I'm Off to The Circle....

... With some close friends my alter ego and Twitter... If it looks like bad weather on this handy Glastonbury webcam, then spare a thought for the day you almost met - The Professor.

See you on the other side.

Selah.

In the Future

There will be no mass production of any considered worth. We shall all have meaningful, bespoke experiences, which engage us to a suitable level.


This is why I work in digital.

Banner ads can fuck off.

My Desk

My Desk, originally uploaded by donshades.

My Desk at Dare

Crazy Film Projects with Dare

Radio silence and lame 2nd life related blog posts of late are most definately the product of a Bonkers volume of film work going through the pipeline at Dare right now. Some exciting advertising bits about to break out of the doors and on the interweb...along with some great motion graphics work and a short interactive film for Barlcays.

Last week we undertook a two day location shoot in the dizzy heights of North Hackney for our outher Barlays Client.

The shoot was Dare's biggest to date; and saw us taking over a Pub and some poor dude's house. We installed false walls in the house, clamped a prop car outside the house and built a false bathroom inside the location bathroom.



Most people at Dare are under the illusion that shoots are glamorous affairs. Trust me they're not. This one had three exterior set-ups - and it pissed it down with rain...



To me the volume of great material we got down on camera is testament to the amazingly talented group of people involved in the project. It's top secret so I should go on about it until we put the project live, but for now here's some on-set pics of the ga

The Night I Spent in A Police Cell

donshades in jail, originally uploaded by donshades.

I got caught aiming my shotgun at a hoodlum across the street. Apparently they're clamping down on random shootings in Tombstone. I hadn't read the local paper saying as much. I was only going to give him a warning shot in an attempt to stop him robbing the bank. The Deputy said I shouldn't have taken the law in to my own hands, I should have shouted for the sheriff..

Our Documentary: An Award Nomination!

festival nomination, originally uploaded by donshades.

Our Documentary - Rio Blanco: The Farmer and the Mine, has received it's first festival recognition; and is up for an award in the Best International Documentaries section of the Heart of England film festival!

It's a small festival, but showcasing films sent from around the world, with an exciting line up of pictures created by independent film makers from various backgrounds.

JM Script Project update

Some nice dudes worked up our sony vaio script project into a nice animation.

Snow Angel
by angels_in_the_snow

The film was directed by the incredibly talented Laurie Proud.

As JM would say - a good script has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

29minutes @ Speakers Corner

I was strolling through Hyde Park on sunday afternoon and came across this rabble... I love polemics at the best of times; but this is just great! Some amazing performances. I shall return with a better camera and an angle at some point.

The Future of Digital AdverFilms

shepperton studios, originally uploaded by donshades.

Last week I spent a long day doing an interactive Ad shoot for one of our clients at Dare. In order to get the required assets, we had to hire a very tall studio. Infact the only place with a studio big enough was London's famous Shepperton Studios.

“Great!” I thought. This is is. We're here! A digital agency shooting an ad in the same studio they used to shoot Harry Potter's Cribbage game. We've made it. We've grown up....

Then I realised. We were shooting a fucking banner Ad.

Indeed things are beginning to change. Clients are starting to trust us more frequently with budgets which extend to more than your best mate with a DV camera shooting in an empty meeting room. But where's the story? Flo's point on the creative social blog is an interesting one and something that has bothered me from day I checked out of the film world and into the land of Digital.

"Why are we trying to do everything our own way?".

It seems that we spend too much of the time getting excited by interesting interactive technology, and not enough time worrying about story, meaning, narrative. I'm just as guilty of this as everyone, by the way.

I am a bit of a film geek however and for me that makes a good story paramount. TV script writers have been bothered about this since the days of the Bulova Watch Company (obviously they fuck it up a lot..); so why do we think needn't bother?

This is something that I feel very strongly about. There is some great work about of late; but all too often an interesting understated story is left high and dry - out gunned by the technology which is packaging it up. Digital agencies are full of copy writers, not script writers and this is evident from the output of their more narrative ideas. I keep banging on about the novelty factor of youTube slowly wearing off and suddenly we're left swimming in shit... well I think this is most definitely starting to happen. Things move with sound on the interweb - great. Now tell me a story, and tell it fucking well or I'm clicking onward. I was at a lecture the other day where the speaker mused over the next layer of the web being the Visual Web. If he's right (and I don't see anything to make me think he's wrong); then surely the champion players of this visual web will be those who know how to tell a story, how to write a good story to be told in spoken words, sound and moving pictures.

For me we've got a lot of growing up to do before we can move in and start our own digital production office at Shepperton.

Analogue In, Digital Out

Analogue In, Digital Out, originally uploaded by donshades.

Went to see my good friends Star Chamber, at one of their band rehearsals last night. I felt privileged to be watching them write a song together. It's always an amazing thing to watch synergy in happen around you; watching their creative process was a most inspiring thing.

Incidentally I noticed that while they use digital distribution channels to get their music and merchandise out to their fan base in a very 2.0 kind of way; they're all well into analogue effects for their instruments.