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.

01-07-11 / 'A STORM AND SOME SNOW'
A little film I made in 2006 called A Storm and Some Snow, which is quite mad, gets its online debut. Be sure to watch it in the dark though or you won't see much.

It was shot with a basic single-chip MiniDV camera, which was the only camera to hand at the time. A better camera probably would have been struck anyway.

The "HD" option is simply out of frustration with repeated SD uploads displaying even more ghastly compression in the sky, so depsite the low shooting resolution, please be sure to switch "HD" on (and avoid watching it in a bright room).

27-06-11 / AWARDS FOR 'WHO KILLED DEON'
Who Killed Deon just won a gold at the Clio awards and silver and bronze lions at Cannes.

16-06-11 / 'JAM TODAY' AT PALM SPRINGS / HAMBURG NEWS
Jam Today will receive its US premiere at the prestigious Palm Springs Shortfest on Friday 24th June at 13:30.

Hamburg Short Film Festival was brilliant as ever, and those who pulled out for fear of E.Coli really missed a treat. With sunshine and friends old and new, for me it was like a big birthday-holiday with the best people ever. I spent hours today fannying around trying to get a picture gallery to work but failed miserably. Jam Today enjoyed its first public screening (for me) and I came over all funny in the second Q&A. Of the other films, I have to mention Nicolas Provost's Stardust (Belgium). I'd been fortunate to see this prior to the festival but it was something else on the big screen. For my money he is one of the most interesting experimental filmmakers out there, doing something fresh in the company of impregnable, repetitive indulgences that seem incredibly dated these days and don't actually experiment much at all.

I'm honoured and somewhat terrified that the festival have asked me to make the trailer for next year's edition. Having attended for the last ten years I have seen many previous versions and, whether the audiences love or hate them, they always have an opinion because they are screened so many times each day. It's more unnerving than screening a film but I'll be damned if I'm going to bottle out. Unless I do of course, in which case I'll just come back and delete this paragraph and it'll be your word against mine. Trailer? What trailer? Nah, I think you're confusing me with someone else, pal.

06-06-11 / DEFINITIVE VERSION OF LAST YEAR'S BINAURAL DOCUMENTARY
I'm more than a little bit relieved that the definitive master of the scruffy little documentary I shot for Swimming four days before Christmas in 2009 is FINALLY DONE, in its original full-frame format. It has been a long time coming, for reasons too tediously technical to list. This was one of those films that just sort of happened and became something quite special, to some extent because of the ludicrous weather. It's fair to say that in such conditions I wouldn't have dared shoot some of the footage on a camera of higher quality, and the lo-fi DV aesthetic complements the snowed-off-and-stripped-down nature of the band's performance just nicely.

Swimming's description of the binaural process: "These recordings are about experiencing a one-off, live version of the music in a totally unique way… with binaural artist Dallas Simpson being the ‘vessel’ for bringing the music to your ears.

"Recorded using tiny microphones worn in Simpson’s ears to capture the sound exactly as he is hearing it, certain songs lend themselves to different spaces in order to be stripped right back for a rudimentary performance.

"When you listen back on headphones, then it’s you who hears the music in the same way, like you were actually there in the environment. The sound of the instruments, voices and the ambience of the location are all captured in 3D surround sound so you’re sonically transported to that time and place each time you listen to the track".

01-06-11 / 'JAM TODAY' AT RUSHES SOHO SHORTS
Jam Today will be screening at Rushes Soho Shorts in London on Friday 22nd and Wednesday 27th July, in the 'long form' competition, while today I'm having a second attempt at shooting a new Petebox vid which was rained off last week.

27-05-11 / PODCAST
Recorded a podcast about Jam Today for the CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival in Toronto, featured here.

24-05-11 / SWIMMING - 'MINING FOR DIAMONDS' BINAURAL RECORDING
And here's the first of the two performances (actually the second, and so NOT the one featured in the trailer - the first one will be next). The man kneeling in front of the band is Dallas Simpson, a binaural sound recordist who has a teeny-tiny microphone inserted into each ear. The idea is that when you listen through headphones you hear it exactly as he did, though there is such little movement in this one that you can enjoy it straight up, without having to wear cans.

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16-05-11 / SWIMMING TRAILER
Here's a trailer for the Northumberland binaural shoot a few weeks ago. I left my Nikon shooting this while filming the main promo, simply relocating the tripod every half-hour or so. The beach performance will be available soon, as a partner piece to an additional, all-acoustic song in the sand dunes.

11-05-11 / 'JAM TODAY' WORLD PREMIERE
Jam Today will have its world premiere in Toronto at the Worldwide Short Film Festival on June 2nd and 4th, followed by its European premiere at Hamburg International Short Film Festival on June 8th and 11th. Big cheers to Graeme Crowley for the poster design.

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