I'm Fraser Coull, currently training at the BBC on their production talent pool to become a production management assistant. It's my goal to become a writer and producer for television. I've had several years experience writing, directing and producing a web series, short films, a pilot for a TV show and a feature film about a superhero in Scotland. I'm confident in research, production management, and pulling together a project.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2013! It's been an incredible year, working on music videos, our pilot for our supernatural TV series, Bloodline, two short films, the 48 hour film challenge, our new podcast to help people get into the TV and film industry AND our networking nights. Thank you to all of our supporters. 2013 will see more shorts, our own film festival, our podcast and networking events will continue and we will be pitching Bloodline for television. And all going well my web series which I started back in 2006, "Night is Day", will have it's very last episode finished and online for all to see! 13 episodes, 2 seasons, lots of demon fighting! Exciting times!
(a completely made up film, Mexican, Mexican, Mexican, for the purposes of our short!)
In October this year I took part in the 48 hour film project in Glasgow for the 2nd time running. After working on "Late Nights" with Mr. Mark Harvey, my long-term collaborator (7 years and counting!) we teamed up again to work on the new film project.
The rules? On Friday night you pick your genre, this year it was a case of picking a music single case, opening it up and finding out what genre was yours. Our genre was mockumentary. The character that had to be included was Captain Ray or Ramona Lewis, and the line of dialogue was "It's our little secret".
Straight away we knew we'd be giving the line to the brilliant Nicola Wellburn who played our character Norma Mackenzie in our first 48 hour film. We also made her Captain Ramona Lewis straight away too.
The prop that had to be used was a map.
We then had until Sunday at 7pm to hand in our film. Scott Forrest, Mark and myself headed home. Our first idea was a mockumentary about a failed actor. However Mark wasn't keen so instead we decided to make him a legendary actor, and a bit of a fool too.
Mark and I got to the flat and started writing. Half way through Simon Weir (River City, Take the Highroad, Spanking in Paradise) called me to say he had a brilliant idea and wanted to play a Michael Cane rip off. So we added that in.
With the script finished an hour later we tried to get some sleep. We got up nice and early and headed off to Scott's flat, which was our base for the day. Everybody arrived at 9.30am as we asked them. Hair and makeup by Sharon Clark and Claire Louise Dell started about 30 minutes later and our camera person Julie Dunn was on her way to setting up the shots and the lights.
Our mockumentary had very few locations, which is ideal when you only have 48 hours. We filmed the football movie scenes "Handball: A True Story" at the football pitch where Third Lanark football club play, and thanks to their coach, and our actor Simon Weir, the entire team agreed to appear in the film.
We filmed Cameron's "Christian Bale"-style breakdown at the park near the base, and it took around 30 minutes to film. We did it again and again, throwing in more stuff, adlibbing it to see what worked. Mark just got more energetic and angrier and angrier. Matt Robertson and Jamie Forrest who played his fellow cast were amazing at going along with it. Thankfully, the police were not called.
Filming wrapped, with over 2 hours of footage shot, with an hour of that being totally improvised, as after we started filming each interview I had the fear of not having enough footage. Again, kudos to Jamie for coming up with some brilliant questions with our cast staying totally in character to make it happen.
Our brilliant editor Anne (who works for STV) worked with us to edit the film down and together we brutally cut things out until we got it down to 7 minutes. Calum, our sound designer on the film, appeared later and worked all through the night until the film was finished.
We got it on to DVD, tested it, and then we headed off to the drop off point. We arrived at 4pm and we were the first to hand our film in. An amazing achievement.
Sadly we won absolutely heehaw on the night of the awards. To be honest it was a little bit heart breaking, but at the end of the day we got to work with some amazing people and we had a great time doing it, plus we are all so proud of our film. My partner Sara told me that they should be worried if we were ever given a drama to do, as she suspects we'd knock it out of the park.
Critics from Flicker magazine were on hand to review the films and they were very kind about Cameron Stone:
"Overall, I really expected the two of us to have different tastes and see a really distinct differential in choices. Even our film education is different and we often differ on opinions of mainstream features, so to see such correlation between us really shows us that there were clear stand outs. Linda and I also agreed on what we thought was the best all-around short. We both chose a film that made us laugh a lot. Cleverly put together, keeping it simple and safe. From Group A it was 'Cameron Stone: A Legendary Actor'. So Linda I'll let you take the lead for our winner."
"'Cameron Stone: A Legendary Actor' by Silly Wee Films, had me laughing from start to finish. I think its use of genre was excellent, the narration was first class and the acting was very versatile. It managed to build up the characters quickly and was consistently funny throughout. I loved the use of parody with characters like Michael Bane, Pear Stone and Captain Ramona Lewis with her contradictory line "It's our little secret" and then selling her story in a book deal. All the characters fit in well with the theme of Hollywood mockery. The dialogue seemed genuinely improvised and this blended well with the genre. The Q&A at the end had me in stiches; it was a true 'Hollywood Insider' moment. It was disappointing at the awards. I expected a few awards to come by the way of this excellent short movie. It is well worth a watch and a share on Facebook or Twitter.
Alan what were your thoughts on Cameron Stone?
For me this was such a simple idea for a Mockumentary. Really well executed, the narration builds the characters very quickly and I think most of us can relate to thinking upon actors like Cameron Stone. This was edited well, the line and character were used effectively and a few good bits of acting. On the night of the showing we even got an excellent little improvisation with the gentleman who played Stone and the host, which was also very funny. This definitely gets the Flicker Magazine stamp of approval so congrats to the team at Silly Wee Films on putting a good effort together. A great shame it didn't take the overall award."
In all likely hood I'll take part in the 48 hour film project again. With "Bloodline" being our main priority this year, as well as putting out our advice podcasts, running our networking nights and producing several short films, there is plenty to keep me busy in 2013.
And hopefully I'll be one step closer to running my own TV show...
Here is first episode of our Creative Talent Connections Podcast, featuring Chewin' the Fat and Still Game co-writer and star Greg Hemphill along with Burnistoun and River City actress Kirsty Strain. Our two guests talk about how their career started, offering advice to new actors and writers, as well as anecdotes from the TV and film industry.
The goal of our CTC Podcasts is to invite special guests who are established in the industry to offer their stories and advice to people just starting out, in the hope that we encourage more creative programmes and content in Scotland and the UK.
To co-incide with our podcasts we are continuing our bi-monthly CTC Networking events downstairs in Blackfriars, Merchant City, in Glasgow, where much like the podcasts, we are lining up special guests to talk and answer questions that people might have. We're also launching the CTC Film Challenge in January, inviting teams to sign up and work together to make films to be screened in March and judged by our special guests that month.
Tuesday 22nd of January at 7.30pm is our next networking event and our next podcast will be recorded on the 24th of January for a February release.
All information will be at https://www.facebook.com/groups/455217211171140/
Please spread the word and come along to our networking nights and help Scotland be creative!
