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We were honoured by Caorle Film Festival 2018 when Marriage won 4 awards including Best Feature Film, Best Supporting Actress, Best VFX and Best Sound Editing. Caorle is often called Little Venice and is situated close to Venice on the mainland. It's a beautiful town with beautiful people and the festival was a wonderful event for all the film makers involved.

Since our last update we've been traveling the world supported Marriage at film festivals. From Thessaloniki to Jaipur, India to LA. The latest list of awards are:10th Jaipur Internation Film FestivalWon Japiur Critics Award, Best European Film, Best Original Screenplay, Best Sound Design and Editing and Best Actress. We were honored to be at the festival and can easily say that it was a wonderful experience with film lovers who truly believe in the power of film for social change.Mindfield Film...

One of the truly rare joys of being an indie is that when you view your cut and decide that you could do with one more scene or reaction shot there, you simply pick up the phone, pick up the right lights, get your kit out and dress your living room appropriately.This is what’s been happening the last few weekends – a routine we always knew would happen even before our main shoot.   It’s an ongoing job sculpting your film until you think it’s ready. We are 96% there, all we need is to shoot ...

We've collected a few vfx breakdowns from Marriage and put them all on this page. Hopefully we'll add more as well.Our first is a virtual Brussels shown outside the window with Miranda sitting in front. This was a late shot in the production and we shot the plates for this in our living room against some greenscreen (which wasn't quite big enough). We used a piece of glass in front to help with reflections. The source background was a still photo. The wind, rain and fog were stock elements but t...

A year has passed since we last updated and in that year the world has seen the escalating drama of the refugees right on their doorstep. The biggest displacement of human wave since WWII.When we set out to make the film, we knew we were making a reflection of the last 7 years and we tried to incorporate (in an allegorical way) what is going on in Europe and how Europe reacts to the major (and even minor) events that occur. We shot scenes that would enlarge the story and we managed with a lot of...

We have less than six months to cast the film, rehearse, find the space, build the set, arrange accommodation, import the right gear, lights, lenses and equipment, do tests, find a crew, coordinate everybody, rewrite scenes, sort out the money and draw up contracts. The jobs we would do between us would have been done in average-budget films by, wait !– - at least 50 people.On top of that both Paul and I had our day jobs.But we knew this was going to be an extraordinary year and that if we ever ...

Welcome to my first retrospective blog about Marriage. This all started for me back in April last year (2012) when a chance encounter via email started between Kat and I. I'm not one to blow my own trumpet but when I found out Kat and Paul were making a film I just had to approach them. They needed accomodation quotes and I wanted to be a part of this amazing opportunity. There are many things in life that you need balls for, so I had to strap a pair on.The reality of doing a low budget feature ...

Marriage was split over a few years but the bulk of the shoot was done in a 6 week block one winter in 2012. This is a documentary that was produced with behind the scenes and interviews. After this was shot work started on visual effects, editing and during that phase a number of other scenes were added away from the location here. This was always part of the plan - one of the main reasons we didn't hire cameras at the time but bought in what we needed. Notice at the time this was the shot...

Today we feature a Guest Post from Photographer Matt Linehan.It was the first time I’d been on a film set and I was bundled into a small room filled with makeup bags and boxes, told to sit on the bed – it was a bedroom – and told seriously to be quiet as it was a closed set.I had no idea what anything was for or what anyone was doing but I presumed I needed to be quiet until told otherwise, so sat their fiddling with my camera anxiously.“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea” I thought to myself.[i...

The trailer took quite a few weeks to make. We wanted a trailer that would be aimed predominantly at industry people and would give away the concept while showing a brief synopsis of the film. If we want people to invest in it, to help us finish the film, they will want to know what it is all about. Consequently it is 2:45, which is slightly longer than most trailers but you can never tell. It's punchy, funny, dramatic and we are very proud of it. It shows the hard work from all the people behin...

I bet you don’t get challenges like that in a studio films!!… Well, after that Herculian deed, I can happily say that the team’s bond stretched to the maximum but never broke, in fact it became stronger. Time against us meant we had no free seconds to argue, bicker, fight or be lazy. The unanimous collective was ‘let’s get it In the can’. Minimal compromises in the style of ‘ We’ll fix it in the post’ but again, vital when you’re on a roll.“Oh no”!!Of course we had our fair share of excitement a...

I have cast 70% of the film plus my two main leads: Woman and Rich. Played by Miranda Magee and Christopher Slater. Two charismatic, lovely, talented and warm people; with the added benefit of having a Canterbury base – how lucky is that?Miranda’s improvs were a league of their own and Chris’s monologue reduced the whole room to tears. When you meet your actors, you go back and revisit your script. You ask the obvious questions: What can Chris and Miranda bring to Woman and Rich? Where will they...

I have cast pretty much every production I have made in the past and I thoroughly enjoyed the process. I know exactly what I am looking for and in some way it’s more cost effective for someone in my circumstances to do the casting than hire anyone from the industry and brief them.My casting process is slightly different to most (or so the actors have told me). I usually advertise for actors to come down to Canterbury to audition. The ones that do are offered an hour in which they can demonstrate...

The challenge: to produce a feature with a micro (is there a sub micro level?) budget so that no one watching even knows that was ever an issue.In this day and age that kind of thing should be possible with a carefully chosen combination of kit and approach. I think one of the most important mantras is that everything needs to be proportionate to the budget. For example at one point the possibility of shooting on a Red Epic came up, however whilst the camera itself was achievable (and desirable)...

On December 2011, after typing FADE OUT on my Final Draft, I pour myself a glass of mulled wine and close my eyes in quiet satisfaction. The play had evolved into a screenplay and all the endless possibilities of plots and answers were alive in to one solid story that had in its core one universal question: what is the price of love?If we had enough to shoot we had enough to make it. You see I’m (certainly) blessed to be married to a forward-thinking genius VFX supervisor/cameraman who by his sh...

It was during a visit to Athens, Greece, to see my mother, when I was caught in the riots, admittedly one of the worst of the last 5 years. I went down as an active participant, joining the friends that I knew are suffering badly, adding to their voices. This is the crux of all demonstrations, is it not? Let the people’s voices be heard. However that opportunity was shattered when a battalion of anarchists rained down on the march from all corners with Molotov cocktails in hand targeting the rio...

Welcome to the first post in the production blog for our feature film, Marriage. We will start posting retrospectively as we kept a diary during the preproduction and production, as you can imagine during these phases we had little or no spare time except to make scant notes and grab some stills and footage. Right now principle photography has been completed and we're in the post production phase, this gives us a chance to breath and also begin to post behind-the-scenes and thoughts on both the ...