Okay... since some of you have found out that I am a director of short films I have had a number of requests from people wanting to see some of them. So I decided to open up a You Tube account and post one of my films up for all to see. This is Play By Heart, my first film ever. It was shot at Hartebeestpoort Dam in June of 2004 over 7 days. A friend's parents own this holiday cottage there and we decided it would be a great location, so we hired it out for a week, cast some brilliant actors, (all of whom worked for food - of which there was little), got some friends to help out both behind the camera and with some dosh and we put this together.
With only 4 cast members and 3 crew we were able to simply move into the house during shooting and lived on set for the full week.
The story is a simple one; two best friends are all that is left of a once-great band. As the story begins they have hired this house by the dam for the weekend in the hope of coming up with some new songs and rehearsing for some gigs. Unfortunately there has been a double-booking at the house and their peaceful weekend of music and drinking is about to be wrecked by the arrival of two, seriously high-maintenance, sisters.
Due to the constraints of You Tube I've had to split the film up in to 5 parts. This is part 1, where we meet the gang as they arrive at the house. Hope you enjoy.
Aaargh...tired. Been working all day on finalising layout for Issue 3 and my eyes are getting screwy. Well, I have finally joined the mySpace revolution - if you wanna call it that - and after several hours trying to make the default puke-screen look decent I am finally happy to allow people to have a look at it.
Went away last weekend 'cause my best friend who lives in Joburg was "in the neighbourhood" for the weekend. What I mean is he had hired out a cottage on a farm up by Montagu - so I drove 3 hours to get out there to spend a couple of days with him. On the Saturday we went down to a town called Arniston, just East of Cape Agulhus, for a dip in the sea. Another 3 hour 250k round trip for a quick lunch, but I think you'll agree the view was worth it.This is the most stupidly beautiful beach I have ever seen, and because it's in the Indian Ocean it is warm, warm, warm... well at least for someone coming from Cape Town it is.
Sunday I drove back and have been slaving over a hot laptop ever since. Other than that we have been running around shamelessly promoting Something Wicked high and low, including handing out free copies to MyAnna Buring and Craig Conway, two of the cast members of The Descent, and Paul Hyett the make-up special effects designer. They were very happy to receive them, hey, maybe they'll take out subscriptions. I'm still hoping to get some copies to Neil Mashall and his D.P. Sam McCurdy - So you see your stories are travelling the world :)
I must admit I am having a blast being the cameraman on these Fangoria interviews. As an actor I do get to meet a bunch of interesting and famous people, but as part of an interview crew I get to actually interact with them as opposed to just saying "morning" as you walk past during breakfast. It's also reminding me how much I love to be behind the camera and how much I would love to make a horror movie sometime soon.
I actually started writing a script about a year ago, I think I am about 58 pages in, but it kind of lost the impetus and has since been dumped on the need-to-fix-later pile along with a bunch of other things. Hey maybe we should have a horror short-film screenplay competition in Something Wicked. What do you guys think? Best 10 minutes script gets made. I'll crack the crew out of storage an we'll dust off our cameras and get busy rolling some tape. Sounds brilliant to me :)
Anyway, I guess I'd better stop talking crap and get back to working on finishing Issue 3, since it needs to be at the printers by Monday morning.
Goodnight for now, folks. Joe
Yes I am still reading The Unquiet... and yes I do have to write a review on it before Monday. I think I'll spend tomorrow in bed and polish off that book. So far though - damn good :)
Just got back from an on-set visit to director Neil Marshall's (Dog Soldiers, The Descent) new movie Doomsday. A friend is doing some interviews for Fangoria Magazine and took me along to work the camera. You can probably guess from the time this post was made that it was a night shoot, in fact the cast and crew's final night-shoot after 5 weeks straight.
What a blast, and I do mean blast, my ears are still ringing from the explosions and gun fire. I can't tell you much but I can tell you it looks great and so does Boston Legal's Rhona Mitra.
I asked Rhona if she was enjoying her stay in Cape Town, "I've been here since November so I practically live here." She grinned. "I've been to many beautiful places, but no matter how beautiful the place is, you always miss home. But not here. I live in L.A. so I have the view and the weather but there's just something about Cape Town. I have the sea here, I have the view, I have my dog so it's very tempting to stay," and was then called back to set.
We even got to meet Sean Pertwee (Event Horizon, Dog Soldiers), son of classic Doctor Who, Jon Pertwee. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take any pictures and were sworn to secrecy, but here is a snippet from totalfilm.com
... a futuristic tale of a country ravaged by a deadly virus known as the Reaper. The infection was so severe and the devastation so total that the entire country was walled off to protect the rest of the world. But when a strain of the killer bug arrives in a neighbouring territory, a crack team (led by Mitra) is dispatched to the original outbreak site to try and track down a cure. Naturally, the mission does not go well and we can expect plenty of blood and gore.
Marshall likes to stick with his cast and crew from film to film and most of the principal cast have worked with him before which contributes to a wonderfully familial environment on set. And there is always something wonderfully endearing about grown men getting excited about blood and gore.
All in all it looks like a hell of a fun movie. Explosions, screaming hordes, unbelievably loud gunfire, (and tons of it too), Doomsday is set to thrill fans of Marshall's work and hopefully garner some new ones too.
Well, it's off to bed for me, I have a magazine to finish.
So I just received news that the Something Wicked presents... podcast has been short-listed for Best SA Independent Podcast for 2007. That is pretty cool, no?
So what can you do it about it? Click on the Vote For Me Button on the right or you can hop on over to http://2007.sablogawards.com/ and vote for us. Just scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page and look for our podcast, make sure the radio button is ticked, and submit.
In other news the final bits and bobs of content is still coming in for Issue 3 and we've broken all records with the submissions for Issue 4 - with 23 short stories received so far. Man, we have a lot of reading ahead of us! But first we have to finish Issue 3 - Autumn 2007. I guess it's only fair to let you all know that there is a bit of a delay with Issue 3, due to finances. We will publish it, but we may come in a little late - eek, not to worry, somehow we will pull it off, promise.
We have applied for funding from the NAC and hopefully will hear from them soon. Trust me when I say this is as frustrating for you, the readers, as it is for us, Issue 3 is an awesome issue. We have a ton of brilliant, brilliant stories, including the first slightly sci-fi flavoured tales. Awesome art, as usual, plus, interviews with Stephen King, an autographed copy of Lisey's Story and 3 copies of the brand new Illustrated Salem's Lot. We're also trying to wangle some copies of Marvel's new Gunslinger: Born comic book. It really is the best issue ever. So keep holding thumbs and we'll get through this rough spot, promise.
Thanks again for all the support.
On Joe's Bedside Table: The Black Angel by John Connolly The Unquiet - Proof Copy by John Connolly The Black Widower's Mysteries - Isaac Asimov
For those of you who don't know, I have another, secret, life. When I am not publishing and editing magazines I am an actor and director. I'll tell you more about the directing some other time, for today we're talking acting.
I just spent the last two days on set for a UK commercial for a fence sprayer (hey I never said it was glamorous). Below is the previous commercial I shot for this product two years ago. Press play and have a laugh.
A year ago I did this ad for Bavaria. (I'm the guy with the meat!!)
I cannot begin to tell you how hard this commercial was to shoot. 5 days with only 9 and 1/2 hours of sleep, covered in mud or dirt, or just soaked, carrying raw meat in 35 degree heat and pretending to love every second of it. Like I said, glamorous it ain't.
What it is, is an obscene amount of work and pain like you have never felt before, pushing your body and mind to unbelievable extremes followed by hours in the shower to wash all the muck off. And a ton of fun.
I've being doing this as my primary profession for over 17 years now and I have been treated like shit one week and like a star the week after. It all depends on the set and on the crew and, most importantly, on the director.
I call them the Holy Triumvirate (no-offence meant), they are the director, the 1st AD, and the D.O.P. - They are the people that will make your life on set an absolute pleasure, or a fucking nightmare. On a good shoot, you have a calm, prepared director who knows exactly what he wants, and how to get it done, quickly, and efficiently and most importantly manages to maintain total rationality during all the inevitable crises. The 1st assistant director is equally important as he or she is your point of contact. The 1st AD pretty much controls the set and tells everyone what to do. He takes orders from one person, the director. It is the 1st AD's job to make sure the director gets exactly what he wants, and if it is not possible then it is his job to tell the director that. He is on the side of the cast and crew when talking to the director and on the side of the director when talking to the cast and crew. On a film set the 1st AD is God. The D.O.P. or Director of Photography (cinematographer) controls the lighting and the cameras. From an actor's point of view this is the person who is going to make you look good.
Forgive me if you already know all of the above, I don't mean to patronise.
Anyway, the point of this discourse is that I love my job. It is without a doubt the best job on earth. I may not sleep for a week on a shoot, or be washing sand out of my ears for two hours after wrap, or be peeling spirit gum off my face with cold cream for just as long. I may be dancing with a hose-pipe at 7am on a winter's morning in a public park, or running fully-clothed through a river, or waking up at 2:52 am (when I got to sleep at 11:30pm the night before) or smashing through a plate glass window with a piece of raw meat dangling from my teeth. But I still love my job.
Anyway, back to Editing Issue 3... goodnight y'all
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