Night is Day VS America

So I had the great pleasure, thanks to the cast and crew of Night is Day fundraising, to head out to the American Film Market in LA between the 2nd and 9th of November. The film market was held in the St. Lowes Hotel in Santa Monica. Not a bad place to be in November when the usual weather in Scotland is described as "wet".

Over the 8 days I met with over 13 distributors who were interested in my film, "Night is Day"and I showed them the 10 minute sizzle reel, which features completed scenes from the movie, hopefully giving them an idea of what the story is about, and why they should buy it and distribute it throughout the world.

It's an absolutely crazy place, but a wonderful place also. Everybody is friendly, optimistic and very happy to be there. It's a country that promotes films and embraces it. Even though 50% of the attendees are there to sell their films, there's no sense of competition or rivalry, everybody was genuinely happy to help one another.

While some of my meetings lasted 5 minutes, there were some that lasted an hour. The main feedback was that the film was the most original content they have ever seen from the UK, while others were very impressed with our visual effects. Sizzle reels were handed over and a lot of people told me to send them the final film once it was complete and they'd take things from there.

Meanwhile another distributor, who is also a filmmaker who has set up their own world sales for productions, contacted me two days AFTER the market and told me they were very impressed with my work and I was to send them the completed film ASAP to evaluate world wide sales.

All and all, a successful trip I'd say. I got to meet people I never would get the chance to in a normal situation - including a 60 minute talk with Lauren Schuler Donner, producer of the X-Men films (and much more!) and a random distributor who approached me in the lobby, handed me her card and told me she had to sell films in Brazil, Germany and Russia! So we'll see how that goes.

The three things I learned at the film market were -

1. Always make film. No matter what it takes, if you have the courage to do it, learn as much as you can and make it.
2. For the American market to be interested and make an offer STRAIGHT away (or as close to it) you need a well known actor or person (or as they described them, an "entity") attached to your film. I'll be calling David Tennant's agent asap.
3. Get to know EVERYBODY.

I feel completely rejuvenated. I have distributors interested in my film, there's a possibility of attending key film festivals next year and the ball is rolling nicely along.

Our once production manager (and captain of transport, props master and all around great guy) has been promoted to producer to help me get the film from the 90% complete stage it's currently at, to the 100% completed stage by the end of the year. We've got two brand new visual effects animators to finish the effects and the sound team are cracking on with the ADR mix and foley design.

There has been one sad moment during it all, but as you learn in this industry, things happen, learn from them, and carry on the best you can. And that's what I'm going to do.

Fingers crossed the film will be out for everybody to see early next year and I can start pre-production on film number 2! All I need (well, one of many things) is an experienced producer with financing skills so I can get the ball rolling...

Wish me luck, but so far, so good.

Thank you to EVERYBODY who has supported me and this mad cap career decision so far!

Do you think you know Scotland?

Night is Day - Do you think you know Scotland? Trailer from Fraser Coull on Vimeo.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again. Filmmaking is hard. I've been involved in this film making malarky since I was 22 (okay, getting old now) when I studied TV Operations and Production at James Watt College in Greenock. Since then I've started my own company (Silly Wee Films) made short films (which you can see here) two seasons of a web series (again, here) and eventually, Night is Day, the feature film.

All of this has been made with no funding from support as I have been knocked back by funding bodies who have offered very little support to fill out the over complicated forms. However I've always found amazing people to work with, and I find that if I just ask someone for something, i.e. to use their location, they tend to say yes and filmmaking continues.

I don't know why, but I have ruffled a few feathers, and a few rumours have been going about how I mistreat my cast and crew and how horrible I am. I've also been told that I'm never going to make it in the industry *stares at my feature film with well known Scottish actors in it*... so yeah. All I've ever done is try to make good films, work with lots of different people and give everybody experience. I've always been up front about what money we had available and people know what they are getting into when they join my productions.

When I'm big, famous and successful (haha, he wishes) everybody will get paid and the people who want to work with me and who I want to work with, we'll sort that out and all will be good.

Anyway, I'm digressing slightly with this blog update. Night is Day is coming along nicely. Unfortunately as this is a non-funded production, some of our team have had to go and work on paid jobs in order to pay for the roof over their heads and, you know, to eat. So that's been a little bump on the road to finishing the film, however my excellent post-production producer Ross Hardie, has kept things moving along nicely. We've got new crew to pick up the jobs that need to be finished and all going well we'll have the film finished by the end of of 2011.

I'm off to LA in November to the American Film Market to meet with distributors and sales agents, so hopefully we'll find someone to buy the film and put it in the cinemas, on DVD and then iTunes! Cross your fingers for us!

And then I can continue pre-production on my second feature... "Get Funded"

Ciao for now!

Welcome to my blog, oh, and filmmaking is hard!

I suddenly have a lot of new followers on my Twitter feed so I thought I'd do a small "intro" blog for those of you unfamiliar with me, what I do, and why I do it.

My name is Fraser, I'm 27 (closing in on 28, well, next March, but still, scary) and I live in the West End of Glasgow with my partner, Bethany. My imagination has always got the better of me, to the point where in primary school my teacher told my parents that I had an over-active imagination. Rather than take this in a positive way which I have done so for the past 10 years of my life, my parents saw this as a problem and tried to discourage me to use my imagination. It didn't work.

After a stint of being unemployed for a very long time, the job centre put me on a training programme at the BBC in Glasgow (this would probably never happen now) and so I got my first real taste for television on the E-Force programme at the old BBC building in the West End - Queen Margaret Drive to be precise. From there I went onto college and studied HND Television Operations and Productions at James Watt in Greenock. In 2006 I left college and started my own production company, "Silly Wee Films"

From 2006 until now I have focussed on making corporate videos, promotional videos, music videos, recording live events and generally filming whatever I can to make money to keep living in my lovely 2 bedroom house, keep the fridge full with food and feed by guinea pigs (Tegan and Maisy), my rabbit Barney and my hamster Donna.

I've also made 2 seasons of a low-budget superhero web series called "Night is Day" 5 short films which, you can watch at this page, and my first EVER feature film, based on the web series, "Night is Day" is now in post-production and we'll be taking it to the American Film Market in LA this November to seek a distribution deal.

After that? Who knows. Making a film, especially in Scotland, is a lot of hard work. The generally accepted genre is "depressing". If it's not got some sort of drug use in it, depression, neds, violence or domestic abuse or senseless violence, the people who hold the money don't seem to be interested. That's fine for those who feel the need to force 90 minutes (if you're lucky) of grainy, depressing story on to your eyes and ears, but for me I'm more of the Hollywood persuasion. I like comedies, action films, superhero films, sci-fi films, romance (well, mostly romantic comedy) and indie films - ala Moon, Source Code.

I'm trying to make "Get Funded" which is a comedy about 3 filmmakers who go to EXTREME lengths to fund their first feature, but I suspect I need "Night is Day" to be sold and make some sort of impression in the world before someone will part with their cash to help me pay a cast and crew to spend their summer filming a comedy in Scotland.

Apart from that I'm a happy-go-lucky person. I make no secret that I'm a geek, I love Doctor Who, Torchwood, Chuck, Castle, Burn Notice, Star Wars, Star Trek, Ghostbusters, How I Met Your Mother, Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Serenity, The Blues Brothers, Blade Runner, Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, Iron Man, just to name a few.

So, there ya go, there's my intro post.

Night is Day - First Official VFX Shot

"Night is Day" is coming together nicely with the ADR almost finished, the special effects are coming in and the music is on the way. Scottish bands "A Band Called Quinn" and "Echofela" are joining the film's soundtrack with more artistes to be announced between now and October.

Please support the film by telling your friends and visiting the website.

Elaine C Smith stars as Katherine Munro, Inspector Rebecca Munro's mother, in Night is Day the movie.

Another blog entry but with something different...

Everybody and their mum's dogs have blogs these days, and it takes something special to stand out from the rest and I probably won't achieve such blog greatness, but blogging is a great method to release stress, tension, or just to get things off your mind.

Alas, I digress.

My blog is for my filmmaking journey, hopefully highlighting the road from my sleepy hometown of Langbank in Scotland to the twinkling lights of Hollywood within the next 5 to 10 years when I'm sitting late and night in my production office writing the script for "Night is Day 3 - This Time Jason Might Not Save The Day"...

However, I spend a lot of this blog complaining about the state of Scottish filmmaking (I'll save you the hassle of finding it, but basically I complain that there's too many films focussed on one or two genres, mostly depressing drama or zombies). So after seeing "Fast Romance" (click above, watch the trailer, be impressed) last night at it's Cineworld premiere (and Twitterer http://twitter.com/#!/Cnuneen telling me to do so) I decided to write a small review of this film.

So "Fast Romance", here we go. Starring Jo Freer, William Ruane and Lesley Hart. Directed by Carter Ferguson and written by Debbie May and James McCreadie. 93 minutes with the certificate TBC - I'd go with a 12A.

First things first, this is a low budget movie, shot on a microbudget (yet more of a budget than Night is Day) but that doesn't matter. This isn't a film concerned about over-the-top robot fighting destruction, or green aliens with decoder rings that can take on anything you think of (i.e. a toy car ramp or a machine gun), this is a film about love in Glasgow and how a group of friends try to find romance.

Big budget is not required to tell this story. So, that's out of the way.

Gordon (or "Gordo" to his friends), played by William Ruane, is a gamer who likes to play online with his friends and his brothers (nice little scene here to introduce his game-loving obsession btw) and works at the post office. Despite being constantly late, his boss, Kenny Cairns (a touching performance from Derek Munn) looks out for him and protects him from the main boss, Mr Braithwaite (played by Dave Anderson of "City Lights" fame).

Gordo is in love with Nadine (an energetic Jo Freer) who works at her family's Italian restaurant in the city and is looking for love, both for herself and to silence her overbearing mother who reminds Nadine on a daily basis that her sisters have found love no problem and that people are starting to talk about her.

Meanwhile Lorna (a flawless Lesley Hart) is having doubts about her upcoming marriage to her fiance, Terrence, and "copy girl" Fiona (Lynne McKelvey) is struggling to get the words out in our place of work thanks to man-eater Susan (Sarah McCardie) who is definitely the office bitch, and she plays it brilliantly.

While delivering the post, and avoiding spooky neighbour Mrs. Livingston (a nice cameo from Barbara Rafferty), Gordo finds a pen from Nadine with the words "Fast Romance" on it and discovers it's a speed dating club. Figuring Nadine will be there, Gordo sets out to go and find the courage to ask out Nadine once and for all.

Nadine convinces her friends Lorna and Fiona to keep her company on the speed-dating disaster.

I won't go into any more of the story from there as it'll spoil it, but everything changes from the speed-dating night. There are some great cameos in there and characters you won't forget. Our heroes lives are thrown upside down and events twist and turn before reaching a satisfying conclusion.

Additional props go to Simon Weir who plays Nadine's disastrous date at the start of the film, and James McCredie as Carlo, Nadine's confidante.

"Fast Romance" moves along nicely for it's 93 minute duration. It's got nice music from bands such as A Band Called Quinn and an original score by Nigel Dunn and Stephen Wright, which suits the movie's tone perfectly.

It's fun to spot places you actually know from living or have visited Glasgow but it doesn't detract from the film itself.

Yes there are a few problems with the movie, some of the sound is out of sync here and there, it's a bit too dark in places and some might say the story is wrapped up too quickly, but it's still a really good, enjoyable movie.

It's funny, it's heartwarming, sometimes genuinely sad and most importantly it's Scottish. Thankfully there are no neds in the film, for which I'd like to thank the filmmakers for, as Scotland isn't all about neds, zombies and ancient Scottish warriors fighting for freedom.

Hopefully this film will pave the way for a new generation of comedies, romances and maybe an action film too.

9/10.

Night is Day Series 2

Here's the first episode of series 2 - shot in 2009, we've made 7 episodes, 25 minutes each. We'll be releasing an episode every month.

Enjoy!

Night is Day and The Sizzle Reel

"Night is Day - The Movie" is steam rolling ahead with post-production in full swing. We've got ADR to do, special effects and music. It's all very exciting and we hope the movie is ready for September where we've been invited to participate in two film festivals in Glasgow.

Our main goal is still to the take the film to the American Film Market in November and we recently held a fundraiser at The Ark Bar on the 29th of March where Reggae band "Man at the Window" and "Echofela" performed along with comedian Stevie Pollack. We raised a lot of money and we're getting closer to taking the movie to the States to meet Sales Agents and distributors.

We also showed the 10 minute sizzle reel we've made to help promote the film, with 5 scenes from the film for you to see. We're keeping it online until Monday so check it out and let me know what you think.

Thanks to Fizzylight design we've got a brand new poster -



This is our main promotional poster at this time so we hope it creates a lot of interest.

Finally, David Fergusson is working on a web comic called "Lexi" which delves into the backstory of our vampire Lexi, who features both in the web series and in the movie. Here's a peek at the front cover:



And finally, finally please do donate whatever you can to the movie at http://www.nightisday.net/donate.php - you'll be credited on the website and on our film's end titles. All donations are appreciated!