Epic Fantasy Adventure Resolution for 2014

At the beginning of the year I pondered on doing something to celebrate Drakkon's 20th anniversary. This led to a reunion at the falls in October, a growing Facebook page and a successful Indiegogo campaign to remaster the film in HD.

In doing all this I was reminded of my passion, ambition and fearless drive, at a time in my early career when anything seemed possible. My passion was infectious and somehow seemed to make the impossible happen. This made me reflect on my subsequent career and how over time I had slowly stopped externalising that self-belief. I realised that if I still wanted that illusive directing career, I had to externalise it again. So what better way to do this than by making the most ambitious and emotionally engaging modern fantasy adventure short that I can on a modest budget, financed and marketed through crowd-funding.

I am looking to Game Of Thrones and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo for inspiration, re-working an idea I have had in my head for the last twenty years. The story will centre around an anti-heroine with a dark and horrific past - a cross between an older Arya Stark and Lisabeth Salander. It will be dark, gritty, graphic and emotionally engaging, aimed at delighting GOT fans and general fantasy fans alike.

The ultimate aim is to attract the attention of Hollywood, encouraging them to exploit my undiscovered talents as a director, using a strategic online marketing campaign that will run alongside the project. Sounds unrealistic? Maybe it is, but that's what I like about it!

Drakkon's Indiegogo Campaign is 182% funded with 13 hours to go!

We have exceeded our minimum target by a whopping 182% - well done everyone who has supported this campaign! 

This is the final call for the`Drakkon Express train to Remasterdome! If you were intending to contribute to this campaign, but kept putting it off, then you now only have 13 hours left. This really is your last chance, so climb on board and join the team! Wooo Woooooo! 

http://igg.me/at/Drakkon/x/3449576

Final Design for Henry Bramble poster by Richard Davies

I'm very excited to reveal the latest and final poster design for The Infectious Imagination Of Henry Bramble, created by the amazing Richard Davies (TurksWorks).

Was David Cameron's advice to the British film industry naive?

There's definately some pretentious art-house films out there that take themselves too seriously that should not be publicly funded (Rat Catcher, Hunger, Bronson) as well as some deplorable 'genre' films (Creep, The Cottage, Hush). I'm not sure what David Cameron meant by his comments this week, but I think the term 'commercial' is often misinterpreted.

A commercial film can be art-house, experimental, drama, documentary, animation, genre or any combination of these. It should be regarded as commercially successful not by how much money it makes, but simply by weather or not it makes its money back (this includes all production, marketing and distribution costs). If it doesn;t have an audience big enough to pay for itself then it should not be financed through public money.

The UK doesn't and will never have the financial infrastructure like Hollywood and therefore can't finance films like Avatar or even 'British' qualifying films like  Harry Potter or Bond. So its commitment to supporting all types of film is actually limited up to a certain level of budget. At the other end of the scale I agree with Julian Fellows that the government should not be financing self-indulgent filmmakers whose films have no chance of making their money back. Despite popular believe, this does not include filmmakers like Mike Leigh, Ken Loach or Anrdrea Arnold who are in fact by the above definition 'commercial filmmakers'.

This out-of-date attitude towards the UK film industry as being only capable of making fluffy period drama, gritty social realism, middle class romantic comedy or east-end gangster films has to change. We need to put more energy into educating British film audiences, by giving them access to the huge variety of wonderful high quality International and British films out there that don't make it to the multiplex. How we do this successfully is any ones guess and is probably just as hard to answer as "What makes a commercially successful film?"