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React Films - Showreel 

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Casting Call Update

If you’ve been chosen to submit a self taped audition out of the 2000 applicants for the roles in Spin State, we’d be grateful if you could upload them by July 23rd at the latest. Thank you.

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Really excited to show off the new poster for Spin State! Created by artist Luke Drozd. This awesome piece of work will be available as a limited edition screen print during our funding campaign in August. Check back for more details.

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Casting Call

There are six roles we need to fill for our new micro-budget feature film Spin State! Head over to Spotlight UK to see the casting breakdown and if you’d like to be a part of React Films’ biggest project yet!

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The latest project is here! The Scientist is a short mystery/sci-fi film set in a world where dreams, memories and visions collide as a private detective searches for the answers only to discover impossible truths. 

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Fin

The feature script I’ve been working of for about two years now, that’s been through four major drafts (read rewrites) and umpteen times infinity minor revisions, is finally finished!

Since that bitter sweet moment when I realised I’m free, that I made it, that I survived, I’ve already broken the script down for pre-production. In the next phase things are going to get really real!

So if you like a good mystery and sci-fi, then I think you’re going to really dig Drop Switch. And if you’re following this blog right now, then you can ride with me all the way from page to screen and everything that happens in-between.

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I was recently asked if I could help create a spot for the Homeless charity AOK. I was proud to be asked. Especially after being left feeling pretty cynical by some of the modern techniques big charities use to get donations. 

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Graffiti Broadcast

Trendsetting TV Channel OFIVE just picked up my project Krishna Malla - Portrait of a Graffiti Artist for broadcast in over 150 countries!

One of the great things about sending art out into the world is you never know when it’s gonna come back and have achieved something you never imagined! Watch the original here: https://vimeo.com/rossawilson/krishnamalla

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Yes, all films are based on a true story.

This was what I said to my sister in law when talking about the poetically tragic film Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter. A film based on a true story about a Japanese woman obsessed with the film Fargo, specifically the end of Fargo where a guy (Steve Buscemi) buries a suitcase full of cash in snow beside a fence in the middle of nowhere. Kumiko, suffering from alienation caused by her life in a big Japanese city, and presumably suffering some kind of depression, harbours dreams of someday finding the treasure buried at the end of the film, and one day she gets her chance. That sounds crazy right, movies aren’t real, “they’re fake” as a cop tries to explain to Kumiko at one point. But for Kumiko that’s a lie, because at the beginning of Fargo there’s a title card that explains the film is a true story. Check and mate.

Kumiko’s map. Embroidering everyday items is the first sign you don’t have your shit together. 

Unfortunately for Kumiko she doesn’t understand that this is a joke by the Coen brothers, a little stab at the “Based on a true story” title cards a lot of movies use to add some spice to the tale ahead. The point here is that many films that claim to be based on a true story are no closer to reality than the many that don’t make that claim. The dialogue, locations, plot elements, entire scenes, none of it has to have happened in real life. Yeah maybe there was like three hundred or so guys who a some point defended their lands from an entire army (300).  But 99% of what you’re seeing never happened that way, there was no one there to relate the dialogue, there are only a few lines scattered throughout history often decades if not centuries later that give us the broad strokes. So it’s kinda silly to make that claim, even though 300 never does, many films do. Hence the Coens joke that their film is not based on, but actually is, a true story. It’s part of the entertainment, as are all elements of films, and even some documentaries.

The actor, director, heck the entire crew knew where the cash was buried!

The other point here is that all films, even those that don’t claim to be, are in fact based on true stories. How so? Well the response I got from my sister in law when I told her, led her to point out that not all films could be based on a true story because, you know, Avatar, and there are no blue aliens etc. That’s perfectly reasonable response, until you realise blue aliens aren’t a story, neither is an alien planet and neither is being able to put yourself into the body of another being. They’re all elements of a story sure (themselves based on real things), but by themselves they don’t make a story. Avatar is a story about big industry taking over the land of indigenous peoples to mine said land for resources. It’s also about how a man from that industry (or technically the military) learns about the indigenous people’s culture in order to exploit them, only to realise that what they’re doing is wrong and for himself to become their champion. All these things have happened before in real life, they’re in effect true stories and without them you just have a bunch of unmotivated special effects. 

That’s totally not how you hold a bow and arrow. Shhh, it looks cool.

If you think about it it makes total sense; our imagination is ultimately a way of comparing and contrasting past events and knowledge and rearranging it into new forms. I’d argue nothing we do is completley original in the way many of us think it is. The real imagination and orginality is nature itself and when science discovers its workings we “create” new things from those discoveries. Creating then is a form of exploiting or rearranging, and that’s great, it doesn’t undermine the activity at all. We don’t consciously think of everything we’ve seen before and start rearranging it in our heads, it’s a subconscious process. But we don’t pluck ideas from the void either, most artists’ final pieces no matter their medium have gone through many variations and workings even once it is outside the mind. Art that hasn’t tends to be more decorative in nature. When you draw a mouse with a knap sack, the creativity here is putting two things together. You could say the mouse is based on a true story, they exist, and so do knap sacks. But that would be pretty silly.

What’s important to remember is that entertainment isn’t a substitute for actual learning or knowledge. In that sense Kumiko was only as foolish as someone who watches Das Boot or U571 or even The Longest Day and thinks they now know what went down in WWII. Likewise for documentaries. 

Robert McKee once described a great story as being a universal truth wrapped up in a culturally specific setting. We love to see stories we understand in places we’ve never been, it’s both exciting and comforting. Kumiko’s story then could be seen as one of universal caution. In a world filled with new age medicine and distorted facts, climate change denial, even lopsided documentaries, it is important to separate fact from fiction. Part of the problem is media has become a byword for entertainment, but we still use it to refer to specifically factual sources, news, knowledge programs, books and articles all which too often err on the side of entertainment, it sells better, it’s easier to digest but it also means that even through omission we can get a warped view of reality. So yes, all films are based on a true story, all entertainment is, but if we fail to understand the distinction between “based on”, and an objective reality, as a culture and society our fate may be similar to that of poor little Kumiko. Lying dead in a barren landscape. 

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How I Learned to Write by Swimming.

I’ve read many of the screenwriting self help books, when you’re starting out in the days before iPhones let alone podcasts like I did, there was scant advice to be had other than the likes of Robert McKee’s Story. Today there’s a vast wealth of internet resources, but I don’t think I’d be any better off if I was starting today either. The screenwriting ‘how to’ scene is incredibly noisy, any newbie will eventually find themselves adrift in a storm of advice cursing at the heavens against a backdrop of lightning strikes. You may at this point experience satori: This is what screenwriting is, there are no life guards, it’s just you, your idea and an ocean. 

To take the metaphor further you could describe passing ships as the screenwriting self help books. When you’re starting out, paddling along in the briny, eventually they’ll come a point where the shoreline you started out at, is no longer visible. It’s tempting then to flag down one of these passing ships with the hope they’re on the way to “Produced Screenwriter Island”. They’ll all tell you they are. What luck you say, and hope aboard along with thousands of others on their way to success. The problem comes when they drop you off. You’ve finished your first screenplay, but you either think it’s terrible or everyone else does. Or both. At best, it’s ok. Time passes and it doesn’t get picked up. That’s when you realise that you’re not on Produced Screenwriter Island, you’re not even on the Success Story Archipelagos, you’re nowhere with nothing but a coconut tree and a soccer ball for company.

More ships will come, and you’ll take them and they’ll drop you at other islands before you have to start all over again. The problem here is in all this time you’ve never learnt to gut a fish, figure out how to use the stars as navigation,  collect drinking water through evaporation or even how to swim. You, are a terrible seafarer, because you’ve only ever ridden on ships with GPS, hot buffets, seminars, satellite communication and life savers. In short you’re a screenwriting tourist. 

Travel is not about arriving it’s about the journey. Your great movie idea is your raft. Writing is the voyage across the ocean. The raft is the easy part, we all have those. But not all of us can make it across the open sea and make it alive. So what to do? There’s only one logical action. Vault over the edge and start swimming. Sound frightening? Damn right but realise fear, uncertainty and desperation are part of what all writers go though on their journey.  If you do ever read a screenwriting self help book, that’s fine but understand it’s not a magic key or bullet, you’re not learning writing, no more than someone painting by numbers is learning to be an artist. Or a passenger on a cruise ship learning to be a seafarer. 

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Now the shooting has finished there’s finally been some time to sort out the poster...

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Perseverance

It's the most complicated shoot in the project, hiring equipment, bringing in crew from across country and working in an area around the public. Not to mention it was outside, so the weather was a big factor. I honestly thought we'd be fine with the weather, we cancelled two previous attempts only to have the weather turn out fine. The biggest thing I was worried about was dealing with the public to keep the area clear for the shot. 

After arriving at 7am it became clear the weather was not co-operating. You can't really film if between each shot you have to dry the filters, you never get every drop and it ruins the shot. So an hour and a half after we were supposed to be finished we headed into a cafe, with only a few sketchy minutes in the can I was thinking I was going to have to call the whole thing off.

Some of the crew wanted to continue to shoot, I was worried it'd all be useable, but with my hopes were in the gutter I grabbed a radio anyway and headed out to check the location one final time before I called it. Miraculously, by the time I got down to the location, all of two minutes, the weather had changed and it was like a different day!

So we got it all done, five and a half hours after the original deadline, the cast and crew were real pros and the footage looks great. We could have waited all day, the rain could have come in again, in the end we were just lucky. If you're shooting outside even just a little make sure you book the whole day! And don't forget to pack a whole extra bag of perseverance. 

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Tripping the light fantastic and occasionally being blinded by it as we shoot the 'Hyper Dimensional Zen Cube' scene for The Scientist. Great cast and crew, fun day shooting at Studio Shed South, even had time to spare at the end which is a first! We'll be posting a write up on the techniques we use to create the backdrop with projection designer Kavi real soon. Until then enjoy the pics!

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New Trailer

The Last Line has gone from a default starting position on Indieflix of 70% to 90% which is really cool. The new trailer is available to watch below and Indieflix subscriptions are cheap, you get so much for your money. Check em out and if you do check out the full version of The Last Line too. https://indieflix.com 

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The Big Picture

Love cinema? then do yourself a favour and save and scrimp for a projector, doesn't have to be fancy, anything that makes your DVD's big or you Blu-Rays huge will do. Find a whiteish wall, plug the sound into whatever you can find and prepared to be experienced. I recently bought an entry level projector as part of a filmmaking project first and second to see how close it could get you to the cinema experience for films. I spent ages researching the different models and how it would be set up and how I'd run the sound etc until finally I plumed for one. Because it's being used for my project The Scientist I haven't bothered to set it up permanently in our living room, I just yammed in a cable to connect it to our portable speaker dock and pointed it at the wall, just for some temporary fun. What happened next was surprising, the non-surround sound didn't matter, the fact there was no screen and just a wall didn't matter, all the little details you can fret about when buying a projector just didn't matter, I had my cinematic heart lit on fire once more. Home projecting really is the cinema experience, you will rediscover all your favourite films, and with it a language nearly lost because of our love affair with big screen TV's. For a filmmaker I would now say a projector is up there in the list of essentials along with a camera. Don't worry about getting caught up in research just get what I did and you'll been feeling that warm sensation in your chest as you become enveloped within all those worlds that made you fall in love with this great art form in the first place. I bought the Benq W1070+, beautiful colours, great lens, wifi HDMI upgradeability HD 1080p quality. Short on space? for a pony more you can grab the w1080 which goes just as wide but at half the distance.

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Projecting Worlds

There's been some exciting progress in the projection design scenes in The Scientist recently. KaVi our Latvian projection guru has been working with myself and producers Donna and Natalia to create some compelling designs and concepts for what has been christened the Hyper Dimensional Zen Cube.

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Boxers Revolution

I was recently contacted by a screenwriter who was a finalist in the Gotham screenwriting awards, which is no small feat, and asked to direct his script Boxers Revolution. We're in the early stages now of getting what is a really compelling story by Matthew Farrell through development and getting some funding behind it. First we're transitioning the script from America to the UK which in itself is quite an interesting task, and one that reminds you how universal a story can seem yet how culturally specific details change how you tell it.