18 December, 2008

Hah Bumbug


It's Christmas time folks, I've been prompted by producer bloke Kerwin Robertson to do a little card for One Day Removals fans and customers. Which there are a lot of now, fun!

I'll have my head stuck in various computers over the holiday working away on film stuff, so humbug to all the festtive cheer and stuff. I will also be firing Bob Cratchet as he's a snivelling little oik with a gimpy son.

But until then, from all of us at Stirton Towers a very Merry Christmas to all of you. If you do happen to see a sober man in Aberdeen during
hogmanay, that may be me. Come over and say hello Clarkie, would you like a drinkie. I will of course accept and no longer be sober - thanks in advance.

08 December, 2008

Stirton Productions Store - Now Open

Just in time for the Xmas novelty market, Stirton Productions has opened a Cafe Press store with lots of fun gifts for the mentally challenged. It's a bit of a work in progress so there's only a limited amount of stock, but it will later include some designs from "The Planet" and some other stuff.

One of the fave gifts so far has got to be the clock that has Ronnie's quote from "One Day Removals" 'it's only half past ten for Christ's sake''. Ronnie fan's may be a limited market but we do hope it grows.

There is a link to the store on the Stirton Productions website, or you lazy folk can click
here.

04 December, 2008

BIFA - Update 2........Electric Boogaloo

Well Mark and Josie made it back safely home from the British Independent Film Awards, they were of course upset about not picking up the award: as we all were at Stirton Towers (the SP flag has been at half mast since Sunday and the guard dogs have had to be kept on a short leash). But they did still manage to have a good time at the party afterwards.

They also managed to get copies of the movie to some huge names in the industry, including award winners Danny Boyle and David Thewlis. It will be interesting to see what they make of the Doric snuff movie.

For a more personal account of the awards visit director bloke's site here.

01 December, 2008

British Independent Film Awards - Mini Update

Latest news from the BIFA's - One Day Removals did not pick up the Raindance Award, but was just pipped at the post by Zebra Crossings, Samuel Holland's gritty London based drama. We'd all like to pass on our regards to the writer/director and wish him and his team all the best for the future.

A full report, with pictures, will follow in the next couple of days - as director bloke Mark Stirton, makes his way back up to Aberdeen. Early reports are that he and Josie Walsh had a great time and majority of actors and producers in the UK have been handed a copy of One Day Removals. We hope that the winner of the main BIFA, Danny Boyle has a good laugh while watching it.

For a full list of the winners click here.

28 November, 2008

British Independent Film Awards - One Day Removals


As One Day Removals has been nominated for an award at the BIFA's, here is a little update.

Attending the award ceremony on Sunday 30th November will be writer/director Mark Stirton and lovely Irish actress, Josie Walsh. Other nominees in the Raindance category are Clubbed, directed by Neil Thompson, Flick directed by David Howard and Zebra Crossings by Samuel Holland. Stirton Productions would like to wish all of them the best of luck on the night, but really hope our film wins as it's ace.

The results will be posted here as soon as I have word from the director at the scene, I'll expect lots of tears in case he's won, lost or failed to fill Emma Thompson with his little babies.

30 October, 2008

Poster Update for One Day Removals

I've done a few little changes to the main poster for One Day Removals, to reflect the award nomination and festival attendance. I look forward to filling all the blank space with little laurels.

I'd also like to bring your attention to the intended cover for the Japanese release of our last movie, The Planet. The design team for the Japanese distribution company have came up with a totally mad design that looks way better than the one I did, nice to see Kerwin's ship on the front again though it is a smart ship.

And finally, as I've noticed the heaviest hits on the blog have been as the result of posting photos of girls, (what a surprise) here is a photo from 'One Day Removals' of a very talented Irish actress called Josie Walsh. Josie plays a tv reporter in the movie, a small role for just now, but I'm sure we'll see more of her in the future.

29 October, 2008

British Independent Film Awards - Nomination

The latest production to be released from Stirton Towers has been nominated for an award at the British Independent Film Awards, to be held in London 30th of November.

The doric snuff movie 'One Day Removals', is competing in the Raindance Award category against 3 other independent movies -all of which had a catering budget larger than the total cost of our film. So we're totally honoured to be included with the other titles.


To be nominated for the British Independent Film Awards (or Bifa) is the highest accolade any indi film can get, so all the cast and crew are really pleased. Director chap, Mark Stirton and possibly some other cast members will be attending the star filled ceremony

'Jekyll' and 'Cold Feet', star James Nesbitt will be the host of the event, which is being held at the Old Billingsgate Market. For more details click
here.

15 October, 2008

Raindance Premiere Photos

Here are a few shots from the Raindance festival in London. A more detailed report is on the previous blog, or at Mark Stirton's blog here.

Director Mark Stirton, decides which trousers to ruin before the screening.

Star of One Day Removals Patrick Wight, with director Mark.

Actors Steve Tomas (left) and Patrick Wight (right) with director bloke.

Stirton Productions producer bloke, Michael Clark (left). The cyberman had nothing to do with the festival, but the Dr Who exhibition at Earl's Court is a must. They even have K9 - yay.

14 October, 2008

One Day Removals - Raindance Screening

London, 16th Raindance Festival - Premiere of One Day Removals - huge hit.

That's all I really need to say, but I'll carry on.

The screening of the movie on Saturday went so well we were cleared out of the 100 or so dvd's we'd brought down with us. People were so happy to get a copy they actually thanked us - now that makes a change. It was great to see the movie on a big screen and the audience laughed at all the right bits. After the screening we'd bump into people on the street, who raved about the movie. That's in London by the way - Yeah baby, etc.

After the movie was a q&a session with Mark Stirton and the rest of us  (Me, Patrick Wight, Mike Mitchell and Steve Tomas) no one asked what the hell people were saying in the movie, so the doric dialect and the accent wasn't a problem. Neither was the swearing. So it was all good.

Being one of the festival director, Elliot Grove's top picks was a great boost to the movie. We'd like to thank him and the rest of the festival organisers and staff for their amazing support throughout the festival. Thanks folk.

I'll post photos as soon as I can.

09 October, 2008

Going down south!


Well, that's me heading off down to London for the premiere, I'll be back next week with lots of updates and pictures.

Keep an eye on the news for any bizarre stuff happening there. When you get a lot of folk from Stirton Towers under one roof, reality goes a bit bongo.

01 October, 2008

Raindance Festival Top Picks

Much to the surprise of all of us at Stirton towers Elliot Grove, the founder and director of the Raindance Film Festival, had included our Doric Dialect snuff movie 'One Day Removals' in his top 5 line up.

What fun! For more details click - here.

Meanwhile, the founder and director of Stirton Productions, Mark Stirton, has arrived in London for the start of the festival and will be making regular updates in his blogglet - here.

19 September, 2008

One Day Removals - Raindance Festival Premiere


Just in case somebody forgets that the world premiere of 'One Day Removals, 'is happening next month, I'll be running regular reminders.

Screening starts at 12 noon, Saturday 11th of October at the Cineworld cinema, Shaftesbury Avenue, London (that's England).

Myself (me) director Mark Stirton and actors Patrick Wight and Mike Mitchell will be attending: so just follow the hordes of screaming girls. Mike Mitchell is currently filming with Sean Bean in the new channel 4 series 'Red Riding,' so it will be a good chance to grill him for gossip.

Tickets may be bought online from the festival or from the cineworld there. Click on banner above to access site.

08 September, 2008

One Day Removals - Now on Sale

Fun news for all the millions of film fans after a copy of our new movie. 'One Day Removals,' is now on sale for a limited period, via our online store - here.

The dvd is the same one being sent out to every film agent/distributor and their cat at the moment, so it's a good time to see it in it's original state. The movie features a director's commentary, outtakes and a novelty Easter egg - don't you just love those.

The DVD is PAL only at the moment, but it is region free. So, if you do have a machine that plays PAL, you have no excuse not to buy it - and I'll be sitting outside your window checking to see if you have (or was that Manhunter?)

02 September, 2008

16th Raindance Festival - One Day Removals

Fun news film fans, the latest movie to be produced at the Stirton towers facility has been accepted to the 16th Raindance Film Festival in London. Schedule dates are still to be released, but until then here is a link to the Raindance festival site.

Needless to say all of the cast and crew are pretty happy with the news and are looking forward to attending the festival.

I should have updates soon, check the main Stirton Productions site and this blogglet for details.

06 August, 2008

One Day Removals - American Remake


Just a what if, prompted by some of the recent comments. But not too far fetched as we believe this movie has quite a lot of international potential as it deals with basic human principles. Fear, stupidity, panic, not being bright at all - and swearing.

If anyone has further ideas of an ideal cast please let me know, just for fun of course. If William Shatner or Cuba Gooding's agent is interested I await your call, also if Michelle Ryan wants to give me her number that's also good.

29 July, 2008

One Day Removals - DVD Cover

There's been a lot of tweaking to the original dvd box design in the past few weeks, but as the disk and artwork are about to go out the door to the dvd printers, I thought I'd share them with you.

Here's the original cover, very dark, but with all the movie elements (or elephants). Only a little nod to the fact that it's a comedy, with the expression on Patrick Wight's face.


While doing the artwork for the dvd menus I really couldn't get a handle on the look. The poster artwork didn't work too well as a menu screen, I played around with a lots of different elements until Kerwin suggested a splat. A Splat! After several dozen comical splats, some of which looked way too Ghostbusters, I came up with the final layout for the dvd menu. It was smart, clean and very different. So much so I decided to change the rest of the publicity work to go with the new design.

The One Day Removals website is going to be updated soon to reflect the changes.

12 July, 2008

One Day Removals - Trailer & Clips Online

Warning, trailer and clips feature lots of swearing and Scottish people, if you're offended by either look away, run - run for the hills!



Here is the initial trailer and a preview clip for the new movie - One Day Removals. This and some other clips are in a dedicated youtube site, the link can be found to the right. These are of course tiny versions of the real material, so please excuse web quality.

25 June, 2008

The Planet - Aftermath

Well, the movie has been out in the States for about 2 weeks now and we're finding a total split amongst the people who have seen it.

There's the indi film fan or people who know a bit about what it takes to make a movie and there's folk who were expecting Star Trek. We've had reviews from 'fantastic invention and story,' to 'what's happening, why have they got a tent, why are they speaking funny?'

I think The Planet leaves a lot to the imagination of the viewer, the script is intentionally vague to put you into the position of the squaddies on the screen - a group of guys that don't even have half a clue. The people that work this out enjoy it, the people that don't - don't. It's not even an intelligence thing, some smart reviewers can't buy into it either, so it may be an empathy thing.

Star Trek it ain't, there's no explanation for things apart from your own conclusions and that's too much for some people. It's also a very cheap film with CG done by beginners, that's also a bit scary. But if you can get past that it's quite fun. Remember, it was made for the price of a second (or third hand) car. In Hollywood that buys you a microphone (without boom). But it's also got distribution in several countries, so it must be checking enough boxes to get sold.

The new movie, One Day Removals, is in the DVD production phase now. We all have high hopes for the movie and will be sending it out to agents and distributors soon. It is a much more assessable movie for an audience, as it deals with 2 guys having a bad day, no monsters, no guns, no bloody sand.

17 June, 2008


Stan Winston - RIP

I got a bit of a shock last night when Mark (director bloke) texted me saying that Stan Winston had died. He had to check the information a few times to make sure, which made us both sad that it was correct. Stan, who had won Oscars for special effects in numerous movies including Aliens, Terminator and Jurassic Park, died on Sunday aged 62. He had been suffering from myeloma cancer for 7 years.

To many film techy folk like me, Stan Winston was a legend and an inspiration. Not only did he create the look of the predator, terminator and Iron Man, he set the bench mark for practical movie effects from the 80's onwards. He will be sadly missed.

Here is a link to his effects studio for those didn't know his work. Stan Winston Studios.

09 June, 2008

The Planet - Unleashed


Our last film 'The Planet,' is now for sale in north America. It's also available online from that Amazon shop here.

Here's a pic of the cast - the roughest band of space mercs since that load in Wild Geese.

20 May, 2008

The Planet - The Beast

A blog dealing with giant movie monsters got in contact with us recently. They wanted to feature a big spanky image of the main 'god' monster from the film. Mark Stirton, director bloke, asked me to fluff up an image of the beast for inclusion in the site - so I did.

I won't post it here as it's a bit spoilery, but if you really want to look it's on this site
Undead Backbrain. The beast is rendered from the original model Mark animated in the movie, this version was rendered in Vue 6, as was the background. The wee chaps are purely for scale - or comedy effect.

The Planet - The Planet

I've put quite a few bits of design work for the movie up recently, so I thought is was about time to feature the star of the film - the planet, himself (I'm sure it's a bloke).
The design work for the planet came very early on, literally as soon as Mark had the title I started hammering out various planets - some were comically wrong. All of the designs were created in photoshop then mapped on spheres in Cinema 4D (planet, clouds, atmosphere). The final photoshop files were created mainly from satellite photos of south western Australia, taken from this site here. Final file size came to about 280meg for the 4 maps making up the planet (image, diffusion, speculative, bump), with a further 70meg for the 3 cloud maps.

The detail was necessary as it meant the planet could be viewed from all angles and could stand up in close up work. As the movie was done at PAL resolution (720x576 pixels) there was a bit of lee way with the shots, but the detail was there if we needed poster work and publicity shots.

For anyone that has seen the film you'll know how far off the mark the original design was: even though the survivors may be thousands of miles from the sea, the audience will wonder why they're moaning about no water. Best to make it a sandy hell-hole.


29 April, 2008

The Planet - Unseen Design Work

As The Planet is going to be released soon in the US, I thought I'd put up some of the concept artwork that went into the design of the film. Attached are a few of the designs and visuals that never made it to the finished movie and a nice shot of the hero ship too.

I'm responsible for the comically huge battleship, Kerwin Robertson designed and built the actual ship used and the e-pod. Tech info. Most of the modelling and rendering was done using Maxon Cinema 4D, with post work in photoshop. Kerwin used Autocad for modelling the main ship model with later additions and texturing in Cinema 4. Other design work from the movie can be found using the links on the sidebar, under 'The Planet.'

I'll track down some more of the less seen or unused work for the next post.





16 April, 2008


The Planet - US Release Update

Fun news this week from the company releasing 'The Planet,' in the US. MTI Home Video have set the date of June 10th, for the DVD release day.

They have produced a spanky Hollywood type poster for the release: at the moment the artwork still has to be finalised, but hopefully they will keep the elements we sent over. The new dvd has the original making of feature and also some new bios and Spanish subtitles. Scorchio! A press release can be downloaded from the MTI publicity page.

It will hopefully be for sale on Amazon, so we'll get that linked up to the IMDB page soon. CEO of Stirton Towers, Mark Stirton, has more on his blog,
here.
The Japanese release info should be with us soon, so keep checking for updates.

02 April, 2008

Last of the snaps

Here are the last of the holiday photos before I start boring myself. I'd just like to say a huge thanks to Actoman for dragging me over to Lewis and forcing his nice parents to feed me for a week. It was much appreciated. Top photo show a group of traditional 'black houses,' used by the islanders before electricity and sense was introduced to the island. Half of the hobbit house was filled with the animals, what fun on bath day.

View facing west, next stop Labrador - North America

Leaving Stornaway on ferry at 7.20 am

Arriving on mainland at 10am, yes am. It got sunny as soon as we left the ferry.

31 March, 2008


Lewis Trip

Just back from Lewis, which may have been the coldest place I've ever been to. It's about the most westerly point in Britain and it's windy, really windy. As it has been inhabited for about 9000 years there's lots of old stuff to see. The most well known is the group of standing stones at Callanish  and the iron age Dun Carloway Broch (sort of castle thing) where the famous Lewis chess pieces were found. 

Here are some photos taken with my embarrassingly old digital camera.




23 March, 2008


Holiday

On a short visit to the island of Lewis with me mate - Aktoman. It's remote, snowing and looks like a pre-set Bryce 3d landscape, what fun for a texture nut like me.

I'll be back on the mainland next Saturday, but until then you can follow the exploits on Akto's blog link on the right.

Toodle pip



Same location as above a few minutes earlier. Did I mention it was cold?

14 March, 2008


The Wrath of Cannes

Mark, director chap and CEO of Stirton towers has informed us that a copy of the new film is heading off to the Cannes film festival, for inclusion in this year's bash. It's taken a huge amount of effort to complete the movie in time for the submission date and all hats off to Mark for getting the disk away in time.

We're having a bit of a rest now, until Monday. Ooh, a whole weekend.

Here are some recent shots that just made it into the edit: 2 weeks ago the associate producer, Kerwin Robertson, asked a favour of the local fire and rescue service. We got 3 fire trucks and a whole heap of firefighters at our disposal, now that's what I call a service. All the folk from Aberdeen fire and rescue did a grand job for the couple of shots that Mark needed, and it was sunny too.

Photos, as always, are courtesy of our resident photographer, Mark Wyness.


13 February, 2008


New Website

The One Day Removals website is now up and ready to view. There are still a few pages to go live, but you can click on things and see stuff (you can tell I'm technical). Already got our first review on and the film's not finished yet, how fun is that!

As advertised on the entry page there will be graphic content and swearing, very soon.

06 February, 2008

Stay on target..

Last Saturday I had a screening of One Day Removals, at the custom facility in Stirton Towers. It was a mostly complete edit, but before sound balancing and grading, so it gave me a pretty good idea of what the finished work will look like. Based on that I'd say it's already hundreds of times better than the previous movie 'The Planet,' and a well told and produced drama to boot. It's also a very Scottish move, without tartan and haggases (haggasusses?) and the story should appeal to a broad audience.

It's very bleedy too.. there's heaps of bleed in this one, and acting, excellent work from the leads. It's more of a docu drama/drama/comedy now, than just a black comedy. Well done to all at Stirton towers (and that writer/director etc. chap) for getting a film out of this standard on a tight budget and a camera that has the worst viewfinder in the world. HD is very sharp and heaps better for projecting, so lots of digibeta copies will be attacking festivals soon.

I'm currently working on the media pack to sell the film, so I thought I'd put some design work up. Here's 2 versions of the dvd cover, I may end up with a mixture of both but I thought I'd let you folks see them first.

Thanks again to Mark Wyness for all his great photos during the filming.