Just finished working on Ep9 of Clean House New York for the style network.
Hosts Nina and Michael grab New Yorkers by the scruff of the neck and force them to sell their beloved clutter to raise money for home improvement.
Kenneth Taster (click through to Vimeo to watch in “Couch Mode”)
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Ken’s been having a really bad day and his headaches are getting worse.
Quite a lot worse…
This is a 3 min taster section from our little feature film “Kenneth” which i’ve been cutting in the evenings & between TV jobs. Hope you like it. We’ll remove it shortly before we release the proper trailer…
There’s still some work to do (the composers and VFX guy Mick are beavering away to finish in time) but we do now have some interest from festivals, so cross your fingers for us!
Dir. Anthony Farren
Prod. Oliver Semple
Before I jumped the pond for my little adventure I just about had time to cut a few more stories on Filthy Rotten Scoundrels (series 2) for what used to be Leopard Films but is now Argonon.
This BBC1 obs doc / reality show got good ratings last time round so we were commissioned once again to tell the story of the council investigators on their quest to catch fly tippers and cheapskate builders…
(It’s a mucky job but somebody had to do it etc etc)
The Impressionists: Painting and Revolution
First of a four part series for BBC 2. (Goes out live Saturday 8pm).
In the first episode:
“Art writer Waldemar Januszczak delves into the back stories of four of the most influential Impressionists - Pissarro, Monet, Renoir and Bazille - who together laid the foundations of the artistic movement. He finds out what social and cultural influences drove them to their style of painting, how they were united and how ultimately they challenged and changed art forever.”
Episode one takes us from the shores of the West Indies, to the progressive city of Paris via the suburbs of South London
Oh and here’s the fun opening titles for the series. (Music by the band Hold Your Horses)
Just finished working on a new series, ‘Britain’s Bravest Cops’ for BBC1.
Each episode was a pacy mix of of obs doc/ reality and dramatic reconstruction - some busting down of doors, but some thoughtful moments too.
I cut episode 5, which features a drugs raid and a money laundering raid in Manchester alongside dramatic reconstructions of an acid attack and a water rescue. Certainly learned a lot (as ever) - this time about working with a big team on a documentary. Very different to working on a feature film and to working on a smaller team presenter led style show. Edit producers, directors, other editors and series producers to communicate with constantly. A good experience.
Lots of legal wrangling also kept things interesting. “I know we only have a few days until transmission but you can’t show any of that footage from inside the house. Or any shots of the outside that would identify it. Sorry about that.”
I cut the extras for this BBC/ NHK/ PBS film version of Macbeth, but I also had a great time watching it being made, and had some highly educational afternoons in the company of the editor, Trevor Waite
On one of these occasions he kindly spent most of a day taking me through his approach to cutting a scene. Viewing the all the rushes to a scene, discussing possible approaches to it, watching his first cut while he explained it and so on. I think I absorbed as much story telling technique that day as in the previous 6 months of cutting a feature in my spare time.
Anyway, should you be interested the extras are 3 films, each around 20 minutes. One with the director Rupert Goold, and one each with Kate Fleetwood and Mr Mekon head.
The DVD and Blu-ray are out now and available to buy from Illuminations Media here and from Amazon here.
And here’s a thespy but good PBS interview with Patrick Stewart on the making of.
I cut a quick documentary pilot for Channel 4 about the UK porn business - in particular a company run by women in Birmingham. They wanted to show the real lives of the staff as well as the casting and shoot process.
It was a 3 day shoot, 14 hours of rushes and a very tight 2 day edit. Starts off a little “formatted” but hopefully we pulled together a nice little story - i think you get a good sense of the characters involved and some of the weird situations they face!
I have blurred out any nudey nether bits that may have waved themselves in front of the camera, but due to the fairly high silicone boob count, this is pretty much Not Suitable For Work…
Dir: Clare Bradbury
Camera: Ian Serfontein
Thanks Mum…
Me and my mum had a lovely chat on the phone about life, the TV/ film industry and the Coen Brothers. The next day she sent me this email:
Lovely to have a chat yesterday and glad all is well in the editing room.
I wanted to add that I wasn’t too keen on the film work that was supposed to make you feel you were on the horse too, that was weird, don’t you think?… And all that close up so you could just about see up their nostrils, yuch! When you come to direct your own film I hope you will avoid unnecessary blood and gore, use the visual aspect of the Big Country and basically give the public the chance to appreciate subtle and artistic expression - it is, I believe, much more powerful.
Sundays would be good to make your day. You must have a social life, find time for a girlfriend and enjoy life too. One day, in the not too distant future i hope you will have children. You’ll make a super dad and you’re not getting any younger!
Hope to see you soon.
Lots of love, Mum xx
Offline Editor
Manet, The Man Who Invented Modern Art.
(90 mins BBC2 - RED cam & DVCProHD)
This short section is about Manet’s capacity to be controversial, the Parisian culture of the time and one of his most famous nudes, Olympia. (There is a live action recreation of this painting in the clip, so be careful if watching at work.)
Offline Editor & Location Director
(90 mins, PBS - DVCProHD)
The story of the last conflict of WW2 as told by American veterans and presenter Elwood Von Seibold. Filmed on location in the foxholes and trenches of the Ardennes Forest.
We shot recreations of each battle using actors, period vehicles and tanks. VXF (green-screen comps of 1/4 scale models, explosions, muzzle flash etc) done in After Effects.
Offline Editor (85 mins - NFT, BFI & Arts Alliance - Panavision Genesis)
Narration by Vanessa Redgrave.
A five screen cinematic interpretation of two war poems. Henrik Ibsen’s ‘Terje Vigen’ and Mahmoud Darwish’s ‘A Soldier Dreams of White Lilies’ This is just a very tiny taster from the opening until i can get my hands on more.
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Because it was such an unusual project I learned on this one. (Editing five screens, each with multi layered composites for simultaneous playback can result in far too many video tracks!) In many ways it was akin to working on a big animation project as the story was constantly being tweaked and shots being worked on through many iterations.
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Edit: I found a very strange trailer for the Norwegian version here - it doesn’t really capture the way the action travels from screen to screen in the theatre but might give a taste of some of the visuals
I was recently offered the chance to cut a full length feature called Kenneth. It’s got a refreshingly funny script and was shot on flavour of the month, the Canon 5D. If I had to pigeon hole it from the rushes I’ve put together so far, I’d say it’s half way between the sitcom Spaced and the film Drop Dead Fred but maybe slightly darker…
About me
Motion picture editor.Broadcast experience includes obs docs (reality) and presenter-led (90 mins, BBC1/ BBC2 / C4/ PBS)
Features experience as editor (e.g. Vanessa Redgrave) large and small budgets.
I have also assisted on Hollywood features, and picked up some useful ways of working when planning workflows, media sharing, VFX pipelines, and screenings.
Technical Knowledge:
I frequently use AVID Media Composer, FCP and After Effects among other software and am experienced with all kinds of workflows from 35mm to R3D, to Canon 5D and XDCAM, (stored on Unity or Editshare.)
