Biography

"I confess: I am a film geek!  Always have been; always will be.  I’m passionate about cinema right down to the most basic spec of my DNA.  One of my earliest memories, from when I was maybe four or five years old, is watching a program about the making of The Return of the Jedi – I was captivated by it.  The taste for it lingered.  It was probably one of those key moments in my cinematic weaning.  That and E.T. dying.

As a child, one of my friends inherited an old VHS camera.  We spent hours filming silly home movies, re-filming perfectly sensible movies (but now starring us), and experimented with the meaningful and the meaningless tricks and tics of cinema until the tape ran dry.  The obsession continued into my college years, where I took ‘A’ levels in Film Studies, Theatre Studies, Art & Design and a City & Guild in Video Production.  After abusing all the camera kit I could at college, we finally got a camera and editing software at home – now I had gone digital!

The home movie years included a number of cheap and cheerful short films, music video’s and three near feature length travel documentaries covering our family holidays in Florida, Lanzarote and Cyprus.  Additionally, I had success with scripts in two competitions – the first making the top 200 short list in the Lloyds Bank Young Writers Competition and the second making the top 100 short list in the first BBC Talent Sitcom Writers Scheme.  My ambitions were swelling…

My first short film as a director working with a professional crew was ‘The Dogges Tale’ in 2005.  To make matters more complicated, it called for the presence of a talking dog!  Fortunately we found our solution in Sky, a hard working and fast learning golden Labrador, who proved herself something of a canine Katherine Hepburn.  Only blonde.

I followed this in 2006 with ‘Nicked!’ and then in 2007 with ‘Phlegm Noir’.  ‘Nicked!’ – a satirical swipe at bureaucracy - was my first experience of shooting on 16mm, while ‘Phlegm Noir’ – a spoof of pretentious student films, tipping its hat to both Film Noir and French New Wave – was my first experiment with black and white.  Both films were featured in the Video Café section of The Portobello Film Festival.

In 2006 I also filmed and edited a music video for the band Wills & The Willing.  They played the BBC Radio 2 stage at Guilfest, and the video was part of the bands online promotions.  Their performance received rave reviews from none other than Gary Numan, who was sandwiched into the neighbouring dressing room!

I recently completed post-production on my latest short film ‘Alice & The Bear’; a far more ambitious project then any of my previous, that is equal parts fantasy and drama.  Currently it is in consideration for screenings at Brief Encounters Film Festival, Fantastic Fest, The Austin Film Festival and Sundance.

In between my own projects, I have attempted to earn a living working on various other television and film projects.  These include work as a time-lapse camera assistant on Britain From Above for the BBC and Lion Television, The Great British Summer Time for the BBC and Lion Television, a Lurpak butter commercial for Partizan - and I even spent two days digging out three tonnes of soil striking a jungle set for Planet Earth for the BBC!

In addition I have  worked on two promotional films for Swindon Borough Council, one covering the Brunel Festival and one the Corporate Games; as a production trainee on a City of London Police training film for Issue’s Ltd and Gemini Production Services; as a production office runner on ‘Oliver Twist’ for the BBC; as editor on the independent cycling documentary ‘Paris-Brest-Paris: The Incredible Journey’, which has now sold significant numbers worldwide; and I recently worked as both a second unit camera assistant and second assistant director on a low budget feature, ‘An Organisation of Dreams’ shot in both London and Paris, for Augustine Pictures by  award winning British director Ken McMullen.  The film stars Dominique Pinon, John Shrapnel and Julia Faure, and was screened at the BFI London Film Festival 2009.

Future projects include my feature film directorial debut, ‘Bloodline’, a psychological horror that I have also co-written."