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Fire Ants will have it's worldwide premiere at the renowned Flickers: Rhode Island International Film Festival between Aug 9th and 15th, this is it's 25th year and in that time RIIFF has become one of the best in the world for short films and had over 6800 submissions from 103 countries in 2021. It is both Oscar and Bafta qualifying and we couldn't wish for a better start to the Fire Ants festival journey.If you are around Rhode Island, pop along and support Fire Ants we believe that the fe...

Writer/Director Kat presents the filmWe were proud to present a full cinema screening of the short One Track Mind at the Curzon in Canterbury. A packed screening with cast, crew and special guests were the first to see the final OTM in this private showing.

Preparing for a shotWe’re fortunate in that as a production company we have what we need at hand during lockdown. In fact, in some ways, we relish the chance to try some new ideas and approaches.We're shooting this with our Red Epic as A cam and a sigma fp as a B cam. They do cut together surprisingly well - both being RAW and can be made to match fairly well on timelines if you're careful with dynamic range. (The Red is 2 to 3 stops higher in range than the sigma, yet the sigma is tiny and very...

Somewhere in Kent during lockdown, our family of four decided to make a short film to remember this time. However, what started as a small intimate project escalated into an international production involving over 100 youngsters from all over the world.CastingOur exterior shoot with minimal crew. Ersi slatingApart from our boys and our neighbours, the rest of the actors were auditioned and directed online.  I first approached Victoria Emslee (Downtown Abbey, Theory of Everything, Danish Gir...

Listen to Kat talk about her work on the BBC Sounds interview with Dominic King. This is the second time Kat has been interviewed and look forward to more updates in the future.The Dominic King show is a great proponent of the arts in the UK and it's an honour to be given a chance to talk about our creative work. It's available in the usual places where you can here BBC shows.Here's a link to the main website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p001d714‍

some text goes here for thisOne Track Mind has it's North American premiere at the well established Gold Coast International Film Festival. The GCIFF is an annual festival on the North Shore of Long Island with a roster of bold, dynamic films and talent.We were honoured that our short won a special Audience Award, it's always nice when the audiences vote for the films!In late January OTM was part of the official selection in the New Dehli International Film Festival.Keep an eye on the OTM f...

We were honoured by Caorle Film Festival 2018 when Marriage won 4 awards including Best Feature Film, Best Supporting Actress, Best VFX and Best Sound Editing. Caorle is often called Little Venice and is situated close to Venice on the mainland. It's a beautiful town with beautiful people and the festival was a wonderful event for all the film makers involved.

Since our last update we've been traveling the world supported Marriage at film festivals. From Thessaloniki to Jaipur, India to LA. The latest list of awards are:10th Jaipur Internation Film FestivalWon Japiur Critics Award, Best European Film, Best Original Screenplay, Best Sound Design and Editing and Best Actress. We were honored to be at the festival and can easily say that it was a wonderful experience with film lovers who truly believe in the power of film for social change.Mindfield Film...

One of the truly rare joys of being an indie is that when you view your cut and decide that you could do with one more scene or reaction shot there, you simply pick up the phone, pick up the right lights, get your kit out and dress your living room appropriately.This is what’s been happening the last few weekends – a routine we always knew would happen even before our main shoot.   It’s an ongoing job sculpting your film until you think it’s ready. We are 96% there, all we need is to shoot ...

As part of their ongoing series on Female Directors, Kat was interviewed by Sophie Duncan. To read the full interview take a look at the Rianne Pictures website riannepictures.com

As of 1st September 2017 we are very proud to be able to show that Marriage has won over 16 international awards (so far!). We reach out and thank those competitions that take the time to watch new dynamic indie drama.London Independent Film AwardsHonored Marriage with Best British Feature, Best Female Director, Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects and Best Editing.NYC Indie Film AwardsGave Marriage Best Feature, Best Director, Best Score, Best Cinematography, Best VFX and Best Actress.Indie...

A year has passed since we last updated and in that year the world has seen the escalating drama of the refugees right on their doorstep. The biggest displacement of human wave since WWII.When we set out to make the film, we knew we were making a reflection of the last 7 years and we tried to incorporate (in an allegorical way) what is going on in Europe and how Europe reacts to the major (and even minor) events that occur. We shot scenes that would enlarge the story and we managed with a lot of...

We have less than six months to cast the film, rehearse, find the space, build the set, arrange accommodation, import the right gear, lights, lenses and equipment, do tests, find a crew, coordinate everybody, rewrite scenes, sort out the money and draw up contracts. The jobs we would do between us would have been done in average-budget films by, wait !– - at least 50 people.On top of that both Paul and I had our day jobs.But we knew this was going to be an extraordinary year and that if we ever ...

Welcome to my first retrospective blog about Marriage. This all started for me back in April last year (2012) when a chance encounter via email started between Kat and I. I'm not one to blow my own trumpet but when I found out Kat and Paul were making a film I just had to approach them. They needed accomodation quotes and I wanted to be a part of this amazing opportunity. There are many things in life that you need balls for, so I had to strap a pair on.The reality of doing a low budget feature ...

Marriage was split over a few years but the bulk of the shoot was done in a 6 week block one winter in 2012. This is a documentary that was produced with behind the scenes and interviews. After this was shot work started on visual effects, editing and during that phase a number of other scenes were added away from the location here. This was always part of the plan - one of the main reasons we didn't hire cameras at the time but bought in what we needed. Notice at the time this was the shot...

This is such a simple but elegant idea that i'm kicking myself that I didn't come up with it! The AirBox light solves one of the more annoying issues with all those LED panels out there -- how to diffuse the light so it's actually soft. Without any form of diffusion the hundreds of little LEDs combine to produce fairly harsh light and ropey shadows. Most LED Panels allow for some diffusion to be attached to the front but it's a little too close to the panel itself and doesn't always produce that...

Today we feature a Guest Post from Photographer Matt Linehan.It was the first time I’d been on a film set and I was bundled into a small room filled with makeup bags and boxes, told to sit on the bed – it was a bedroom – and told seriously to be quiet as it was a closed set.I had no idea what anything was for or what anyone was doing but I presumed I needed to be quiet until told otherwise, so sat their fiddling with my camera anxiously.“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea” I thought to myself.[i...

The trailer took quite a few weeks to make. We wanted a trailer that would be aimed predominantly at industry people and would give away the concept while showing a brief synopsis of the film. If we want people to invest in it, to help us finish the film, they will want to know what it is all about. Consequently it is 2:45, which is slightly longer than most trailers but you can never tell. It's punchy, funny, dramatic and we are very proud of it. It shows the hard work from all the people behin...

It's a common dilemma. You need a graphics card for post production: do you go with a consumer/gaming card or a 'proper' workstation card?On paper at least, the specifications of the consumer cards are orders of magnitude better than the substantially more expensive Quadro based workstation cards. So in most cases the consumer cards seem like the sensible decision, however after going through several options i've been made to see things a little different.The general theory goes that the only di...

I bet you don’t get challenges like that in a studio films!!… Well, after that Herculian deed, I can happily say that the team’s bond stretched to the maximum but never broke, in fact it became stronger. Time against us meant we had no free seconds to argue, bicker, fight or be lazy. The unanimous collective was ‘let’s get it In the can’. Minimal compromises in the style of ‘ We’ll fix it in the post’ but again, vital when you’re on a roll.“Oh no”!!Of course we had our fair share of excitement a...

We knew we wanted some kind of decent dolly. We had a slider, which was a bit lightweight but useful for some moves but we needed something longer. We'd considered a floor dolly and in fact at one point we were hoping to get someone on board who also happened to have a Chapman but sadly for all sorts of reasons we were unable to get things to work out, also the floor of the location was only smooth-ish. It was polished concrete but with quite a few bumps and joins. Most importantly a lot of the ...

I have cast pretty much every production I have made in the past and I thoroughly enjoyed the process. I know exactly what I am looking for and in some way it’s more cost effective for someone in my circumstances to do the casting than hire anyone from the industry and brief them.My casting process is slightly different to most (or so the actors have told me). I usually advertise for actors to come down to Canterbury to audition. The ones that do are offered an hour in which they can demonstrate...

The challenge: to produce a feature with a micro (is there a sub micro level?) budget so that no one watching even knows that was ever an issue.In this day and age that kind of thing should be possible with a carefully chosen combination of kit and approach. I think one of the most important mantras is that everything needs to be proportionate to the budget. For example at one point the possibility of shooting on a Red Epic came up, however whilst the camera itself was achievable (and desirable)...

Welcome to the first post in the production blog for our feature film, Marriage. We will start posting retrospectively as we kept a diary during the preproduction and production, as you can imagine during these phases we had little or no spare time except to make scant notes and grab some stills and footage. Right now principle photography has been completed and we're in the post production phase, this gives us a chance to breath and also begin to post behind-the-scenes and thoughts on both the ...