recently I watched the Raindance DVD. It was a mixed bag. For me the highlights were the movies The Button, Earthquake, and Racing Post. I showed the film Earthquake to my 5 year old niece, and I ended up having to watch it about 30 times with her. And my 2 year old nephew was just in awe of it. He'd sit there and stare intently and then clap when it finished and want me to put it on again. It is indeed, as Raindance put it, a '90 second comedy masterpiece'.

Racing Post was a real cool film and had excellent sound. I decided to contact the director, Daniel Outram. He's now going to do an interview for the site. When it is ready, you'll be able to access it here.

The final piece of news is that I came across the website, Mart Face about the documentary film of the same title. I left a message on the dream book and was then e-mailed by the director, Leslie Chan. She said something in her e-mail that I just had to quote:

"I've logged 336 hours at 6 universities - and it's nothing, compared to what Mart-Face taught me, and what making the film, "Mart-Face", taught me. I wouldn't trade it for anything."

Swiss Effects are one the best companies that offer the service of Tape-To-Film. If you have made a movie on DV, they will transfer it to 35mm film. Jerome Poynton is one the experts who work there. He gave a candid interview recently about the myths involved in tape-to-film. I contacted him after being blown away by the quality of the film 'Everything Put Together' which looked as beautiful in ultra-low light as it did with massive white-outs in a garden party scene. A lot of this was down to the DP, Roberto Shaefer, who I rank as one of the best DPs in the world alongside Anthony Dodd Mantle for working on digital. Check out the interview here.

Today I was e-mailed Jeff's final draft of Living Dead. I was very pleased with it, but more work is definitely needed before I can be confident we can shoot it. I have taken the ideas, and together Stuart Folley and myself will draft a shooting script that hopefully will work within our budget.

I am pleased to announce that I have finally got an interview on the subject of sound. The interview is with Colin Foster, an independant filmmaker who has successfully mastered this rather neglected area of DV filmmaking. You can see the interview here.

To compliment this interview, you can also read Dan Brockett's article on Location Sound which is a follow-up to his article on cheap shot-gun mics. This can be found here.

Living Dead has been finalised by writer, Jeff Day, and I am expecting a final draft any day now. I have also been working hard over christmas. My new short film, which I hope to actually film in 2-4 weeks, has only one actor and is incredibly psychological. It's simply titled: Hole. I will upload the finished script to the screening room before I film it.

In other news, a film producer from the states has asked me to come aboard the writing and directing of his movie, a romantic comedy. Since I have no sense humour, I have asked Jeff Day to get in touch with him to discuss maybe writing the script. I will release more details when I have them. Other than this, there is not too much going on at the moment because my camera is still out for repair. :(

Yesterday night I attended the opening day screening for Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers. in Letchworth. I don't think I have ever been so in awe of a film, or enjoyed myself so much in a film. It was like being a kid again and watching The Never Ending Story for the first time.

This film stamps all over Fellowship Of The Ring which was a massive disappointment. Unlike its predecessor, The Two Towers doesn't have moments where things just seem to come out of nowhere without any atmosphere or buildup (The wraiths chasing down Arwen); likewise the second film does not suffer from moments when I felt embarresed for Peter Jackson (Galadriel freaking out and turning green??). In fact, for someone who normally notices flaws in films without trying, I have to say The Two Towers left me speechless. I will wait until it is out on DVD before I compare it against the likes of Jacob's Ladder and Vanilla Sky.

Today I dispatched my MV30 for repair for the second time. Last time I enclosed a letter along with the camera to explain what was wrong, but it was either ignored or misplaced. So this time I had to enclose a miniDV tape inside the camera with running commentary on the fault. I also stuck a description of the fault to the camera on the LCD screen. Hopefully this time round those pesky white pixels will be vanquised!

I also prepared some interview questions today with the director, Chris Watson, who has recently made a super zombie gore fest movie (yay!!!!!!). The interview will appear here when I upload it tomorrow.

Today I finally uploaded the interview with Jeff Povey which can be found here. Jeff also stripped down my 10 minute film and picked out every mistake and oversight. His comments have been extremely valuable for me, and I am sure they will serve all low-budget filmmakers who are looking to improve upon their scripts. Jeff's script critique can be found by clicking here.

I finally got to look at the camera after it came back from repair. It turns out that all they did was replace the LCD screen, even though I had sent a covering letter clearly explaining what was wrong with the camera (The CCD). I bought an extended 2 year waranty today as the camera's 12 month warranty was running perilously close to expiration. Now I have to send it off again, and this time I will be including a tape with it which will act as a running commentary so that the engineers get to see what is wrong. I also will have to stick a description of the fault to the actual camera. Take note, all Canon users.

I have some good news, though. I have been writing a script to a short film (10 minutes) over the last week with co-worker Stuart Folley, and we finally finished it today. I will use it in conjuntion with my interview with Jeff Povey on good screenwriting (I'll get him to strip it down to its bare bones and show how it could be better - a nice practical). I will upload all of that soon.

One last piece of news: I had contact from a filmmaker also based in Letchworth called Kevin Gates. He is making a feature film with a pretty good storyline (well, as far as sci-fi/horror can get plot-wise). He has put a website up but there is not much at the moment. Hopefully he will update it as things progress. The URL is http://www.theunseenfilm.com.

I came across an inexpensive Steadicam recently, called the SteadyTracker. I found a company in the US that sell them internationally called ProMax. They sell the SteadyTracker Ultralite for $199 and the SteadyTracker Xtreme for $299. I had some dialogue with one of their sales representatives over e-mail and they were extremely helpful. I also found the following text from Victor Khong's web site talking about why he hcose the SteadyTracker:

I forgot to mention on my diary (until now) that I saw the film Ankle Biters on the 25/Nov/02. This is the film that Elliot Grove mentioned in his interview as being the most profitable at the Cannes Film Festival.

A friend recently described this movie as being 'a porno but without any porn' and it's not hard to see why. One thing I will say is that the actual picture quality was pretty good - at times DV really can look like 16mm film. The acting was dire - but hey! - that's what low-budget horror is all about. All things considered, this was an hilarious film with some brilliantly scripted one-liners:

[Imagine the following in a Gladiator/Charlie Sheen voice]: "You watch too many movies lady. We don't explode when we touch light; we're not allergic to garlic; and we do have a reflection. If you put a steak through a vampire's chest, he'd pull it right out and shove it up your ass. And if you ask me to turn into a bat, I'll knock you across the room."

I can now reveal the project I dubbed as FILMONE has a name and a synopsis, with a full script near completion. The film's title is: Living Dead and the summary is as follows:

A man who realises he needs to change his lifestyle receives a voucher in the mail for what appears to be a health advice web site. Later when he uses it at work, the animated doctor (which would normally ask questions relating to diet, exercise and alcohol/smoking) asks some unexpected questions, including his whereabouts when princess Diana died, and how many times he has been caught for speeding. It then diagnoses he will die in 18 hours, along with other sinister predictions, one of which relates to a close friend. As these unfold to be true, the man tries desperately to alter the inevitable...

If you could know the exact time of your death - would you want to know?

I was contacted today by Brian from AmericanAlien.Net. He liked the site and agreed it would be a very valuable resource for young filmmakers. I checked out his site and was pleased to see he is running a competition for kids to enter their own movies. If there are any school kids reading this, check out AmericanAlien.Net!

My MV30 came back from repair today. It was delivered to my parents due to the cumbersome nature of my flat's mailbox. I'll hopefully get to see the results soon, but I am hoping the nasty pixel will be long gone!

Today I also found the best website yet on amateur filmmaking. It is like a super advanced version of this website but without the diary. It is called AdmitOne.Org and I would recommend all readers check it out.

Before I get started on the subject of the Magic Bullet suite, I'll just quickly mention the interview with DJ Hupp is now online. Click here to see that.

Now, as for Magic Bullet.....

There has been a need in the DV Community for a long time to get their digital video to look like it originated on film. There are a number of reasons why they want to do this, the most obvious being cost. Up until the release of Magic Bullet there were certain ways you could do this. These can be summarised as:

• Light your set as if you're lighting for a real film
• Use a diffusion filter to soften the image
• Layer ND filters
• Smear vaseline over a filter attached to your lense (NOT the actual lense!!)
• Shoot half (or more) zoomed-in to reduce the depth of field
• Focus Manually - autofocus will jump around in certain circumstances
• Use post-production software like CineLook or FilmFX
• Shoot Progressive Scan if you have it - if not, De-Interlace your footage

Now Magic Bullet has arrived you have another way. Magic Bullet will obviously work better depending on how good your source material is, so continue to use manual focus, to light properly, to shoot half zoom or more. Don't worry about filters (Maybe an ND filter is okay) as Magic Buller can do this for you. Unlike other software such as CineLook or FilmFX, Magic Bullet doesn't add grain. It prepares your footage for film transfer rather than spoiling it and leaving it suitable only for TV. Magic Bullet is only available for the Mac at present but they are working on a PC version. It costs just inder a thousand dollars and can be picked up from ToolFarm.Com.

For more info check out the Orphanage website - the guys who made Magic Bullet.

I have uploaded a demo of what Magic Bullet can do. It is a 3MB quicktime file that can be found here. Check out the bottom left hand video which looks incredibly similar to film. I have also compiled a number of useful links:

• Magic Bullet - FilmLook Made Easy
• FilAndVideo - Magic Bullet
• 2-Pop - Celebrate The Bullet

On checking my e-mail today, I was surprised to see a message from Jeff Povey. Jeff wrote the script to the film Blowing It which was shortlisted in the Orange/FilmFour prize for short film. Jeff was over the moon that basically everyone who I know, including myself, thought his film was by far the best.

With a hell of a lot of experience in the TV arena, Jeff kindly agreed to do an interview on the subject of screenwriting. He is busy with some projects for BBC 1 at the moment (Those readers from other countries should note BBC is basically the main channel in the UK) but said that when he has finished he will be happy to do an interview. So keep checking back at the site for updates!

In other news, I had a breakthrough with the FILMONE project after a number of days where my brain wouldn't work. My sleep debt has been increasing, but after a 13 hour sleep last night I finally feel like I am making progres again. A few more scenes were worked out today and the plot is developing nicely.

Today I watched the edit of AI: Artificial Intelligence by DJHUPP, a filmmaker from the states. DJ's website detailing his edit and the motivations behind it can be found at the site http://www.djfilms.com/AI.html.

DJ's edit has been recognised world-wide alongside other 'bedroom edits' such as the Phantom Edit - an edit of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace which removes lots of silly kiddish bits and replaces that annoying character's (Jar Jar) dialogue with an alien voice and then decent dialogue as opposed to kiddish jokes.

DJ has agreed to an interview, so hopefully one will be posted here as soon as I have thought up some good questions and then received his answers.

Today I met with the producer and man behind Articulate Pictures, Paul Ashby, who I first heard about from the raindance newsletter after he sold his film THE MOMENT OF ACCEPTING LIFE to an american network for a substantial sum of money. I viewed Paul's films and was very impressed with the results. THE MOMENT OF ACCEPTING LIFE was filmed with DigiBETA yet it looked incredible on my TV. Paul said some people have seen the film and thought automatically that the film has been shot on 35mm.

Paul kindly agreed to do an interview on the subject of production for low-budget films. This should help a lot of people as Paul's knowledge is incredibly extensive; he has recently applied to teach film production at the NY Academy (London branch) .

As a result of my chat with Paul, I researched into places that rent out digiBETA cameras. I found two very good sources with similar prices (£1,000 for a week). These are Lighthouse Films who Paul has used before and had good results with, and Lizard King.

This project has been going for one year as of today. Looking back I'd have to say things have gone very well. I probably could have produced a few more films, but finding actors who will work for free has been a problem.

A lot of people have asked where the "Film" has got to that is referred to in the title of this web site. The "Film" is the feature film that I plan to direct in 2003. It is already in pre-production. There is a story and a few storyboards. There is not yet any script or any actors. The film has a title, but that is under wraps at the moment. More information will be released as developments happen.

The reason that progress has been slow is that I have spent the last year pretty much learning everything I need to know about making low-budget films. If I had jumped straight in then I doubt the film would have been very good. I made the decision to work slowly and thoroughly on gaining experience. Things are going well, and I feel good progress is being made.