Film Premiere!

We showed the film for the first time at the Ultimate Picture Palace on Sunday 🙂

Thank you to all those who came to watch; an emotional day for all I know but just so good to have everyone who was in the film together to support each other.

Now we just need to ‘get it out there’! Watch this space…

Kate & Alistair x

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Hello all!

It's a wrap!

It’s been a pretty busy summer – we managed to get all the remaining shots and cutaways in the can and a short version of the film has already travelled with Penny to Ireland where it was well received.

As I type, Alistair is at Storm HD in London, who you may remember very kindly said they’d donate their online edit suite plus editor so we could do all the last minute polishing including colour balancing the whole film. I will be joining him on Friday to record the voice-over in Storm’s studio and then ’tis done and dusted.

Of course, there are lots more things we’d like to shoot and different versions of the film can be edited according to what’s needed but our main priority now is finding a venue to have a screening for all those who’ve helped us so much and who would like to come to see it… it needs to be easy to reach for everyone, be able to seat more than just a few and not be too expensive: ideas and suggestions on a postcard, please 🙂

Kate x

And the Grand Total is *drumroll*…

£15,000!

We can’t quite believe it! In the teeth of the worst recession everyone has been so, so generous and thanks to a top-up from SPECAL itself, we have our total. We’re seeing Penny next week so she can have the first look at our draft edit (to check we haven’t got any howlers in there!) before we finish it off at Storm . We owe so many thank yous to so many people – it sounds cliched to say we couldn’t have done it without you, but we really couldn’t and I hope that this film will help to spread the SPECAL message in order that the people who need its help the most will benefit. Just like me and my darling Dad.

Much love and grateful thanks from Kate, Alistair and Jim x

A grand tour…

Thanks to the generosity of IPC staff, we have just returned from 3 days filming to gather shots of the places which were so influential in the lives of the subjects of our stories.

Thursday took us to Leeds, to Yorkshire Television where Tony used to work as a script writer for (among other things) Emmerdale. We also visited Esholt, which was one of the main locations for the show for 20 years, although we didn’t succumb to buying a Woolpack tea-towel…

Friday saw us heading in the opposite direction to Louise’s stamping ground of West London where she worked as a fine art restorer and then at the weekend, we headed West to the Welsh mining village of Cymer, where Betty was born before she moved to Porthcawl.

Someone was smiling on us, because we had smashing weather in all three locations and came back with some lovely shots…

Hope you all got to enjoy the sunshine too!

Kate x

Good luck to Cliff Jones – 2 days to go and counting…

This very kind IPC member of staff is running the Paris Half Marathon on behalf of SPECAL on 10th April and has already raised over £280 which nearly brings us to our budget total!!

Thank you, Cliff. We’ll be thinking of you on 10th April and cheering you on 🙂 *feels tired thinking about it!*

Kate x

To Everyone at IPC Media – Thank You!

The wonderful staff at IPC Media have raised over £600 for  SPECAL which will enable us to finish the film and I cannot say enough thank yous! We hope you will all be as proud of it as we are and it was hugely generous of Penny to pass it on to us. We also hope that when people watch, they will understand how much the SPECAL method can change people’s lives – both the carers and  those they care for at a time when everything seems utterly hopeless. A huge thank you also to Maggie at IPC who has been working so hard to organise the fundraising and to promote SPECAL.

Kate x

*Bounces off to alter the ‘Total Raised’ figure* 🙂

We need your help

Thanks to Director of Photography Alex MacDonald, Sound Recordist Marc Wojtanowski and James (‘The Wrangler’) Marsden for kindly helping us make this promo. (For the filmmakers among you – shot on a Canon DSLR 5DMk11 with Nikon prime lenses).

Storming in with help..

A huge thank you to Storm HD facilities in Covent Garden!

Storm have very kindly said that they will finish and on-line the film for us – an incredibly generous offer and much appreciated.

You are a whole basket full of good eggs!

Kate x

A huge thank you…

… to the very kind lady who held a coffee morning in aid of the film fund in December. She has just sent us a second cheque donated by those who couldn’t make the coffee morning but gave money anyway.

Alison, you’re a star!  🙂

Kate x

 

Happy New Year!

Hope you all had a great break and have made it into 2011 without succumbing to all the lurgies doing the rounds!

The individual stories are edited down to 1 hour (!) each and will work well as stand-alone case studies; so whether the carer is looking after a wife, husband, Mum, Dad or sibling, we have an example of how SPECAL has worked in a similar relationship situation.

Alistair is now starting to cut the main film from those case studies. Not an easy task, as there are so many good bits to choose from.

Despite editing, we still have  more filming to do: location shots and my bits and pieces, which we’ll need to do when the weather improves a bit.

There may be a slight interruption in proceedings tomorrow, as npower have informed us that our part of the village may be without power for the day – so unless we can hook up the computers to the wood burner…

Kate x