J. J. Abrams: on Filmmaking

Could The 'BitTorrent Bundle' Eradicate Film Piracy?

I hate going to the cinema, paying £10 for a ticket, only to find out that the film I was looking forward to was just in fact a clever piece of marketing and that the film itself was a complete waste of my time - I genuinely consider this to be daylight robbery. You should be able to get your money back if you are genuinely dissatisfied with the product. I also hate missing a film I really want to watch at the cinema. This is either because by the time you get round to it, the film has already been and gone (having kids is a killer for this), or the film had a limited release and is not playing at any of your local cinemas. The fact that you then have to wait a minimum of three months before you can watch it on the small screen just adds to the frustration.

I refuse to subscribe to Sky Movies, LoveFilm or worse Netflix as none of these providers have access to all the film titles I want to see. In addition to paying for each film you download, you also have to pay a monthly subscription, but why? I want to be able to search for any film and pay £3 - £4 to stream it in HD to a device of my choice. If after watching it I really like it, I should then be able to purchase a download copy to keep (minus the £3-£4 I have already paid) or be able to access it through the cloud for free at any time.

I worked out fairly recently that owning a video collection today is rather materialistic, a waste of money and environmentally unfriendly. Out of maybe 200 carefully selected DVD's that I have purchased over the last fifteen years, I have only watched about twenty percent of them a second time. I bought these films for the comfort of knowing I could watch them when I wanted to, but you can now probably download any of these films off the internet whenever you want, making a physical private collection completely unnecessary.

So for all these reasons above, I have recently found myself illegally downloading more and more films off the internet. This may seem rather contradictory from someone who is passionate about filmmaking (I do genuinely feel guilty at times), but as an audience member I am sick of paying to see rubbish, and as a filmmaker I am reluctant to pay to watch a film for research purposes (especially if you just need to see one or two specific scenes). To be fair, the films I do genuinely like, I often purchase on DVD anyway (Drive, Dragon Tattoo and Super 8 to name a few). The ones that I enjoyed, but don't want to purchase (Another Earth), I'd happily pay £3 - £4 for. Unfortunately downloading illegally doesn't offer that option and that's when I start to feel guilty.

However, I was delighted to read a fascinating article on nofilmschool about the new developments of technology company BitTorrent. It is launching the 'BitTorent Bundle' designed to empower those in the content creation business. I am not going to say anymore except that if you really want to get ahead of the game, as a viewer and as a filmmaker, you should read this article. Have we finally found a way to watch and distribute films online, legally, fairly and efficiently!

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).

20 years since the making of Drakkon

We are now well into 2013 and in a few months it will have been a whopping 20 years since I made my first 16mm film on location at West Burton Falls in North Yorkshire. Drakkon was an incredibly ambitious first film filled with stunts, explosions and special effects puppetry.

The final results may not have been up to Hollywood standards, but they were certainly no worse than Peter Jackson's Bad Taste. For a crew that were mostly made up of national diploma media graduates from Harrogate College, who had never made a film before, it was an impressive feat in 1993.

On the surface the short is now construed as a rather embarrassing and somewhat amateur attempt of filmmaking, but for myself and many of the filmmakers involved, it holds a much deeper sentiment.

Peasant (played by Derek Boyes) being confronted by Drakkon (notice the Alien 3 homage).

We were very inexperienced at the time, attempting something far more ambitious than most other beginner filmmakers. To our Media Production course leader, we were seen as egotistical mavericks who were heading for failure, yet through naivety, passion and sheer stubbornness we proved him wrong.

The experience bonded many of us at a pivotal moment in our young adult lives. It symbolised our hopes and dreams for the future. It was a time of innocence and optimism, when anything seemed possible. I look back on the whole experience with great fondness and despite all its faults, I am still very proud of the short film we made.

Twenty years later, it seems Drakkon has made a lasting impression on our middle-aged lives, so much so that on Saturday August 10th 2013, nine (maybe eleven) out of seventeen original cast a crew members, will be heading back to the enchanting waterfall in West Burton for a 20th anniversary reunion - can't wait!

DVD sent off to Cannes - Fingers crossed for a miracle!

I have just spent the last 24 hours creating all the elements for a region-free DVD of The Infectious Imagination Of Henry Bramble, to send with our submission to The Cannes Film Festival. 

I had to roughly mix the most up-to-date dialogue, sound fx and music tracks together alongside the picture from the locked off Final Cut offline. I then exported out to ProRes 422 (LT) version, which I opened in Quicktime to convert into an MPEG 4 720p version. I then imported this to a new iDVD project, creating a menu from one of the more tasteful template designs on offer. I also added a small section of Henry Bramble music to it, to get you in the mood. I then burnt off four DVD's (3 extra just in case I messed up along the way), opened a new photoshop file and using the elements from my poster design, created the images and text that will be printed onto the DVD.  

I had to drive to my Dad's to haul my decrepit Epson Stylus Photo R200 printer back home, only to find the cartridges were empty. I sped off to Tesco's to get a cheap compatible set only to discover it was £70 - The same price as Epson's own?! Frustratingly there's plenty available online for £15 or less, but the earliest they could deliver was Monday which is cutting it a bit fine, as the screeners have to reach the festival office no later than March 7th. 

Eventually I found a small ink cartridge refill shop in Maidstone and rather than going to sleep (I've just worked a 12 hour night shift), I jumped back in the car to collect a refill set for a more reasonable £36. I then get back home and installed the cartridges and a new printer utility software for OS 10.7.5, only to have to clean the nozzles three times, before I was satisfied it was safe to print. Finally at 12:12 on Friday 1st March, I have my God damn DVD. All I need to do now is bag it up and pop it in the post via Airsure for a mere £9.24! 

All this just to have our film considered  -  but just imagine if we do get selected in competition, I'll get to meet Steven Spielberg (this years president of the Jury) who can then convince the jury to hand over the short film Palme d'Or.   ....oh it's good to dream!

Roald Dahl on writing

"When you're writing it's rather like going on a very long walk, across valleys and mountains and things, and you get the first view of what you see and you write it down. Then you walk bit further, maybe up on to the top of a hill, and you see something else, then you write that and you go on like that, day after day, getting different views of the same landscape really. The highest mountain on the walk is obviously the end of the book because it's got to be the best view of all, when everything comes together and you can look back and see everything you've done all ties up. But it's a very, very long slow process."

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

Been reading a Stephen King book - it's a real page turner, yet it's not fiction. It's about the craft or writing form his perspective and is split into two sections. A brief biographical history that attempts to reveal how he became a writer from the events that happened in his life and then an easy going, laid back chit chat on what he considers to be good writing with many useful tips and advice from one of the most successful writers of his generation.

What I found extremely comforting was that he says you don't need to know a lot of words to be able to write well. It's how you construct your sentences that's important. Again detail is not always necessary and should be kept to a minimum in order to give readers just enough to fill in the blanks so you don't slow down the natural flow of the writing with irrelevant detail. Often less is much better than more.

This is music to my ears, as I have always been somewhat over-conscious of my lack of vocabulary and the fact that I often struggle to bring the right word into my head, particularly when I speak. I still lack confidence with my sentences too, probably because I never remember being taught how to construct them. I have just developed a system of writing that works for me. As it turns out, it seems it is the right way of doing things. The examples King gives on poor sentence construction and what not to do, I already seem to be aware of and try to avoid at all cost, though (even he admits) it is not always put to practice.

As I grow more confident with my writing I am beginning to realise that a lot of what I do is good, even very good. I don't know why this surprises me as I have never had a producer or agent tell me my writing is bad (Only my spelling and punctuation, which is more a case of mild dislexia than bad writing). When I first started to write seriously, friends and colleagues insisted that I was not a writer, that I should stick to directing and leave the writing to someone else. However, screenwriting to me is simply a poor-man's directing as the fundamental skills of telling the story are the same.

I have always been able to imagine very, very clearly in my mind. Being a very sociable person, directing was the natural position in which to tell stories, but now with nearly ten years of screenwriting practice, I am starting to be able to translate what I see in my head, directly onto the page with increasing success. Like Stephen King, this comes to me fairly easily. The difficulties I tend to have is with character.

I'm hoping there is a book out their that can explain to how to overcome these difficulties in way I can grasp. Too often screenwriting books are written academically and I struggle to fully understand the concepts, yet books like this or Save The Cat, are much more accessible to me and I recommend them whole heartedly.

ADR session for Henry Bramble

Had  a good ADR session in East London with Archie Lyndhurst on Monday. It mostly consisted of getting better/cleaner recordings of some of his dialogue along with some moans and groans when he is attacked by the Voydarkatron. Nice to catch up with the busy young man and his Mother. There was a technical delay that took an hour to sort out, but Archie being Archie, sped though the material as a true proffessional does. We got the recordeing session free, so thanks to the guys at Filmfonix.

Woodkid’s - Run Boy Run!

Here's a nice music video by French director and musician Woodkid’s (aka Yoann Lemoine) that captures the wonderful essence of child's desire for adventure. Not too dissimilar to our very own Henry Bramble.

Turksworks commissioned for Henry Bramble poster

I can confirm that we have just commissioned the extremely talented illustrator and designer Richard Davies to create the final version of the Henry Bramble movie poster, based on my previous design ideas. 

Rich has created some amazing work that has a very modern Drew Struzan style about it - The man responsible for some of the most iconic film posters of the 1980's (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back To The Future, The Thing, Blade Runner and The Goonies). 

From Richard's portfolio it became clear that we share a very similar taste in films and in a particular style of movie poster art. I immediately sent him an email, begging him  to help us with Henry Bramble. Thankfully he agreed and I'm dying to see what he comes up with. Checkout some of my favorite pieces of his work below.