in a single tracking shot and we see every member of the crew just going about their duties. It’s a great shot. I really love this film and I am certain that time will be very kind to it. I’m sure in years to come people will look back and spend time trying to figure out just how/why The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou didn’t receive the appreciation it deserves in it’s own time.