Today MakingTheFilm.Com becomes two years old! So much has happened in the last two years - it has been a fantastic journey. I will upload a full review of the last year tomorrow. As for Halloween - I never shot my little horror movie in the end. I was just too tired when I got down into Gillingham. I ended up having a great weekend at my friend's Halloween party, chilling out with a few beers. I will still go ahead with a horror short, but will do it as my next project after Mnemosyne.

It's still a few days to payday, so I have made good preparation for my new firewire hard drive by beginning picture capture. I captured about an hour's worth of footage and then started editing it to see how it looked. I now have the entire kitchen scene edited, but obviously this may change as the scene's build and flow could feel artificial if it does not slot in with the rest of the film. I am now going to edit the beginning section of the film, see how the Kitchen scene fits, and then get on with editing the rest of the film chronologically.

One other fascinating piece of news: I saw a film the other day late on channel 4, that is very similar in atmosphere to how I wrote Mnemosyne. It was such a powerful film about the apocalypse, I immediately got Hakan, Kevin and Julian to watch it. Kevin then subsequently tracked down the director and I promptly interviewed him. The film is called Tag 26 (Day 26) and is directed by Andreas Samland. The film has little dialogue but speaks volumes about the nature of being human and the connections we make to people in our lives. It won Best Short at the Brooklyn Internation Film Festival 2003. Read Andreas' interview here.

I was surprised today when I opened my mailbox to see an e-mail from the president of the New York Film Academy, the world's largest film school. It turns out they have been following the site for a while and have been impressed with the material thus far. I phoned up their Internet Co-ordinator, Bhak, and had a chat with him for a few minutes. NYFA are now going to add my site to their list of resources for students, which means the number of young filmamkers running across this site will continue to grow. Let's hope I don't blow my bandwidth limit! ;)

Even though I am supposed to be editing Mnemosyne, I must confess that my mind has wandered of late onto possible ideas for my feature film, the culmination of this 'Making The Film' project. Today I met up with Julian Newman Turner (Stills photographer on Mnemosyne), Kevin Gates (Director of The Unseen and Cameraman on Mnemosyne), and Matthew Hope (Co-Writer of Emotional Backgammon). Since we are a pool of filmmakers all local to the Letchworth/Stevenage area, we have decided it would be cool to meet up more often to discuss films and possible ideas. Matthew is currently looking at a script given to him by Roger Corman, and today Kevin was able to give him some feedback on the draft.

I had an idea myself for a film which I hope ends up being the feature film I ultimately produce in late 2004 or early 2005. I ran the idea by Matt and Kev, and they both seemed impressed by it. I come up with a hell of a lot of ideas all the time, but I have such a good gut feeling about this one idea that I am almost ready to go out on a limb and say this WILL be the feature. But anyway, enough of that ... I've gotta get Mnemosyne edited! More soon...

The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Film and Television recently conducted an interview with my cameraman, Kevin Gates, about his film The Unseen. Check out the interview here.

Today Scott Ainslie and Gareth Howells both travelled up to Letchworth to see me, so we could get some pickup shots for the film. I started asking Scott if he knew of any horror films that had been shot in the style of David Lynch, and mentioned I got the idea from how I imagined Cabin Fever would be.

Scott then said he definitely knew of one, and that it was due out in cinemas soon. He said that he had a friend back in Los Angles who he had been out to dinner with a few times who had just made a horror film and he believed David Lynch was the executive producer!

Strange, I thought. That sounds exactly like Cabin Fever! I then asked Scott what his friend's name was. Guess what? ELI! So then the penny drops! Scott had no idea Cabin Fever was the title and that it was so big. He said he saw some clips of it unfinished back in Eli's little box apartment in LA. Apparently Eli told him he had been trying to make Cabin Fever for 10 years. Scott was under the impression it was playing in maybe 3 or 4 cinemas in London.

I have uploaded a few production stills, as the production diary will be going up any day now. You can view the stills here.

I was reading Eli Roth's diaries on the BBC Website and totally sympathise with what he was getting at on the diary entries written immediately after the release of Cabin Fever in the US. The film, as he rightly pointed out, was misrepresented during its marketing phase. They sold it as a scary horror film. Eli reckons it was not a horror film, but more of a rollercoaster ride that encompassed comedy, horror, fun, etc. I saw it at Cineworld in Stevenage with Julian and Kevin on Sunday, and would class it as a flat out comedy with a lot of red paint. So because of the marketing, we were pretty disappointed at what we got. That being said, if it had been marketed as a comedy, I would never have seen it, so I can understand maybe why the marketing bods decided to go with the horror vibe. Cabin Fever has its fingers in so many pies it is hard to truly represent it.

What is interesting about all of this, is that I had a feeling Cabin Fever was going to be 'like a horror film, but as if David Lynch had directed it'. I thought this because Roth worked with David Lynch, and it was ultimately Lynch's support that got the film where it is now. I also know Roth is good mates with Richard Kelly who wrote and directed Donny Darko, and that itself was described as being 'like a high-school film, but as if David Lynch had directed it'. So there is a new idea: a horror film in the style of David Lynch. That would be cool.

I'm exhausted after the weekend. Hakan came up from Croydon on Sunday and helped me sift through a few more tapes. I now have 4 of the 10 tapes logged. If I can do a tape a day after work, then I will be ready to start video capture by early next week. I only have a 40Gig hard drive at the moment, so I am planning to capture and save to CD, and then buy an external hard drive on pay day, which I will use to dump the video to. At that point I can begin the rough edit.

I have finally uploaded Mike Conway's interview about his film Terrarium. The word 'epic' would be an understatement, but goes some way to describe the wealth of knowledge and insight passed down in this 17 QUESTION strong interview.

Today I got stuck in to the editing of Mnemosyne. I watched back about two hours of footage and logged the two best takes for each shot. It is pretty time consuming, but I reckon by next weekend I should have the entire film logged. Hakan said he'll come up tomorrow and help me. I'm also going to watch Cabin Fever tomorrow for a break, otherwise come Monday morning I'm gonna wonder where my weekend went. I'm setting myself a target of the end of November to have a rough edit complete (without full sound mix). I'm also meeting Julian (My stills photographer) tomorrow to get some production stills, which I will upload with my Mnemosyne Production Diary early in the coming week.

Mike Conway's interview is now complete, and will be uploaded tomorrow.

My stills photographer, Julian, met with Kevin Gates and I recently to get some questions together for Mike Conway on his low-budget sci-fi film Terrarium. I have been a bit slow typing up the questions, but I'll get them off to Mike soon. The lengths Mike went to in order to make his film are simply mind-blowing, and I feel this wll be reflected in the interview which is shaping up to be the best one so far.

TERRARIUM placed 3rd at the ManiaFest film festival, in Santa Monica, CA. This was a great fest that focused on Horror and Sci-fi. Attended by John Landis, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, Stuart Gordon, Stan Winston, Sean S. Cunningham and many more accomplished filmmakers.

One other piece of news ... I worked on typing up my production diary for Mnemosyne over the weekend. There are still two more entires left, but I am hoping it should be uploaded by the coming weekend.

Aaron Demski and I met an actor in London today and coined an idea for a special Halloween film on the spot. I fleshed out the idea at a coffee bar in Victoria Station, and will work on the script this week. It won't be anything major - just a bit of fun for my favourite time of the year. I actually plan to shoot the film on Halloween.

I began my edit-phase of Mnemosyne soon which will involve looking through some of the footage. When I am happy, I am going to digitize the top two takes for every shot. I imagine this will be a lengthy process, but I believe it will help me speed up editing once I begin. Due to this, I believe I can fit the following activities into the November-January period:

• Edit Mnemosyne
• Complete Halloween Project
• Begin Work On Treatment For Feature
• Full Update To Quick-Start Guide To Filmmaking

Eli Roth's 'Cabin Fever' is about to be launched in the UK, so for all those horror fans anticipating what could be one of the best horror films in a long, long time, here are Eli Roth's diaries that stretch from August, right up to the opening of his film, and into euphoric territory (congratulatory phonecall from Quentin Tarrantino).

Feedback has been flying in for Aaron Demski's film, Consequences. As per usual, the readers of my site have been brutually honest, but this is the way it should be!

Comments Thus Far:

• Guy's reaction not very realistic
• Lighting in bedroom scene not realistic for daylight
• Lighting in outdoor scenes is terrific with red bleach
• First glimpse of letter should be removed
• Clip-art on letter is tacky
• Editing is tight and well executed
• Excellent cinematography and direction
• Not bad - quite dark in that it's a killer situation if it happens to you!
• Music was well decent
• Really nice camera angles
• Wow! I didn't even know what I was watching. But I was intrigued enough to watch it two more times. I Loved it. Music, performances, angles, lighting. Very nice surprise.
• I feel the film, along with the other three shorts in the screening room, is underlit and could make better use of light. You seem to have it figured out for all the other elements of the production process, however. Well done.

I finally got a finished copy of Consequences mailed to me by filmmaker, Aaron Demski. I helped Aaron out a few weeks ago on this short film (camera operation). I will upload more details soon. If you wish to view the file, it can be found here.

Please e-mail me with any feedback you have on this film, and I will forward it on to Aaron who does not have a website yet.

The interview with Bille Eltringham about her groundbreaking film, This is not a love song, is now online. You can find it here.

Today I went down to Liverpool Street to help out with the film 'Consequences', a short directed by fellow filmmaker, Aaron Demski. I should have some stills soon. We used my Canon XM2 so it goes without saying that the picture quality was fantastic. The full film will appear on the site when it is ready. We took the sound straight from my Azden SGM-2X shot-gun mic direct to the XM2 via a BeechTek Box. This should speed up the editing as there will be no need to sync picture and sound.

By complete coincidence, I ended up on a train home from work today with one of my work colleagues who happened to be reading the film section of the times. I suddenly realised the main picture on the page he was reading was of Scarlett Johansson, the actress from 'Lost in Translation': the new Sofia Coppola film I have been getting excited about and endlessly plugging to every person I know.

I proceeded to read the article, and was blown away. So much so that I feel I would be robbing every reader if I didn't share this article with them.

One other piece of news - Bille Eltringham, the director of This is not a love song has agreed to do an interview about her groundbreaking DV film; the first to be launched at both cinemas and online. More soon...

Today my stills photographer brought a DVD around for me and Kevin Gates to watch. It was a low-budget ($27K) sci-fi feature film named Terrarium, shot by a filmmaker from Las Vegas by the name of Mike Conway.

I always love to see work by other 'have a go' filmmakers, and this work was amongst the most inspirational I have ever seen. The reason the DVD is so good, is that the film itself is complimented by a brilliant 'making of' featurette which shows the lengths Mike went to in order to complete his project. I would recommend the purchase of the DVD for the extra alone which clocks in at 30 minutes running time.

Terrarium is shot on 16mm film and at its best looks like an episode of the Outer Limits. The film does, however, also slip into 'student film' quality in parts, but hey - this guy worked without a crew so you gotta take your hat off to him!

You can purchase the film for around $14 from the official website. This film encompasses everything that low-budget filmmaking is about, from Mike building a full sized spacecraft in his backyard, to funding $19K of the film on credit cards. If you get the chance to see this work of inspiration, don't pass up the chance. Highly recommended!

The majority of Mnemosyne has noe been filmed. I have a car ride scene yet to shoot, plus a reshoot of another small scene, but these can all be done in one day. My actor, Scott Ainslie, is required for these scenes, but is unavailable because he is expecting to become a father any day now. This means the extra day will probably be in late September. I have enough footage now to get started on editing. I need to upgrade my computer's memory and hard disk space, but I have enough of each at the moment to get started.