A head in the clouds...

Promoting Ren at London Comic Con May 2015

2015-05-31T18:38:00.000+01:00

The other weekend I travelled to the Excel in London to visit Comic Con to represent Ren with some of the team. We had been invited onto a panel of New British Webseries at 1pm on the friday 22nd May.

It became quite eventful getting to the panel in time because by the time we traveled down, parked and got everyone dressed and then tried to find out where to go to actually get our wrist bands it was ten to one! Eventually we managed to get our bands and got to the panel in time.

Myself and costume designer Miriam Davies represented Ren, while Ren DoP Neil Oseman had a conflict of interest as he was there to represent another ambitious webseries he was DoP on, The First Musketeer. The other panelist was Chris Stone representing his new series Year of Spies. Susan E Clarke, who is herself the creator of a webseries called Chronicles of Syntax, helped moderate the panel.

While we were doing the panel Edward Morley (dressed as a prison guard), Tindi Lewis (dressed as a villager), Ivan Moy (dressed as the Kah'Nath Commander) and Robert Myles (dressed as a Kah'Nath Soldier) wondered around the Con dishing out flyers and showing the trailer to as many people as possible.

We had a great day and below is a video of our time there.

Check out the Ren blog for some more information about our trip www.rentheseries.com/ren-at-london-comic-con-video/

As an extra bonus I popped back to ComicCon on Sunday where I managed to watch Felicia Day's panel and then briefly speak to her about Ren and hand her some boar coins :-)

HobbitCon 2014

2014-04-21T16:18:00.000+01:00

Over the Easter weekend I was in Bonn Germany for HobbitCon 2014. I was there with Christopher Dane and although we did a bit of work promoting Ren we were mostly there to do some filming for Legendarium with Artist Jay Johnstone as the interviewer.

Here's the first video we produced from the event. Hope you like it. There are many more to come including a load of interviews with some of the special guests.

New Hobbit Production Diary

2013-11-06T23:19:00.001+00:00

As a filmmaker with a real respect for Peter Jackson and his work I love watching these behind the scenes videos almost more than the films themselves.

Post by Peter Jackson.

New Fantasy Webseries!

2013-07-23T18:24:00.002+01:00

I've launched my brand new fantasy production and I need you to help me spread the word.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mythica/ren-a-brand-new-epic-fantasy-series

When Kate's fan prequel to the Lord of the Rings, Born of Hope, was released in December 2009 it instantly raised the bar for fan film productions and was hailed as an accomplished and in every respect a worthy addition to Peter Jackson's trilogy.

Three years and 23 million online views later Kate is now planning to raise the bar for fantasy web series.

The new project is a web series called REN after its lead character, who lives a quiet life in a small village until dramatic events, involving an ancient powerful spirit and the ruling warrior order of the Kah'Nath, forces her to leave her safe existence and find the truth behind the web of lies she's believe in all her life.

The inspiration for the show is very much rooted in great fantasy stories like The Lord of the Rings, but epic books and TV series like Game of Thrones and the more lighthearted Legend of the Seeker have also influenced the creation of REN. One of the most important features of Born of Hope was the fan base that helped finance, design and even act in the film and we are keen to involve the fans even more in this project. The series is in the very early stages, with only the first season written, so we will look to the online fan community to influence what happens... and yes, even be in it!

www.rentheseries.com/

Portugal

2013-07-05T04:38:00.001+01:00

4am wake up call. I'm leaving the country again. Doing that a lot this year but this is probably the first truly relaxing holiday. Five days in the Portugal sunshine just chilling. I have my Game of Thrones book number 2 and hope to finally break the back of it. Having said that I have also brought my laptop so work is not far away and it's very tempting to get back to writing and tweaking the Ren episodes, and planning the live launch party.

Ok well I promise to take some sun and sea photos to make you all jealous, then I'll be back in the UK before you know it. :-)

Cannes Film Festival 2013

2013-05-20T12:25:00.000+01:00

Last night I arrived back in the UK after 5 days at the Cannes Film Festival. I hadn't been since 2010 and it was so great to be back! The weather did try to destroy our spirits with torrential rain for 3 of the days but when the sun did shine the place came alive.

The crazy edible chocolate cactus display at the Brazil party.

Baptism Spec Trailer Shoot

2013-04-08T12:43:00.000+01:00

So today I headed off to the Pump Museum in Walthamstow, North London. It was a cold day but unless we were on set most of us could take refuge in the warm cafe.

Today I was acting in a spec trailer for a film called Baptism. Based on a novel by Max Kinnings and produced by The Philm Company.

This was day 3 of the shoot and the set was a tube carriage. As the carriage was outside but needed to look like it was in a tunnel, a big black marque had been erected around it. The team could then add lights and smoke to create the effect that this one carriage was a whole train stuck in a tunnel.

I was there to play one of Hugh's group. The character of Hugh persuades myself and two others that we need to take back the train. As you can see from the photos below, it doesn't end well.

The four of us were rigged up with a squib each which is basically a blood sack and small explosive which could be triggered by the SFX guy sitting just off camera.

I've always wanted to try this although I had heard that they can hurt. We were all given ear plugs as the squibs can be quite loud. After a few rehearsals with no bangs we got ready for the real thing. There were a lot of nerves bubbling. We had to run a few steps, hit marks, react to being shot, fling ourselves back and slide down to the floor. We also only had one take so no messing up! On top of all this, would it hurt?

Before

Well as you can tell I'm still smiling so no, it didn't hurt at all. Scott the SFX guy did a great job.

After

I had such a great day on set and it's incredible what they managed to accomplish in just four days.

Here's the 3 minute spec trailer.

But if you want to see more then here is the whole 8 minute extended cut.

My Christmas Countdown

2012-12-05T13:29:00.000+00:00

I've set myself a challange. I'm releasing a video everyday until Christmas and possibly until the New Year if I can!

Here they are.

CRUSOE : An overview

2012-06-21T14:42:00.001+01:00

For anyone who doesn't know Crusoe was a TV series from 2008/2009 which only lasted one season, and having now bought it on DVD and watched 4 episodes so far I can see why.

If you haven't actually seen Crusoe then this will probably mean nothing to you. However I've decided I will review each episode as I am despairing while watching them and want to voice my thoughts in more than the odd tweet.

The implausibility of everything:
So we are meant to believe that Crusoe has been on the island for 6 years. This deserted and isolated island that he can't escape from. But then when the show starts the island seems to have a new boat arrive every other day.

Crusoe can build elaborate tree houses, juicers, hamster wheels to get him over a river but he can't build a simple boat. Oh no that's far too hard.

He also desperately wants a compass so was clearly never in the scouts to do the pin on a leaf in water thing.

He's desperate to go home to England when all his flash backs show a horrible place that I can see no reason to return to except for his wife and child who after 6 years have probably moved on. Oh I'm cynical.

To be continued...

Location! Location! Location Scouting

2012-04-02T02:17:00.016+01:00

Everywhere you look there's another great location

I can't speak for other filmmakers but for me I find that I'm almost always location scouting. Sometimes it's unconcious but often it's a very concious thing.

This month I've actually been doing it 'officially'. My good friend Emily came back from four months in USA, NZ and OZ and went straight up to the Peak District to be the Location Manager on a low budget feature film called The List. Well this film has a lot of locations and Emily was basically on her own and in need of help. So of course she gave me a call and suddenly I found myself up in Whaley Bridge near Manchester as her Location Assistant. I was only meant to be there for 2 days to help with the recce but ended up staying a week, plus I'm still helping by doing the daily movement orders. Anyway it's quite a story so maybe I should put it all in another post.

Emily Blickem, Locations

Shooting a Western in the East

2012-03-16T00:18:00.005+00:00

Cowboys bring the West to East Anglia.

Yesterday I was 1st AD on the short film called 'Rustlers' which a group of us had produced for the Reed Short film competition along with another short called 'Being Mr Abernathy'.

So at 5am the alarm went off and it was time to pack the car and head north to Horse Creek Farm, the home of Sovereign Quarter Horses. David and Sarah Deptford had very kindly agreed for us to not only film at their place but also to use three of their wonderful horses. David even played a starring role as one of the three cowboys.

So our day at the farm started at 7am getting the actors into costume and the horses too. We were outside all day and it wasn't the warmest even with thermals on. Now I've not done much 1st ADing, especially on a film with horses and with a mostly unknown crew so I was feeling the pressure a little, however a fair amount of prep had gone into this shoot which really helped.

I had spent some time doing photo storyboards which the DoP, David Hands took and added to with Michelle Golder the writer/director.

My storyboards on the left and David's on the right. I then created my shotlist for the day.

Robert Jezek as Bart (left) and Christopher Dane as Deke (right)

Losing a friend

2012-03-09T13:19:00.078+00:00

Why does it have to take a death to remind us to live?

Today I drove up to Norwich to attend the funeral of the wonderful Lucy Harvey. Last year Lucy was diagnosed with Cancer and last weekend, as too often is the case with Cancer, it took her away from us. She was still in her 30s.

I knew Lu from various film projects I've been involved with since 2007 and although I only really saw her on about 6 or 7 different occasions in those 5 years, the world is an emptier place without her. She had the ability to feel like your best friend in the first few minutes of meeting her.

The first time I met her was when she produced NFN or Normal for Norfolk. It was a kind of 'preditor' short film. Lots of guns, blood and a big green monster. Fantastic fun! :-)

Cast and Crew from NFN (Lu is wearing a green scalf and standing next to me)

The next film was Fracture in 2008. A week in Norwich filming a sci fi short with FX Home. Lu had only just joined the company and was an integral part of making this film happen.

The last film I did with Lu and FX Home was a couple of short scenes for their new software Hit Film. I got to be an evil Belatrix style witch and a silver terminator. Lu got me the great costume and helped to make the night shoot a fantastic experience.

Thank you for the great memories Lu, I will miss you. You will always remind me how precious life is and how I should live every moment of it.

Being Mr Abernathy

2012-03-04T11:52:00.010+00:00

It's always fun to play a quirky character and on the 3rd March 2012 I stuck on a mahogany wig, some round Harry Potter style glasses and a slightly higher voice pitch to play the role of Polly, the extremely efficiant and over protective secretary of Mr Abernathy.

Being Mr Abernathy is one of two short films which I'm helping to produce for the Reed Short Film Competition 2012.

This year's theme is 'The Boss' and after some brainstorming sessions we came up with two very different little films, "Being Mr Abernathy" - a quirky office set comedy, and "Rustlers" - a western.

In 2011 the theme was 'Monday' and we entered two films into Reed, 'Monday' and 'This is Susan'. Monday was a film that myself and Christopher Dane developed and were really pleased with the final film. In fact we were quite disappointed that it didn't get shortlisted. Especially as at least one shortlisted film had absolutely nothing to do with Monday and personally was only shortlisted because it had a 'named' actor wearing pants in it. Anyway, have a look at what you did last year and as soon as our 2012 films are done I will put them on this blog for you all to see.

It's snowing in Spain!

2012-02-23T17:17:00.074+00:00

On the 9th February 2012 I found myself in Camberforth, Selby in Yorkshire UK, there was snow on the ground and it was very VERY cold but myself and a bunch of other actors were all pretending we were in sunny spain.

Wait a minute I'm jumping ahead of myself though, let me go back a couple of days. A talented director friend Phil Hawkins gave me a call, he was due to shoot a set of idents for Bavaria Lager Shandy and the client had wanted to change a casting and suddenly I had a job, yeah!

So the day before the shoot I drove up from Cambridge, checked into the hotel and met a woman called Lisa who spray tanned me into a spanish glow.

I also got room service for the first time ever...

ok so it was a burger but it was still cool.

The next morning at 4am my alarm went off and it was time to get up, shower off the spray tan and head out into the cold. I'm pretty sure the day started in minus figures.

The location was a pool side bar in the garden of a large house. Luckily no one was required to actually go into the pool as some of it was still covered in ice! I did feel really sorry for everyone else because although I got to wear thermals and ugg boots under my costume, most of the others were in bikinis or shorts. They were all troupers.

So here are the finished idents. Enjoy!

"Give me a hug"

Little man trapped in the TV

Our director, Phil Hawkins

The crew

Not so sunny spain

Amazing cupcakes

Broadcast Video Expo and The Production Show

2012-02-18T00:22:00.000+00:00

This week I went along to the Broadcast Video Expo and The Production Show down in Earls Court London. It's a large event that takes place over 3 days from the 14-16 February, though I only attended one. The hall was filled with loads of stands and theatre space for talks and demonstrations. For anyone interested in cameras and lights and cranes etc it's a toy wonderland.

A model tries to hit ping pong balls falling from the ceiling for a slow motion camera

It was a very interesting place to walk around. Lots of expensive gadgets to look at. I love slow motion so enjoyed the displays for the Phantom and other slow mo cameras. As well as the stands there were talks going on every day and they were very popular, it was almost impossible to get a seat. I went along to 'Financing your feature and Cannes on a budget.' I found it very useful. I already knew some of it but it's always good to be reminded of things plus it helped me to focus on the goal of going to Cannes this year.

BoH 6 Million YouTube Views!

2012-01-23T00:54:00.000+00:00

It’s gone midnight and I was about to head off to bed but I thought I’d check on the BoH viewing figures on YouTube and we’ve hit 6 millon views which is amazing!

It’s fantastic to know that my film has been seen so many times. This year in particular has seen the viewing figures rise significantly which we just didn’t expect to see considering the film has been out for over two years now. I suppose people are getting more acustomed to watching content on their computer. It is even possible to connect the internet to stream via your HD TV so you can sit in comfort to view the film like any other DVD off your self. To all those viewers, old and new I send my thanks and I’m glad so many of you are enjoying it.

New Actors at Work website

2012-01-23T00:53:00.000+00:00

I have been designing and making my own websites for years. First with frontpage, then iweb and last year struggling though learning dreamweaver. With so many people using wordpress nowadays I decided it might be worth a look. I’m hoping that by getting a pre-designed site I can spend less time designing and building and more time on content which is sorely needed. So please check out the newest incarnation of my Actors at Work website. Brought to you by WordPress, elegant themes and of course me, Kate Madison. Enjoy. If you have any feedback to help me improve the site please send it via the contact form. Thank you.

Wasting my day on Youtube

2011-09-03T21:21:00.001+01:00

So I feel like I just spent most of my day watching Youtube. The sad thing is that this is very easily done. I'm easily distracted...oooh puppies...

I spent a lot of time trying to get my two main channels both linked to my Adsense. I finally managed after many hours reading help forums and watching tutorial videos. Eventially I managed to unlink my channel that was linked to a blocked adsense and relink it to the proper one. Sounds easy I know but believe me, it wasn't. I do find it odd that you need a seperate google account for each of your Youtube channels but you can only have one Adsense.

I even rediscovered a Youtube channel I set up back in March 2010 called KatemadisonTV which I'd totally forgotten about. It's badly in need of content.

So I decided to look into this as I am lucky enough to be a Youtube Partner and although I have some ads on some of my videos I have yet to see any, ££££ benefits :-)

So I started looking around at what people say about making money from Adsense and Youtube. I been subscribing to various Youtubers for a while now and am always thinking how cool it would be to be able to make a living from Vlogging but have yet to try it out.

I mean you can see some attempts on my Actorsatwork Channel like my vlogs from Cannes last year etc but my problem has always been to get the videos editted and out promptly and keep them interesting.

So the conclusions of the day are that I need to blog and vlog more. Oh and not get distracted and to get on with the rest of my stuff on my to do list. ;-)

Movie Budgets

2011-03-18T00:17:00.001+00:00

I just watched Tristan & Isolde plus the making of. They kept talking about the very small budget and how it was so hard to do anything with such a tiny budget. However no one actually stated the budget. After much googling some sources say it was $31 million.

Now I'm watching The Last Legion which is said to have had $67 million though I don't think it looks as good personally.

Anyway for my next feature I planned to try to find a "small" budget. By that I meant between £1-5 million. I managed to do 'Born of Hope' for only £25,000 with a lot of beg, borrow and stealing, however if low budget for a historical fantasy is about $31 million or £19.3 million then expect I must be nuts thinking we can make The Last Beacon for so little.
Ah well, never stopped me before ;-)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Showreels

2010-08-26T03:16:00.000+01:00

Any of you who are actors or filmmakers will have had to put together a showreel to show others what you can do in your chosen field. I have had one for a number of years now which I try to keep current and interesting, though unfortunately it's changed little in that time. I am currently looking at it again and wish to improve it which has reopened thoughts that many of you may be familiar with.

Very generally there are two types of showreel, for actors at least. One contains clips from short films, commercials, TV shows or features that the actor has been in. The other is created by a showreel company or similar. The actors may recreate a scene from a famous film or a stage show or even perform a monologue.

Now as far as I know the common thought is that the first version is the best. Clips from films you've actually been in show that someone has liked you in an audition enough to cast you and that you have been in a film that's made it all the way through to completion. It shows that you can actually do your job on a 'real' production and have worked with a director etc.

There are two problems with this. Firstly, the catch 22, you need to get work to get a showreel and you are more likely to get work with a good showreel. It's not impossible though so this is not a major problem. The other problem, and this may be controversial, many people make films, but many of them are pretty poor. Sorry but you know it's true. You may get a role in a short film, you most probably work for little more than some expenses, if you're lucky, but is it going to be good enough for your showreel? You may even find that the film is never edited and finished, or it is but you never receive a copy. The film is finished but the quality is very low, the shots are bad, you have no nice close ups, or the poor script has damaged your performance. My point really is that you could spend a lot of time, money and effort working on quite a number of short films for very little return.

NB. I do think working on shorts is extremely useful no matter what the quality as you can use them to practice your craft and work with new people. You never know where that short film director might go. However this discussion is about getting good footage for showreels.

I was going to add some showreel examples here but I'm questioning it now. I wanted to show you what I think are bad examples but now feel bad about highlighting people. This does bring me to the point that although showreels are invaluable tools, put together a bad one and you can kill your career before you've even started! I have thought someone was pretty good in an audition only to change my mind after watching their showreel.

So where am I going with this little rant. Well despite having been in this game for a number of years I think my showreel is quite limited. I have at least 3 or 4 short films shot over the last year or so that I have yet to see. I therefore find myself having an old debate.

Should I just write, shoot and edit some footage especially for my reel? I think the answer is yes.

I have clips from films I've been cast in so I've ticked that box but rather than wait around for new films, I will do my own. My plan is to intersperse my existing film clips with new original footage I create.

My other reason to do this is that this industry is so over populated and there is so much competition, you need to show a casting director what you can do. If you'd love to play a tough gangster chick but your showreels and headshot only shows a sweet girl next door, why would a casting director think to get you in for an audition? Show them you can do it and they might think of you when a job arrises. Also, why wait for someone else to stereotype you? If you want to do romantic comedies, then why not put some clips of you doing just that in your showreel.

Anyway, this blog entry is way too long. Just thought I'd put that out there. If you have thoughts please write in the comments. If I end up filming some stuff I'll keep you informed.

Let's do lunch

2010-08-06T16:41:00.001+01:00

So Wednesday was an interesting day. Chris Dane and I drove off to Brighton for a meeting with Michael from Spice Factory and Stealth Media. We had randomly had a meeting with Jason from Stealth when we were in Cannes and had obviously made a good impression. A couple of weeks ago Chris sent them a copy of the 1st draft of "Blood Traps" our supernatural period horror film and it turns out it rose above the usual crap their script reader has to go through. It then got passed around the team and they all liked it and wanted to meet.

So Chris and I drove down and went out for Lunch with Michael and chatted for what must have been about 3 hours or more about films and about Blood Traps. Now before this meeting, Blood Traps was written so that we could go out and make a film this year with about £20,000 we could scrap together, shoot it in Scotland and London and pass it off as Canada, act in it ourselves and hope to sell it in Cannes next year. However, over lunch we were suddenly talking about getting a Canadian Production Company on board to Co-produce, a known director, named actors and a budget of 1million or more.

All quite amazing and exciting if it actually happens, though it also means we are back to not having a project to film and act in this year. I wonder if we can write something new that we can film for about £20,000? Back to work :-)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Cannes Vlog Day 2

2010-07-21T19:11:00.000+01:00

So it's taken quite a while, new computers etc but finally here is Day 2 of the Cannes Vlog! The other days should follow very shortly.

Day 2, which was actually the first full day in Cannes, felt pretty full on. We did so much walking, some of which was pointless as you will see, which is always the case in Cannes. You need good shoes and even then it might not help. I hope you enjoy the video. More coming soon.

Standing In

2010-07-08T14:50:00.001+01:00

Today I'm on set as a stand in for camera tests for a new film called One Day. I'm standing in for Anne Hathaway and the film is being directed by Lone Scherfig the Danish director who did An Education.

This is my third day on the film. The first was at Angels, the costumiers being a human walking clothes dummie, trying on various potential costumes. The next was my first day on set as Anne's stand in. I met Anne and Lone who were both lovely and even spoke to them over lunch and they were asking about what I do and I was promoting Born of Hope to them. I wonder if they'll take a look?

So today was more of the same. A 7:30am call after I foolishly went to bed at about 3am because I'd made a pitch video for my Pirate Movie fundraising on IndieGoGo and wanted to get it up on YouTube and the indieGoGo site but it wasn't working for some reason. I finally gave up before it got light and I'd have had to go straight to work with no sleep at all! Two hours is ok right :-S

So in theory it's not going to be too late a day today. Which is good as I'm due to go watch a show tonight that an old drama school friend of Chris is in.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Networking

2010-07-03T18:47:00.000+01:00

I went to another networking event the other night. It was the Wrap Party for The Production Office Live, the internet show from Chris Jones and the team at Living Spirit. After 10 weekly shows they realised that they were spending more time organising the show and not actually making movies. That's the problem with social networking etc, it can take over if you're not careful.

Anyway, despite the Phoenix Room in London feeling like we were all in an oven, there was a nice amount of people there supporting Chris and the show and networking with each other. Networking is a funny thing. I don't consider myself very good at it and following up by contacting people from their business cards is something I'm especially bad at. My poor communication was actually highlighted to me when I got chatting to a screenwriter who, it turned out, had emailed me at least twice before and never recieved a reply. My problem is that I can often flag emails to follow up on rather than email straight back. Then what happens is I get more emails, more are flagged and they start to disappear off the bottom and some never get a reply. Crazy I know and I know I need to get better at this. I really do. I apologise if any of you have emailed me and never heard back. I need pestering I really do.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The Darkside?

2010-06-02T10:26:00.001+01:00

I have changed sides and I've been warned that once the line has been crossed I will never go back.

What am I talking about? PC vs Mac of course. Yes, after years of being a PC girl and laughing at all my Mac obsessed friends, I have decided that, with my old desktop PC on it's last legs, an iMac is what I'm gonna try next. After working on an iMac for most of the last year while editing BoH I've kind of gotten used to them. I think buying an iphone probably also contributed. They are easy to use, have a compact design and I was just starting to think that an iMac with Final Cut Pro might be the best way to go.

I hope I don't regret it. A friend built my PC computer and could probably do it again for less than the mac but I guess I'm a bit impatient to wait plus the iMac is basically just a big monitor with no huge box taking up space. I'm keeping one foot in to PC world though as I have a little PC laptop.

I only bought the iMac yesterday an it's still sitting in it's box in my room. I'm out working today but would rather be getting it out and having a play.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone