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.

Happy New Year!

Well, holidays are over, and we're back in the office again.  I hope everyone had a good Christmas and new year, that you all got what you wanted and haven't broken your resolutions already.  

I've promised myself that I'll have something to share with you all soon - so watch this space!

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!

Process, or: writing is rewriting

Warning - slightly rambling train of thought follows.

Writing can be really easy sometimes, or really hard.  If I've got a specific idea in mind for how a scene goes, then sometimes it just flows out onto the page, and it works great.  Other times, it can drip, and no amount of coaxing helps.  Maybe I just have to accept that some days will go better than others.

One of the things that can make stuff harder, for me anyway, is characterisation.  When I'm writing a scene, I try to be in everyone's head, and have the whole conversation.  I tend to get very attached to all the characters, and that usually means that if I'm writing a stressful, depressing, or angry scene, the characters' emotions can get a bit overwhelming at times.  More than once, I've had to walk away for a cup of tea to try and calm myself down.

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.