Category: Creative Projects
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Film Blog: In Search Of The Premiere — Encouragement From The Film Festival Circuit
Responses from the world’s major film festivals are beginning to trickle in. We’ve been making submissions since last autumn, and now we’re beginning to learn what has already been learnt by thousands of independent filmmakers before us: little short of a miracle will get an unknown, independent, first-time filmmaker a premiere at any of the most prestigious events on the festival calendar. Continue reading →
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Film Blog: International Film Festivals — One Way To Tell The Story?
There are a number of possible routes to go down in order to put something like this in front of as many pairs of eyes as possible. The easiest would be to upload the thing to Youtube, hit ‘Publish’, and move on. But to take something to a wider audience? To lift it above the trillions of bytes of throwaway trash that swamps the net? To give the project longevity, purpose and pride? (And, let’s not forget, to somehow recoup the financial investment?) Youtube probably isn’t the best solution. Continue reading →
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Are Book-Writing And Film-Making The Same Thing?
Subjects are nouns, their actions are verbs, their appearances adjectives. A sentence is a single shot, while a paragraph is a sequence of them. Paragraphs are built into chapters, and sequences are built into stories. Then chapters are assembled into books; stories into films. The viewfinder is my vocabulary. The focus ring and exposure dial are my spelling and grammar. These are basic things that I’d better get right. And I need a good mixture of context and detail, otherwise my tale will become muddled and hard to understand. Continue reading →
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30,000 Miles Around The World In (Not Just) A Wheelchair
I’m really excited to have put together this new website for extreme athlete Andy Campbell, who’s planning a 30,000-mile round-the world expedition beginning next year. The difference? Andy’s been paralysed from the waist down since a climbing accident in 2004. Continue reading →
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Film Blog: Publicising Janapar (Rant Alert)
We respect and engage with transparency and honesty. Storytelling has become a huge focus after these last few years of travel — of generating stories to tell. So transparency and honesty will be a cornerstone. There’s nothing I hate more than corporate bullshit or self-aggrandisement. But we’re so numb with it that we’ve almost forgotten anything else exists. Here are some facts: Continue reading →
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Film Blog: A Recent Q&A Session Yielded The Following Conversation
A little context — my brother is a journalist in Vancouver, and he conducted this interview with me for his blog. His questions provoked some interesting thoughts. Tell me about the development of the movie. Did you expect that it would become a fully fledged feature, rather than a simple documentary? The best way to understand this is to go back about five years to early 2007, when I was planning to cycle round the world. My best mate Andy and I had got a whole route round the planet mapped out, and we were absolutely dead set on doing… Continue reading →
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Film Blog: One Down. Many More To Go
It came as little surprise to receive the following email yesterday. Dear James, Continue reading →
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5 Of The Best World Cycling Videos, And An Interview With The Curator
Blanche, the Dutch founder of the World Cycle Videos group on the video sharing website Vimeo, contacted me to see if I’d showcase some of the group’s videos. I was skeptical. Cycle touring videos tend to appeal to the enthusiast, and vary wildly in quality. Most are quite boring (including plenty of my own), unless you already know the riders, or are researching that particular region. But there’s a huge breadth of material in Blanche’s group. More than a thousand videos have been posted to date, from practically every nation on Earth. [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/1396719[/vimeo] This is a fantastic, classic video from Tibet. You… Continue reading →
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Film Blog: “So When Can We See It?”
The answer, I’m afraid, is “not quite yet”! I owe you a better explanation, though. Previous videos I’ve made have been quite simple — go adventuring, collect the footage, edit, edit some more, and upload to Vimeo. That’s how the Lapland, Mongolia and recent micro-adventure videos worked. Janapar is a bit different. Continue reading →
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Film Blog: Janapar’s First Private Screening
Late on Saturday afternoon, James and I walked gingerly onstage in the Royal Geographical Society’s Ondaatje Theatre. Around 200 people sat in the audience — a handful of family, friends, fellow adventurers and cyclists, and a large proportion of the delegates from the RGS’ “Explore” annual seminar. I thanked those in attendance for coming. I made a little joke. People laughed. This itself was reassuring: I utterly hate public speaking. James introduced himself as the producer-director, introduced the film, and we made our escape before outstaying our welcome. Then the film began. Continue reading →