Skeletons

I've always been a huge movie fan, and I've always been fascinated by the film-making process. I never rent a DVD without watching the special features. I love reading interviews with my favourite directors, and I'll often rewatch movies with the commentary on as I work on props or other such things. I never really thought about making my own movies until I saw The House Of The Devil. I've warbled and raved extensively about this film before, but for whatever reason, it really struck a chord with me. I made a few (very) short films since then, mostly just shot by myself on one night. And I found that I liked doing it quite a lot.

Over the past while, I've been working on making a 'proper' short film. I wrote a script, drew out a storyboard, built props and makeshift camera dollies, and convinced my dad to play the lead (and only) role. We worked till late many nights - it's worth noting that it's summer over here, which doesn't help when you have to film everything after dark (a quick shout-out to my mother and sister, who'd let us kick them out of the living room nearly every night for filming). After many, many hours of filming, re-filming and re-re-re-filming, we finally finished. I've spent the last week or so writing and composing music for it. When I say writing, I mean poking at the piano keys until something nice came out, and when I say composing I mean putting my sister's laptop on top of the piano and recording from the tiny in-built microphone straight into iMovie. Overall, it's been a fantastic and fun experience, albeit with an enormous amount of help from my dad, who happily and enthusiastically complied with my stupid perfectionism, proved to be quite knowledgeable about film-making and let me advertise him as a remorseful child murderer on the internet.

I'm thrilled to announce the beginning of my (very) amateur 'production company' Geisterbahn Pictures, and to debut my first film - Skeletons. It's set on the night before Halloween, and revolves around a reclusive haunter who gets a late-night visit from what appears to be a trick-or-treater.

Get yourself comfortable, put on some headphones and enjoy...