13-12-12 / NEW MUSIC VIDEO

While in the final throes of post production on Stew & Punch (sound mix and final picture imminent) I restored a wee bit of sanity putting together this batty music video for Swimming:

18-11-12 / JURY DUTY IN BREST / A SPECIAL MUSIC VIDEO

It was still dark in Brest when I left this morning, then it was raining in Paris, but Birmingham was all booming sunshine when I landed and it's funny what cheers one up after only 90 minutes of sleep, even if said sunshine was wasted on my undead head. Brest was brief and brilliantly bananas. While there was a lack of drunken Breton brawling compared to last year, the cinema audiences seemed even more enthusiastic for the films, and that's saying something. Their sheer numbers and insane fervour really made an impression on me last time and they pretty much blew me away again, exhibiting the kind of excitement that most festivals can only dream of seeing in their paying public. You should hear them holler when the festival trailer ends, even in the afternoon! It makes me wonder what they put in the water.

Interestingly, there was a male streaker who ran across the stage butt-naked on two occasions. Appropriately, his first caper was during a particular moment of Jean-Baptiste Saurel's porn-ish comedy The Dickslap, and he was clearly so chuffed with waggling his silhouetted balls on the stage that he decided to do it again during the closing ceremony. Under the spotlight this time, he wore a nappy to spare the crowds (and cameras), except that we, the jury, were standing right behind him. And we got a solid eyeful of dangle when he took a bow, I can tell you. Speaking of the jury, I got lucky again with my fellow jurors Mihai Mitrica, Ludovic Henry, Nabiha Akkari and Kris. Through much agreement and occasional friendly disagreement, we made the right choices for the right reasons. The schedule was fairly heavy: five 90 minute programmes for me on one day because of the need to view the non-subtitled films with English subs in between theatrical screenings, but despite the workload we got to go out and see some of Brittany's coast, pose for the cover of our upcoming album, and I ate the best crepe I ever had in Le Conquet. Thanks to Nabiha for some of these pictures (her wonderfully juvenile chocolate teeth trick was something to behold and damn I'm getting all misty-eyed already).

Right, enough with the sentimentality. Notable films were Gabriele Mainetti's Tiger Boy (Italy), Nicolas Guiot's Le Cri du Homard (Belgium/France), Michael Rittmannsberger's Punched (Austria), Fabrice Maruca's Coming Soon (France), Miha Hocevar's Can I Drive Daddy? (Slovenia), and of course Gunhild Enger's exemplary short Prematur (Norway), which I have bleated about in previous posts already. There were others too but I can't list them all.

To side-step for a moment, festival director and general bud Massimiliano Nardulli put me onto something I hadn't seen or heard of before, and I currently can't stop watching/listening to it. It's a music video using reappropriated footage from the 1962 Italian documentary Mondo Cane (A Dog's World), put together by one Jamie Harley. What makes it particularly hypnotic for me is that the footage is 1962 16mm shot in the streets and bars of my beloved Hamburg's St Pauli district. Anyone who has spent more than a fleeting amount of time in those streets can't fail to be fascinated by this raw document of the Reeperbahn's hedonistic heritage. It is something very special indeed, so fill your eyes and ears right up, right now. That means full screen, and louder... louder... a bit more... just a touch more... good:

This one here is a bit mad too.

01-11-12 / STEW & LOTS OF MUSIC

Like the titular broth, Stew & Punch is bubbling along slowly but surely, and there is a page for it here which includes some waffle by me and an on-set report from Lauren Bergin. Nothing else to reveal on the film yet. What else... I exploded my face off for Halloween fun and games.

In more musical news, Nottingham's free Branch Out music festival last week revealed a true bevy of world class performers sure to break through into ubergalacticmegastardom. Gawd bless Nottingham, just when I was starting to wonder where all the talent had gone. Hats off to John Sampson for a sublime performance in pitch blackness, Ady Suleiman, Georgie Rose and the exceptional Natalie Duncan. I also had the pleasure to see Max Richter and Britten Sinfonia perform his recomposed version of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons at the Barbican on Wednesday. Some moments of shivery bliss went on there, I can tell you. Made me want to give up filmmaking and learn violin. Again.L

03-10-12 / NEW SHORT WRAPPED

Stew & Punch, the story of a housewarming dinner party gone awry, finished shooting two days ago. Despite being one of my shorter shooting schedules it is likely to be my longest short, and all that I have the energy to say at this time is an enormous THANK YOU to an outstanding cast and crew. Each and every one of the talented buggers really went the whole nine yards and never seemed to start flagging despite having to live on top of one another for the duration. I'm sure I will find better ways of gushing about them all as my head readjusts to the world outside but for now this is the best I can do.

23-09-12 / ENCOUNTERS FILM FESTIVAL

The sun shone on Encounters Film Festival in Bristol this year, only to vanish abruptly as soon as the celebrations were over. The winning films were excellent choices by both the international and animation juries, and it was particularly gratifying to see Gunhild Enger's Premature (Norway) take its rightful Grand Prix after being robbed at Hamburg in June. Manuel Schapira's excellent Les Meutes (The Hounds) (France), Ross McDonnell's Remember Me My Ghost (Ireland) and Rafael Balulu's Eynayim Kaele (Such Eyes) (Israel) were just a few of the highlights for me out of a strong and eclectic programme. Other gems I've mentioned in previous posts were Till Nowak's The Centrifuge Brain Project (Germany), Julia Ducournau's Junior (France), and Emma de Swaef & Marc James Roel's Oh Willy (Belgium). It's a shame that fully unwinding was so difficult with an imminent shoot to ponder - a bummer when Encounters gets stronger every year and there was so much to see (or in this case miss).

A very special event was the live soundtrack performed for 1924 silent film Aelita: The Queen of Mars by cross-dressing Finnish performers Cleaning Women. They famously play self-made instruments adapted from recycled material and although I'd seen them perform some years ago in Finland I hadn't heard of the film at all. Pre-dating even Metropolis, its pioneering influence can't be underestimated. The production design and wardrobe of Mike Hodges' Flash Gordon, for one, owes it an enormous doff of the hat. Easily the most rousing live soundtrack event I've attended, check more information and see an extract here.

17-09-12 / INCUBATE FESTIVAL

Quite a long write-up this; an appropriately tall report from the land of giants (that's the Netherlands to you) for Incubate 2012. Tilburg is a tiny town with a massive annual roster of music, art, film and theatre. On the Friday flight out I had this itching hope that the bright sunshine might mean a cheeky burst of summer for the weekend. Of course, I knew full well that being above the clouds was cheating (Mama didn't raise no fool) but a yawn-off four hour journey to England's most pain-in-the-arse airport for a measly forty minute flight had me in hopeful spirits. Then, descending through the clouds, it was like somebody switched the lights off. We landed and I experienced a whole new kind of grey. I mean, I live in England so I know grey very well; grey and I are bedfellows, but this was wholly without cheer. A bit like arriving into Manchester by train from the south, but multiplied by ten. I grabbed some money from the grey cash machine and exited the grey sliding door of the terminal to get a bus ticket (which was white!) from a grey machine, then I boarded a grey bus, which was even greyer on the inside, and I couldn't help noticing that almost all of the vehicles in the adjacent car park were grey.

An hour later I checked into the hotel and mooched through the festival timetable to see how many acts could be squeezed in, then scooted straight out for some swift, pre-music munch. Stopping at the first place I passed, and for reasons I can't explain, I bought a considerable plate of weird kebab contents. A whole half of said plate was taken up by a pile of tangled meat that looked a bit like bloated worms or shorn dreadlocks. Without finishing it I whizzed off to a small venue to catch experimental rap-nut Busdriver, and was bloody delighted to find that this dark little venue served Westmalle Tripel on draught (boom!). I swiped a glass of it and parked in a shadow while Busdriver was still setting up, then a bunch of his plugs caught fire and produced the most unexpected sound, like the farty rasp you get when you let go of an inflated-but-unknotted balloon. By the time the gig started thirty minutes later, the Westmalle and meaty dreadworms started having an argument in my stomach. I knew they were having a row because they were threatening to go their separate ways, so I left Busdriver to it and opted for a fresh-air stroll to the next act. Jenny Hval is described in the festival programme as a 'Norwegian multidisciplinary artist', which is a bit of a guffy statement to be fair, but she was great. Quite hypnotised, I was. Going from the rough-and-ready Busdriver experience to the sublime Jenny Hval was akin to falling through a tree of thorns and landing in a massive, warm jacket potato. Kebabgate was a distant memory. Then for another insane tangent I moved on to Anthony Rother, mostly out of nostalgic curiosity. For me, alongside the likes of Aux 88 and Dynamix II, Rother was one of the few who kept the faith in proper electro when there wasn't much new stuff being produced. Fifteen years on from Sex with the Machines, this was the first time I'd seen Rother in the flesh and from a distance it seemed like the Danish actor Kim Bodnia from the first Pusher film had took to the stage. I half expected him to whip out a couple of pistols and frighten everybody.

On Saturday I was talking on a seminar panel and spent the afternoon redrafting the short script for Stew & Punch, which we shoot in a couple of weeks (yikes). With a brainful of yet-to-be-resolved production worries I sought a superior kebab before getting myself all impressed by Yann Tiersen, whose consistently fantastic set was iced with a dazzling violin solo. Then, really showing off, he pulled out a Mandolin and I wondered if maybe he was about to start yodelling or play Balalaika with his feet. Mogwai had their work cut out following his show but they bumraped everyone's ears, regardless.

Sunday was mostly spent watching shorts and I did a little Q&A for Binaural Swimming (Beach) as part of a special 'music in film' programme organised by the ace Dutch festival GoShort. They even had a bunch of wireless headphones for people to fully experience the binaural audio but unfortunately the left and right channels were the wrong way around and the headphones weren't loud enough to drown out the main theatre speakers, so the effect was somewhat compromised. Still, it was good of the GoShort team to make the effort with headphones in the first place, and after a brief Q&A I got to go and see Laibach perform so I can't complain. As a big enthusiast of most bands on Mute Records in my 'alternative teenager' years (particularly its Industrial/Electronic quota), the chance to check Liaibach's legendary theatrical fascism was something of a box ticked. The sheer BOOM of Tanz Mit Mir performed live was quite the experience.

Finally, Buzzcocks closed the festival with such volume that my ears are still howling eighteen hours later. Then Monday morning brought some bum luck. I'd been advised to leave on the 6.30 train in order to get to the airport two hours before departure, but let's face it, only MASSIVE SQUARES do the two-hour thing and I opted to leave a bit later. I was the first person downstairs for breakfast, which was supposed to start at 6.30, and was joined shortly after by a couple of other loners. We probably all had early flights - why else would you be first to breakfast - so we sat dotted around at our respective tables while the world's most laid back chef got his arse into gear. Said chef then served up four paltry eggs and, being closer to the counter than me, the other two buggers took two each. With no other hot food to choose from and the chef having gone to meditate or something, I sulked through a piece of bread and tried my hardest to put a hex on the egg thieves, who by now were already making their satisfied, burpy exits. I checked out at 6.50 and started walking to the station, passing thief #2 en route. For some reason, I stopped to photograph an endless sea of parked bicycles while two thoughts simultaneously sprang to mind - that this brief pause could make me miss my train, and that it was a shit photograph anyway. The egg robber overtook me and spurred me into action - no way was he going to get the eggs and the train while I missed the lot. I zipped into the station and saw him stop outside the closed ticket office, crestfallen (in my mind), and relished this moment of karmic fate. That'll teach him not to snatch the last two eggs when he's not the only eggless soul in the room! For this brief moment, victory was mine as I imagined him missing his train, then his flight, then puking his eggs up at the departure gate while trying to catch his breath and being charged for a whole new flight by Ryanair. But then karma played a double-whammy and decided to kick my Schadenfreude in the nuts. On the escalator up to the platform I heard the ominous THUNK of too-many train doors closing at once, followed by the BEEEEEP of imminent departure. I stepped on to the platform to see the train cackle off down the track, missing it by, oooh, let's say half the amount of time it took to stop and take a pointless picture of bicycles.

I was writing this on the train home from the airport and realised that it would have made a more colourful story had I actually missed the flight, which I caught by the skin of my teeth, curiously lamenting how all the fannying around amounted to an eventless ending. Then fate stepped in again when I got off to change trains and left my bloody suitcase on board, bound for Birmingham.

01-09-12 / WRITING-WRITING-WRITING / BRAIN SOUP / INTERVIEW

It's been two months! Oh, the stagnation! Shocking. That's how much Cannes affected me. No, I've been in development for a proposed new feature project and writing pretty much non-stop. Any free time has been spent drinking ale. Being as I'm the superstitious type who doesn't like to jinx things by giving too much away, there is nothing to report on that front. Boooooooooooring. I could talk about the most helpful combination of different coloured highlighters or the thrill of white push-pins though. It has all turned my brain into soup, but in a satisfying way. Ah yes, shooting an ambitious new short film is imminent, but as it's all been negotiated throughout the brainsoupery I haven't been able to give it any headspace until now (I'm really struggling to get back into a groove here, nnnnnngghhh, I had no idea until I started writing this). In other news, I did a brand spanking new interview for Lights Film School, which went live today.

26-06-12 / CANNES LIONS JURY

The Cannes Lions. It probably isn't fair to judge a town by the foul excesses of its annual festivals. Dominated by an eerie balance of the powerful and needy, the aggressive display of decadence in the face of simultaneous global recession is sinister and downright discomfiting. There just isn't enough room on the internet to try and explain everything that is so wrong, but who cares anyway, right? Clearly, the show must go on, no matter the outrageous cost. It's a creepy place, plain and simple. Just not my world.

I was on the Film Craft jury and therefore spent the majority of my time in a darkened room watching exactly 1349 commercials. Our way-too-heavy schedule meant anything from 12-15 hour days, which in itself is bad enough but when you consider such hours with a minimum of food it's easy to appreciate how a less patient group of people might have tore each other apart. What I personally found most difficult was being completely out of sync with the outside world by the time a day was over, surrounded by too many people who had already spent their day getting utterly shitfaced. The pressure to catch up, in order to wind down and eventually sleep, was dreadful.

On reflection, it amazes me that the jury held it together, which is testament to how cool they are (not to mention poor Lisa who had to babysit us the entire way). I only have to think back to some of the other juries I have been on (film, not advertising) to know how punishing the Cannes schedule was, and yet nobody walked away, nobody irreversibly offended another, and they still found the energy to sing Happy Birthday to me (twice) early on the final morning. As for the work, we awarded the Grand Prix to one of the few commercials I had already seen before attending (above). Simply a masterpiece on every level. Go here for another little gem.

11-06-12 / HAMBURG SHORT FILM FESTIVAL

Another year, another Hamburg Short Film Festival, and what a pleasure it was. Seeing the trailer I somehow managed to shoot (two posts below) blown up to beautiful 35mm film and booming out loud in the main THX-equipped theatre was thoroughly gratifying. This was the final year of 35mm exhibition for the festival trailer as they go digital from 2013. A real treat to do before it all goes the way of the pixel.

The two pictures above show it screening in Zeise and Metropolis cinemas. Many thanks to festival photographer Xenia Zarafu for the shots. I was very touched to be presented with a 35mm print of the trailer during the awards ceremony, along with a 'lifetime accreditation' pass to the festival's legendary 35ml bar, hehe. And here's something quite brilliant - the release of Short Film Top Trumps (!), which includes Soft as a contender alongside 30+ short film classics. I have already played it a few times and have been happy to lose to my own film on several occasions. We aren't talking about some rinky-dink home-printed cards here either - these are the real deal, produced by Weltquartett (check out the media controversy from last year regarding their Adolf Hitler card).

Despite the surprising choices made by the international jury there were some strong and extremely varied films on show, including Gunhild Enger's Premature (Norway, and my overall favourite), Emma De Swaef and Marc James Roels' Oh Willy (Belgium), Semiconductor's 20hz (UK), Julia Ducournau's Junior (France), Rafael Urban's Dinosaur Eggs in the Living Room (Brazil), Phil Collins' The Meaning of Style (Malaysia), and Till Nowak's excellent The Centrifuge Brain Project (Germany), which was the obvious (and deserved) choice for the audience award before it was even accepted into competition. Outside of the competition it was fantastic to see Jay Rosenblatt's excellent The Smell of Burning Ants, which I hadn't seen since my first film festival back in 1996.

09-05-12 / HONDA VERSUS THE PETEBOX

Oh, here's one other little thing I did for The Petebox which I had forgotten about until now - a little film commissioned by Honda that shows the recording process for his soundtrack to their new TV commercial:

And the commercial itself can be viewed here.

25-04-12 / TRAILER FOR 2012 HAMBURG INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM FESTIVAL

Just to prove I haven't only been doing work with a certain beatboxer recently, the trailer I've been banging on about for months that I made for Hamburg International Short Film Festival, the one with the balloons, the one that buggered the camera (grrrr), is complete and went live today:

15-04-12 / 'FUTURE LOOPS' SCREENING

The screening at Nottingham Contemporary was a blast. It would have been nice to have been able to forget the imminent deadline of the Hamburg Filmfestival trailer and actually relax, but with the screening's oversubscription and emergency extra seating it couldn't have gone better, whoooooP.

11-04-12 / FINAL PETEBOX VIDEO IN SERIES

Here is a little eye and ear parcel for you. Just gone live. Just now. Just then.

09-04-12 / EXCLUSIVE PETEBOX ALBUM VIDEO SCREENING

Git yo bony ass down to Nottingham Contemporary THIS FRIDAY evening for an exclusive premiere screening of my entire video series for the Future Loops album by The Petebox. Yes you might have seen them on YouTube but these are in full HD on the big screen, plus additional documentary material. Click here for further details, and here for a radio interview with Peter and myself about the overall concept.

02-04-12 / COMMERCIAL / HAMBURG-BERLIN-HAMBURG / THE PETEBOX

Maaaaan, loads has happened in the last month. I finally finished the last of the The Petebox series, did a commercial I'm not allowed to talk about (seriously, non-disclosure agreements, the whole nine yards), then went to Hamburg/Berlin/Hamburg for more fun (?!?) filming from balloons. The Berlin part was a brief but thoroughly enjoyable pleasure-pause as Swimming happened to be on the German stint of their European tour. A few hours on the autobahn, attaching myself to their van like a mossy limpet, and it was back to the 'burg for work-work-work.

Children and animals I can work with, no problem, bring 'em on, but balloons... pfuh. It's with great relief that I'm no longer at the mercy of the daily wind forecast and its constant indecision, like suddenly changing the optimum shooting period from a comfortable midday session to six o'clock in the bleddy morning. On one occasion the rig got stuck in a tree above a main road for thirty-five minutes and wouldn't have been retrieved were it not for the kindly Mrs Nowak who allowed me up onto her balcony with a makeshift lasso. Another incident irreparably scratched the lens of the GoPro camera when it skidded across an nosey rooftop, which would have been easily avoidable had I spent thirty seconds attaching a bit of makeshift padding. Most frustrating of all is that it happened during one of the first shots, so there is now an extra load of post-production tomfoolery involved as I try to fix the images. I'd rather not reveal any teaser images until the trailer goes live in one month's time. Instead, here's a curious little Hamburg diptych:

So, after a whole year of on-off work for The Petebox, the ninth and final video of the Future Loops album series was filmed, edited, and finally ejected from my suite with the precision of a finely-honed SAS mission (compared with the post-production trauma of some of the previous eight, at least). There were literally two hours to sleep between finishing it all and leaving for the mystery commercial shoot in London. The eighth, penultimate video, which I posted after the September shoot as being "a truly batnuts track" is now live:

02-03-12 / LATEST PETEBOX

The latest video for The Petebox, filmed right here at bubtowers, is proving to be popular. This is really quite gratifying because it was the hardest one of them all, for reasons that would be waaaaaaaaay to boring to explain:

17-02-12 / VON BERLIN NACH HAMBURG: IMPRESSIONS

Presenting my retrospective in a delightful venue while Whitney Houston climbed into her final bath. Fun squeezing as many faces as possible into a Fotoautomat. David bloody Beckham in his undercrackers, on every bloody ecke, soon removing his skin to model internal organs if the price is right. A bad, full club, full of bad music. Zig-zags in the snow. The photography of Miron Zownir. Rejecting a plea from a woman claiming to be the victim of a chemical attack, then feeling bad, then feeling better, still wondering if she was fibbing, still not knowing. A highly intrusive playlist of gash nineties euro-pop in a tourist restaurant near Alexanderplatz. A gay man sitting cross-legged in his seat, shoulder-dancing to said euro-pop while forking his rice. A seven-times distilled vodka called Pyromaniac. A drunk Russian falling over in a bar and being laughed at by two tiny dogs. The stress of deadlines. The smell of coffee.

An archetypal Italian moment in a Berlin cafe. An archetypal German moment at a Hamburg konzert. The eerie, spectral bleat of distant foghorns on Hamburg's winter ports (a favourite sound). Business as usual for boats on the Elbe, despite it being a river of ice. The obligatory chuckle from the Turkish owner of my regular imbiss when ordering currywurst. Rising at six to try shooting footage from balloons, the wind blowing too hard, almost losing the camera across rooftops. Walking the streets with heart-shaped balloons, unrelated to Valentine's day, on Valentine's day, like a Valentine's plum. Being mobbed by balloon-loving school children.

In less whimsical summary, the Berlin Directors Lounge was lovely and it was touching that an unexpected gang of Hamburgers showed up (friends from Hamburg, not Big Macs and Whoppers), not to mention a couple of faces from Nottingham who are now based in Berlin. All of my films were screened from MP4 files and the projection was the best I'd seen for quite a few of my older, low resolution films. Considering how much easier it is to make an MP4 file than pay for a costly dub to a high quality tape, this is definite progress which I hope more festivals will take on board. In addition to the main screening, Binaural Swimming (Beach) screened in a cosy basement room, complete with a sofa, heater, and headphones for the intended binaural experience. Further reports about what I was getting up to in Hamburg with balloons can be expected when I finally beat the wind and get everything I need.

08-02-12 / RETROSPECTIVE IN BERLIN

This coming Saturday, the 8th Berlin International Directors Lounge will feature a two-part retrospective of my films, split into drama-based and music-based work. The music section will feature two world premieres: my new music video for Swimming's Mining for Diamonds, and the documentary Binaural Swimming (Beach), which will also be screening in a bespoke cellar space with headphones for the complete binaural experience.

04-02-12 / TAMPERE FILM FESTIVAL / CLERMONT FERRAND / PANTHER DANCE

Jam Today has just been selected for competition at the excellent Tampere Film Festival in Finland.

Just back from the massive, snowy festival that is Clermont Ferrand. I gave up feeling guilty about missing screenings after the first two days because it just isn't possible to do anything but scratch the surface of the vast schedule of programmes. Trying to catch up with so many of the other attendees doesn't help matters when just about everyone you've ever met at any other festival is there. Despite Jam Today screening every day I only managed to dash into one showing and dash out again.

Highlights of the very few films I did manage to see were Robert Morgan's Bobby Yeah (UK), Grzegorz Jaroszuk's Opowiesci Z Chlodini (Frozen Stories) (Poland), and Philipp Kaessbohrer's Armadingen (Germany), all of which were comedic. Lowlights were the filmmaker staying in the next room, who appeared to be addicted to watching noisy films with either cowboys, kung-fu or explosions in the early hours of every morning.

My latest video in The Petebox series, Panther Dance, is now online (see below). This one is particularly special as it has always been my favourite of his tracks and is the reason we became acquainted all those summers ago. I always intended to film a promo for it and had an exciting idea but never found the time, so filming this went some way to make up for the project that never was.

26-01-12 / NEW INTERVIEW

Nip on over to the Write Shoot Cut site to find out what side of the bed I've been getting out of recently, plus plenty of other informative articles, videos and interviews with a whole host of talented film folk.

16-01-12 / 'SOFT' FACEBOOK PAGE

Soft now has a Facebook page, including (so far) a bunch of previously unseen production stills. There is a good reason for this, which shall be revealed at a slightly later date, but in the meantime please pass the link around to as many people as possible!

11-01-12 / 'WHO KILLED DEON' MOST AWARDED TV CAMPAIGN IN THE WORLD

Who Killed Deon was 2011's 'Most awarded TV campaign in the world' and also ranked 7th in the 'Top 25 campaigns across all media'. Heck.

04-01-12 / SHOTS MAGAZINE COVER & PROFILE

Well this can't be bad. A big profile in Shots magazine and the front cover of both the magazine itself and its accompanying DVD. Being the weighty, glossy publication that it is, it costs a whopping three-figure sum to buy, but you can see a scan of the interview here.

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