Need a studio?  No worries, use the front room.  Need to fit a cable in there?  No worries, just knock a hole through the wall.

OK I haven’t done that yet, but I can imagine it happening some day.

The art/life balance takes another swing in the ‘wrong’ direction today at any rate as my window begins to turn into a gigeresque, steampunk inspired hell machine.

This is basically a giant shadow puppet screen which will be used in the Spinning the Compass video I’m doing.    Most of the furniture will be similarly covered in machinery or removed when finished.  Here it is lit with a few gels.

This has been designed so that it can make use of the existing wall plugs from my curtains to hold it in place and be removed without causing any damage to the existing paintwork.  I am fighting an urge to paint the wall rust coloured though………

This might be overkill but I was paranoid about it breaking when I cracked it open so I tried to make it bullet proof ;0)

Here’s the mould cracked open. It all held together really well which is a relief!

Interesting negative image.

This is all going to go in my front room so the idea is that each of these pieces is designed to cover furniture  that’s already in the room!  Here’s the previous piece in place.  The whole alcove will be covered with a screen with a light behind it so that shadow puppets can be used in front of it.

The edges will be covered with a frame in a similar style.  Think I’ll keep it like this once we’re done with the vid ;0)

As the idea is that this is either an electro shock skull cap or maybe from an electric chair, I decided to add arcs of electricity shooting from the thing.

Seems to have been quite well received – one chap from New Zealand commented on a forum ‘Hope you don’t mind but I have copied the link to my evil Mates down at Weta. Coolness!’

If I’d been drinking coffee I would’ve spat it over my keyboard.

I went along to the Frightfest ’International Short Film extravaganza’ at the Empire Leicester Square today.  ’To My Mother and Father, the horror film I did some effects for last year was in the line-up along with ten or so other shorts.

I’d seen the film beforehand at the BFI but the soundtracks now been refined as has the grading.  I also thought the edit had been tinkered with as well, but that might’ve been my imagination.  The film really does look fantastic in terms of production values and looks like it was shot with a much bigger budget than it actually had.

It went really well and got a good reception from the audience.  It was nice to see my work up on a big screen in front of an audience.  You’re always critical of your own stuff, but a few shots of the effects that made me wince previously actually looked fine this time round.

There were also loads of other really great shorts on the bill as well.  The ones that stood out for me and certainly got the biggest audience reaction were the ones with a comedic edge (not to say the more serious ones didn’t too – check out ‘Through the Night’ if you can).

I guess it’s because you only have a short time to grab the audience so if you can make them laugh then you’ve got them straight away.  The biggest hit was probably ‘Papa Wrestling’ which is a spanish short about a retired wrestler who goes on a violent rampage after bullies steal his son’s lunchbox.

Absolutely hilarious, it had everyone in stitches.  Luckily the whole thing’s available on YouTube so I’ve posted it below.

There was also ‘Nelly and Lio’ which is  a french language Canadian production with a thelma and louise vibe which was really quirky and very good.  The two leads were fantastic.

There was also ‘Rise of the Appliances’ which was about household electronics taking over the world.  Sounds silly, and is, but it’s also hilarious and very well made.

I could only find sections of those two on Youtube but I’ve posted them nonetheless.

Papa Wrestling

Nelly and Lio

Rise of the Appliances

Oldroid from The Dark Power on Vimeo.