My name is Jonathan Entwistle. I'm a director who is interested in telling stories; real, simple, everyday stories. I want my films to reflect the people and places that I saw when I was growing up and all of the contrasts I have encountered since.
I have been commissioned through Film London’s Pulse scheme to make my short film project Mulligatawny. Thanks to everyone who has helped in the development process. Can’t wait to get started.
In brief, the film is about a 68 year old woman trapped in a world of racism and violence in Hackney. Her down and out husband returns after a 2 month bender and with him comes the usual tide of hatred – Hatred of everyone, everywhere and everything. His attitude mimics the world in which they all try to live.
I am currently half way through shooting The Good North in and around Rochdale and Oldham in the North of England. It’s been fantastic! Been working with the fantastic Jack Deam, Linzey Cocker & Zoe Iqbal. Next week, on to the interiors with Michelle Holmes and Diane Beck!
Using the 7D, it’s perfect for this project! Smaller chip size means it has a fantastic ‘cinema’ feel. To be honest, framing up feels like we are using 35mm again :-) Justin Brown is DoP, great to get to work with him on a short. It’s all going well! Can’t wait to finish and get down to cutting…
I’ve been working hard over the past few days on a skeleton script for the the quartet of shorts shot in the North of England. The idea is to workshop the scripts into 2 minute scenes that will interlink and form a 6 minute short.
The content is based on a few things – Each short is titled – these titles will be a words which I feel reflect not only elements of life there, but also form a dramatic representation of the shorts. The power will be in the choice of ‘slice’ that we take. The situation we choose to dramatise – in and out in 2 minutes then on to a contrasting yet wholly linked scene.
In many ways it will be similar to Cotton Stones. It will be more abstract in cinematic construction, but no less realistic in the situation. Grabbing quick story elements from the lives of a few people.
What I can say about the story is that it will be reflecting the recent localised right wing politics in the area. It has been brewing for many years there, but recently members of the ultra-right wing party; the BNP have taken legitimate seats at the European Elections last week. I’m hoping to represent the areas lack of willing to take this head on at a local, personal level.
I’ve got all sorts of projects on the go at the moment. I’m trying to make as much as I can. The most important thing for me is to keep working in a similar vein, but also be actively expanding my reel.
I am currently looking at doing 2 music videos, one short play, an ad/promo piece, a series of live music events and a Quartet of shorts set around Yorkshire. And it seems, through coincidence, that I’m using the Canon 5D2 for all of them!! Let’s just see how easy that will be!
I’m going to talk about the projects individually and post a few clips and photos. I think some of the projects are more to my tastes than others, but I’m looking forward to using the 5D2 properly now that Canon have fixed the Auto-Expose function. So far I have been very impressed. Going to be trying a bit of handheld and manual focus pulling and getting dirty with After Effects for the music promos and then I’m going to try and treat the 5D like a traditional ‘movie’ camera, if there is such a thing these days, for the drama shorts.
I’m a little worried that I might be spreading myself too thin with such diverse projects. My only hope is that I can maintain a level of artistic consistency throughout that will give all the work the right feel in relation to each other, so that as a reel, they work to show people my style, as I intended it to be.
There is some 5D test footage for the music promo here.
I have been overwhelmed by the response that Cotton Stones has been given by the Vimeo community! It has revitalised my thoughts on how to use the web as a platform for ‘theatrical’ content. I am so pleased to now feel like a part of the Vimeo world as well as some of the other online opportunities that have arisen since it was uploaded. I hope that I can give a little back and help other film-makers with this site where I plan to discuss my current practice in detail as well as film-making in a wider context.
I would love it if as many people as possible could subscribe to the Editopen RSS/Atom feed so you can keep up to date and join in the discussion! (also a link on the right hand side)
