Films

Being as my new camera has an HD video function, I tried making a short film this weekend in order to practice using it, and get back into editing. What came out probably won't be a masterpiece, mainly due to the fact I wrote the idea in ten minutes the night before shooting, and asked my (very patient and kind) parents to help me shoot it up on the top of Dartmoor in the freezing cold with no notice whatsoever. The things I learnt are as follows:

1. My Dad can learn lines really quickly, and is actually quite good at acting. Given he only got given his script just before shooting, he did a really good job, although he did have some somewhat inexplicable problems with the line 'hold on, dont go'.
2. Focussing is really difficult.
3. Pushing peoples generosity to breaking point in order to make a short film is only going to be exasperated further if you ask them to do it on a freezing moor.
4. Always remember that your sister is a proper trained actor (and thus your Mum has first hand experience of good acting) when asking said Mother whether your first, hopelessly lifeless attempt at acting is any good. The response is never going to be positive.
5. Dad was the star of his school plays as a boy. He played Dick Whittington! It was really weird trying to realign my perceptions of my Dad from practical, manly, down to earth bloke, to preening, squealing, drama ponce.

Anyway, hopefully it will be up on my blog (or maybe, if there is some burst of ingenuity and inspiration, my website) when iv edited it and rerecorded the dialogue somewhere where the wind isnt overpowering everything. In the meantime I thought id post up some of the short films I made with Si when we were much younger. This one is my favourite, and (topically) features another top dad performance, by Ron Ward.