It’s been a while since my last newsletter. Rather than repeat the blow-by-blow account of how to make a short film like I did for Brian & Grim, I thought I’d wait till it was time to tackle the big one. That time has almost come. But first, final notes on Thunder!

‘Thunder’ Under Control was a special project to me. It had the biggest crew of all my short films (to this day, in fact) and I was delighted to receive the support I did for it. Henriette Mercedes Spiering (Producer) & John Suriano (Associate Producer) deserve the most credit.

Thunder itself ended up being accepted at 2 film fests. Good, though not what I’d hoped for. So to present the best possible version of the film to audiences on-line I went back to the project to do a “director’s cut”. I won’t pretend my short’s perfect, though I do believe this new cut to be an improvement.

So why a director’s cut? The simple answer is that if you can find a way to make your film better, then you should. It cost me no money, though it did take up two months of my time. It’s punchier (sorry), better paced, and – I hope – more moving as a result. I’m not sure how many tweaks I did in total, but in one 3 minute segment I made 56 alterations. Some of these consisted of just a frame or two cut here and there. Others were more extensive.

This brings to an end a project that started late April 2015. At that point my shorts had received no film festival acceptances. I’ve now had 17. My most recent project, Boxes, has been accepted at 4 film fests and has won Best Short at two of them. I feel good things lie ahead.

I’ll chat more about my other projects in my next newsletter. They’ll start to become a bit more frequent now. This newsletter will also mark the start of the great campaign. The big push. The road to my most ambitious short film yet. This is, as they say, the big one…