The Local is live!

And with the push of a button, The Local is now live and viewable on YouTube!

As time goes on and views go up, we'll also be making some special features like the Soundtrack and Outtakes available, so Like the video and Share it with anyone who'll listen!

Enormous thanks are due again to everyone who was involved with the production, and to all of you who've watched, Liked and shared our films so far.

The Local - release date set!

Well, you've heard the name plenty by this point, and now it's almost time - we're proud to announce that The Local will be available publicly on YouTube this Friday, November 8th!

This is a project I'm very proud of - everyone who worked on it was fantastic, and we can't wait for you to see it!

We've put a (very) brief teaser up as a sneak peek, so please take a look, and as always, Like and Share as much as you can! Help us get the word out, and make sure as many people as possible come watch on Friday!

Need to Know: release schedule

Good news, everyone!  We're pleased to announce that Need to Know will begin "airing" on YouTube this Friday at 1pm (UK time), and there'll be a new episode at the same time every week, for the next six weeks.  You can subscribe to our YouTube channel for immediate notification when the series updates, and we'll also get the links up on this site ASAP after they go live.

We can't wait to hear what you think!

Trailer: Need to Know

Big News!  We've just released the teaser trailer for Need to Know into the wilds of YouTube!  It's 38 seconds of awesome, so go watch it, share it with everyone you know, and tell us what you think in the comments, or your social network of preference!

Editing continues on the series itself, so stay tuned for news on the first episode proper!

New Project: Need to Know

If you've been following us on Facebook or Twitter, then you'll already know that we've started on another project - this time a web series!  We spent two days shooting last week, and everything has now started being assembled for editing.

First up, we're going to try and get a teaser put together to let everyone know that Need to Know is coming, and hint at what to expect; after that, we'll be releasing each of the episodes into the wild on a regular basis (schedule to be determined - watch this space!).

We're really excited to let everyone see what we've put together, but for now I just want to thank our awesome DP, Mat Cooper, our excellent cast, Vincent Jerome & Amy Matts, and everyone else who had a hand in making sure the shoot ran smoothly!

New Short: Time For Regret

Well, the shortlist for the 24 Hour Film Race has been published, and unfortunately Ninchilla Films' entry didn't make the cut.  I'm still really proud of what we managed to accomplish in the timeframe, though (especially considering there were only three of us!), so Time For Regret has now been made public on YouTube!

Work continues on our next project, too, so look out for more updates in the coming weeks!

Long Time No Etc.

It's been a while since our last update, but that doesn't mean nothing's been happening!  In the weeks since finishing up The Local, we've submitted the film to several festivals, and are waiting to hear word back.  Who knows?  Maybe when you finally see it, it'll be on the big screen!

We also took part in this year's 24-hour Film Race, which involved writing, shooting, editing and scoring a three-and-a-half minute film in under 24 hours.  At 3am local time, they provided us with a theme (Time Travel), a prop (an egg), and an action (crumpling a piece of paper) to base the film around, and we got our entry, Time for Regret, submitted with moments to spare!

Writing and planning also continues on future projects, which we'll share with you as soon as possible!

Thanks for following our progress - we hope you like what we've done so far, and what we do in future!

The Local update #5 - COMPLETE!

Long time no update, but NEWS FLASH: the epicture is cut, the sound is mixed, and the colour is graded - The Local is finished!

Discs and covers have been printed (and looking awesome!), so the first festival submissions are getting under way.

I'd just like to once again thank our great cast (Kevin Keenan, Martin McCann, and Justin Davis), our DP Paul Christie, Jennifer Bowman for makeup, and an additional hooray to Chris Packman for the quick turnaround on colour grading.

There's no plan yet for a YouTube appearance, but we will get it released into the wild at some point - until then, watch this space for further updates!

The Local update #3 - The Shoot

No updates in a while, I know, but today's the day!  We're heading down to the first location soon, to meet up with the great cast & crew we've assembled, and make a (short) movie!  This is just a brief note for now, but we'll try and have some more updates through the day on Twitter, and a proper report tomorrow.

The Local update #2

This one's turning out to be a little bit bigger than I expected when I first wrote it.  Survival was shot on a Handycam with a shoestring budget and a cast & crew of volunteers, but The Local is shaping up to be up in the lofty realms of micro-budget, and we're looking at hiring just about everything - cast, crew, and equipment.

This week, we've hired a camera to shoot some tests and get to know some higher-end gear.  Next week: MEETINGS, and an educational trip to London.

The end result of all this effort will be a film about half the length of Survival, but that'll look as good as anything else that's out there, and the extra experience we're getting will help a lot with tackling the bigger projects on the horizon.

Casting call: The Local

-- Casting is now COMPLETE --

Help us get the word out!

We're looking for 3 actors to play the leads in The Local, which we're aiming to shoot in Northern Ireland in late February/early March.

All characters are male, and in their late 20s or early 30s.  The nationalities mentioned are an ideal, not a requirement.

DAVE:

Irish, medium build, average-looking; the sort of guy who wouldn't get noticed in a room on his own, never mind in a crowd. Worries easily, and tends to overthink things.

BRICK:

Scottish, fairly tall, big build. Short or shaved hair. He takes nothing too seriously - especially not his friends - and has a fondness for action movies.

ALFIE:

English, tall, thin, smartly dressed. Alfie considers himself the intellectual of the group, and he probably is.

A couple of updates

While we spent the last few days writing, shooting, and editing Santa Charles the Christmas Dog, we also saw Survival break 500 views!  

I just want to say thanks to everyone who's shown us their support, and ask you all to please keep sharing Survival and Charles with anyone you think might enjoy them!

Oh, one other thing - if anyone has any ideas for extra features they'd like to see for what we've done so far, or future projects, then please leave a comment here, write on our Facebook page, or tweet us @Ninchilla.

Merry Christmas from Ninchilla Films

Don't say we never get you anything.

ANNOUNCEMENT: The Local

Major announcement time - the next Ninchilla Films production will be a short, not-very-serious sci-fi film called "The Local".

Confession: I'm never sure how much to make public about upcoming projects.  It's a bit of a dilemma, I suppose; loving what we're doing and wanting to tell everyone, vs. wanting to wait until everything's ready.  As I get a little more ambitious with the writing, though (and I suspect this will apply to all our projects going forward), we're probably going to need some help.

Before too long (hopefully), we'll move from pre-production into production - the script is in good shape, and we're almost ready to start looking at locations, gear hire, and casting.

As I mentioned, we'll need some help - we've got three main parts to cast, and will need a few extras, too - so if you know anyone that might be interested, point them in this direction!

Project updates

There's been a lot of writing going on these parts lately - as mentioned on Twitter, a sudden unexpected bolt of inspiration hit earlier in the week, and as a result I have first drafts for not one but two new projects sitting on the desk in front of me!

One is the non-genre drama mentioned in the previous update, which has been in the works for a couple of weeks now - it's been pretty tough to break down and write, so the next stage is to get some more eyes on it and see if it's done what I wanted it to do.

The second is a new short that I bashed out over the past couple of days - a slightly odder concept (being, as it is, vaguely sci-fi), but possibly a more straightforward shoot.

So, next week may well see Ninchilla Films back on a pre-production footing, trying to rustle up some locations and cast.  Fingers are well-crossed, and with any luck we'll have more to show you soon - in the meantime, keep sharing Survival (now at 375 views)!

A Slight Change of Plans

Initially, the idea was to follow Survival immediately with a much larger project - possibly a full feature.  However, as I've put (a lot of) work into the plotting, planning, and scheduling of that film, it's become pretty clear that I might be trying to bite off more than I can chew with that one - at the moment.  So the bad news is that our Big Sci-Fi Extravaganza™ will unfortunately have to wait a little longer.

Instead of the feature, then, I'm working on another short.  It's still early days yet, but I'm confident that broadening our portfolio and gaining more experience will give us a better shot at making our feature debut as good as I want it to be.

This post is vaguer than I'd like it to be, but I'll tell you everything I can as soon as possible.  In the meantime, thanks for reading my ramblings, and watching my movies!

Site cleanup

I've spent some time today tidying up the Projects area of the site, so that the links there now lead to individual pages for each movie, which will link to the video, as well as any extras that we've produced - this will keep everything together, rather than only having a link to stuff like the Survival outtakes video in the blog post announcing it.

If there's anything else that you'd like to see, just post a comment either on the blog, or the project pages themselves, and we'll see what we can do.

Work's also continuing on the next movie - the script is finished, and storyboarding is underway, among other things - and I continue to be both excited and terrified by the potential scale of this thing - not long now, and hopefully we'll have some announcements to make.

Survival - outtakes!

In ongoing promotion efforts, I'm working on expanding the amount of material that's available on the film - starting today with a selection of outtakes!

Obviously this is just a small sample (there are 11 takes of Eric's fall!), but I think it gets across some of the fun we had over the three days shooting Survival in Hartshill Hayes and Nuneaton.

Survival vs Charles

In only week and five days after it went live, Survival has now surpassed our first release, Charles the Grammar Dog, in the number of views on YouTube!  The stats now stand at 217 views for Survival to Charles' 205 - so not a big lead, but I'm really impressed at the attention we've got.

Please, keep sharing Survival as much as you can, and let everyone you talk to know where to download Thomas' awesome soundtrack.

Preproduction work is continuing on the next film, and hopefully we'll have some more news to share soon!

Survival OST!

Survival's been out for a couple of days now, and we've had some great feedback.  I hope everyone who's watched it is as impressed with Thomas' music as I am - and for those of you who want to hear it a little clearer, you can download the soundtrack for free right now!

Survival OST (11.2 MB, MP3)

Work starts properly on the next project now - more updates on that soon!