BAFTA Premiere!

Damien at the "Clowning Around" Premiere at BAFTA from summit from nuthin productions on Vimeo.

So, we finally got to premiere 'Clowning Around' at BAFTA, for industry, backers, cast & crew. It's been a long journey to get to this point and a lot of work has been put in by a lot of people, not least of which by Damien who finally got to show people the film on the big screen.

It should, I suppose have felt like a milestone to get to this point, but the film has a long journey yet to go and I certainly hope we'll have plenty more opportunity for the film to be seen around the world, so if anything this feels like the first leg of another journey. It went down very well on the night, and the feedback was genuinely very positive and uplifting. Aside from the film everyone had a great night at BAFTA too where we gathered after the screening in the David Lean room for drinks and a chance to chat with everyone. We took a few moments to record a video message from Damien above (appologies for my poor camera technique) to thank you all for your support. And our support is indeed heartfelt to everyone who contributed to what we saw on screen.

As Damien said, it was great to finally meet some of our backers face to face and celebrate with them, the evening went by in a blur and I truly wish I had the ability to slow time and have chatted to everyone more fully, but it was a very cool event and a warm feeling to be in a room full of people there to see and enjoy and talk about film.

For those who couldn't be there, our online premiere will come shortly.

Views from the composer

I met with composer Alexis Bennett this evening in "The Wellington" pub in Waterloo. My now standard half an hour late, we discussed numerable ideas about the latest cut and where we would go from here, based on my ideas and what Alexis had sent me a week ago...

"Clowns and music... a long and complicated history. Damien's film brings forward a variety of different possibilities for a composer. A good starting point for me is Bonzo, who has an interesting struggle on his hands between trying to make a living out of being funny while suffering from alcoholism. So musically, what I hope to achieve is that same tension. For me, musical ideas can start with the sound of particular instruments, and Bonzo suggests various things to me, and because of his character these instruments don't necessarily go together very often: tuba, hurdy gurdy, piano, cello. I did also think of a fairground organ sound. At the moment I am throwing ideas around with these instruments in mind. At this point I also have to think about if and when we might have a recording session, and where this may take place."

So, we sat down and watched the film on my Iphone (whilst supping a couple of beers) and will now work out a deadline so we can hopefully get something to Cannes for the March deadline :-)

A "Clowning Around" Family

Preparing some of the perks for backers I'm reminded of how many people worked for so long to bring this film to fruition. It's been a truly collaborative effort over a long period of time to get this far and so many people have helped along the way, excited to be part of the ongoing team we've accrued around "Clowning Around."

One of the themes of the film is that it's easy to do something for a day, but it's much harder to keep up good work when you're alone. Having our backers, supporters, and all the people who have worked on the project, given up their time and talent to it and just been there throughout has made the process to date a very warm experience. People have put huge pieces of their own hearts into the work we all wanted to do and we all adopted Damien's initial project as our own and joined his vision for what the film could be. I couldn't be more proud of our "Clowning Around" family or more grateful to be part of it. Looking at a rough cut of the first few minutes of film I'm acutely aware of how effortless it seems despite the effort that went into bringing it all about. Happy days and busy days with wonderful people.

Post production always seems like a quiet time where there's much less to speak about on a project and a lot of the team have moved on to do other work and aren't so much around, especially for me without the production team meeting every week I have missed the bustle of regular face to face meetings, but the wheels have kept turning and so much is ticking along that it's exciting to think of the things we still have planned. Right now it's about looking after our family of supporters and sending some of the digital goodies like the online comic book out! That has been a real labour of love by Damien and Phoenix Ryte and I truly hope everyone will love them as much as the guys have enjoyed creating them. There are two comic books in one double edition, sharing extra stories about our clowns for our backers to enjoy!

More funs soon!

Slava's Snow Show

One of my Christmas presents this year was being taken to see the wonderful theatrical clowning spectacle that is Slava's Snow Show.

The clowning is simplistic, beautiful and quite profound and it reminded me how clowns are such a fantastic vehicle for connecting us with deep human emotions.

Our clowns in "Clowning Around" are not of the same ilk as Slava Polunin and Co, they're more traditional and robust, less simple and staid, but they do have the same depth I feel and I think have proved themselves (if the rushes are anything to go by) as a really good way to deliver the story of addiction that we're telling in the film and in their own right as characters that we can love and love to laugh at and cry with.

As well as being a rather fun Christmas prezzie the Snow Show took me into the new year with a feeling that very good things await our "Clowning Around" clowns as the film comes together and begins to head out into the world.

Red nosed and raring to go! *:O)

Greer's poster pick

There was something about Jenny Law's entry that really stood out to me. It has this real movie-poster feel, while channelling the underlying serious tone of our bittersweet comedy. Also loved the fact that she took our starter images and really made them her own. If I saw this on a wall, I would stop and want to read more.

Two other entries that caught my eye were by Fiona Nash and Andrew Smith. Fiona's was clean and dramatic, with a wonderful depth of colour. A little more text - a tagline maybe - to fill the space would have pushed this into the winning zone for me. As for Andrew's poster, well I thought putting Bonzo in a bottle really captured the very essence of the film. Loved it was so clean and tapped those wonderful Hitchcock posters by Saul Bass. Again I think - considering the graphic concept - that it just needed one more element that told me a bit more about the film.

The 'Likes' of our Poster Designs. Top Five Time!

To make our poster design competition as fair and as interesting as we could we decided that as well as picking some finalists ourselves, from the production team, we'd choose some of them by 'likes' on our facebook page and hopefully this helped to get everyone's work fully looked at and appreciated by everybody as much as it was by us.

We had such a huge range of ideas and designs submitted (well over 100!) and each has it's own particular take on the 'Clowning Around' story. We deactivated our facebook page at the appointed time and counted up.. it was close.. the 'likes' came in right up to the hour and the placements changed rapidly and these were the top five most popular designs. What was truly inspirational were designers who came and 'liked' the work of their fellow entrants. And people came from all over the place to flock to the page and select their favourites. We'll be leaving all the entries up for everyone to continue to appreciate. The competition has enriched the project and we love all our posters!

These though, were the top five shortlisted for the finals! Congratulations to the designers for their popular work!

Myish Endonila ~ 110 'likes'

Diana Taki ~ 116 'likes'

Olivier Bontemps ~ 116 'likes'

Stuart Johnstone ~ 127 'likes'

Janaka Poblete ~ 162 'likes'

Eureka!

Today had all the markings of a bad day - I couldn't find my oyster card (and had to buy a new one), my train was late and then stuck underground, and eventually when I did make it outside once more it was pouring down with some pretty nasty rain.

None of this however diverted me from my good mood. I couldn't figure out why at first, until, sitting on the train I received first an email from one of our producers Graham, then another from Katherine and a third from our unit manager Markus all in quick succession. All carried one piece of news - we'd reached our target! and with 46 hours still to go.

I'm incredibly proud of all the hard work the production team have put in thus far to make this happen. And also very grateful to all our wonderful backers. Of course now we just want to keep that indiegogo counter climbing.

Anything is possible:-)

poster competition launches

It's Friday and the day we launch our Clowning Around poster competition. Leilani and Damien have been beavering away with uploading images and creating copy to produce the wonderful poster you see above. The rest of us - thanks to a little guidance from Blair - have been informing all our graphically minded friends to get involved - the whole point of our campaign after all - and pass it on.

So if you'd like to became part of the Clowning Around team by creating our poster drop Leilani a line and get creating. Alternatively have a read, pass it on, blog, facebook and tweet about it at will.

2nd pre-production meeting

My opening pleasantry before any production meeting is “Thanks for coming”, which is always a good way to thank people for making the effort to attend in their own free time.

However yesterday there was genuine appreciation and awe for our producer Leilani, assistant producer Juliet, 1st AD Greer, 3rd AD Blair and production manager Katherine, who all made their way from various parts of London for our second pre-production meeting in Vauxhall last night. Granted, Vauxhall has not been one of the places which has been attacked by the morons so far, but nearby areas Clapham, Balham and Elephant & Castle had and the general opinion is that you never know where will be next, so I am very grateful for their commitment in doing so, as everyone around me seemed to be leaving work early and head home to avoid possible trouble.

The meeting was to catchup after last weeks initial get together when a lot of things were discussed and new members brought up to speed, so I felt we needed to sit down and work out who would be doing what and a few deadlines on when they needed to be achieved by. We went through a plan for locations and set a deadline for end of August to find them, discussed the logistics of the poster competition) which goes live on Friday and how to start to co-ordinate recces, camera tests and rehearsals as well as any further ideas on how to bring attention to our campaign.

I did question whether to have the meeting with such turmoil and fear around and it may have been more sensible to not as I am not jeopardizing my own safety but also four others but I trusted them all (and they were certainly under no pressure to attend) to make the right call for the journey they needed to take or make arrangements so they would not be in the eye of the storm. I deliberated all the way to getting the tube from Wembley Park whether to go ahead, rather than postpone until things calmed down as I certainly don’t think this film is more important than peoples safety.

However, one thing that kept hanging in my mind is that I didn’t want to let the idiots who are smashing shops and setting fires turn me into a hermit, afraid to continue with my normal life and as I got to Vauxhall that feeling was justified as everyone was like us, cracking on with their evening and we managed to get a little further down the road for “Clowning Around”.

The thoughts of Katerina, our costume designer

As the costume designer on Clowning Around, I am really looking forward to starting working on the film

I can't wait to see the characters, on set, alive in their costumes in motion

I'm about to go on my summer holidays, but I am really impressed by the progress of the whole project, made possible by the hard work and effort that all the members of the team have put in so far.

Taking with me the photos of the two clowns in their costumes, my research, mood boards and thoughts, lying under the sun next to the beach, I close my eyes and dream..

Yellow and orange

Dark and blue

Treads and thrills

Polka dolts & stripes in a fight

A touch of whipped cream

A dress in a shape of a cake

An apron wrapped around

Small and big flowers in a dance

A yard full of children as a background

A pile of rubbish as a clown's hat

Tattoos and smells

A strong smell of alcohol indeeed!

But above all

One question

Who wins

In that world of c est la vie


to be continued...

Bonzo the clown confronts Murdoch on first day of Indiegogo campaign...

If only this were true, it seems some other clown has stormed the select committee and custard-pied Mr Murdoch. I still think it's a PR stunt by Mr Cullen - Damien please stand up if I'm right...

grown men in comedy outfits...

It's a tenuous link, but perhaps everyone should start their Monday with a shot of elf.

1 day to launch...

So this time tomorrow our Indiegogo campaign will officially be live. Once it starts, all the other pieces will begin to fall into place. Damien and I are sitting down tomorrow to plan the big what's next on the Clowning Around agenda. This will include location scouting, rehearsals, set design, locating lots of child extras for the school and party scenes, and generally making sure that by the time we turn over in September he feels confident and non-stressed about the whole set up.

Let the games begin...

Post shoot...

I really wanted to do this last night, but after a long and productive shoot at the very wonderful Tower Bridge Studios, I sat down in front of my computer and fell asleep. So here we are today instead. In a very short time we got an astounding amount covered, so thought you might want to have a quick peek at what we achieved. Here's my faves.

Kirsty working her magic...




Katerina fleeing the clowns



The crew watching as Azul shoots the soon-to-be-seen film trails...



Damien and Azul pow wow



Bill lets out his inner clown...



Matt under the spotlight