Welcome to our Showreel, showcasing several of our recent film projects...
Romance and the Telescope began life as one of our stage movies - a series of short clips intended to sit behind the performer as part of a bigger performance. We liked the imagery so much that we decided to build on the ide. Over the next couple of weeks, we added a few more concepts to the storyboard and, like topsy, it just grew. A rough story then emerged, which was then developed and refined into what you see now.
We're quite proud of Romance. It's our first movie with a proper story. We hope you enjoy it too.
Added 20-Nov-17 by Admin
The Hoppings is the largest travelling fun fair in Europe, which takes place annually on Newcastle's ancient Town Moor.
We used a collection of found footage left over from a previous shoot and added our own sound track, The Art of Falling by SkinMechanix
.This short film was used by the Newcastle Evening Chronicle as part of their promotional strategy for the event. Launched on 23rd June 2017, the video was seen by a staggering 11000 people in one night.
Mandorla, a film by Roberto Miller, explores a man's search for a meaningful life despite conflicts between his inner and outer worlds. Ernesto is a visual artist and seeker stuck in a corporate job, who is drawn by dark magical visions to a medieval French city. There he seeks an elusive banker to help him unlock an obscure dream that threatens his job, family, and sanity.
Logoscape was the second track on Ion's 2007 album Future Forever. A three-minute filler, Logoscape formed a bridge between the bright and optimistic opening title track with the sombre and more downbeat Minerva. It took a matter of minutes to compose. Probably not even that. And yet here it is promoting a major independent movie, which was backed by some of the best known producers in Hollywood. It even found itself in the sound studios over at Industrial Light and Magic, smoothed and caressed by none other than Oscar Winner, Randy Thom.
Pinch me. I'm still dreaming.
Added 13-Jul-17 by Admin
A promo film for SkinMechanix, Zyra's Song was an experiment in CGI animation combined with live action.
The brief went something like this : "Easy going. Arty but without being pretentious."
We created software to overlay persistent particle trails over a collection of stills, merging these sections with footage from an outdoor shoot at the local nature reserve.
SkinMechanix were delighted with the end result, which has been shown as a backdrop at many of their recent concerts.
Caution: There is some minor tasteful nudity in this movie...
Produced for ambient electronica double-act Thorpe Cloud, the brief was as simple as it was complex - "Concert visuals of around fifty minutes duration, like walking around an abandoned spaceship."
With limited time and no budget, we were stuck for a solution until we accidentally stumbled across the perfect set in the virtual world, Second Life, which fitted the brief exactly.
To capture each scene, we used a simple off-the-shelf screen scraper, uShowMe, saving each sequence to disc as a QuickTime Movie file. These were then assembled using iMovie. Quick 'n' dirty works every time.
However, the greatest challenge wasn't so much technical. Sourcing more than fifty minutes of footage so that we could hit the required duration proved quite difficult. We succeeded by capturing the same scene from several different angles and by adding in other locations with similar themes from elsewhere in Second Life. We were incredibly grateful to those residents of Second Life who created this amazing space. Alas, the entire island disappeared without trace a matter of weeks later so we were very lucky to find it when we did.
With the performance out of the way, we felt that it would be a shame if the film was never shown again. Hence, we reviewed the movie and then added our own soundtrack with the goal of creating something dark and mysterious, spooky but without falling into the usual horror movie cliches.
This brief three minute edit was assembled for the students of the second year Sound Design course at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne.
Added 13-Jul-17 by Admin