The sun came out today, and yes it warmed my shoulders and took some of the pale winter complection from my head as I drove down the road from Killin today. Having had lunch with my Mum and cleaned up a little round the cottage, it was nice to blow the cobwebs from my winter recluse.
I returned to sunny Bowling, and fired up the laptop to find a number of interesting messages, one of which I will speak of in the near future, and one from Brett Gerry, who wrote a very impressive review on my wee film Shooter. I have listed all the recent reviews on the right of this blog for you to read , however I want to put this review on this page as it made me very proud of the accomplishments of this little film
'Shooter' Review from Brett Gerry Films
Honesty, they say, is always the best policy – and here Goodwin successfully marries his own life-story to an effective short film, at the same time forging an innovative visual style that demands the long form treatment. Shooter has already won some impressive awards, and been a firm success on the festival circuit, so is therefore perhaps the quintessential short film – initially anonymous, provocative and brief – which could possibly also be its undoing. Many filmmakers and theorists insist on the importance of ‘story’ in cinema, but, as demonstrated here, many of the best short films can only suggest story in their runtime; often they are only slightly longer than modern commercials, and feature about the same amount of narrative information. Such innuendo, schtick and bravado that many adverts and short films contain do not add up to a story but a sketch that only implies more.
But we could likewise imply that, in an exacting cinematic sense, this suggestion of story is what gives Shooter its depth and apparent popularity. Goodwin, acting as director, producer and writer as well as cinematographer, treats his film with a visual style that is nothing short of brilliant: a digital collage technique that blurs the lines between past and present, and marries some impressive nature photography with abstract stylized imagery. It’s a fascinating way to disseminate narrative information (that suggestion of story) which reaches, with the full power of the cinematic spectacle, through the screen and into the audience, and cries out for a feature length exploration. Hopefully, the attention given to Goodwin and his achievement will bring such an exciting possibility for the man who has chosen cinema as his weapon of choice.
Just great Brett, thanks for putting so much into this review, totally blew me away
You can read the entire review here Brett Gerry Films and please leave comments
Thursday, 24 March 2011
Tuesday, 8 March 2011
Loch Lomond Seaplanes and Jordan Bayne
Great news from Loch Lomond Seaplanes. David West dropped me a line yesterday to announce that the seaplane features in the new Visit Scotland TV advertising campaign sneak preview at this link, top right. This is fantastic for the Scottish Tourist Industry and Loch Lomond Seaplanes. The magnificent footage of the 208 as it works in the beautiful highlands of Scotland, will surely attract people from all over the world to experience the majestic scenery and awesome hospitality.
I meant to mention in my last post, that I had the pleasure of meeting, very briefly, on Facebook, the award winning Director and Actor Jordan Bayne, who had a great feature on the Cutting Room Floor Radio programme hosted by Casey Ryan, talking about here new movie 'The Sea is all I Know', you can hear it here, I am very excited about seeing this movie
Working on my new movie material today, just getting over a horrible cold, but the solitude of being a little sick has pushed me to write fresh material. Title 'The Rape Fields', and with a little luck it will take you on an adventure that you have never experienced on the big screen before.
I meant to mention in my last post, that I had the pleasure of meeting, very briefly, on Facebook, the award winning Director and Actor Jordan Bayne, who had a great feature on the Cutting Room Floor Radio programme hosted by Casey Ryan, talking about here new movie 'The Sea is all I Know', you can hear it here, I am very excited about seeing this movie
Working on my new movie material today, just getting over a horrible cold, but the solitude of being a little sick has pushed me to write fresh material. Title 'The Rape Fields', and with a little luck it will take you on an adventure that you have never experienced on the big screen before.
Sunday, 6 March 2011
How social media can make an instant change
Yesterday, whilst nursing a sniff and drinking a hot medicine for my streaming cold, a message came in on twitter, just on the normal stream, not to me personally, it read:
Going on air soon - which one of you fine #indie #entertainment people wants a free on air #promo? Polls are open..................NOW!
@ronniebgoodwin Done! Promo for the Shooter.
Half an hour later, Casey Ryan was on air talking about 'Shooter'. You can hear the show here Cutting Room
and a second plug on this link Cutting Room Sunday 6th March
and a second plug on this link Cutting Room Sunday 6th March
So the power of Social Media is really starting to pay dividends, if you have a product that is specifically on line content and an opportunity comes along that can highlight your product to a wider audience then take it.
You never know where it may take you.
Another story about the power of social media,
David P Baker and Oklahoma Ward, have made an indie film makers pact. Through their meeting and developing friendship, using the Skype, Facebook and Twitter networking programmes, they have joined indie forces and are going to produce both their movies, together, yes, both separate movies, but made with each others resources, so David is going to go to the US to make his movie SCREEN, and work alongside Oklahoma on his movie CRAWL, the power of the social networking tools, magnificent
Another story about the power of social media,
David P Baker and Oklahoma Ward, have made an indie film makers pact. Through their meeting and developing friendship, using the Skype, Facebook and Twitter networking programmes, they have joined indie forces and are going to produce both their movies, together, yes, both separate movies, but made with each others resources, so David is going to go to the US to make his movie SCREEN, and work alongside Oklahoma on his movie CRAWL, the power of the social networking tools, magnificent
Meanwhile I have a cold and and I am feeling sorry for myself:)
Monday, 28 February 2011
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:)
Saturday, 26 February 2011
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
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.
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.
Wednesday, 23 February 2011
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?
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?
Monday, 21 February 2011
FilmG and Peter Mullan
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
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