If you haven’t been down to the Holbeck Underground Ballroom yet, you should make an excuse soon. It’s housed in 5 interconnecting railway arches and filled with all sorts of interesting nick nacks that the theatre company Slung Low, who own and run the place, have used at one time. This includes, amongst other things, a giant glass tank and a phone box containing a gold mannequin wearing a hat.

This production was the first time we’ve pulled in the effort of Bunty May Marshall and Michael McNamee in the art department. We’re pretty happy with the decision, especially after Bunty made us all cupcakes. Here’s a quick peak at some of their work. You’ll have to wait for the final cut to see their work in all it’s glorious form (you’re not ready for the Hobo Ringmaster’s stage…)

From left to right: Kaylie Joy Black – Puppeteer; Michael McNamee – Art Department; Bunty May Marshall – Art Director

Today I have a very exciting announcement. In just a few short weeks we’ll be shooting our first short film “The Mind’s Wood”.

We’ve been working on the film for the last 6 months with Director and Writer Dave Bond and we’re so excited to be just a couple of weeks away from shooting it. The sets are being finished, crew and locations are in place, rehearsals are going great and we can’t wait to be able to show you the finished film in just a couple of months time.

But we need your help.

To get the final pieces in place for the film we need to raise a little more money. You can support the project on crowd-funding site Sponsume, different levels of “reward” are available, and from just a couple of pounds you can help us make an amazing film.

Please help out if you can, and if you’ve any questions feel free to email me.

Many thanks

Ben

Find out more about them at Croissant Neuf Summer Party

Enjoy

Ben

It was a great festie, House of Pain, Lamb, Mika(!), DJ Kaspa and loads more,

The teaser trailer for this year’s event is now out, with lots of our lovely shots in it, as well as some great timelapse and aerial photography (props to the guy in the helicopter – rather him than me!). Have a look and hope you like

Find out more about B’estfest here

For this promo video we were back working with the brilliant Gavin Mintus.

Smartent were looking for something which would work both as a consumer facing piece for their website and as something to show distributors and retailers as proof of concept and to get a sense of the market for the product.

We came up with a creative solution to utilise Gavin’s considerable experience in local news and show members of the public getting hands on experience with the tent.

We found some very enthusiastic and lovely people to have a go with Smartent and we reckon its a pretty great idea for a product. Should be coming to shops later this year – check their website for more details.

Its been a while since we’ve done a “everything in one day” project and it was really nice to get that frenetic energy going, plan, shoot, edit and grade all in about 14 hours. You can see the final video here – we really like it and wish Ioana the best of luck in the competition.

Now that its most definitely the New Year we’re head on into new projects, if the doomsdayers are right and this is the endtimes, you’re gonna be damn sure we’ll pack a tonne of amazing films and videos into it.

Before we get onto what’s happening in 2012, we thought we’d briefly look back over the things we really liked in 2011

New Friends

We’ve been really lucky over the last twelve months to work with some amazing people

The Blind Club

These guys have taken the format started off by Vincent Moon and La Blogoteque and brought their own unique beauty and atmosphere to it, they live at www.theblindclub.com and this video for Paul Thomas Saunders is one of the most beautiful things we saw in 2011

CK Goldiing

We worked with CK on the Nuba Hair and Beauty launch in Sheffield over the summer, he’s also got a blog which is brilliantly self-effacing, irreverent, funny and interesting. Here’s hoping we get to work together again soon.

Morain

One of Leeds best new bands, we loved working with them back in August in a beautiful church near Wakefield, expect some really big and really cool things from them in 2012

Croissant Neuf

Working with these guys at Glastonbury and their own festival was one of the highlights of the year once again, every year they go from strength to strength and the Summer Party in Usk this year was totally brilliant, the video of which is coming out soon, keep an eye out.

Films

So many great films came out last year, here’s a few that really caught our eye:

Drive

This had Ben completely obsessed for a large part of the year, the elevator scene is one of the most beautifully shot in a film for years, the performances are amazing and the soundtrack is completely genius, here’s a taster:

Melancholia

The latest from Danish Auteur and cinematic trickster Lars Von Trier. Existential as you like, beautifully shot and a long way away from his Dogme ’95 manifesto, what with CGI, slow motion and hyper-stylisation abound, its a gorgeous meditation on family, depression and the apocalypse, but as always with Von Trier, never feels as downbeat and downtrodden as its themes suggest. Nothing here is turned up to the extreme levels of Antichrist but the intensity still grips you in a way few other directors can acheive. Here’s a trailer:

Beginners

I’m yet to see this one, so can’t comment, but Cristina, who we always listen to, made it her film of the year, so I’ve included it here too:

Friends With Benefits

This one sneaks in as “Guilty Pleasure”, “Light relief” and “Suprise” of the year. Was expecting typical vapid US “rom-com”, actually found a genuinely funny, fairly touching film dealing with the nature of friendship and relationships, trusts made and broken. JT holds his own pretty well and Mila Kunis is great, but the best line of the film goes to Patricia Clarkson playing Kunis’ mother – bursting into her apartment with the immortal line “I’m starving… got any gin?”. Oh, and flash mobs, everyone likes a flash mob. Loved it.

Thanks for reading, teaser of 2012′s new projects coming soon…

The 4 tracks are literally the soundtrack to a summers day, or as their bassist, Liam Klimek put it – “post pina-colada pop”.

They’re very much in the vein of the crop of bands around recently like Vampire Weekend and Two Door Cinema Club, but in Loose Talk there’s something even more exotic and escapist – sometimes you’d swear the guitars are in fact a troupe of steel drummers on a faraway Caribbean Isle.

The four tracks are titled Seraphim, Hemlock, Calavera and Amaranth – the art school song titles could easily come across as overblown and arrogant if the tunes themselves didn’t stand up, but in this case they convey a band brimming with well earned confidence in their powers and unafraid to take a risk and stand by it.

As a lovely little bonus you can choose how much you want to pay for EP from BandCamp, I went with £3, I would happily pay twice that, but I’m off to a festival this week so gotta save the pennies :p

Right, random music reviewing interlude over, I’m gonna get back to making videos. Amazing new acoustic session in a church by candlelight video coming soon-ish.

Much love

Ben x

By the way, if anyone’s looking for someone to host an event / present a video etc – CK is really great and an extremely nice chap email him ck.okereke [at] googlemail.com