In October I released a ghost story for Halloween. It was partly inspired by Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows, but the majority of its actual narrative structure (especially in terms of character) came from a short story of my own inspired as well by Blackwood’s story. As it’s near Christmas, the original story is presented below. It’s very typically Jamesian and should be read late at night … Continue reading Salthouse Marshes (Ghost Story).
Above is a showreel built from footage I’ve shot over the last twelve months. Compared to last year’s showreel, this one feels far more defined and less haphazard with the visual ideas I want to play with. Gone are the mixtures of stop-motion, digital and film, instead replaced entirely by different stocks of super-8 footage. This year has felt like a much more defined trajectory … Continue reading Showreel 2015.
Nature is always present or at the very least contrasted against something in Gideon Koppel’s nostalgia portrait, Sleep Furiously (2008). In spite of the film being a very clear ethnographic postcard from the director’s past, having lived previously in the Welsh town of Trefeurig, it manages to underline its gentle portraiture with a sense of pervading nature and landscape; where even the most concrete of … Continue reading Emerson’s Nature and Sleep Furiously (2008) – Gideon Koppel.
Few films are as explicit in their depiction of character relationships that are at the mercy of the fluctuating landscape than Roman Polanski’s 1966 film, Cul-De-Sac. Polanski had been to both ends of the environmental spectrum within his previous two films – the open waters of Knife In The Water (1962) and the cramped, claustrophobic London of Repulsion (1965) – and Cul-De-Sac sees him returning … Continue reading Isolation And Madness In Cul-De-Sac (1966) – Roman Polanski.
It feels odd to finally be able to say that Holloway is finished. This oddness derives not just from the fact that it has been the longest planned film that I’ve produced so far (starting all the way back from Robert Macfarlane’s first email to me in February 2014) but because the subject of the film itself is never-ending. The holloways of Dorset do not … Continue reading Short Film – Holloway (Robert Macfarlane).
Within the British tradition of the “Chase and Pursuit” drama, there are several reoccurring themes. The idea of a lone individual being chased through different topographies by a group seems to have been popularised in Britain by the Second World War but was around far before then. The basic impetuous seems to be that an individual is wanted for some crime or misdemeanour (sometimes falsely) … Continue reading Fugitive Refuge In The Landscape – (A Cottage On Dartmoor, The 39 Steps, Hunted, Rogue Male).
I thought it would be last my time – The sense that, beyond the town, There would always be fields and farms, Where the village louts could climb Such trees as were not cut down; I knew there’d be false alarms – Going, Going, stanza 1 – Philip Larkin. Above is the opening stanza of Philip Larkin’s 1972 poem, Going, Going. The poem captures the … Continue reading Demise Of The Rural in Requiem For A Village (1976) And “Going, Going” (Philip Larkin).
Above is the trailer for the film that I have been working on with Robert Macfarlane. Only recently, upon reading a Wikipedia entry no less, did I discover that it is an adaptation of a “Sunday Times best-seller”. Perhaps it is best to ignore the pressure of this in spite of the article actually putting my name to the project. As the edit progresses, Holloway … Continue reading Trailer – Holloway (Robert Macfarlane).
In Henry David Thoreau’s influential work, Walden (1854), he speaks of many elements of the natural landscape and the deeper meaning within it. Tying into the first movement of transcendentalism, Thoreau’s was one of a number of works that sought out inner spirituality within a journey toward the outside. One quote seems particularly prescient, both in the context of our film of study and in … Continue reading Death and Landscape in Drowning By Numbers (1988) – Peter Greenaway.
The characters of Nigel Kneale’s work rarely like the “outsider.” The drama of his plays is often built around small groups of people at odds with (or at least representational nationally of being at odds with) some concept of the outsider. The oppositional group will be diametrically opposed for a variety of reasons; sometimes for more pulp tendencies such as aliens in a space invasion … Continue reading Quatermass II (Nigel Kneale) – Fear Of The Outsider Within The Landscape.
Celluloid Wicker Man 