Dan Maharry

Warped Premiere

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Well, the cast and crew premiere for the Digital Shorts program I was a part of last October finally happened last night. Warped turned in at just under ten minutes, looking wonderful but, for me at least, somewhat underwhelming. Maybe it was just the fact that the edit got everything moving too swiftly to the point that all the subtlety - the really good stuff - was lost onscreen leaving it a bit confusing for the most part. Ah well, must try harder. There were eight shorts in all last night ranging from the conventionally told slightly cheesy ‘morning after the night before’ story to more darker affairs of drug addiction through to a couple which told hold of the digital medium by the scruff of its neck and composited everything save the actors onto the screen whose green screen debuts weren’t bad. One thing is true of everyone on this program though is that they are all better at networking than I am. Aside from the few I knew already, I fair bolted out of the door at the end. And instantly regretted it. I wish I could make up my mind whether or not I seriously want to take up movie-making or not. It's not the doing that scares me, I suppose, it’s the switching from one career to the other.

Warped

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Spent most of last week working as a grip on location for a short film called Warped, which is part of Screen West Midland's Digital Shorts programme. It was your typical story: hitman kills priest, hitman gets caught in time warp, hitman kills himself. How many times have we seen that story before, eh? Lots of nice stories from the set - a simply stunning church and old manor house out in the countryside where it stayed fine while we shot exteriors and then pissed down once the camera went indoors. Everyone got a stinking cold but we did all stay to the last shot when a couple of nice chaps from MovieMagic came out and blew up our car for us. More on that when the photos come back from the chemists. Our hitman was a nice bloke called Gary Martin, a voice over artist by profession - should have been Darth Maul but Peter Serafinowicz got there first - keen to get some on-screen time for a change. Premiere is sometime next month in Birmingham. More on how to crash and blow up a car on film later.