Getting Things Finished

Post production on Grandpa in my Pocket is now complete and we've just delivered the last episode to the editing team in London. Our final shot count was 1051 shots, a 25% increase on last year and most of that was down to the scripts that integrated Grandpa more with the action. There's far more activity and running around in this series and there are plenty of times where Grandpa is on his own trying to solve a problem without being seen. It's been a tough schedule but, since this is the second series, we were able to jump straight back into the workflow without the stress of trying to figure things out as we were going along. Here's hoping for a series three! Grandpa has been nominated for a Bafta so I don't think this will be the last we've heard of Grandpa and his cap. Showreel and full writeup will be posted as soon as the series has been aired next February/March.

I've also now finished production on Reign of Death and the trailer has been posted on Youtube (see below). It's been great to work on this from beginning to end and it's really inspired me to return to filmmaking again, now that I'm leaving Dinamo to work on personal projects. I'll certainly be making another short film again next year, hopefully a script that Barney and I wrote a few years ago but had to shelve when our careers took over. It's been a great pleasure to work on this production and was a really good editing and compositing experience. I think this film is going to go far and people who see it are really passionate about pushing it further and really making use of the great crew that came together to make it. A big thanks to both Matt and Linus for all their hard work and inspiration!

I've added loads of new articles to my work section, filling out the titles with making-of information and showreels. I just need to write the Grandpa Series 1 piece and then I'll be up to date.

Lastly, I visited the Birmingham Comic Convention last month and got loads of new banners for the Comics section. There are about eighteen new sketches, plus a couple of extra ones drawn at the recent MCM show in London that I sadly couldn't visit but had a friend take along my sketchbook instead. The convention was good, but oddly empty and I'm not sure whether it will go well next year. The Bristol one is more fun and energetic so I'll certainly be going to that in May. I'd also like to go to the next MCM show that's also in May but I'll see what my finances are like first! The highlight of Birmingham, however, was seeing Star Trek on the Imax - definitely an experience I had to do twice! What a great film.

On the film front, District 9 was superb, Up was okay but rather simplistic (I wonder whether Pixar's canonical group-writing process actually removes all individuality from the story and simplifies things too much), The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus was a fun mess that I really enjoyed, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was good fun and didn't hurt my eyes, and Fantastic Mr. Fox was okay even though they all looked a little like animated roadkill. Looking forward to Avatar and 2012 - I'm a sucker for VFX overdoses.