26-01-12 / NEW INTERVIEW
Nip on over to the Write Shoot Cut site to find out what side of the bed I've been getting out of recently, plus plenty of other informative articles, videos and interviews with a whole host of talented film folk.

16-01-12 / 'SOFT' FACEBOOK PAGE
Soft now has a Facebook page, including (so far) a bunch of previously unseen production stills. There is a good reason for this, which shall be revealed at a slightly later date, but in the meantime please pass the link around to as many people as possible!

11-01-12 / 'WHO KILLED DEON' MOST AWARDED TV CAMPAIGN IN THE WORLD
Who Killed Deon was 2011's 'Most awarded TV campaign in the world' and also ranked 7th in the 'Top 25 campaigns across all media'. Heck.

04-01-12 / SHOTS MAGAZINE COVER & PROFILE
Well this can't be bad. A big profile in Shots magazine and the front cover of both the magazine itself and its accompanying DVD. Being the weighty, glossy publication that it is, it costs a whopping three-figure sum to buy, but you can see a quick scan of the interview here.

21-12-11 / THE PETEBOX 'FUTURE LOOPS' ALBUM & VIDEOS LAUNCH
So, here is the first of a series of promos I did for The Petebox. Starting today there will be a new promo every two weeks, one for every track off his debut album Future Loops. I must be mental...

20-12-11 / 'SOFT' ON NEW DVD COMPILATION
Following on from Soft's recent popularity on Vimeo (thanks to the Vimeo staff who featured it on the homepage), it has now been included on the new Wholpin DVD magazine. Mine arrived in the post this morning and it seems to be a right fancy little package, featuring an all-in-one gatefold DVD sleeve/booklet with eleven short films and interviews with the directors. I can't speak for any of the titles yet but I shall have to watch it over the festive period and report back with more reasons to buy one. In the meantime, Merry Christmas y'all.

12-12-11 / NEW AWARD FOR 'JAM TODAY' / CLERMONT-FERRAND / LEUVEN
Lots of good news at once, woooop! Jam Today just won the Ron Holloway award at Tirana International Film Festival in Albania. It is an award in memory of the late critic and film historian who attended the festival a number of times, and the blurb is that the award is for a director who "continues shooting short films without falling into commercialism, always supporting innovation and originality". That is really quite lovely.

Jam has also just been selected for competition at Clermont-Ferrand in France, the biggest of the big and a huge honour. I could have fallen off my chair when I received the incoming email entitled selection result and said to myself "oh yeah, here we go again...".

And I keep forgetting to mention that last month Soft screened in Baghdad, of all places. Iraq Short Film Festival, don't you know...

Leuven Short Film Festival in Belgium was great. What nice people, nice food, nice beer... It was a shame my attendance was only for two days and I got my screening date wrong, arriving one day after. It was the first time Jam Today had screened with new English subtitles, after many reports of the dialogue being difficult to understand for international audiences. I would have been interested to see if it made any notable difference, alas, perhaps another time. Apart from the Westmalle Tripel beer (and new discovery Orval), my main reason for attending was to catch Nicolas Provost's retrospective and finally see the missing titles I had previously only read about. Excellent.L

08-12-11 / 'CHOOSE A DIFFERENT ENDING' RELAUNCHED !?!
I'm not quite sure who the Metropolitan Police are trying to kid when the Choose a Different Ending campaign was so successful two years ago, but they have just relaunched it again with the bizarre claim that it is new.

24-11-11 / 'JAM TODAY' WINS AT ENCOUNTERS!
Late reporting this but Jam Today just won Best British Film at Encounters International Film Festival in Bristol on Saturday. So soon after the award in Brest, absolutely amazing. I got the call just as a massive German sausage was put down in front of me in Berlin, so as far as moments go, that was a pretty perfect one. Unfortunately I left Encounters for Germany the day before the awards, so I missed the celebrations.

The best thing ever happened in Bristol. One of my genuine heroes, John Kricfalusi (of Ren & Stimpy fame), drew my caricature. It's a bit of a rude one though and probably not appropriate to put up here.

15-11-11 / 'JAM TODAY' WINS IN FRANCE / 'WHO KILLED DEON' WINS FIVE AWARDS
I am very proud to say that young Oliver Woollford scooped the Best Actor gong for his performance in Jam Today at Brest European Short Film Festival in France.

After the nightmare I had failing to make it to this particular festival last year (see the entry dated 11-11-10 on this page) I was determined to attend this time and I'm so glad I did. The first thig that really struck me was the sheer size of the theatre, not to mention how full it was, and then I noticed how young a lot of the audience were, which is really encouraging for short film in general. It's not just Hollywood for these teenagers. The audiences clapped along to the festival trailer and went wild when it ended on the festival logo, and all in all there was much enthusiasm and good cheer. I've never seen a jury having such a good laugh together. Here is a pic of me with festival programmer and super-nice-fella Massimiliano Nardulli (in the middle) and David Procter (Director of Photography on Jam Today).

Brest itself seems quite mad, with drunken punch-ups occuring nightly in the street, so when somebody told me that this is the part of Brittany on which Asterix was based it all made perfect sense. There were no jowly faces with oversized moustaches but there was plenty of Pif! Poff! T-chac! going on (the noises of a typical Asterix brawl). One small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the Romans... hehe.

Of the films I did see, favourites were Jeroen Annokkee's Sugar (Netherlands), Anca Miruna Lazarescu's Silent River (Romania - liked it even better this time around), Magnus Arnesen's Sing Me to Sleep (Poland), and for sheer nutsness - Sylvia Guillet's downright odd Le Vivier (France).

In different news, Who Killed Deon won five more awards, including the GRAND PRIX (wooop) at the 2011 BIMAS, plus two Golds and a Silver at the 2011 London International Awards.

09-11-11 / PHOTOGRAPHY BACK ONLINE
The photography section is now online, featuring an eclectic mix of images from as far back as 1992 to the present. It is displayed via Flickriver, requiring you to scroll down as the image stream keeps expanding.

27-10-11 / MORE AWARDS FOR 'WHO KILLED DEON'
Who Killed Deon won a gold and three silvers at the 2011 Campaign BIG Awards last night.

24-10-11 / AWARDS FOR 'WHO KILLED DEON'
Just found out that Who Killed Deon won two silvers at the Kinsale Sharks advertising awards in Ireland..t

17-10-11 / NEW BINAURAL DOCUMENTARY
To mark today's release of Swimming's smashing new single Neutron Wireless Crystal, here is a second binaural film documenting the specially recorded version of it, which we shot in Easter. It also features the excellent Mining for Diamonds (the flip side of the new single) plus a host of other Swimming tracks. If you enjoyed the first binaural film then you should definitely check this out.

UPDATE : DUE TO AN UNEXPECTED FILM FESTIVAL OPPORTUNITY I HAVE HAD TO PASSWORD-PROTECT THE FILM FOR NOW. ANYONE I EMAILED THE LINK TO WHO IS INTERESTED IN WATCHING IT CAN EMAIL ME FOR A PASSWORD. I SHALL ALSO UPLOAD A FULLY ACCESSIBLE, TRUNCATED EDIT ASAP. 

11-10-11 / RESPECT TO ANDY SESTON
Today we say goodbye to Andy Seston, the ever-cheeky make-up and special effects artist, and a giant amongst men. Cruelly stolen from us by cancer at the age of thirty-four, he is simply one of the most warm spirited human beings I have ever known. A truly calming presence with a big heart and an enviable sense of humour, it is with much regret that I shall never have the pleasure of working with him again. While it is always a cliche to speak in such terms when remembering the deceased, anyone who is lucky enough to have known Andy will know these words are far from empty. You won't be forgotten mate.

25-09-11 / ANOTHER PETEBOX SHOOT
Number eight of nine done and dusted. Well, far from dusted, but, err, done. Shot. Look, I'm tired, okay? The usual thanks go out to Graeme Crowley (for the camera), Graham Forde (for the loupe), Al Clark (for the gels), and John Sampson (for being the bat in the belfry). Oh and Peter, for a truly batnuts track.

My GoPro camera has been dispatched from the States and I'm champing at the bit. I can't wait to have a blast on it, it's like Christmas is coming.

21-09-11 / MILAN FILM FESTIVAL & OTHER STUFF
Well, it's HIGH time for an update. I've been working on a significant series of videos for The Petebox, which will be announced in due course, and also directing a new commercial.

I also just returned from Milano Film Festival, where Jam Today was in competition. It was my fourth visit to this festival, and judging by the amount of people flocking to the screenings it is really starting to outgrow itself, in a brilliant way. I stepped off the plane at 10pm into 27 degree loveliness and immediately felt like I was on holiday. The outdoor screen in the park (below) was bigger than ever and I was very much looking forward to screening there...

... but, as noted in my 22-09-09 entry, the festival has a habit of attracting thunderstorms as the boil of summer starts fighting with the promise of autumn. Unfortunately for me, the lightning started zapping two hours before my scheduled screening, the heavens opened and started weeing over everything, and the screening was cancelled. Bummer. Rain conspired against us during the film's production and it obviously still hasn't finished putting the boot in. As gutting as it was though, the festival had too good an atmosphere to dwell on the disappointment. As small consolation, the film did screen the following day in a fantastic indoor venue (below), albeit in the middle of a 'short film marathon' which saw me half-asleep and somewhat confused by the time I got up for a short Q&A, two and a half hours in.

In other news, I'm all set on the concept for Hamburg Short Film Festival's 2012 trailer and will be going over there to shoot it very soon. It's a pretty exciting idea and I can't wait to get stuck in.

28-07-11 / ARCHIVING CONTINUES WITH 'CHOOSE A DIFFERENT ENDING'
As part of my ongoing and masochistic mission to remaster and archive my catalogue, just in case I fall into a big hole any time soon, I have finally cut my own version of a promo for Choose a Different Ending. Although it's only for showreel purposes I thought it worth putting up here. I'd wanted to do this a long time ago but the need to re-encode gazillions of files from Mac to PC format, plus working on new projects, prevented it from happening.

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