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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 ...

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 ...