Good news

Sky Super Shorts have just connected, and want to broadcast 'Shooter',

'Your film is incredibly good!

I loved the ending of it. It is very smart and the images are great.

It will be a pleasure to air your film on our Super Shorts program.'

Also some promising news from the Screen Machine

'At present we don't normally screen short films in Screen Machine but I'm hoping that we change this in the future and regularly include short films, mainly from Scottish film makers. I'll keep note of your film and if we go ahead with the new policy - as I hope we will - I'll get back in touch with you.'

A good day:)

Moving Forward

For a long time, I have been pushing my career, and the way things are developing with my film projects and scripts, things are moving forward. 

This morning, I drove out on a beautiful day to Luss, to put the poster for Shooter up, at the Luss Tourist Centre, where Dane the minister has agreed to show the film in the centres little cinema. I met him during the winter months to prepare for screening, and now looking forward to the film screening for tourist that pass through Luss.

Yesterday, I met with Steve Mackay, who runs his production company Red Zebra, a like minded film maker from Edinburgh, we had a great meeting with lunch, and a never ending torrent of ideas that kept flowing, very exciting, and enjoyable. It's great to talk about these ideas without people looking at you as if you are some kind of crazed lunatic. One word, Productive.

A couple of days ago, Eddie Millar, who you may have remembered from an earlier post, dropped by to get me up to speed with his development. He has now stepped up to the digital age, and ventured onto the highway of knowledge, in other words, he bought a laptop:) He is now registered with Withoutabox, the awesome tool for film and script, that gives you instant access to the world festival circuit with your script of film. So we loaded his script, 'Woke up Banged up' onto the system, and he is currently studying the festivals listed.

Basil Khalil from Code 81 Films, informed me last night that Shooter has been delivered to iShort in Prague, iShorts Evenings are organised by FAMU students and present amazing Czech and foreign short films. Basil also sent a script this morning called 'A Gaza Week', which I am very excited about, and will spend the dark hours of the weekend reading, and hopefully not writing notes, more of this to come soon.

No word from Peter Mullan, after the chance meeting at the FilmG awards last week, I guess he is really busy, so may be a while before he gets a chance to see the film, fingers crossed.

Paul Hunter has just informed me that one of his short films is ready for the festivals, so I will need to spend a little time with him and the withoutabox service, great stuff.

The Dynamo system that is embedded at the top of this blog, is proving to be a great resource, as I can follow the amount of times that people look at the link, and even break it down to the countries that they come from, so currently, after 4 days, I have people from 10 different countries looking at the film, very exciting times.

Thanks to all these review sites for the great work they put into writing very in depth pieces on such a short film.
Flickering Myth
Cinehouse Review
Eternity of Dream
Live for Films
Celluloid Heroes
David Calder
Jack L Film Reviews
Virtus Productions
Suspend Your Disbelief
Terra King
Brett Gerry Films

I managed to get the film reviewer Robbie Collin to look at Shooter, using Facebook, and he wrote this

"Hey - just had a chance to look at this - loving your work! The sequence with the seaplane especially I thought was excellent - some really nice compositions there. And you have a great voice for v/o. Sadly I've got no space to review shorts in the paper thanks to the constant churn of features on wide release, but please stay in touch and do give me a shout if you're ever up to anything that might work for a NoW piece".

I hope you don't mind me copying and pasting this into my blog Robbie, but it is a great little review never the less, Ta.

Should you want to review 'Shooter', please email me at ronniegoodwin(at)hotmail.com and I will arrange an on line screening.

Reviews and Dynamo

Another fine review has been posted on Jack L Review Site for my short film, and once again I am so happy with the response that the film is receiving, each review has hit on element that I never even considered within the films story or structure, very encouraging.If you would like to review 'Shooter', drop me a line and I will arrange a screening.

I was also contacted by James Adkin a film making friend who runs Virtus Productions and he posted a juicy little link to Shooter's trailer, and this blog site, James wrote this great piece about 'Shooter'

"It was late last year when I was first made aware of Ronnie B. Goodwin. I noticed a poster for a film he had directed and was intrigued by its content. The film, entitled ‘Shooter’ tells the story of how people effected by human conflict, re-adjust, as best they can, to normal life.
The effort and passion put towards this film are evident from the start. No aspect of the story is overlooked and the images are rich detail.
Few films are able to capture the beauty and innocence of the Scottish landscape, few films are able to tell a story that affects so many, yet is known about by so few, ‘Shooter’ however does both and so much more…More of the same please Mr Goodwin" 

I have added a new player to the header of this blog. It is the Dynamo Player, which allows me the opportunity to sell my film without handing it to second and even third parties, which basically leaves the film maker with not a lot at the end of the day, this system allows me to market the film and have a few more pennies in my pocket than the other distribution models, not that there is anything wrong with them, it's only very difficult to create a revenue stream when you have to wait for six months between any payment, if any:) So I feel I have to at least give Dynamo the benefit of the doubt and give it a try. Currently I am looking at how to make the Dynamo system work with IMDB, any thoughts?

FilmG and Peter Mullan

My good friend Ro J Goodwin (picture) came down from Inverness on Friday 18th February 2011, and asked me to accompany him to the FilmG award, where his short film 'Sgiath nan Treubh' had won a MG Alba Visions Award 2011. What an honour it was to sit with him and watched as he received his award.
I recorded the event on my little Fuji camera, and sent the footage back to the North with him the following morning, no doubt the cut version will be posted on Youtube soon, I will post a link here when it is complete. 

David Hayman and Peter Mullan were in the audience and also presenting awards, which was very exciting for us, as they are such huge ambassadors for Scottish film, and to be only a few tables away was very exciting. We were also in the company of two very beautiful girls, they told me their names, but I forgot, other things on my mind I guess.

After the event, I thought I must try and get an introduction with Peter Mullan, I had an opportunity to meet him when his short film 'Neighbours' was screening alongside my short at the Lochness Film Festival a few months ago, but he couldn't attend, so I thought I had missed my chance. As soon as the proceedings ended, I made my way to the bar on the look out for Peter. That's when I was asked by a lovely crowd of people, if I would take their picture, I said yes of course, but still keeping one eye on Peter, as I didn't want to miss another chance meeting. We finished taking pictures and just at that, Peter and his friends started to move out of the building, that's when I took my chance and tapped him on the shoulder. He was very polite and listened to my story, accepted the DVD with the film on it and said he would drop me an email after watching it, at some point.


Next day I left Bowling to visit my Mum with our mutual friend Len Pankhurst. On arrival in Pitlochry, it was cold and wintry, so I got on with the fix-it list from my Mum. I mentioned to her that I had seen an add on Facebook for people wanting their houses remodelled, and suggested to her that we register the cottage with them, Mum agreed, so I did all the emails to make it happen. This morning when I was checking my emails, I had one from the crowd of folk that I met at the FilmG event, they asked me if I could send the photos that I took of them, and here is the application to the Property Series, so by complete accident, I had met the people from Tern, Mr Peter MacQueen and friends, how freaky is that. Such a small world sometimes.

The new Dynamo Player has been installed on this blog, at the top of the page, and if you want to use the embed link on the film to add it to your own blog or web site, please be my guest           

Prague and Mofilm

How exciting, Shooter has just been invited to screen at BIO OKO (http://www.biooko.net/en/) in Prague. 

iShorts Evenings are organised by FAMU students and present amazing Czech and foreign short films.

"After going through the British Films 2011 catalogue that we got from Britfilms, I must say that me and my colleagues from iShorts programme are intrigued by your film Shooter "

Up to this point in the short films career, 'Shooter'  has probably been to more places and travelled more extensively than I have, quite jealous of it actually. Maybe I am just getting a little stir crazy.

The results for Mofilm are out and this time, no joy with the 2 short ads that I sent to them, the competition was extremely tough this time round, with over 1000 shorts in competition. Still, it was a terrific way of producing new, quick projects over the winter months, keeping the creative juices flowing, and experimenting with new techniques. I will be posting the films in about 6 weeks time. 

Also, January proved to be an excellent month for movie reviews, and I have had my share, they are listed below.
To be reviewed in amongst films like Black Swan, The Kings Speech and True Grit, is truly awesome.
Thanks to, Flickering Myth, Celluloid Heroes, Cinehouse, Live for Films and Eternity of Dream 

Another review from David A.Calder, this one came as a complete surprise, he connected with me through face book, and told me he had watched Shooter on Indieflix.com, and as I was getting our profiles up to date, I noticed he had posted a link to his blog and this is what he wrote, David A.Calder

I got a very short but amazing email from Lloyd Kaufman, he said 'The Shooter is great', that was it, short n sweet, but extremely exciting to receive a cool email from this legend of a man.

The weather has been a real problem the last couple of weeks, with very dark days and huge gale forced winds, it has relegated my camera to a dusty patch on the floor, however this morning, the birds are singing, and the wind has stopped its raging. Fresh start...

Eternity of Dream: Shooter (2009)

Eternity of Dream: Shooter (2009): "4 stars 'I wanted to shoot. I wanted to kill.' (Gun Man) We should see more short films. A less-than-five-minutes piece can become a great ..."

Thanks so much to all the review sites that have given such praise to 'Shooter', and especially to 'Eternity of Dreams' for writing such an honest and memorable piece for me to enjoy with my readers. The link above will take you to the review.