Directors Notes

On the 5th July A Field In England will simultaneously hit cinemas, Film4, VOD, and be available to buy on DVD and Blu-ray; you can find full details on your preferred viewing method after the jump. Links 5vlf

A truly mixed media piece of filmmaking comprising stop motion animation, stills and NASA archive footage, Tom Jobbins’ My Face is in Space explores the idea of thinking you’re big but ultimately realising you’re small. We talk to Tom about technique driven animation and how he approached conveying themes on the duality of mankind’s brilliance and insignificance.

In Paralyze, the first music video to come from Jannis Noya Makrigiannis’ musical project Choir of Young Believers, Danish director Anders Malmberg entrances with painterly compositions, beckoning dolly moves and transcendent shots. He joins us this week to discuss creating work imbued with a sculptural feeling through his formalistic approach to filmmaking.

Narrowly escaping a career as a wedding video editor with his creative, self-initiated fake trailers, Australian filmmaker Stuart Bowen took the bold choice to dive into stop motion animation feet first for his debut short Woody. Stuart takes us through his steep learning curve and reveals how the cost of printer ink can ultimate effect the aesthetic of your film for the better.

Inspired by the structure of porn teaser clips, Jonathan Harris' latest project I Love Your Work, sees him create an interactive documentary which profiles the lives of nine women who make lesbian porn. Jonathan joins us to discuss the internet's role as a planetary meta-organism and his experiments in monetising digital art through artificial scarcity.

Created as part of the first round of films produced under the Collabor8te scheme, writer James Pout teamed up with Beakus director Gergely Wootsch for a short animation about accepting the comfort of friendship when it presents itself, The Hungry Corpse. The pair join us this week to discuss designing a bedraggled pigeon and successfully balancing their creative roles on the project.

Jaro Minne tells us how improvisation brought him closer to his goal of creating work which is both tactile and natural on his dramatic short Regarde-moi.

When D.C. band These United States set out on their six week tour that would see them play 33 shows in 33 cities with 33 different lineups, they asked director Jared Varava to come along and document their herculean adventure

Ralf Schmerberg joins us to discuss working for pleasure and opening yourself up to possibilities of varied distribution avenues.

We know that some of you have been with us since our earliest days, for which we're eternally grateful, but over the past 7 years you've all remained a deliciously elusive mystery to us at DN Towers. We're planning to make some big changes around here and need your help to make sure they're all for the better. So if you could lend us a few minutes of your time, we'd really appreciate it.

Eli Sasich’s ambitious short HENRI, about a derelict spaceship that becomes self-aware, employs an impressive mix of quarter-scale miniatures, in-camera effects, and computer animation. Eli joins us to discuss finding the perseverance to continue when it feels like your shoot is failing and using his split second reaction skills to create a fireball. It honestly […]

HENRI (2013) Hundreds of years in the future, a derelict spacecraft, controlled and powered by a human brain, floats aimlessly in the outer reaches of space. HENRI, the name of the ship’s power system, is an acronym which stands for Hybrid Electronic / Neuron Responsive Intelligence, and was the first of Earth’s Neuro-Tech space exploration […]

Not one to select projects due to their ease of execution, director Joseph Ernst hit the streets of London with a 100 year old hand cranked 35mm camera for documentary Londoners and even considered drilling a hole in his jaw to get the shot in experimental film Feeder. Joseph joins us to discuss finding projects […]

Feeder (2009) A short film that will make you feel sick. Londoners (2012) Shot entirely on a 100 year old wooden hand-cranked 35mm camera, LONDONERS documents modern day London as you have never seen before. It shows the city as a community: a snapshot of contemporary history about what it is like to live in […]

Hand drawn frame by frame in a cross hatch style with sharpies, Cabbit from Soogie is a delightful animated passion project, which attracted a global team of contributors over its four year production period. Soogie joins us to discuss the cathartic nature of creative work and how the act of collaboration can shift the tone […]