Post production continues - pre production begins... the filmmaking circle just goes around and around

Not much of an exciting blog post, I will admit, but I felt it was time for a small update. 

The producers of Night is Day - The Movie, have now watched the first cut and have told me that they are happy with the flow of the story but they have notes on changes they feel will benefit the movie, so I look forward to reading them - although I am slightly terrified too haha. 

Then again, anything that does get cut-out will likely go on a DVD as "deleted scenes", so nothing is lost forever, which is nice.

It feels like a life time ago since we started making the movie - in fact I've moved house twice in that time - and I already miss it. We only wrapped in August and my life has been a mix of editing the movie, promoting the movie and working on corporate video work to pay the bills.

I've started writing my next feature, well, I started writing my next feature a year before I wrote Night is Day, but I've went back and chipped away at the script for "Get Funded" (working title - other favourites are "Go Fund Yourself" and "Fund It!") which is a comedy about three filmmakers who are so desperate to make their movie that they resort to robbing people and exploiting them - only to get mixed up with gangsters and the police. 

"Night is Day" is a miracle, really, because we're in Scotland and it got made. We didn't wait for someone to give us a big wad of cash to make it, and we were VERY lucky to find a cast and crew who understood that it's far more important to make a movie, rather than wait until someone gives you the money to do so.

I'm not saying the movie is going to win awards for being clever, thought-provoking or ground-breaking but I am DEFINITELY saying that if you like Doctor Who, Angel, Buffy, Spider-Man, Torchwood, superhero movies, Scottish movies, then you will (hopefully) enjoy this movie. 

Now that we've made the £3,000 movie, we can take it to investors, distributors, sales agents, private sources of funding with a pitch for "Get Funded/Fund It/Go Fund Yourself" in the hope that they will give us enough money to pay everybody, get the equipment and whatever costs come up along the way (locations, props, costumes etc) and that we can make a Scottish comedy next Summer. 

Once "Night is Day" has been "locked" (where the actual movie itself won't change shot wise) we then take it to the composer, sound designers and visual effects artists who will work on it and then it will be coloured and graded.

Whoever says making movies is easy is lying, but it is a LOT of fun.

That's enough of a blog post for now...

Later folks.

Night is Day - Sci-fi web series online - superhero webseries

"Night is Day" is the one project that has been constant throughout my filmmaking career. When I was training at the BBC in Glasgow on their E-Force training program in around 2003 I came across a competition to shoot a trailer for a film that hadn't been made yet. It was there I decided to make a trailer for a film about a superhero in Glasgow as at that time there were no Glaswegian superheroes so it felt like the right time. 

From training at the BBC I went to James Watt College in 2003 until 2004 and I made a short film version of Night is Day called "Night is Day - Dusk". We shot it in 7 days and while it could vastly be approved upon, it was still my first proper short film and I'm very proud of it.

After making the short I decided making a feature film was the next way to go - a sword fighting epic called "The Journey" which came to an abrupt end after I got ran down by a car. With a lack of funding and a stable crew, I decided to make "Night is Day" as a web series instead and come 2006 we had started filming the 6 episodes. 

The series was filmed in 9 months and released online for £1 per episode for people to watch, and while there was a steady flow of viewers, we never did manage to reach the target of making the expenses back we had incurred while shooting the series, so thanks to KenKai Projects in Stirling we got the series put onto a DVD (which you can buy here) We then took the episodes off-line and kept them for the DVD.

In 2008 in May we started filming series 2 of the show. This time it was bigger and better. Instead of 6 episodes we went for 7 and instead of random length we stuck to the 25 minute format. Over 40 cast and crew were involved and we filmed in Glasgow and Stirling. Finally episode 7 is in post-production with the complicated special effects (demon vs demon in the Hamilton Mausoleum!) being worked on and episode 4 is having the sound effects worked on while the music for episode 6 is being scored. 

As series 2 nears competition and with "Night is Day" branching out and becoming a full-length feature film, originally titled "Night is Day - The Movie" (not to confuse any one who might be aware of the series),  which starts filming on the first weekend of June - I've put episodes 1 and 2 of series 1 BACK online for people to watch for free. So feel free to check them out below and if you like what you see then you can always order the series 1 DVD. 

Enjoy!