There has been a change around here. Hands up anyone who noticed!

If you’re looking at the blog layout and design, that’s the wrong place. Yes, it still sucks monkey arse but fuck it, so what. The answer you’re looking for is in terms of content. For years and years and years I’ve been talking about doing films more and for years and years and years I’ve been putting it off. Why all of a sudden I’m approaching the proverbial bull and seizing it by it’s big, hairy, metaphorical bollocks I don’t know (well, I do, but I can’t be arsed to go into it here) but carpe coleones I intend to.

I’m going to take a step here and outline my intentions because when I don’t do them it will mean that you can laugh at me and say “Loser! You’re all bark and no bite! Fucking grow a pair and come back when you’ve done something worthwhile.” Of course this is a statement of intentions (or, as most people call it, a plan) without much of a timeline because there are other things going on at the moment in my life which will no doubt require a lot of my time. (No-one picked up on the ever so subtle allusion to it before - do I dare be a little more explicit?) Having said that, I am currently passing myself off as a developer so giving unrealistic timescales is second nature.

So, here is a list of projects that I am beginning to work on:

1. Microshort #2 - first draft of script written. Planning for a November shoot. Dialogue revisions and storyboarding to be done.
2. Horror Short - finally came up with a very ambitious idea for the 2 Days Later 48 hour film challenge but am not going to be able to film it myself before the deadline. Am very willing to pass on* idea to someone who might be able to do it and help out as much as I can with pre/post production but I don’t have a day to spend filming. However, I think the story might hold water so may try to do it anyway.
3. Sci-Fi Short - a few years ago I wrote a script for the Sci-Fi shorts competition. It wasn’t very good - the ending was terrible - but I always liked the idea and some of the imagery in it. Want to revisit it to see if I can sort out a better story.
4. Thriller Short - actually, it’s not so much a thriller and more of an adaptation of one of the Canterbury Tales. I’ve been kicking this around for years and am very near having a final script if I can just sort out the beginning and the middle. For a change, the End is in place!

That’ll be the short films taken care of. After that I want to start working on some features. In the back of my mind, I have a plan to get my first feature shot by the end of 2009 at the latest. I wrote a first draft of it years ago but even since then it’s undergone numerous changes (in my head and on hastily scribbled notes) although the central idea is still, well, central. The only other change to it which could be significant is that I have two other movie ideas in particular (I’ve actually got far more but not to be discussed yet) which initially started off as seperate ideas but I’m now considering to be sequels to the first idea. When I say sequels, I actually mean more of a sequence. I’m not sure yet - it needs a lot of working out.

All this change means I can finally give this blog a purpose which is to help get my life and mind turned around to deal with this. That was always it’s original purpose but I just didn’t do anything about it. There will still be posts about my running adventures and occasional posts about video games and such like but hopefully more about films and filmmaking. What’s the worse that could happen eh?

Incidentally, if you’ve never seen The Changeling, a 1980 haunted house movie starring George C. Scott, you should. It’s fantastic and has one of the creepiest moments in a film ever.

*Although I will also reserve the right to retain the story for later directorial use myself!