The Road Ahead

February 2024

This Month

The Sussex Film Office, The David Cross band, Devious,
Super Charly & Blender.

Welcome to February 2024 and we find ourselves in the thick of creative endeavours.

Super Charly continues to take shape as the script goes through another draft (some fundamental tweaks which I can’t believe I didn’t think of to assist the narrative flow of the story).

Devious, episode 5 is taking shape with David and Ashley lost in a sea of CGI and Stephen creating the sound-scape with my good self cleaning the audio and creating music.

Even though I’d love to create the score from scratch I am still, ‘early days’, into learning music properly. With this, I turn to the ever faithful and wonderful music programme, Sonic. Our go to software which has been fantastic in aiding us produce music scores for our projects, ever since The Never Was (The Doctor Who fan fiction project, which is the spin off from Devious) which was now over ten years ago! I can’t believe it’s been that long. Mentioning the passage of time, this year will be the twentieth anniversary of my first feature film’s, Griffin, public showing. Gosh! That was a scary time. The Producer, Gary Downie, and myself walking down the red carpet at a Spanish film festival and our little movie sandwiched between Lost In Translation and other Hollywood blockbusters.

I have been using Blender instead of After Effects to composite my green screen visuals. I have found Blender to be an invaluable tool and even if you have no interest in CGI animation Blender can do a lot more. On the editing front it is like the early versions of DaVinci Resolve, but like that programme, being node based as well, I can see this side of blender growing; even to the point that, Like resolve, It becomes the go to, all in one post-production software for those producing projects without a Hollywood budget.

I cannot recommend Blender enough. It is open source and it has an excellent community and their are loads of, ‘How to,’ videos on You Tube. So if you haven’t checked out Blender, please do.

The Sussex Film Office

Putting Sussex in the Spotlight

My dear friends at the Sussex Film Office have launched a new initiative.
The Sussex Film Office provides a complete film support package for anyone filming within the area. From finding locations, providing crew and providing the correct permits required, they offer a complete wrap around service.
Since 2016 the Sussex Film Office has supported 5500 productions. From micro budget production to major television and cinema productions.
Their latest venture is a Funding Hub, bringing potential productions and investors together.
To find out more click on the Sussex Film Office logo and it will take you to their website.

The David Cross Band

Episode 5

The 30 year plus love letter fan fiction that is Devious trundles on with episode 5 (Only one more to go after this!) With my dear Chums Ashley, David & Stephen, we find the time between our lives, other projects and stuff, to get this beast completed before we grow too old (Some may say, "To late.") And we are slowly getting there. We are trying to complete this episode in time for the April Doctor Who convention, where this will make up some of the evening, after party's entertainment. Wish us luck.
Ashley (Who is a web designer by trade) has always kept the Devious website up to date and there is a wealth of historical stuff were he has chronicled the whole history of this project and it's relevant off shots; like the Never Was and two stage plays.
To find out more please click on the Devious logo and you'll be taken on a whistle stop tour of the world of Doctor Who fan fiction and Devious.