Kendal report

Here we are at Kendal Mountain Film Festival, introducing the fifth and final screening yesterday at 9am. Remarkably, given the partying that was going on the night before, we had around 55 people in the audience. The feedback has been great, with people saying that it's a gentle, thought-provoking film, one that really gets what climbing is about, and that they have really enjoyed it.

The festival itself has been great, loads of interesting films, fascinating lectures, and great people. The record-breaking quantity of rain certainly looked like it was going to cause massive problems on Thursday (and of course, it did, all over the Lake District, with people being flooded out of their homes, and a phenomenal amount of work for the emergency and rescue services), but a dry (and even sunny) day on Friday meant that rivers had time to subside, flooded roads around Kendal cleared, and people got here and made it a sell-out festival.

A highlight for me was hearing Doug Scott's lecture on Saturday, and then meeting him yesterday. The Asgard Project premiere on Friday was also a great event, and unsurprisingly Alistair Lee won the People's Choice award for that film.

The other good thing that's happened this weekend is that we've been invited to submit LoF to Vancouver Mountain Film Festival, and Sheffield Adventure Film Festival. So there should be plenty more news to come!

Countdown to Kendal

Less than two weeks to go to Kendal Mountain Film Festival, and we're getting quite excited!

The screening schedule for "Lines of Flight" is as follows:
Friday 20th November, 9am and 1pm
Saturday 21st November, 9am and 5pm
Sunday 22nd November, 9am.

The master has gone off to the festival, we have our tickets and passes sorted out, so we're pretty much set to go. I haven't got any guest tickets left to allocate for our screenings, but if anyone is going to Kendal and would like to say hello, come and find us - I'll be there from Thursday to Sunday and Martin will be there from Friday.

If you're on Facebook, join the "Lines of Flight" group here, and check out further details about the festival here.

News update

Just a brief, but very exciting news update - "Lines of Flight" has been selected for the Kendal Mountain Film Festival, which will run from Thursday 19th - Sunday 22nd November, in Kendal in the Lake District. We're really thrilled by this news, as it's the first festival we've entered, so to get selected is a real vote of confidence in our work.

We'd still really appreciate any contributions to the Flight Fund, so please consider clicking on the button, or dropping an envelope of tenners onto my doormat (it happened!). We might even be able to add to the list of incentives for supporters, but even if we can't, we'll love you and thank you anyway.

Keep coming back for more news - hopefully this is us on a roll now.

Now it starts getting exciting ....

Latest update on Lines of Flight:
We finished filming a couple of weeks ago, and have now almost completed editing. We still have some work to do on the soundtrack, and some finessing to make the final film as good as it can be - it looks good now, the cinematography is great, and test audiences so far have enjoyed it, but with a few more touches it'll look great. And then we can start sending it out to festivals, and hopefully get selected and screened.

However, in order for that to happen, we need help. As always with short films, money is tight, and we've run out, having stretched our budget as far as it will go, and now we're running on goodwill and promises. If you'd like to help us by supporting us financially, please consider donating to "The Flight Fund", via the button to the right if you want to use Paypal, or just send me some money if you don't like the techno stuff! Every little helps, and there are rewards: everyone who donates £10 or more will be invited to a contributors' party and screening, and everyone who donates £20 or more will be invited to the party and get a copy of the DVD. More rewards will be announced as we go along.

I'll be updating the website with information and photos soon, and will keep posting news, so you'll always know what's happened to your "investment".

Thanks, angels!

A picture tells ...

In lieu of not posting much recently, the Lines of Flight photo album on Flickr is here

I think this is probably my favourite photo:

We got the soundtrack through from our composer, Robin Garside, this week, and it's fabulous. He's done a great job, and I'm looking forward to our editing day on Wednesday, when we can put music into the mix.

More news soon!

Almost there

Just spent a week entirely on the film, which has been great - knackering, but great. We had three days out on location Monday - Wednesday, and were well favoured by the weather, particulalry as THE crucial climb of the film was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, and we got sun.

We also got masses of really good footage for the industry/history segments, and a couple of good interviews:

Steve and his loom
Richard and our high tech approach to filming

Out on the moors.

Then the last two days, we've been in the edit suite putting all this stuff together - its been fairly intense, and hard work - we've got archive footage, stuff we've filmed ourselves, poems, interviews, sound tracks - some difficult choices to be made in terms of what stays and what goes, what works and what seemed like a good idea once but is now superfluous - in some ways they're the hard bits to handle, giving up on some segment that once we thought was really cool. But it's been completely brilliant - being a team of three, as Richard said when we were out in Saltaire on Wednesday, is a good size for a team - not unwieldy, and we click pretty well, and I think we all feel free to say what we think, which means that what goes in is thought through and agreed on. At least that how it feels to me - a really good collaborative project. Love it.

To finish the week, M and I went out to meet our music guy, sat in his studio while he played us a few tunes and we talked about how we thought music might fit - left there feeling very positive about the music.

Top week then.

Lines of Flight taster

It isn't perfect, but it gives you an idea of what we're up to:

The finished film, obv, will be moving images, not stills, and we'll have a lot more context and history stuff in there - but this at least gives you an idea of how we see images and poetry going together. Just pretend you can't hear the bit where Sam looks at me and says "good?"