I WORKED ON A MUSIC VIDEO

So they time finally came when I was assigned a group to work on a music video and if I'm gonna be frank I believe ours came out better than most peoples in my college class. I'm still thoroughly impressed by this as it is my first music video. We all alternated roles in the production but eventually created individual cuts. Sadly though my cut was never the official one used It's still a cool thing to take a look at in my opinion.

James Parsons is a cool cat to work with so check him out: https://www.youtube.com/user/JustParsons

REVIVAL OF DRACULA - Filming Completed! and Update

Something incredible has happened. Filming for The Revival of Dracula is now complete. From October through to now in February I have been working on a short film homage to the 1930s-1950s B-Movie horror films of yesteryear.

This is incredible to me as it's the first short film I've created since my revitalization of The Small Studios - my 'production company'. All I need do, is edit it and it will be close to seeing YouTube. But in addition to that I have also discovered a Bristol based free-for-all film festival, essentially. As such, I am considering bringing Revival of Dracula to the May showings of Bluescreen. A link can be found here ---> Bluescreen.

 I would have taken it to March showings, however during that time I will be away with the College filming scenes for our Techleap Duology. I am happy to report me and my colleague Chris have almost finalized the script for the short film 'Dora', the film I will be working on. So with my Dracula movie almost done, I may be able to see two short films I've wrote appear on the big screen, as well as attend a screening for one.

Finally, before my Dracula movie I began development work on a superhero film with my friend Jordan or JJ. This would be his first film directed but I'm sure I annoyed him as during the writing of his movie I decided to create the Dracula film underestimating how long it would take. However as I'm in post-production, I will get back to writing his film now.

So, exciting start to the year 2015.

Remember to pledge money please to my college's crowdfunder - it will help make 'Dora' look as good as it can, and you can even be rewarded.

- Moskow J. Stiles

AMPLITUDE 2014 EPISODE (MALI AND ME)

As part of Bath College's series 'Amplitude' which showcases the music students and gives them a spotlight, Me and Frank were given the task of designing and producing an episode. From interviewing music students I met Mali Bone, whom by chance of fate had already caught me on stand when I went to see one of filmmaker Kevin Smith's Q&As. Anyways, We decided chiefly Frank would direct and I would vision mix and despite some faults with the vision mixer I feel we did a great job together. We also devised of a show plan which I feel is simultaneously very lazy and simple, without being too boring. Overall, despite the stress of working with live broadcast equipment I can definitely say I had a good time with it.

-The aforementioned Kevin Smith Q&A where he hugged me and let me sit on stage... what a hero! I'm the guy to the side in the white shirt with long hair.

REVIVAL OF DRACULA PRODUCTION UPDATE 09/11/14

After a month of delays and other discouragements I've finally managed to produce a small teaser of what will ultimately become the short film. I've used all the footage I have that links together to produce a rough cut of the opening to the film.

I'm taking a hiatus from filming as I feel my actors aren't getting paid for this and I don't want to make them freeze to death in the cold. I expect to return to shooting early next year. Part of me regrets this but I feel its for the best so I don't get too worked up over the difficulties of film making.

AUTUMN - Short Film

I present to you one of the first pieces of College second year work I'm actually proud of. Stunning! I know right. God, things are just so much better than last year in media studies.

We were told to go out and film something and just "impress" our lecturer and I ended up in a team with two other guys: Aynsley and Calum. The theme was 'Changing seasons'. I'm really happy with this video and I feel it encapsulates everything I can improve upon as a filmmaker. Taking initiative in shot design to having my own individual edit distinct from the others. In fact, it may be the first thing I've ever been proud of in college. Enough to warrant willingly being picked on, for showcase by my lecturer.

REVIVAL OF DRACULA - PRODUCTION UPDATE 02/11/14

Filming began a little over a week ago on my new short film: The Revival of Dracula; however I'm facing several problems and roadblocks which are highlighting the fact that I need to be tougher in order to become a better director.

Due to the over whelming friendly chemistry on the set with my friends/the co-stars I was unable to get as many shots as I desired that day due to everyone being distracted. We did manage 1 scene though and I suppose it was rather optimistic to believe I could actually get more in 1 day. Frank managed to fill an entire SD card with Behind The Scenes footage. Also because as soon as we got me suited up for Count Dracula's scenes we discovered that the goddamn fangs dont stick to my mouth.

Following this I successfully shot some solo scenes with my girlfriend Gabby (or Gee); pictured above. I was very happy with the way these turned out as I learned how to effectively play with lighting on my new DSLR - A Canon 550D. Wonderful piece of machinery, to film a wonderful girlfriend.

Okay so far so good, 3 out of 8 scenes done, but after trying my fangs again for Halloween - which still did not work we came to the conclusion that my canine teeth are simply too small to allow me to play Dracula. Worse, I find Gabby has had fake blood spill over her white hoodie, which I'm going to have to shoot around now. We eventually decided on Frank playing Dracula due to his natural fang-like teeth anyway.

We'll see how things progress....

SHORT FILM: REVIVAL OF DRACULA SCRIPT COMPLETE

It's amazing to think that in just under 3 weeks, I've been able to formulate an idea of what I want from a Dracula short film and write a 7 page script about it. All stemming from my costume this year. Just wow, to top it off I'm even producing storyboards (a rare occurrence for me) and have ready and willing actors and have even bought prosthetics and make-up in preparation!

...Just wow! this is probably outside of college, the most professional I've ever been in creating a film. I'm so excited for this, we start shooting Saturday and I cannot wait! It's how planned everything is, my new camera, using my friends as actors like the old days, Frank shooting behind scenes material, Dracula, the B-Movie aesthetic! it's all tumbled so fast and I'm so joyed to be making this!

'Enter The Pitch' Contest Entry

For college we each had to develop a pitch for an individual bible themed movie. (maybe I should upload the script on here at some point)

I chose the story of Moses as did the rest of my crew in this pitch. We were then grouped together to weld our ideas together into something fresh and new in the hopes of winning the competition and enough money to turn this into a high budget short film.

The film would have been set in some sort of special rehab hospital where patients (analogous to the Israelites) go about their existence guided by the 'Moses' character. (In this case, a therapist)
However one day their treatment begins to falter as one patient begins to realize the drugs the therapist has been reluctantly giving him (on orders by an unseen authority - a God figure) are causing him to discover that the patients are being manipulated into believing they have a better future coming - when in actuality they have been sent here because they are incurable.

So, we produced this short pitch, where I voiced the therapist and Tom sent it off but.....

Oh well, still though, way better time than anything we did last year. :')

JJ Tortures Moskow and Gabz

John Yogi Bear: An E! True Not True Story

(Originally Released July 1st 2014)

Yogi Bear is owned by Warner Bros.

Learn the true story behind one of the pioneering innovators of television.

Cinephobia

(Originally Released June 7th 2014)

You must guide our protagonist. You decide his truth. He must have faith to believe he can comprehend what the veritable truth is. He has begun to keep a journal to record the experience however life has proven to be difficult as the lines between reality and fiction are beginning to blur together faster and faster.  You must choose whether he is caught in a kind of conspiracy to shatter his perception of what is real or if they're really only measly tricks of the mind.

Frank at the Skills Fair

Frank almost kills someone and becomes an expert plate spinner.

Bath Chronicle Flappy Bird Article

So as part of a annoyingly compulsory 'extended activity' in our Print Publishing lessons in Media at College, JAMes (my lecturer) makes my class go do these bogus reports on things with this chap from The Bath Chronicle. While these would be somewhat appealing for someone who wishes to work in journalism it was not for me as I...well don't. Ergo I cheaped out when it came time for me to do it yesterday and found the way I could do the least amount of effort - by letting the other dudes go out and interview people while I find background info which only takes about 20 mins. ^^

The Flappy Bird Article

Fortunately our group did at least get a mildly more interesting topic than the previous ones from what I gather. However it is still incredibly uninteresting to me the kind of reaction that the Flappy Bird app is getting as I generally don't care about such time waster games. To compound this, ultimately it seems the small (20%-ish of the article) work I did has been decreased even further by the guy from The Bath Chronicle coming along to edit our team's work. He clearly isn't using the background info I researched as basis for his rewrite as I think he's thrown in some facts which weren't present at all in our original draft. While I understand this from a professional standpoint that he may not have felt our presentation or style or whatever wasn't up to snuff with the rest of Chronicle. The fact still remains that our presence in writing this thing has been rendered somewhat pointless.

So enjoy Valentine's Day with my article which is about as much mine as the theatrical cut of Superman II belongs to Richard Donner.

January 29th - Shooting Frank's Single Camera Space Sketch

So this was the day I got to finally collaborate on something of Frank's for a change. Even if he wasn't too thrilled to make it but I reckon it turned out okay in my humble opinion. Anyways, the previous night I briefly discussed with him his thoughts on 'Eraserhead' (1977) and eventually somehow he asked me if I was willing to play a satellite in his sketch. At the time I had a surge in creative zeal. This allowed me to have some more enthusiasm to this *groan* college project.

When I arrived the following day at college, Frank's single camera team were having a production meeting while me and the others were being taught how to use the cameras, a highly unnecessary lessons because of how simply those cameras are and the fact that I already had prior knowledge that I was to be cast as a Satellite. (Frank's sketch featured several celestial bodies talking to one another about the advent of satellite TV, this was kinda the point of what we were supposed to make for college.) We soon headed over to the studio and after some deliberation because Frank misinterpreted our lecturer's (whom I will refer to as Jesus) plans for the scheduling, we began filming without one of Frank's friends who was originally to play the earth as he ended up contacting her too late. Soon after though, he found someone to play the earth. Being the only male celestial body it seems I was quite the pimp satellite ...ha...ha...ha. I'll shut up. Frank then realized during the make-up sessions that he had make-up for everyone except me. As such he improvised and I had a range of different colours on my face which seemed to make me look like a zombie. I was even described as looking bruised up at one point. 

Satellite Selfie xD

Despite the fact that we both only had about several sentences, my dialogue with the moon seemed to go on forever. However, this may just be an exaggeration. I reckon the whole thing turned out pretty fine as long as the chroma key goes well so that we're edited into space. As the shoot finally came to a close, there came a need for a narrator and as I performed my Tommy Wiseau impression, for some reason they chose me. Although they requested more of a German accent, which I am incapable of with my natural yet inexplicable American accent. So that was a wrap! I then headed over to the Bath College toilets (something which I had not done before and probably will not do ever again - public toilets suck and plus these were really small) I evidently have no skill in washing my face as my fingers proceeded to ram across my face ending up jamming my nose and making me bleed. Stupid Moskow.

My fingers at the time.

So after both me and Frank appeared as extras in another dude's section of the TV sketch afterwards, it was the end of the shoot. This meant that the following week would be time for the Multicam crew i.e. Me. John Yogi Bear would finally have his day...