Short Film: Until Now

Approximately six years ago I made my one and only foray in to film making to date with the short film Until Now. For me it was a directing project based on a script I had previously written for a competition (knocked out in the final round) but we were essentially a two man crew and so I owe massive amounts of gratitude to my producer and all round great guy Simon Bonner for the huge assist in making my vision a reality. 

Our poster concept borrowed heavily from Thumbsucker

The original plan was to submit it to festivals and the like, get noticed, get funded, make more films, be rich and famous, but things didn't happen that way and the movie never did get submitted to festivals, infact it's barely had a screening of any kind. 

It wasn't as polished as we had hoped for and has a few sound issues but when all was said and done we really couldn't have done much more with the funds and time available to us and we're still proud of the work we did in putting this film together.

I was always hesitant to put the film online, proprietary reasons, pride, fear etc. causing me to not make it available as anything other than a fun trailer but in the past month I discovered that my man Simon had uploaded the full film (without the music, I am yet to get to the bottom of this) to Youtube as part of his portfolio to get employment and so today I face my past head on, finally put Until Now behind me and share the film with people. It does miss something without the music but you still get a fair idea of the overall vision.

 
If anyone out there knows of any paying projects that need a talented producer, editor, DoP, artist or director and want to work with Simon please get in touch with him via Thinklings Studios.

Of course I wouldn't be putting this online if I wasn't wanting some feedback, so for those of you who feel like critiquing, criticising, encouraging, etc. I'm all ears.

Thinklings - It's Where Ideas Come From

Apple, making science fiction come true. That should be their tagline. If they needed any advertising at all these days that is. Who has an iDevice of some kind? Me too. I'm generally sceptical of touch screen technology but since I got my new iPhone in January I'm starting to change my mind.

Almost immediately it allowed me to work with an app development company, Thinkling Studios, on their debut game, Thinklings - Space Rescue. Don't worry, I only beta tested. Finally released today, I may not be as proud of the game as Simon and Stewart, the app development genius creators, but I am still excited to see a project I had a little input in to be launched in to the world.

So what exactly is it? Here's a fun little video to help explain:



Using your fastest finger, you must guide the Thinkling Starship, Blue Shift, past the evil Slumlords and rescue the Thinklings, who are trapped on their home world. Beware, however, as space holds many dangers and obstacles: asteroids, mines, wormholes and homing-comets, along with the spiky, disgusting Slumboid, leader of the Slumlords. Help is at hand though, the Thinkings reward players with power ups to assist them on their quest. It is a game of daring and danger, timing and tactics, rescue and reward.

Thinklings Space Rescue challenges iOS players to direct their ship by tapping or dragging their finger around the screen. With three additional ships to unlock, 24 achievements and a bonus mini game, there is plenty to play for and hours of fun to be had for just 69p (or equivalent international price).

 
Having played this game for many hours myself I can attest to both its ease of play and its extreme addictiveness. I started my testing expecting to put in half an hour here and there only to find an entire evening had passed without looking up. The combination of point scoring and multiple goals to achieve kept me repeating the game time and time again ignoring the technical aspect of my task and desperate to open every unlockable and beat my own high scores. You may take that as reason not to play the game but if you're in to playing app games then I can think of nothing better than one with that many hours of gameplay. 

I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you where to get the game, so follow this link to the app store to download the game for your spangly iPad and keep your eyes peeled for the iPhone download in the next couple of weeks.

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