Reed.co.uk - 'The Don'

Hi everyone! Here is my latest work: a commercial that I directed and produced under the banner of my production company Crimson Owl Productions.  Please do check it out on YouTube - I'd love to know what you think! While you're there, why not take a second to subscribe to my YouTube channel to keep up to date with all of the projects that Crimson Owl Productions and I are working on :)

  

Showreel

My new showreel for 2014 :)

Burridge - "With You" Music Video

Happy New Year film fans!  My blog has been rather quiet of late so I thought I'd kick off my first post of the year by showing you all my most recent film project.  Its a music video I directed, produced, and edited by a very talented up-and-coming artist named Rebecca Burridge.  It was a lot of fun to make & I hope you all enjoy it! Any feedback you have is most welcome in the comments :)

'A Poem for Lovers' First Festival!

Big news today! I just learned that 'A Poem for Lovers' has been accepted into its first film festival! The Southampton International Film Festival! This is particularly exciting for me as this is, not only the first film festival where some of my work is going to be screened, but it also happens to be my first film. So I'm savouring the moment for as long as possible, as its not something I'll ever experience again!

I'm delighted to say that my film has been nominated for three categories in the short film section: best cinematography, best score, and best sound design.  I want to say a big thank you to everyone who was involved in bringing 'A Poem for Lovers' to life, for your hard work, guidance and support.  A particular shout out must go to my cinematographer Kai K. Krause, and my composer Shamoon Khatri.  Some samples of Shamoon's work from this film can be listened to here:



Look out for some more sound clips of Shamoon's that I'll be posting here soon, from my latest film 'The Art of Madness'.  The Southampton Film Festival isn't until October, but once it hits I'll be letting you all know how it went & how 'A Poem for Lovers' was received!  Stay tuned also for more festival news regarding 'A Poem for Lovers' and 'The Art of Madness'.  Hopefully this will be the first festival of many!! :).

Thanks for reading!

~ Rob 

My Hitchcock Essay

I thought it might be interesting to show all of you who like to read my blog a little bit of what I used to get up to before I cornered the market in directing films about mad artists!  Below is an online journal published by students of the University of Essex, called ESTRO, which I contributed to a few years ago with an essay on Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece Rear Window and its use of the point-of-view shot.  I wrote it about 4 years ago now, long before I even thought about picking up a camera, and as such my essay writing skills have probably improved a little bit since then, but since its my first published piece of work I thought I had to show it off!

It starts from page 10 in the document below and if you have an interest in film theory and criticism, or indeed if you have an interest in Alfred Hitchcock, Rear Window, scopophilia, or voyeurism, then hopefully my essay will give you some interesting insights.  If it does, or even if it doesn't, I strongly recommend perusing some of the other interesting essays in the journal to feast your intellect on.

Both this copy of the journal and others can be found on the University of Essex ESTRO Journal website: http://www.essex.ac.uk/journals/estro/default.aspx

       

'The Art of Madness' Trailer

As promised here is the trailer for my latest short film 'The Art of Madness'. Please 'like' and comment on my YouTube page!

'The Art of Madness' Posters

Here are the two official posters for 'The Art of Madness'.  Hope you like!

The Art of Madness - Clip 2 - 'Inspiration'

As promised here is the second clip from 'The Art of Madness' entitled 'Inspiration'.  Enjoy!

The Art of Madness - Clip 1 - 'The colours look fantastic'

If you're a regular reader of my blog, you will have noticed in my previous post the tantalizing image that I posted of an earnest looking artist contemplating his work as a mysterious and sultry woman sits on a sofa behind him.  This is in fact, as some of you might have guessed, a still from my latest short film 'The Art of Madness'.

The film centres around Stanley, a struggling artist, who must create the masterpiece of his life before he looses his livelihood and, more importantly, his sanity.

I had an incredibly fun time working on 'The Art of Madness', with an absolutely amazing cast and crew.  I'm looking forward to seeing people's responses to the film, and I'll keep you all fully up to date with its progress at film festivals.  In the mean time here is the first clip from the film entitled 'The colours look fantastic'.  Look out for more clips and a trailer coming soon!

The Art of Madness

The Madness is coming...

A Poem for Lovers on IMDb!

A Poem for Lovers is now on IMDb!  Please check out the link below to see!  Very exciting!!

 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2723214/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Festivals...

So at the moment I'm very busy sending A Poem for Lovers to as many film festivals as I possibly can in the hope that maybe a few of them might fancy screening my charming little short for the general public.  When you get ready to send a film to a film festival there are all sorts of forms that you have to fill in in order for the festival to consider your submission. 

One thing you are often requested to write is something called a 'Director's Statement', which is essentially a short statement outlining what the Director hoped to achieve and what the rationale for the project was that he/she eventually created.  I recently wrote one for A Poem for Lovers and I thought it would be a nice little insight for my loyal readers to see what was going through my mind when I first thought of making the film :)  So here it is, enjoy! And please let me know what you think in the comments:  

A Poem for Lovers will always be significant for me, as it is really my first attempt at writing and directing a short film.  I spent many months carefully considering the nature and subject matter of Poem, highly conscious of the fact that ‘firsts’ do matter and that it could play a very important part in defining myself as a filmmaker and showing any audience I might build what sort of films I may end up creating in the future. 

As such I was not in any way disappointed by my first directorial endeavour.  I was able to exactly capture the mood and tone of what I wanted to put on screen.  This was made especially possible through the wonderful performances of Ian Hencher and Sophie Grace-Hill; the atmospheric and enchanting score of Shamoon Khatri; and the extraordinary and exciting cinematography of Kai K. Krause.  I was able to use all of these elements to create a dark, brooding, beautiful but macabre world of thoughtfulness, melancholy, and psychological pain. 

When writing the script for Poem my aims were essentially two-fold.  The first of these aims was to explore the theme of jealousy and examine its impact upon the mind and upon an individual’s behaviour.  One of the things that fascinates me the most about the nature of jealousy as an emotion is how often it is unjustifiably invoked by those who indulge in it, and how its emotional inducement is often the cause of uncontrolled excess in the form of love or, more often than not, possessiveness.  In Poem it is deliberately unclear as to whether Kate is guilty of sharing her emotions with someone else besides Adrian, but this fact is irrelevant as, like Othello before him, it is ultimately his own imaginings that precipitate his struggle and ultimate downfall. 

The second aim I had for Poem was to explore the effect that memories can have on us and the various ways in which they can be unearthed.  The power of words, and their role in exciting specific memories, is also an idea that the film explores.  Words, as well as images, have always fascinated me, and since writing and literature had played such an important part in my life leading up to the creation of my first film, I was very keen to find a way of paying homage to the art form when constructing Adrian’s story.  

I am incredibly proud of what my team and I achieved when we made A Poem for Lovers.  It marks the beginning of my journey as a filmmaker, and makes a number of statements that I want people to listen to and take on board.  My only hope is that people enjoy watching A Poem for Lovers as much as I enjoyed making it. 

A Poem for Lovers Clips

Below are a number of clips from my first Short film A Poem for Lovers.  Hope you enjoy them!  Please feel free to comment and let me know what you think!

A Poem for Lovers - Clip #1 - The Argument

A Poem for Lovers Clip #2 The Photograph

A Poem for Lovers - Clip #3 - The Kiss

A Poem for Lovers Trailer

After a lengthy absence I am finally back!! And with a new year I bring new tidings in the form of a trailer for my short film A Poem for Lovers.  Hope you enjoy!!  Please let me know what you think! :)

Running Free - Virgin Media Shorts

Here is a link to a short film that I made for the Virgin Media Shorts Competition.  Please take a few moments of your time to watch the film and share it to your Facebook & Twitter accounts. The more it is shared in the next few days the more chance it has of being screened in a cinema near you! Many Thanks! 

Running Free - Virgin Media Shorts

'A Poem for Lovers' Score

Here are a couple of tracks from the score to 'A Poem for Lovers', written and composed by the very talented Shamoon Khatri. Hope you enjoy! Please rate & comment!

My evening at 'Have I Got News For You'

So last week I was fortunate enough to fulfill one of my long held ambitions: going to a taping of the comedy panel show Have I Got News For You! I've followed the show since I was a teenager back in the 'noughties' (that's the 2000's for those of you unfamiliar with the parlance) & have been a fan of its acerbic & satirical wit ever since.  Satire, political or otherwise, is something that seems to be quite scarce on British television screens these days & since I love satire it probably goes a long way to explaining why I've been a fan of the show for so long.
      

Inside the London Studios in Southbank

The show was the first in the new series, hosted by the very funny Stephen Mangan (from Green Wing fame), with guests Grace Dent and Miles Jupp, and team captains Ian Hislop & Paul Merton.  In fact Hislop & Merton are also very big reasons why I'm such a fan of the show.  I keep meaning to get myself down to the comedy store on a Sunday to see Paul Merton in the 'comedy store players' but haven't got round to it yet (a new aim for 2012 I think!).  Although I have seen his very entertaining & interesting documentaries on Hitchcock & the early silent era of cinema, which I would strongly recommend people checking out if they haven't already done so.

Hand Prints of Steven Fry outside the studio

Anyway, in short, I enjoyed myself immensely.  I went with my best friend & we were very fortunate to get really good seats on the second row.  We had a really good birds eye view of everything & were sat right near the camera.  In fact when I watched the show back on iplayer I could just about make out the back of my head! lol.  What was really interesting was seeing how much of the show they cut out in the final edit.  The final show is only 30mins but they were recording for a good 2 hours.  They also changed the order of some of the exchanges between the panelists & cut out a few things I'm sure the shows lawyers wouldn't have been too happy with! 

The queue outside that we were able to thankfully bypass

One of my favourite jokes of the evening came from Paul Merton at the end of the recording, while they were waiting to do some re-takes, when he said: "I'm not going to tell you who was the worst guest host we've ever had, but what I will tell you is that he or she had great difficulty saying the words 'Good evening and welcome. My name's Neil Kinnock.'"  Most of you probably don't know who Neil Kinnock is, but if you do hopefully you'll find it slightly funny lol.      

The itv logo at the London Studios Southbank

I've included a few hastily taken pictures for your enjoyment.  I'm disappointed I couldn't get a photo from inside the studio, but the production team told us they'd kick us out if they caught us taking photos :(. You'll notice one of the photos is of a building with ITV written on it.  This is because even though HIGNFY is a BBC show, for the last 20-odd years they've been filming it at the ITV studios down on Southbank (another quirk of the show). As I said earlier it was a brilliantly funny evening & I'd highly recommend you get tickets to go and see the show if you can :)