Night is Day and other such things...

NIGHT IS DAY AND OTHER SUCH THINGS...

Back in 2010 I wrote and directed a little Scottish superhero film, Night is Day, produced by Gavin Orr and Lindsay Dowell of Goldray Productions, Andrew Dougall of Andrew Dougall Films and Ross Hardie. The film was a spin-off/wrap up of the web series of the same name/theme/universe (watch it here if you wish!) shot over 19 days at weekends in the Summer of 2010. We raised around £4500 to make it, our cast and crew signed up for a share of the profits if we sold the film and away we went. The film was completed in time for it's premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival in February 2012 and after a jaunt to the American Film Market in LA, the film has now been picked up by Shami Media in New York! 

They are currently designing the art work for the DVD and will be shopping it around festivals and distribution markets, so fingers crossed they sell it soon and the extremely hard working cast and crew can get something for their troubles.

Okay, so it's not a ground-breaking Hollywood Blockbuster, but it's my first film. I'm really proud of what we managed to achieve. I purposely stepped away from Scottish cliches. There are no drugs, the violence is of a superhero nature, and there is only one ned/chav/thug and he gets dealt with accordingly. Like my friend Tam Toye, who stars in the film as the villainous Mr. Philips, who also made his own James Bond style feature film, "Infiltrated", we wanted to show that Scotland has more to offer than depression, violence, and people with painted blue faces. We're more than kilts and ginger hair (although we are that too!)

We had lots of fun at Collectormania Glasgow in 2010 and in 2011. Here are the highlights for 2010, with Mark Harvey, who plays Frank Stone, killer assassin, singing The Lord of The Rings: The Musical...

Until it's been picked up you can watch it on Distrify for either £1.99 to rent it, or £3.99 to buy it. There's even a trailer so you can make your mind up based on a 2 minute clip! 

Hopefully I've come some way since writing the movie about 3, 4 years ago, and it's helped me decide that I would much rather write for TV than film. But hey, it's my starting point.

Enjoy!

Time for a new showreel then...

SHOWREEL 2013

Since Summer 2012 I've been lucky enough to be involved in a few projects, I've been fortunate enough to be able to write them and bring together an exceptional cast and crew to work with.

We kicked off with a pilot for our proposed supernatural TV series, Bloodline, which was co-written with Scott Forrest and produced by Claire Mcguire. We're currently pitching it so fingers crossed. Since then I've worked on the 48 hour film project, made a supernatural rom-com, One Year Later, with the intention of submitting it to festivals. Following on from that I wrote and directed a horror short film for Shortcuts to Hell, where you had 6 hours to shoot a 3 minute short film with only 6 cast, 6 crew and 6 lines of dialogue and finally we shot a Virgin Media Short called The Interrogation, which will be online soon.

I've managed to get on the BBC Production Talent Pool, so I am going to use every opportunity, work my ass off and try to progress with my dream of being a writer/producer and running my own show!

Music Videos

MUSIC VIDEOS

From time to time I'm asked to produce music videos for upcoming bands and artists. Here's a small selection of videos I've made so far for Emerald Sunday and Del. Enjoy!

6th sense - Shortcuts to Hell Competition 2013

(The 6th sense poster by Ross Boag)

The Horror Channel on Sky TV have launched a competition inviting people to make a 3 minute horror short film, with only 6 hours to shoot, with a cast of 6 and a crew of 6 (including post-production) as well as only 6 lines of dialogue, to be submitted by the 6th of June at 6pm. The top 6 will be screened on the Horror Channel as well as screened during FrightFest this year and the winning team will win £6,666. A devilishly tempting competition...

When Anne Nicholson (editor of Bloodline, Cameron Stone and One Year Later) told me about the idea I thought "But I can't add anything to the horror genre!" and I quickly realised that wasn't the correct approach. I want to be a writer, I want to write for TV (either my own show aka THE DREAM or for another show aka Doctor Who, the ultimate dream), I need to push myself, go out of my comfort zone (hmm...comfort zone) and see what I'm capable of. Even if it sucked, and I really hope it doesn't, at the very least I've tried something different and it's all good practice to becoming a better writer. 

We had just wrapped One Year Later and were busting our guts out (appropriate for a horror, no?) to get post-production finished for the first festival entry on the 24th of May (major kudos to Anne, Sean and Sam for pulling that off!) and once the dust had settled Anne text me and said "We can film in my sister's house this weekend!". That was three days away. I was able to convince dear Anne that the following two weeks would be better, to allow for more prep and she (thankfully) agreed. So I assembled some of the team from One Year Later and on the 28th of May we shot our horror film in 6 hours.

You can watch the resulting short by clicking here and I hope you all enjoy it.

It's my first ever attempt at a horror, I've tried to take a zombie genre and turn it on it's head a little bit, trying to put my own spin on it. I hope it comes across in 3 minutes and I hope you guys appreciate it. It was amazing fun to do and everybody was in high spirits. Sharon Clark is a fantastic makeup artist, seriously stupidly talented. Her work is astounding and it might not all come across in the video I suggest you get over to her Facebook page and check her work out.

Everybody, again, worked their asses off. Thank you.

On Saturday we're shooting a Virgin Media Short called "The Interrogation" with Simon Weir and Rhys Teare-Williams. The rules are the film can only be 2 minutes and 20 seconds. I wrote the script and everybody seems happy with it so once more onto the breach. It'll be my last as writer/director for a while as I'm stepping back into a producing role to assist the team's other short films that they want to make. Also I want to concentrate on my writing, try to get better at it, write a couple of spec scripts of different genres and try to get an agent to represent me and hopefully get my work on to the telly box. That would be lovely...

But of course, the 48 hour film challenge is in October and I won't be able to resist getting the old band back together for another 48 hours of madness...