TEASER

Only 67 hours to go on Indiegogo! Thanks to all our contributors so far.

Thanks to our recent contributors: Allie Phoenix Darko, Jack Fitzsimon, Laura Kerr, Claire Dignam, Ruth Murphy, Nigel Fitzgerald, Anna Carrick, Theresa Norman, Maddy Fitzsimon, Michelle Craig, Kip Fitzsimon, Julit Cairns, Michelle Westgate, Ty Batterman and Lyma Tempone. So far we have raised $7,475 of our $19,525 budget. Everyone’s support is greatly appreciated and thanks for your belief in the film. We still have plenty more tickets and packages to sell though, so spread the word. Let’s see where we can get to in these last hours!

http://www.indiegogo.com/Flotsam-Jetsam-1

Sam

Only 6 days left to raise our budget!

Thanks to our recent contributors: Jose and Isabelle Sousa, Damien Ryan, Kiowa Craig, Peter Teys, Jo Rawlings, Kirsten Young, Karen Hunter, Jon Keats, Kerrie la Berry and Jules Olsen. Your support is greatly appreciated! C’mon everyone there is only 6 days left to get tickets we’ve got 44 funders so far, but let’s pack the cinema!
http://igg.me/p/30060?a=158222​&i=shlk

Only 7 days to go to raise funds on Indiegogo!

Hi guys so far we have raised $4550 of our $19525 budget on indiegogo. However, with only 32 funders so far that’s not much of an audience for our premiere screening! If you would like to buy tickets ($30 each) hurry to the link below as there is only 7 days left to contribute.

http://www.indiegogo.com/Flotsam-Jetsam-1

Thanks to our recent contributors: Gavin Scope, Benjamin Carey, Richard Hopson, Georgina Kennedy, Amanda Tarrant, Duncan Lovelee, Bridgette Collie, Constable Vaughan and Kate Taylor. We really appreciate all the support.

-Sam

Screen Test. Richard Green & Kiowa Craig

Here is the screen test we shot last week in Waterloo that Banjo mentioned in the last post. Hope you enjoy it and thanks to our crew: Martin Jago (2nd camera), Peter Teys (Sound) and Christian Tancred (Production manager & extra thug in scene!). Lucky we got the scene before the residents got jack of us.
Sam

screen tests

On thursday night we hit the street to shoot some screen tests with Michael Gupta, Sean Barker, Kiowa Craig and Richard Green.  It was a fun night, we were only stopped twice by the police and were told “hold on to your camera’s boys.. this is waterloo after all”. Just had a quick look at a rough edit by Roman Mongin… it’s looking good, looking forward to sharing it with you soon!

Dreams can and will come true

Many years ago Banjo and I sat in the Robin Hood hotel in Orange sharing a quiet beer. We had both been experimenting with digital production and knew we existed on the cusp of the digital revolution.After a fairly beer fogged conversation, we committed to one and other to take the skills we were fast acquiring and sidestep the establishment and make the bloody film ourselves…………Several years later after collaborating with Banjo and his ‘dream boat’ Cousin, Sam Phibbs, on many short films, on-line ads, working in art department in the film and television industry and many more beer fogged conversations, Banjo had finished his 7th draft of ‘Flotsam Jetsam’.

So then we drew together friends, colleagues and family in support of this production and it started becoming a reality. Then one night completely out of the blue we met Richard Green. We told Richard about our project and he told us to send a script. Then to our joyful surprise Richard came back to us and said he like the script and was in.

So now after years of conversations, planning, dreaming and hard work, mostly by Banjo and Sam, we find ourselves shooting test footage with Richard and a white hot crew outside the flats in Waterloo. Working with Richard is amazing. He is like having a mentor, leader and powerful spirit that gives us strength and a boldness to make the bloody film ourselves.

So if you ever had a dream to make a feature and you are a digital native, why not give it a crack. You need to commit and believe and don’t be afraid to ask the question – you might just get the answer you want! We have a lot of work ahead but we now believe in the dream that began so many years ago at the good old Robin Hood in sunny Orange.

Love Christo

Link

After a lot of hunting and deliberation, we are very lucky to have Matthew Scott from Melbourne on board for the shoot. If you have never heard this name before maybe you have heard of his company MTS films or have seen his stuff on vimeo where he is probably most famous for the video above.

We feel very lucky to have Matt on board as he is such a talented director of photography and his camera operating skills are excellent.

-Sam

Thanks to all our contributors so far!!

Hi all I just wanted to send out a thanks to all our contributors so far.

In no particular order thanks to: natalie sousa, Esther Fitzsimon, Jessie Phibbs, james.daly, Emma Wingad, kthrntidy, contribute1308276453, gavin-chan, BR Fadden, iamadrianamos, mahajago, Daniel J Mulvihill, Jane GAvel, Serena Sharp, Fiona Callanan, Trevor Payne and some people who wish to remain anonymous ( you know who you are).

Thanks to everyone so far we have raised around a fifth of our budget target. Your help is really appreciated and thanks for your belief in our project.

 

A bit of background

I thought I would include my first post that we had on our old blog, might be of interest to someone…….no one!

“So I am a self confessed geek and I love keeping track of my favorite bloggers online, but this is my first blog. I am actually looking forward to becoming more proactive with social media, I might even start tweeting! ( I am on twitter all the time, but never tweet.)
I think that I am going to get the first blog up on this site and beat Banj, as he is still riding his bike home. ( I am not counting the “Fish Tank” recommendation. A bit of rivalry is good and I think it will push us to keep blogging and hopefully keep people in the loop over the course of the film’s life span.
So I am going to be DOP on the film, so you will probably see a lot of tech discussed in my blogs, so if that is not your thing just read Banj’s posts.

At the moment we are in preproduction so I am doing a lot of research into camera systems and lighting for the film. What we know is that we are aiming to shoot handheld with 2 cameras with an aim to do as much practical lighting or prerigging locations so that we can shoot fast as we will probably have a very compressed shooting schedule for the film. We will be shooting digitally as that is what we know, and we have been doing camera tests for the last couple of months that we will be evaluating on a cinema screen soon. Banj and I are both looking forward to the results and it will hopefully show us what works and what doesn’t.
I have also been watching a heap of films trying to get some references for what I want the film to look like, not really sure if we have settled on anything concrete, but we both definitely like the style of “Half Nelson”. Other films that I have bookmarked are Ballast, Lilya 4 Ever, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Show Me Love, Fish Tank and I am having a mental blank…

Anyway as time goes on I will keep you up to date with things that we are doing how the tests are going, what locations are looking like( we need to find them first!), how the lights I am building are going etc etc and basically what is the flavour of the month.

– Sam”

Update: A lot has happened since this post, but to keep it geeky I will say that we have settled on using 2 Canon 5d MK II’s to shoot the film after seeing tests projected digitally onto a 40 foot cinema screen. The verdict: we were blown away with how good it looked and the projectionist even commented that it looked sharper than the Harry Potter film they were screening at the time. – Sam