The Suicide Brothers had a great month. It won ‘Best Comedy Short’ at the New Hampshire Film Festival. We couldn’t make it to the party but our producer Chase Bailey was there. He had another film at the NHFF, which he wrote and directed, ‘Crooked Lane’ and a film he was acting in ‘Killing Dinner’. Needless to say they gave him the ‘NH Filmmaker Of The Year’ award. So he walked away with some pretty bricks.

The London Film Festival was fun. Saw some fantastic films (not as many as we wanted to) and met some great filmmakers (not as many as we wanted to) and drank beer (more than we wanted to). They gave us lanyards too! Posh. Might just wear them all year.

This Month The Continuing and Lamentable Saga Of The Suicide Brothers will be at the Foyle Film Festival. It’s playing on the 21st.

xoxo

We had a Cast and Crew screening of The Continuing and Lamentable Saga Of The Suicide Brothers at MPC and then there was a sort of industry screening at the Soho Hotel. It was a lovely little party, put on by @leithclark at Lula Magazine with the generous sponsorship of Van Cleef & Arpels and Perrier-Jouët. I know, it sounds a little too classy for the likes of us but it was pretty chilled. Like, Rupert wore his Hawaiian shirt….

(Keira Knightley as Fairy)

(Tom Mison as Barath Suicide. Rupert Friend as Bourbon Suicide)

Anyway, it was good to see (and hear) the film on such great screens and to put it in front of an audience. A couple of finishing touches with VFX and it’s ready for festivals etc. –We just found out it has been accepted into the London Film Festival– All those details are still being worked out. The process of putting this film together has been incredible but mostly we are just really glad that it’s finished. The Suicide Brothers site has a making of by Chloe Domont.

Oban turns 1 on Saturday. Wow. She started walking. She just got up and decided to walk down the hallway.

We got our friend and mentor Steven Barron involved in Slingers. He directed a 3 min sizzler for it which is being edited right now. It is such a pleasure to work with Steve again, I can’t tell you how much we learn by watching him. We also learned a lot about Slingers by getting it up on it’s feet like that. It’s going to be fun getting back into developing the pilot and the series. We’ve turned into real fans of this show.

For more updates follow Slingers creator Mike Artherton or Sleepydog. And by the way, if you’re at ComicCon today Steve will be a panelist for the 25th anniversary of TMNT.

(Adrian Bower and director Steve Barron)

(Sean Pertwee as Colonel Hall)

(Adrian Bower as DM and Tom Mison as Frank)

(Margo Stilley as Jeannie)

(Haruka Abe as Marti with Junior as Junior)

Oh, and we have an agent now, Jack Thomas at Independent. He’s a great guy. Plus he knows all the best places in town to eat.

Excited about what happens next month.

A couple of weeks ago we sent a pitch to Team Waterpolo to shoot their first video. They asked for colourful, energetic and cool so our pitch, in a nutshell; Film the band in super slow motion, mid air, pulling interesting shapes on a bouncy castle (of course the pitch was more eloquently put than that…and we added pretty pictures). Sony brought us in for a meeting with the band on Thursday. They told us they liked the pitch and would like us to direct it. Done. All set. Let’s do this.

So the ball was in motion and while Factory started booking the space and equipment, we called a friend of ours to see if he was available to help. He listened to the pitch and said “I’m going to tell you something that might upset you…” Turns out he was on the set of a PJ Harvey video that Jake and Dinos Chapman were directing. They were in the middle of shooting PJ in slow motion… on a bouncy castle…

We said we’d have to call him back…

We’re just glad it’s the Chapman brothers and PJ Harvey. At least you know it will be a good video.

If anyone needs us we’ll be at the drawing board.

We met Toby Hyde and Paul Fennelly from Factory Films for a chat and they shook our hands and welcomed us to the Factory Films family! Everyone we’ve talked to about them say that “They’re lovely” and “such sound people to work with” and generally pleasant things like that. We’ve only been with them for a couple weeks but completely agree! They are sound and lovely and we’re looking forward to working with them this year.

Its the year of the OX! So Arran and I are preparing to vigorously plow the field of prosperity until the great super harvest party. Then we trade it all in for some magical beans. Because that’s what the OX do. Trust me. We met an OX in 2007. Her name is Keira Knightley. She, along Rupert Friend (year of the rooster) and Tom Mison (year of the dog) were all playing make believe in a short film we shot in 2008.

It happened like this here:

We’re in Budapest and Rupert says to us “Wanna direct a short film that Tom and I wrote?” Then he starts to tell us this crazy little fairy tale and the next thing you know we’re meeting with art directors and costume people and special effects people and pointing and explaining and directing a fantasticalismly imagined cautionary tale.

(Arran, Corran, Kiera -photo by Kate Friend)

The reason short films take so long is that everyone works on them for free so it’s more of a side project for people. What’s good is that everyone is doing it for the love of the work.

In February we will be finishing the visual effects for the film at MPC and ILP. Meanwhile Tim Phillips will be continuing to compose the most magical soundtrack ever scored for a short film and Caleb Knightley will be creating a cerebral sound scape. Adding the 4th dimension to the silent characters in “The Continuing and Lamentable Saga Of The SUICIDE BROTHERS“. Coming soon(ish).

The short is featured in the February issue of Lula Magazine if you feel like having a peek.

Now…You, poets of the 21st century take note; Today is the 250th anniversary of the great Robert Burns! We expect the greatest drunken poetry to spew forth on this bra bricht moonlicht nicht nicht.

But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread,
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He’ll make it whissle;
An legs an arms, an heads will sned,
Like taps o thrissle.
—from Robert Burns Address To A Haggis

The AGT video we made is video of the week on 6 Music. You can listen to the interview with Nemone for at least a week on their “Listen Again” column (Monday Nov.17th).
There’s also a sweet, two (web)page article @ CGSociety about an ad we worked on for minivegas (who are wickedawesome and the ad is wickedcool). Check it! you can see a couple concept designs we did for them. It gives you a good idea of the process from concepts to final product.

That’s all for now. Stay safe! Bush isn’t out yet.

A new video for The Asteroids Galaxy Tour - Around The Bend

Ya so like…this is the video that broke bones! That was a crazy week. One day to shoot it and then about 6 days to finish the post at Glassworks. We asked our friend Ollie Barron from J.A.F.C. (Just Another Film Company)if he wanted to produce it and he said “Sure. Sounds fun”. Then we said “Cool cool…you have 3 days of prep!” and he was like “What the fuck?! You tricked me!”. But he pulled it off and even maneged to find us a tube camera from 1981 that was buried in storage at panavision.

As usual it was Diego who brought the post production magic. We wanted to recreate the feeling of watching TV when we were kids and Diego goes “What, like this?” and we were all like “Yeah maaaan!”…basically…

Hey if you like it you can apparently download it on itunes.

Bet you’re wondering what we did to celebrate London fashion week (besides fasting). We shot a video for our friend Kerry Nixon who is the Nixon of Vidler and Nixon -Coincidence? I think not- They just happen to be experts in classiness!

You might recognize the babe in the video. None other than Cara Horgan! Yayyy…It was the longest amount of time i spent with her since she started Hedda (which finishes on Saturday night… and it’s sold out so if you weren’t fortunate enough to see it you can just trust me when i tell you it was wick’!).

A video we shot this summer in Copenhagen. The band is The Asteroids Galaxy Tour. The song is The Sun Ain’t Shining No More.

We’re doing their second video right now. Mette (the singer) broke her wrist on the set. That’s a little thing we like to call “hard core”, my friends!

Now… What were we saying? Oh ya. We made some goddamn MTV.

Shot the video for ‘Calliope’ on the first weekend of April. Then did the post at Glassworks, a superb facility, on and off throughout the month. We owe them and a lot of people a big THANK YOU but especially Diego Vazquez Lozano who wore a lot of hats for this job and stayed up way past his bedtime more than once (Diego also worked with us on the AUDI project we directed in April. But we’ll tell you about that one later).

The Veils are a charming band and a joy to work with. Hope you enjoy ‘Calliope’. It’s a sweet sweet song. Perfect for summertime frolics for all the teenage alcoholics who never mind the bollocks.

Cara cooked us a delicious roast on Sunday. As you can see I was very helpful. I filmed the process. The music is Stereolab — Lo Boob Oscillator.
xoxo