No pillow as soft as a clear conscience

I sometimes use the phrase 'My name is Pat Higgins and my conscience is clear' as a sign-off when I do live events (like the one coming up on Wednesday 27th April at Southend Film Festival) and have done for years. In fact, I gave the expression to a comedian in Hellbride as a catchphrase (although using the character's name, not 'Pat Higgins'. Otherwise that would be ridiculous. And confusing). The phrase started out entirely as a joke; a call-back to something that I tended to mention earlier in the evening. Over the years, though, I guess I've become fond of it.

Received an email yesterday, informing me that a distribution company that I have dealt with in the past are to cease activities. I won't name them, since their website hasn't broken the news yet and the last thing I want to do is leak the story if it's not public yet, but I feel that the demise of the company is particularly heartbreaking (above and beyond the usual sadness of a business closing its doors) because of one simple fact.

They were nice.

Actually, I'll expand upon that. They were honourable. They had excellent communication with people they dealt with, they were polite and friendly and they always delivered whatever they'd promised. I've been paddling around in the shallows of the movie industry for close to ten years now, and those sorts of qualities have seemed depressingly few and far between.

Is being nice really so tough? Because, if you want to be all hard-nosed and business-like about it, in terms of gaining loyalty and repeat business and all those other things that companies claim to seek, being nice is a pretty goddamn cost-effective way of getting those things. As either customer or co-worker, I'll put up with a much worse situation for much longer if I feel I'm being treated with empathy.

So why don't more people in the industry embrace being pleasant and honourable as the default way of doing business? I don't mean the fake smile, have-a-nice-day bullshit so favoured by soft-skills training courses; I mean genuinely treating people well for no other reason than it makes the whole experience much more rewarding for all parties?

There was a particular film set I visited a few years ago that sticks in my mind. The shoot was several budgetary notches above the films that I was making at the time, and in several respects it should have been the sort of shoot I was aspiring to. Didn't take long on set to work out that it wasn't. In fact, the atmosphere was borderline poisonous. Not only would cast and crew not talk to each another, but half of the crew wouldn't even talk to the other half of the crew. Conversation on set seemed to consist almost entirely of bitching. It felt like a state of arrested development; adolescent egos rubbing each other up the wrong way and constantly trying to get one over on each other. I thought about how it compared to the upbeat atmosphere that I try to foster on my shoots and I found it rather sad.

The film industry seems to attract assholes like moths to a flame. I understand the reasons for that, but that doesn't mean I have to like it and that doesn't mean that it's the only way things can be done. Yes, of course there's pressure.. But teachers dealing with classes of 5 year-olds are under pressure too, and they somehow manage to avoid using it as an excuse to treat people badly.

So, on a day when a rather lovely little company has closed its doors for the last time, I'm reminded of why I liked them so much and reminded that, no matter how long I stay in this business, I will never let it turn me into something I'm not. I will never run a set where the cast and crew won't speak to one another. I'll never put someone in a position where they'll regret signing a deal with my company. I'll never accept that behaving like (for want of a better word) a dick is somehow a norm, or something to be aspired to.

My name is Pat Higgins and my conscience is clear.

Scre4m (Or Scream 4 if you're not in marketing, or 12 years old)

The Scream franchise means quite a lot to me.

When the original hit the screens in the UK in May 1997, my life was changing in all sorts of ways. I initially saw Scream at the cinema with my friends, some of whom weren't used to horror films and found it pretty gruelling. By the time the run had finished, I had gone back to watch it again with the woman who would later become my wife. It was the first horror film we saw together at the cinema.

I approached Scream 2 with a certain amount of trepidation, but thought it was fantastic. For me it stands up as one of the great sequels; one that ratchets up elements of the original without ruining the feel of the cinematic world by doing so. The sequence in the trashed police car stands up as a fantastic bit of tension building, and the death of Randy remains one of the most heartbreakingly ruthless yet utterly necessary bits of business in any franchise. By killing Randy, the flick reminded you that, yes, this is a horror series, and people aren't going to be safe just because you feel affection for them.

Then along came Scream 3, which ruined the feel of the cinematic world and kept people safe just because you felt affection for them. Not only that, my enjoyment of the film on first viewing was also marred by the fact that I'd fallen victim to a spoiler.. Some twunt on a message board had posted the identity of the killer in caps on an unrelated thread, thus ruining my day and causing me to grumble endlessly. Except, funnily enough, the twunt hadn't actually posted the killer's identity; they'd taken a guess and got it wrong. Nevertheless, I spent the movie convinced that I knew the twist.. The tragic thing being, of course, that the actual resolution of Scream 3 wasn't even as imaginative as the twunt's fake spoiler. So I got the worst of all worlds, which probably didn't help pump any excitement into a film that was already pretty limp.

So, we have the approach of Scream 4. I'm torn; on one hand, I'm concerned that it's going to feel like that piss-awful Blackadder reunion show they did for the millennium, but on the other hand Scream 3 wasn't exactly closing the series on a perfect note, so maybe the creative team will come back with batteries recharged and all guns blazing.

I've just got to make it through the next few days without seeing any spoilers, fake or otherwise. Plus, I'm a bit apprehensive about viewing the flick with an audience, which is kind of a shame.. It's been given a '15' over here in the UK (a first for the series) and whereas seeing a horror movie with a pumped up crowd of fans can be fantastic (just go and see a screening at Frightfest if you need convincing), watching a '15' rated horror movie in Essex can be a truly punishing experience. It just takes one nervous teenage boy blurting out endless 'jokes' to show how not scared he is and the whole experience takes a tumble.

Still, sod it, I'm in. Optimism engaged.

Thrill me, Wes.

Into the Pit

Non-disclosure agreements can be the enemy of decent blogging, but trust me.. The one I'm under at the moment will be well worth it. Can't tell you much at all about the upcoming shoot for House on the Witchpit, for reasons that will become apparent once things kick off.

We're unlikely to be advertising for cast and crew through our regular channels, however we have set up a special email address for interested parties (for either cast or crew) to get in touch. I realise that this is all frustratingly vague at the moment, but the details we can give are as follows..

House on the Witchpit is a feature film shoot taking place in the UK later in 2011. The creative team have a proven track record for producing critically acclaimed, internationally distributed genre features. It's a full-tilt supernatural horror with a decent helping of wit and intelligence; it's not a body count movie or a torture flick, but instead sets out to genuinely freak out the viewer.

If you've got something unique to bring to the flick, either in front or behind the camera, feel free to contact the production team at..

intothepit@jinxmedia.co.uk

Can't guarantee individual responses, (it's just not realistic I'm afraid, and a standard cut and paste response has always struck me as oddly pointless) but we can reassure you that we're grateful for your interest!

And, for those of you who are just interested in watching the thing rather than making it.. There should be some news soon. I know I've said it before, but it'll be worth the wait.

New Workshop Date

I'm pleased to announce that I'll be running another workshop at the Southend Film Festival this year.

On Wednesday 27th April at 6.30pm, I'll be chatting about micro-budget filmmaking at an event called "DIY: Making a Feature Film to Launch Your Career". Places are really limited, but can be reserved on 0845 5212345 or by emailing learning@southessex.ac.uk

More details can be found over at http://www.southendfilmfestival.com/film_schedule.php

Bringing it all together.

Keeping everything together in the sprawling age of Facebook, YouTube et al has proven a bit of a headache for me. Working out what leads where, and following how the hell people ever find out about us are challenges that face any small business.

With this in mind, we've just whacked some fucking great big buttons on the front page of http://www.jinx.co.uk which will hopefully point you towards whatever it is you're after.

For example, we've been updating our official Facebook page with never-before-seen photos by the brilliant Debbie Attwell from the shoots for KillerKiller and Hellbride

We've put together a nice, convenient list of our stuff over on Amazon that features all our flicks so far, (we'll be adding Bordello Death Tales very shortly, of course), which can be found over here..

Plus, there's other stuff too.. Ah, hell. Just go to the main site and click the buttons. The first step in a long process of keeping all our stuff together rather than being scattered all over the web..!

Fake Blood on the Lens: Remakes, remakes everywhere..

Fake Blood on the Lens: Re-edits from Bieber to Blade Runner (plus Vamp ...

Fake Blood on the Lens: Radiohead, The King of Limbs and Digital Distrib...

Fake Blood on the Lens: Screenwriting, Celtx and Final Draft

Fake Blood on the Lens: BBFC fees, classification and The Devil's Music

Fake Blood on the Lens:2003 Flashback

Fake Blood on the Lens: Witchpit Meeting

Fake Blood on the Lens: House on the Witchpit.divx

Fake Blood on the Lens: Collecting VHS

Fake Blood on the Lens: Marketing and publicising independent films usin...

Fake Blood on the Lens: Beating Writer's Block with Software

Fake Blood on the Lens: Titles for Horror Movies

Fake Blood on the Lens: Film Censorship

Kevin Smith, Red State and self-releasing

In 2002, Pip and I drove 26,000 miles around America. We didn't have a grand plan and went pretty much wherever we felt like. I did insist, however, that we stop in a tiny town called Leonardo in New Jersey. I tracked down the Quick Stop convenience store where Kevin Smith shot the movie Clerks. I bought 2 decks of Marlboro Light and two bottles of Mountain Dew, and marvelled at just how goddamn tiny the place was. Amazing how the camera can make things look bigger and more important. The only indication that this was anything remarkable about this particular convenience store was one tiny press cutting about Clerks blu-tacked up behind the counter.

I love an awful lot of Kevin Smith's work. Not all of it, but a lot of it. More than that, though, I love what Kevin Smith represents. Even more than Sam Raimi with his cabin, even more than Peter Jackson with his DIY gorefest, to me Smith represents the 'fuck it, I'll do it anyway' spirit. The idea that a guy working in a shop could do a day's work, then close the shutters and shoot a feature film that would go on to be distributed all over the world is an idea that I find vital and exciting. Hell, even if you can't stand Smith's work, if you don't find something to applaud about the methods and determination by which he got that work to a global audience then something inside you just ain't working right.

I've seen Kevin Smith doing live Q&As a couple of times.. The last time he came onstage at 7.30 and was still going strong well over 4 hours later with no interval. The guy can chat, endlessly. It's kind of remarkable to watch.

As you've probably already heard, this week KS used the Sundance festival to launch his new flick Red State, and (after a fake auction) sold himself the distribution rights. He gave an impassioned 25 minute speech about what's wrong with the Hollywood distribution model (specifically on how much is spent on marketing vs how much is spent on the movie) which you can check out over on YouTube, and explained how he's going to tour Red State prior to conventional release and bypass regular marketing by using word-of-mouth, social networking, podcasts and so on. Funnily enough, the reaction to this has been strangely hostile in certain parts of the internet. Anti-Smith articles and message-board diatribes have been popping up, saying that Smith's speech was spitting in the face the community he was purporting to be supporting.

Personally, I love seeing someone work outside their comfort zone and I love the fact that KS is trying to approach the distribution model in a different way. Yeah, of course his plan of four-walling works rather better when you've got a huge built-in audience like Smith has, but where did that audience come from in the first place? This was a guy who had no contacts, no industry experience, nothing but a shitty job in a convenience store and some black & white film stock. At this point, the man can do whatever the fuck he likes, and good luck to him.

I couldn't help but be fascinated by the bored-looking dude slumped behind the counter at that Leonardo Quick-Stop when I bought the smokes and sodas. I wondered about him all day. A wannabe filmmaker? Someone who was an acquiantance of Smith's crowd back when Clerks was shot? Or just a guy working in a shop for minimum wage, vaguely aware that someone once something there?

"Yeah, someone filmed something. Some movie with a load of dick jokes. I dunno. Listen, d'you wanna hear my band's demo? We're gonna be huge one day"

What's Going On..?

There have been a bunch of news reports lately about Strippers vs Werewolves, (a pretty typical example of which can be found over at Arrow in the Head) detailing various exciting new details about the project including the additions to the cast of Sarah Douglas (Ursa from Superman and Superman II) and Barbara Nedeljakova (from Hostel).

The more eagle-eyed of you may also have noticed the announcement of Jonathan Glendening (director of 13 Hrs) in the director's chair.

Yes, indeed, for the first time I'm entrusting one of my scripts to somebody other than me.

At the point that SvW starts shooting (April 18th), I'm going to be up to my neck in House on the Witchpit.

It's been a project close to my heart for years and years. Even in this rather endearing local press cutting from 2005 I was listing it as one of my next projects. That was back before TrashHouse had even been released. Yeah, me and the pit go back a long way, and the script has changed a great deal over the years (as I've rabbited on endlessly about in various previous blog entries). But the time was never right to shoot it.

Sometimes the stars just kind of align and the right circumstances arise, and 2011 is finally the point where everything has dropped into place for the Witchpit shoot. If I didn't take advantage of the moment, I'd always regret it. We'll be shooting in the first half of this year and, (as I've already promised), further details will be along soon.

For those of you who prefer the actual scary bits in my flicks to the trashy bits, this movie is going to be an all-you-can-eat buffet. The script still creeps me out. I shall be directing with one hand over my eyes.

Plus, this way, I get to settle down and watch Strippers vs Werewolves as a completed movie with everyone else.

2011 is going to be an amazing year.