The special effects of 'Shooter'

When building the short film, I really had to tap into all my resources.

With one actor, Paul Hunter, who also wrote some of the script from a different perspective. I placed him in a blue screen studio, and shot him doing many different things with a rifle, then I was able to composite him into scenes that I shot with him in, in the highlands.

I also wanted to incorporate jets into my flying sequences, and that involved learning how to model in a 3d environment, and animate the finished pieces in a live action sequence of the film, it took a lot of time, but looks amazing

I tried many different voices for the piece, using American, Canadian and English accents for the narrative, I finally decided to stick with my own voice for the film, as it seemed to be more relevant to the piece and delivered the passion that I wanted

After 7 months I felt I had the pre-viz that I needed to develop the film further, It was at this point that I decided to place it before an audience, to see if the story worked. It went down very well, and there were no criticisms to note, so I decided to put it into a couple of festivals.

'Shooter' was accepted to screen at the short film corner in Cannes back in May 2009, but with my lack of experience, I would say I should have waited till the following year for Cannes, as the film had nothing to help push it.

Then it was The Heart of England International Film Festival, where Paul and I attended. We were blown away when Shooter was called out as the best short film, what a buzz. We met some amazing people there and still enjoy keeping up with there stories of how there films are doing.

That's when I decided to enter a few more festivals, some of which I thought may have been too big for our little film, but what do you know, we were then invited to screen at the prestigious Palm Spring Short Film Festival, where we were screened with some of the best short films on the planet. For me, it was as good as winning, just to be there.

Since then we have won in Ireland and South Africa, with other screenings planned for the new year.

The video diaries can be viewed above or at www.youtube.com/Studiorondo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Z9EebmbDNo