Lee Kemp

By that I mean, I want to be like Clint Eastwood, not Dirty Harry Callahan. It’s easy to mix the two up.

Not this guy

As a director he’s well known for being softly spoken, extremely organised and very, very fast. If you draw a line back to the beginning of his career to the nascent TV industry and low-budget exploitation movies you can see where he gets it from. Revenge of the Creature and Tarantula anyone? Budgets are low and deadlines are tight.

He’s been directing movies for nearly 40 years. It must be relatively easy to control a set when you’ve been the biggest star in the world and I’m sure he has a deadly glance that will stop a young arsehole in his tracks. But credit where it’s due. Getting images on the screen that look great, make sense and draw you in is no mean trick. It takes preparation, dedication and a love of the job.

Who wouldn’t want to be like this guy?

This Guy

On Tuesday when we start shooting, I hope that even the colleagues that know me well will be surprised by just how fucking prepared I am.

So I’m preparing and planning like crazy.

We’ve got a big shoot starting next week. My producer Rachel has been sorting all the dull logistical kind of stuff. Shooting in London is strangely much harder than shooting in Dorset. Between the Metropolitan Police Film Unit, Transport for London, borough Film services, hotels, convoys, restrictions of ten hour days and the sudden requirement to double our public liabililty insurance  it seems there’s a lot to do with this film stuff. We’ve got assistance from the British Army providing soldiers and equipment (and repeatedly offering to get weapons). Finally, because of our great relationship with Phil Baxter of Creative Video we’re being given the use of a  Sony PDW-700 XDCam to test out for the shoot. Phil Wood is coming along to assist our DP Ed Moore so we’ll have two Canon XL-H1s to play with as well. I don’t think coverage is going to be an issue.

We’ve even got a great pro car photographer called David Shepherd coming along to capture the Armoured Land Rover Discovery in all its 3.5 tonne, 110mph glory. I used to do a job where we had two vehicles to cut about in, one was a Discovery and the other was, somewhat strangely, a Montego. They had the respective nicknames of the Beast and the Skip. This new Discovery definitely deserves the name, and then some.

Mainly i’ve been planning the shot list; working out how to get the most out of our extremely limited time. I wrote the script, planned the shot list and drafted the schedule so I should know it all inside out by now but I’m still convinced there’s more I could be doing. That means I probably won’t be great company this weekend but I plan to be very prepared. Piss poor performance does no-one any favours.

I’m really excited but also a little bit nervous. I think i’ve done everything I need to do to make an adequate film, but whoever got up in the morning and said “I want to be adequate”. More yet!

Elsewhere, two Royal Marines got the good news in Afghanistan today and Indian hotels are still burning. Spare a thought for the families. My best mate Nick flew to Iraq last week leaving behind his new born son Matthew. So if you have some thoughts and prayers to spare, send some his way too.

I think its time for a beer.

I’m not a big fan of smart cars. There’s nothing actually wrong with them, I just couldn’t see myself driving one for the amount of driving I have to do. In fact even if I lived in London, or Tokyo or Ridley Scott’s LA of 2019, I couldn’t see myself driving one.

Until now. These bodykits are awesome to the point of ridiculous, or vice versa.

I defy you not to look at these and grin like a maniac. I’ve posted two of my favourites but please do go check out the original post for all seven over at Gizmag.

I’ve been watching The Empire Strikes Back this afternoon. Apart from being a bit icky where Luke gets off with his sister it’s pretty awesome. So I thought I’d take the opportuniy to post three of my favorite Star Wars inspired videos off youtube.

Technology is ace. I love it. Check this out from from Crunchgear. US Army scientists, so often the bad guys just because they spend their time working out more efficient ways of wiping out civilisations, have come up with nanofibre technology that means missing limbs and damaged organs can be regrown.

One guy re-grew a fingertip, bone nail and all, that he’d lost in a freak model aeroplane accident. (Not sure what was so freak about it, he probably stuck his finger in something sharp and fast moving)*. And apparently a little girl grew a foo foo she never had in the first place!

Perhaps not the head he wanted

This is so awesome I almost don’t quite believe it. The full story’s here.

*what constitutes a freak accident, as opposed to a run of the mill accident?

These are draft, unvarnished thoughts and may well get amended when I have more time.

My favourite thing of recent times (apart from Jason Wingrove’s website) is the Barclaycard Waterslide Ad.  The ad itself is superb and the making of is a great insight, especially because they did a lot of it practically and practical effects are my new favourite thing second only shooting everything from the floor. (Michel Gondry does a great line in practical effects, so definitely worth watching Eternal Sunshine again).

But the first spoof has been has been made by Specsavers and i’m ambivalent about it. Its funny, it fits with their brand, but a spoof is always, always a cheap shot and it’s riding on the back of very well-deserved success.

The Scary Movie series is a production line of cheap shots, in fact they’re probably the only films are exempt from the cardinal rule of film criticism; though shalt not slate films you haven’t seen. I’ve seen the first one and though I laughed, I take against the series in principle. If that makes no sense or defies your own rules then sorry, but this is my soapbox, deal with it. It’s symptomatic of the business imperative of the film industry and you can’t really rail against it. So the only thing you can do is not go watch them.

I showed Airplane! to my girlfriend’s 13 year old niece recently and she loved it, thereby breaking another cardinal rule of mine; that old films are usually much more shit than you remember. Airplane! is awesome and deserves another look. As does the Naked Gun series. Watch those instead. And avoid Specsavers. I think they’re cheating.

Barclaycard:

Cool making of:

Spoof:

That took me about 3 months all told. But I wasn’t multi-tasking.

Just before I go to bed, thanks for coming to my website. There is small selection of films here and more will be added before too long. I’m particularly looking forward to our Armoured Land Rover Discovery series of films. And there’s an Army one on here that I did last year that I just need to get official permission to share.

There might be a showreel at some point but I have pretty strong feelings about director’s showreels. They don’t work the same as, say, our Fullrange showreel. So i’ve put complete projects on here for now.

More photos will be added in due course. And I’ll get the flash player working. I’ve currently got a ticket in with UK2 because I can’t see what’s wrong.

Twitter feed will be going over there somewhere –> and eventually i’d like to design my own theme. But all in good time. I’ve got a short film about vampires that is now taking up literally all of my time. But its going to be awesome. I promise.

Time for bed.

I did a director’s course last year at Raindance in London. The course was really good and i’ve been on their mailing list ever since. Today’s email from Raindance contains a transcript of an essay that Cecil B DeMille gave to the Harvard Graduate’s Business School.

Gives a really good insight into how the film industry used to be and also into what a director actually does, which is something that flummoxes a lot of people.

Have a read. If you like that sort of thing. I’ve stuck it on here without permission from Raindance but i’m guessing its out of copyright anyway. I can heartily recommend Raindance’s courses though. Lots of very famous people have been there, Tarantino, Matthew Vaughn and Chris Nolan to name a couple.

motion-picture-directing

Righto. Got some of my films on here now. Unfortunately I appear to have picked the single worst video player ever invented and the one Ed recommended to me appears to need a little more programming than I was expecting.

So films are up on the My Films page but will be amended so that they look nicer, contain information about the project and most importantly can be viewed individually.

But I’m taking my car in for an MOT then I’ve got actual work to do so it won’t be right now!

I was on my way home last night, going via the creche to pick up Alfie my chocolate labrador, when I happened upon a Renault Clio on its side. I was there soon enough after the accident that there was only one other car and they were still making the 999 call.

A young lad had hit a slippery patch of something and rolled it at least one and ended up with the car balanced on the passenger side and oil gurgling slowly down the road. He passed his driving test six days previously. The passenger was a girl of the same age; just seventeen

Obviously, serious face on, this whole situation was very bad. But the only injuries were cured with blankets and a bit of reassurance and I wanted to share a priceless moment with you.

Girl borrows my phone to ring her mum. Mum arrives and is very calm. Girl apologises to mum for being in a car crash. Mum clearly ponders killing boy. Boy apologises to mum for crashing car. Girl apologises to mum on behalf of boy. Boy apologises to girl. No-one’s hurt. Everyone’s happy. You’re all alive, that’s the main thing (repeat as necessary).

Girl says she’s cold. Mum asks why. Girl apologises because shoes still in upturned car. Mum says don’t be silly. Girl says no Mum. Your shoes still in upturned car. Mum says OH. Pause. Which ones. Girl says leopard print. Mum visibly wilts. Mouth says don’t worry. Face says MY LEOPARD PRINT SHOES!?! You’re all alive, that’s the main thing.