Autumn 2002... I worked with a colleague of mine - Humphrey James of Satelitte Productions - on producing a handful of short films to showcase first time writers and directors... it's a program in its third year, called "Screen Gems"... a collaboration between Sgrin, The Film Council and HTV.

The purpose of Screen Gems is to give first time writers and directors a chance to have their work produced in a professional environment. Each year, ten scripts are selected along with ten directors. The ten filns are then split into two groups, one to be shot on 35mm, the other to be shot on video and then two production companies are selected to guide the directors thru the production process.

So, Humphrey and I put ourselves forward to produce the five on 35mm - I mean, who wants to make stuff on video - right?
Well, we got given the job of producing the video strand. But... not to be downhearted... we had a little talk and thought to ourselves, if we're gonna do somehting... let's try to do something that's never been done before. We tried to do something a little different over there, so through the kind patronage of Panavision, were able to shoot them all on 25p High Definition. We had Peter Thornton as our cinematographer - so we knew we were in good hands. (I'd previously worked with him on Alone and Up 'n' Under). The end results were going to be shown alongside the 35mm productions in a movie theatre at the Welsh International Film Festival - so we knew we'd have stiff competition - but our goal was to make our shorts indistinguishable (if not better quality) than those shot on the more traditional medium.


They were premiered at the Welsh International Film Festival in November 2002 and seemed to go down pretty well from what I heard.
If anyone was there... please drop me a line and let me know what you thought of them...

All 10 Screen Gems were broadcast on Welsh TV... hope some of you managed to get to see them.