Star Wars -Trench Run

The only arcade game I truly enjoyed over and over again was the early 1980's Star Wars vector graphics 'sit-in' trench run game. It was a simple shoot and dodge game that just got harder and harder rather than moving on to multiple and varied scenarios. For years I hoped they would re-release the game with photo realistic graphics. It often appeared as one level in a more complex game but not as a singular game itself ...until now!

I recently discovered an i-Phone app called Trench Run. It is everything I ever dreamed of and even better I can play it anywhere. If you purchase the add-on you can also play it on a huge HD tv connected to your computer and use your i-Phone purely as a controller. How cool is that!? Try it out yourself at StarWars.com or view the trailer below.

What is a director?

Directors UK have just relaunched themselves and apart from now having to pay a yearly subscription, it is a much more exciting organisation, being more than just a collection agency. Unfortunately apart from a BBC short film I was comissioned to direct, that I doubt will ever get repeated, none of my other directing work has been televised or been released at the cinema, therfore they have nothing to collect for me yet. Until they do, I think I'll opt out of the subscription, but here's a quick reminder of what a director does.

Final Design for the Voydarkatron

What an incredible beast. It's a huge bulk of a monster and I can't believe he was created from just three living creatures on this planet - a slug, a rhino and an elephant. The concept artist James Law, has done an incredible job and I'm now officially his number one fan. So much so that I have asked him to help me design the film poster for when we head to Cannes. Can't wait to see the results.

The Voydarkatron - A seven foot beast that roams the forests of Minoitaniga and feeds on imagination.

2nd cut completed.

Henry's curiosity gets the better of him.

We had a screening of the first cut for Jo Nolan, the Executive Producer at Screen South. It was at my house so I had to tidy up a bit, get rid of the baby parafanalia, brew a nice pot of tea and purchase some posh biscuits. I should have presented the film on a state of the art 52 inch plasma widescreen TV, but all I had was a 13 inch Macbook Pro laptop placed on the dining room table, still it did the job.

I think she was pleased with what she saw, though it's difficult to tell as I was sitting behind her at the bottom of the stairs. The main feedback I got back was basically to speed up the uncle's world once Henry had invaded. It was actually the best kind of feedback you can get, which is feedback that you actually understand and agree with.

The film without rolling end credits was coming in at 22:36, but most short film festivals prefer films to be under 20 minutes. So using little pockets of spare time between working and family commitments, I managed to cut out over 4 minutes in just a few days and I have to say, most of it is looking better for it. I'm pretty confident what is going to be in the final cut now, but I have to wait for the VFX team to build and animate the Voydarkatron before I continue.

Henry attempts to make friends with Raygo Rattlegum.

Nearly finished my first assembly edit.

Well here we are, two more scenes to edit (one of them consisting of just one shot) and I'm coming in at a whopping 22'30" Now considering I had to cut my 20 page script down to 10 pages in order to be approved for the Inovation Shorts Fund, I'd say that's not bad going!

So what does The Infectious Imagination Of Henry Bramble look like? Is it going to be an award winning classic short? Will it get me some children's televisioon work? Will it attract David Heyman and Warner Bros to give me some decent development money for a feature length version? Will I finally be on the road to blockbuster success? The answer I'm afraid is that I haven't got as clue. I'm currently suffering from editor's syndrome, a condition where you have been exposed to the material for so long you can't judge it any longer. I need a few weeks off while the VFX boys get busy creating the wire frame Voydarkatron, then maybe I'll have fresher eyes for the picture lock. I am screening it to the producers Charlotte and Annabel on Monday so it will be interesting to see their reactions and hear their thoughts on the matter.

What I can tell you however, is that surprisingly, there are not that many problems with it considering the limited time we had. Overall the interior scenes work exceptionally well and Paul Copley's performance is a real pleasure to watch and is probably the main reason the films running time is so long. He delivers so many 'telling' expressions, it's hard to cut anything out. There's less usable material for Henry and Raygo, though that's mostly because we only had a couple of takes to work with due to the speed at which we had to get through the exterior scenes. There are also a few times when Archie would get tired and struggle to completely focus (a problem I also faced with The Happiness Thief, which is why there are such strict working patterns for child actors) and where Maxwell struggled with the creation of my tounge twisting words like Voydarkatron and Minoitaniga.

Overall, at this early stage, I am not thinking we have a dudd, so that's got to be worth something. Even though i signed off the final design for the Voydarkatron, I still can't imagine it there in the flesh, blended into the footage we shot. I'm hoping it'll look incredible, but we'll have to just wait and see!

...and that's a wrap!

Director Derek Boyes demonstrating how to use a VFX prop of the Voydarkatron's trunk so that Archie, the actor playing Henry Bramble has something real to push away. Michael, the 1st AD stands-in for Archie.

From left to right: Producer Annabel Bates, Executive Producer for Screen South, Jo Nolan and Producer for Hopscotch Films, Charlotte Wontner.


...Okay so I'm over a week late. We wrapped about 5:50pm on Sunday 23rd October having run out of daylight. Overall the shoot went well in that the cast and crew worked extremely hard to get what we needed in just three days while maintaining the highest quality in performance, cinematography, art direction and sound.

The cew set up for the first exterior shot of the day. This is one of the first scenes of the film where Henry Bramble unexpectedly arrives at his Great Uncle Geoffrey's house.

Unfortunately our biggest problem was always time. Realistically we needed four days or even five to comfotably finish. We were constantly fighting time, slipping behind schedule by a couple of hours each day, as a result I was forced to drop a lot of shots including a large chunk of the action at the end. I also didn't get the coverage I needed often running out of time to shoot the reverses or only getting one or two takes before moving on.

Archie Lyndhurst and Paul Copley keep their imagination alive as they play fight between takes.

The day after I felt very depressed and frustrated. If only Screen South had let us have that extra £10,000 we could have shot for a fourth day, if only our DOP hadn't got stuck in traffic on the prep day we could have rigged the lights the night before gaining 1.5 hours before we even started, or if the owners of the location could have given us a little more flexibility when and where we shot. There were so many 'if only's' it hurt. I felt deep down that I didn't get the film that I wanted and feared the lack of coverage would leave obvious holes in the film that would be unfixable and therefore not worth screening. My hopes of success were ruined!

Archie Lyndhurst (Henry Bramble) and his Mother help Maxwell Laird (Raygo Rattlegum) learn his lines.

....a few days later however I began to feel a little more optimistic and my curiosity thankfully took the better of me. I started browsing the footage and working out in my head if things would cut together okay. Soon I was ready to take on the challenge of fixing this film. I'm currently editing a couple of hours a day working through the film scene-by-scene while the other 22 hours the computer is hard at work converting the huge RED rushes files into a more managable HD format. So far the problems would propbably go unoticed to the average audience, but then I haven't got to scene 15 yet, Gulp!

The Voydarkatron - concept drawings

The Voydarkatron is  a seven foot creature that lives in the forests of Minoitaniga and feeds on imagination. It has a short fat slimy trunk that sucks the victims brain out of their eye sockets. The only way to then restore a victims imagination is to drip a drop of Voydarkatron blood into their mouth.

A sneak peek at the props for Henry Bramble

Production Designer Damien Creagh and his Art Directing team, Paula Oropeza and Nicholas Akass have ben working their socks off over the weekend to locate and build some fantastic props for The Infectious Imagination Of Henry Bramble. Well done to you all and thank you so much for your energy and support. Here's just a few of them:

The elephant picture in the spare attic bedroom that Henry has to sleep in.

Geoffrey's bedside alarm clock.

Raygo Rattlegum's hunting belt

Raygo Rattlegum's hunting rucksack

Geoffrey's 1970's typewriter.

Warning sign in the forest.

Confirmed Cast for Henry Bramble

We can now confirm our three cast members for The Infectious Imagination Of Henry Bramble. The first is our main character Henry Bramble who I am proud to announce is going to be played by the exceptionally talented 10 year-old ARCHIE LYNDHURST who not only is a brilliant, natural actor for his age, but is probably one of the most polite boys I have ever met. 

Second on the list is Great Uncle Geoffrey, the stuffy retired judge who's lost his imagination. He will be played by the brilliant PAUL COPLEY who I first saw in the award winning series The Lakes. He has since appeared in many exceptionally high quality television drama including The Street, Life On Mars, Torchwood and Downton Abbey.

Finally we have the up and coming MAXWELL LAIRD, recently featured in the Channel 4 documentry Seven Dwarves, playing what I'm sure will become one of the most memorable parts in the film, the wonderfully enigmatic elf-like forest hunter Raygo Rattlegum.

The Crew for Henry Bramble

It's always difficult to hire crew you have never worked with before, or to put it slightly differently, it's just easier to hire crew you have worked with before. There's always that fear that someone you have never worked with is going to turn out to be difficult, incompetent or on one occassion just plain weird, but if you have the balls (which I confess I often don't), it's healthier to change your crew from project to project  so that your work stays fresh and varied.

Despite several crew members already dropping out due to 'paid' opportunities and extended commitments (which unfortunately is a common problem when making a film with little money), I'm actually very excited by the team we are gathering for the shoot. It is turning out to be a healthy mix of old friends and new. Some are doing me a big favour and for others I hope the experience will help open some doors.

So far our crew consists of:

• Cinematography: Sara Deane (NFTS, First The Worst, Verity's Summer)
• Production Design: Damien Creagh (Shifty, Island)
• Music: Richard Chester (NFTS, The Happiness Thief, Blackout trailer)
• First Assistant Director: Michael O'Kelly
• Sound Recordist: Neil Heard
• SFX Sound Design: Miha Jaramaz (NFTS, The Happiness Thief, Aliens Vs Predator)
• Sound Design & Surround Mix: Ian MacBeth (Touched By A Stranger, Birthday Girl)
• Costume Designer: Nicole Pitchers
• SFX Make-up: Gilly Church
• 2D - 3D Conversion: Mike Fraser at Prime Focus (3D Star Wars Saga)
• EPK: Talulah Birchenough
• Production Manager: Rosa Glover
• Location Manager: Douglas MacDonald
• Accountant: Nigel Wood (Spaced, Black Books)
• Emma Newman: Runner (Filmsteps Maidstone)
• And last but not least my wonderful producers Charlotte Wontner  (Island, Sickhouse) and Annabel Bates. 

....more to follow!

We have our location for Henry Bramble!

After a week of searching the Internet for local country houses I am very excited to announce we have found the perfect location just minutes from my home (very convenient I know). It is a privately owned property that is used a lot for fashion shoots and is filled with beautiful antique furniture and pictures fitting for a retired judge. What's more unbelievable is that it is actually owned by a QC! Filming will commence from the 21st-23rd October. Fingers crossed the weather will be dry!

KILL LIST - Directed by Ben Wheatley

Having heard good but disgustingly dark violent things about the new British feature film KILL LIST and getting excited by the Wicker Man style poster, I started researching the filmmaker Ben Wheatley and discovered the UK director has had an interesting career. Watch the trailer below and then hear some words of advice from Ben Wheatley, the 39 year old viral filmmaker turned feature film director.

Henry Bramble Back On Track

So it has been a while since I have spoken about my new short film, The Infectious Imagination Of Henry Bramble. Well that's basically because until now I wasn't really sure if it was going to actually happen. We went from a £20,000 budget shooting in Kent to a £55,000 budget shooting in Denmark and then back down to an £18,000 budget shooting in Kent. Why? Well it was all about getting the production value the film deserved.

£20,000 was not enough to shoot in 3D so we managed to raise another £35,000 on the condition we shoot in Denmark, but when we budgeted the film it was becoming clear that living costs and film equipment was more expensive in Denmark, there were no known dwarf actors out there or many experienced crew in the region and most importantly there were no twee English Georgian houses with pretty gated, landscaped gardened entrances. Not only that, but planning a film in another country is so much more difficult and frustrating as you have to rely on other people out there to act as an extension of your imagination, using Skype, e-mail and dropbox to share information.

Shooting in my home country of Kent is so much easier. I can walk out the door and be on location in less then half an hour to plan storyboards or pre-dress the set, I can source local crews that I have already worked with, who will not need accomodation and will work that extra mile for me. Because we have such a thriving film industry here we can also make great deals with rental and post houses. The fact we don't have to shoot in 3D now due to the brilliant deal my producer Charlotte struck with Prime Focus (a company with cutting edge technology that can convert 2D to 3D and who have been chosen by Lucasfilm to do the 2D to 3D conversions of the two Star Wars trilogies) we now don't have the added pressure of technicalities on set so we can shoot faster and cheaper and still deliver a fantastic 3D short.

So the reality at present is that we have £18,000 to make TIIOHB. I have trimmed the script to its very limits without, I hope, loosing the emotional and imaginative impact of the story. We are now aiming to shoot over a three day weekend on location in Kent at the end of Septemeber or beginning of October, so keep checking back for more updates!

Words of Wisdom & Inspiration

Final Cut Pro X

Just in case you weren't aware, you can now purchase the latest version Final Cut Pro X on the Aps Store for a measly £199! Not only that, Color and Soundtrack are now built-in. You can also buy Compressor and Motion separately for £30 each. All in, it'll cost you less than £260!

Considering only a few years ago Final Cut Studio was £1,500, I'd say Apple are onto something very very good here. I just hope Adobe will do the same with their creative suite range of design, web and video applications.

I know there's been a bit of controversy over this latest version (nicknamed i-movie pro) as it has inherited many of the innovative layout and working patterns of i-movie, but Apple have obviously used i-movie as a platform to experiment with more intuitive editing techniques and have decided it is now the right time to make that change. Nobody likes change even though it is usually for the better and as all new software built from scratch, there will be much to improve and tweak. You only have to go back to the mid 1990's to remember film editors moaning about Avid and Media Composer (the latter of which even gave them a Steenbeck controller to make them feel safer). Give it a year or two and everybody will be wondering what all the fuss was about!

Love Does Grow On Trees - Award winning short now available on Vimeo!

Here's a wonderful short by my friend Bevan Walsh, the man who discovered Andrew Garfield before he was famous. He had huge success at festivals across the globe with this 2008 short.

I am personally very fond of this film as there was a lot of Derek Boyes influence. The very first scene was based on a true account of an early porn memory I had on the school football field, but thankfully I did not get a football in my face.

I think the magical porn man (Tom Brooke aka The Happiness Thief) was inspired by the day Bevan walked with me into a park in Newcastle where I left a plastic carrier bag full of my old porn magazine's on a shed door. I decided to be rid of them having recently met a girl and suddenly felt dirty owning them. I considered it as a generous donation to the first teenage Geordie who came along. 

Finally the third link to my life is that Bevan shot part of the film in Maidstone and used my Dad's house for the boy's parents house. Unbeknown to my parents we converted my Dad's music/study room into a teenage boys bedroom.

Are you aware of Scrivener?

Scrivener is a powerful content-generation tool for writers that allows you to concentrate on composing and structuring long and difficult documents. While it gives you complete control of the formatting, its focus is on helping you get to the end of that awkward first draft. I discovered this amazing application while researching Neil Cross the writer of BBC 1's excellent crime drama Luther on the BBC's writersroom website. Luther is currently in it's second series and well worth a watch (Tuesdays at 9pm - or catch up on the i-player). Unfortunately as I have had to do most of my writing for the last year on an ancient PC at work, I have not had the proper chance to utilise this well thought out program, but that doesn't stop you from using it! It just makes your workflow so much easier and keeps all your notes, drafts, treatments, outlines, clippings and reference material together in one intuitive file. Don't take my word for it watch the demo below!

Want to know what it's like to be a successful screenwriter in Hollywood?

I stumbled upon this incredible website a few years ago when I was trying to find the definition of a film treatment (which by the way there are many variations). It's called Wordplay and is run by two very talented Hollywood Academy Award ®-nominated writers  Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio. Amoung other things you can read or download over 100 useful and insightful essays on writing from a Hollwood point of view including how to write a proper treatment . If you are ever thinking of writing for Hollywood then I seriously recommend you read all of these essays first - They will be invaluable!

Introducing producer Charlotte Wontner

I am very excited to announce that The Infectious Imagination Of Henry Bramble is being produced by Charlotte Wontner of Hopscotch Films who has worked extensively across documentary and drama as a producer and a production manager for the last 15 years.

Her vast knowledge and hands-on experience of running a budget and organising large productions is invaluable for such an ambitious short and I am very grateful she has come on board. It is rare you find a producer who fights your corner to provide you with the professional and financial support you need to achieve your vision.

Charlotte has produced various shorts and feature films including the short film A Fairy Story (2002), a £2.2 million feature The Sick House (2008) sold by Arclight Films and more recently Island (2011) starring Natalie Press which is still playing at the following cinemas:

Riverside Studios Hammersmith    13th June
Light House Wolverhampton    13-16th June
Dundee Contemporary Arts    17th & 19th June
Eden Court Inverness    16-21st June
Hippodrome Bo’ness    20th & 23rd June
Cornerhouse Manchester    23rd June
Greenwich Picturehouse    6th July
Hyde Park Picturehouse Leeds    9-12th & 14th July
City Screen Picturehouse York    12th July
Tyneside Cinema Newcastle    13th July
Picturehouse at FACT Liverpool    18th July

Development Hell

BBC radio 2 has an interesting program on right now called Development Hell about the difficulty of getting a film made in Hollywood. Has some insightful stuff, in particular the account of the infamous Smoke and Mirrors screenplay about Houdini that nearly everyone in Hollywood was attached to at some time or another. Listen to it on the i-player here!

J J Abrams talks about his mystery box.

Watched this a while back and got very excited as I loved magic as a kid and for a short while was a junior member of the Medway Magical Society. I connected with a lot what he was saying and found it very inspirational depite not being that familiar with his TV work. Then he directed Star Trek and quickly became my top new favourite director. Now he has teamed up with Steven Spielberg with Super 8, a film that pays homage to Spielberg's classic work of the late seventies and early eighties. I just hope I won't be disappointed. Watch his talk below and see what you think.

J.J. Abrams traces his love for the unseen mystery –- a passion that’s evident in his films and TV shows, including Cloverfield, Lost and Alias -- back to its magical beginnings.

The best book about storytelling I have ever read - FACT!

I am terrible at reading at the best of times so when this book arrived from amazon and I saw the tiny font size and thickness of the book I never thought I'd ever finish it, however to my surprise I could not put it down. By the end of it I felt I had gone on a spiritual journey of enlightenment. Not only had it educated me in the many important works of storytelling throughout the ages but it also showed me how fundementally important storytelling is to the human race and that without it we would not survive. I insist that anyone that is serious about telling stories in whatever form MUST read this book!

"An enormous piece of work, not really one book at all but at least three... nothing less than the story of all stories." Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye

"This is a truly important book, an accolade often bestowed and rarely deserved in our modern age." Dame Beryl Bainbridge

"This is literally an incomparable book, because there is nothing to compare it with. It goes to the heart of man's cultural evolution through the stories we have told since storytelling began. It illuminates our nature, our beliefs and our collective emotions by shining a bright light on them from a completely new angle. Original, profound, fascinating - and on top of it all, a really good read." Sir Antony Jay, co-author of Yes, Minister

3-D family/fantasy short gets £20,000 Screen South funding

The Infectious Imagination Of Henry Bramble is a new short film idea that I came up with off the back of a filmmaking summer school workshop I ran last year. It was inspired by my impending fatherhood having suddenly realised that although we wanted a girl, we could quite easily have a boy. I wrote the character of Henry Bramble based on the kind of boy I imagined we would have. As it turned out we had a baby girl, so I guess this story is now dedicated to the son I never had.

I developed the script over four weeks while working as an usher at The Maidstone Crown Court. There is so much waiting around in court due to legal arguments that I could get at least a couple of hours writing in a day. When I finished I let a few film people read it and by their feedback I quickly realised I had come up with another brilliant short film idea (the other being The Happiness Thief), that could potentially put me back on the map in terms of my directing career. However I was a little stumped as to how to get it made in a recession, especially as it was so ambitious and required a completely CGI character.

I knew pretty much all the shorts funding had stopped due to the the closure of The UK Film Council, but I sent the script to Screen South anyway, in the hope they may know of a shorts scheme I was unaware of. To my utter surprise they told me they had plans for a new Innovative Shorts scheme that would be much bigger than their largest Digital Shorts award.  The scheme sounded perfect for an ambitious 3D short and so I applied as soon as the applications appeared online.

To my relief The Infectious Imagination Of Henry Bramble was one of four projects chosen to be awarded £20,000. Filming will take place over the Summer with VERL in Dundee undertaking the visual effects.

A new beginning

Well what can I say, I've been away from this blog for a long time having only just figured out how to set up an account on Blogger. Now it is so much easier! Anyway a lot has happened in the two and a bit years since my last blog entry, so I better fill you all in.

Progress with Blackout seemed to take a step backwards after my announcement that Jessica Hynes was coming on board. What was supposed to be the final draft in June 2009 proved to be problematic as I struggled to please Ipso Facto Films while still trying to hold on to the original concept I had for the film. In the end we over-developed having a far too complicated backstory with two main stories that nobody knew which to favour. The project was eventually shelved halfway through a new treatment back in September 2009.


Blackout was originally supposed to be a simple three character story and so I wanting to go back to writing a much simpler story. Using the original 1970 suspense thriller And Soon The Darkness as a template, I built a new mystery thriller called Missing set within the same world I had created for Blackout (the bleak remote wind swept Island of Sheppey). Things started to feel like they were moving forward again when Ipso Facto hired a top design company to work on a new poster and marketing pack but by now the recession was at its peak and we had little interest.


I wrote a second draft with Ipso but began to have difficulties with conflicting notes and ideas that made a third draft impossible. With the option ending in April 2010, Ipso kindly agreed to return the rights to me so that I could look for a new home for Missing. My producer Bex Hopkins also stood down as she is having a baby this Summer and naturally wanted to have some time off from work. Since then I have developed a new draft with the help of a brilliant script editor Ludo Smolski and I am hopeful that a new producer will identify with the project and finally push it forward into production.

As for Blackout, I am keen to go back and re-write the version set in the Ardennes in Belgium and re-launch it sometime in the future.