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FROM INSTAGRAM POST @cartervisualuk : I recently directed, shot and edited a short advert for my pal Ryan Higgs @ryanhiggzy429 who is raising money for Uprawr Mental Health Foundation @uprawrmentalhealthfoundation
He will be performing alongside 1000 other performers at the Utilita Arena Birmingham, as well bands such as Funeral for a Friend etc. Find out more: www.uprawrfoundation.org/1000-lights You can also find out more and how to donate by visiting @ryanhiggzy429 We shot everything in one day, keeping things run and gun, and minimal in terms of lighting and set design. We had great fun, with a huge thanks to @lewisbd_ for helping set up lighting and ranging kit. All the BTW photography was also done by Lewis Deacon @lewisbd_
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 Rhodri was brought on as Director by Caitlin Mae to help bring her visual idea to life. Caitlin Mae is a young up and coming Welsh country singer dedicated to her craft. Working closely with fellow filmmaker Danny Land (Co-Director of Photography), we filmed a range of footage at Coyote Ugly, Cardiff. Using a selection of lights, and directing Caitlin's performance, we wanted to create a sense of inner turmoil between the anger Caitlin's song communicates, alongside elements of self acceptance and letting go.  Rhodri then took over as Director and DOP at a scrapyard where he worked closely with a Pyrotechnics expert to create images of empowerment, symbolising Caitlin's letting go and 'Burning' of the past that she describes in the song. Overall it was a highly pressured shoot, everything being shot in one day at multiple and complicated locations, a quick turnover, as well as only being brought on four days before shooting as Director, but we were very happy with the shoot and how the music video came out visually.
 "New Life" is a thought-provoking short film that takes place in the near future. At the time of the story, mankind is on the brink of extinction while also being at the peak of technological achievement allowing them to create androids that are basically human to assist their day to day lives.
We follow a broken but wealthy family as they come to understand the dark depths of human ingenuity and how progress has truly taken precedent over our future as a species. COMING SOON...  Internal Beauty is available to watch as an extra on the full DVD release of 'Eternal Beauty'. Very proud to finally be able to share our work after many years! Myself and Gareth Sanders were tasked with creating a behind the scenes documentary to accompany 'Eternal Beauty', a lovingly crafted film by Craig Roberts that tells the story of a woman (Played by Sally Hawkins) struggling to overcome her inner demons and mental health struggles, while maintaining close connections with family and friends.
Me and Gareth Sanders on set We worked tirelessly on this documentary for around a year, becoming a part of an incredible crew and cast! We made memories and gained a massive amount of experience. Craig Roberts brought us on while the film was in pre-production and after an initial meeting with himself, we were left to take complete creative control of the project.
Shots from our interview with David Thewlis We unravelled the mystery of the film as we went along and attended the various sets. Craig maintained this air of mystery right up until our final interview with him at the edit suite! It made our experience all the more exciting and challenging but allowed us to document the production process and the story as they played out organically without any predetermined ideas or biases.  Director Craig Roberts and Kit Fraser (Director of Photography) We wanted our behind the scenes film to mirror the feature film, capturing the essence of Internal struggle that the crew and cast had to capture and express. Film sets are amazing places though and seeing how much fun and passion that was being shared amongst everyone involved was incredible. Everyone was 100% invested in this project and became a family over the weeks it took to film. Overall we are very grateful that we were a part of it and hope everyone enjoys what we made! We put a lot of love and time into this film. Thank you to everyone who helped us make this film, the amazing crew, cast and Craig Roberts for trusting us with this project.
 My latest short film 'All There is' has been nominated for an award at the Carmarthen Bay Film Festival 2020! Very excited about the nomination and fingers crossed it wins! Good luck to all the other nominees as I'm sure their films are incredible, can't wait to see them. Stay up to date with the festival here...
https://carmarthenbayfilmfestival.org  Having completed production on our short film 'All There is' a few weeks ago, I have had time to reflect further on the film and what I've learned in the process. Being writer and director on the project, I have internalised a number of lessons that I'm sure will always reoccur to me when moving forward with any future projects of this kind. "Trust and value your collaborators." Although there were practical challenges that we had to overcome during filming, there was a clear sign of passion displayed for the project by the cast and crew, that easily got us over any obstacles. This passion and drive that I saw from everyone involved were incredible to witness and I think is an essential part of the film making process. I aim to release a more extensive behind the scenes article with images when the film is complete. "As a director you have to be as clear as you can be when communicating your ideas, while also being totally open to other peoples." A fellow film maker and legend Craig Roberts (Writer / Director of 'Just Jim' and the upcoming 'Eternal Beauty') told me in a recent chat about making films that once production starts you essentially have to "let go" of your script and open yourself up to and trust the cast and crew, who will bring the story to life that you have painstakingly written. Based on this advice and my own experience on this film, it has cemented the fact that the director is an overseer of the project, a guiding hand and everyone must be trusted to play their role accordingly. A level of control has to be relinquished, however, a level that you had during pre-production and one you will regain in post production (Especially if you have the privilege of Directing and editing your own film). Although this may seem obvious to a more experienced film maker, this is the first short film that I have written and directed. Like a line from the film that you will hear eventually, "This is new to me you know, it's scary, it's actually really scary." The film deals with emotional blocks and the subconscious mind, something as a film maker I am passionate about visualising. That being said, the process of making a film can in itself, be a form of therapy. I found that upon beginning production, along with the rest of the cast and crew, I had to understand and empathise with the characters on a deep level. Doing this leads one to see aspects of oneself in the character and go on a journey with them, the characters become real for you because they are within you, or at least some aspect of them is recognisable. "For me, relatable stories and characters are the foundation of an often profound experience internally within the viewer and is not only why I watch films, but why I make them. I want to create a space, a world, in which the viewer can have an experience which goes beyond what could be called just a film." As 'All There is' goes into pre-production now, I am excited to see how the film takes its final form and as I know the cast and crew can mirror, am very excited to share more in the coming weeks! Something inside of you wants to wake up...   ‘All there is’ is a short experimental film about rediscovering love. Over the past two years I have been focused on progressing as a writer, so that I could learn how to visualise and communicate my grandest ideas through a powerful narrative. During this time I was also setting up a video production company with fellow company director Gareth Sanders, who I also studied Documentary Film & TV with at Newport Film School a number of years ago. For me those two years creating a business from scratch were filled with personal and professional growth, understanding the unwavering rawness of the business world and developing creative ideas in very short space of time for a variety of companies. You can see the promotional video work we make on our company website: www.visual-echo.co.uk Having written a number of scripts, some feature length and some short, I have learned the harsh lesson of being overly ambitious. Although having any film idea is fundamentally ambitious when working with smaller budgets, especially in a time of prominent and powerful VFX. The imagination can run wild with ideas of altering perspectives on a grand scale with epic and mind bending visuals. This is where my mind usually goes in terms of my ideas, but I've grown to appreciate the subtleties of film. Which often provide the most powerful insight into the central struggle of a character or the main themes of a film. It's being able to say more with a sentence, than with a paragraph. "I have had to learn to keep my ideas grounded and subtle, so as to say more with less." I became overly taken in by the extremes of life and thus my creative vision matched that extremity. I am grateful for what I have learned, but saw a halt in the production of any fiction film work on my part. I now have a solid foundation by which to express myself, excited about what I can create and the people I can work with. All the lessons I have learned and the ideas I've had all add up to my latest project; 'All There is', which will be going into production in the next few weeks. ‘All there is’ is as much a film about love as it is about nature and existence, the surface layer presents an individual's struggle with the prospect of falling in love with another, but visually presents a deeper idea of one’s internal perspective playing an integral role in terms of creating reality as an experience through consciousness. This is an idea put forward by modern quantum mechanics, as well as by ancient religions and philosophies. “Just in the same way that you don’t focus your attention on how you make your thyroid gland function, so in the same way you don’t have any attention focused on how you shine the sun.” - Alan Watts The idea of matching a relatable and more grounded problem of learning how to connect with another, despite past pain, with a deeper existential problem of appreciating and understanding one's essential place in reality is the goal with this film. Although difficult, it’s what drives me as a film-maker, juxtaposing the simple with the utterly complex and bring the audience to a deeper understanding of themselves. You can follow the films progress on here or following my facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/rhodricarterfilm/ |
