One Man and His Dog... for a bit...

Last month Ella was nominated at the Limelight Film Awards for best horror... and it won! Very cool, very exciting, very pleased and very proud.

It's been almost two years now to the day that we filmed Ella,and having recently rewatched it after not seeing it for a while... well, I have to say it deserved to win. Although I never saw the competition... Ella is awesome. It is very awesome. I had got my mind into a horrible place where I saw faults with it, that I wasn't happy with it, but having rewatched both cuts I have sitting on a disc... it blew my mind a little.Yeah its messy and ambiguous in what we show, and yeah there are bits that didn't translate so well from the script, but fuck... the mood, atmosphere and feel of that little fucker are so strong that you just forget whatever short comings exist. Fuck, there aint any shortcomings. I showed it to someone who was a fan of it at the weekend and someone who was new to it and it just creates silence in the room when its over. Love it. Love how it makes people feel. The ambiguity of it is only there on the surface, the way it is put together and the things that are suggested kinda do the film a lot of service as it gets the head firing up and filling in the blanks. Its ace.

Dan I salute you and everyone involved with it. Ella week was an awesome week of shooting. Mr. Head is a legend in everyway and Miss Blackwell does the greatest dog barking while being covered in red shit and wearing a dogs face ever! I miss that week of shooting, I miss the scripting of that little crazy film and will never forget the phonecall when Dan suggested 'Dog Face'.

We need to work together again dude. I shall email you those words as soon as I have finished this blog. Something new. Something dark. Something fucked. Something born from the two brains we have between us. Something with blood and dirt in it. Something that says something about the human condition and how fucked we all are.

Namaste.

THINK:BREATHE:WRITE:DESTROY

Happy New Year.

Yeah. Late. Nevermind.

New year, new focus. Proper focus. Two things.Two main things.

Powerless is about half way complete and probably will take most of the year to fine tune before anything happens with it. Its not a bad thing, no point in rushing these things. If I didn't have to work then all would be different. But Powerless needs to be perfect. Its my thing, my passion and I need to get it right, i need to get it down right.

I read a blog by the writer of Death in Paradise, BBC crime drama I had no interest in watching and never actually watched. But the writer is interesting because he won the Red Planet prize, something I have entered a couple of times and gotten fairly far into the process only to be let down by a rushed finished script. Anyway, his blog about how he got started with this whole thing is very interesting. He wrote that you should write what you know. However obvious that maybe, for some reason, when I used to hear that I always thought that meant, what I knew from a day to day kind of thing. Stupid right? Well, not really. But what this writer knew was crime drama. He loved it, he was obsessed with it, read it, watched it, loved it.

So as you know I'm writing Powerless, about a guy with powers. Its a love letter to comics, its a wishfullfillment thing, its a what would i have done with powers in a certain situation. Comics, superheroes... its what I know, so i am gonna write the hell out of it.

This writer dude, also went on to say that because he loved this stuff so much, he would write something thatwas original, that no one else had ever seen, that no one else could write. Now, the whole originiallity thing... cop dramas have been done to death, but its more of a 'no one can write this thing quite like me'.

So, there has been Heroes, and various other cack tv shows about superheroes, but no one has ever written Powerless. Not the way I am writing it. It's mine. And that is why its original.

Lets just hope its good.

Aside from Powerless I have been developing something that started off as a short film, but I think would really extend itself into an ace little character study feature. Its got the working title of Pangs at the moment and is a romance about a guy with an eating disorder and how love can transcend anything when its true.

NO LIFE!

Homeland is fucking awesome. Best new show on the box.

Luck is a little odd at the moment, finding it a little tough to get into. But liking it all the same. Well, i want to like it.

Alcatraz has started promisingly.

Walking Dead season 2 part two continues and I hope it continues to be good.

Sons of Anarchy season 4 is fecking brilliant.

Drive is one of the best films I have seen in ages and has become one of my all time faves. A little obsessed with it...

Whispers by Joshua Luna is brilliant.

Rachel Rising by Terry Moore keeps on getting more awesome with each new issue.

Scott Snyder is a God, as is Grant Morrison and Warren Ellis. Batman, Action Comics and Captain Swing are currently rocking my comic book reading world a lot.

TMNT are back and rule!

Mono and And So I Watch You From Afar and Feist fill my ears with brilliance.

Namaste...

The World is My Oyster

So... 2011 is falling into the past. This shall be my last post of the year. Crazy year. Draining year. But a good year, almost. Had its ups and downs as do most, but certainly was a year of learning.

Powerless is still unfinished and will be completed in 2012. I don't want to rush it, i don;t want to finish it just to finish it. It has to be perfect. Perfection is a hard to thing to come by when you work five out of seven days a week. Leaves you two days to chill out, clean the house and do various other dull domestic things that need to be done, and... if you are lucky, spend some time with your lady. But... Powerless will be done. It will be a calling card. Its what I love, it has everything I love in it and everything I have ever dreamt of doing... ie, being a superhero, have a secret identity, having a calling greater than you could ever understand. So i am writing the hell out of it and will continue to do so until its perfect. Annoyingly i was hoping to get it in to the Red Planet Prize this year, and despite it being later this year and the deadline being mid January... I can't. I mean, I could submit, i have ten opening pages that i am really proud of, but like last year, they may want the rest of the script and... well i kinda dropped the ball last year and rushed an ending that fudged the rest of the script up. So, lesson learnt.

So, while Powerless gets completed over a period of time I am going to be developing a few other ideas. RUSSIA is an idea I have been playing with for a few months now and will attempt to geta treatment put together and eventually woe a local artist with its merits, but it is very high concept. And after chatting with him, i think we both need to leave high concept on the back burner. Instead we have found common ground on collaborating on something a little more fun. I'm putting some ideas together as you read this for talk in the new year. I really hope this comes about and comes together as planned. Think Regular Show meets Twin Peaks. Thats what is in my head at the moment.

Ella news.

Upcoming screenings are as follows.

London Short Film Festival 2012
January 2012Tickets and Info

Looks ace. TIckets are resonable and Ella is eligable for the Popcorn Horror award.
Here is what its all about...

The classic scary story with a twist in the tale was a staple of 1970s television; a ghost story, a vampire story, a twisted story, a story set in a not-too-distant future. This varied selection brings together a few jumps and bumps, including an adaptation of Stephen King’s short story Mute. Also includes Paul Kaye as a mysterious kidnapper in Straight Way Lost, and Buffy’s Anthony Head as a grieving father in Ella.

Prague Short Film Festival 2012
18th- 20thJanuary 2012
Info

Again, looks ace. Dan always enters shorts into awesome looking festivals. Will update with any info that appears on both of these festivals.

NO LIFE!

FIlm of the year...Black Swan/Kill List/Adventures of Tintin/Rise of The Planet of The Apes...
Album of the year... Bon Ivor
Comic of the year... Who is Jake Ellis?/DC's New 52 (pretty much all of them)
TV of the year... Fringe season 4/Bored to Death season 2/Black Mirror/Alphas/Walking Dead season 2
Book of the year... When God Was a Rabbit/The Marriage Plot/Skippy Dies

Next year... Stuff I'm excited about

Film... The Dark Knight Rises/Avengers/New PT Anderson???
TV... Alcatraz/Fringe Season 4/Mad Men season 5/Walking Dead season 2
Comics... Everything on my pull list!
Books... The Art of Fielding/The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry/The Land of Decoration

Happy Christmas/Happy New Year/Goodbye/Namaste

Ella's Big Weekend

Saturday 19th November. Date worth putting in your diary, or simply remembering if you are in the Bristol area, as Ella gets a screening at the renowned and awesome international film festival this weekend.

Local news ITV Westcountry screened a segment yesterday which as a nice little tease of Ella, a little interview with our lovely producer and sneak peek at the festival itself. Its a piece on the festival really, but I like to think its all about Ella.

See it here if you wish... ELLA

Check out the festival website for times and program information. I wish I was going, Dan has told me there is a Q&A session with filmmakers which would have been great fun, but tis the season and i work fucking retail... go figure.

Video

Mr. Dan has set up a Vimeo page which contains a teaser for Ella (very nice), and the last film before Ella that Dan and I collaborated on... INSIDES (which was named after an Orbital album, fact fans, plus it just fits perfectly...), which is about a guy (good uni pal Martin Murphy) going a bit mental over a video tape. That by the way is the wrost description ever.

That Bloody Kid

Ella continues to wander the earth like Kane in Kung Fu.

The festival line- up has gotten a little bigger which is very cool. One of the coolest though is in Sweden. Where Ella will screen with a Dutch film called Two Eyes Staring. Follows the links to find out a bit more info.

http://www.fff.se/artiklar/2011/09/filmerna-i-arets-melies-kortfilmstavling/


http://www.fff.se/en/film/zwart-water/

And here is the updated list of where else Ella will be screening and has alread screened...


FESTIVAL WHERE WHEN

Worldwide Short Film Festival Toronto, Canada June 2011

Puchon Fantastic Film Festival Puchon, Korea July 2011

Grossman Fantastic Film & Wine Festival Slovenia July 2011

A World of Shorts Toronto, Canada August 2011

Concorto Film Festival 20-27 August 2011

MotelX – Lisbon International Horror Film Festival Lisbon, Portugal 7-11 September

Lund Fantastic Film Festival Lund, Sweden 15-24 September 2011

Branchage Festival Jersey 22-25 September 2011

Calgary International Film Festival Calgary, Canada 23 September – 02 October 2011

Screamfest LA LA, USA 14-23 October 2011

Court Metrange Rennes, France 20-23 October 2011

Razor Reel Fantastic Film Festival Brugge BELGIUM 29 OCT – 5 NOV

SITGES International Fantastic Film Festival

Spain 6-16 October

Encounters Short Film Festival Bristol, UK Nov 16-20 2011

Abertoir Horror Festival Wales Nov 2011

Puerto Rico Horror Festival

At the start of the year Dan came to me with the idea that we had been throwing around last summer to see if we could put Ella into some kind of feature treatment. We pitched a ten page treatment he had me write to SW SCREEN and low and behold the crazy bastards went for it, giving us a development fund and support to rewrite and rethink the concept of ELLA as a movie. I thrashed out story and treatment ideas with Dan till we bled and co wrote the treatment with him. He is now writing the screenplay, the first draft of which has just come across my desk(top).

Found this artcile online...

... the South West-backed chiller is called ELLA, from director Dan Gitsham...  No further info was given in the trade break, but Fango did a little digging and found it’s evidently a feature expansion of a digital short of the same title from the same creative duo, also funded by South West. This ELLA, which world-premiered last month at Toronto’s 17th Worldwide Short Film Festival, was written by Gitsham and James Driver and stars BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER’s Anthony Stewart Head (pictured above and right), Lisa Backwell from the UK version of SKINS and Joanne Lancastle.

Read the full article here.

Right... back to Powerless...

WATCH: The Regular Show, New Thundercats, The Fades, Fringe, LOST, Stewart Lee, Teen Wolf, The Killing
READ: Christopher Priest, The Marriage Plot, Skippy Dies, Stewart Lee, DCnU Action Comics, Detective Comics, Justice League, Locke and Key, Moon Knight, Ultimates...
LISTEN: Bon Ivor, Explosions in the Sky

The Wolves Act I and II

Rewriting can be an absolute pleasure. When it flows and works and feels like perfection itself... words, perhaps ironically, fail in describing the pleasure.

It can feel like an act of betrayal though. You have thirty, forty pages of a script that you clearly liked cos you were fucking writing it for the last few months and then  suddenly, you wake up in the middle of the night with fresh thoughts and you look at that body of work and think, fuck you, you piece of crap.

Its odd.

Thats kinda where I'm at the moment.

Its a massive part of the process and some who don't write, or who aren;t familiar with what you are doing will think that you have just wasted a ton of work and a ton of time. 

Not true. All part of the process.

My danger is rewriting ad infinitum.

But I feel I am on an ace path. Streamlined, fun, thought provoking,action packed...

I'm back on POWERLESS, which is an idea that has been brimming for about four years and has changed from super depression to whimsical super depression to super whimsy to super whimsy depression comedy social drama... its somewhere in the midst of that. I'm trying to get to feel like a comic book, the sort i read and look forward to each month. I love comics, have loved them since I was a tiny kid, so to see a TV show that does justice to the things i love would be a dream come true.

Heroes was probably the only show that managed it... and even then it only managed it for a season. Season 2, 3, 4 sucked large amounts of balls.

So... yeah, writing going good.

NO LIFE....

Kill List... British hitman movie crossed with Rosemary's Baby and The Wicker Man. Awesome, brutal and mental.

Easy A... Really surprised the shit out of me how much I enjoyed this.

EEEE EEE EEEE... Mental little book about depression, boredom and hating stupid things and the bears, hamsters, moose and dolphins that feel the same. Loved it.

Skippy Dies... Amazing book.

A Rage In Harlem... Brilliant, crazy piece of old school crime.

Bon Ivor... Just in love with everything Bon Ivor at the moment.

LOST... Starting season one from the beginning. I LOVE THIS SHOW! Now own all on bluray, it's like watching for the first time. Looks and sounds amazing.

Sons of Anarchy.... Finally getting round to watching season 3. Brilliant.