Directed by Neil

Blog posts from when Neil used to produce and direct his own micro-budget movies (2001-2014).

Dark Side update

neiloseman,
Benedict Cumberbatch as Max
Benedict Cumberbatch as Max (photo: Richard Unger)

Carl and I have decided we need to change tack a little with The Dark Side of the Earth. We had some interest from a major Hollywood studio, but the suggestion was that the dialogue is too period, too archaic. I just don’t have the mental capacity to tackle another draft, so we’re looking for a writer who can do a polish and make it a little more mainstream, ideally someone with experience of writing for Hollywood. I’ll let you know how that goes, but it definitely seems like if this film is going to be made it will not be by a UK company.

In other news, I’m now casting for Stop/Eject, the short fantasy drama I’m shooting next month. And if anyone reading is in London this Friday afternoon and fancies helping me out running the auditions, please get in touch.

Dark Side update

Behind The Beacon

neiloseman, , ,

A decade ago today principal photography wrapped on The Beacon. To celebrate, here’s Behind The Beacon, a documentary previously only available to those lucky few who purchased the DVD. (I’m sorry, lucky few. I’m really sorry. I hope it was at least useful as a coaster.)

The documentary was made by David Abbott of Star Films, who also served as first assistant director, director’s chauffeur and action vehicle co-ordinator on The Beacon. Yep, The Beacon is a £3,000 movie with a car chase in it. How? Well, a crazy cast and crew, a quiet common and a total disregard for any kind of health and safety procedures. In fact, the chief requirement for involvement in the film, behind or in front of camera, was a complete lack of interest in one’s own personal safety. So I must of course write the immortal words: DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME.

Anyway, there’ll probably be some more behind-the-scenes video nuggets from The Beacon coming your way later in the year, so look out for those. And you can read all about the making of the Malvern Hills’ most action-packed movie ever by selecting The Beacon from the Blog Categories in the sidebar. And if you feel like you’ve missed something because you haven’t seen the film itself – trust me – ignorance is bliss.

Behind The Beacon

Darkness Falls

neiloseman,
One sheet artwork for The Dark Side of the Earth
The Dark Side of the Earth

For the last six years I’ve been developing and trying to raise finance for The Dark Side of the Earth, my would-be third feature. It’s a wildly ambitious fantasy-adventure set in an alternate 1908 where the world has stopped spinning, and a girl stows away aboard an airship travelling from the Light Side to the Dark Side with the aim of finding Old Father Time and starting the earth turning again.

In 2008 I shot a 35mm pilot for the film starring Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock) and Kate Burdette (The Duchess) and featuring the voice of Mark Heap (Green Wing, Spaced), on a wonderful big steampunk set with a beautiful puppet of a Victorian swordfighting robot. Many, many talented and hardworking people contributed their skills to the pilot and to the development of the feature script. Sadly all I have to show for all this effort are lingering debt and a gorgeous 35mm print of the pilot. No fucker will finance it.

But perhaps you can learn something from what I achieved, and more to the point, didn’t achieve by reading the blog – which you can now do right here on neiloseman.com. There are also hours of behind-the-scenes podcasts and “how to” guides from the pilot and our pitching trips to Cannes on my YouTube channel.

Darkness Falls

Back into Hell

neiloseman
Soul Searcher poster
A.J. Nicol, Ray Bullock Jnr. and Lara Greenway in Soul Searcher (photo: John Galloway)

In 2002 I set out on what would end up as a four year journey to make a fantasy-action feature for no more than the cost of a decent family car. With 280 FX shots and numerous martial arts fights and set entirely at night, it was a tremendously complex production for a five figure budget and it damn-near killed me. If you want to find out how I did it, you can now read the entire blog here on NeilOseman.com. You can filter this page to show just the posts from Soul Searcher or a particular part of it using the category links on the right of the page – same for The Beacon.

Back into Hell

Welcome

neiloseman
Directing my 35mm pilot for The Dark Side of the Earth
Directing my 35mm pilot for The Dark Side of the Earth (photo: Richard Unger)

Greetings, people of the Interweb, and welcome to NeilOseman.com, the new virtual home of my filmmaking adventures.

I’ve been blogging about the films I make for many years, but up till now these blogs have always been on websites set up specifically for each film. The purpose of this site is to bring all my blogs together, past and present, along with lots of other stuff.

So, you’ll see down below that I’ve already imported the blog from The Beacon, a terrible 75 minute action movie I made in 2001. Over the next few weeks I’ll be integrating the journals from Soul Searcher and The Dark Side of the Earth.

Also coming soon to the site:

  • A page for each of my films, from the short version of Soul Searcher (2000) to The Picnic (2011)
  • Micro-shorts Calf Vader and George & Mark available to view in full
  • Behind-the-scenes featurettes from The Beacon, previously only available on the DVD
  • Info on my latest short Stop/Eject (a Light Films production)
  • Scripts, schedules, budgets and other useful downloads from my shorts and features

In the mean time, things may move about and perhaps I’ll play with different layouts and colour schemes, so please excuse me as I settle in.

Welcome

The Picnic: Script and Shot List

neiloseman, , , ,

With my first Virgin Media Shorts entry now out there for all to see, I thought I’d share the script with you. The film’s working title was Two Timing. Here are two different drafts, the first and second (shooting), plus the shot list I drew up.

Download Two Timing first draft script (.doc, 28kb)

 

Download Two Timing second draft script (.doc, 26kb)

 

Download Two Timing shot list (.pdf, 93kb)

The Picnic: Script and Shot List

The Dark Side of the Earth: July 17th, 2011

neiloseman

Yesterday I met up with most of the guys from the Dark Side reunion again, to watch all the other films we made in our teens. Nearly five hours of surreal, puerile comedy that wouldn’t make sense to anyone else and barely makes sense to us. I also showed them the finished Video-8 documentary (you can see the trailer on the video page) . I’ve shown it to a few other people as well and it’s gone down quite well. I may well enter it into some festivals.
A few months back on this blog I mentioned that I was looking to buy a new camera and disucssed some of the issues I was weighing up. Well, last week I finally threw my hat in the ring that is the DSLR revolution, about two years late, but, like I keep saying, I’m old now and I can’t be expected to keep up with you young ‘uns any more. I purchased a Canon 600D (or Rebel T3i as it’s known Stateside) and various accessories including a Proaim shoulder rig with follow focus and all the gubbins. I’ve played around with it a bit, but I’ll wait until I’ve shot something proper with it before I give you my thoughts on it.

The Dark Side of the Earth: July 17th, 2011

The Beacon: Looking Back

neiloseman

Sometimes it seems like all I’m doing on this blog is celebrating anniversaries of things I made ages ago. Hence my desire to start making lots of shorts again. Like The Picnic, which you’ve hopefully watched and enjoyed by now.
But in the meantime, today is the tenth anniversary of the start of The Beacon’s shoot. The Beacon is a terrible 75 minute action movie about a bored admin assistant who finds herself the only person standing between a bunch of terrorists and their plot to launch deadly biochemical rockets from the summit of the Worcestershire Beacon in the Malvern Hills. Shot over about five weeks on a pitiful budget of UKP3,000, the film is essentially an excuse to string together lots of action sequences. Many of these are martial arts, some of which look a bit clunky in retrospect; some of them involve shockingly poor CGI (this project was crucial in forming my current opinion of CGI); and a few still hold up today as fun, energetic scenes – such as the infamous Cardboard Chase and the rollicking car chase. All in all, the film borders on the unwatchable, but I learnt a lot from it and without it I couldn’t have done Soul Searcher or any of my subsequent projects.
Of course I kept a blog during the making of The Beacon and I’ll be making all of that available online again later in the year along with lots more related goodies that may help you learn from the few successes and many failures of the film, but for now here is the brief entry I wrote after the first day of photography, a decade ago today:
“Did three gunshot effects. Were cool. Lit everything badly. Was rushed. Finished two and a half hours late. Tired. Watched rushes. Were better than it seemed whilst rushing through filming everything. Wish I’d scheduled more time for everything. Not as if I had to worry about extra budget to pay people for more days. Damn. Maybe next time. Ate Burger Star burger. Was Best By Far.”

The Beacon: Looking Back