Loch Ness and Salem

Travelled up to Pitlochry last night, did a bit of work at Mums house and stayed over for the drive to Drumnadrochit for the Loch Ness Film Festival 2010 , The theatre was great, with a very good projector system, and the picture was a little dark, but worked and sounded good. It had a very intimate atmosphere. Bonus was that the audience really liked 'Shooter' very happy.

This morning before heading to the festival, I checked my emails, and there was one from Loretta Miles of the Salem Film Festival, USA, to say: We plan to position SHOOTER in competition with other short films and it would show once with a group of international shorts and the second time in a perfect pairing with HIDDEN BATTLES. Thank you for the lovely film. It is one of my personal favorites in this years fest

What a lovely email

Filming some material for Basil Khalil tomorrow morning, just scouting for a cool location and interesting charachters, up early in the morning.

Competition

I ran a competition this week, with a prize of a signed DVD of 'Shooter', which was won by Leanne Walker, she is travelling through Australia at the moment.
New competition this week, keep an eye open for announcement on FB and twitter.

Make sure and read the blog as the question will be relevant to the content:)

Started a VIMEO account yesterday, I will be posting more films there soon

Also making a new Reflect video this weekend, as I am travelling North to fix the cottage, fix Mums house and screening 'Shooter' at the Loch Ness Film Festival. Round trip of Scotland.

Reflecting

I have been writing blogs and posting information on what I have been doing now for a long time, and yesterday I decided to film a short piece called Reflect, you can see it here.

It was a near perfect day on the little Carman Loch, where I got to think, and sometimes fish. I set up the camera at the front of the boat, rolled the tape and just talked to the camera.
When I got home I reviewed and chose the most relevant parts to make the diary. I added an intro, and a bit of ambient music, did a rough cut, and compressed for the web. Took about 4 hours in all to create, and I had a blast doing it. No crew to worry about, no background noise to worry about, apart from a wee remote controlled helicopter that some bloke was flying near by. Loads of interesting life to film round about me, and the sun was out, bonus.

How do you Reflect?

More to come

Photography Lecture

On the 31st August, I had the pleasure of lecturing on Digital Photography and Photoshop at the Concord Centre, hosted by Tommy Crocket.

Meeting the photographers and talking about photography, working examples and having a giggle, it was a pleasure to be in amongst Tommy's crew of enthusiastic photographers.

Talking to Connor O'Gorman this evening about future plans, fingers crossed, and also wishing Basil Khalil and happy Birthday yesterday, Go Bas...

Footage for the Scottish Parliament project that I am working on for Philip Barlow, should be here tomorrow some time, then we can knock the project on the head for screening in Estonia on the 7th of September.

'Shooter' is screening at the Lochness Film Festival on Saturday the 25th September, competing against some hard hitting shorts and feature films. Looking forward to the event.

This morning I got a tweet from Shorts TV to say I had won, The Annecy Festival of Animation 5 DVD set, wooohoooo, how cool is that.

And finally, today I have to research a little about 'film in radio', as I have been asked to present the sound track for 'Shooter' on the Heartland FM radio show on the 11th November. I am sure that an entire film track has never been used on a radio programme before, so I need to do a little digging to find out if I have a first, if so, then it could be great for 'Shooter's publicity.