this is really very exciting: we're being screened at locarno. officially selected for the 'pardi di domani' (which means 'leopards of tomorrow', so called because the top prize at locarno is a golden leopard) competition, bunkers & mounds will be shown three times, first on thursday 9th august at 2pm, and then again friday 10th at eleven in the morning and saturday 11th at 6:30pm.

it's been a crazy week getting the film there though: we originally shot it on HDV which for those of you who aren't technically minded is a high-definition format, but not the 'highest' there is, if you like, since it still uses a compressor to handle all the data. this was up-converted to full HD and the new tape sent to belgium, which is nowhere near switzerland, but which is where it was going to be re-digitised and put on a server from which it will then be screened in locarno. digital cinema has many beautiful advantages, such as this particular one: you can superimpose subtitles onto the film as it is being screened. so far so good. except final cut pro, the professional editing software we've been using to edit this film and which i'm an ardent fan of has just revealed its first major flaw: it's bad at handling subtitles. for example, it can't export a subtitle file in a format that can then be used in combination with a standard digital cinema projector.

this is where the mayhem starts. first i'm trying to get a compatible subtitle file out to our friends in belgium. this isn't working. then i try to get the subtitle file that we can make converted by a third party service. this isn't available. so we go: fine, let's send them an already subtitled version of the film. we need to do this in the standard definition beta format anyway as a back-up, so we might as well generate a high definition tape with the subtitles on. another day in the edit suite and really quite a bit of money spent at the duplication house later we datapost a pristine new hi-def tape to belgium and a digibeta tape to locarno. i go off to devon on what's supposed to be a relaxing holiday. denkste, as they say in germany...

email from belgium: the new HD tape with the subtitles on it has a loss of data. because it's in a scene with dialogue, it can't be patched up from the tape that hasn't got subtitles on it. so we start allover again. now we find a way of generating a simple text file that should do the trick. it's a couple of nights' work and requires meticulous checking as one single wrong time code on the text file will cause a subtitle to appear completely in the wrong place. i get it out on time and now keep fingers crossed to the point of entanglement that this will work. meanwhile, we check the subtitled master tape we'd made and its fine. but the digibeta backup that went to locarno also has a drop on it. so big mystery: where did the error creep in? as it's not on the master it looks like the dupe house did both dubs at once and had a playback lapse of about a second which then found its way onto both tapes. we don't know yet, it will all come out in the wash, i reckon, or when we get the two faulty tapes back and test them against the master.

in any case: a new back-up tape has gone to locarno. there have been no more alerts from belgium. the film is in the programme and listed as HD. i've got a flight booked and a hotel in locarno. we're all set for our international festival premiere...

somehow this is more nerve-racking than building up to a live show, and i've still got nearly two weeks to go...

this is it. we've made our film. we're showing it: saturday 10th february 2007 at 6:30pm is the moment of truth. the study of bunkers & mounds in a temperate climate (relatively speaking) goes onto the big screen number one at the curzon soho cinema in london. and exciting as that is, it's also just a bit scary:

that really is then the point of no return. you could argue - and you'd be right - that the point of return was passed about ten months ago when we committed ourselves to principal photography in scotland. but up until now it always felt like we could still change, tweak, polish and, well, generally improve things. once things are on a great big screen with a great big sound system in front of an audience, that really isn't possible any longer. so here goes.

what's curious is: i have no idea where i am now with this: i've seen the film so many times, it's impossible for me to tell whether it is in fact any good or not. of course, i like it. but then i would. and it's the film i wanted to make. so i'm happy about it. and i'm extremely happy about having made the film in the first place. everything else now, it seems, will more or less come as a bonus. but will anybody get it? that really remains to be seen.

so the next couple of weeks will be taken up with getting the DVD ready - i've still got to cut the trailer, and i've decided to include optional subtitles in english, german and italian. because i've noticed that non-native english speakers, of which there'll be many who will get this DVD either as festival programmers or as framefunders and friends, struggle with the dialogue: the combination of scottish accents, contemporary speech delivery and some tricky sound environments make following what's happening something of a challenge if you're just not that familiar with the language. i particularly enjoy reading the italian dialogue (which my friend and erstwhile italian teacher alessia so generously has translated for me): it lends the film a whole new dimension and nudges it just that bit further into european arthouse territory. which is a place i feel quite at home in...

the only thing - apart from the festival submissions, which will be ongoing for about the next eighteen months or so - that then remains is choosing the individual frames for the framefunders and sending them out, and putting the film and clips from it on our website.

and then? well: the next project is waiting in the wings and will soon move centre stage. my first feature film. and that, compared to this, will be one great big adventure...

[/I][I]

we are - i think (i hope) - on the home straight. we're expecting to spend a few more days this week in the edit suite putting malcolm's sound mix together with the picture, and fine-tuning the colour grading a bit, and then that should be it.

these last few months have gone by in a flash and i sometimes wonder to myself just exactly how a sixteen minute short could be spending quite so much time in post production. but of course on an unfunded project like this you continually work around other commitments and such unwelcome demands on your time as having to earn some money in between stints to keep yourself and the project afloat. and the same goes for the people you're working with. that's one of the things i'm most looking forward to: being able to fully, intensively, undisturbedly concentrate just on the film i'm making, with the distractions kept at bay.

meanwhile though: a first bit of good news came through last thursday, and that's also helped me focus my mind back on this project, and propel it forward to completion: we had submitted our final cut master - the version just before picture grading and sound post-mix - to the TCM classic shorts competition which is run in conjunction with the london film festival, and as the shortlist was announced i was thrilled to realise that bunkers & mounds has been "highly commended" by a jury which after all includes people like terry gilliam, stephen poliakoff and pierce brosnan!...

now, obviously, being shortlisted for the award would have been even better, but i confess to being more relieved than disappointed that that didn't happen just on this particular occasion. not because i don't want to win any awards with this film (i do), but simply because it would have put us into something of a tight spot: the shortlisted films are being screened at the festival this coming thursday (it's tuesday as i write this) and though we would have got the film done in time somehow, this gives us a bit of breathing space and the opportunity to finish the piece with the attention to detail and care that it deserves after all the effort that has gone into it so far.

still, there are now new deadlines looming at the beginning of next week which is also already the end of the month, and i know myself well enough to also realise that unless i go for them and knock this baby on its head it'll be in danger of just dragging on into next year and eternity.

and that's not possible, not just because it now needs to be entered on the festival circuit and be seen by people, but also because i'm now well into the development of what i want to become my first feature: while all this has been going on, i've written a script called SOHO, NIGHT 9X9 which weaves together nine stories of nine characters who live, work and play in the tiny area just around soho square, at night.

together with nine generous actors who gave me their time and energy for the sheer love and good-spiritedness of it, we then spent a morning at the writer's centre of the soho theatre to do an unrehearsed read-through, and following that i've now finished draft two. that means the process of finding a producer and then finance is already underway. it's much too early to give up any details of this as yet, not least because i can't risk jeopardising what's in progress, but you can be sure you'll get to hear about it when the time comes, if you stay tuned into this blog and/or the website...

it's saturday, it's the 17th june, and it's 2:30 or thereabouts in the morning. and i'm saying it. more or less six months after starting pre-production, almost to the day two months after finishing principal photography, and having spent days in the rain, the snow, the cold and the sun, having dealt with hailstorms and off-their-head-crew-members'-girlfriends, and having just spent some six hours or so in the water, gary and james are finally allowed to stand down. at least as far as the picture is concerned. we've still got a fair amount of sound recording and re-recording to do and we will spend a lot of time yet in the edit suite refining our rough cut to a final edit, but - barring any last second disasters - shooting is done now.

i set out making this short a) because i liked the story and wanted to see it on the screen and b) because i felt i needed to learn a lot more about film-making before i could start raising finance for a feature film with any degree of confidence, and c) because i liked the idea of shooting in the highlands in the rain. so the project has already fulfilled a lot of its original purpose: the way the story is taking shape on the screen is beautiful. i would say that, you may say, and you'd be right, but only in parts. from a writer/director's perspective it's as easy to be self-critical as it is to get excited about the work once you see it materialise. in fact, it's probably easier to be critical because you can always, always see something you could have done better. but as we're working through the footage and starting to put together the story, i'm getting these moments, where i think "yes, this is exactly what i had in mind." not all the way through yet, but then we're not done yet. and we'd set ourselves some challenges, if you forgive the slightly motivational-speak term here, which were really quite taxing. and somehow it worked out. i can't yet take a step back and say: "of course, this is how we did it: x, y, then z." but we've got it all in the can now. it's a wrap. as long as we don't mess it up in the edit, it'll be all right, chances are. i'm excited...

last week went by so fast, and was so full-on, i'm still catching my breath, literally. i was too busy or too exhausted most of the time (and, once, i admit, too drunk) to keep a diary, so this is all written in retrospect, and things when they're so budged up to each other start to blur into one a bit. but here goes:

monday - travel day

gemma at avis tells me this is the biggest car they've got. we'd ordered a seven seater with large luggage capacity. what i see standing in front of me is a seven seater with enough luggage capacity for a handbag. i worry about the generator, which miles tells me is the size of a coffee table, but i like the electric side doors.

gregor loves the electrict side doors. gregor's come over from switzerland to do stills and docucam and he has many brilliant qualities. two of them are: 1) he can completely disappear into the background so nobody even notices he exists, and 2) he finds life intrinsically entertaining. seeing him play with the electric side doors of the peuge, that in itself is a heartwarming sight.

gregor and i load up and get lost on the way to picking up miles. miles has explained to me where he lives, and i've been to his road several times before, but i have no sense of orientation and outside zone one everything looks more or less the same to me. the generator people laugh at us because we're running two and a half hours late, but they've never tried to take the back seats out of a peugeot 807... come eleven we're on the road.

fast forward nine hours and a bit and we pull up at tomdoun, hungry but well. malcolm had been first to arrive, but he has an unfair advantage, he's a highlander himself. malcolm also has a terrible secret, but we don't know that yet. malcolm has stepped in with about 40 hours notice to rescue our film from turning into a silent movie. paul has picked up james from the airport, and gary is lost and was last heard of in perth. perth is nowhere near where we are and it's nowhere near en route either. the two jennies are already here, as are jackie and scott, and jackie and scott are in control. i feel confident and warm. i'm sure gary will find his way. (i'm not sure gary will find his way at all, i just think it would be really much better if he did...)


tuesday - day one

the weather is perfect for he scenes in which the weather is perfect. this is good news, because it's the beginning of the "story proper" and that's a nice place to start shooting. the weather plays a big part in this film. you could say it plays a main part. you'll see why.

we're glad to find the bunkers are still there, and even the dilapidated moped that features in the script is. temperatures are around 4 degrees celsius and we've spotted the occasional snowflake. gary has to strip to his waist as he spends half the film bare-torsoed. i'm wearing six layers and i think it's pretty nippy out here on the hills. gary's stoicism lends new meaning to the idea of suffering for your art.

we make it back to tomdoun in time for dinner and decide to do a couple of night scenes. as it happens, we get one of them done before calling it a wrap for the day at about eleven.

good start.


wednesday - day two

the weather is perfect for the scenes in which the weather is perfect again. except this time we're talking about rain. we need a lot of rain for this film, because we haven't got the resources to make rain. the weather is playing ball. temperatures haven't really risen, so it's still just above freezing, but now it's also wet. gary is still wearing no top, and no shoes for most of the day. i have added a layer and, at seven, i'm now wearing as many clothes as i've ever worn. i still think it's quite chilly out here.

we shoot the scene with the phone box and the phone box looks great. there's something about an old-style red phone box that you just can't fault. it's the same with routemaster buses, but there are no buses out here.

malcolm has hinted at his terrible secret. we're intrigued, but we're not sure. we know there's a big empty house that's flooded under the loch, and that has got absolutely nothing to do with it. it lends a mysterious touch to the whole concept of being here though.

in the afternoon it's still raining, but now it's got windy too. this is a bit of a problem because the gazebo that's supposed to protect mainly kit (and us a bit) from the rain is clearly not designed for strong winds, and one of the plastic elements that's meant to hold it together breaks. besides, we keep getting water drops falling onto the lens, as they're coming in horizontally. which rain, to be fair, is not supposed to do. we decide to take it down and shoot from the back of the peuge. it's still about four degrees, it's still raining, and now with the wind chill factor it feels like about minus 15. gary is allowed to wear a t-shirt, but only because it fits with the script.

the wind blows over the camera. this is the second camera that's fallen over in two shorts, i think we have a recurring theme here which we don't need. (we have others too, but you can find them out yourself, if i told you that would spoil the fun for you...) the camera is all right, we can continue shooting, though we've broken the lens shield.

after some soup to keep us going, we head down to loch hourne. it's sixteen miles along a long and winding road, so it takes us about forty minutes to get there. the cottage we're hoping to use for the cottage scene is lovely, but not quite right. the one we're using for the exterior is perfect. but we realise we're going to run out of time, and as everybody is getting tired and hungry and we're techically in the kitchen of some extremely kind local people we decide to call it a day and come back on friday. we leave the loch at about ten at night, in the driving rain, and it turns out the peuge is quite big after all. it's certainly wider than the road, it appears, because on the steep bendy bit we hear the kind of sound you'd expect to hear if somebody took a big rock and attempted to scrape your lovely electric side door off. we arrive at tomdoun and find that the side door is still on, but the "sill" (as i later find out it's called) is scratched more than is perhaps entirely acceptable to gemma at avis. i'm glad we've taken out full insurance.

the forecast is for snow and temperatures are well below zero. i have that sinking feeling: we've got scenes on the road to do, and scenes on the loch. we've broken three things today, effectively lost a whole shoot period and i think we may be running out of time. i go to bed too exhausted to sleep and think the film is not going to happen.


thursday - day three

i wake up a lot happier. i have no reason for this, other than i think i've cracked malcolm's terrible secret. it is truly terrible. malcolm neither confirms nor denies it. we're appalled and thrilled in that weird way that you are when you find out something thrillingly appalling.

the weather looks just right for the scenes that happen in the film before it starts to rain, because it looks like it's going to rain. gregor is ill. he's had an upset stomach for three days now and nobody really noticed, because he has this brilliant quality of disappearing completely into the background so nobody even notices that he exists. sometimes your brilliant qualities work against you.

we go out to shoot the mound scenes. we love the buggy we're using in place of the moped and we get a lot done. true, we have to dodge a couple of freak hail storms, but hey, what's a hail storm when you're standing on a hill overlooking the gorgeous glen, wearing nothing but a pair of light combats... gary as far as i'm concerned is a hero. either that or he has simply been type-cast and is in fact an alien with no sense of temperature at all.

we can't stop humming that tune. it's truly totally appalling.

we've decided we can shoot the cottage scene in london. the shoot schedule is so tight that if we do try to squeeze it in tomorrow morning, we may end up with not enough time to set up and shoot the loch. we can't shoot the loch in london. so, knowing we've got a moderate start in the morning, we have ourselves our first - and as it turns out really our only - social time off. it's already late, because we did some night scenes and so by the time some of us reach our bedrooms (to wake up our room mates and hug them and tell them how wonderful they are and, allegedly, sing) some others of us have been asleep for a few hours and are not best pleased.


friday - day four

i think we've been forgiven. there's bright sunshine in people's faces, which somewhat compensates for the snow that's falling outside.

the snow makes shooting the loch impossible. not because we mind the scene happening in the snow (it really ought to be raining), but because you can't see anything. michael at the hotel assures us this snow now in april is unusual. that's good to know. at least it's unusual.

we lose most of the day, but get to do a lot of night scenes in return. the day is a day of give and take, it seems. we only have one day left to shoot the loch. if the loch can't get done tomorrow, we have ourselves an above-average size problem. my worry level is on the wax...


saturday - day five

the weather is glorious. spring has sprung: the air is fresh, the trees are alive. the sun is out. there is no wind. malcolm is out and about early, recording some wild track again. conditions for the loch are ideal. granted, it's not raining, but we think we can live with that. that's the good news. the bad news is we've lost the film. or two thirds of it. we can't find reels 1 to 4. everybody stays calm, mainly because we don't really tell anyone. after an hour or so of searching, everybody cottons on to the fact that something's gone missing. miles remembers he handed the reels to jackie on the night of the impromptu party, so as to make sure they would be safe. jackie lives up to her reputation. the tapes are safe.

we go down to the loch to shoot the loch scenes and they look wonderful. as we get to the mids and close-ups it's started to rain. not pleasant, but wonderful. we get everything in the can and deliberate about the best way in which two people standing up in a small boat in the middle of the loch in the middle of the night would fall into the water and whether or not anybody in the audience would think that the bench across the centre of the boat might potentially get in the way of james's feet. the light is fading fast. malcolm comes out with the immortal line "it's all nonsense anyway, i shouldn't worry about it." i think he means the bit about two men allowing themselves to fall into the ice cold loch in the middle of the night. i know he likes the script and the story, and the project. he's helped us out in so many ways with it, i'm not sure the film would have happened without him. so i hope that's what he means. but anyway. he has a terrible, terrible secret, and we're almost sure we know what it is. of course he wouldn't possibly comment. that's because he's sworn to secrecy. and we're his friends. and you wouldn't betray a friend. but believe me: it's a shocking thing that he's done, he and his mates in the full public eye, but in disguise. many years ago. not criminal, not even illegal, but practically unforgivable. and very silly indeed...


sunday - day six and travel day

after shooting the rest of the night scenes until about one in the morning, we pack up early, and hit the road for glasgow. my laptop drops from the top of the stack of the peuge to the pavement and my heart stops. shut down my laptop, shut down me. simple. it may be my most prized posession, but it owns me just as much as i own it. is that sad? i don't know. is it true? in practice, yes. the laptop doesn't power up. i have that sinking feeling again. it's all gone awful. then it does start up. i come back up to float...

the shoot goes well, we have two extra runners who made it over from edinburgh just for the day, and jackie who plays karen gives us a sequence of faultless takes.

we wrap principal photography at 6pm on a glasgow pavement and say goodbye to our scottish crew. they've been the stuff of legend. paul, scott, jackie, jenny and jennie. and the secretly famous malcolm. you've made our shoot and you'll have made much of our film.

there's lots still to do, and we've not seen all of the rushes yet, but what we've seen looks very promising. true, we haven't really got near enough money for the pick ups and the underwater shoot yet, but we'll get there...

we're on target, and that's not a bad place to be at all.









[B]

there's always one, isn't there. there's always one person who throws a last minute spanner in the works. but having had one of those week ends during which you feel that maybe you're taking the concept of "sailing close to the wind" just a gust or two too far, it looks like we're all set to go.

we seem to have been on fairly choppy water over the last two weeks anyway: first of all, we realised we had to scale down just a bit from the "big" HD kit to the more manageable HDV camera. without going into too much detail: we only have a crew of ten and we're doing a fair bit of outdoors shooting in the rain. so light, easy to carry and handy for use with a steadicam rig, these are all things that work in our favour. so after thinking, for a short while, about postponing the shoot till the autumn, we decided to "seize the day", "strike while the iron's hot" and "just do it" while the cliches keep on coming...

next, our sound recordist "crisis". perhaps there aren't enough of them to go round, perhaps there are but they don't like scotland, perhaps they love scotland as much as we do but they just didn't hear about us, whatever the reason: with the rest of the crew and the cast in place and poised, we were still looking around for a sound man or woman by yesterday lunchtime. yesterday lunchtime is the saturday before the monday that we travel up to the highlands to start shooting on tuesday. you get a sense for the imminent nature of the requirement... so emails were flying around, texts were sent to anyone who even remotely works in the media field and posts were placed on shooting people, the filmmakers network. and lo! up to the mark steps malcolm. malcolm effectively signed up to being our sound recordist on the basis of a "cold" approach from us by email and a series of phone calls over the next 45 minutes, and for nearly twenty-four hours we had full house.

and then it happened. the sadly almost inevitable. you can practically bank on it: there will be one person who lets you down. why, i don't know. but it seems to be in the nature of things. this time, it was our script supervisor and continuity person. this woman came highly recommended through some friends of our production manager and for a good two and half weeks or so she had been happy to be considered a part of the prospective crew. today just around lunch time she decided that she wanted a "better deal". now this is an ultra-low budget short. the "deal" that's on offer is the best deal there is if the film is to be made. there is really no room for negotiation, it's a case of: this is how much money there is, it's all going to be spent and then some, and if you'd like to be a part of the project then we welcome you with open arms, because we need your skills and your time and we're excited about making this film with you on board. and up until today that seemed fine with her.

then, around eleven thirty a phone call from jackie saying that the script supervisor had pulled out. we are now less than forty-eight hours away from the shoot. now there are certain unwritten laws. i imagine they exist in any industry, and they certainly exist in this one. one of them is: don't drop people in it. if you say you're going to do a job, do the job, unless conditions are so excruciating that it becomes intolerable, or your leg falls off. she assures us she's never done this before, pulling out of a commitment at no notice, but that's of little comfort to us, and how do you trust someone they won't do it again, after all, you can pinpoint a "first time", easy. but how do you know when is the last time...

as it happens, the production will survive, of course, because one of the other unwritten laws is: nobody is really indespensible. but in a smallish professional community like glasgow, where there are perhaps half a dozen people working as script supervisors, being the one you can't rely on may just not be the ideal way of making friends and influencing people...

that unpleasantness aside, and with a - we sincerely hope final - reshuffle of the crew underway, tomorrow is travel day, and we'll all be descending on tomdoun, with a bit of luck in time for one of their wonderful dinners. and now i'm tremendously looking forward to it. the last two days have been a bit more nerve-wracking than is perhaps entirely necessary, but that's almost par for the course. it keeps you on your toes, and the week that's about to be, well, we'll certainly need to be on our toes for that...

it were a blast!

it's not always that you can enjoy your own party, but our project launch on the third was really excellent, even if i say so myself. and i can say so myself, because the credit for this does not go to me, but to miles and his mates who mixed just the right kind of sound and had everybody dancing till the wee small hours. and to the troubadour staff who handled a fairly complex event with aplomb. and in terms of raising money through the fund a frame scheme, it was, as we hoped it would be, our most successful day yet with several hundred frames being funded on the night alone, and quite a few more being pledged.

and even the gatecrashers were nice! they dutifully funded some frames, and then partied with the rest of us as if we'd known each other for ages. that's what i like.


so after spending saturday in "recovery" miles and i drove up to glasgow where we met our core crew over a couple of pints and i'm extremely happy to have them on board because not only are they a competent bunch, but also some of the most agreeable people you could ever wish to meet. and when you're about to spend a week holed up in the middle of nowhere working day and night, and living together in the same house, then that really does matter.

the middle of nowhere though is a wonderful place: it took us another three hours to get there from glasgow, and on the way we practically ran out of petrol. (a word in your ear: should you find yourself powering up into the highlands of a late sunday night, make sure you fill up your tank. from glasgow to just after fort william not a single fuel station that's open. not one. we tried. we looked. we became almost a little bit nervous, so as not to say desperate. it's that feeling of driving along a wintry country road, stars in the sky, no other car for miles, outside temperature around freezing, and the little petrol pump on your dash flashing at you, bigger, brighter, it seems, by the minute. by the time we pulled in at mr shell's we were well past the last little marker on the dial...)

what a joy though to see sheila and michael again. sheila and michael run the tomdoun hotel, which is one of our principal locations, and our base for the shoot.

monday was recce day and miles and i promptly got stuck on the snow with our front wheel drive hire car that clearly wasn't meant to be going up and down icy country lanes. but we found our bunkers again - something of a relief, considering i've written a whole story around them - and, thanks to sheila and michael, managed to get hold of the man in charge of the land they're on. and we found out what they were for! but we're not going to tell you, that would spoil the fun...

so: so far, so good. our shoot dates are confirmed for the first week of april, our crew is being recruited from glasgow, next week we're casting the second male lead, and all things being equal and fair wind prevailing, we should be able to go into production in three weeks' time.

meanwhile, we do need quite a few more frames to be funded though, so if you feel like helping us make this short which is indeed - this is now as good as certain - the first ever film to be financed on a frame-by-frame basis, then click on the fundaframe link below and fund a frame. even just the one frame makes a big difference to us; you'll get your name in the credits and you'll be making a bit of film history. that alone must be worth the price of a pack of cigarettes.

go on...

with less than a week to go before our project launch party, things are starting to heat up nicely: the fund a frame scheme is live and with almost three hundred and fifty frames fully funded already, we're of course still quite a long way off the number of funded frames we need to make the film, but we're in a good position for entering what will effectively be phase two of the project: pre-production. i'm glad when that happens, because the stage we're at right now is always a bit intanginble: we're now at the moment just before the crew is put in place. just before casting is completed. just before the production team really starts taking shape. we're lucky in that we have some key personnel either already committed or on stand-by, but the next few days will see a whole set of arrangements finalised, and everything will start to feel a whole lot more concrete.

then, immediately after the launch party on the third of march, miles and i will be heading up to scotland to do a final site recce and also take some pictures. so we'll be able to show you in much more detail what the setting for the film will look like than you can see from the images that we've already used on the website.

so: looking forward to friday. not least also because we'll be showing our first short film, twenty-six takes on life without allen for the "last" time. (certainly for the time-being...). if you happen to be in london and would like to come along, let us know (just use the contact form on the website, or better still: go to http://www.fundaframe.org/ and fund a frame or a few and we'll make sure you'll get your invite).

incidentally: we're still fine-tuning and making improvements to the fundaframe scheme: we'll be introducing a "linkbaq" feature soon, which will allow frame funders to have their credit on the website linked back to any url they like. it's called linkbaq because like the nasdaq, or newsnight's gordaq, our linkbaq index will be tied to external factors that determine the "value" of a link from our website, such as the average number of hits we receive. it essentially means that if, like us, you speculate on the film and the fundaframe scheme getting more attention over time, and the website consequently getting more hits, you will benefit from funding your frames now and getting a link back to your site which in a few weeks' time may be worth a lot more. it'll all make sense, don't worry...

it's done. the "send" button has been clicked. the invites are out. the scheme is launched. and that means: we're on. it's what's nerve-wrackingly known as the point of no return.

miles and i are making our second short film. within the next few minutes everybody we know will have been told so, and not only that, we'll have invited everybody to come along to our launch party in march, and what's more: we'll have asked everybody to help us make the film by joining our fund a frame scheme.

it's a good scheme, and i'm a bit proud of it, because as far as we know it's the first and only one of it's kind: you go to our website and in about three easy steps you can become the funder of a single frame in our new film. or of several. or if you feel particularly generous or excited about it, you can donate a full dozen, or even sponsor a whole second. i have no idea yet whether or not this is going to be a success, but the reason i hope it will be is pretty obvious: although it would be nothing short of a miracle if we actually managed to get every single frame of this film funded, every single frame that is funded gets us a little closer towards completion. and it's a truism in short-film-making that you don't work with a full budget. but even a fraction - we think about a quarter or a third - of our budget will allow us to make "bunkers & mounds". so every frame that gets funded by our friends and supporters is in fact worth about three or four to us. which is why if you haven't already done so, this is a brilliant time to fund a frame!... (there's a link in the bottom right hand corner that you can follow).

so we're now technically in pre-pre-production. i don't think the term exists. which means we're probably in pre-production even though we're only "officially" launching the project itself on the 3rd march.

so what's the film about? you know, this is my biggest problem right at the moment: the fact that it takes me longer to explain what the study of bunkers & mounds in a temperate climate (relatively speaking) is about than it will ultimately take you to watch the film once it's made. and it's not a complicated story: man has argument with girlfriend/wife, man drives up into the highlands, man gets lost in the middle of nowhere, man wakes up in gorgeous countryside, man meets alien... exactly. and is it even an alien. or is it a local lad having him on. and then try to explain the way these two people - are they both "people"? - connect. is it spiritual? mental? emotional? physical? sexual? well yes it is, and no it isn't. and that's the point of the film: it's about two people who connect on a totally separate level, a level of their own, a level that is neither of these things in isolation, and all of them combined.

and that's why to my mind it makes wonderful material for a short film and terrible material for a pitch, because you can show this connection in a few images and it won't be in the least bit weird or confusing, it won't even be all that strange it will be ...intriguing and unusual and just the scenery alone will be breathtaking. but try to put it in words and you need several thousand, one for each picture, quite literally.

so until i've got my twenty-five word slugline sorted, imagine this: two strange but intriguing people in strange but beautiful surroundings make a strange but compelling connection.

it's about: evolution...

it's a pertinent coincidence that just as i'm starting to write my first post in the optimist blog, my iTunes is playing "drowning" by the butterfly effect. this may mean nothing to you, but to me it does, because it's the track that accompanies cathy's 'out-of-body-experience' in our first short film twenty-six takes on life without allen, and as you will see when it's finished, our latest project has a definite water immersion theme to it...


the last time i wrote a blog, it was called a webdiary, it ran under the title "dear dan" and it was in all honesty a fairly irrelevant ramble about nothing in particular, at a time when blogs hadn't even been properly invented yet. and unlike this one, there was no real point to it.

the point of this one now is to keep you up to speed with our second short film, the study of bunkers & mounds in a temperate climate (relatively speaking). it's a ludicruous title, i know, but i like it. and i love the story behind it. i would, you might say, since it's my project, but that's not what i mean. it's not really for me to say whether this is a 'good' story (of course i think it is...), and the film hasn't been made yet, so i can't possibly say yet whether it's a good film or not (with a bit of luck and if everything goes according to plan it will be, but you'll be able to form your own opinion on that). what i do mean is the way the story has come about: it just had to. the sheer number of coincidences and fortunate circumstances that led to "bunkers & mounds" make it one of these projects that you can't turn your back on.

and that's why we're now making this film. i'll be telling you the story of how "bunkers & mounds" came about here at some point, but for the moment let me just welcome you to my blog and thank you for taking an interest at all. we're hoping that this will be the first fully frame-by-frame funded film ever, and if you're helping us achieve that then the least you can expect is to be kept in the loop as to what's happening on the project, and beyond. this blog will do just that.

feel free to comment (you can create a user ID in a few seconds) and if you haven't done so already, go to http://www.optimistcreations.com/bunkersandmounds/fundaframe/bnm-
fundaframe.html and fund a frame. at less than four quid it's a snip, and it may well secure you a place in film history, who knows...

more soon!

sebastian