Kev and I finalised the details of our production insurance today for The Zombie Diaries and got the casting details ready for the film. Casting should occur on the weekend of May 14th in London.

Mnemosyne went off recently to three people for critical appraisal - Elliot Grove and Mark Kermode & his wife Linda who is an expert in the field of film. I am not sure if or when to expect feedback because they are all extremely busy with one thing or another from film festivals, to chat shows, to critiquing Ph.D. theses! As a member of raindance I am hoping Elliot can spare me a few minutes - he has already written to confirm he has received the DVD. As for Mark and Linda, any kind of response would be awesome. Fingers crossed.

On a sidenote, I have decided to make Raindance the last named festival I submit Mnemosyne too, and only as a leap of faith on my part that they really are looking for something innovative, and not just another film about a kebab shop or some gangsters. I feel that Britian as a country and a filmmaking industry has much more to offer than the same old films containing the same old two-dimensional and unlikeable characters, boring plots (usually revolving around love or violence) and lack of imagination. We need more films like Primer, Japanese Story and Donnie Darko. Right now the rest of the world has us beat, and it doesn't surprise me that people with talent are either selling out, or moving out.

My lack of confidence in the British film industry continued today, having rented the film TRAUMA (starring Colin Firth, directed by Marc Evans). This is quite possibly the worst film I have ever seen (surpassing Dungeons and Dragons, Boggy Creek II: The Legend Continues and Goldy 3: The Search For The Golden Bear).

Seriously, the script was truly awful. The acting was poor at best. The attempts to be 'freaky' (speeded up shots and MTV style low-shutter shots) were laughable, and to add insult to injury, my mum gave up after 50 minutes as it was putting her to sleep. I have a chess DVD (one of my hobbies) that teaches you how to maneuvre in closed positions, and I found that more pulsating! Why, oh why, are people in the British Film Industry funding and making such utter crap, and why, oh why, do festivals continually support and promote the dire filmmakers responsible? The only theory I can come up with is that this film was funded by one of the actors, who then used their network of contacts to get it into festivals. Seriously.

Today all my efforts editing and re-editing the corporate films for my company finally paid off. The films were shown at our annual conference, and went down really, really well. I was even called onto stage and given some champagne and vouchers as a thankyou; something I didn't expect, and was really grateful to receive. I came down to my brother's house in Kent from Leeds on Thursday evening and worked up until 3am to get the final re-edits complete. I was then up at 6am, and on my way to the conference with the final DVDs in hand. A great day, and nice to be finally acknowledged instead of being overlooked in favour of something gangster related ;)

I caught the flu on Vacation, and then after making a seemingly good recovery, went down to a secondary infection. My doctor has written me off work for another week! I thus have been stuck indoors working on the corporate films. Progress was initially slow, because my body was demanding 14 hours sleep a day to fight the illness. In the last few days I have gotten much better, much in thanks to the anti-biotics.

Originally I was supposed to do four films, but project deadlines and workloads meant I only filmed two. Still, all the time off has meant I have had a chance to put an extra special effort in. One film is shot in a parady of Gladiator; the other as a parody of Ocean's Eleven. I have managed to do the originals justice, while still making the films quirky and amusing. So far a few people have seen the work-in-progress, and are over the moon. I have even been told by one high-ranking member of the company that these films may lead to some paid work in the future, which will be cool. I relish the chance to get behind the camera, whether it is corporate fun work, or a serious, full-crewed production. Hopefully by Sunday these two particular films will be wrapped up. :)

I have managed to secure a great location in London for casting. In addition, James Marshall has agreed to do the artwork and digital effects for the film. The Zombie Diaries is marching on, full steam ahead. James is a fellow director from New Jersey who did the car crash effect and main poster for Mnemosyne. Our planned release date is October 2005. Casting and Crewing posts will be going out in a week or two. As James would say, 'Rock on'.

Mark Jeavons, the director of photography who worked on Mnemosyne for me in 2003 has just completed his first feature film, The Boy With A Thorn In His Side, which looks like a classic. The film will be premiered at the 58th Cannes Film Festival; I will probably be attending the screening! You can read more about Mark and his film at his website Sepia Films. Mark managed to shoot this film for £5,000, and is probably the most prolific filmmaker I know, having turned out some very successful shorts in the last few years. You will find his Director's Comments section very insightful.

We all need something funny to cheer us up occassionally. Normally that something funny can come in many different forms, but none are more hilarious than a complete fool who is on a hopeless mission. And believe me, I've met my fair share ;)

These people are great pretenders at best and normally achieve nothing more than amusement for the rest of us; but kudos to them for having a delusion and being prepared to pursue it! Of all the men on a mission, no tale is funnier than that of Troy Hames Hurtbise. That story is now available on DVD and I swear it is one of the funniest things you will ever see!!!!!!!! I don't normally plug movies on my site, but you have to see this!

I don't care if you're broke. You must see this!

In American slang, Mnemosyne is now 0 and 2. I purused the Common Wealth film festival site today and found no trace of the film. I really need to get off my arse and start submitting it to more places, otherwise it will end up 0 and *insert value less than 5 here*. I missed the Brooklyn festival deadline too! Next up is Raindance I think. I made a grave error by not getting good stills which may have also hurt the submission. Really it's anybody's guess, but based on what I saw at a recent London Sci-Fi festival, Mnemosyne should be playing! I also still need to get around to that list of festivals I was going to write up.... So many things to do!

I hate having to post bad news like this, but this is a 'warts and all' diary of low budget filmmaking, so it makes no sense to hide the truth, or polish it up, etc like some other journals do; i.e. "Today I met with producer x who is interested in funding my film". I think I read a few remarks like that on one of the BBCFilms Director's journals.

The third draft is now complete. I sent it off to Kevin Gates (who, in turn, will send it onto Scott Orr) and James Marshall for review. I feel we are almost there now. I will review Kev's script at some point in the next week, and then all that remains it to tie-in Scott's and we are done and ready for casting!

I'm chilling out on holiday at the moment. I work very hard during the week, which is why the updates on my latest film have been slow. Over the last two days I have made great progress on the third draft of 'The Zombie Diaries'. I expect to have it ready by the end of the week.

Also, regarding the special edition DVD of Mnemosyne, I have to get the videos edited that I shot for my company when I get back. So I am looking at mid-April to get the editing done, and hopefully mid-late May to launch the DVD.

Today I heard about a fantastic film that is running on the festival circuit called The Deadroom. The storyline is about four different individuals who can go into a room and are able to have a conversation with someone who is no longer living. One is about a fan who speaks with a famous author; another is about a woman who tells a man of her infatuation for him but never had the courage to tell him. It sounds brilliant, and is directed by four different directors (James M. Johnston, David Lowery, Nick Prendergast, Yen Tan). The premise alone deserves an award. Good luck to the filmmakers behind The Deadroom; I hope their film is successful and look forward to seeing it one day in the not-so-distant future.

Today I was in Manchester filming the second of three films for my company. The third one which is supposed to be in London tomorrow has been cancelled, so I will now have to do this in early in April.

As with the previous film, I got a real kick out of meeting some new people and having a chance to work with them for the day. The film was shot with full Roman costume, but we were not allowed to use candles due to the sensitivity of the fire alarms. I thus had to come up with a way of creating a conspirational lighting theme at night. In the end I resorted (believe it or not) to a spot light on a dimmer, and two of the security guard's flashlights with a plastic sheet over them to diffuse the light. The result looked pretty good. I was also very pleased with the sound on this film.

I have agreed to shoot three films for my company for an upcoming conference. Today I travelled to a location in Surrey to shoot the first one. Everything was done on real 'bare bones' equipment, all of which I owned. In my backpack were:

1. Azden SGM-2X Shotgun Mic
2. Canon MV30
3. BeechTek Box
4. Mini Tripod
5. MonoPod

I met a great bunch of people, and spent most of the time operating the camera and monitoring the sound. A fellow employee, Arif, had conceived the entire idea, and stepped up to direct his own script and did a really, really good job. I must say I enjoy these kind of low-budget shoots much more than professional shoots - there seems to be a lot more energy and momentum, which you can see translating into the finished product. My only gripe is that the numerous mobile phones around kept interfering with the sound.

The weekend was a little crazy. I had to leave my apartment in Leeds at 7:30am so I could meet Hak in Croydon to retrieve my shotgun mic from him. I need this mic as I will be shooting the first film for my company this coming Friday. After this, I headed up to Letchworth. Kevin Gates and I travelled to the farm where I shot the end-sequence of Mnemosyne, and from there went with Mark, the owner of the land, to see one his friends who also owns a farm in that area and was considering let us use it for the forthcoming film The Zombie Diaries.

The location was fantastic - a farm with many derelict buildings that looked exactly how I had imagined. Kevin was also pleased with the location, which will bring a lot of production value to the film which is already running on a very tight budget.

It was also quite an inspiring weekend, as I got to see Kevin's new DVD for his film The Unseen which is a two disc special. The quality was amazing and the "making of" featurette was excellent. "Making of" featurettes can sometimes be the factor in buying a DVD, so it was good to see how well he had done. I recently saw a "Making of" featurette on the Internet that was laughable, with cast & crew being interviewed on a busy road and thus virtually drowned out. Still watching bad as well as good is necessary to a point, as one should learn from other's mistakes where possible.

I was a little disappointed by my interview with the DVGuys, as they didn't really ask me any questions specific to my film, Mnemosyne. I was hoping they would ask questions such as 'we really liked scene x - tell us how you achieved this' or 'where did the idea come from for scene y'. They also made no comment on what they thought of the film and there were lots of awkward pauses after answers as if the preparation had not been that thorough, but I am being a little hard because there were some good questions asked on the fly. I also really appreciated the DVGuys giving me the opportunity to talk about my film to a large audience.

I e-mailed them yesterday, and got back an admission that they didn't watch Mnemosyne. Apparently they were so busy they couldn't find 19 minutes. Quite amazing, and something that makes me wonder if I should set up my own radio show given the calibre of the guests I have for interviews, and the fact I would prepare for them meticulously. I have spoken with Kevin Gates about this and it is a possibility, but something I wouldn't want to do for a long time due to the load I have for this year.

Anyway, my interview can be found here (right click, save target as). Enjoy!

Onto more positive news - I am going to see a location this weekend with Mr Gates for our upcoming film 'The Zombie Diaries'. I also hope to find time to work on the third draft.

Tonight I am doing a live radio interview with a station in America to promote the up and coming special ediiton DVD of Mnemosyne. I will post the link to the mp3 in my next diary entry. I also have secured the go-ahead to send a copy of the film to Mark Kermode (an outstanding British critic) for review; he is a very tough critic, but my philiosophy is that I have nothing to lose.

Today I secured one of the locations for The Zombie Diaries. We have yet to do a recee (Kevin Gates and I) but we are looking to arrange it for sometime in early March. I haven't had much time to do any work on the third draft as I have been pretty busy. It was sorted through the farmer who let us use his land for the climatic scene at the end of Mnemosyne.

Although things seem quiet at the moment, there is actually a lot going on. Hakan has been too busy with work commitments to do any work on the Special Edition DVD of Mnemosyne, so I am meeting him tomorrow to pick up my DV Tapes. I then have to get cracking on this. In addition, I have been asked by my company to produce and direct 4 short films for their upcoming conference. This is being attended by some of the hotshots from the USA, including the head scientist. I have a holiday from 19-Mar-05 to 02-Apr-05, with the conference scheduled for mid-April, so there is much work to be done!

I have also been working on the script for the feature The Zombie Diaries, reaching second draft on my segment. To add to this I have a radio interview scheduled for 24-Feb-05 with DVGuys. It will be a busy time that is unlikely to leave me with much spare time until May or June.

I was contacted today Nick Lezin of Buzztone. He asked me to let all the students out there who want to make films know about a cool competition that is going on called The Imagine Cup. There is no entry fee, and the prizes are very good indeed (up to $8,000)! All students who register get a free copy of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET.

Competitors are challenged to express themselves through a compelling short film that they create from storyboards to the final product. Wild creativity is encouraged and students are allowed to collaborate with up to 3 teammates. That's all I know so far! Check out the site for more info:

Today I went into London and met Kevin Gates and Scott Orr, the third director of our new film, The Zombie Diaries. Kev and I are producing, but we have brought Scott on board to help write and direct the third segment of the film. We had a great brainstorming session. I am feeling very positive about this project, and the vibes helped me complete my second draft, albeit a little late, that night.

I also got a chance to checkout the new film from Alexandra Payne, Sideways. I have wanted to see this film since it was released on the 28-Jan-05. Unfortunately, the dickheads who run places like UGC, ODEAN, etc (i.e. the same people who pulled SAW from cinemas the day before Halloween) have decided to pretty much ignore the film. After an exhaustive search of 'art house' cinemas in London, we found one place that was showing it. They also had a sci-fi film festival on that happened to be showing PRIMER, but I was just too tired to see that too, as much as I wanted to. The whole festival feel was very pretentious with a lot of chatty and self-indulgent shorts and film-lovers homing in from very angle. I hope I can just get on and make great movies without having to interact with people like this to get ahead. I just can't kiss ass or feign interest like that - maybe I just don't want it enough???