09-05-12 / HONDA VERSUS THE PETEBOX
Oh, here's one other little thing I did for The Petebox which I had forgotten about until now - a little film commissioned by Honda that shows the recording process for his soundtrack to their new TV commercial:

And the commercial itself can be viewed here.

25-04-12 / TRAILER FOR 2012 HAMBURG INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM FESTIVAL
Just to prove I haven't only been doing work with a certain beatboxer recently, the trailer I've been banging on about for months that I made for Hamburg International Short Film Festival, the one with the balloons, the one that buggered the camera (grrrr), is complete and went live today:

15-04-12 / 'FUTURE LOOPS' SCREENING
The screening at Nottingham Contemporary was a blast. It would have been nice to have been able to forget the imminent deadline of the Hamburg Filmfestival trailer and actually relax, but with the screening's oversubscription and emergency extra seating it couldn't have gone better, woooooP.

11-04-12 / FINAL PETEBOX VIDEO IN SERIES
Here is a little eye and ear parcel for you. Just gone live. Just now. Just then.

09-04-12 / EXCLUSIVE PETEBOX ALBUM VIDEO SCREENING
Git yo bony ass down to Nottingham Contemporary THIS FRIDAY evening for an exclusive premiere screening of my entire video series for the Future Loops album by The Petebox. Yes you might have seen them on youtube but these are in full HD on the big screen, plus additional documentary material. Click here for further details, and here for a radio interview with Peter and myself about the overall concept.

02-04-12 / COMMERCIAL / HAMBURG-BERLIN-HAMBURG / PETEBOX / NEW INTERVIEW
Maaaaan, loads has happened in the last month. I finally finished the last of the The Petebox series, did a commercial I'm not allowed to talk about (seriously, non-disclosure agreements, the whole nine yards), then went to Hamburg/Berlin/Hamburg for more fun (?!?) filming from balloons. The Berlin part was a brief but thoroughly enjoyable pleasure-pause as Swimming happened to be on the German stint of their European tour. A few hours on the autobahn, attaching myself to their van like a mossy limpet, and it was back to the 'burg for work-work-work.

Children and animals I can work with, no problem, bring 'em on, but balloons... pfuh. It's with great relief that I'm no longer at the mercy of the daily wind forecast and its constant indecision, like suddenly changing the optimum shooting period from a comfortable midday session to six o'clock in the bleddy morning. On one occasion the rig got stuck in a tree above a main road for thirty-five minutes and wouldn't have been retrieved were it not for the kindly Mrs Novak who allowed me up onto her balcony with a makeshift lasso. Another incident irreparably scratched the lens of the GoPro camera when it skidded across an nosey rooftop, which would have been easily avoidable had I spent thirty seconds attaching a bit of makeshift padding. Most frustrating of all is that it happened during one of the first shots, so there is now an extra load of post-production tomfoolery involved as I try to fix the images. I'd rather not reveal any teaser images until the trailer goes live in one month's time. Instead, here's a curious little Hamburg diptych:

So, after a whole year of on-off work for The Petebox, the ninth and final video of the Future Loops album series was filmed, edited, and finally ejected from my suite with the precision of a finely-honed SAS mission (compared with the post-production trauma of some of the previous eight, at least). There were literally two hours to sleep between finishing it all and leaving for the mystery commercial shoot in London. The eighth, penultimate video, which I posted after the September shoot as being "a truly batnuts track" is now live:

Finally, one of the more interesting interviews I have done (in terms of the questions) can be found here, focusing specifically on Soft and Who Killed Deon.

02-03-12 / LATEST PETEBOX
The latest video for The Petebox, filmed right here at bubtowers, is proving to be popular. This is really quite gratifying because it was the hardest one of them all, for reasons that would be waaaaaaaaay to boring to explain:

17-02-12 / VON BERLIN NACH HAMBURG: IMPRESSIONS
Presenting my retrospective in a delightful venue while Whitney Houston climbed into her final bath. Fun squeezing as many faces as possible into a Fotoautomat. David bloody Beckham in his undercrackers, on every bloody ecke, soon removing his skin to model internal organs if the price is right. A bad, full club, full of bad music. Zig-zags in the snow. The photography of Miron Zownir.  Rejecting a plea from a woman claiming to be the victim of a chemical attack, then feeling bad, then feeling better, still wondering if she was fibbing, still not knowing. A highly intrusive playlist of gash nineties euro-pop in a tourist restaurant near Alexanderplatz. A gay man sitting cross-legged in his seat, shoulder-dancing to said euro-pop while forking his rice. A seven-times distilled vodka called Pyromaniac. A drunk Russian falling over in a bar and being laughed at by two tiny dogs. The stress of deadlines. The smell of coffee.

An archetypal Italian moment in a Berlin cafe. An archetypal German moment at a Hamburg konzert. The eerie, spectral bleat of distant foghorns on Hamburg's winter ports (a favourite sound). Business as usual for boats on the Elbe, despite it being a river of ice. The obligatory chuckle from the Turkish owner of my regular imbiss when ordering currywurst. Rising at six to try shooting footage from balloons, the wind blowing too hard, almost losing the camera across rooftops. Walking the streets with heart-shaped balloons, unrelated to Valentine's day, on Valentine's day, like a Valentine's plum. Being mobbed by balloon-loving school children.

In less whimsical summary, the Berlin Directors Lounge was lovely and it was touching that an unexpected gang of Hamburgers showed up (friends from Hamburg, not Big Macs and Whoppers), not to mention a couple of faces from Nottingham who are now based in Berlin. All of my films were screened from MP4 files and the projection was the best I'd seen for quite a few of my older, low resolution films. Considering how much easier it is to make an MP4 file than pay for a costly dub to a high quality tape, this is definite progress which I hope more festivals will take on board. In addition to the main screening, Binaural Swimming (Beach) screened in a cosy basement room, complete with a sofa, heater, and headphones for the intended binaural experience. Further reports about what I was getting up to in Hamburg with balloons can be expected when I finally beat the wind and get everything I need.

08-02-12 / RETROSPECTIVE IN BERLIN
This coming Saturday, the 8th Berlin International Directors Lounge will feature a two-part retrospective of my films, split into drama-based and music-based work. The music section will feature two world premieres: my new music video for Swimming's Mining for Diamonds, and the documentary Binaural Swimming (Beach), which will also be screening in a bespoke cellar space with headphones for the complete binaural experience.

04-02-12 / TAMPERE FILM FESTIVAL / CLERMONT FERRAND / PANTHER DANCE
Jam Today has just been selected for competition at the excellent Tampere Film Festival in Finland.

Just back from the massive, snowy festival that is Clermont Ferrand. I gave up feeling guilty about missing screenings after the first two days because it just isn't possible to do anything but scratch the surface of the vast schedule of programmes. Trying to catch up with so many of the other attendees doesn't help matters when just about everyone you've ever met at any other festival is there. Despite Jam Today screening every day I only managed to dash into one showing and dash out again.

Highlights of the very few films I did manage to see were Robert Morgan's Bobby Yeah (UK), Grzegorz Jaroszuk's Opowiesci Z Chlodini (Frozen Stories) (Poland), and Philipp Kaessbohrer's Armadingen (Germany), all of which were comedic. Lowlights were the filmmaker staying in the next room, who appeared to be addicted to watching noisy films with either cowboys, kung-fu or explosions in the early hours of every morning.

My latest video in The Petebox series, Panther Dance, is now online (see below). This one is particularly special as it has always been my favourite of his tracks and is the reason we became acquainted all those summers ago. I always intended to film a promo for it and had an exciting idea but never found the time, so filming this went some way to make up for the project that never was.

 

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...

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