Humans Movie - The food bites back!

Yes, that's right, I'm involved in feature length zombie film. It's been written and produced by the company I work for Red Dog Film - and I am really excited about it! I helped the writer develop the first draft of the script, was a runner on the trailer we created - which won an award from Celtx for its script, and which you can see below.

I am now helping to run a crowdfund campaign for it, including its Twitter feed and on Facebook page. 

The film, called Humans, is a twist on the zombie movie genre, with the zombies being the good guys and the humans being - gasp - the monsters! It begins in World War II, with the British trying to create a super solider. This creations are actually zombies, and they are let loose during an attempted raid by the Nazis, and soon the whole world is overrun and taken over by zombies. 

But it doesn't stop there, the zombies evolve into a society of their own, only for it come full circle, when humans return - now becoming the scary, monsters of the tale. 

The film, as I said is being crowdfunded via Indiegogo - check out the page here! - where you can find out even more information and watch the pitch video presented by the very cool director Phil Stevens. 

We're also running a design a zombie competition as one of the perks, with the winning entries being turned into real characters in the finished film. To enter just donate to the the Indiegogo page and then upload a design on to the Humans on our Facebook page.

As I said in the beginning, I am honestly excited about this film. I love the concept for the film - its going to be full of World War II costumes and settings, zombies and dark humour -and I really want to see the characters I met on the page live, and breathe, and be loved by an audience via the big screen too. But of course the only way that can happen is if we have the support of the horde (excuse the pun) of zombie film fans out there! So please, please, check it out at - @HumansMovie, humansmovie.com or our Facebook page!

Okay that's enough links for now! Zombie on people. 

Sir Joseph Banks Crowdfunidng Campaign - We Can Do It!

This week I am not reviewing a film or television show. Instead I'd like to tell you about The Banks Endeavour. 

The Banks Endeavour is  an authentic period drama and documentary that Red Dog Film, the company I work for, are planning to produce if we can raise enough through a crowdfunding campaign currently running on Indiegogo. 

Why should you be interested this you ask? Well, the documentary/drama is about Sir Joseph Banks, an explorer and botanist that did a huge amount for science, exploration, for example...

• He sailed on the Endeavour and discovered Australia with Captain Cook. 

• He was involved in bringing hundreds of plants back to Britain - he and his party were the first Eurpoeans to come across the Eucalyptus tree. 

• He is considered by some to be the father of Australia. 

• He was the man who sent Captain Bligh out on the Bounty - so we can basically thank him for Mutiny on Bounty (1962) with Marlon Brando. 

The strange thing is though, despite doing so much for Britain and being involved in so much, he is hardly known to the public. Surprisingly I seem to be one of the few people who seem to have heard of him. I knew his name growing up as a child because we had a Banksia rose growing up the side of our house and my father told me who is was named after. It continues to be one of my favourite flowers, because of the creamy yellow colour of the petals and because it has no thorns.

One person who has know about, and has a great appreciation for Banks though, is David Attenborough. He even recently came to the opening of a Banks exhibition at a local museum The Collection, and gave our crew an interview for the short documentary below. He also intends to be one of several interviewees bookending the 40 minute drama we intend to produce.

So that's a brief idea of what the project is about and personally, I think Sir Joseph Banks deserves more awareness. I've been helping out on the research side of the film and the amount this man did and touched upon during the Enlightenment period is incredible. 

In many ways this project reminds me of a fantastic programme called Breaking the Mould from the BBC Four, which was about Florey, Heatley and Chain. If you don't who these men are, they were the people who turned penicillin into a usable drug during the Second World War. Though many people justly credit Fleming with discovering penicillin, the work behind making it useful for hospitals and safe for humans was done by those three men. That programme still sticks vividly in my memory because it showed me amazing people who I never knew about it. 

I like to think that The Banks Endeavour can do that too. That people will suddenly realise that the plants in their garden, that Kew, that Australia would never have been what they are without one man - Joseph Banks.  

Anyway, so if you'd like to get involved and help support this film please click on the Indiegogo link here. The Banks Endeavour is also on Twitter and Facebook, so even if you can't donate please spread the word. 

Many thanks for listening...
Girl With A Gun Mic 

Scene 69: Pills Short Film

I've been involved in quite a few short films for the last few years - as a producer, extra, runner, editor etc. However, the latest film I've been involved in - not including my community film editing work - is particularly special. Pills is a short sci-fi about time-travel and trust, with a script written by me!

Yes, my very first script translated to the screen. And as with many scripts, it took a while to get there. I came up with idea at least a couple of years ago, and first pitched it in a session with Jon Reiss on a Second Light Lab for Producers.  A few months later I wrote the script, but it wasn't until earlier this year, after failing to get funding for it from a competition, that I decided, I'd produce it myself.

So, I got together with a couple of guys I've worked with before at Red Dog Film - a young cinematographer called Ben Groves who I also had as director, and a young director/actor called Will Jones who played the main protagonist George. I then cast along with an actress who been in Coins, a short film written and directed by Will Jones, as the second main character Izzy. Finally a new actor who is part of a film club I help run for RDF called ReBrand rounded off the cast as George's friend Mike.

The film was shot over a weekends towards the end of the summer, and is currently still in post-production - I've seen a rough cut and I'm rather pleased with it.

So, what did I learn whilst making the film? Well, I discovered first hand what it's like to have actors and directors taking your precious script and causually change lines or throw in new ideas, and though it was a little disconcerting, I knew that it was the way it was meant to be. Scripts as they say, are blueprints for films, and films are all about collaboration - everyone throws in their ideas, and hopefully expands and augments the original idea, making it better and bigger.

Or as I put it - a script is like a cake recipe. You perfect it, then give it to someone else - and yes, they aren't going to make the same cake as you did, but they might add things you never thought of and improve it.

In short, I enjoyed making the film and I'm intending to make more in future.

If you want to check out a few pictures from the shoot for Pills here's a link to the Facebook page: Pills on Facebook.