The Beacon: October 15th 2001

If you’ve read the Guerilla Filmmaker’s Handbook, you’ll know the story of low budget production company Living Spirit’s bad luck with their second feature, White Angel. The film was about a serial killer, and had the extreme misfortune of being released just as the Fred West case hit the news – and they had been shooting right next to Cromwell Street. This resulted in a lot of bad press for the film, seen as tastelessly cashing in on the real life murders. The media of course will not care less about The Beacon’s release, despite its unwittingly topical plot elements of terrorist-laden-aircraft-crashing-into-building, government air strikes and biological weapons. But it’s still quite annoying. Progress on da Beak has been slow, with the paying edit’s weekend break being filled by the shooting of eponymous journal mentionee James Clarke’s European-style art film Friendship of the Seasons on Saturday, and a relaxing-but-ineffectually-so Sunday. I’m back to work on some fire FX tonight. On Friday I showed the current cut to some mates, with a largely positive response, and one of them, sound man Chris Mayall, has composed an excellent track for the score.

The Beacon: October 15th 2001