It's been quite an eventful year! Everyone who made it so, thank you! Hopefully 2024 goes from strength to strength!
Goals next year:
🎬Get my feature debut DEAD MAN'S HILL into pre-production
🎬Write an entirely new feature film (planning it now)
🎬Shoot and release at least one (hopefully two!) live-action shorts that I've almost finished writing
Here's a quick recap of 2023 then:
🗓JANUARY
💻 Started Unreal Engine Fellowship: Worldbuilding (as a Mentor). I hadn’t worked since early December.
🗓FEBRUARY
💻Wrapped up the Fellowship and started a new job as VFX Art Director on Marvel’s DEADPOOL 3 at Pinewood Studios.
🎬My feature film, DEAD MAN’S HILL, got an Executive Producer attached. We immediately started the search for the right Producer.
🎬PRAZINBURK RIDGE played the BC Sports Film Festival, Barcelona, Spain. I was unable to attend.
🗓MARCH
💻Continued working on DEADPOOL 3.
🎬PRAZINBURK RIDGE played the Milan Machinima Festival, in Milan, Italy. I was unable to attend.
🏆Learned that PRAZINBURK RIDGE had won two awards – for Best Animated Film and for Best Educational Patriotic Film – at the inaugural Dispatches of War anti-war film festival in Kyiv, Ukraine! I wasn’t able to attend, for obvious reasons.
🗓APRIL
💻Continued working on DEADPOOL 3.
🎭Attended my first BAFTA Connect Forum
🎬PRAZINBURK RIDGE played the Kino Short Film Festival in London, and I attended the screening and awards ceremony. It was a great experience.
🗓MAY
💻Continued working on DEADPOOL 3. The writer’s strike begins.
✈ Spent my birthday weekend in my favourite place - my wife’s home county of Donegal, Ireland.
🎭 Attended Bruce Springsteen concert in Dublin.
🎭Went to theatre in London to see OPERATION MINCEMEAT.
🎭Attended the cast and crew screening of Disney’s THE LITTLE MERMAID, which I worked on for 3-4 months as previs co-supervisor for Proof in 2019.
🗓JUNE
💻Continued working on DEADPOOL 3.
✈ My brother-in-law’s stag do took place in Salzburg, Austria. I had a great weekend there with my Irish in-laws.
🎓I enrolled on Dominic Morgan’s SCRIPTFELLA PRO screenwriting masterclass.
🎬🏆PRAZINBURK RIDGE had a double-whammy of London festivals in the same week – Kingston and Barnes (now London Breeze festival). It won Best Animated Film at Barnes.
🗓JULY
🎭Visited Paul McCartney photography exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery
🎭Attended Sam Mendes’ new play THE MOTIVE AND THE CUE.
🎭Attended PATRIOTS, a fantastic play about the creation of modern-day Russia, and follows in particular the rise of a young bureaucrat named Vladimir Putin.
💻DEADPOOL 3 goes on hiatus due to the SAG-AFTRA actor’s strike. I was almost at the end of my contract with it anyway, so finished a couple of weeks earlier than scheduled.
🎭At the end of the month I attended a cast and crew screening of MEG 2: THE TRENCH, which I worked briefly on at the end of 2022 with Proof.
🗓AUGUST
✈My brother-in-law’s Austrian wedding took place the first weekend of August, and that was a nice way to get my mind off the work situation.
💻I did some previs work for Nexus Studios on a Christmas ad for Very.
🎓Enrolled on Dominic Morgan’s inaugural SCRIPTFELLA PLAYBOOK course, designed to help up-and-coming writers develop an online presence and a unified approach to their career. I learned some useful lessons in writing query letters and how to conduct myself in meetings.
🗓SEPTEMBER
🎬Over the course of September I had two meetings with Producers at BAFTA, regarding my feature film, DEAD MAN’S HILL.
🎮The rest of the month was extremely quiet. I used my time off constructively, though, racking plenty of hours up on THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: TEARS OF THE KINGDOM. I’m a huge Zelda fan, always have been. It was a nice way to shut my mind off from the constant cacophony of work-related thoughts.
✊The WGA strike ends with victory for the writers – fantastic news.✊
🗓OCTOBER
🎭🎬Attended a VIP event at Battersea Power Station hosted by the London Breeze Film Festival, who had given PRAZINBURK RIDGE an award in June.
🎬At that event I met a Producer and after they read my DEAD MAN’S HILL script, formally became attached to the project. We then set about approaching talent to attach to the project.
🎬🏆I attended Wimbledon International Short FIlm Festival where PRAZINBURK RIDGE won the award for Best Animated Film.
💻Started and finished Unreal Engine Fellowship: Animation (as a Mentor)
🗓NOVEMBER
✈🎬PRAZINBURK RIDGE played the This Is England festival in Rouen, France.
💻Upon my return from France, I began work for the Dimension Studios / DNEG 360 joint venture as a Realtime Visualisation Supervisor.
✈Almost immediately I was sent to Rome, for two weeks, which was a great experience. The food poisoning on the way back though, not so much.
🗓DECEMBER
🎭Attended a Cast & Crew screening of Aquaman 2! I worked on it briefly way back in 2021, although the one sequence I worked on has since been cut. Still fun!
✈Flew to the Maldives for a well-earned break, over New Years.