#danielthomasfreeman

[danielthomasfreeman]

You can now watch my experimental short film The Day After for free on both Vimeo and YouTube.

I'm very pleased to say that the film has now won awards at all four of the festivals it has been screened at: BEST UK EXPERIMENTAL SHORT at Dreamers of Dreams, PEOPLE'S CHOICE at the South Coast Film Festival and BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM (RUNNER UP) at both Brighton Rocks and London Rocks.

I decided to make the film freely available today as it is exactly a year since I started making it as a personal response to the terrible events in Ukraine on 24th February 2022. This prayerful lament will not be to everyone's taste but I hope there will be something in the slow, meditational images and music which helps a few people.

Please note that, while there is nothing untoward in the images or sound, I would not recommend this film for young children.

Thanks for watching.

Daniel Thomas Freeman

https://vimeo.com/730493775 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUB6uRDcq6Q descendingangel.com

[ramesesiii]

TONIGHT - FREE WORLD PREMIERE of Dan’s (ex-Rameses III) feature film THE SILENCE AFTER LIFE at 18:55 your local time at the Ramsgate International Film & TV Festival - still time to get a ticket (the festival would love a donation) - hope to see you there :) ramsgatedigitalcinema.co.uk

[danielthomasfreeman]

My new abstract/electronic album 'The Day After' is out today on digital platforms.

I must admit it feels very odd to be creating any social media post on the same day that Andrew Walker, a senior coroner in the UK, has quite rightly pointed the finger at Meta (Facebook + Instagram + WhatsApp) for their part in the death of 14-year-old Molly Russell stating that, "She died from an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content" (source: BBC News). As ever in recent times, I feel very apprehensive about social media which is why I now post so little.

In contrast, my hope for the 'The Day After' project is that, in some small way, it will be helpful or valuable to those that see and/or hear it. I created it as a personal, artistic response to the desolation we're seeing as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and now, maybe for a few people, this could act as a channel for anger or grief or confusion when nothing seems to make sense.

The album consists of a single 39-minute track of controlled feedback, drone choirs, a little electric violin and a thick morass of analogue + digital electronics. Although rightly dominated by a slow, glacial, heavy lament for most of its length, something like hope breaks through in the final minutes: a prayer that resolution will come. It's an extended version of the score to the experimental short film of the same name which is screening at smaller film festivals this year, including the London Rocks Film Festival in November.

You can find the album on Apple Music, Spotify, Bandcamp etc.

If you can't afford a music streaming service, note that you can now play the album as many times as you like for free on Bandcamp (although any purchase through BC is much appreciated).

Love and God bless, Dan

https://danielthomasfreeman.bandcamp.com/album/the-day-after-original-film-soundtrack https://music.apple.com/gb/album/the-day-after/1638878842 https://open.spotify.com/album/0j3LdASx6Nj4X9Kz0uxwcl?si=qwXLRGGiRS-gxmwqVHgWrw

[danielthomasfreeman]

An exclusive 4-track preview of some of the more beautiful and peaceful music from our experimental / narrative feature film 'The Silence After Life' is now up courtesy of the good folks at Fluid Radio (please look at the news page of the Fluid Radio site).

Maybe the first track in particular would bring you some serenity in these ridiculous times of lockdown?

Full album and feature film out on November 27th.

http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2020/10/the-silence-after-life-original-film-soundtrack-exclusive-preview/

[danielthomasfreeman]

Soft-light harp meditations get beautifully lost in the English woods ... the single "Three Days Gone" is out now on digital (Spotify, Apple Music etc). Something to remind you of hazy summer afternoons?

This new music is a taster of the full soundtrack album to our experimental / narrative feature film "The Silence After Life" - both the film and album are coming out this Friday 27th November.

MORE INFO: thesilenceafterlife.com

[danielthomasfreeman]

We've picked up our third film festival Official Selection - our experimental / narrative feature #thesilenceafterlife is screening now and all this week at the London Rocks International Film Festival - many thanks to all @londonrocksfilms ! :)

TICKETS: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/londonrocks20/439867

INFO: http://descendingangel.com/Gig.aspx?ID=TheSilenceAfterLifeAtLondonRocks2020-10

[danielthomasfreeman]

Delighted to find out our feature film is actually being screened at Brighton Rocks until Tuesday (my mistake to say it was only on yesterday) so there's still time to catch an early view of our "intensely poetic meditation of life, grief and spirituality" before its official release in late 2020. Apologies for any confusion!

TICKETS: ​https://www.tickettailor.com/events/brightonrocks/401375

FEATURE SCREENING ROOM (including our film): https://vimeo.com/showcase/7401358

[danielthomasfreeman]

We're absolutely delighted that our actor and friend Sally Mortemore has won BEST ACTRESS at the Brighton Rocks Film Festival 2020 for her performance in our feature 'The Silence After Life' ... huge congratulations to Sally for all her hard work and her faith in our little big film! Also congratulations to our Silence supporting actors and friends Emma Spearing and Lucy Alfred who received the Best Actress Special Commendations (Finalist). Could not be more pleased for you all! :)

The film will be released in late 2020 - mailing list http://eepurl.com/besG5r

[danielthomasfreeman]

Our powerful and haunting feature is screening online NOW at the Brighton Rocks Film Festival until 10pm tonight (UK time).

There's also a Q&A with main cast Sally Mortemore, Emma Spearing, Lucy Alfred and writer/director Daniel Thomas Freeman at 6pm.

Hope you are able to join us for these special events!

Many thanks to Brighton Rocks Film Festival for including us.

TICKETS + INFO: https://www.rocksfestivals.com/briff2020.html

[danielthomasfreeman]

The next screening plus Q&A cast/crew interview of our haunting and powerful feature The Silence After Life is at Brighton Rocks Film Festival on Friday 14th August - hope you can join us for this special event! :)

Tickets: ​https://www.tickettailor.com/events/brightonrocks/401375

Info: https://www.rocksfestivals.com/briff2020.html

Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/besG5r

[danielthomasfreeman]

A big day: I've just finished submitting my new film 'The Day After' into 13 UK film festivals.

More details to come once it's either got selected for a festival or two ... or it hasn't and I do the Vimeo + YouTube free release anyway :).

After the 5 year intensity of writing, directing, shooting, editing, scoring, promoting (and then spending over a year recovering from) my last film, the feature 'The Silence After Life', this is a much smaller and shorter project before - hopefully - starting to shoot a larger project next year with some of my compadres from the feature.

And this time I'll let the film pretty much find it's own audience so, although I'll do a little bit of social posting here and there, I'm hoping to actually go to a film festival or two and meet some real, live, actual people! :).

Oh ... and there's an album of extended score on its way too.

Hope you're able to enjoy your summer,

Love, Dan

[danielthomasfreeman]

THE SILENCE AFTER LIFE - Pre-Production

"The Silence After Life" (TSAL) can be seen as a natural progression from Daniel's previous music / poetry / photography project "The Infinite and the Unknowable" (2016) and, as such, it was written to embody the same slow, meditative but intense properties as that album. The film was always envisaged to have minimal dialogue, partly to enable a faster, simpler shoot and to utilise the director's existing sound and scoring skills but mainly because the nature of the grief, reflection and spirituality we were trying to illustrate demanded it.

Co-producer (and partner) Valerie Adam Freeman oversaw and guided the script to final draft at which point we decided to commit to making the film a reality. Knowing that TSAL was definitely feature-length but with no previous directing or production experience to attract investors it seemed wisest to self-fund, to pare the budget down to an absolute minimum, and to concentrate on utilising skills and resources at hand. Derek Jarman's "Last of England" (1987), Peter Strickland's "Katalin Varga" (2009) and Shane Carruth's "Upstream Color" (2013) acted as examples of how such an independent approach could work and be creatively inspiring.

Given that the budget was going to be so small, the decision was taken early on to use a documentary style of shooting but apply it in an narrative / experimental context. The perceived size of the film would then be expanded by using intense sound design and score.

CASTING AND REHEARSALS

Although Daniel had already started to experiment with audio-visual forms, TSAL only really started taking form when Daniel met, worked with and was inspired by the experienced screen and theatre actor Sally Mortemore on the music / theatre project "The Lie Box" (2015). She was able to see enough promise in working together and in the score of "Catch Me Daddy" (2014) which Daniel had co-written with Matthew Watson to take a chance on a then-unproven writer / director. Daniel responded by writing the main role of Katherine Amesbury specifically for Sally, knowing that she would be able to handle playing this seemingly cold but fragile, strong, tender and complex character and to perform it mostly without dialogue.

As this was our first feature we knew that we would need to rely on the help and experience of professional actors for most of our main cast but TSAL does introduce one newcomer to film acting: Lucy Alfred. We spotted Lucy doing great silent work in a local amateur theatre production and she was kind enough to help us create "Poultice" (2017), a short film focused on TSAL supporting character Marianne Blake. This was our first TSAL rehearsal / experiment as we tested out our new and (slightly) unconventional shooting and post process with additional crew Anna Durbridge.

For the other two supporting roles we were keen to find a cast who would immediately gel together so it seemed wise to ask Sally to work with actors she already knew. After following up various recommendations from her we then invited Emma Spearing and David Broughton-Davis to complete the rest of the main cast.

In contrast to perhaps the stereotypical experience, the role of the main character's partner was male and we're grateful for David's understanding that he would "just" be playing the husband, especially as some of his few scenes unfortunately had to be cut or shortened for budgetary and technical reasons. The role of Martin Smith gave David a chance to play against his normal comedic casting.

Emma joined the cast as Claire Renshaw just before our second rehearsal shoot after our original choice had to drop out. Played wrongly, Claire could have come across as somewhat bland but Emma soon proved she could show the depth of kindness and trauma this grieving widow exhibits even as she helps Katherine to recover.

All of the main cast and crew then met up for a weekend to film another short, "The Land Artist", as rehearsal for TSAL and to test out the location for Katherine's house. By the end of that shoot we knew we had an ensemble and a process which would work for the feature so there was no need to complete this second film, although some shots of "The Land Artist" shoot were later integrated into TSAL during the edit.

Casting was finalised with a number of minor roles and over fifty extras all played by non-actors, usually re-enacting situations similar to those they were already very familiar with and mostly from church backgrounds (Anglican, Baptist and Catholic). Although our film is very much set in England our cast included people from Romania, Australia, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Hong Kong.

LOCATIONS

Even though the budget was microscopic, the director felt it was really important that the film was not just restricted to one location as he wanted to give the film the best chance of having cinematic scope. We were therefore very fortunate to be offered half of our locations for free with the remaining offered at very reasonable rates.

Many of the nature scenes meant to be set deep in the East Sussex countryside were actually shot in the centre of Croydon, a city borough of Greater London usually only known for its grim and towering concrete architecture. These woodland scenes were complimented by other country scenes which were shot in East Sussex in the tiny village of Penhurst, including four scenes in and around its 17th century manor house which is now a centre which specialises in running silent retreats.

The locations for the Katherine and Claire houses took the more typical micro-budget approach of asking family and friends if we could borrow their living space.

The church and its congregation were found through another family connection. We wanted to use a church that would fit with the English stereotype of medieval stone architecture for such a building but involve a congregation who would defy common expectations and the All Saints, Little Bookham community proved to be beautiful in both respects.

INFO ON THE FILM

'The Silence After Life' is an experimental drama / meditation on grief, spirituality and the beauty of nature, with minimal dialogue and immersive score / sound design. Following a serious accident, a lonely woman in her fifties experiences intense visions as she loses her voice and runs away from home to live rough in the beauty of the English woods.

This is the debut film from writer / director / musician Daniel Thomas Freeman and stars Sally Mortemore (Harry Potter, Games of Thrones) and Emma Spearing (Red Call).

Officially selected for: - Brighton Rocks Film Festival 2020 (Winner) - Ramsgate International Film & TV Festival 2020 - London Rocks Film Festival 2020

BUY / RENT FILM https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thesilenceafterlife First 50 rentals FREE with code WEB-1-TSAL

BUY / PREVIEW SCORE http://descendingangel.com/Recording.aspx... The score is also available on Spotify, Apple Music etc.

MORE INFO: http://thesilenceafterlife.com/

[danielthomasfreeman]

Many thanks to film journalist Gemma Dempsey for her interview with actors Sally Mortemore and Emma Spearing and the writer / director / composer Daniel Thomas Freeman from the feature film 'The Silence After Life'.

The interview was run for the Ramsgate International Film & TV Festival 2020. Many thanks to Sylvie Bolioli and Gemma at Ramsgate for their permission to post this interview which was originally posted on the Ramsgate Facebook page. Some editing has be done to tighten up the sound.

'The Silence After Life' is an experimental drama / meditation on grief, spirituality and the beauty of nature, with minimal dialogue and immersive score / sound design. Following a serious accident, a lonely woman in her fifties experiences intense visions as she loses her voice and runs away from home to live rough in the beauty of the English woods.

This is the debut film from writer / director / musician Daniel Thomas Freeman and stars Sally Mortemore (Harry Potter, Games of Thrones) and Emma Spearing (Red Call).

Officially selected for: - Brighton Rocks Film Festival 2020 (Winner) - Ramsgate International Film & TV Festival 2020 - London Rocks Film Festival 2020

BUY / RENT FILM https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thesilenceafterlife First 50 rentals FREE with code WEB-1-TSAL

BUY / PREVIEW SCORE http://descendingangel.com/Recording.aspx... The score is also available on Spotify, Apple Music etc.

MORE INFO: http://thesilenceafterlife.com/

[danielthomasfreeman]

Since times are tough the first 50 rentals of our new experimental / narrative feature film are FREE (first come, first served) - please use code WEB-1-TSAL when renting.

This free code is exclusive to our social media but we're offering two other official codes for free rentals online through the ads on the Little White Lies and Fluid Radio websites. Free while stocks last anyhow :).

The 70 minute film is an experimental drama / meditation on grief, spirituality and the beauty of nature. It uses minimal dialogue and takes cinematic inspiration from Andrei Tarkovsky, David Lynch, Shane Carruth, Peter Strickland, Sally Potter and Derek Jarman. It stars Sally Mortemore ("Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets", "Game of Thrones") who plays a lonely woman in her fifties who, after a serious accident, experiences intense visions as she loses her voice and runs away from home to live rough in the beauty of the English woods. Sally is supported by actors Emma Spearing ("Red Call"), Lucy Alfred and David Broughton-Davies.

BUY / RENT FILM https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thesilenceafterlife First 50 rentals FREE with code WEB-1-TSAL

BUY / PREVIEW SCORE http://descendingangel.com/Recording.aspx…

The score is also available on Spotify, Apple Music etc.

MORE INFO: http://thesilenceafterlife.com/

[danielthomasfreeman]

TONIGHT - FREE WORLD PREMIERE of our feature film THE SILENCE AFTER LIFE at 18:55 your local time at the Ramsgate International Film & TV Festival - still time to get a ticket (the festival would love a donation) - hope to see you there :) ramsgatedigitalcinema.co.uk