Wednesday 18 July 2012

CHEESEMINT NEEDS YOU!


In anticipation of The Dark Knight Rises, I was going sit down and write a blog post about Batman. But that can wait until tomorrow. I’ve got something more important that I feel like I need to talk about.

If you know me fairly well, you’ll know that I’m part of an amateur film group called Cheesemint Productions. Myself and some friends founded the group nearly three years ago. It all started back in August 2009 when my friend Matt and I were pratting around in our friend’s living room and someone happened to film it on their mobile. It got a few laughs on facebook and we all decided to parody a recent viral music video. The result was met with a high view count on Youtube and a lot of positive feedback so we decided to keep going with the filmmaking by making more short films and a web-series called ‘Unlocked.’
Fast forward two and a bit years and we’d come a long way. We released three music videos, eight short films and a six episode web series. Some of us even got to go to MCM Expo (London Comic-Con) and help promote Unlocked on a panel and on the show-floor.
But working creatively with friends is tough. Differences of opinions and visions for the work can get in the way, almost destroying the friendship you had in the first place. And so two friends left Cheesemint to pursue other projects and passions.
With a new era of Cheesemint, the remaining members decided to freshen things up a little. Not ignoring or forgetting what we had achieved in the past but learning from it. We also thought about what we wanted to get out of Cheesemint in the long term. We’d been approached by youtube in the past to become a partner and monetize our videos but didn’t pursue it because a lot of the films we had made had third party content in them.
So, we updated the logo, giving it a bolder, more adaptable look. We decided very early on to create a new youtube channel so everything we put on there would be 100% owned by us or use content that we had permission to use or had paid for. 
We also thought long and hard about Unlocked. With the first series on the old channel, we wrote the new series in a way that wouldn’t alienate new viewers but wouldn’t bore the audience we had already built. We bought new equipment including a fancy new camera and proper audio equipment. We wanted to equip ourselves with everything we needed to make professional looking films so people would take us more seriously.


We spent months writing the new series of Unlocked. A lot of the groundwork had been laid before the change in members so we had a core idea of the story we wanted to tell but we wanted to be a bit bolder, a bit braver and ultimately create something incredibly entertaining. We introduced more characters, locations and special effects. Of course this meant spending more money and more time on the series. Which created some problems.
I don’t think I’ve made this clear. There are five full-time members of Cheesemint. Four of us work full-time. Two of those work weekdays. The other two work in retail and often work weekends. The other member is a student and works weekends and often evenings. It’s tough enough getting us all together, let alone getting the extra cast and crew free too. None of our jobs pay that well either. All the equipment was bought and paid for by us out of our own pocket. Then there’s costumes, locations, props, petrol etc. The list goes on.
So. We came to a crossroads. We could either carry on as we are, scraping money together where we can and filming at sporadic times. Or we could try and make things easier on ourselves and ask for help.
We decided to up our game. Take things even more seriously. Like we said before, if we take ourselves seriously, everyone else will treat us the same. So we made a bold and potentially life-changing decision. We registered the company. Cheesemint Productions Limited was born. We all became managing directors. And then we launched a crowd-sourcing campaign on Indiegogo asking for a small amount of $500 to cover some of the costs we’re facing. We’re making a six episode web series that, in total, is nearly two hours long. That’s the length of a film. A film would normally get millions of dollars and take months on end to film. We don’t have either of those luxuries.


$500 is nothing compared to what most of these kind of campaigns ask for.  We’re not taking the piss, we just want some help. And there are even perks to donating, we’re taking something and giving nothing in return. We’ll show our gratitude with gifts!
Filmmaking is all I’m good at and all I want to do. I feel so grateful for being fortunate enough to end up with a bunch of friends who are as crazy and ambitious as I am. We’ve come such a long way since our first video and the stuff we’re making now is still a little rough round the edges but it’s a learning curve and hell, we’re doing this in our spare time but treating it like’s a full-time job!
And even though sometimes we snap at each other, it’s only because we all care so much about what we’re doing and what this to succeed no matter what it takes.
I can only pin my hopes on the lottery so much so I’m asking a massive favour of you, whoever you are, taking the time to read my crappy little blog post. Please donate some money if you can. Anything you can give will be appreciated. I know that’s the kind of phrase you hear all the time but I genuinely mean it. Every single penny will help.
If you can’t donate then there’s other things you can do. You can tell other people about the campaign. Sharing something on the internet is so powerful. You sharing it could create a chain reaction that changes our lives forever. Cheesey, yes, but also true. Rebecca Black didn’t get anywhere on her talent did she?
But the most important thing you could do for us is also the easiest thing. Just support us. Like us on facebook. Follow us on twitter. Watch our videos and most of all, enjoy them.
We’ve been overwhelmed by the support we’ve received so far. To everyone that’s donated and helped spread the word, thank you so much. You rock.
Let’s see how far we can push this.
28 days to go.

Check out the campaign over at Indiegogo - http://www.indiegogo.com/cheesemintunlocked?c=home


Follow us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/Cheesemint



Tuesday 3 July 2012

“Thirty-eight of New York's finest, versus one guy in a unitard.” George Stacy - The Amazing Spider-Man


The Amazing Spider-Man - A Review

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As soon as they announced they were rebooting the Spider-Man film franchise I was torn. A part of me was like, “It’s too soon you money-grabbing douchebags!” and another part was like “Anything to wash away the mess that was Spider-Man 3!” As we got closer, I got more excited and more convinced the film was going to live up to the name. The costume looked incredible, I knew Andrew Garfield would nail the role of Peter Parker/Spider-Man and I had every bit of faith in Marc Webb after 500 (Days) of Summer. But I walked out of the cinema half an hour ago and I’m having seriously mixed feelings.
Peter Parker lives with his Aunt and Uncle after his parents mysteriously left in a hurry when he was a child. Now at high school, Peter has found clues about the kind of scientific work his father was involved in. This leads to him to Dr Connors, a man who hopes to develop a cure for all the set-backs mankind suffers, including his lack of a right arm. While visiting Dr Connors in his lab, Peter gets bit by a genetically engineered spider, becomes the web-slinging hero that we all know and love. He then manages to start dating Gwen Stacey,( the daughter of the police captain who is intent on bringing Spider-Man down) and tries to trying to solve the mystery of his father’s work. Oh, yeah. He takes photos too.
It was a beautifully shot film. The scenes with Spider-Man swinging around were captured perfectly and the scene on the bridge was particularly well handled. However, I’m still not convinced the 3D adds much value, even to something on this scale.


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Just as I thought he would be, Andrew Garfield was spot-on as the guilt ridden Peter Peter and the witty, charismatic Spider-Man. Emma Stone was great as Gwen Stacy and Martin Sheen and Sally Field were well cast as Uncle Ben and Aunt May. Rhys Ifans’ Dr Connors was well portrayed. But they all struggled with a weak script and weren’t given a lot to work with.
Because this is a reboot, I was hoping they wouldn’t focus on the Spider-Man origin story as much. I knew they would weave their own tale (pun intended) because otherwise people would assume the origin story of the original film would still be the origin for this Peter Parker. Instead they focused on the origin bit too much by trying to tangle it in with Peter’s own origin and his relationship (or lack of) with his parents. But as soon as he becomes Spider-Man, his parents are forgotten about and the questions that we were promised would be answered remain answerless. Which wouldn’t be a problem if we were getting swept up in the plot but the film was so slow in the first act that I just kept thinking to myself that we’ve seen all this, we know he becomes Spider-Man so let’s just get this all out of the way so we can get on with some real plot!
The ‘real plot’ was Dr Connors and his dream to be able to use a knife and a fork at the same time. I understand his motivation. Who doesn’t love having two hands? But I don’t get why he was so evil when he became the Lizard. He was perfectly nice before. Are all lizards inherently evil? Then he had the problem that the villains in the first two Spider-Man films faced. They had no-one to talk to! How does a villain share his evil plan with the audience if he isn’t sharing it on screen with anyone? 
In the first film, Osborn spoke with the Goblin (which makes sense). In the second film, Doc Oc spoke with... his tentacle-claws (pushing it a bit.) In this film, Dr Connors first speaks to a camera (which worked well) as he conducts more science but later on, he just talked to himself. Which was painful to watch. It felt so cheesey and forced. At least it was in his head I suppose. But as soon as Spider-Man stops his plan and Dr Connors returns to normal, he’s a nice guy again and saves Peter’s life. Which is bullshit. If the guy had been showing some remorse as the Lizard, some kind of guilt but convincing himself he was doing the right thing, I might have bought it. Instead we’re forced to assume that just because he’s big, scaly and got claws that he’s a naturally going to be a bastard. But this is a problem a lot of Spidey’s villains have. They’re generally nice guys who have something they can’t control and WHOOPS now they’re evil. Whereas, for example, most of Batman’s villains are just evil or evil with proper motivation. The Joker? Insanely evil. Bane? Grew up in a prison. That’s going to make you a little evil. But just because a guy is big and green doesn’t make him bad. Look at the Hulk!
I might be alone here but I really liked Danny Elfman’s score for the previous films and I was keen to see what they would do with the new film. I had no idea who they had on board for the score this time round. Around half an hour into the film I remember thinking, “Jeez, this music is bad. It sounds a hell of a lot like the score from Titanic.” Low and behold, James Horner did the score and he did a terrible, terrible job. Half the time it was felt like the music was building to something that never happened and half the time it felt like the score to a daytime soap. The piano music that was played while Gwen nursed Peter’s wounds was close to ruining the entire scene for me.
It might sound like I didn’t like the film at all. That’s not true. I really enjoyed it and a lot of that was down to the cast and Stan Lee’s cameo was his best yet. But I’ve spent months convincing people that it wouldn’t be the same as the first film, that we’d get something different but the first forty-five minutes to an hour felt far too familiar. I think the sequel (as with the original sequel) will far out-strip the first film and really find it’s own ground. They’ve already started planting the seeds with the un-answered questions about Peter’s parents, Dr Connors involvement and of course, Norman Osborn who turned up at the end (although it’s not confirmed it’s Osborn, all we know is that he has a hat and had some kind of authority over Connors and sounded EXACTLY like Willem Dafoe). Obviously depends on how much money this film makes but I’m sure it’ll do well enough to warrant a sequel.
All in all, a welcome return for the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. I just wish he’d turned up a lot quicker so we could have seen more of him and less of what we’ve seen before.
7/10