Podcast extract from Vintage by Maxine Linnell

I recently had the pleasure of recording Maxine Linnell reading an extract from her new time-swap novel 'Vintage', in which a contemporary teenager swaps places with a counterpart from 1962.

I'm podcasting the recording here, partly to recommend the novel (which is excellent) and partly to experiment with embedding audio files in blogger - which I hope to do much more of in the coming months.

For those of you interested in the recent technical discussion of microphones and field recorders, this recording was made on my Sony Z1 camera, and not with the Marantz PMD661 - which I hadn't bought at the time of recording.

Note: As I write this additional note, the podcast link has stopped working. The audio file hosting site seems to be down - so that is probably the reason. I will clearly have to look for other solutions.

New Microphone

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the Marantz PMD 661 field recorder. I'm still extremely pleased with the way it works with my Rode shotgun microphone. That covers my film making needs. But I do intend to use the recorder for audio interviews in the near future, and realised that a different kind of microphone is necessary for that.

For that usage I need an omnidirectional rather than a shotgun microphone. I also need it to have shielding to prevent all that nasty handling noise. I don't have a background in audio technology, so need to rely on reviews to guide my choice of equipment. This was fairly easy with the field recorders - which are extensively reviewed on the Internet. But with microphones I had a harder time. It seems that very few people choose to review microphones. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised to discover that.

I eventually decided on the AKG D230. I managed to buy a second hand one on Ebay - which should arrive sometime in the next couple of weeks. When it does I will offer my own very inexpert review.

As for the question of what audio interviews am I intending to conduct - it is connected to my interest in dyslexia. I'll say more about that in a future blog post.

The Poster Test

I'm still digesting all the information from Chris Jones's amazing film making masterclass. When I wrote about it a few days ago, I promised to write more regarding lessons that novelists could take from the class.

One of the things in Chris's course that struck me most forcefully was a test he used in deciding whether/how to proceed with a film making project based on the title, strapline and poster image.

Does the title alone tell the potential audience what sort of story to expect? Or does it mislead? Does it imply a story or not? What about the strapline - does that help? And the same question goes for the poster image. Unless you have a HUGE advertising budget, your potential audience will make their decision to part with money or not based on this information alone: title, strapline and poster image.

How about these for movie titles that imply a story:

Home Alone
Snakes on a Plane
Star Wars

And for a perfect strapline:

Alien - in space no one can hear you scream

And a poster that tells the audience all they need to know about the kind of film to expect:

Chris described how he had designed three posters for one film project but couldn't get any of them quite right. Thus the film remains unmade. The poster test was revealing a flaw that would have come back to bite him at the point of trying to sell the movie - an ambiguity in genre and audience.

Perhaps novelists think they are above such base commercialism. But it seems to me that we have a lot to learn from filmakers. Even if money doesn't matter to you as a writer, surely having readers matters hugely. And in this game, one equates to the other.

So how about it? Before getting stuck into a long writing project, choose a title, a strapline and a cover image. Who is going to buy that book? Where will it be sold? And if you are really happy with your answers to those questions - why not write the back-blurb? Fifty words of hard sell. Do a mock-up of the book cover. Ask twenty friends what they think of it. Better still, ask twenty strangers.

Even if we don't like to think of our work in these terms, be sure that editors and agents have to.

Marantz PMD661 field recorder

Excitement yesterday as a parcel containing my new Marantz PMD661 field recorder arrived at the door. Having a new toy does tend to throw my day out of equilibrium. Instead of writing two thousand words of novel, I unpacked the box and started to explore a new world of high quality sound recording.


My choice of the Marantz over other field recorders came from an extensive survey of reviews on the Internet - reviews penned by people who know more about sound recording than I ever will. Without getting too technical here, I'll say that I needed a recorder that would take an external microphone input via balanced XLR connectors. I wanted it to record onto memory cards, have reasonable battery life and as good a quality preamplifier as I could afford.

Of all the review sites, the most helpful was the one at Wingfield Audio - with its superb table of sound samples from different machines. And I eventually found the best UK price at Pink Noise Systems, who were so helpful that I will certainly be checking their website if I need more audio kit in future.

So - now it is out of the box and I've had 24 hours to play with it, I have to report that I love everything about the Marantz PMD661. The look and feel of the machine are very satisfying. Plugging in a good microphone and a set of reasonable headphones is like having bionic hearing. I don't know where to take it that is quiet enough to find out how good the preamp really is - but so far so good. Yesterday I thought I detected a slight hum - but then realised I was hearing the fan in my laptop some distance away.

If I can figure out how to embed audio into this blog, I'll share some recordings in the near future.

Guerilla Filmmakers Masterclass

The Guerilla Filmmakers Masterclass by Chris Jones is a huge journey crammed into 2 intense days. It is film making from story conception through screenwriting, production, post-production and premier all the way to film sales and beyond to the development of your career in film.

Thanks to the work of Hive Films, Creative Leicestershire, Phoenix Square and of course Chris Jones himself, this workshop was brought to Leicester. And thus for the last two days I have been sitting, absorbing what felt like gigabytes of information. Some of it I knew before. Much of it was new to me. It was by stages uplifting, fascinating and frankly terrifying. In short, it was reality.

All the information I might have been able to dig up from books and the Internet. But nowhere could I have had the whole package served in one go. The effect of this was quite startling. Going through the journey of the filmmaker in two days from start to finish gives a sense of perspective. It lets you see the whole thing - every stage in its place.

And having seen the big picture, I can now go and learn more about the individual parts of the process and understand where they fit into the whole. Short of having done it - having made a feature film and taken it to market - short of that I can't imagine a better way to get perspective on the process.

If you are thinking of making your first feature film I strongly advise you to attend this excellent course. It'll be the best money you spend on your project.

I'll write more about one or two specifics in a later post - particularly some lessons that I will be taking from this into my novel writing.

Miss Garnet's Angel

To have closure or not to have closure is a question all storytellers must face. Does the protagonist definitely achieve or definitely not achieve the victory? Are all the secondary plots neatly tied up? Is every single thread accounted for?

Perhaps it is not a question of closure or lack of it, but the degree of neatness.
These were questions that tumbled around in my head last Thursday evening on driving home after an excellent talk by the bestselling novelist Salley Vickers.

Salley does not plot out her novels, she told us. She writes without knowing where she is going, prompted presumably by the unconscious mind. Although her books are not autobiographical, she weaves in threads from her own experience. This became clear as she wove the narrative of her talk, dipping into life experiences and into her novels with such lightness of touch that it was easy to become confused as to which was which.

These things struck me about the writing process as she described it: she reads her work out aloud to herself as she edits it, she walks when she needs to resolve issues and she never reads her own books once they are published. She is also fascinated by the workings of memory and the process of natural selection on ancient stories that survive today. These things struck me because in those respects I am exactly the same. She also visits art galleries when looking for answers, something I have not done but am now resolved to try.

But back to those tumbling thoughts. Have you ever wondered why some stories cling on to the mind after you have finished with them? Some talks too. I was so intrigued by her talk that I bought a copy of her novel Miss Garnet’s Angel.



My one regret about dyslexia is that it is a barrier to my reading more. Reading takes the work of my whole mind. In order to read a whole novel I need to set aside a chunk of time. You can judge then, how much Salley’s talk had clung to my mind, when I say that on getting home I started reading her novel. And that I pressed on to the end three and a half days later.

The story is tumbling right now in my head. I have the feeling that it will still be there tomorrow. Such is the quality of narratives which do not travel directly from A to B, but meander and bifurcate and recombine, beguiling the logical mind. Perhaps it is a quality of stories that are written with the unconscious mind in the driving seat. And perhaps it is a quality also of stories where all the threads are not quite so neatly tied back together at the end.

They say Miss Garnet’s Angel was a word of mouth bestseller. Having read it, I am not surprised. It is as delightful as was her talk.

The making of the making of

When one is making a movie about the making of a movie, all seen through the cameras of a 'The Making Of' camera crew, things can become confusing. When shooting footage to be the making of the making of, it gets more confusing still.

Perhaps this video will make it clearer. Or perhaps not.

Duck Speaks To Chicken

When I was learning Mandarin Chinese several years ago, I found particular joy in some of the four word sayings that I was being taught. Among these were 'Horse Horse Tiger Tiger' - meaning neither good nor bad. 'Chicken Egg Crack Stone' - meaning a thing is impossible. And my absolute favourite 'Duck Speaks to Chicken' - a phrase describing the situation where two people talk but, coming from vastly different starting points, completely fail to understand each other.

Well, Duck Speaks to Chicken is the perfect phrase to describe an argument (debate seems to imply too much reason) presently raging between the communications union BECTU and individuals desiring to protect the new wave of low-to-no budget independent film making.

On the side of the union are people who believe it is wrong for anyone to offer their work or free. On the side of the independent film makers are people who believe that any form of regulation is an unjustified imposition. And lying heavily between these two groups is the Minimum Wage.

The argument is a fire which has generated lots of smoke but little light. Though I have followed it carefully for a week or so, I still feel unable to offer a summary, such are the claims and counter claims flying about.

The tragedy, of course, is that there are good, well-meaning people on both sides, who do not seem to be able or willing to understand each other's passion. Duck speaks to chicken.

There is undoubtedly exploitation going on, which needs to be stamped down on. But there is also the terrible possibility that whatever quasi-legal framework emerges from this debate it will unintentionally result in the stifling of a new creative movement.

I love the idea that an individual can shoot a film on a cheap camera, edit it on her/his own laptop, broadcast it for free on YouTube or Vimeo, have it viewed by millions and potentially even generate an income from it - without ever having to go to film school or become another brick in the huge edifice of a monolithic studio. It would be a deeply ironic tragic if a well-meaning union inadvertently turned film-making back into the special preserve of the very wealthy.

Have a look at the debate on Chris Jones's website. Or look at the BECTU article on this, entitled 'High on Creativity Low on Ethics? Indi-Film Making in the Frame'

New Website for '43 pounds'

The following post was copied from our new movie website at www.43pounds.com


Friday 15th January marked two landmark events for Hive Films: the long-awaited premier of the movie ‘Zombie Undead’, and the beginning of filming the movie ‘43 pounds’. The full story of how and why the two came on the same evening will be unravelled through this blog over the coming months.

But first a word about Zombie Undead. Two of the four screenings so far have been sell-outs, with the others well on their way to being full. We’ve been fortunate to have good coverage in the media and enthusiastic responses from audiences.

The premier should surely have given us enough organisational challenges. Why then start filming ‘43 pounds’ on the same day? There were two reasons for that. The first is emotional rather than logical. It is the pleasing sense that the end of one journey is also the beginning of another, both for us and for the many people who have been following our work and the emergence of film making in Leicester.

The second reason is practical. The movie ‘43 pounds’ opens at the premier of a zombie movie. We had the main screen at Phoenix Square. We had a sell-out audience, who we hoped and guessed would be keen to volunteer as extras.

Zombie Undead was screened. The audience applauded and cheered. The production team did a Q& A session on the stage. And then we sprung the surprise. “We’re about to film the first scene of our next movie, right here, right now. If you’d like to be part of it, stay in your seats. If you don’t want to be, we’ll see you later in the bar.”

They could have all walked out at that point. Happily they all stayed.

You can see a short podcast from the premier here, including a glimpse of the director in action.

But why does the first scene of ‘43 pounds’ need to be at the premier of a zombie movie? The answer to that will have to wait for another post.

Writing lines for actors

The process of writing for '43 pounds' is significantly different from the work I usually do. There are two reasons for this:

1) We are going to be relying heavily on the excellent improvisational skills of our cast. This should give us more of a documentary feel - less like scripted lines. So the lines I am actually writing will probably never be spoken. They are there to guide the actors rather than constrain them.

2) I already know some of the cast and have started workshopping with them. This has given me the seeds of several ideas. And when I type the words in, I can already hear the voices of the actors saying them.


Hearing voices may sound more like a mental illness than a writing technique. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that when I read the lines that I have written, I hear them in my head with the tone, accent and delivery of those individuals.

Getting the voices is one of the important milestones for me in writing any work of fiction. With this it has been given to me from the start.

Zombie Undead premier - podcast

Zombie Undead

A couple of years ago I was showing my film 'Pixacillus' at a bar screening alongside a number of other shorts. In the intermission a very tall man with a goatee beard pushed through the crowd to introduce himself. This was my first meeting with Rhys Davis.

A few months later, I bumped into him again at a zombie makeup workshop at the old Phoenix in Leicester. I learned that he and writer Kris Tearse were working on a full-length zombie movie. Would I like to be a zombie in the movie? he asked. Yes, I said. Of course.

But when the call came, it wasn't to be a zombie. They were looking for someone to play a doctor. A speaking rather than a groaning part.

A word here about timescales. Movies are usually shot in a month or two. You get everyone together, plan your schedule carefully and you work day after day until it is done. Rhys and Kris had devised a different approach.

By writing the movie so the bulk of it takes place inside an evacuation centre, and by securing weekend use of some large buildings at De Montfort University, they made it possible to shoot on odd days through the year - without worrying about the massive continuity problems that would have arisen through trees losing their leaves etc had they been shooting outside.

Thus Zombie Undead was shot on occasional weekend days over a 2 year period. On that basis, cast and crew volunteered their time. I don't know what the eventual budget was, but we must be talking less than Avatar spent on paperclips.

Tonight it premiers at Phoenix Square.

Huge congratulations to Kris and Rhys. It is a massive achievement.

'Forty three Pounds' the movie

Are movies Speciating?

Speciation is the process whereby one species of animal or plant becomes two. It can happen, for example, when a physical barrier such as a mountain range or an ocean separates two populations and they start to evolve along different tracks. After a time they become so different from each other that they can no longer inter-breed.

Comparing ultra high budget movies such as Avatar to very low budget movie such as White Angel or Zombie Undead, we still find enough of an overlap to suggest that they have not speciated yet. But is that the direction they are travelling?

The barrier that separates them is money.

A low budget movie will struggle to even get a cinematic release. Avatar just made a billion dollars from the box office in 17 days. Low returns push low budget directors to very low budget and very low budget to 'zero' budget. Immense returns push the mega movie producers to ever bigger spectacle.

How many planets can we blow up this time?

The challenge, it seems to me, is for the makers of very low budget movies to find ways of generating an income stream. Otherwise they will become dependent on public arts funding, will become self-indulgent and will lose the creative edge that they potentially have at present.

That is the power of the low budget movie. The creative edge that comes from being able to take risks - risks you couldn't afford if your movie cost as much as Avatar.