Sigma Films

Well the video that Brian and I have been working on for the last five weeks is now finally finished.

It has been great fun to work on and the band were amazing, as were everyone else involved in the production.

Amazingly, it all seemed to go pretty much to plan bar a few hiccups.  The last few days in the edit were very tight, working till five in the morning every day in the last week but I'm pleased with the results.

There is already a version uploaded on Youtube but it is unfortunately in the wrong aspect ratio.  Below is the video in the correct aspect-ratio (2.35:1 for those who are interested in technical details.)

Sigma is in full flight at the moment.  As well as interesting rumblings about new projects things are in production, so all hands are to the pump night and day.

Rounding Up Donkeys is bowling along; now into gruelling night shoots and at the mercy of the seasonal Scottish climate.  However, spirits seemed un-dampened when I visited the set last night.

Tomorrow sees the first and only day of principal photography for the We Are The Physics video.  I'm looking forwards to it although the nerves are starting to jangle somewhat - sweaty palms.


There will be a 'making of' crew and stills photographer on the set so there should be some snippets of the goings on released shortly.  Probably the best place to look out for any news on this front is the labels site.  If you check out the 'making of' for Blood Red Shoes listen carefully to the sound at the start, I love it,

"That's the first time we've had one of them, fucking cool." 

I presume he's talking about the digi slate.  I have to say, I'm a little jealous, we don't have one of them.  Instead we have pilfered the old slate from Hallam Foe so it will be pressed into service again tomorrow.

I'm just going to take this moment to say a huge thanks to all that have helped so far with this job.  I will post a precise list with links to all the relevant places after the shoot but for the mo here''s an incomplete one:

Beth and Blair at Forest of Black
Nick Aiton (DP)
Donald Campbell (Gaffer)
Kara Ramsay (Designer)
Steph (Props hire)
Nicole Stafford (Make-up and Costume)
Nicola (Make-up trainee)
David Arthur (Editor and stills)
Aaron Bevan-Bailey (graphic artist)
Maria Noebauer (Model)
Kahleen Crawford (Casting)
Brian and Donald at Progressive Broadcast
Dom (Runner)

and anyone else who has helped us out with this shoot - many thanks, it's much appreciated.

The stills for the WATP video are coming on pretty well I think.

Here's a sneak preview.

Dave Arthur is going to be editing the video we're making for WATP.  It turns out he's also a bit of a dab hand with a stills camera so has come along to do some unit shots too.

Check out some more unit stills and the rest of Dave's photos on Flickr.

There will shortly be some of the images we are creating for the video posted but hopefully these will suffice in the meantime...

Music video

Band: We Are The Physics
Label: Fake DIY Records
Track: You Can Do Athletics
Director: Colin Kennedy
Producer: Brian Coffey

We had our first shoot day for the We Are The Physics video on Friday. 

Needless to say we encountered the usual problems with shooting in Scotland but our hectic schedule wasn't dented by the relentless gale force winds and accompanying driving rain. 

We had 12 locations in the bag by lunchtime.  Not bad going by any means.

Then things got a bit slower.  We returned to the studio to shoot stills of our fantastic model Maria Noebauer and had completely under-estimated just how long that was going to take.  An hour-and-half later and we had only finished the first scene.  The knock on effect of this was that it was midnight before we had finished shooting the band.

And this was just a stills day.  I have a funny feeling the day of the actual shoot may be a little longer than the average day on set...

Sigma Films started shooting Rounding Up Donkeys today.

It was very exciting to present on the set of the next Sigma film, to meet the cast and crew and generally hang out as everyone went about their business.  For some the process of making films is marginally less interesting than watching paint go through its proverbial motions, but for the keener eye it's a fascinating thing glimpsing the capture of all the tiny fragments for the jigsaw.

Please ignore this post, it's a tech thing for Technorati

Cheers

ck

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As most of you will know the DVD of Hallam Foe is here in the UK.  There has been some chat about the extras and various aspects of the film in the Imdb forums, feel free to say anything you want to the production team here and we'll endeavour to answer any of your questions as directly as possible.  This is probably going to be a better place to get some semblance of the truth rather than the generally spurious rumour mill that tends to be the info that comes from the chat rooms. 

Anyone who worked on the production will be clearly marked so you are in no doubt as to where the opinions come from.

Over the last few weeks I have been trying to inject a new lease of life into the Sigma Films blog.  This has been entirely behind the scenes and  wholly unsuccessful until now, finally I have some progress.  Incidentally, this site is by no means finished yet, it probably never will be, it's an ongoing work that will grow and take shape over time like any creative endeavour, so bear with me, things will get better.

Hallam Foe has moved overseas and has a new home, and a new name, Mister Foe (so grown up our baby!) in the U.S. with Magnolia Pictures (and elsewhere around the world) and it feels like the right time to start concentrating on things that are going on here.

There will still be the odd bit of news about Hallam and I will be republishing the podcasts so that they have a permanent home.  If you feel the need to visit him then all the stuff created over the last two years has been archived and is viewable here (a few teething troubles abound but we're working on it).  But, primarily, this site will be dedicated to all the other pies Sigma has its fingers in, so watch this space if you're interested in the machinations of film and television production or the work of Sigma Films.

There will also be other blogs springing up about specific productions.  First to hit the limelight are Rounding Up Donkeys and I Love Luci, a feature and a short respectively.

The beautiful nightmare continues...