COOL HILL FILMS

Video introducing the charity Whoopsadaisy.

Fit Fans is a short documentary I made after coming across this training camp in Hull, after shooting some footage for a corporate client. It seemed an interesting scheme and I had a camera in my hand, so well worth documenting.

'Unrequited' was a project for Straight 8 competition, shot in sequence and edited in camera.

Straight 8 films dictate that you hand in your undeveloped film cartridge with soundtrack seperately, and that the first time you see your film is along with the rest of the audience at the Straight 8 screening. I was delighted that the two matched quite as well as it did - and I'm still accused of cheating, which I can only take as a compliment.

'Unrequited' was very well received when it first screened at the Other Cinema in Rupert St in May 2001. It remains one of my favourite pieces of work, and has since gone out on the Mobile Cinema tour organised by Shooting People to great acclaim.

This began with a posting on Shooting People at the beginning of December in 2005. Jane and Lucy, two Shooting People members, announced that the old Routemaster buses were being taken out of circulation on December 9th - and invited Shooters to make films documenting the end of this London landmark.

It was my writer friend Emma Davis who suggested the first person aspect that then became the poem I wrote. I wanted a good, old London voice to be the voice of the bus, and so George Cole seemed like the perfect choice.

I rang his agent, sent across the poem, and he very kindly agreed to do it for a bottle of Macallan. We recorded the voiceover at Metropolis studios (many thanks to everyone there), and I managed to get it in for the deadline on 20th January.

The Naked Lunch was one of those ideas that just hit me, and I started laughing. I had the image of this guy confronted with unexpected nudity, and his girlfriend being a bit mischevious. The bee came later...

Another Straight 8 film - shot and edited in the super 8 camera, with the soundtrack created seperately without seeing the picture.

I had the idea for this years ago, but didn't end up filming it until September 2004. The first question I'm always asked is 'Why French?', and the answer is because Jean seemed like a very French character to me, and I liked the juxtaposition of his ranting with the non verbal impact of the subtitles.

Hooking up with Franz Pagot, the Director of Photography, was instrumental in getting the look of the film right. I wanted it to look like a late sixties Godard piece, very Nouvelle Vague, and thus black and white was my first choice. Similarly the locations had to be right, and pre-production turned out real finds, not least Kalim's wonderful flat that overlooked both a park and a cemetery.

Casting took place two weeks before shooting, and we had a real find in Stephane Cornicard, who embodied Jean perfectly, and Laurie Hagen, who I'd seen in a short in Cannes earlier that year, and had just the right look for Isabelle. I wanted a May to December element to their relationship, and they bounced perfectly off each other.

I've done several Straight 8 films before - straight8.net - and knew that The Fun Guy would be my entry for the Cannes competition that coming May. I knew I wanted to combine animation and live action, a mushroom costume and outlandish make-up, and still tell it all in 3 minutes 20 seconds while editing in camera.

Dave Cox, formerly 0898 Dave and now in AutoKratz, came on board to play the mushroom and record the soundtrack. I asked Dave to do the music because his style fit the madness perfectly, and he also understood the Tex Avery quality that I was after. His (then) wife Chika came on board, contributing some additional animation: the PacMan sequence, and the rhapsodic clocks, flowers, and guitars that rise from the beach are her work, and the film is all the richer for it.

Shooting in sequence meant that there was a strict timetable to adhere to, and we were lucky in that we managed to keep to it. Hannah George, the make-up artist, came up by train mid week, and the caveman sequence took a mammoth 16 hours to shoot what ended up being just over three seconds of film. But it looks great. While we were shooting that the most incredible rainbow appeared over the harbour, which we took to ve a very good omen.

I had already shot some of the image sequence as a test on another reel of Super 8, and that was projected onto Alex's face prior to the image sequence which closes the film. We dropped in to Stonehenge on the way back to London to shoot the closing seconds with Alex in the mushroom suit - it was a complete tourist trap though, and so we shot it on a little hill nearby.

I screamed like a little girl when I found out that 'The Fun Guy' was going to get a premiere in Cannes, especially as it was one of only six films winning a place from over a hundred entries. There's nothing like the buzz of having a film premiere at Cannes - I've been fortunate to be a Cannes winner twice now - see The Operation.

Autokratz is the latest project from Dave Cox (aka 0898 Dave), along with Russell Crank. Dave played me some of his new stuff, and I loved it (and I'm not the only one - they're signed to hot label Kitsune, and Pete Tong was all over this track when it came out).

The basic idea was to come up with some proto-Dadaist silliness, while placing the pair of them in different positions, and then cutting to the music and cloning them on screen. We shot all round the city and London Bridge one hot Sunday, and then I spent about a fortnight cutting it together.

The black, white and red pallette was all created in camera, and was intended to reflect the band's artwork. There is a poster of George Orwell which the band also wanted in there which occurs from time to time, although you could blink and miss it.

I'd come across Monoman when they were being managed by the infamous Dropjaw.

Edited at the PPC, the video was screened on a lot of the music channels.

I directed this promo for Itinerant productions with a budget of around £15k.

Jamie Leask, the producer, did an amazing job of getting together a crack squad of a crew. Shirley Brodie first AD'd, and Shane Daly came on board to DOP.

Nick Lofting did a great job of editing, and then I went in with Alex at Clear, who worked his magic in Shake, adding the explosion of sparks, and smoothing out any visible track.

The promo got several plays on MTV and other music channels, and the track was a UK top 40 hit. It's also noteworthy for featuring a young Agyness Deyn, who I knew then as Laura.

I pitched the idea to Janie (Bird), which she liked, and so I storyboarded and assembled the small crew. John, the DOP, did a great job in shooting the super 8 on an unpredictable Canon camera.

Janie had practised lip synching to the track at double speed, so that when the footage was played back at normal speed, everything would be slowed right down. Weirdly, she often now performs the track at that high speed, as the original temp seems really slow to her.

Ben Leighton did a great job with an online at the PPC, matching the digital shots to the Super 8, and adding some more film flare to compliment what was already there.

Janie is currently doing very well in Iceland, where this promo has received several plays. Her album, 'The Insides' is available online and in all good record shops. Check out birdwebsite.net

This was co-directed with Contraband - Kal, Kam, and Wes, who animated this using 3D Studio Max. It was my first foray into animation, and I loved the experience.

The whole promo took around seven weeks from start to finish, which is an incredibly short amount of time in animation terms, but we were working to a deadline and a very short budget.

The act and label were both delighted with the finished promo and it got MTV playlisted, which was a buzz. Possibly the weirdest moment was when I passed Top Shop in Oxford St, just as the promo began playing on the big screens at the entrance.

Video to promote volunteering instore for Cancer Research UK.