Story so far... The anologue and early Digital years

Its has taken many years to get to where I am now with my work.

I have been mainly self taught through plenty of experimentation, though the Internet and video tutorials play there part later on.

I was lucky enough to be exposed to camera equipment at an early age in the shape of my dads Sony tape recording camera.

This was mainly used to record family moments such as birthdays and Christmas, but from time to time I could be found ordering my dad to film me in my own films. These generally consisted of me pretending to shoot things and blow things up in my garden using my imagination, so to anyone but my self it looked like a crazy kid jumping about.

After a while I began taking control of the camera myself and began to direct my brother George and my cousins Dex and Fin. Due to a general dislike of my own voice and how I looked on camera I began to stay behind it more and more.

Our first films, still using this Sony camera, consisted of our own Big Brother, Pop Idol, and general running about. This also saw the beginning of my editing. It was done crudely whilst still filming. Scenes needed to be shot in order and on a good take, taping over ones that didn't work, but at the end of scenes I would push the fade button or leave a straight cut and push the cross dissolve button at the beginning of the next scene.

The next stage came on my dads Birthday in the early 2000's when he was given a new Sony DV Camcorder. Within hours I had claimed it as mine and we were filming. Myself, George, Dex and Fin created our own band that night and made our own spoof of Spinal Tap, so a spoof of a spoof!

Now I could mention the band at this moment but I think it would deserve a blog of its own!

So for now I'll keep down the film making side.

With this camera we began to create films that generally consisted of starting at one part of either my or Dex and Fins house and moving around the garden until we arrived at the other side of the house and completing the mission.

The characters we created we now mimics of our on screen heroes, most notably Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid, a game series that still gives me great inspiration to this day.

Another notable creation was the Lazy Guards which were basically really rubbish cloned guards mimicking those from Metal Gear Solid. These films followed the same basic premise, where George and Dex would be the heroes and Fin was the enemy, usually with high pitch consequences...

This new camera itself didn't add much technically, apart from it being lighter and the tapes smaller.

Although the later addition of a tripod brought on massive new possibility's as well as my inevitable return on camera in our most ambitious film of the time, Mega Team.

The film consisted of the four of us wearing home made costumes representing one of four elements; Earth, Wind, H20 and Inferno! The main story line was that captain Inferno (Fin) had a child, a strange one eyed head only child. This was kidnapped but the heads of the Mega Team's three Nemesis factions, the Undead Mafia, the Tribe of Hunglowcock and the Blind Man's Redundancy guild. The reason they took him was to bring out the Mega Team from hiding for revenge.

The Mega Team had been in hiding ever since there victory over these three Nemesis during the Condiment Wars of times past.

The film takes the Mega Team through different dimensions until they reach there goal only to find that the enemy's have transformed Virgil into an all powerful weapon. After a long and destructive battle, the Mega Team destroy Virgil. However in an unremarkable tern of events Virgil floats down from heaven and is reborn...

Unfortunately this film was filmed but never finished effects wise and edit wise, although work was done later one when I was at college.

Over time our films grew because we did. I would suggest this due to a new found sophistication with age, but as the films we made we just better versions of us running around pretending to blow things up and to be in the army, then I cant say we were any more sophisticated than when I was at 6...